@fmarini Thanks for the explanation! Didn’t Metal start out for C, which would obviously tie in nicely with Objective-C?

Watching through this year's WWDC sessions about Metal 4, it is bemusing to see the code examples are in Objective-C. An interesting choice instead of being in Swift. Does anyone know if there is a particular reason that Metal examples are in Objective-C instead of Swift?

sometimes, sierra on-line artists could be *really* on their game when it came to rendering 256 colour backgrounds in deluxepaint

this particular background from Police Quest 3 was likely hand painted on traditional media, scanned in, and then touched up in dpaint

i usually use this scene as an example of an interesting cinematic high-angle rarely seen in games, but today i thought i'd focus on the anti-aliasing. aliasing or "jaggies" occur when a high-res image is resampled to a much lower resolution - and only get worse as the resolution decreases. you can imagine how much resolution loss there was, going from a physical painting, to a 320x200 image. jaggies galore. it probably looked like a mess when it first came out of the scanner.

this is why the additional touch-up step in dpaint was so important. artists had the chance to iron out jaggies by blending neighbouring colours into more pleasant (smoother) patterns, so harsh lines wouldn't stand out so much

handcrafted AA became a lost art in the mid-90s, when photoshop made layers and transparency ubiquitous. today, you can blend an object into the background using opacity sliders, or using a blending tool.

but in 1992 when this game would have been painted, the palette was limited to 256 colours with *no* transparency or automatic blending available. artists had to build "ramps" or tiny incremental palettes of similar colours, and then use those to smooth out the hard lines.

i've zoomed in on the destroyed car so you can see the anti-aliasing approach this artist used. it's still jaggy, but jaggy in a pleasant, relaxing manner. compare it to the white car in the bottom right corner, which has had no AA drawn, and is harsh and unpleasant to look at, "popping" off of the background like a bad copy + paste job.

i love that game art of the early 90s was a mix of traditional colour-mixing knowledge, and intensely delicate pixel art. someone zoomed in to 800% to work on the back end of that car for an hour, just to provide you with a stronger sense of realism.

it is interesting to me that while you could try to replicate this scene using transparency today (and a 16M colour palette) - you'd end up with something far less pleasant, and less cohesive for the eye. using such a compressed palette of 256 colours forced colour coherence and holism into the process. if you only have 6 shades of white to work with, it can make things *easier* for the eye to read.

#adventureGames #pixelArt #sierraOnline

The latest from Crimson! Narrascope is almost here!🎉 The Season 2 @playdate I made with @golosogames is coming out soon!💛 Lovely little @noclipvideo mention in a recent video (thanks Jesse Guarascia!) 📰https://www.thecrimsondiamond.com/CrimsonGazette81.html

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R.I.P. Bill Atkinson, who was so instrumental in the development of the graphical capabilities of the Lisa and Macintosh computers. This image has been dithered with the algorithm which bears his namesake: Atkinson dither

You can now translate print text to Braille and back-translate Braille to print text using the new API AXBrailleTranslator in your app!

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/accessibility/axbrailletranslator

Amongst all of the news from WWDC25, I didn’t initially see anything about a new, exciting framework: EnergyKit

It will be interesting to see how this develops and expands further into home automation over the coming years.

https://lnkd.in/gnma8vda

Fortunately, Apple’s new Liquid Glass design language isn’t just monkeying the Windows Aero look of nearly 20 years ago when frosted glass seemed to be a dominant trend of the time. Liquid Glass even has touches of the candy-like Aqua interface of the early days of Mac OS X.

@robotspacer A very important question. Hopefully another year or two until they drop support. But Apple has supported the Intel Macs longer than they did the PPC processors, so that has been good, at least!

One big question I’ve had is how much longer Apple is planning on supporting Intel-based Macs. The question has now been answered — macOS Tahoe (AKA macOS 26) will be the last version for Intel.

I’m glad I’ve been able to assist porting games to the Mac built as Universal Binaries, and now there is a more definitive timeline on when older Intel-only games have to be updated.

Source: https://www.macrumors.com/2025/06/09/intel-macs-no-more-updates/

Intel Macs Won't Get Updates After macOS Tahoe https://www.macrumors.com/2025/06/09/intel-macs-no-more-updates/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon

How NOT to give app reviews:

1 Star - It sucks.

5 Stars - Helpful

Constructive and thoughtful comments go a long way, versus quick obligatory text for a prompted review.

The Duel

#MastoArt #fediart #CreativeToots #fantasy

We just released the first beta for Nova 13. The headline features of this update are quick sorting, joining, and uniquing of lines; case-preserving replace; and a shortcut to open projects quickly.

But that's not all we added. You can read the full release notes at https://nova.app/releases/13b/

And yes, SVG files open as text by default again, but you can now preview them just like HTML files. 😉

You can get the beta now by opting into beta updates in Nova's general settings.

One thing which was unusual with the review process for EdenList 2.4.0 was how long it sat in the queue to be reviewed. I hadn't seen a delay like this in over 12 years. After more than 10 days of a "Waiting for Review" status, I finally expedited the review process at https://developer.apple.com/contact/app-store/. Once I did that, the app was reviewed and approved within an hour (or so).

EdenList 2.4.0 for iOS has now been released. This is the biggest update to the app in several years, featuring:

• New Dark and Tinted app icons
• Pin favorite lists
• Share lists from the main screen
• Fixed UI scrolling glitch
• Verified and tested with iOS and iPadOS 18
• Note: Now requires iOS 13+

Download: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/edenlist/id376577040

It’s come to me desperately asking for help via a GoFundMe. I have no money for health insurance, rent, or medication. I’m screwed as of June 1st without help. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. https://gofund.me/5dfd5a7b

A delightful spin on an old idea:

“The grass is greener where you water it.”

Tried to make a macOS port of my AGS game Yip Quest.

Unfortunately I can't enroll to the apple developer membership now, because of issues with my credit card, and I need an apple developer ID.

I'm working with @edenwaith's blog post:

🍎 http://www.edenwaith.com/blog/index.php?p=112

#gamedev #indiegamedev #game

The 10 year old iPhone 6S got another OS patch update with the release of iOS 15.8.4. This corresponds with the release of iOS 16.7.11 (same set of security patches) for other aging iPhones like the iPhone X.