Rob Brown
@robmbrown.bsky.social
I make pictures and words about stuff. Sometimes developer.
Pinned
Rob Brown
@robmbrown.bsky.social
· Nov 19
Never stop pushing things forward.
Blue Prince was my game of the year (and it's not close). Hell it's one of the games of the decade, a great game, an all-timer. A warm-hearted labour of love that rewarded all the many many hours spent playing and those otherwise still thinking about it (and then some!).
December 20, 2025 at 9:39 AM
Blue Prince was my game of the year (and it's not close). Hell it's one of the games of the decade, a great game, an all-timer. A warm-hearted labour of love that rewarded all the many many hours spent playing and those otherwise still thinking about it (and then some!).
My new favourite Windoze explorer bug is when a downloads folder is grouped by date modified (so you see headers for 'Today', 'This week' etc) and you download a file at midnight it will show up under 'Tomorrow' rather than updating the names of headers to 'Today' and 'Yesterday'.
November 18, 2025 at 12:06 AM
My new favourite Windoze explorer bug is when a downloads folder is grouped by date modified (so you see headers for 'Today', 'This week' etc) and you download a file at midnight it will show up under 'Tomorrow' rather than updating the names of headers to 'Today' and 'Yesterday'.
Forgot how much I enjoyed the TTRPG Timewatch. Also forgot that one of my wolves is usually saying "hang on, how is future-you blinking in to help in this timeline if slightly-earlier-future-you travelled back and diverged this timeline.." while the other wolf is saying "A T-Rex?! Fuck yeah!"
November 12, 2025 at 1:42 PM
Forgot how much I enjoyed the TTRPG Timewatch. Also forgot that one of my wolves is usually saying "hang on, how is future-you blinking in to help in this timeline if slightly-earlier-future-you travelled back and diverged this timeline.." while the other wolf is saying "A T-Rex?! Fuck yeah!"
Turns out testing several weeks of code additions felt kinda ominous and I might not do that again, but that seemed to be the only way to implement three systems that all rely on each other.. but hey the bug fixing was relatively painless (whisper: I actually enjoyed it). I should try to worry less!
November 12, 2025 at 12:25 PM
Turns out testing several weeks of code additions felt kinda ominous and I might not do that again, but that seemed to be the only way to implement three systems that all rely on each other.. but hey the bug fixing was relatively painless (whisper: I actually enjoyed it). I should try to worry less!
How long do we have to wait for Amazon to step up and sort out Twitch? This whole year has been a shit show and week after week the platform just seems grimier and grimier. We used to call it incompetence but we can't use that excuse any more, they are actively enabling gross behaviour.
November 8, 2025 at 1:48 PM
How long do we have to wait for Amazon to step up and sort out Twitch? This whole year has been a shit show and week after week the platform just seems grimier and grimier. We used to call it incompetence but we can't use that excuse any more, they are actively enabling gross behaviour.
I don't really browse Imgur that often any more, but when I did on a daily basis it entirely inspired my taking up and eventually learning half a dozen different skills like doing procedural art in Blender and god knows what else.
October 25, 2025 at 10:36 PM
I don't really browse Imgur that often any more, but when I did on a daily basis it entirely inspired my taking up and eventually learning half a dozen different skills like doing procedural art in Blender and god knows what else.
Saw my first imgur purple box and I guess I'm out of the loop but I actually thought it was parody at first but no, it's just our government that's a parody of itself.
October 25, 2025 at 10:29 PM
Saw my first imgur purple box and I guess I'm out of the loop but I actually thought it was parody at first but no, it's just our government that's a parody of itself.
Posting this cos hey maybe someone at some point will read and they're also snagged up on a mechanic and realise 'oh, the solution is already just there on the page'. I think inspirations are VITAL and I couldn't do any of this without all these games (and devs) existing but yeah, you do you.
October 25, 2025 at 8:23 PM
Posting this cos hey maybe someone at some point will read and they're also snagged up on a mechanic and realise 'oh, the solution is already just there on the page'. I think inspirations are VITAL and I couldn't do any of this without all these games (and devs) existing but yeah, you do you.
Anyway this week or so was kind of a new experience when it comes to games where I typically just bash out code and don't really get impeded by anything, but now I actually had to down tools and solve a design snafu. That honestly doesn't feel that great but finding the way forward - for now - does!
October 25, 2025 at 8:12 PM
Anyway this week or so was kind of a new experience when it comes to games where I typically just bash out code and don't really get impeded by anything, but now I actually had to down tools and solve a design snafu. That honestly doesn't feel that great but finding the way forward - for now - does!
Figured out my combat design puzzle (and ensuing gumption trap) by realising that I just won't do combat. No, wait, come back! That is to say, no turn-based combat rounds, no codifying combat as some discrete thing, just entities swinging at each other (or not) for however long they need to do it.
October 25, 2025 at 7:45 PM
Figured out my combat design puzzle (and ensuing gumption trap) by realising that I just won't do combat. No, wait, come back! That is to say, no turn-based combat rounds, no codifying combat as some discrete thing, just entities swinging at each other (or not) for however long they need to do it.
Feels a bit strange waiting so long for Bloodlines 2 that I can't even remember how long (is it nearly two decades?) - enough to rediscover my fairly kindred soul multiple lives over in the interim - and then deciding to wait a little longer on reviews. But yeah, I guess that's where we're at :/
October 22, 2025 at 6:31 PM
Feels a bit strange waiting so long for Bloodlines 2 that I can't even remember how long (is it nearly two decades?) - enough to rediscover my fairly kindred soul multiple lives over in the interim - and then deciding to wait a little longer on reviews. But yeah, I guess that's where we're at :/
Anyway (anyway), totally looking forward to people telling me which of the silly lines in my game/s are not remotely funny - and they'll probably be right! I guess it's likely some people will find none of it funny, too. Which I will find very very funny, so there's that.
October 17, 2025 at 7:54 PM
Anyway (anyway), totally looking forward to people telling me which of the silly lines in my game/s are not remotely funny - and they'll probably be right! I guess it's likely some people will find none of it funny, too. Which I will find very very funny, so there's that.
So LEGO Party ripped absolutely everything from the other party game to the point of feeling like a cheap knock off but then decided that the formula that has worked for nearly twenty years and almost as many iterations needs an absolutely gratingly unfunny commentary on top?
October 17, 2025 at 6:56 PM
So LEGO Party ripped absolutely everything from the other party game to the point of feeling like a cheap knock off but then decided that the formula that has worked for nearly twenty years and almost as many iterations needs an absolutely gratingly unfunny commentary on top?
(forgive me and just imagine that I correctly capitalised KotOR/KoTOR in the middle of all that)
October 13, 2025 at 10:41 AM
(forgive me and just imagine that I correctly capitalised KotOR/KoTOR in the middle of all that)
So far in my game I have implemented the basics for a bunch of systems (movement, perception, entity states, items etc), which is necessary, and generally enjoyable to hack in since it's a bit of gentle theorycrafting, but gives little/no sense of the gameplay its eventually going to underpin.
October 13, 2025 at 10:01 AM
So far in my game I have implemented the basics for a bunch of systems (movement, perception, entity states, items etc), which is necessary, and generally enjoyable to hack in since it's a bit of gentle theorycrafting, but gives little/no sense of the gameplay its eventually going to underpin.
Anyway, in due course I will be less vague about muh game. For now the making it ugly part means not waxing lyrical about The Game It Is And Will Be. I have learnt well over the decades that remaining tight lipped is the way to go even if it is painful to keep quiet on the thing that burns within.
October 3, 2025 at 5:39 AM
Anyway, in due course I will be less vague about muh game. For now the making it ugly part means not waxing lyrical about The Game It Is And Will Be. I have learnt well over the decades that remaining tight lipped is the way to go even if it is painful to keep quiet on the thing that burns within.
Past week or so of work on my game has all been a lot of bashing keys interspersed with occasional runtime errors and no visual feedback of progress whatsoever. The low-hanging fruit of sprite maps and renderer and basic entity stuff where the progress is writ large is passed for now.
October 3, 2025 at 5:02 AM
Past week or so of work on my game has all been a lot of bashing keys interspersed with occasional runtime errors and no visual feedback of progress whatsoever. The low-hanging fruit of sprite maps and renderer and basic entity stuff where the progress is writ large is passed for now.
The time it takes me to understand or at least adopt and competently use a programming (forgive me) paradigm or language feature almost entirely hinges on the name that it was given. But so often the extremely smart people creating these things are almost inherently the worst at naming them.
September 25, 2025 at 5:27 AM
The time it takes me to understand or at least adopt and competently use a programming (forgive me) paradigm or language feature almost entirely hinges on the name that it was given. But so often the extremely smart people creating these things are almost inherently the worst at naming them.
Oh no, stack overflow has fallen victim to the dogshit abbreviated date strings meme. Nice to know that these comments on an answer are 'over a year ago', so what is that like, early 2024? Maybe 2023? No, it's 2018.
Fuck off with this shit.
Fuck off with this shit.
September 23, 2025 at 11:22 PM
Oh no, stack overflow has fallen victim to the dogshit abbreviated date strings meme. Nice to know that these comments on an answer are 'over a year ago', so what is that like, early 2024? Maybe 2023? No, it's 2018.
Fuck off with this shit.
Fuck off with this shit.
Thinking about those zombie movies/media that don't use the word zombie. Aside from this being one of my bugbears because it's pretty inane, self-important and usually jarring, there's some weird thought processes that go along with it.
September 19, 2025 at 8:16 PM
Thinking about those zombie movies/media that don't use the word zombie. Aside from this being one of my bugbears because it's pretty inane, self-important and usually jarring, there's some weird thought processes that go along with it.
TIL in Python loop variables like 'for key,val in...' running in global scope are created as globals. So in this case key overwrites the method key(). I don't like this :S This means all init loops that procedurally create globals have to be wrapped in a method or put in a class. Sure I guess?
September 17, 2025 at 6:26 PM
TIL in Python loop variables like 'for key,val in...' running in global scope are created as globals. So in this case key overwrites the method key(). I don't like this :S This means all init loops that procedurally create globals have to be wrapped in a method or put in a class. Sure I guess?
I think I am blessed with the everyday superpower of very much enjoying starting from first principles and doing things 'the slow way' or 'the wrong way' and enjoying gradually doing it slightly less slow and slightly less wrong.
September 12, 2025 at 10:46 PM
I think I am blessed with the everyday superpower of very much enjoying starting from first principles and doing things 'the slow way' or 'the wrong way' and enjoying gradually doing it slightly less slow and slightly less wrong.
I never bother with any of the 'don't code like this' YouTube videos but I do wonder if the creators realise that coding like that - or really however feels sensible at the time - is a necessary step to later understanding a different way of doing things (or more importantly finding a style).
September 12, 2025 at 10:41 PM
I never bother with any of the 'don't code like this' YouTube videos but I do wonder if the creators realise that coding like that - or really however feels sensible at the time - is a necessary step to later understanding a different way of doing things (or more importantly finding a style).
Adding 'Hades cinematics anime series' to the list of media I will spend the rest of my life dreaming about.
September 12, 2025 at 8:03 PM
Adding 'Hades cinematics anime series' to the list of media I will spend the rest of my life dreaming about.
After some years of gumption traps and y'know all the other nonsense I finally allowed myself to 'start anywhere' this past week and bashed out a little arcade game loop for the TIC-80 virtual machine. Even though it is a stepping stone to a larger project it feels great and has been so healing.
September 9, 2025 at 1:43 AM
After some years of gumption traps and y'know all the other nonsense I finally allowed myself to 'start anywhere' this past week and bashed out a little arcade game loop for the TIC-80 virtual machine. Even though it is a stepping stone to a larger project it feels great and has been so healing.