add company update july 2024 blog post
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</h3>
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<ul class="blog-listing">
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<li><a href="posts/company_update_july_2024/index.html">Company Update July 2024 (2024-07-29)</a></li>
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<li><a href="posts/btrees_and_refactoring/index.html">B-Trees and Refactoring: Week 4 of VoreStation Development (2023-09-10)</a></li>
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<li><a href="posts/infinite_dbas/index.html">The Simple but Awful Result of Making a Miscalculation: Week 3 of VoreStation Development (2023-08-27)</a></li>
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<li><a href="posts/journaling_impl/index.html">VapUFS Implementation Hell: Week 2 of VoreStation Development (2023-08-13)</a></li>
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blog/posts/company_update_july_2024/index.html
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<html lang="en">
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<head>
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<title>vore microcomputers development blog - Company Update July 2024</title>
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<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"/>
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<link rel="stylesheet" href="/microsoft.css"/>
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<link rel="icon" type="image/x-icon" href="/favicon.ico">
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</head>
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<body>
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<div class="container">
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<div class="container-item">
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<a href="/"><img src="/assets/logo_typeset.svg" alt="vore microcomputers logo"/></a>
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<h1>Company Update July 2024</h1>
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<h5>2024-07-29</h5>
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<h4>written by Niko Chow-Stuart (Founder)</h4>
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<p>
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good day everyone! i'm writing this at like 11pm so it might not be day for me, but maybe it might be day
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for you!
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<br/>
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<br/>
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so, unless you've been one of the people emailing us for yiffOS support, you may have noticed that we've
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basically been 100% radio silent since late 2023
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<br/>
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<br/>
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now, i can't exactly say this was planned; in our last public social media post we hinted at having a
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project very close to release, and while that project is 99% finished and currently just sitting in the
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private area of our git repos, i'm unsure as to when or if that project will ever be released.
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<br/>
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<br/>
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the main thing i ended up getting stuck on was documentation, it was a project that definitely required a
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lot of good documentation before release, and because of that i ended up getting quite burnt out on writing
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the documentation and that project ended up taking way longer than i would've liked.
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<br/>
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<br/>
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just in case anyone was wondering, that project was in no way related to vap or the vorestation, and those
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two projects are still things we plan on doing; which i'll get to in this next section
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</p>
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<h3>vap / vorestation</h3>
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<p>
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as these two projects are very much the foundation of our company, these are things we are unlikely to ever
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cancel due to scope or burnout, and as such we are still working on these in the background.
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<br/>
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<br/>
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throughout the last half year or so, i've gradually been working on the vap kernel as well as doing a ton
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of research and planning on the design of the operating system. unfortunately i've done nowhere near the
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amount of work i would've liked to on the project, but at the end of the day i'm only one person, that also
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being one person with very bad adhd who likes to start new projects every other day.
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<br/>
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<br/>
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i cannot exactly say when we'll next be talking about the progress of these projects, but i promise
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that they are both being worked on and are both things that we still hold with high value
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</p>
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<h3>other projects</h3>
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<p>
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naturally, the absence of work on our main projects has lead to a lot of work towards some side projects.
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i cannot exactly say that these projects are in anyway related to our position as a "hardware company", or
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even necessarily a "software company"; but they're all things we're passionate about, and i feel that it
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helps to just group all of our team projects under this one roof, whether that be for marketing or for
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making the IRS happy.
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<br/>
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<br/>
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assuming that everything goes to plan - which is a big assumption but i do have a good amount of hope, you
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should be seeing the results of these things we've been working on sometime quite soon.
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<br/>
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<br/>
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of course, i cannot easily clarify how soon "soon" is, but at the very least i can say that my project
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management skills have gotten quite better over the time i've been working, and that i have been steadily
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making progress on things, even if slow.
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</p>
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<h3>that mascot horror game we released</h3>
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<p>
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so uh, without proper context, us just coming out of nowhere after like over half a year of silence with
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nothing but a tweet announcing what looks like some random mascot horror game probably seems quite weird.
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<br/>
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<br/>
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to be honest, even with context it could seem a bit unexpected, but hopefully i'll be able to explain at
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least a bit of our motives here.
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<br/>
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<br/>
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first off i should clarify that this is not actually a mascot horror game. i'm not entirely sure what
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genre i'd put it in, but the best thing i've been able to describe it as is a "quake-style strategy game".
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<br/>
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<br/>
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i should note that i've always been a game developer. i'm still an osdev, but i have a ton of different
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hobbies and as such i like to bring most of them under the roof of this company.
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<br/>
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<br/>
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the main context for this game is that, years ago, one of my friends gave me $20USD to make him a
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"FNAF clone". over the course of the next weekend, i made him a game called
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"-13 Nights at Lil Guy's Pizza Pies". the game was very much just a fnaf clone, albeit with a humorous tone
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and very much in my own style of game development, including using photos of some of our friends as the
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enemies. nevertheless, it was never released outside our friend group.
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<br/>
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<br/>
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fast forward to last saturday, i was browsing itch.io and saw that the PolyMars x ScoreSpace game jam had
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started. i was somewhat intrigued by the main idea of the jam, which was to make a "speedrunnable game"
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(i.e. a game that is built around speedrunning).
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<br/>
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<br/>
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one of my first thoughts was "what is the most unique idea
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i could do with this topic?", which eventually lead me to thinking about game genres that aren't
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conventionally speedrunnable. the main thought i had was Five Night's at Freddy's, which if you've somehow
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never heard of, consists of waiting in a security guard's office for animatronic robots to attack you, and
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then defending their attacks by closing doors. the win condition is just surviving until the clock hits 6am.
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<br/>
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<br/>
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this isn't really something you can speedrun whatsoever, since every gameplay session by design will take
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the exact same amount of time. which is why i wanted to see if i could turn it into something you could
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actually speedrun.
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<br/>
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<br/>
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after some pondering of both the idea, and the other theme of the game jam (that being "Overheat"), i came
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up with the idea that is now the tagline of the game: "fnaf but played in reverse".
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<br/>
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<br/>
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you play as the animatronics and race against the clock to kill the security guard.
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<br/>
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<br/>
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i have literally no idea how original this idea is, i've never looked into it and i can't say i'm much of
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a mascot horror game player myself, although i knew i wanted to incorporate one other thing in most
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conventional speedrunnable games that i love: fun movement.
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<br/>
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<br/>
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because of this, i ended up building a movement system which took a lot of inspiration from quake and its
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derivative engines. the game itself is made in godot, however as i have quite a bit of knowledge in
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designing my own game engines, i used a lot of that to my advantage in designing the structure of this game
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<br/>
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<br/>
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this is all without saying, however, that due to the 3 day time constraint, the game can be quite janky at
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times. overall, it was a fun experiment; but at the end of the day, that's all it really feels like to me.
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<br/>
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<br/>
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i couldn't imagine getting more than 10 minutes of gameplay out of this game if i hadn't made it myself,
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maybe i would find it more fun if i had really spent a ton of time to tweak everything to feel perfect,
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or maybe designing a more interesting stage to use all of this in would have improved things;
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but overall, it's really just a game you can entirely experience in about 3 minutes.
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<br/>
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<br/>
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still, if you're interested whatsoever in the idea, i'd encourage you to try it as me and my wife put a ton
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of work into getting it ready for release within the short development window.
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<br/>
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<br/>
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there are some parts, such as the leaderboard system, which we overengineered the hell out of, and as such
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those parts are what i feel i'm most proud of.
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<br/>
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<br/>
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if i someday feel like it, maybe i'll go back and polish this up more, but for now, i'm just going to leave
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it as what it is, and focus on other things that i want to do more.
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<br/>
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<br/>
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</p>
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<h3>future plans</h3>
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<p>
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working on game design is something that i do still have a large passion for, and as such i can almost
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certainly say that this is not the only game we will ever release, especially as i'd love for us to have
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some released i'd consider of higher quality in the future.
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<br/>
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<br/>
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other than that, i cannot say for certain what we'll release next. i'll try to post more frequent blog
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posts in the future, although due to my tendency to prefer making big announcements of projects we've been
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working on in secret over just posting a blog post everytime i have a new idea, and then having to cancel
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90% of the projects i bring up; i prefer to keep things sparse but with actual promise.
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<br/>
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<br/>
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besides that, i want to hopefully by the next blog post implement an rss feed for our blog, as i think
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that's something that we've gotten quite a few requests for, especially with the large split of social
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media platforms at the moment.
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</p>
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<h3>conclusions</h3>
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<p>
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thank you to those of you who've made it through this huge blog post, i would've made it shorter but i
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wanted to try to get out as much information about what's going on as possible
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<br/>
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<br/>
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i'm incredibly tired after spending so much energy to hit the deadline of the gamejam, so i am probably
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going to spend some time resting
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<br/>
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<br/>
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otherwise, i hope to have more announcements soon!
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<br/>
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<br/>
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happy voring (:
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</p>
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<hr/>
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<p id="footer">
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<br>contact us at <a href="mailto:nikocs@voremicrocomputers.com">nikocs@voremicrocomputers.com</a> <a
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href="/pgp.asc">pgp key</a>
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<br>
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for abuse, copyright, or other legal issues, contact <a href="mailto:devnull@voremicrocomputers.com">devnull@voremicrocomputers.com</a><br>
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<!-- or, call at <a href="tel:1-888-519-0437">+1 (888) 519-0437 (toll-free)</a> or <a href="tel:1-507-767-9433">+1 (507) RMS-YIFF (local)</a> -->
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(our phone system is currently down, sorry!)
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<br><br>
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Vore Microcomputers is an unregistered trademark of Real Microsoft, LLC. all references to "the company"
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are in reference to Real Microsoft, LLC and the name Vore Microcomputers is only a reference to the
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hardware/software focused development project held under Real Microsoft, LLC. Real Microsoft, LLC is
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in no way associated with the Microsoft Corporation or its products/projects.
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<br><br>
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<a href="https://climate.stripe.com/4MO1d9">Our Carbon Footprint</a>
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</p>
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</div>
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<div class="container-item">
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<div class="credit">
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<img src="/xenia.png"
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alt="image of xenia, an anthropomorphic fox who was a contender for the linux mascot"/>
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<span>image made by <a href="https://twitter.com/cathodegaytube/">@cathodegaytube</a>!</span>
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</div>
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</div>
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</div>
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</body>
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</html>
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