Rick's b.log - entry 2025/12/09

A decorated tree

My tree, decorated.

Also, while I was walking up to put the rope across the entryway (as in, stay out thanks), I noticed this huge mushroom trying to pass itself off as fallen leaves.

An incognito mushroom.

It breathes oxygen.

If you're wondering about the "breathes oxygen", yes. Mushrooms have around 50% of the same DNA as humans, and we are more closely related to each other than either of us are to plants. It is estimated that about a billion years ago, fungi and animals went their own separate ways from a common ancestor - most likely a simple multicellular organism. Plants, on the other hand, evolved entirely independently.

Deezer offer

Why is streaming music SO expensive?!?

Can somebody explain to me, in a way that makes sense and isn't the word "greed", why I can stream all the music I want for twenty euros a month, while I can stream all the films and programmes I want for just over a third of that?

Actually, as it happens, I listen to streaming radio. It's free and it is often targeted at the genres that interest me. When's the last time you heard Apocalyptica on normal commercial radio? Maybe never?

Mamie v0.35L

...so...

I added chandeliers. Now chandeliers are not your friends and are not just scenery. If you pass underneath one, there's a non-zero chance that it might fall on Lucy's head. If that's the case, instant tombstone. The further into the game you get, the more liable they are to fall.

So if you hear Lucy scream for no reason, get out of there, a chandelier is falling.

Bashed on the bounce by a chandelier.

A much bigger change is the behaviour of the megaghost (the green one). It no longer just patrols left to right like the wimpy blue ghosts. It'll still do that, but only if you aren't too close to it. If you approach (and this works through walls and doors because I couldn't be arsed to code a block ghosts can sense you) then they will immediately turn and head towards you.
There is, however, some slack when they are very close to you, in order that they not mob you to death, but it does make getting rid of them somewhat more challenging.

I fixed two and a half bugs. The first was pressing F1 in the game would cause it to hang. This was because it was using the RISC OS "wait for a keypress" code, and therefore not polling SDL so it wouldn't know if a key was ever pressed. It now does the correct thing on Linux.

Secondly, running up single-tile stairs (such as pretty much all of level 3) was a nightmare of getting stuck down behind them and unable to get out. There is now some code to trap this specific case and bend reality slightly so you can jump out of there and carry on with the game. I'm surprised this didn't get picked up in testing or reported in the years it has been available for RISC OS. Ummm... you guys know you can press Shift to run, right? ☺

The half-fix is that when the SDL window (window or fullscreen 'window') is created, it no longer grabs the keys. I thought that this meant that the window would claim keypresses. Well, it does, but not in the way that I thought. It claims additional system keypresses, stuff like PrintScreen or Alt-Tab. So it no longer does this, and now those keys work as expected.

Like with RISC OS, you can now press Esc during the initial title screen to abort the game.

Oh, and since PrintScreen is a system key, it can no longer be used for screenshots. To do that, you should now press the P key.

Okay, that'll do for now, I think. I've made some good progress with this game over the course of my unexpected break. Back to work tomorrow, and I hope my back is up to it.

But for the moment...

Oh, and if you run from in a terminal, you'll see it can be just a tad snarky. ☺

Oops, forgot to update the URL to today. Oh well.

rick@Rick-E200HA:~/Coding/mamie$ ./mamie
Starting Mamie v0.35L...
Linux build, compiled at 13:37:19 on Dec  9 2025.

For more info, refer to https://heyrick.eu/blog/entry/20251207

Initialising screen and SDL.
Created screen using the renderer "opengl".
Initialising sound system
Initialising MP3 player
Initialising game state and loading level maps
- loaded from game state snapshot
Initialising key handler
Initialising fonts
Initialising sprite handler
Initialising drawing system
Entering menu handler
Game started, at level 1.
- completed level in 108 seconds.
Preparing for level 2
- completed level in 40 seconds.
Preparing for level 3
- completed level in 50 seconds.
Preparing for level 4
- completed level in 87 seconds.
Preparing for level 5
- completed level in 66 seconds.
Preparing for level 6
Lucy has expired.
- completed level in 48 seconds.
Preparing for level 7
Lucy has expired.
- completed level in 131 seconds.
Preparing for level 8
Lucy has expired.
Game finished due to the demise of the protagonist.
This is generally considered Not Good.
Game finished, back to the menu.
Shutting down application...
Shut down MP3 player.
Sound system shut down.
Fonts discarded.
Screen and SDL shut down - this is it, bye!

Thank you for playing. :)

rick@Rick-E200HA:~/Coding/mamie$ 

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jgh, 13th December 2025, 22:48

That mushroom looks familiar, I'll have to dig out my Roger's.

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