2nd of October 2025: October 2025 Update
Contains spoilers for the PvZ2 AltVerZ 1.8 update. Y'know, the one with all the war and stuff. Yeah, that one.
One Word: Inconvenience.
Yeah, so uh. Not too long after my last post, I had finally managed to get Linux installed on my Lenovo 100e Chromebook. After doing so, I backed up my data on my main laptop and installed Tiny10, which I would've linked to the github page for rn if it still existed. So weird...
But yee, after having done that, I now had a weak laptop for web browsing and a strong laptop that, after gutting the Wi-Fi card out of, is now only for offline usage. I just haven't really put any time into making an article since then. Sorry!
Things I've been doing...
...Well, since I'm here, I might as well talk about some things I've been doing. Or, something???
Great, now I gotta get my laptop out...
MEmu Emulator!!!!1
Since I got Tiny10, I could finally do some things I couldn't do before (or at least conveniently) and one of those things was Android emulation. Not that I couldn't do that on Linux, but the only option was to change Mint's rendering system to Wayland to use Waydroid (which would just break Discord. sob.) as the other kinds of emulators only work with x86 or x64 apps and not ARM apps. Anyways, here's some AltVerZ photos I've taken.
Played through Dark Ages with Power Vine as the only plant that did any damage. Tried to do BWBX-X after this, but uh. Don't do BWBX-X, kids.
Guys, Skyshooter is just fine as an insta. I will die on this hill. Also Poppin' Poppies is fun.
I barely beat this mowerless lmao.
...Wait a minute, this isn't an AltVerZ level, what's this doing here?!?
BreadEngine - Poorly made .NET thingy whatdoievencallit
Back when I was messing around with the PvZ Decomp, I also ended up familiarizing meselfs to the PopCap Engine... Or at least, that's what the decomp called it. It's really neat.
I like trying to make games with .NET WinForms on Visual Studio 2010. Key word: trying. It's the only combination of language, libraries, and IDE I'm truly comfortable with, and uh. It isn't designed for making games. At all. Like, it kinda sucks at doing that lmfao.
...So why not put them together?
And thus, BreadLibrary was born.
The point of BreadLibrary is to make it easier for me to develop game-like things more quickly. Instead of having to re-implement slightly differing variations of the same concept (a window created by sub Main that is drawn to via a GraphicsBuffer,) it's just neatly packaged into a singular DLL, complete with a few graphical drawing functions and an implentation of colours, images, and images that are pretending to be fonts. Just like PopCap would.
It's still a work-in-progress, and there's a lot of features I'd like that are missing (as well as some features that GDI+, the graphical thingy that .NET WinForms uses, are missing!) but hopefully that gets worked out over time. Things I'd like to have implemented is a built-in default font (probs something like FreeFont or UniFont) that can be used to draw text without having to create a proprietary bitmap font. I'd like to make an editor for creating these bitmap fonts, too. I could even have it be built into the library itself, but that's a bit extreme if not a little bit bloaty.
Will I make it publicly available? Eh, maybe. Perhaps I could start developing it through GitHub or something so that people can iron out all of my silly mistakes. I've been putting a lot of effort into documenting everything important and making sure everything that's disposable is disposed so hopefully that isn't a problem, but I'm sure there's things I'm missing. Anyways, here's a photo of a demo program that I have contained in the same solution as the DLL itself.
...Well, what are you gonna use it for?
Well, besides the test program, there are a couple of game ideas that I want to make that will probably end up using it. For one, I want to make a proper PvZ fangame. Like, PvZ. Like, copyrighted plants fight against copyrighted zombies on a grid. Y'know, a legally questionable game project. God I hope EA doesn't start a takedown crusade on every PvZ fangame known to the world.
There's also a game concept that, over the years, I've expanded into an entire worldbuilding project. It's, uh, interesting, to say the least. I started making a final FINAL FINAL version before I created the BreadEngine, but now that I have the BreadEngine, I'm gonna either need to start ANOTHER PROJECT or gut out the old code and transplant the BreadEngine inside of it. Either way, it's not gonna be pretty.
Re-creating some old Windows games like Minesweeper and Solitaire would be fun. Though, in order to do so, I'd need to implement a menubar system, which would be really awkward to do from the ground up and would require some very messy code if I used .NET's built-in ones. One of the goals of the BreadEngine is to make it so that you can create a blank project, create a module with a Sub Main in it, and import BreadLibrary by its own, and bam. You can start making games. No need to import System.Drawing or System.Windows.Forms. so having to implement menubars would be such a pain. Might be worth it though, idk.
Other things...
Been spending too much time on wplace. lmao :3
I also created a concept for a small board game based loosely on 1D chess, a puzzle created in the 1980's where you have to find the set of moves that results in the only possible position where White checkmates Black. It's been stuck in my head for a good while, and I wanted to turn it into a game. Somehow I went from Army to Navy with it, though, and everything became vaguely ship themed. Anchors instead of Dabbabas, Cannons instead of Knights,,, Idk how that happened, but it's neat. Might make a seperate post about it, but I also don't know if it's actually that fun or not. The only person I have to play against is old and doesn't have the mindset to be able to learn the rules of a game like this. Maybe you can decide if it's any good or not, idk. Here, have a look at the board. I'll talk about it more in-depth another day.
