Nova
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novasquirrel.com
Nova
@novasquirrel.com
Game dev and pixel artist, hoping to meet other people into cute sfw furry RP. 30, she/her

See https://chitter.xyz/@NovaSquirrel or https://novasquirrel.com/contact.html for other sites

Check out https://tilemap.town/ - my 2D pixel art virtual world
Here's a bunch of toy art I got from @funnyhat12.bsky.social and @raystarkitty.bsky.social that I haven't posted here yet! Thought it'd be cute to get some art involving cute bappy paws, and RayStarKitty's style is perfect for Maffi. Love the idea to have colored heart prints on paws.

#toyfur
January 19, 2026 at 3:39 PM
I did end up giving Tilemap Town a way to focus on just private messages, which helps with the still-not-ideal UI for doodle boards, and I made it much more bandwidth efficient which made me comfortable allowing bigger boards and higher-color boards. Good place to leave the feature for now.
January 17, 2026 at 5:05 AM
In yesterday's Tilemap Town Tuesday I showed of the new feature in tilemap.town where you can create a doodle board to draw on, and people drew a bunch of stuff. We ended up making a little art gallery attached to the library to hold some pictures people made.
January 7, 2026 at 4:41 PM
Managed to make a Tilemap Town client as a desktop app with Qt, using code from the 3DS client as a base. It's very basic but you can explore and chat. I'd like to eventually add the ability to build and other important features but it's a proof-of-concept for now

Code at github.com/NovaSquirrel...
January 4, 2026 at 4:15 AM
I added the doodle boards to Tilemap Town as well as a bunch of other things, like a projectile shooter. The doodle boards are actually small tilemaps themselves with tilemap.town/img/mini_til... as a tileset and tiny 4x2 tiles, so there's color but also attribute clash.
December 24, 2025 at 4:56 PM
I added chat name colors to #TilemapTown recently to try and help make it easier to follow chat that's busy and that has a lot of people in it. And it's just a fun, easy-to-implement bit of customization anyway. Earlier I added a feature to focus on chat from nearby people for similar purposes.
December 19, 2025 at 9:46 PM
Managed to set up a reasonably good Maffi on Second Life using the Puchimono avatar, though there are a ton of things I'd like to improve eventually, like figuring out a way to get her tummy symbol on her (though a dress is a cute alternative that avoids the problem.) Happy to see her so shiny.
December 11, 2025 at 4:21 AM
The Petal Crash port for Game Boy Color is now at a point where all four score attack modes completely work, and you can play a whole game to its completion and get a results screen. Multiplayer is close to fully working too. There's a lot of work left but the game being fully playable is exciting.
December 8, 2025 at 4:26 PM
I commissioned @funnyhat12.bsky.social to draw some of my favorite Kirby characters as shiny rubber. I usually just get art of my own characters, but art of my characters interacting with characters I like a lot is a fun concept that I want to do more with. And it's fun to see them on their own too.
December 6, 2025 at 4:32 PM
I love going so fast that I have a hard time not constantly ramming into walls. I guess that's the case in F-Zero too but in this situation there's no penalty for it so it's a lot more fun haha.
November 21, 2025 at 6:11 PM
I also got this footage of me defeating Dyna Blade via the incredible power of running very fast. Rick's special is very fun and is so fast that it's hard to control, but I like that. It's like how going extremely fast with the Grizzco Roller is fun but it's something I get to do every single game.
November 10, 2025 at 5:22 PM
Kirby Air Riders makes everything feel so impactful and I'm really looking forward to playing again next weekend since there will be another demo period. And then the weekend after that... the game will be out!
November 10, 2025 at 5:14 PM
Petal Crash sure has a lot of menus and screens. I've been working on setting up all the screens you'd use to configure link cable multiplayer, and getting everything properly synchronized. Board walls from Petal Crash Online are returning, and perhaps I can add brand new cursed wall options.
November 3, 2025 at 5:49 PM
Making stuff on my own region on my own grid means I'm completely cut off from the Second Life marketplace, *but* I'm totally free to make silly objects out of primitive shapes, and I think that's a really fun kind of aesthetic in itself. I could probably look for 3D models online to import in too.
October 29, 2025 at 10:31 PM
I found a shower demo while exploring Second Life's 2025 Halloween Shop and Hop, and the idea of going and taking a shower in a public mall after being given the opportunity to do so was way too funny not to do. And then I realized that using this avatar of Sir Kibble from Kirby makes it funnier.
October 28, 2025 at 2:47 PM
Game Boy's hblank is really big and varies in size depending on the number of sprites on the line. It's easier to delay to hblank to do a change instead of queuing a list of changes for the next vblank. Here the change being made is that a tetromino I placed is being added to the background layer.
October 21, 2025 at 10:49 PM
I was able to cut the latency in half by making it so that both consoles can send a byte each transfer, whether or not they're in charge of initiating the transfer, and I also skip sending a byte if it would be redundant. I'm happy with the speed now, which is good since it'd be hard to improve.
October 21, 2025 at 4:32 AM
Finally got my link cable setup in Petal Crash for Game Boy Color set up to the point where a connection is actually established, but I'm not happy with the amount of latency in sending over a message. I know a few things I can try, but going much faster might require tricky synchronization stuff.
October 20, 2025 at 6:10 PM
Working on the versus mode in Petal Crash for Game Boy Color again, now working on finishing the garbage mechanic. Instant drop garbage was already in because of Trash Trial, so I implemented the normal kind, with targets for where garbage will fall in a few turns.

#gbdev #homebrew #gamedev
September 21, 2025 at 3:16 PM
Extending my Furnace to Terrific Audio Driver project so that it can also accept Impulse Tracker files wasn't too difficult, though there's still work to do and everything needs to be tested. Internally it converts the file to Furnace-style representation and then converts again to MML.
September 9, 2025 at 5:48 PM
Here's a Brionne Maffi by @funnyhat12.bsky.social using the design I made. Always a big fan of the way she shades rubber, making it look real.
September 7, 2025 at 12:59 AM
Here's a video of me playing part of the first map in the game, using mouse controls.
September 6, 2025 at 6:05 PM
Here's my #SNES mouse-controlled shooter game so far! It's definitely far from being 100% done, but it's in a state where I feel comfortable showing it off and having people try it out! Multiplayer and regular controllers are supported.

forums.nesdev.org/viewtopic.ph...

#gamedev #snesdev #homebrew
September 6, 2025 at 6:05 PM
Managed to have a big enough event on Tilemap Town yesterday with enough people that we ran into a problem where it's difficult to keep track of multiple activities/conversations happening on the same map, all in the same chat log. I added a feature to let you focus the chat by names or by distance.
August 27, 2025 at 5:06 PM
Here's a draft of the first three chapters of a fanfic I wanted to write since last year, involving characters from Earth finding themselves in a setting based on the 1997 Pokémon Gold/Silver demo, transformed into cut Pokémon designs:
drive.google.com/file/d/1CWJH...

Excited to write more of it!
August 18, 2025 at 6:38 PM