New Computer! | Patreon Weekly #342

Hey Patrons! In this weekly I’ve got a small update for Shattered’s grid levelgen, a new computer to show off, results from this month’s poll, and a new audio Q&A this month (question timestamps below, as usual)!

Firstly though, here’s the results from the 2025 rewards survey! Just like last year, votes are counted based on Patron tier, and I’ve also included the numbers from 2024.
75%: Patreon Weeklies (from 78%)
33%: Audio Q&As (from 28%)
20%: Patreon Discord (from 33%)
55%: Loyalty Pins (Gold+) (from 60%)
59%: Patreon Polls (Gold+) (from 36%)
36%: Patreon Alphas (Gold+) (from 53%)
71%: Shattered Secrets (Shattered+) (from 76%)
As you can see, the results are mostly consistent with last year. I suspect the biggest increases and decreases are caused by my comments on the poll (i.e. two options I mentioned scaling back got more votes, one option I said was safe got fewer). I’m not planning any major changes based on these results, but may scale back the Audio Q&As in particular, such as by adding a soft limit on the number of questions one Patron can ask as time (i.e. ask as many as you want, but more questions means shorter responses).

As for Shattered work this week, I’ve once again been a bit tied up with the holidays and a new computer, but more on that in a second. I have made some progress with grid-based level generation, which you can see here:

This is now running based on a new level builder, and is directly creating the WIP vault area. Previously the vault area was largely hard-coded, but now the shape can vary. The biggest limitation here is that rooms are hard-locked to 7x7, and I’d like to make the builder more flexible. Probably I’ll find some time after Christmas to finish that up and release this new WIP level in v3.3.2.

Aside from that, I spent most of my time this week building and configuring a new computer! This is the first completely new build I’ve done in almost 15 years, as previously I’ve seen steadily swapping out parts in an old Corsair 600T. I was prompted to do this by the rapidly rising memory prices, I managed to see it coming and grabbed memory and storage for this machine about 2 months ago, just before things started going crazy. I decided to go with a bit more of an aesthetics focus, and while some tinkering is definitely needed (that graphics card cable in particular is an eyesore) I’m pretty happy with the results!

A lot of my life is tied up in these machines, so swapping computers ended up being and almost week-long job. So far I’m pretty happy with Windows 11 honestly, but a bunch of that probably has to do with me using tiny11, which strips out a lot of the newer bloat like copilot. Aside from all the organizing and transferring, I also had a hell of a time building the computer as well. The graphics card and power supply are the only two parts carried over from my old machine. The power supply is still doing well but its cables have gotten stiff over time and I had to FIGHT it to get the cables re-inserted on the power supply side. So far everything is running smoothly, I’ve got most of my programs set up, Shattered is compiling, and I plan to fully copy over and test all my build and release scripts today.

Audio Timestamps

This month there were 18 questions from 9 different Patrons. (Note that are some audio hiccups in this Q&A for the first couple minutes and a big glitch followed by hiccups at 15-17 minutes, sorry about that!)

• 0:09 "how have you been?" - Depresbian

• 2:20 "How has your pet been?" – Slenderazi

  Penny Picture:

  

• 3:19 "If you had never found PD would you still have made a game? Was that always something you had in mind?" – DaltonGoesFast

  Game Link: https://www.myabandonware.com/game/get-lost-3at

• 4:28 "What is your comfort game? That one you replay every year or couple of months?" - DaltonGoesFast

• 5:26 "If a publisher approached you and asked you to make basically SPD 2, basically a non-open source version with original assets, would you do it? If so what would be your stipulations and what developer/publisher would be your dream scenario" - DaltonGoesFast

• 7:02 "How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck would?" - Slenderazi

• 7:24 "Also do you like drinking coffee and what kind?" - Slenderazi

• 8:05 "Another question: do you have any tips for organizing computer files, since you're switching to a new PC. Mine is a disaster" - DaltonGoesFast

• 9:41 "Another question: What is your favorite genre when it comes consuming media such as tv shows/movies etc?" - Slenderazi

• 10:48 "What does new player growth look like since SPD released? Have you ever participated in any advertising campaigns for the game?" - Chickens

• 12:42 "how are saves structured and how do they work? (i don't need enough info to be able to save edit or anything im just curious about the format)" - Depresbian

• 14:20 "Another question!!! What are you most proud of in SPD?" - Slenderazi

• 16:52 "i move my knight to d8, what is your response?" – radiantchaos

  Board state:

  

• 17:38 "Last question from me: Would you want to get Isekaied into SPD?" - Slenderazi

• 18:00 "I have two game specific questions now; Is brawler stance being instant too OP?" - DaltonGoesFast

• 18:56 "And why does stone of fear work on anti-magic champions but deep sleep doesn't" - DaltonGoesFast