We are a mere week into 2021, and it has been confirmed that the world is still delightfully mad. Despite the past year being nuttier than Mr. Peanut, some interesting projects did come about this past year. I continued my exploration with games, primarily porting games developed with Adventure Game Studio to the Mac, but also wrote about Gabriel Knight 3, Curse of Monkey Island, and Quest for Glory III. I also wrote a plug-in for the Acorn image editor to transform a photo to look like an 8-bit image. A fourth part of the Reverse Engineering Sierra's Adventure Game Interpreter series was also written to show how to have a little fun with hacking Sierra games (and mocking "poisonous" snakes).
Just as the calendar flipped over, I released an update to the Mac version of AGI Studio, the utility I used to King's Quest 1 - Redux.
Software updates:
- EdenMath 1.2.2
- EdenList 2.1.1
- Permanent Eraser 2.8.1, 2.9.0, and 2.9.1
Development for Permanent Eraser 3.0 has officially started and will have a new focus and be geared for more modern Macs.
I have been mulling over the idea of retiring 33 RPM for a number of years, especially since it no longer works on macOS Catalina and Big Sur. At this time I am sending it off to a well earned retirement since there has been no real movement towards trying to rewrite the entire app (so far).
One project I mentioned I was working on last year was writing a novel. I was successful in completing the first draft, and I am currently in the process of editing the second draft. During this year's NaNoWriMo, I might visit the intersection of writing and technology by investigating TWINE. I might even try resurrecting my old text-based game Psychomancer this way.
A couple of game-related projects are planned for this year, including porting a couple more AGS games to the Mac.