Years and years ago, when I was a Classic Mac user, I spent an inordinate amount of time playing the very simple (text and menu-driven) movie-making simulation game, Sim Cinema Deluxe, by Shannon Schroeder. A few years back I had spent some time reverse-engineering this game to understand its mechanics, because I wanted to figure out how the game calculated a movie's success, and also I wanted to learn 68k assembly. Very fortunately, the author had conveniently left in the debugging symbols in the compiled binary, so I had a fairly smooth experience basically hand-decompiling it into a C library.

While I was on a roll this week and last of polishing off some long dormant projects, like my playdate boat game and my playdate plane game, I decided to learn termbox2 and made a nice TUI interface for my reimplementation of this game. You can get the code from my Tangled page; use make to build.

While it occupies a similar legal grey area to OpenTTD, being based on reverse-engineered code, it's a considerably simpler game and I'm pretty sure Shannon won't mind.

I had been working, off and on, of a port of John Calhoun's old game Glider 4.05 for Classic Macs to the Panic Playdate for several months. So, naturally, I was pretty pissed off when I saw that basically the exact same game (made with some AI programming assistance, although I wouldn't call it AI slop) had been released to the Playdate catalog last week. Still, this motivated me to finish off what I had been working on, which includes a web-based level editor for Glider 4.05 games, and put it out on itch.io.

You can get the game at my itch.io page.

Gaudeámus omnes in Dómino, diem festum celebrántes sub honóre Sanctórum ómnium: de quorum solemnitáte gaudent Angeli, et colláudant Fílium Dei.

This morning I directed our choir at All Saints Ainslie for Harris' arrangement of Bach's chorale to text by George Herbert:

King of glory, King of peace,

I will love Thee;

and that love may never cease,

I will move Thee.

Thou hast granted my request,

Thou hast heard me;

Thou didst note my working breast,

Thou hast spared me.

Wherefore with my utmost art

I will sing Thee,

and the cream of all my heart

I will bring Thee.

Though my sins against me cried,

Thou didst clear me;

and alone, when they replied,

Thou didst hear me.

Sev'n whole days, not one in sev'n,

I will praise Thee;

in my heart, though not in heav'n,

I can raise Thee.

Small it is, in this poor sort

to enroll Thee:

e'en eternity's too short

to extol Thee.

Afterwards a soprano in our choir Polly was baptized. We reprised Rutter's Gaelic Blessing for her:

Deep peace of the running wave to you,

Deep peace of the flowing air to you,

Deep peace of the quiet earth to you,

Deep peace of the shining stars to you,

Deep peace of the gentle night to you,

Moon and stars pour their healing light on you,

Deep peace of Christ, the light of the world, to you.

Requiem ætérnam dona eis Dómine: et lux perpétua lúceat eis.

This evening at All Saints Ainslie I was the solo singer for a quite moving mass for the faithful departed. At communion, accompanied by Lynda Tooth on piano, I sang Ralph Vaughan Williams' The Call again:

Come, my Way, my Truth, my Life:

Such a Way, as gives us breath,

Such a Truth, as ends all strife,

Such a Life, as killeth death.

Come, my Light, my Feast, my Strength:

Such a Light, as knows a feast,

Such a Feast, as mends in length,

such a Strength, as makes his guest.

Come, my Joy, my Love, my Heart:

Such a Joy, as none can move,

Such a Love, as none can pass,

Such a Heart, as joys in Love.

At the end of the mass, I sang Fauré's In Paradisum (the soprano line down an octave).

In paradísum dedúcant angeli;	My angels lead you to paradise;
In tuo advéntu suscípiant te mártyres,	May the martyrs receive you at your arrival;
Et perdúcant te in civitátem sanctam Jerúsalem.	And lead you to the holy city Jerusalem.
Chorus angelórum te suscípiat	May choirs of angels receive you
Et cum Lázaro quondam páupere	And with Lazarus, once a pauper,
Aetérnam hábeas réquiem.	May you have eternal rest.