It's a good thing there are no global challenges or human failings
weighing us down as a species in recent times.

Play:
--=--

Skyrim (Switch) - I've figured out that the main reason I keep playing is
because cold weather seems comfortable to me. It's too hot everywhere in
the northern hemisphere but especially too hot everywhere where I am, so
being surrounded by snow and dead trees makes me feel nostalgic and
homesick. I'm doing all the Mage College quests now because there are two
dungeon areas that won't open up unless you get yourself on the path to
becoming the archmage, which is as explicit an example of institutional
leaders being underqualified as I've ever seen in a video game. I should
really put this down and play something worthwhile.

Phantasy Star Online 2 New Genesis (PC) - Maybe not this. It's strangely
uncompelling, even though it goes out of its way to drop a giant
expository narrative on your head that's easily the equal in scope to what
we had in the original PSO. I think that might be the problem, in that PSO
gave you the barest outline of a story and let you discover the details on
your own at your own page. PSO2NG is just shoving plot down your throat
without actually showing you why it's worth your time to play the game,
and I wish I liked it more.

Want:
--=--

To get over ennui - I can feel it building in fits and spurts. Not being
able to sit for more than ten minutes at a time isn't helping.

Bin:
-==-

Nothing game-related.

Expenditure:
-----=-----

Balance forward - $2,788

itch.io Palestinian Aid bundle (PC) - $10
Shin Megami Tensei III Nocturne Remastered (Switch) - $40
Shin Megami Tensei III Nocturne Remastered (PS4) - $50
Dungeons and Dragons Dark Alliance (PS4) - $40
Saviors of Sapphire Wings Stranger of Sword City Remastered (Switch) - $50

Total year-to-date - $2,978

-KKC, who also doesn't miss the cinema.
--
-- "People with happy families don't become spies. A bad | kendrick
childhood is the perfect background for covert ops. You | @
don't trust anyone. You're used to getting smacked around, | io-nyc
and you never get homesick." - Michael Westen, /Burn Notice/ | .com

Kendrick Kerwin Chua <kendrick@nospam.io-nyc> wrote:

> Play:

zpsoli (Linux etc.) - on the one hand I am reeeally dragging out the
testing on this portable awk Solitaire thing, but on the other I did
at least give it a highly imaginative name. And to be fair, testing on
what felt like every awk implementation in history (it wasn't) did
turn up some oddities, and even a bug in the display code.

bj (PDP-11) - Blackjack against the computer. Obviously. It's one of
the games that came with V7, which you could probably guess given how
the output almost reads like you're running ed:

Black Jack
new game
Shuffle
TC up
KC+7D

Hit?

You don't even get a running total of the value of your hand. An
advance to be saved for later decades I suppose.

> Want:

Nothing.

> Bin:

Finding an awk implementation that just seems incapable of running
zpsoli (the old Minix 2 one, which somehow always runs out of memory).
I was hoping to say the game runs on every awk I've tried - so much
for that idea.

-Rus.

Russell Marks <zgedneil@spam^H^H^H^Hgmail.com> wrote:

> zpsoli (Linux etc.) - on the one hand I am reeeally dragging out the
> testing on this portable awk Solitaire thing

No longer! Presumably I'll find a bug in about five seconds now. At
any rate, it's here, and it can run on lots of things including phones
because the future is crazy:

https://zgedneil.nfshost.com/zpsoli.html

It should be pretty easy to run on e.g. Linux and macOS, and a bit
more complicated on Android, Windows, MS-DOS, AmigaDOS, and probably
others. Not sure if iOS will run it or not. It's all text-based, don't
be expecting colour or graphics or anything silly like that. :-)

-Rus.

On 15 Jun 2021 at 15:09:59 BST, "Russell Marks"
<zgedneil@spam^H^H^H^Hgmail.com> wrote:

> Russell Marks <zgedneil@spam^H^H^H^Hgmail.com> wrote:
>
>> zpsoli (Linux etc.) - on the one hand I am reeeally dragging out the
>> testing on this portable awk Solitaire thing
>
> No longer! Presumably I'll find a bug in about five seconds now. At
> any rate, it's here, and it can run on lots of things including phones
> because the future is crazy:
>
> https://zgedneil.nfshost.com/zpsoli.html
>
> It should be pretty easy to run on e.g. Linux and macOS, and a bit
> more complicated on Android, Windows, MS-DOS, AmigaDOS, and probably
> others. Not sure if iOS will run it or not. It's all text-based, don't
> be expecting colour or graphics or anything silly like that. :-)
>
> -Rus.

Works in macOS with, indeed, low complexity. Very tidy!

Took me too long to parse how to move an ace to an ace pile, but that's
on me misreading :)

Cheers - Jaimie

--
"The polar opposite of cinnamon is frogs."
-- Mandy, in "Mandy the Merciless"

On 15 Jun 2021 at 20:48:37 BST, "Jaimie Vandenbergh"
<jaimie@usually.sessile.org> wrote:

> On 15 Jun 2021 at 15:09:59 BST, "Russell Marks"
> <zgedneil@spam^H^H^H^Hgmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Russell Marks <zgedneil@spam^H^H^H^Hgmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> zpsoli (Linux etc.) - on the one hand I am reeeally dragging out the
>>> testing on this portable awk Solitaire thing
>>
>> No longer! Presumably I'll find a bug in about five seconds now. At
>> any rate, it's here, and it can run on lots of things including phones
>> because the future is crazy:
>>
>> https://zgedneil.nfshost.com/zpsoli.html
>>
>> It should be pretty easy to run on e.g. Linux and macOS, and a bit
>> more complicated on Android, Windows, MS-DOS, AmigaDOS, and probably
>> others. Not sure if iOS will run it or not. It's all text-based, don't
>> be expecting colour or graphics or anything silly like that. :-)
>>
>> -Rus.
>
> Works in macOS with, indeed, low complexity. Very tidy!
>
> Took me too long to parse how to move an ace to an ace pile, but that's
> on me misreading :)

I've copied your release post over to the Discord too, btw. Go Team UGVM
Game Devs! It's been a looooong time since the last one. Well, not
counting James Sutherland, who gets paid to do it.

Cheers - Jaimie
--
A mind stretched by an idea can never go back to its original
dimensions.
- Conan Doyle

Jaimie Vandenbergh <jaimie@usually.sessile.org> wrote:

> On 15 Jun 2021 at 15:09:59 BST, "Russell Marks"
> <zgedneil@spam^H^H^H^Hgmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Russell Marks <zgedneil@spam^H^H^H^Hgmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> zpsoli (Linux etc.) - on the one hand I am reeeally dragging out the
>>> testing on this portable awk Solitaire thing
>>
>> No longer! Presumably I'll find a bug in about five seconds now. At
>> any rate, it's here, and it can run on lots of things including phones
>> because the future is crazy:
>>
>> https://zgedneil.nfshost.com/zpsoli.html
>>
>> It should be pretty easy to run on e.g. Linux and macOS, and a bit
>> more complicated on Android, Windows, MS-DOS, AmigaDOS, and probably
>> others. Not sure if iOS will run it or not. It's all text-based, don't
>> be expecting colour or graphics or anything silly like that. :-)
>>
>> -Rus.
>
> Works in macOS with, indeed, low complexity. Very tidy!

Thanks.

> Took me too long to parse how to move an ace to an ace pile, but that's
> on me misreading :)

It clings to the Speccy version's UI about as closely as it could
while having line-based input, which is what I wanted but it does mean
it's probably not as intuitive as it could be.

-Rus.