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Andy Toone

@lockfarm.bsky.social

1.3K followers 690 following 3.3K posts

Petabytes in my day job, kilobytes in my spare time. Maker of Beasts - https://feersumbeasts.com/ 8-bit Z80 kit Technologist, cynical optimist, occasional CTO, regular tinkerer. Rural hideout in UK

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Andy Toone @lockfarm.bsky.social · Oct 18

You're meant to share the work you're doing..

I'm particularly bad at that, and somewhat overwhelmed with stuff..

..at which point I'm meant to end on a positive note and a call to action, but really, that's the post. That's it.

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Andy Toone @lockfarm.bsky.social · 5h

In the case of people like Theil and Musk, they've had the time to research some topics deeply enough to drop references to obscure texts into their lectures and speeches to impress casual observers. They appear knowledgeable.

The problems come form the conclusions they reach from that knowledge.

Andy Toone @lockfarm.bsky.social · 6h

Her mum used to walk their dogs on the same field my mum walked our dogs.

I'm THAT close to celebrities, me.

Andy Toone @lockfarm.bsky.social · 6h

No, humanities majors go on to invent weird religions and theories about the earth being flat.

Andy Toone @lockfarm.bsky.social · 10h

So was Elizabeth Holmes

Andy Toone @lockfarm.bsky.social · 10h

I'm going to guess... 6.4?

(No. No I don't know what the Hfuhruhurr-Hobbit Index is).

Andy Toone @lockfarm.bsky.social · 10h

It does also open up the question as to whether the world would notice if it was taken over by Bond villains. After all, they'd put out a lot of propaganda to convince us otherwise...

Hmmmm.

Andy Toone @lockfarm.bsky.social · 10h

Book? We want that librarian in real life.

Andy Toone @lockfarm.bsky.social · 10h

That's what I'm doing with VideoBeast - feersumbeasts.com/videobeast.h... - it's designed specifically for 2D arcade graphics, tiles, sprites, bitmaps, layers. Using all the tricks so that a low powered host processor can punch way above it's weight.

Andy Toone @lockfarm.bsky.social · 11h

It would be a possibility - do it all in an FPGA that can't (easily) be re-written. Accessible hardware would be a big benefit though - to encourage add-ons and hacking.

I'm certainly not against the idea of a custom processor that sets the right sort of level for coders to have fun.

Andy Toone @lockfarm.bsky.social · 11h

Possibly. Something of that order of magnitude.

I think the PlayDate and Pico8 have both shown how an 'underpowered' device can open up ideas and opportunities for solo devs and indies to have fun.

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Andy Toone @lockfarm.bsky.social · 11h

It's been interesting to discover how these guys are actually pretty stupid (for want of a better word) in some respects. The bubble they're in stops them from having to think about basic stuff, so they can swan around making nonsensical statements without being corrected.

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Andy Toone @lockfarm.bsky.social · 11h

If you have physical hardware powerful enough to run a VM, you're straight back into the uneven playing field of a device that 'power users' will run a full game engine/OS on.

It'd be nice if it ran something like Lua or a similar scripting language, but bare metal is right there to be used.

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Andy Toone @lockfarm.bsky.social · 13h

One of my goals is designing a "low resource console" - something that doesn't run Linux, Godot, every emulator under the sun, but that can run fun, engaging games.

The trick is finding the balance - enough power, but not overwhelming complexity.

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Andy Toone @lockfarm.bsky.social · 16h

We somehow have both more knowledge now, and less...