Jim Stormdancer

Sandwich Imagineer at Twinbeard. Made Frog Fractions. May or may not have already made Frog Fractions 2. He/him.

Last Notes

2026-03-18 16:01:42 UTC

Our TV just went kaput (after 11 years, thank you for your service) and there's no way I'm getting an Internet-connected TV because I'm already worried enough about my blood pressure. There don't seem to be many consumer options, but is there some reason why we shouldn't just get a commercial display intended for digital signage, like this one?
https://www.cdw.com/product/tcl-te65n-ten-series-65-led-backlit-lcd-display-4k-for-digital-signa/8463458

2025-08-25 17:15:04 UTC

Topic Lords #305: Phlegmletting, ft. Abby and Sid. We discuss reading the diabetes manual, saying vegetables instead of cussin', Winston punching his tooth out, If I Ran the Circus (excerpt) by Dr. Seuss, and reminding yourself of all the PS2 games you hated.
https://topiclords.com/phlegmletting

2025-03-27 23:37:41 UTC

In the 90s, the demo scene and the ZZT scene were populated mostly by 15 year olds working out of their bedrooms.
The demo scene spun out of the cracking scene, so it was very cyberpunk-coded. Groups had names like Razor 1911 and Ultraforce.
The ZZT scene aspired to legitimacy. To release a ZZT game you had to choose a "company name," and call yourself its "president."
The same naming conventions hold now that these scenes are mostly populated by 45 year olds, which makes it *way funnier*.

2025-02-27 19:41:51 UTC

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Any ideas? I found support threads discussing the hidden checkbox for HD video, but is there one for high quality audio? And if so, does that translate to recording quality, or does it just improve the quality of the call that you hear as it happens?

2025-02-27 19:39:16 UTC

I used to ask Topic Lords guests to record own their audio locally. It was usually not that big a deal but would often create technical difficulties -- counterintuitively, the audio professionals were often the ones with the technical difficulties, because their setups were more involved 😂
There are turnkey solutions to this like Zencastr and Riverside FM. I tried Zencastr once and it shit the bed hard enough that I am leery of any web-based recording solutions.

2025-02-27 00:18:34 UTC

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I do think the best possible outcome is that we get games -- and art in general -- with a broad variety of budgets and funding sources.

2025-02-26 18:15:47 UTC

For decades, game devs have aspired to make their games more addictive, first as an explicit primary goal from when they were making arcade games, and later it got dragged along with all the other arcade tropes like lives and high scores when the culture moved on to PC and console games. When I was growing up I constantly heard people say a game was "addictive" as a compliment, and the idea got conflated with "fun" and other things it's "good" for a game to "be."

2025-02-01 19:02:40 UTC

I'm live on Indiepocalypse Radio right now, if that's your kind of thing: https://www.twitch.tv/pizzapranks

2025-01-28 19:57:39 UTC

Is this typography evidence for "Dragon's Lair" being a pun? Or is this just what fantasy media looked like in the early 80s?
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/907/714/299/855/484/original/4f5817cc8e05879d.webp
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/907/726/511/421/816/original/fae9bd4dc57fabf4.webp

2025-01-25 08:09:31 UTC

I've felt next to no human connection on Tumblr despite following people I know personally almost exclusively
On Mastodon I mostly follow people I've never met but they talk about their lives and the thoughts they have and sometimes we have conversations about it and in general I give a shit. On Twitter and Cohost it was the same, before Twitter went to hell and Cohost vanished into the ether.

2024-10-18 04:36:19 UTC

I just found out that there aren't exactly 52 weeks in a year. There are about 52.14.
And, like, of course there aren't? If there were, the days of the week would line up the same with the days of the month every year. Except that they'd change on leap years. (Which have about 52.29 weeks.)

2024-10-05 23:53:56 UTC

Last year I made a spooky Pico-8 game for the Halloween season called Gordy and the Monster Moon. It's a bite-sized Zelda-like about a jack-o-lantern going on spooky adventures.
You can buy it on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/642020/Gordy_and_the_Monster_Moon/
Or itch.io: https://twinbeard.itch.io/gordy-and-the-monster-moon
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/257/504/460/328/633/original/a9a33cb856a813cc.mp4

2024-07-22 02:54:20 UTC

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Peachable