Top all-time · #19699
[K]ayinworks
Personal blog · kayin.moegameswriting
[K]ayinworks is a personal blog at kayin.moe about games and writing. Since 2014, 4 different Hacker News readers have linked it 4 times. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-08-18, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (4) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this blog by the IWBTG maker for rarely updated posts on game design, drawn from games he has played or made. Other linked posts cover retro game and file-format topics.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 4 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Writings from the Creator of I Wanna be the Guy and Brave Earth: Prologue.
What Hacker News says?
It's not necessarily easy, but decoding MMO data files can be massively profitable for players. Reams of valuable data are often stored client-side to save on sending it during gameplay. You can maybe learn what items are in the game (including items in not-yet-released updates), where the items drop, and what the exact % droprate they have. You can learn the exact HP and other stats of mobs (if it isn't normally di…
Comment linking /?p=2218
on “Reverse engineering the binary data format for Star Wars: Yoda Stories”It's a really a complex answer with many facets but the main one in my opinion is that the displays of that era were CRTs with extremely low resolution (e.g. 1024x768) and generally dull color depth. This in turn required things within the page to be large, blocky, and saturated to make it appear pleasant to the eyes. What you see in these screenshots of FrontPage is _not_ what the user nor the developer would exper…
Comment linking /wp-content/uploads/2014/02/1391807722376-1024x614.png
on “FrontPage 98: Elegant and Exquisite (1997)”The IWBTG maker has a rarely updated blog in which he talks about game design in stuff he has played or made which I enjoy. Maybe check this out? This post seems relevant. https://kayin.moe/?p=2653
Comment linking /?p=2653
on “Why Adventure Games Suck (1989)”Retro games weren’t pixelated per se http://kayin.moe/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/1391807722376.pn...
Comment linking /wp-content/uploads/2014/02/1391807722376.png
on “60 FPS Retro Gaming on Mobile – Master System Emulator in JavaScript (2013)”
