Doing some 8-bit game dev
20.02.2026 14:18
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Doing some 8-bit game dev
Today I visited Rudston Church with the Rudston Monolith in it's churchyard - the tallest standing stone in the UK
I try to limit my shilling on here, but my "breakthrough" game is only £1.29 on Steam at the moment. It recently got an update too
Three years ago I launched my first proper attempt at a solo video game
I only expected a few people to play it for about twenty minutes but I was amazed by the response
Over 2000 sales & 1000 players later, some clocking 20+ hours of gameplay, I've released an update as a way to say thank you
No expenses spared as I take my marketing campaign to Manchester
Here's the latest on my latest game
The past few months I've been working on a remake of my first indie game, Astra Protocol. The original was quite small in scope and remaking it felt like a good way of getting started on a new engine for future games. We're close enough to release that it was time for a teaser trailer. Check it out
First time playing Call of Cthulhu as an Investigator (rather than a Keeper).
Generated a decent character based off one I played on a Murder Mystery.
Proceeded to fail every roll and even fumbled twice...
Yeah green text on a green background is what I associate with vintage computing
Writing the first draft of the next Astra Protocol game. Thought it might be worth writing it on period appropriate hardware
This year it was a much less spooky affair
Went to Covesea lighthouse today
It has some Eldrich vibes to it - caves underneath used to be inhabited until the 1920s by a group of people known as "The Joyful" who would go around town singing hymns.
When we last visited, a dead whale had washed on the beach with an abnormal amount of seaweed
Essentially, its a tech demo for the new game, but since Astra Protocol was such a quick game to build (I made it in three months at the start of lockdown) it seemed a good place to start.
The biggest downside is that it no longer fits on a floppy disk - but I want to keep the dot matrix support
I've been working away on the next game in my Astra Protocol series for a while.
Making games takes a while (especially when its a side job) so to show something in advance and hopefully build up a bit of hype, I've been working on remaking the first game
Been contacting streamers for some @slicebargames.bsky.social marketing and it's funny, working in a corporate setting, sending out formal emails to Twitch usernames
"Dear Captain_Awesomez..."
Managed to track down Mothership at UKGE. Gives off similar vibes to what I was trying for with Astra Protocol. Can't wait to give it a go
At the UK Games Expo
A bit of reading for the train
So while Astra Protocol 2 had the bigger impact, it all started due to the game released five years ago today.
Happy Fifth Birthday Astra Protocol.
#indiegame
I the game, and and interview with me, even appeared in-print in the magazine Pixel Addict.
Astra Protocol 2 had a much bigger impact than its predecessor (releasing on Steam and marketing the game a little helped with that). It enabled me to go demo the game live at the likes of the Yorkshire Games Festival and EGX and I appeared on two podcasts to talk about it.
But with such a short development cycle and simple concept, there was room for expansion - many ideas didn't make it into Astra Protocol (such as the homing missiles) so I was left with a concept of a game and a whole load more to add - which led to me releasing Astra Protocol 2 a few years later.
Only taking three months to release (and a big chunk of that being taken trying to implement homing missiles) meant that the game was quite simple, but it was also very lightweight - the game came in at around 500 kB, so it would easily fit on a floppy disk and had very few external dependencies.
The concept was quite straightforward. My lack of artistic ability meant I wanted to try and stick to something which involved simple geometric shapes, this then slowly evolved to become something inspired by the Amstrad CPC I had when I was younger.
Today marks the fifth anniversary of the release of my first indie game, Astra Protocol.
The game started off as a lockdown project and took roughly around three months from conception to release since there wasn't much else to do at the time.
If you've got a need for viewing scanned forms or images (it doesn't have to be in a laboratory!) give it a look and let me know what you think and whether there should be any more time invested in this small project.
#programming #coding #laboratory #software #scanning
This is an MVP version of the application which can be built upon, should there be a need.
github.com/DanMallinson...
Currently the application is windows desktop only, but a web front end is possible (and on the cards), along with a compatible scanning and indexing system
From what I've heard, the replacement software doesn't quite hit the mark, but lack of support (since I moved on) meant that they have to find a new solution.
To ensure that this work isn't completely lost, and on the off chance there are others with similar demands, I've re-written it from scratch
One of the applications I worked on is facing decommission, which is a shame as it was well received and fairly robust. It was an application for viewing scanned request forms with details which would be handwritten on paper and not necessarily captured by the laboratory database.
From my time working in labs, I noticed that there's a niche for laboratory software. There's a demand, but the money available means that there's not many viable commercial options, which leads to a lot of in-house solutions (part of what my role was).