Some things change and some things stay the same!

Been a while since the last post back in.. err.. 2018.. and you’d think I’d have more things to add here. Amusingly, the only major new release the Badgers did since the last post, is technically an update to the same game as the last time - Snake-A-Roid - so I’ve had to add the date to the title to differentiate them here. I say update, but that’s not being particularly generous as it was a fairly major rewrite and it clearly shows even between the screenshots of both pages. The 2016 version is still available ( along with the earlier mini ludumdare original and the build we took to 4TG ) so you can see the progression. Still, near enough a decade between releases is a little bit much, so lets try and get something else out a bit quicker!

Speaking of, I’ve been looking into ZX Spectrum development. Specifically using z88dk and writing it in C. It’s been going well, and I’ve been thinking of bringing a few games over - first one being a port of Germies! - and then one that languished on the back burner, and one that didn’t make it past design. The idea being to get them all done this year, but I’ve been poking at things since December, and it’s June already and I haven’t finished the first one! So we’ll see how that goes.

GameMaker’s latest LTS version finally got released, which was a mammoth amount of work. A little bit late, but we got there in the end.

I’ve also been looking into JavaScript and TypeScript recently, so might actually dust the site down a little more! Though as always, finding spare time to do much of anything is never easy, so don’t hold me to that!

And finally… in the intermediary years, various services changed their terms of services, shut down, etc… and the backups I had bitrotted.. so anything that wasn’t actually archived up on GitHub has sadly been lost. Thankfully this was mostly just coursework binaries and my terrible mod files, but it is a bit of a letdown that the drives went, and the discs I had archived to either got lost or damaged, so much of the files that I hadn’t yet uploaded here now never will be. I hadn’t had time to go back and check things, so it’s really only my own fault.

Again, I’ll try and find time to clean the site up a bit; be that a redesign or just going through things and taking out bad links, etc..

Hopefully that won’t take another seven years before I next update things!

This site has been stuck in a rut for quite a while, with broken images and all sorts for a couple of years after the import from Wordpress.

I’ve now gone through everything, added missing projects and images, and recategorised things… it should now be pretty complete. There are a few things still missing - downloads for older projects mainly, and a details for a few odd projects - but the most interesting bits and pieces should be here now.

Where possible, things have links to SoundCloud where I put most of the music, and to either my own GitHub repo or the Arcade Badgers GitHub repo where there is source available.

It’s been an interesting year for me in general. A lot of ups and downs.

Starting with the downs first… both kids had their appendices removed at the start of Summer - within three weeks of each other. I swear you cannot put odds on that. So that meant they were stuck inside in what turned out to be a rather glorious Summer for a change. Not long afterwards however, Claire’s grandmother passed away… and not long after that again, Loki passed away - to which I posted about below. We’ve also still been fighting with the debt, with another magic bill pulled out of HMRC’s thin air.

On to the good, however.

While the debt has been a pest, we’re getting through it.. with the hope of being completely clear of the lot of it by the end of the year! Hurrah! I’ve also found time to work on a few projects, from JS1K with Pollute at the beginning of the year, through to LowRezJam with Pixel Beard and JS13k with -link> just this month. Also, YoYo released the Nintendo Switch export for GameMaker Studio 2! Or the Open Beta anyway, with the final to be done soon-ish.

So, it’s been an interesting year.. and it’s not finished yet.

The idea is to do another odd experimental thing, and then finally (FINALLY) finish off Snake-A-Roid 2.0 as I’m slowly getting tired of it. There’s not much left to do, but it’s in that last 90% complete stage, where everytime you get to 99%, you find something else that needs done and pushes it back another week of real dev time.. and the Badgers is a side-hustle after all so time isn’t always available.

But here’s hoping it sneaks out before the year’s end.. it is looking rather good.

Loki passed away this Summer.

It was quite unexpected, as he was “the old boy” having been with us for six years! We were sure he’d outlast everyone as he just fought through everything. He had arthritis, which cost a bit in keeping him medicated every day.. but you’d do it for any person, so why not your pet? Still part of the family, just perhaps a bit furrier!

But yes.. six years as part of the family is a long time. He outlived his companion, Thor, as well as Ragnarok and Magni. He was piggy number one. He went through our original cage; where both him and Thor were free-range piggies, able to leap out and follow us as they pleased - raiding the salad drawer of the fridge when we opened it. He got the joy of the custom built CNC cage, along with loft with Thor. He got to meet Ragnarok, Cupid and Magni. He soaked us during bath times, by shaking and running around as no, he did not like it! He let his presence be known as we got in the door, and the wheeks for food and attention. He chewed the bars to bits to let everyone know that Loki was boss. He was Claire’s pig. A fact he made perfectly clear by just tolerating me, but scrabbling to her everytime he was picked up. He was a gamer pig - and routinely cuddled down with Claire for gaming goodness - and trying to help by “testing” the analogue sticks for tastiness. He was best pig.

There won’t ever be another like him. Six years of Loki. Six years of memories. Six years of showing us what a Guinea Pig can be, and certainly not going down without a fight.

He’ll be back with Thor, causing mischief along with Ragna and Magni. Eating all the parsley they can, and forever keeping a watchful eye on me, and a loving eye on Claire.

Loki Cuddles