Jill
@jill.scrungus.club
Sometimes gamedev
Current focus is Psychonauts.
I'm @ScrungusCrungus on the bird website
https://jillcrungus.com/projects/psychonauts/blog/
Current focus is Psychonauts.
I'm @ScrungusCrungus on the bird website
https://jillcrungus.com/projects/psychonauts/blog/
A lot of particle effects in Psychonauts have this "Start pasting PE Room output here." comment. I can only imagine "PE Room" (Particle Effect Room? Particle Edit Room?) was some kind of tool that'd let them easily put together particle effects. A bit of a shame we don't have whatever it is.
November 6, 2025 at 5:09 AM
A lot of particle effects in Psychonauts have this "Start pasting PE Room output here." comment. I can only imagine "PE Room" (Particle Effect Room? Particle Edit Room?) was some kind of tool that'd let them easily put together particle effects. A bit of a shame we don't have whatever it is.
Oh hey! We actually have the file for this! I don't know if I've ever posted about it before but I thought it was really neat to see.
August 20, 2025 at 2:51 PM
Oh hey! We actually have the file for this! I don't know if I've ever posted about it before but I thought it was really neat to see.
With some determination, I've managed to staple on support for loading textures from PNG, BMP and for some reason JPG files. TGA also works, though was technically already supported by the engine.
June 23, 2025 at 6:21 AM
With some determination, I've managed to staple on support for loading textures from PNG, BMP and for some reason JPG files. TGA also works, though was technically already supported by the engine.
I've been working on a small side project recently, unrelated to Psychonauts. However, it's really been selling me on the potential for using Godot as a frontend builder for tools. Better than WinForms/WPF by a long shot. Considering it for a potential GUI for Oatmeal.
May 5, 2025 at 7:47 PM
I've been working on a small side project recently, unrelated to Psychonauts. However, it's really been selling me on the potential for using Godot as a frontend builder for tools. Better than WinForms/WPF by a long shot. Considering it for a potential GUI for Oatmeal.
Progress, continued.
It's occurring to me that it's been a long time since I wrote a technical post on solving a new issue and this might be a good candidate for it.
It's occurring to me that it's been a long time since I wrote a technical post on solving a new issue and this might be a good candidate for it.
April 26, 2025 at 3:31 AM
Progress, continued.
It's occurring to me that it's been a long time since I wrote a technical post on solving a new issue and this might be a good candidate for it.
It's occurring to me that it's been a long time since I wrote a technical post on solving a new issue and this might be a good candidate for it.
Believe it or not, this is what "progress" looks like when working on Astralathe.
April 25, 2025 at 5:09 PM
Believe it or not, this is what "progress" looks like when working on Astralathe.
multi_prim_test. This was a very early test level that I built while developing custom level support for Psychonauts last year. It originally started as just 2 differently textured platforms to test multi-primitive support in Oatmeal. This version was built on the 19th of April 2024.
January 24, 2025 at 9:59 PM
multi_prim_test. This was a very early test level that I built while developing custom level support for Psychonauts last year. It originally started as just 2 differently textured platforms to test multi-primitive support in Oatmeal. This version was built on the 19th of April 2024.
Deadlock ended up being recorded as my most played Steam game of this year, but I know for sure that if had been launching Psychonauts through Steam while working on Astralathe and such, it would have certainly dethroned it. A shame, would have been fun to see it here.
December 18, 2024 at 8:41 PM
Deadlock ended up being recorded as my most played Steam game of this year, but I know for sure that if had been launching Psychonauts through Steam while working on Astralathe and such, it would have certainly dethroned it. A shame, would have been fun to see it here.
And that's all we need to do. If we implement those changes then both machines now always work, and show the expected portrait!
December 6, 2024 at 7:43 PM
And that's all we need to do. If we implement those changes then both machines now always work, and show the expected portrait!
We can prove this is the issue - if we head to Ford's lab while in state 7 but before meeting up with Lili (i.e. when he's standing on the entrance platform to the obeervation area) and PSI blast the core machine while closer to him, he speaks!
December 6, 2024 at 7:42 PM
We can prove this is the issue - if we head to Ford's lab while in state 7 but before meeting up with Lili (i.e. when he's standing on the entrance platform to the obeervation area) and PSI blast the core machine while closer to him, he speaks!
Here's the code the PSI core collector uses to set up its own reaction table. Ignore the "DIALOG" comment - it's incorrect. This code is generally a lot nicer and more maintainable though, I like it. And you'll notice we have the owner override set here!
December 6, 2024 at 7:42 PM
Here's the code the PSI core collector uses to set up its own reaction table. Ignore the "DIALOG" comment - it's incorrect. This code is generally a lot nicer and more maintainable though, I like it. And you'll notice we have the owner override set here!
Let's check the Cobweb Loom's code. Action actors such as the loom use a shared system for reaction dialogue like this. Here's the cobweb loom's reaction table in all of its redundant glory.
December 6, 2024 at 7:42 PM
Let's check the Cobweb Loom's code. Action actors such as the loom use a shared system for reaction dialogue like this. Here's the cobweb loom's reaction table in all of its redundant glory.
Furthermore, if you listen to the loom vs. the core collector, you can kind of tell that there's something different. The loom's dialogue seems to play in 2D whereas the dialogue when you hit the core collector seems to actually be coming from Ford. Hmmm...
December 6, 2024 at 7:42 PM
Furthermore, if you listen to the loom vs. the core collector, you can kind of tell that there's something different. The loom's dialogue seems to play in 2D whereas the dialogue when you hit the core collector seems to actually be coming from Ford. Hmmm...
First off is that this is of course resolution agnostic. With or without the widescreen patch, this bug happens. It's not a display issue - there really is no dialogue icon being shown.
December 6, 2024 at 7:42 PM
First off is that this is of course resolution agnostic. With or without the widescreen patch, this bug happens. It's not a display issue - there really is no dialogue icon being shown.
🧵 I was idly messing around in Psychonauts and managed to find a mildly interesting bug. In this case, I was messing around in Ford's lab and happened to bump the cobweb loom. I got a line from Ford but... his dialogue portrait isn't there.
December 6, 2024 at 7:42 PM
🧵 I was idly messing around in Psychonauts and managed to find a mildly interesting bug. In this case, I was messing around in Ford's lab and happened to bump the cobweb loom. I got a line from Ford but... his dialogue portrait isn't there.
Back to quality of life, I've decided just for fun to add full Discord rich presence support to the entire vanilla game. This was inspired by something I've been meaning to write a thread about but I digress. In the future, this'll be exposed to modders in some way.
December 1, 2024 at 12:27 AM
Back to quality of life, I've decided just for fun to add full Discord rich presence support to the entire vanilla game. This was inspired by something I've been meaning to write a thread about but I digress. In the future, this'll be exposed to modders in some way.
This one's back to being more developer oriented, but I've also merged in my reimplementations of the game's debug rendering features. This restores some features of the debug menu and grants modders access to debug rendering for the sake of... well, debugging.
December 1, 2024 at 12:27 AM
This one's back to being more developer oriented, but I've also merged in my reimplementations of the game's debug rendering features. This restores some features of the debug menu and grants modders access to debug rendering for the sake of... well, debugging.
This version of Astralathe fixes that, patching the game so the game renders them to appropriately sized buffers for your resolution. You can even set a scaling factor that allows you to increase or decrease the size of said buffers (such as for performance reasons).
December 1, 2024 at 12:27 AM
This version of Astralathe fixes that, patching the game so the game renders them to appropriately sized buffers for your resolution. You can even set a scaling factor that allows you to increase or decrease the size of said buffers (such as for performance reasons).
To start, I've finally gotten around to merging in my fix for the game's various effects being low resolution. If you never noticed, some effects like the PSI hand or entity fading were quite... crusty, because the game was rendering them to a 640x480 buffer.
December 1, 2024 at 12:27 AM
To start, I've finally gotten around to merging in my fix for the game's various effects being low resolution. If you never noticed, some effects like the PSI hand or entity fading were quite... crusty, because the game was rendering them to a 640x480 buffer.
Before we get to those though, the final tool in the F10 menu is the console. This is a window that lets you view the game's log output and even enter and execute any Lua code you wish. This is great for both developers and just messing around.
December 1, 2024 at 12:27 AM
Before we get to those though, the final tool in the F10 menu is the console. This is a window that lets you view the game's log output and even enter and execute any Lua code you wish. This is great for both developers and just messing around.
Also in the F10 menu you can find the shiny new in-game settings menu. I'll be deprecating the old settings tool eventually because this menu is just a lot better in every way. There's some spoilers for a few new features in this image...
December 1, 2024 at 12:27 AM
Also in the F10 menu you can find the shiny new in-game settings menu. I'll be deprecating the old settings tool eventually because this menu is just a lot better in every way. There's some spoilers for a few new features in this image...
The mod list. Astralathe has a fancy new in-game UI accessible via the F10 key and inside it you can find this menu, which lets you view and manage every mod you currently have installed. This has been a very long time coming, and I'm really proud of it. I've spent a while polishing it up.
December 1, 2024 at 12:27 AM
The mod list. Astralathe has a fancy new in-game UI accessible via the F10 key and inside it you can find this menu, which lets you view and manage every mod you currently have installed. This has been a very long time coming, and I'm really proud of it. I've spent a while polishing it up.
Oh actually there is one last thing I couldn't fit in. For some reason in this frame from Gloria's memory vault one of the hands has 4 fingers and the other has 5?? I don't really know what to make of this one. Gloria only has 4 fingers on each hand. Interpret this how you will.
November 28, 2024 at 4:36 AM
Oh actually there is one last thing I couldn't fit in. For some reason in this frame from Gloria's memory vault one of the hands has 4 fingers and the other has 5?? I don't really know what to make of this one. Gloria only has 4 fingers on each hand. Interpret this how you will.
And then in December 2002 we have Augustus' concept art. Again, 5 fingers. It seems that after all the theory was correct. There is seemingly some cutoff point in 2002 where Double Fine decided that characters should have 5 fingers.
November 28, 2024 at 4:36 AM
And then in December 2002 we have Augustus' concept art. Again, 5 fingers. It seems that after all the theory was correct. There is seemingly some cutoff point in 2002 where Double Fine decided that characters should have 5 fingers.