Superforce 2.1 is out now on the App Store. This update brings the following improvements:

• Gamepad support
• New collision handling system
• Tilt sensitivity increased to save your wrist
• Engine optimizations

An updated version of Tiny Player for Mac is out now.

• Fixed playback controls on latest OS
• Updated icon
• Added support for m4b audio book files

Full changelog here.

I'm rewriting my 3 shipped games. It's a big technical overhaul and I'm also updating some gameplay elements.

Devastro was my first shipped game and it is by far the most complex one. AI, collisions, pathfinding, bots, vehicles, cutscenes, level editor... about 60000 lines of Java in total. I decided to rewrite it in C++ and convert it from PC to mobile.

Type Raiders was my second game, also originally written in Java. The C++ rewrite is almost complete. Gameplay mechanics are pretty simple, so I can focus on getting the graphics right. I dropped the built-in level editor, since I'm not planning on making new ones.

Superforce is the most recent one, already written in C++ but I completely replaced the rendering and audio code with a new engine based on Sokol. There's another update coming with improved collision handling and gamepad support.

 

Tiny Player version 2.1.0 is out now on iOS. What’s new?

• Open tinyplayer.net in your browser and the running Tiny Player app will appear automatically. You don't have to type the IP address anymore.

There had been a few minor releases since 2.0:

2.0.4

• Fix seeking in files with less common sampling frequencies
• Fix saving of playlist

2.0.3

• Add support for m4b audio book files
• Fix crash during file management operations

2.0.2

• EQ tweaks

2.0.1

• Show list of supported file extensions on front upload webpage
• Drag to reorder playlist items
• Enable player controls on startup when a track is selected

Tiny Player version 2.0 is out now on iOS. This is a rather big update:

• Refreshed user interface
• Import from Files
• ZIP support
• Equalizer (high-shelf/low-shelf)
• Embedded lyrics
• Designated "incoming" folder

• Removed support for variable playback rate
• Removed "autosort" feature
• Requires iOS 15 or newer

Quick update: 2.0.1 is out:

• Drag playlist items to reorder
• Small fixes

Tiny Loader version 1.2.5 is out now. Tiny Loader is the companion Mac app for Tiny Player for iOS. This update brings support for Apple Silicon.

An updated version of Tiny Player for Mac is out now.

• Tweaked the main UI a little bit, extending the playlist to be edge-to-edge
• Added support for the mp4 file extension

Full changelog here.

A small bugfix release of Tiny Player for Mac is out now. M3U files containing Windows \ path delimiters should be parsed correctly and the “Sudden termination” macOS feature is disabled to make sure the current playlist is saved properly.

For the last few years I had been using DigitalOcean to host this website & a few others, file sync and my git repos. Fairly low traffic stuff on a single VPS instance. It was nice and cheap. But still… the recent 20% price increase got me thinking…

Can I build my own server?

Turns out I could! And it was a lot of fun.

I used a 10th generation Intel NUC with a 6-core i7 CPU, 32GB RAM and a 1TB NVMe SSD. Yes, overkill. But the key parameter is power usage. The whole system draws ~7W at idle. What a wonderful little machine!

For the OS I decided to install Ubuntu (22.04 LTS). I’m familiar with it and it was useful having the same OS on both systems. Then, some housekeeping on the old server:

• removed old disconnected websites
• put websites under separate user accounts
• moved from Gogs to Gitea
• organized my git repositories
• setup a more thorough backup procedure

When I had everything ready, I brought the NUC to the new Prague data center and turned it on. It went online and the migration could begin. I started moving websites and services one by one. A few days later, the old VPS instance was empty and I turned it off.

	CPU	RAM	Storage
DigitalOcean	1x vCPU	2GB	50GB + $extra
Intel NUC	6x CPU / 12 threads	32GB	1000GB

There's plenty of headroom for no extra money and I feel like I'm more self-reliant.

To elaborate a little bit on the backup procedure:

1. daily rsync (soon → rsnapshot)
2. daily mysql dumps
3. /etc and apt package list versioned in git
4. secondary NUC ready for deployment
5. backup VPS account ready for deployment  (prepaid credit)
6. up-to-date checklist for configuring the whole software stack

Tiny Player version 1.5.2 is out now on iOS. This update contains two fixes:

• Always show IPv4 address for uploads (instead of mangled IPv6)
• Fix dark mode background color in player controls area

If you encounter any problems, please let me know.