Also, this might be a brain chemistry thing, but I can't remember a time in my adult life that I've ever been screaming or hopping-up-and-down or running-in-the-streets type of excited about something, the way people get when their team wins or scores a goal, so I'm envious of that too. :P

That plus the purpose-built-device-that-does-one-thing-really-well are some of the best genres of devices, and it'll be exciting when everyone rediscovers them. :D

Sure, hide stuff in the stage, and let it scroll by as I slide down a ramp I can't jump back up, or past some flying Goombas I can't reach once I fall past, so that I get it in my head, "check behind and around", so I get on top of some thwomps hiding NOTHING and get squished against the ceiling. :\

"Is there anything on top of this row of thwomps?"
No, in fact, not only do you get reverse-squished against the ceiling, which is an instant-kill in the Galaxy series, but you lose all 114 coins you collected over the course of the stage.
Nevermind the *other* hidden stuff elsewhere in the stage.

It's possible this boss has some kind of tell for what side he's going to dodge towards, and I just didn't pick up on it. But, if I wanted to design a boss where you needed to shoot where he's *going* and not where he *is*, I'd hope I'd remember to put in some kind of tell.

Please let me know if I ever end up designing any bosses like that, because I don't want to design any bosses like that.

The part that I *really* don't know is, while I know the calculations and detection can be done in the game logic, is there a way to get the graphics rendering pipeline (which is already doing the calculations) to help out with the detection?
Probably, but modern graphics rendering is my weakness.

Without looking it up, I'll bet it's the same matrix transformation(s) you use to convert world coordinates to camera coordinates, then to screen coordinates, and then it's simple 2D collision detection from there.

IIRC, the TV Rachel's talking about that required a software license agreement before it would allow you to switch inputs was also a Roku TV, so I'm noticing a pattern. :P

Pickled keycaps. :D

I had a thought; if you never connect a smart TV to the internet, that basically neutralizes it into just being a TV without any software updates, any apps, or any junk like that.
It might have a fancy swooshy menu you have to go through to switch between inputs, but that's it.

At this point, I know enough Swedish that I can almost read random things people post online, but I still need to look things up often.
I will probably never be able to spell anything correctly though, sorry. :P

I'm using a simple FM patch editor I wrote on the X16, and every now and then I just boot it up and play around, writing down anything that sounded good.
I think that's what Yamaha themselves recommended in their programming references.
Algorithms 0-3 are still the hardest for me to figure out.

With the OPL, I can pretty much figure out what the patch settings are just by hearing them, but with 4-op FM synthesis, I can't, because there's a lot more parameters that go into it.

But, I'm starting to be able to guess the algorithms, so that's something.