Author: james

  • Forcing DOS onto an unwilling ThinkPad R60e

    I decide that doing DOS development means I need a real computer, rather than an emulator. I have an old laptop, surely making it run DOS can’t be that hard, right? The device in question is this. It’s an IBM ThinkPad R60e. It says IBM on the lid, it says IBM in the BIOS, but…

  • Tilemap Game Engine Development – Agon Light C Programming

    In this video, I’ll show you how I built a tilemap system from scratch in C for the Agon Light, and integrated it into my existing game engine. Getting the physics engine to handle collisions with the tilemap was no easy task, but I’ll walk you through how I made it work. On top of…

  • Bring back physical buttons!

    At least polling a physical button can be done with electronics that don’t require running code, meaning you can always program one of the buttons to be a “reset” switch if needed. Like in my car, when the infotainment system decided to lock up… No amount of frustrated tapping on the screen did anything, and…

  • Emulation Sucks

    … because it’s so realistic you still have to put up with the same problems you had 30 years ago… Ah yes, that’ll be the problem, something ate the system.ini file, because of course it did, didn’t it There’s some 30 year old muscle memory going on here, if I don’t think I can drive…

  • Dodgy DOS Development

    From the mind that brought you “let’s try to write games using just pure C” I have a new idea for making my life difficult. Let’s write DOS software using period correct tools… This is just me organising a thought, I’ve not started yet. Further research will be needed – or in other words, if…

  • Writing a game the hard way – from scratch using C – Part 2

    Join me on a journey as I attempt to write a game for my Agon Light using nothing but raw C programming. In this second episode I figure out how to make a very basic 2D rigid body physics system work. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have an Agon Light, I’m bringing you along…

  • Writing a game the hard way – from scratch using C – Part 1

    Join me on a journey as I attempt to write a game for my Agon Light using nothing but raw C programming. In this first episode I figure out what kind of game to make, look at some shareware games of the past and get a basic game engine working, using nothing but C code…

  • So I broke my PC… and its replacement (Part 1)

    So my main PC that I do all my video editing, programming and anything more complex than talking rubbish on Discord died. Totally dead. How it died is a story for this video and involved me, a new NVMe SSD and a screwdriver. It wasn’t too bad because I’d been looking for an excuse to…

  • Maximising the fun in Linux

    Or in other words, I ditch NixOS because it’s awkward and weird, and I install Arch because it’s awkward and weird, but in a different way. And here’s my opinion. So I’ve been playing with NixOS for a few days now and while it does have some interesting features, it’s just a bit weird. I…

  • Making Computers Fun Again

    It’s nearly midnight, I’m supposed to be going to sleep but downstairs my Surface Pro 7+ is busy compiling a Linux kernel while installing NixOS. Getting that far required a lot of fussing about and a desk fan. And it’s great fun. I’ve not had this much entertainment from my computers since they looked like…