OK, I gotta hand it to CoPilot.

[swelljoe@mas.to]

I opened up Steam to see if any games were calling out to be played, and realized I bought AseSprite at some point, and it also became available on Linux (via Proton, I assume, as it's wrapped in a Windows looking window). But, I can't figure it out? It's complicated and clearly not designed for retro machine targets, though I've seen people talk about using it for making C64 sprites, I just can't see how. I reckon I'll keep plodding along with my editor that does only/exactly what I want.

[swelljoe@mas.to]

I'm getting cooked in the `clang-tidy` comments.

[swelljoe@mas.to]

Do I have to build everything from scratch to make a game for C64? I just want to draw some tiles to turn into a charset and Krita is just broke?

[swelljoe@mas.to]

Good ol' GNU Image Manipulation Program to the rescue. But, now I'm tired of fucking around, so I just bought some tiles off of Itch.io to start with. I think somebody here on Mastodon posted them a while back. They're cute. Still need to get them into a format I can convert automatically to a charset... https://algernon3000.itch.io/minimal-8

[swelljoe@mas.to]

He can't keep getting away with it. (Not going to bed, writing 6502 assembly, things of that nature.) #retrocomputing

[swelljoe@mas.to]

Is a dual grid system possible on a C64? Since I'm using sprites for the little guys, it seems like it would be, as they have pixel-precise movement. How to maintain the world map (not the visual one, the one that determines behaviors) is breaking my brain, though. Much to think about.

[swelljoe@mas.to]

OK, this is not as good as Web Developer Tools for apps in the browser, but I guess it'll have to do, because I'm not doing Electron or whatever. But, trying to figure out why things are rendered the way they are without "Inspect Element" is certainly not as much fun as one would hope.

[swelljoe@mas.to]

I think I need to learn Godot or something for the prototyping phase. Even if I end up writing the whole game twice, iterating on gameplay ideas in 6502 assembly does not seem at all like a more efficient use of time. I was so excited to get something running in VICE but now I'm overwhelmed enough by the high level concepts (proc gen maps and the dual grid stuff at the moment) that trying to think it through at a super low level just isn't working.

[swelljoe@mas.to]

I think I'm making a charset/tileset editor now, somehow? Why are all the existing tools for this stuff so complicated and confusing?

[swelljoe@mas.to]

Qt Quick/QML has too many ways to make runtime errors. Why am I dealing with static types and a compiler and static analyzers if I can still have random brokenness I'll only find at runtime by clicking the right place?

This does not spark joy.

[matt@toot.cafe]

@swelljoe Have you looked at Slint (https://slint.dev/)? Its accessibility is a work in progress, but as I understand it, it supports static typing all the way through. Written in Rust, but supports a few languages, including C++ and Python.

[swelljoe@mas.to]

@matt I hadn't heard of it. I kind of settled on Qt because it's so mature, has accessibility features baked in, has good tooling (qmillint, Gammaray, etc.), and I could find a lot of examples (I simply need examples, my brain can't do anything with just an API reference). And, it's not terrible that I got an excuse to refresh and modernize my C++ skills a little bit.

But, when it comes to building something big, I kind of already know I don't want to use C++ or Qt. Probably Rust or Zig.

[swelljoe@mas.to]

@matt oh, they're aiming straight for Qt's embedded/auto market, huh? They have a backend targeting Linux without X or Wayland. Very embeddy. https://docs.slint.dev/latest/docs/slint/guide/backends-and-renderers/backend_linuxkms/

[swelljoe@mas.to]

@matt but, it looks really nice! Reactive UIs seemingly without the island of garbage upon which they built React.js.