Issue: October 2026
MOVIES
September saw National Cinema Weekend in the UK and I thought I’d write a little about my favourite movie from the three I saw that weekend:
The Incomer is a fantastic modern legend about two young people who grow up on a deserted island and their reaction to the incomer that comes to tell them they have to move out. It’s part fable, fairy tale, thriller, and comedy with some very British humour. To tell you any more would spoil it! I had a great time.
Another fantastic movie I watched this month was Korean thriller The Wailing (2016). If you’re OK with subtitled movies, I’d say this is a must-see. It’s more thriller than horror, and had me on the edge of my seat.
You can follow my movie reviews at letterboxd.com/mattsephton/
…sound the NEW APPS claxon!
🎉
USB PROBER
This is some old Apple demo code that has been useful for decades to get low level infor for USB peripherals. Over the many years it has stopped working in many different ways but members of the macOS dev community always seem to patch it to keep it trucking along. Looks like it was my turn!
I’ve left the "good" old interface untouched and changed logging so that it no longer requires a kext or driver, so it works on modern macOS 15 or newer. It remains open-source under its original Apple licence.
bsky.app/profile/gingerbeardman.com/post/3mwqftxng622d
SCALPEL
As part of my ongoing work on Jinks I edit SVG files that the engine app and game source code can import. Typically adding glyphs to my vector font, and adding reusable symbols to a library. I’ve traditionally used BoxYSVG as it’s the only app I’ve found that respects the source code and doesn’t reformat, tidy, or otherwise "optimise" it on saving. When I change a node or a shape, I want only that part of the file to change in the most minimal of ways. But the UI in BoxySVG is very un-Mac-like, with it being a wrapped web app, and I’ve found some simple operations like copying a shape to another group behave unexpectedly, are very difficult, or impossible. So I decided to write my own that is as Mac-assed as possible!
It shares some code with Tatebanko, Dottie, Vanishing Point, and even Katana, as well as my custom Inspector code. It has full manual as a macOS Help Book. It has a bunch of unique stuff I’ve seen no othe SVG editor do, like: surgical/atomic edits, changes shown as diffs against original, synced selection highlighting between canvas/inspector/code, lots of QOL shortcuts and keyboard-focused navigtion.
There’s still a gap to full SVG compatability, but the beauty of the way it edits is that it doesn’t touch any of the code outside of the changes you make! And if you do try to change something it doesn’t support it’ll warn you.
gingerbeardman.com/apps/scalpel/
…sound the NEW GAMES beeper!
📟
POPSICLE
This is my take on the Spout game by Kuniaki Watanabe, created for the P/ECE handheld back in 2002. I’ve done a port/remake of the original to Jinks, and I’ve added Enhanced mode that includes colour, 60fps, power-ups, 2-player, music, and more.
This one will be heading to most supported Jinks platforms very soon: at least Web, Mac, Windows, Linux & handhelds, Wii, Dreamcast, and maybe N3DS? Not sure I have the energy to get an iOS version on the store, but it builds to my iPhone no problem.
https://bsky.app/profile/gingerbeardman.com/post/3mw2iwfugi22c
JINKS on Nintendo 3DS
Behold! BELTRUNNER and Jinks are running on Nintendo 3DS (tested on my New 3DS Ambassador Edition).
The game is running well on my New 3DS, but to get more of a handle on the limits of the system I’d like to spend more time on performance profiling and optimisations to see if I can support original 3DS and 2DS. I will say that at 240p this build proved how good my menu and UI design was for BELTRUNNER: I only needed to make some slight adjustments to font sizes/positions and set a minimum particle size. This N3DS build shares some code with three other builds: Wii, Dreamcast, and an as-yet unannounced platform. Work continues!
bsky.app/profile/gingerbeardman.com/post/3mvcw6tytos2z
YOYOZO in Jinks
I thought it would be a fun excercise to port/remake my multi-award-winning and "Best Games of 2023"-featuring YOYOZO to my new Jinks system. For reference, the original was ~3000 lines of Lua using Playdate SDK. The initial Jinks bring-up was <400 lines of whatever I’m going to call this new language.
The "final" finished vesion took me less than two days. Not only is it a 1:1 conversion in terms of gameplay and graphics, I’ve also added analog stick control (d-pad still plays like the original), 60fps rendering (the original was dynamic but targetted 40fps most of the time), colour with a chice of pale (the original was 1-bit, two shades of grey), CPU player with variable difficulty, 2-player mode, and attact mode that shows of one- and two-player modes. All this and it’s still only ~1500 lines of Jinks—a far cry from its Lua origins.
bsky.app/profile/gingerbeardman.com/post/3mwssgu2jl224
Serenity in Jinks
My game Serenity—a strange 3D musical glide-em-up—powered by Three.js game and running in the browser. A minimal proof of concept to Jinks in ~800 lines. A bit more thinking and work got it down to ~400 (more succinct level definitions). Not sure how much more time I will give this one but it certainly stretched Jinks in ways it had not been until this point, which is reason enough to keep porting minimal versions of game concepts.
bsky.app/profile/gingerbeardman.com/post/3mwzzek3cb22j
HIJINKS
This is what I am calling my online scoreboards for Jinks. They are done, but not yet included in any Jinks game. Doing so will add a dozen lines, at most, to a Jinks game. Runs as a single rust binary on my server, or—eventually—your server if you want to self-host! BELTRUNNER will be first to get it.
IN REVIEW…
Updates to 2UP, Dottie, EQer, Octoping, PaperTrail, and Wavelet. Phew!
Here’s a look at a big new feature for Wavelet, DAW-style mix view:
bsky.app/profile/gingerbeardman.com/post/3mukmk6tqlk23
…I really do need to take a screenshots and metadata day. Maybe this month.
STILL IN THE OVEN…
SNAP SHOT GOLF
A casual golf game where you can create golf courses from any photo, or just play infinite random courses.
gingerbeardman.com/apps/snap-shot-golf/
TATEBANKO
I am seeking licensing rights for some images, which has delayed its release.
gingerbeardman.com/apps/tatebanko/
SPINDLE
This is my multi-drive optical disc dumper. Close to release, I just need to put some time aside to give it a final session and write some App Store copy.
gingerbeardman.com/apps/spindle/
Until next time… have fun!
✌️
matt
