End of 2024 (December 31, 2024)

Another year came and went. There's so much stuff that happened since the last blog post that I would like to recap here.

First of all, Chex 3 Vanilla finally got a stable 1.0 release! If you've been waiting to speedrun it, then now's a good time. It also got a mention in a sidebar in the 2024 Cacowards!

Another thing that happened in 2024 is that back in June I finally got a new computer! Before then, I was stuck using a Chromebook for a few years after my previous Linux laptop became too broken to use comfortably, but now I have a new laptop that I installed Linux Mint on. And by the way, I don't personally consider ChromeOS to be a Linux distro. Sure, it technically uses the Linux kernel, but since you can't (directly) run regular Linux applications on it I don't think that technicality really counts in my eyes. My Chromebook fortunately supported the "Linux VM" feature, which mostly helped me get by until I got my new non-Chrome laptop, but it was no substitute for directly running standard Linux. I also really didn't like having to deal with the mandatory updates. While there was an attempt to install a real version of Linux on my Chromebook, it turned out to be more complicated and risky than initially thought so I abandoned the project. Anyways, all that Chromebook nonsense is behind me now and I finally get to have a better computing experience again. Please do not buy Chromebooks.

After obtaining my new laptop, I created a GitHub account to contribute to projects. Now, I've been critical of GitHub before I created my account so I put some slight criticism of GitHub in my bio, mostly saying how I would host my own projects elsewhere because I disapprove of GitHub's AI stuff. Also I previously linked to my Neocities site in my bio. So after I tried to open my first issue on the Freedoom repository, their automated systems shadowbanned me. Realizing that they maybe don't accept criticism, I deleted the bio text and then contacted GitHub's support. It turns out they also didn't like me setting the "name" field as "Melodic Spaceship", because apparently that's only reserved for real names. But more bizarrely, apparently you're not allowed to link to your Neocities website in your GitHub bio if you have one. Although I really didn't want to be forced to remove the link to my Neocities site, I didn't feel like trying to fight it so I just caved in and removed the link, and then my account was unbanned. Even though I now have my account back, the whole incident left a sour taste in my mouth and just made me even more critical of GitHub than I was prior to that.

For anyone reading this that has their own Neocities site and is considering creating a GitHub account: Don't link to your Neocities site, because apparently that's not allowed. In fact, unless you plan to contribute to other projects don't create a GitHub account at all and instead consider alternative places like Codeberg. Speaking of Codeberg, I just created an account there! While currently there's nothing on it, it's going to be where I'll host my own open-source projects, besides the forks that only exist for making pull requests for GitHub projects which will be found on my GitHub account instead. Fortunately, they don't seem to automatically ban people for the heinous crime of linking to a Neocities site so I'm sure it'll be a much smoother experience than GitHub for me.

But getting back to the less negative stuff, last October I released a demo for a new Doom WAD I started working on, called "MSS: Modulation". If you're interested in playing a 90's style TNT WAD, then you might want to check it out. Lastly, my JavaScript port of Dangerous Dave finally got a public release.

At any rate, happy new year! This is probably my longest blog post yet. By the way, my New Year's resolution is to finally release a public beta of "Chex Quest: Bazoik Revisited". I've been setting on a completed beta for like a year and I should really start putting this project to rest finally.

New Sub-Site (May 13, 2024)

I created a brand-new sub-site for Chex Quest 3: Vanilla Edition! It's had a public release candidate since March, and this sub-site provides links to downloads as well as all the information you need to know about it.

Additionally, I added a sub-site index to the main page. It includes both the Chex 3 Vanilla site as well as the abandoned Collision Code comic.

April Fools! (April 2, 2024)

For those of you who missed it, for this year's April Fools Day I changed my logo to say "Melodic Spacecraft" instead of "Melodic Spaceship". For the full context behind what inspired this joke, see here: DoomWiki's talk page on the Meteor Spaceship article.

What? (April 1, 2024)

What are you talking about? I've always went by the name "Melodic Spacecraft"!

Late for 2024 (February 29, 2024)

Happy belated new year! Sorry about the lack of blog posts in a while, I just couldn't think of anything to talk about. I didn't end up getting the Bazoik Revisited beta out last December as I had planned, but hopefully I can still get a public beta out this year.

Bazoik Revisited may still be waiting and is not published in any form yet, but since my last blog post I did submit my first publicly-released Doom 2 map to the "Doomworld Maximum Project 2023" community project. If you're interested in playing my map, it's called "Tribulation Facility" and is in the MAP06 slot. The same project also has a few other maps I found interesting, so I recommend you check it out if you're into playing Doom community projects.

Chex Quest 3 Vanilla is still being worked on. I just started work on Provincial Park. It's also been moved from Doom 2 to Doom 1 in order to be more polished under vanilla.

I also did Famitracker covers of the Doom 1 and 2 soundtracks and made music mods like I did with my Chex Quest covers. You can find them here: https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/143054-doom-and-chex-quest-famitracker-nes-covers/