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paktc.bsky.social
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@paktc.bsky.social
Fun and unexpected stuff related to 2000s retro games and computing. All content is in English.

YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@PAKTC
Website: https://paktc.markusmaal.ee
I've been having fun finding some new cheat codes for Flipnic. It's a bit easier for me, since I have some understanding of how the game works internally.

They are PCSX2 .pnach files, I will release these eventually.
December 17, 2025 at 11:49 AM
In Flipnic, FPD files are all sorts of fun (they define fixed paths for various things, e.g. enemy movement/coins/UFOs/etc.)

For example, you can do something like this:
December 8, 2025 at 2:18 PM
LOAD_0.MID
November 30, 2025 at 9:49 PM
This is a really early version of Pak, the official mascot of PAKTC!

It's a vector image made in Inkscape and looks kind of uncanny right now.

And he's got no nose, because you don't need to breathe if you live inside a computer program (yes, there is lore).
November 27, 2025 at 12:33 PM
he's watching you
November 14, 2025 at 11:39 AM
I changed my profile picture! Here's a comparison between the two (left = before, right = after):
November 8, 2025 at 6:54 PM
I made a tool to extract the PlayStation 1 startup sound (including the .VAB soundbank and a custom MIDI-like sequence)
github.com/MarkusMaal/p...
GitHub - MarkusMaal/psxbios2mid: Tools to convert the PlayStation startup sound to MIDI (from PSX memory dump)
Tools to convert the PlayStation startup sound to MIDI (from PSX memory dump) - MarkusMaal/psxbios2mid
github.com
October 27, 2025 at 6:10 PM
I found this is a cool project to restore the 2013-2016 YouTube UI called Rehike: github.com/Rehike/Rehike

It's basically a server you set up and route all YouTube trafiic through. It's still in development, but most stuff already works, except for live streams, which break in a funny way.
October 19, 2025 at 8:26 AM
flipnic main menu with dark buttons
October 12, 2025 at 3:14 PM
In case you were wondering: yes, it's possible to change the loading text Flipnic, but you are limited to 11 characters of text in UTF-8 encoding (stored inside the data section of the game executable).
October 11, 2025 at 3:13 PM
I made a website for my YT channel
It has some links to my stuff, contact info and there are also a few guides here: paktc.markusmaal.ee
Welcome!
Official website for the Press any key to continue YouTube channel
paktc.markusmaal.ee
October 7, 2025 at 2:47 PM
Something nostalgic for TrackMania² players (that is if you've even heard this obscure soundtrack)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y775...
ManiaPlanet 1.0 - Menu Theme [Extended BGM]
YouTube video by Press any key to continue...
www.youtube.com
October 6, 2025 at 1:07 PM
The growth of my YouTube channel has been insane this year.
I've gotten a total of 75k more views, 1k hours of watch time and 156 new subscribers.

This is more than any previous year my YT channel has existed and there are still 3 whole months left of this year.
September 29, 2025 at 12:01 PM
I've managed to decode some 3D models from Flipnic's LP4 files. It isn't perfect yet (I have yet to figure out how texture coordinates are stored), but some models already look kind of accurate.
September 21, 2025 at 4:18 PM
Flipnic File Tools - a command-line tool for working with various files used by the game (with a GUI front-end available).
Here's what it can now v.s. what it could originally do 1 month ago when I started developing it:

The plan is to eventually support all file formats.
github.com/MarkusMaal/F...
September 20, 2025 at 4:15 PM
Reposted by Press any key to continue...
Flipnic - Ultimate Pinball - Any% in 1:25:47 by PressAnyKeyToContinue
Flipnic - Ultimate Pinball - Any% in 1:25:47 by PressAnyKeyToContinue
www.speedrun.com
September 17, 2025 at 10:44 PM
In late 2019 I made my first Flipnic video in a video series called "Bad Luck", where I tried to figure out if getting bad luck would affect gameplay.

It was bad, please do not watch it!
September 15, 2025 at 5:08 PM
it's kind of fun to see the Flipnic soundtrack deconstructed like this...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTtT...
Flipnic - Original Soundtrack [MIDI Waveform Deconstruction]
YouTube video by Press any key to continue...
www.youtube.com
September 12, 2025 at 11:12 AM
This is my best attempt so far at converting Flipnic's HD/BD (a.k.a. JAM) files to a standard soundfont (.SF2).

The best sounding one currently I think is SERIOUS.MID (especially the start/end is basically identical to direct rip, probably because it's a really simple track).
September 7, 2025 at 11:29 PM
Here are some screenshots of a wip open-source software program I've been working on - Flipnic file tools (supports Mac, Windows and Linux).

It does some of the same stuff as FlipnicBinExtractor, but it allows opening way more file formats used by the game and there's also a GUI front-end for it.
September 6, 2025 at 11:52 PM
Reposted by Press any key to continue...
my bluesky
August 31, 2025 at 7:32 AM
Here are some events of a specific stage in Flipnic (guess which one) partially translated to (somewhat) human-readable format. This gives you an idea of some of the stuff you can change in this game by just patching some bytes in .SST files, without touching the game code itself
August 31, 2025 at 1:10 PM