The last post covered the cyberdeck's gameplay loop: contracts, mission graphs, RPS combat, chain storylines, three-path endgame. With those bones in place I spent the next few days fleshing out the world around them. The OPERATOR isn't just running missions anymore; they're moving through a city that has its own …

I've spent the last couple weeks turning the cyberdeck from "a thing that talks to you in cyberpunk-flavored ways" into something that's actually a game. Now there's a real loop: you take contracts from fixers, you run them through one of several gameplay modes, the world reacts, your reputation moves …

One of my hobbies is collecting physical copies of games. I've been at it since 2013, but I've slowed down in recent months and am now looking toward downsizing.

It started with a buddy wanting to sell his old NES and games that he found in his parents' attic. With …

Like a lot of people, I've been spending a ton of time with AI tools over the past few years. I wrote previously about how Claude Code reinvigorated my relationship with code by getting me out of the busy-work layer and back to the parts of building software that I …

The idea of hot-swappable AI "cores" is central to the fiction of the cyberdeck I'm building. Each core has a distinct personality, communication style, and set of capabilities. Some of them are just for fun and variety. They all bring something unique to the overall experience. I've built the supporting …

I've always had a soft spot for good text-driven experiences. I spend most of my workday in a terminal. I have fond memories of text adventures and MUDs. The beauty of a good text UI (TUI) is its simplicity; you aren't bombarded with more information than you can handle and …

I've been working on a hobby project for several months and am at a point where procrastination is preventing meaningful progress, so I thought it would be a good time to document what I've done so far.

I'm building a cyberdeck.

Some would argue my current design doesn't meet the …

My relationship with code has changed a lot over the past 30 years. Giving an idea life on a computer screen has always thrilled me, ever since the time of staying up late writing MadLibs programs in QBasic with my friends. I've been writing code professionally for nearly two decades …

I've made some pretty decent progress, I think, though at the same time I'm beginning to learn that I have a very long way to go before I can make a real full-featured game. The resource that gave me the biggest jump-start was definitely Famicom Party. Using that book as …

I've set a new goal for 2022: to build an NES game. As I collect and play more games for the system, I've come to appreciate the amount of effort that goes into engineering software at such a low level. The kinds of challenges that programmers had to overcome while …