The Kingdom of Philtopia

I’ve started using Steam for Mac the last couple months and I have been finding it very enjoyable. Steam’s best feature is it somehow gets into your head and throws stuff into featured that you’re likely going to decide to get.

So one day I log in and on the featured page is 8bit MMO, being a child of the 80’s and having used a C64, C128 , NES and SMS this of course immediately got my attention.

8bitMMO website

The world

The world in 8Bit MMO is almost entirely generated by players. It sort of works like a top down version of mine craft where you purchase or accumulate blocks and can assemble your own little 8bit world. When you start the game you go through a very helpful set of tutorial missions that get you used to the basics of the building system of the universe before even allowing you out into the wild.

Everyone is also give their own Pocket universe isolated from the main world where you can build whatever you want. This allows you to build in private before allowing anyone to see your accomplishments.

The world is broken up to cities and cities have mayors, those mayors are actually players and they decide who can and cannot build in their town. To build in a town you must talk to the mayor and ask if you can be a citizen. Some cities this is a straight up yes or no and others sell you plots of land to build on for gold.

Click here to see the world map

Currency

The games main currency is gold this allows you to buy blocks to build with and weapons to fight with. You get gold by completing Quests or killing monsters. Monsters tend to be a zing on society like “hipsters” and “game reviewers”

The other currency is called plat, this is a paid for currency that solely exists for supporting the developers. The prices for plat are fairly cheap and items that require it do not require very much. Having plat allows you to get Town stones and become a mayor. Other than owning a town and a couple gimmick items like a zombie character you do not need plat to enjoy the game.

Quests

Quests are also made by players. A player can make a quest later on in the game by buying a reward block and placing it in a dungeon of their own design.

Sound track

This is probably my favorite part of the game. No matter what you are doing or where you are there is always a wonderful 8bit soundtrack following you around from various musicians. I’ve heard NES like tunes, C64 Sid like tunes, arcade style. It’s all there and it’s great!

Downside

While the best part of the game is that it is all player contrib that is also on occasion the worst. You will on occasion run into a map that wasn’t designed very well and will find it hard to navigate or a quest description that is so vague that you’ll never complete it. However you can always abandon a quest with no penalty and it isn’t common so it’s only a minor hiccup to an otherwise enjoyable game.

Give it a try, it’s free, it’s fun, hell just have it running in the background for the music!

Been quiet on this one for a while…

OpenParsec development hasn’t entirely been quiet the last 2 years there have been a few bursts here and there making strides towards another release.

After this release all objects that were in the LAN demo are present in the internet game so what does this mean?

TELEPORTERS

Yes, we finally got those included they didn’t quite make 0.2. We also got the Invulnerability shield to properly display to all users.

Non gameplay changes:
-SDL2 across all platforms
-Added the Raspberry Pi as a platform via GLES 1.x
–Yes, seriously
-Mac OS X Spaces fullscreen support
-Moar Audio tracks! 3 weren’t part of the 0.2 release that were present in the demo.
-Headless bot support if you can’t find anyone to play with
-Many many bugfixes

You can clone the current WIP here on Github and if you get a successful client running you should get the current 0.3 test servers via the StarMap.

Stay tuned it won’t be long now!

On the weekend I was at the St Jacobs market and there was a retro gaming booth with all sorts of goodies. He had some NES carts and some SNES, N64 and gameboy. I didn’t find anything I really wanted in the cart bin as I do have most of the games I want already but I did notice he had a variety of replacement controllers for various systems.

I asked him if he had NES and sure enough he pulled a box out from under the counter “$10” done deal.

I got the controller home and unboxed it. It is a fairly accurate replica. The only thing off were the start/select buttons which were plastic instead of rubber.

The feel of the controller is very accurate, it feels like I am holding a NES controller in my hand and it appeared to respond fairly well. The only way to be sure of this however was the speed bike test

Battletoads

The Battletoads speed bike level is probably the fastest level in any NES game that I have ever played so if I could make a decent run at it then the controller passes my test.

I got to the last part of the level where it gets insanely fast and the alerts stop and I made it about 2/3’s of the way. I haven’t been able to beat this since I entered my 30’s so that counts as a pass for me.

NES

So my Nintendo now is coming up on 25 years old but it is still running strong. About 12 years ago I opened it up and pulled up all the cart pins with a flat head eyeglass screw driver to restore proper contacts and I cleaned the inside of it. The carts are harder to get in and out now but the connection is perfect.

The only odd thing I have to do is get it to rest about halfway up/down in the cart bay as all the way down or all the way up won’t run the game so I have an SD card container propped in the system. It’s weird but it works.

If you have an NES and have any unusual ways of keeping it running please comment below I would love to hear about it.

Decided to try some scenic stuff and securing down the track this time around

Earthy Stain

So I had been wondering what to do for the base colour there are lots of options from just painting it brown with latex paint, doing nothing and just starting with the scenic stuff or using things such as real dirt.

Since I haven’t scenicked before I decided to take the Woodland scenics route.

I started off with a bottle of their “Earth colors undercoat” and a paint brush directly onto the wood. I was liberal with the liquid because A: no experience and B: I only had a 1×4 area to cover and had plenty of undercoat for the job.

I only used about 1/3 of the bottle to cover the whole area and I let it dry over night. The end result was very pleasing and I was ready to lay down the track.

Track laying

I used some wood glue I already had available in my toolbox to secure the track down to the board. This had a high tack and held quickly and once dried was not visible. It holds the tracks well to where I want them and it isn’t overly impossible to get it off if I ever decided to “do over”.

There was an issue with a turnout that didn’t sit flat and for that I used a pair of track nails as it caused a power issue.

Grass

Once again I used Woodland Scenic products in this case I used “Blended Turf: Green Blend” and their Scenic Cement. Spraying the area to start I then shook the turf onto the layout with a small spoon and spread it over areas I wanted grass coverage. It is sparse because this is an industrial park after all. Once again I was pleased with the look.

Future

I will be ballasting the tracks, I know this is sort of backwards but I want to have the ballast and grass mixed to indicate a sort of not maintained track and I will also be using some pigments to rust up the tracks and colour the ties. I also will eventually be getting a photo backdrop and at least some minimal industry representation of the other 2 spurs as much as minimal space allows.

It’s been a month and a bit since my 1×4 shelf layout became a reality and there have been some updates to talk about. The reception has been positive so far and at least a couple times a day someone stops by my desk to talk about the layout, ask train questions or to talk about their own past hobby experiences.

Uncoupler magnets

I added a couple over the track uncoupler magnets just to make things a bit easier for me. They don’t work all the time but they work enough. I had to go through and tweak several of my couplers as the magnets immediately highlighted some issues.

Loading Dock

My first structure was a generic loading dock I added some freight details to it from a simple woodland scenics pack that included a forklift and other assorted objects.

Weathering

I took another crack at weathering, this time I completely rusted out a yellow hopper. Put some rust on the trucks for my freight cars and some dirty detailing to the switcher.

Benchwork

I wouldn’t really call it benchwork but I upgraded from being directly on the metal shelf. I picked up a 1×4 Pine plank from Home depot. It fit perfectly and it fixed some levelling issues I was having from the shelf because it sagged in some places. The main reason I need this is so I can secure the track permanently to it, take it home, and begin more messy scenic details without damaging the actual shelf the track resides on.

Wiring

For simplicity I switched to Atlas rail joiner feeds. It allowed me to get rid of that ugly terminal track I had before. My power pack is also secured to my desk below with some double sided tape which keeps it from shifting around on me.

Tracks

Atlas code 100 flex track is now in place throughout the layout other than the turnouts. The sectionals I was using previously was just to see of my idea worked. The flex track allows me to fit exactly into my small form factor