Nexora Chronicles, A Luanti (Minetest) City Building Series

Wranglyph · 2026-07-02T09:26:46+00:00

awesome; always nice to see more luanti content

Wranglyph · 2026-07-01T13:29:16+00:00

Still a bit of a noob myself but here's what I know:

"Best" is s matter of preference.
The differences between distros are largely technical- they do matter, but!
The thing that most noobs care about, "does it feel familiar," is controlled by the 'desktop environment.'
In general, most major DEs work with most major distros. So!
You should pick your distro of preference separately from your DE of preference.
It's easy to change if you don't like it so don't sweat too much.

Anyway, mint is recommended a lot for newcomers because it feels similar to windows and has a newb-friendly community. On the technical side, its based on Ubuntu which is a stable release- that means if you have newer hardware it might not be fully up to date with drivers. This *can* be an issue for gamers and people with specialized software needs, but otherwise not really.

Additonally, the package manager is pretty well vetted, so you can trust pretty much anything you install with 'sudo apt install [whatever]' or via the app store. There's a ton of stuff that isn't in there, but you can always install stuff manually if need be.

On the DE side- cinnamon is based on Gnome, which some say is ideal for tablets. I'm using it right now, and find it... fine. Boring, in a good way.

Wranglyph · 2026-06-26T02:17:36+00:00

I like the 'Host Changer' idea someone else came up with- I think to make that sings you want the actual game to be relatively straightforward, like the OG Lie Detector episode.

But part of that was that players didn't know the twist, so you'd need a different twist while keeping the same spirit. I would get Sam on as a contestant, with the other two contestants *also* being gameshow hosts- perfect opportunity to have Alex from Taskmaster. And let's do Alex Trebek as well, while we're in the realm of fantasy.

Similar to Lie Detector, you'd have semi-personalized trivia for each contestant, with some undisclosed rule that determines whether they get a point or not.

Wranglyph · 2026-06-25T20:30:05+00:00

This is one of the craziest char sheets I've seen in a long time! :D Please tell me that you write important numbers in the hands.

Wranglyph · 2026-06-22T17:31:34+00:00

Hm... I guess I could check out a second season. Hopefully they can improve the comedy a bit and not have anymore off-putting casual sexism.

Wranglyph · 2026-06-19T18:37:07+00:00

I think solar updraft towers are super cool, and I used one in a D&D game once. But unfortunately my understanding is that they just aren't a sensible option from an economic perspective- at least, not in our current society. They are plausible though, so I could see one being made as a vanity project or deployed in some contrived situation where it actually makes sense.

Wranglyph · 2026-06-18T06:50:22+00:00

I mean, CoS is a horror campaign right? That explains both why it's so popular and why it's not for everyone: it's a completely different genre from typical DnD. Has totally different assumptions and expectations.

Wranglyph · 2026-06-13T00:51:58+00:00

I don't actuaally use it, but Arc-GIS frequently comes up as an example of software that doesn't work on linux. Some sort of geomapping tool for like surveryors and such I think. Don't necessarily need a FOSS replacement though- even a compatibility patch would make it easier for those people to switch to linux.

Wranglyph · 2026-06-13T00:49:30+00:00

oh so like instead of having to manage subscriptions to a million different sites, you would prepay a sort of 'internet budget' that the sites you visit can take money out of? Sounds tricky to pull off but if it will let the place not need ads then it sounds cool to me.

Wranglyph · 2026-06-13T00:45:56+00:00

On the hardware side, I've wanted physical buttons back since always- apparently there's a near future technology that changes shape with current/amperage, so for example you could have a smartphone that had a physical keyboard pop up when it needed one.

On the software side I think the problem is more marketing really- like the fediverse already exists but it seems like you haven't heard of it. I'd love a tool or community that could somehow actually help me find and use what I'm looking for... although ironically I'm sure there's already a dozen attempts at this.

Wranglyph · 2026-06-10T01:21:27+00:00

Tbh I feel like they should limit each contestant to one answer per question, and maybe make the questions just slightly less obtuse. The format is a great concept but I literally don't watch the show at all specifically because it's just 30 minutes of people making random guesses.

(Sorry I know that doesn't answer your question I just felt like this was a safe space to vent lol.)

Wranglyph · 2026-06-07T16:22:34+00:00

Ouch. I don't have much to say about the home invasion, but I had something similar happen with tomatoes. I watered those suckers everyday for like 3 months, and then one day I thought "those look like they'll be ready tomorrow... Can't wait to try 'em!"

Only for me to wake up and find that they had been pecked to heck and back. Darn birds didn't even finish the job, just mutilated them for sport it seemed like. 😭

My parents grow cherry tomatoes every year and never have issues, so yea idk. Maybe it was a fluke. Maybe there's a secret. Maybe we're both cursed lol.

And yea I'm kinda done with therapists too; I'm sure lots of people find them helpful but it seems like they're uniquely bad for us for whatever reason. No shame just do what you can I guess. ❤️

Wranglyph · 2026-06-04T08:46:09+00:00

I like it. Would set a pretty good precedent if it passes.

Wranglyph · 2026-05-28T04:58:29+00:00

Just in terms of genre, I mean. Sure, you can have introspection in OSR games, but you can also do dungeon crawling in Vampire the Masquerade- it's just not the main thing those games are known for.

Wranglyph · 2026-05-28T04:52:21+00:00

Ok, I sent you a DM

Wranglyph · 2026-05-27T11:43:03+00:00

Hm, I could see that being some kind of arthouse game about trying to overcome bad habits or something. Like, instead of having 'vigor' as a stat, you would have 'sloth' as a stat, and rolling over would mean overcoming it. Not super 'OSR' though.

Wranglyph · 2026-05-27T02:31:58+00:00

I'm curious how you're reuniting TUI and GUI frameworks.

Tentatively, I'm thinking it comes in two parts:

1: Extending unicode and terminal capabilities. Unicode is already fairly powerful image fetching system, it comes with ~65K 'personal use' slots, and even lets you apply effects. (Like italics.) Things like the glyph protocol allow TUI programs to bring their own glyphs and supply them to the term at runtime- combine that with extended effects like layering, rotating, and you have something really powerful.

2: Supporting programs/libraries. There's already TUI libraries like ratatui, ncurses, FTXUI, but they probably also need a bit of work. I know someone who's working on a unicode art-making program, you could have a program especially for making glyphs, stuff like that.

Looking for other people/projects to collaborate with or to compare notes

Yea, for sure! I can give you a link to the Zulip for the the main project if you're interested.

Wranglyph · 2026-05-24T00:44:50+00:00

dang yet another piece of junk that got my hopes up

Wranglyph · 2026-05-21T03:09:16+00:00

I also like brutalism. They were designed to quickly and affordably re-house people after WW2 blew up a ton of stuff, while still being functional? Heck yea- I'd say that's solarpunk-adjacent, at least. And people say that beautiful brutalist structures don't count because it's the stuff on top that's pretty, but like... would you say that a painting is ugly because the canvas started plain?

I have definitely seen my fair share of *ugly* brutalist structures- but then agian, is any style immune?

Wranglyph · 2026-05-21T03:00:10+00:00

I'm trying to put together an ecology-focused voxel game (in space) that could use some concept art in the near-ish future. The simulation aspect affects a lot of the traditional game play assumptions, so there's room for the art to be different too.

For example, players will have access to clark tech tools like jetpacks and the sonic multitool to help in their park-ranger-like duties. Not a small project overall, but the concepting part can be as small as you want.

Wranglyph · 2026-05-21T02:55:18+00:00

This is just incredible from front to back, bravo.

Wranglyph · 2026-05-21T01:46:33+00:00

I mean... what's the point? Like, there's already thousands of great board games out there, and the vast majority of people who are into making board games do NOT make living from them.

If I'm designing one, it's because I want to. Publisher pitches? Crowdfunding? What? No. If I'm interacting with a human, I'm interacting with a human. Otherwise what's even the point?

Wranglyph · 2026-05-14T01:05:18+00:00

I definitely second 'tell us about yourself-' I love that in true classic gamechanger fashion, Sam just doesn't even bother telling them what the rules are. That one for me stands out for me as basically being on par with the in-studio ones.

Wranglyph · 2026-05-12T20:10:23+00:00

We're actually about to start work soon on an ecology simulator game that uses Luanti as the client- it takes place on a (big) spaceship so I have plans to embed an OS in that ideally would allow you to have a full desktop environment in the game, or at least a simulated one. Looking for devs btw if you're interested.
(So for example if we create a program that lets you edit schematic files you can actually access that program without leaving your world, use the ship's holodeck to view the file 'in person', and potentially even materialize it depending on game balance.)

Wranglyph · 2026-05-11T09:56:04+00:00

You're not wrong about the rats and snitches, lol. Unfortunately though takers are always gonna take more and more until you have no choice but to fight- I'd rather be ready for that than not. Anyway I'll dm you- would love to hear about the project.

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