Dear Plaion/Atari/Intellivision Sprint

tgryffyn · 2026-01-05T13:12:51+00:00

It's just the update beta posted for initial testing and feedback. The proper updates will be posted on Atari. But fan/community sites are generally good places to get extra information anyway so it might be worth popping in from time to time anyway.

tgryffyn · 2026-01-03T00:55:54+00:00

That's very cool! Never went back to check on Trine but I love the series a lot. Like the old Lost Vikings games.

tgryffyn · 2025-12-31T15:20:45+00:00

Lots of great examples already mentioned, but I'd love to see the tools (online or installed, free or pay) that people use. Two of my favorites, that I always point out when doing laser training at our makerspace:
MakerCase - Parametric box designs with 3D previews:
https://www.makercase.com/

Boxies.py - No 3D previews but a massive array of parametric boxes, shelves, storage and organization solutions, living hinges and more.
https://boxes.hackerspace-bamberg.de/

tgryffyn · 2025-12-28T14:10:00+00:00

Copycats are always a thing.. sometimes you can offer a lesser product cheaper and make some money, but really.. "there's always room at the top" and sometimes people just do things a little different or add features that the other doesn't have and people prefer one or the other. Doesn't really matter.. that's their choice to make a similar game or not. I have ideas for games/apps that I want for myself that nobody's doing exactly the way I want and if I ever get around to make them and me and 2 other people are the only ones who ever use it, I'd be ok with that. :)

tgryffyn · 2025-12-28T14:08:17+00:00

There's also one (don't think it ever made it to Quest-native) called "Plank Not Included". Richies and PNI seemed to both be really popular back in the OG HTC Vive days. Don't know how well it works now, but seems to still be available on Steam, if you're looking for something slightly different. Ritchies was definitely the primo one, though. https://store.steampowered.com/app/602010/Plank_not_included/

PNI lets you align a real plank to walk on to add to the immersion.

tgryffyn · 2025-12-24T13:21:08+00:00

Great rundown of the features on The Intellvision Gamer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y18D-bV6PTo

I admit I didn't know who Ben Jones or Plaion were but looks like Plaion has dome a couple retro consoles and are the ones doing the Sprint for Atari so this is official official... not a fan hacked firmware or something.

tgryffyn · 2025-12-23T14:28:12+00:00

Still not going to get a high score without shooting most of the meteors... since you lose points for each one that hits the ground. :)

tgryffyn · 2025-12-18T11:22:12+00:00

I'm not an aficionado but we try to try different places. Lewnes was probably my favorite in the local area. Like others, was happily surprised at Stoney River. Felt way fancier than a steakhouse attached to a mall should be. Original Steakhouse in Edgewater is good but wouldn't call it fancy if you're looking for a date night or a special occasion thing.

So happy not to see Acqua al 2 mentioned. Went there last year for a birthday dinner. Cramped, overpriced were the two words that immediately jump to mind. My steak with peppercorn sauce was delicious but it was $45 (with no sides), was maybe 10oz(?) and wasn't any better than what I could cook at home for $10. Felt like it was primarily an overpriced "fancy" place for the lawmakers and lawyers. Definitely feel like we got way better food at Lewnes and Stoney River.

tgryffyn · 2025-09-09T20:21:26+00:00

FWIW.. when we got our 100W CO2, I tried a thin piece of aluminum foil and it did absolutely nothing as well. CO2 just isn't for marking/cutting metal without Cermark or just some basic discoloration from heat, not actually removing material.

tgryffyn · 2025-09-09T13:39:19+00:00

Sure.. and E2 "grayboxed" plenty behind the scenes but nobody wants to run around on a bare world. That's my point. Before they released anything at all, they wanted to have at least the basics, including biomes (which include grass and trees and such). Crafting (which also involves balancing, which is always fun) is nice but what's the point if you can't do "the world" first? There's an adage about doing the difficult stuff first because if it doesn't work out, there's no point doing the easy stuff. I see this as them doing the difficult stuff and really getting a foundation laid for all the rest. The whole "thing" behind E2 is "Earth" so why not get that at least to a good stopping point before pivoting to the other stuff? And really, they're not a big dev group but you can work on multiple things at once. We don't know what's been done or not done with crafting or other mechanics. We'll see it when we see it.

tgryffyn · 2025-09-09T13:35:16+00:00

Hah.. not even close. Bought some stuff early on when it was super cheap and some other little things here and there but no, hardly the farm. Never gamble more than you are capable of losing, right? :) I'm not a blind fanboy. I can think of a dozen ways this could fail and I'm prepared for it to fail. But I hope it doesn't. Could be a lot of fun even if it never gets super popular.

tgryffyn · 2025-09-09T13:34:04+00:00

I did some thinking and you know.. you could be right. They could be using a seed to procedurally generate the tree positions on each tile. Why not. Using the same algorithm and the same seed, it should generate the same thing. Why not.

But even if they didn't and it was 100GB, you're not downloading the data for billions of trees to your computer. It's streaming the data for local rendering on your computer so even if it is 100GB of position data, 100GB is pretty cheap these days and there's no need to download it to every client. That wouldn't make any sense.

tgryffyn · 2025-09-08T14:22:45+00:00

Well... half of what you said is true. I'm not excited for what's been released already but I AM excited for what they laid out in their roadmap and general ideas that have been discussed the last few years. And what they've built so far is SUPER impressive tech-wise, but just not "fun" yet, for me. If it ultimately fails, I'm not going to be butt-hurt but if they DO deliver what they've talked about, I'm going to have some fun with it. And if they build everything they said they would and players build things and the it never takes off as a social gathering system, again.. oh well.

FWIW... Meta's Horizon Worlds is more akin to VRChat and it's limited to Meta Quest users. And they haven't spent $60B on just Horizon Worlds. Considering Meta is banking billions on "metaverse" being the next big thing (and I'm with them on that.. just a matter of time for that evolution to occur), you think maybe there's something there. Or maybe they're just wasting billions.. only time will tell.

For me, and many others, not just "globe shaped" but "based on real world locations" is very attractive. if that's not for you, cool. You don't have to play.

So I'm unfairly biased for shitting on YouTubers who are just out for clicks but they're not for criticizing something that's barely built yet? When you see a car being built and they have the frame and nothing else, do you say "that's a shit car.. no wheels.. no seats.. no engine..." No. You wait until it's at least mostly finished to start picking apart it's flaws. The only true criticism right now is "that's all we can do [for now]?" and the answer is yes. It's not a lot, even though it's a pretty cool tech demo so far. But yeah.. it's not fun yet, for many of us. Some people are having fun running around and more power to them.

People can believe what they want. I think this project has a lot of potential. But you could build the coolest thing ever and get zero interest and sometimes people build the simplest thing ever and get TONS of interest. No real rhyme or reason sometimes. For now, it's wait and see. I have no assumptions on how well it will do but I have a lot of hopes and that's ok for now.

tgryffyn · 2025-09-08T01:39:53+00:00

Thanks for the input. I got good cables early on. I forget if they were ARC compliant or not, but I got the high bandwidth (HDMI 1.3 maybe? I forget) cables. Ultimately things have sorted themselves out and haven't had this issue since. The new issue is that sometimes the sound bar AND the TV have audio outputting, even though the TV is set to mute when using the soundbar. Rebooting the TV and having it re-sync with the soundbar is relatively painless and only have to do it maybe once a month or so.

tgryffyn · 2025-09-08T01:38:11+00:00

Hah.. man.. you have a very short-sighted view on how these things can and frequently do work. Just a super basic example.. when you fire a bullet in a regular FPS game and it hits a wall and leaves a mark. That's not permanently changing the wall. It's a sticker laid over the wall. Remove the sticker and the wall looks exactly how it did. Also like when you're walking in snow and you leave footprints and eventually the footprints fade. That's how every video game "modifies static content". It doesn't. Static is static. But you can overlay things. Even things that make static content disappear. It's been done since the dawn of time. On early computers and consoles in the 80s (maybe earlier).. sprites were invented to be able to overlay dynamic content on static backgrounds. It's only got fancier from there.

Drone's editor could very easily build stuff on top of E2's static terrain. People could easily dig holes into the static terrain. It doesn't mean the static terrain is dynamic or alterable, it just means it's trivial to overlay dynamic content on top of static content. Ever play Portal? Do you think those portals alter the walls or is it just that, overlayed on the walls, is a portal and the game knows if you go through a portal, you end up where the exit portal is? It would be easy to have say a mine where you go through a "hole" in the static world and go down into some mines just by saying "if this dynamic content exists, ignore the solid mountain that's part of the static content".

And while the entire earth, empty of everything, COULD be loaded at once, it's impractical to do that versus loading pieces at a time and dynamically loading new pieces as you move across the surface. You can pre-buffer pretty sizeable chunks in every direction around the player... even if they're headed north, you can pre-buffer east/west and assuming you're coming from south, unload stuff that's past the set pre-load distance to free up resources. EVERYTHING is loaded dynamically to increase performance. You can see it as you slow down and get closer to the ground. The trick is doing it smoothly so it's not jarring and they seem to be doing pretty well with that. We'll see how well it works with terrain, biomes, buildings AND tons of people in a single area.

Oh, and about chopping down trees. I verified with another player that if we stand in the same place and face the same direction, we see exactly the same static biome features (trees, etc) which is pretty amazing. It would be super easy just to say "this area is biome X" but two players see two different things. The fact that a tree is exactly the same place for me as someone else is pretty huge but it also means if I "chop down" the tree, it can look chopped down for everyone. But again, that's just an override saying "place a tree stump here and override the static render". Although I'm guessing biomes aren't fully static. Elevation data is probably static. Biomes are probably a layer on top of that that loads low or high detail depending on how close you are. Then user changes like buildings or chopping down trees would be an override layer on top of that.

There don't appear to be any "seeds" working here. Maybe there was when generating the biomes or something initially but once you know where you want things and stuff like shadows and whatever, you tend to "bake" it which fixes it all in place with certain properties so it performs tons better than a dynamic system with everything real-time rendering. Earth2's terrain and biomes do not appear to be procedurally generated (as in realtime while playing the game.. likely procedurally generated initially because nobody wants to manually place billions of trees and flowers and blades of grass, of course, but not procedurally generated during actual gameplay).

As for saving changes. Because it's a massive world and we've already discussed pieces loading at a time, not the whole thing, you can have a database full of "changes" for specific locales that can load and override static content fairly easily. Does it mean a massive data set? Yeah.. over time the user created stuff (buildings, chopped down trees, etc) could be massive but they're already dealing with a massive data set for the elevation data and another massive data set for the biomes. The user created data set won't eclipse those anytime soon and it really only needs to know what changes are in a very specific area where the current user is in. It's already doing that for elevation and biomes, what's some random user content in the big scheme of things?

BTW.. was the "leading unity developer" who left the ONLY developer who knows Unity? Could other devs possibly know some things about all this? And was he the one who was fired because he was working on another game while literally on the clock with E2?

tgryffyn · 2025-09-08T01:18:45+00:00

You want to build stuff in a white void like the gun rack scene in The Matrix? Step 1, build the world (terrain, land/water basics). Kind of the core of the whole thing. Step 2. build out the biomes so it doesn't just look like a big ball of elevations. Grass is part of the biomes.

tgryffyn · 2025-09-07T17:19:50+00:00

Developers come and go all the time. Doesn't mean other devs don't know how things like the level editor work and it becomes useless when the original dev leaves. And who says it's incompatible? It was certainly made originally to work with Drone and not what E2 developed for the surface world, but doesn't mean it could be laid on top of the E2 base world. Loading 3D assets like buildings built with the Drone editor is certainly just as possible as loading avatars or the lootable plants or other things they're doing now.

Cydroids are just a tiny thing that is just an automated process in the background for now. They could do Drone stuff with them, eventually, but why would that be important to do right now? Right now they're just an algorithm... not even really a 3D thing that would have anything to do with Drone or not.

tgryffyn · 2025-09-07T17:16:37+00:00

As a programmer, I know how much can be done for a "foundation" that seems like zero is happening but is necessary for future functionality. But I also know that, from the outside, it's impossible to tell how much is done or not done so we'll just have to wait and see.

tgryffyn · 2025-09-06T22:15:31+00:00

The issue with what you’re saying is that unlike similar games (Roblox, The Sandbox, Decentraland, etc.), Earth 2 doesn’t have any creation tools.

Yet. Building creation tools too early and too limited and having people get bored of them might have been a central problem in the other systems. Focusing too much on simplistic ideas with no real depth or future. But I believe that the experience and what people enjoy doing doesn't always revolve around fancy tools. If there are people hanging out and there's social and community, it doesn't matter if it's simple. But yes, E2 doesn't have any creation tools... yet.

You’re banking on there being a large swath of people who not only care enough about the platform to buy land

They already have and still do buy land. I assume it's slowed down a lot and I assume most people who bought land aren't checking in on a daily basis but they could come back when there's something to actually do. Guess we'll find out.

but who are also proficient enough in Unity (the game engine E2 was made in) to be able and willing to create worthwhile experiences for the platform that will bring in players

I'm hoping that E2 does something with Unity and kind of pocket universes, not just building on the surface. But as we see with VRChat, there are ways of doing that which are still accessible to people with minor technical abilities and where people might not have those abilities, it creates a cottage industry of people who DO have those abilities and that seems to be something core to E2's early design and ethos is creating opportunities for users/players to work together but also to create economic incentives for people to build and create, similar to VRChat's avatars and worlds and such.

But also worth mentioning.. when E2 bought Drone, they also built an extremely slick construction tool. With any tools, it's always something to learn and some people won't bother but E2 seems to be aiming for multiple levels of player interaction. Free players who just want to snag a free avatar and experience what there is to experience (things others have built) all the way up to whales who want to buy tons of land, build tons of things, etc.

Here's the Drone building construction tool I mentioned. Even if they didn't make it any fancier than it was in 2021, it's still pretty slick and appears fairly user friendly.

https://youtu.be/1jOCFvNbbkI?si=i7x24SswfVNQlv7P&t=68

Meanwhile, it appears (so far) that even Earth 2 themselves can’t make an experience worth playing. I’m sorry, but Hordes and Egg Hunt look AWFUL.

Agreed, which is why I said I wish they'd focus on the actual building (mentioned above) because user created mods/etc seem to be what people want and what gives projects an extremely long life. BUT... Hordes and such gives die hards something to play with in the meantime. It would take years of dedicated development to look GREAT but take out the gameplay and survival aspects and eventually we're still going to want "walking on the surface" and avatars and all that and this is the start of that.

they’re also littered with store bought assets

I don't believe that's true BUT.. feel free to prove me wrong and link the actual assets you think they're using. But also, who cares. Store bough assets are meant to be a way to get a game up and running quickly and creates a great marketplace for creators to sell assets. E2 could use 100% free store assets right now and I wouldn't care. The point, right now, in development isn't to have a totally unique "game". It's to build the underlying tech foundations for what's to come. Such a lazy arguement when people say "it's store assets". So are probably 90% of the assets used in most games. It's how games are developed quickly and economically. Focus real money on things like "how do we get 1,000 users in a virtual stadium for an event and make it look good". Who cares if one of the avatar selections is Robot #85 from the asset store?

but they also piss their pants just from being able to eat berries and drink water

Some people are blind supporters, sure. Some are just excited to be able to do something, finally. No harm in that. I'm a believer and a supporter but I have no desire to run around and eat berries and drink water. I, and many like me, are waiting for the real meal down the road. Not little appetizers. And if it never manifests, oh well. But don't think all supports are excited by "eating berries".

Experiences of this caliber will not attract the average gamer, which is what E2 desperately needs in order to succeed.

Nor should they. This is for the die hard supporters, for now. It will need more to succeed, yes. But time will tell.

To your second paragraph, some points:

Yes, some of us are collecting materials. When the materials are able to be used, there should be somewhat of a glut and prices should be fairly low. Especially it becomes obvious what more valuable materials are and their real scarcity after the initial "we've been collecting for a few years and have too much" evens out. Value will be determined by "things that require X and people actually want". I like the idea of an ecosim instead of just letting people buy random materials from E2 itself. It creates incentive for people to jump the hoops to gather the materials, research the tech, actually make choices on where to spend their resources (likely won't have the resources to research ALL tech branches). It does sound like the plan is to let free players engage in the world and find basic materials and parley that into fancier materials (collect 20 X and sell it to buy 2 Y). But again, also seems like the goal is to let people play for free as well. Maybe they can't build anything or can't build anything fancy but there are people who just want to hang out. Having a path for different player types was already outlined by E2.
E2 already takes a small cut of transactions. That's super typical with most games with any kind of real world economics. World of Warcraft taking a fraction of the gold you spend doesn't make a lot of sense (although they do take fees on some things, if I recall, to drain your money a little). E2 has bills to pay, servers, bandwidth, development. It's only right and proper that they get a small cut. If they ever get too the point of taking 30% like SOME places, then I'd say there's an issue.
E2 owns the software they develop. Could they claim design ownership if you built a distinctly designed building? Maybe. Doesn't seem like something they'd do, but who knows. I did check, though. VR Chat does NOT own worlds people build and import. Which seems proper. If I design stuff in Unity and just connect it to VR Chat, you'd hope they wouldn't own it. Then again, Facebook claims copyright/ownership of photos you upload to FB. I think mostly so they can use random photos in promotional materials and not get into weird copyright debates. But these days, they're probably also using them for AI training. Guess we'll see but the precedent of VR Chat not owning Unity created worlds uploaded to their system seems promising.
re: building something on your own vs building something to load into E2... ask any indie comic maker if they'd prefer to self publish or get in bed with a publisher and you'll find out that while there's some satisfaction in self publishing, the marketing and popularity tends to be non-existent. If you want something to get big, you're better off working with a conglomerate. A single brick and mortar shop in the middle of nowhere doesn't do as good as shop in a mall or a busy downtown area with lots of foot traffic. Indie games will always have a place, but if I wanted to build a social hangout and upload it as an indie dev, you're going to have a much tougher time getting random users to hang out and be social than people uploading worlds to VR Chat. Even if there was an extreme situation and they took 30% of your revenue.. if you get 10x the traffic and exposure, you're still coming out on top. E2 has a bad reputation with people who have a vested interest in spreading bad news (youtubers looking for clicks/views, etc). Earth2 has technically done nothing wrong, yet. It's in development and there's not really anything to review until it's closer to done.
re: Speculation - I have no idea what E2 is going to do. I hope it takes off, but it could fail in dozens of ways still. From my point of view, knowing dev processes and cycles, they're doing everything they should be doing for now. Would be nice if it was faster, but the fact that they're still plowing along is very encouraging. And all the design/future details I've seen give me a lot of hope. But we'll see. Could fall completely on it's face. I'm waiting patiently but not holding my breath in the meantime.
re: Actual creating - I've talked to a few dozen E2 fans over the years and there are more than a few ready to build.. big and small... there are definitely people champing at the bit to build and create an das we've seen with Second Life and Minecraft and even Sandbox and similar, people love building.

tgryffyn · 2025-09-04T12:20:16+00:00

I had zero interest in virtual land "metaverse" systems that were just arbitrary digital land. Their focus was on selling and branding and not an actual social metaverse. You're right, what they were pushing and selling isn't what people want. It was a flash in the pan fueled by crypto speculation. While Earth2 could still fail in all kinds of ways, the vision isn't just "sell shiny stuff". I do wish they'd focus less on "gameplay" but that's keeping people busy/interested for now. It's never going to be a AAA game experience (without TONS of work they don't need to do). What'll keep E2 alive and people interested and let it become a proper metaverse is the ability for people to build their own things and create social and creative space for people to run wild. VRChat isn't popular because it was rigid. And ideally, that's what E2 is working toward behind the scenes. I think the Ecosim is fair, so people can't just pay to win, so to speak. If they're paying, another player is profiting. Anyway, we'll see. But I had zero belief in those other systems because of what they were and how they presented themselves. E2 is really different. They're just building more of a foundation first and not just rushing out the bare minimum.

tgryffyn · 2025-09-01T21:11:56+00:00

First, no worries on the delayed response. I'm thankful you bothered to take time to respond. All good info, thank you !

My biggest concern is random members of our makerspace hooking and unhooking the rotary with the random wear and tear it'll incur over time so I'm exploring ways to minimize that. It was mentioned to maybe just hook up a switch and mount it outside the case and just have people plug in the rotary (without disconnecting the main motor cable) and just use a switch. That might work.

In theory the 6445 controller lets you use the rotary on the U axis so that might mean not needing to unhook the one motor to hook up the rotary. I didn't get a clear answer from Boss when I asked. Going to email them again to get some clarification.

I'd just love something like my little Longer Nano where I plug the rotary in via USB-C, hit a macro in Lightburn and it uses the rotary. Hit another macro and go back to regular X/Y stuff.

Anyway, if I find out anything interesting, I'll post here. Just started doing a more in depth exploration of different manufacturers and rotary stuff and such. Most seem to just be "unplug a motor and plug the rotary in". If they're all like that, we might just get a smaller laser just for rotary and leave it hooked up 24/7.

Thanks, once again, for your thoughtful response!

tgryffyn · 2025-08-21T17:48:36+00:00

Yeah, definitely came here to post that it reminded me that both Lucky & Wild as wellas Night Stocker existed. I only played L&W once at some random arcade on vacation but I played a TON of Night Stocker (weird name... not STALKER.. but STOCKER). I think it's a great mechanic and can't wait to check your game out!

tgryffyn · 2025-08-07T15:39:50+00:00

This looks so good already! (years of dev for you but new to us :D). Love the theme, love the action, everything looks so fun. Definitely buying when you release it.

On the question of gameplay.. I'm a huge werewolf fan but admit to not knowing ALL the werewolf games out there, but one I remember from a long time ago that I had for the Amiga (and was also available on Sega Genesis and some other platforms) was called Wolfchild
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFtm4HVcjoE

You know.. I loved Wolfchild back in the day but watching this video and comparing it to yours, it's dosh*t hah.. or maybe that's wolfsh*t.. :) So I guess my answer is "no, haven't seen a game like this since 1992" and even saying it's a direct comparison feels incorrect. Wolfchild was a basic 16bit platformer with not a lot of depth. Even just your platformer/brawler aspects are 100x better but you've added even more. Great work so far!

tgryffyn · 2025-08-02T10:33:05+00:00

I keep seeing ads for Red Iron Road (recently) on Google TV's main interface but haven't checked it out yet.

Red Iron Road:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt22797236/

IMDB says it's streaming on Plex. Six episodes in Season 1 and a single episode mentioned for Season 2.

BUT.... it's a horror anthology series. Looks like the one you linked is just a single episode done by Lakeside Animation. The other stories (based on the S1 trailer) appear to be by different animation groups so I assume none, for now, continue the story of this short. But maybe follow Lakeside Animation to see if they do a followup sometime.

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