Xylemon / is on Nostr

I make games, mods, music, other weird stuff, and archive too many things.

Last Notes

2024-06-26 21:10:38

Finally have this bad boy after all this time
Thanks @npub16jz…gdxz
#quake3 #quake3arena #Linux #pcgaming #gaming
https://media.idtech.space/media/09936f2c3aa38e589a196e6fb5bf33c507b261418ffbeff4fcbcc3122fd0c9e7.jpg

2024-06-26 02:29:19

When you finally achieve your ideal "work room" after fifteen years
https://media.idtech.space/media/e1763f9860fe9dca53e0187b6ec327ea21f9a1dc86a493cb38ad74d6e7a5abc0.jpg

2024-06-17 02:07:41

Found out that toxic Microsoft developer I insulted for proudly declaring less "UNIX philosophy" in systemd has contributed to this:
https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/latest/systemd-bsod.service.html
Can't make this stuff up.

2024-04-27 11:54:41

Linux may kernel panic, but Windows will always update
https://media.idtech.space/media/d9c2572eec656df8670242522d38509e3e7aa3982874c096836751173a7b8b09.jpg

2023-12-29 05:35:55

I have finally relaunched my website after several years with a new blog post to celebrate. Going to be doing more of these in the future, read here:
https://www.bloodbathsoftware.com/xylemon/blog/2023-12-29.php
https://media.idtech.space/media/32fd39aa7d70b840ec3e7326be0d1aa7c99822c272dddf63d241c97f6900e845.gif

2023-10-09 04:37:03

Been trying to finish up the waypoints in FreeCS and others lately. Thanks to the way the map cs_747 is made, when you're in the sky brushes it culls everything but the waypoints leaving this neat layout of all playable areas in the level. I wounder if this should be used in conjunction with the overlay...
Creating waypoints is always good for level design ideas and reflections, i.e. to see what flows and doesn't. It can also reveal short comings with the system that need addressing or decision making on what bots should focus on. And nothing helps discover those issues than 20+ years of cool/weird experimental maps from the 90s/00s. Oh man, did these level designers love their long alternative sewer or vent routes (I was guilty of it myself).
https://media.idtech.space/media/d14b08d7f6db9d4de3e9e97b89d354d014164af794b1ab03a14cbd93c12a7ad1.png
https://media.idtech.space/media/cef8216b6889ce1e2fbe91824a4fb1ecb06c7d51b221d4690168a3c474d150d5.png
https://media.idtech.space/media/7e256e6169e4f1d8b971992482d19374f75668f78c6a7cefbccef07712377e28.png
https://media.idtech.space/media/f3fa0cad20d2852e9b1f481ed5ae2ffc915d01af86d1c9b80f30d32fcd38e7f4.png

2023-09-20 18:39:57

Test maps often produce unintentionally evil results.
https://media.idtech.space/media/a394253ddf64970b1951b76c63a2c023c6e728731fc1da6bbcf543fd15f3ef31.jpg

2023-09-14 08:57:25

Here's some work-in-progress NPCs for FreeOP4 / FreeHL. All done with idTech 4 .def files in our Nuclide SDK, not a single piece of compiled code. @npub1pny…vegv and I will be committing it soon...
https://media.idtech.space/media/d947dcdfa32554304a374573489dafbfa7f0a97e9506db50637a661017a6f0cc.mp4

2023-09-04 21:54:41

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/09/the-state-of-optimus-manager-explained-by-its-developer/
Daily reminder that nVidia Optimus is a crime against humanity.

2023-08-29 01:32:22

Been sorting through over a decade of old photos. Heed my advice and organize your photos on a regular basis because yeah, 8000+ photos from 2010-2017 I’ve been sorting through…
Anyways, it’s confession time:
Here’s a photo from 10 years ago to the day. I had gotten a T-Shirt for “writing” a couple plugins for Overwolf, a GL/DirectX overlay for games. There was a competition or something like that held by Overwolf themselves to encourage people to write plugins. I think there were cash prizes, but I’m not sure.
Regardless, the plugins that netted me this shirt were ports of Spotify and another service. Must’ve been a decent amount of work right? The truth however is… they were only a few lines of code, if not two. Since the plugin API was all Web/HTML based, I just had it iframe or something stupid like to spotify.com and bam, Spotify in the overlay.
It’s amusing to think I won a T-Shirt over this and it got a lot of good reviews for a while. Sadly Overwolf is proprietary and was .NET based which was more or less a dice roll if you wanted to use it on WINE back in those days. That meant I had to leave it behind when I went to Linux and let my plugins break. Which always kind of confused me how they did anyway considering it was so simple ha! But if you left a one star on my plugins, I’m sorry I couldn’t fix them, I’m not even sure how I could have.
I’m also still sad there has never been something like Trillian or Overwolf that’s open source to this day. The Steam overlay is nice and all but a lightweight and powerful chat overlay for all your services for all your friends on any game was truly wonderful. The shoving everything into a website with hostility towards native (and even third party) clients has really made us lose something special in my honest opinion. Not to mention the amount of energy and RAM wasted from webapps. Jokes on me I guess, I got a T-Shirt for making one.
https://media.idtech.space/media/44848d5886a00b0cd20bb7abdd891b56d53d585821f6a0af10d3704dd809b944.jpg

2023-08-28 21:36:49

Some photos by Brian "Wendigo" Hess, documenting when DOOM fans got play QTest with id themselves.
See more here: https://web.archive.org/web/20070728115315fw_/http://photos.planetquake.gamespy.com/qtest/
I've been working on a @npub1wp3…rj22 article about these visits/QuakeCon, I'm so greatful Fedi helped me rediscover this.
https://media.idtech.space/media/daa9b5f9ffb0a69220496cfa8441580f7bf5c3eb8d1a8636d11c37d56f45dd3e.jpg
https://media.idtech.space/media/1f251aa2968210ed39a49970c9f8b4494228ecc477f4cfc073b8fa078583cedd.jpg
https://media.idtech.space/media/f418303c0613e2e96dea91754740889075bc4ad3c5c30cca8bcd8db930c08edf.jpg

2023-08-28 04:05:10

Please repeat so this can get exposure:
There was an old site that hosted a page documenting a moment in 1996 when several at the time professional DOOM players flew/drove to Texas to have a small for fun LAN tourney and then they visited id Software the same or next day. This was when Quake was still in development from what I recall. It's significant not only for e-sports and id Software history, but it also featured many photos of the players (some who have sadly left us) and id Software guys such as Carmack, American, and of course Romero. I believe a popular old photo of American working Quake comes from this set.
I had it bookmarked over a decade ago, and it's been so long I can not remember their names or the site. I believe the site itself wasn't from 1996, but sometime after the event like 99 or early 00s. I'm sorry at how unhelpful that is but I'm hoping someone else knows what I'm talking about for I would love to get it documented properly for the modern age if it isn't already.

2023-08-07 00:31:58

When the town you live in is built like an amateur Quake/Half-Life map
https://media.idtech.space/media/3a99d60bb8d655b5fc03ade0ab0fb1bbb3d9b067132e903509c9855c0d7b6ff1.jpg

2023-07-03 01:19:41

It's easy to shit on Twitter/Reddit and laugh at the dumpster fire it certainly is, but you should err on the side caution over how this plays out. It doesn't matter how wrong, how stupid, how simply inefficient doing something like this, if this can convince the other major players in the webspace that enough users will put up with it and it's financially viable then you will see the internet turn into a hellscape that companies have wanted for years:
A walled garden you pay the privilege of even looking at, every major website a giant stupid bloated Costco.
Garbage like this is why Tim Berners-Lee wants the web to be decentralized fyi

2023-03-29 23:03:47

I have to ask the Fediverse and general internet:
Is there some kind of coordinated effort or database of lost files?
I have been building a small database of lost mod files, and I've realized that even someone like me who is on the lookout for this stuff, will (probably) never have the time to fully dig through my old horribly disorganized drives manually. I've been thinking about this for a while, and I believe some kind of tool that intelligently scans a database of files will help us find lost files. Who knows, you could start scanning old thrown out PCs and might find previously lost media without having to manually waste hours crawling through someone's personal files.
I ask around because duplicated effort is a waste and I'd rather contribute, but if there isn't anything that specific or niche, I don't mind working on a tool/database for this specific purpose.