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                              not just a doompatrol metafor
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Christmas Card Pack 2023

Greetings to we  have no friends so we thought it nice and sociable to send a small card to every machine we actually had after trying out a Spectrum because the palette looked like easy christmas colors. Turns out it isnt that straightforward.
So its time to wrap it and send it on the 24th so Santa can read them and grant the old machines a blessing for all their hard work and good companionship throughout the years. Sadly a sega gamegear, Atari Jaguar and Xbox 360 couldnt find an ide or emulator but mostly time.

All things prone to updates or improvements since we never in-compo and its never finished and we dont care about facebook likes, normally this wouldnt get posted yet but Santa insists this time ... (tho likely no more updates this year, i think im expected for supper ... and probably game until next year, my empire in X4 must be in disarray without the great commander)

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1) White Xmess (Atari 2600 , tested on Stella emulator)
2) Santas Little Falkiries (STillenachtE, Atari ST 520, tested on Hatari)
3) 64 wishes of the Catstar (c64, atm only tested in vice, 8580 + resid filter)
4) zXmas (Spectrum, tested on Speccy 5.9)
5) All i need for christmas is my two front speakers (UX/PC, tested on UX/PC (which is actually the same machine for some strange reason they get different listings)

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This has been on and off during hours of clarity and screentime since the 16th of which 3 machines we never did anything for programwise and only yesterday (at time of writing) thought HEY lets Atari2600 with sound, how hard can it be ... it was gonna be 
"just a pic 'n tune" and ofcourse turned out a tryout. No excuses will be made, greetings to we have no friends, im sure the machines will feel jolly for having served their purpose
Some stuff has been included in PoW directories as ZeroAI, Arkos Tracker wav files (in stereo!), sadly sidwizard doesnt have a wav output (or .ogg)

Everything under JoG NO-AI crackerlicense

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you can ctrl-f " :xmas-tools: or :xmas-dlog: but no yanking about "i dont wanna read that after you do please"

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|-------------------------------|
|Updates: (last edit 2023 12 24)|
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1) White Xmess v0.0 (notes from white christmas)
-2023 12 23
the tune could obviously use some improvement but theres no more time before Santa

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2) Santas Little Falkiries v0.0 (notes from silent night ... yes they are :p )
-2023 12 24
pixeling sure is a drifter, an hour goes by fast but it seems TRSE doesnt exact-import multipaint pictures even with dithering off (ST low) some outlines are missing.
It also seems as i noticed before that Hatari sometimes needs some kind of warm boot after starting it, one reset before it runs a program.
And added an .st floppy image for use on Mister FPGA

-2023 12 23
the pixels could use some more but theres no more time before Santa

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3) 64 wishes of the catstar v0.0 (carol of the bells)
-2023 12 23
"just a pic 'n tune" ended up split bordercolors with a scroller, pic'n tune could use some but theres no more time before Santa
no dir-art yet either.

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4) zXmas v0.0 (jinglebells)
-2023 12 23
... its a christmas card, dafuk you want for free (we didnt realize the masochism that comes with spectrum pixels until this, much respect to those who keep it alive)

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5) All i need for christmas is my two front speakers v0.0 (spike jones : all i want for christmas is my two front teeth )
-2023 12 24
	- compiled for web (wasm) , will be the frontpage until next year and somewhere under galmeetsdemo afterwards
	- we had to add a small bit to "press anykey" at the end (or the testscreen at the very beginning) for the USA-DOS version b/c in linux you can just alt-f4 but USA-DOS apparently wont let that happen so now once the end text is on screen "press the anykey" and it will stop.
	- gud, ... create video and uploadertime ... 9 days of machinehead during claire hours ... i gotta catch them all ...
-2023 12 23
compiled for UX(mas) but the same version for USA-DOS, (for just once for poor people who cant afford a decent OS)

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cc0 assets used
(as we are a skitzo lamers we still have only one so the whole cc0 community is our crew - we try our utmost to not forget to credit even if not needed by cc0 people)

https://opengameart.org/content/candy-pack | https://opengameart.org/users/clint-bellanger

https://opengameart.org/content/candy-canes-beansjam | https://opengameart.org/users/whooosh

(yea in this case a case of the no-time rather than the lazy since im sure we could manage that in blender but time was up for Santa and so it came to pass ...) the md5sum should be visible on the downloadpage too now
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:xmas:tools:

TRSE, Atari Riff maker, batari basic, multipaint, gimp, blender, dithertron, sidwizard, dirmaster vscode, atari dev studio

theres one pic used from wikimedia commons for the tv test image in the UX/PC card and the font in 64wishes is from a TRSE example : no time before Santa

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:xmas-dlog:
... 

2023 12 16 :

3:30 am ... ideas are plenty , but days are short, to do one thats "a card" (= a bitmap + a tune) for each machine we had

excluding the Atari Jaguar and Sega Gamegear then ... (and Xbox 360 i suppose) that is C64, Atari ST(and E), and ofcourse PC

for some reason we have zxMascard hanging around and so the calculation

it took about 5 days (on and off, not PRO-continuous ofcourse) to do the starbars thing for the .a26 (O WAIT A MINUTE, the kidkid had one of those too, Ataripaddles was the first)

so music alone at that rate, considering Arkos Tracker is alien territory and like Goattracker, you dont get 32+ channels in stereo where every sample can use every opcode

we would estimate 25 days just for the 4 (+1?) tunes, its the 16th so thats about 9/5 left just for the music, hence

we conclude for now : fat chance we'll get a "christmas card pack"

16:04 pm ... the xmas tree for the zxMascard doesnt cooperate but the tune is about 1:40 ... figuring out "alter pattern length" was staring in the face took a while.
Nothing much fancy if we want 5 postcards , even using TRSE as rank amateur lightweight afternoon tea coders. Ofourse, having pc, c64, atari st/e, atari 2600 and zx , javascript and php/css on pouet is also something since nobody here is tribal ...
I wonder how far it'l get , even if we stretch it to "31st last minute" since the resident typist doesnt even know where the ZX characters hide in rom, let alone ST heheh, even with TRSE its not just press play on tape. Sadly no Amiga since Mister is wonky and we dont have a working Amiga emulator on pc that runs TRSE compiled prg. Hatari works fine for the ST programs tho (the ones compiled with TRSE)
Nic G. sent us the right .exe to use with the ide for M68k there and. THERE WAS A FALCON030 ON SALE FOR THE CURRENT BID OF €850 ... budget this year went to Mister ... rooting for that psu to make it from Portugal so we can weed that possibility out, needed more than the amps anyway but we have an almost unanimous vote that the powerbutton is at least one of the culprit (doesnt rule out a failed PSU that bent a cable or something after a few monts. Borg Cubes are Borg Cubes and Seven is on strike til Nine)

ow ... is that what you call "incoherent rambling" ? :) we call that "a hyperthreaded brain"

guess we forego the gaming to see how many cards we can fix and then "O sprites, cool!"(lol)

no sprites, pic + tune

anyway ....

2023 12 17 : night - our domain expands

3:56 am ... never having had any music ed discovering a midi file instead of "hearing out" the notes (not tonedeaf after all) shaved off "abit". 
At 4:36 with a 40 second loop well consider this "something to take to the studio" and for the purpose of zxMasCard ready until the other 3 are at least as ready (theres always time vor V0.1 if you're not 'of TH3 SC3n3')
Gotta say, by now, Arkos Tracker 2 seems like a fine piece of work if you like the dimensions below 32bit (Falcon was sold as "24" heeh so we cool ... id ask Santa to get me one for Xmas that has never been out of th box, forgotten in a magazine somewhere , euh .. WAREHOUSE ? pristine, accidentally packed with "how to hack your 68030 in 5 minutes with falcon-assembler" and "democoding for the Falcon" floppies and books ... but Santa hasnt been here for a while ... i think the kid was alive last time it did)
So ... WOW, these noise-cancelling phones sure are ... didnt even hear the alarm ... euh

SO ! the picture, try to get the xmas tree in zx-pixelcheck and mash it, compile it and have one zxMas card V0.0

looking at this now, i think TRSE has .ym files for the Atari ST and so it happens and came to pass that he sayeth unto hee (hee hee) : a midifile might shave off enough since a picture for the ST shouldnt take much time using dithertron or the other one as theres no limits on the 16 chosen colors there.

The sid tune might be a different matter but i think we'll take a mibri (the man seems to add his .sng files) and remix the given instruments to something new, albeit V0.0 since xmas is the 25th

now, more code less typing (that didnt sound right)

JoG 2023, incoherent rambling for yowass since Atari Paddles killing Yars Revenge

mh ya indeed, i wonder what the thing will sound like on a ZX ... also arkos outs stereo and we are somewhat certain a ZX wont ... dont have a real one to check so lets hope the emulator is somewhat accurate.

4:12 am ... ofcourse a wav-file doesnt loop (it exports wav too apparently) and that has the stereo. Its safe to say this is definitely not a copy pasted midifile, tho theres room for at least 0.07 improvement version numbers. Sitting down has me yawning already. Stand up and walk around a bit. See where we get. (the game is going nowhere yo, as in "deadline dead or demented" and i doubt a c64game is gonna change the world. (we doubt anything can at this stage actually but thats not very christmassy, christmas is false hope for all people of meek will after all... if this text bothers you (then we wonder why you're reading it in the first place) consider it a scrolltext that didnt make it due to lack of time.

5:31 am ... le chat dalmatien seems to be our 3rd remaining silent ally here in dogland , and a hedgehog too, which as mysticism goes is a blessing , spirits and creatures of the night who dont run away - but its december 17, i think that critter shouldnt be walking around this time of year, Planets cleary foobar ... the saga continues. Lets say Mission Elevatorjazz:JoGglebells is cardready with options for 0.07 improvement versions if time, STille nagt has a 41 second go with ... 90's rave stabs ? dunno, the instruments available will do fine and theres a bit more dithering to the xmas tree but manual dithering sure is something more suited for experienced pixel people it seems. What would be nice is an emulater that eats .bin files, speccy gets to the screen and the other "free" one wont do anything until registered (...probably not happening if it tries to force it) is the c64 scene really the only hassle-free one (i mean not if you go on CSDB obviously , thats for dramalovers and incrowd patters (b/c you cant say circlejerk in 2023 without someone feeling insulted?) ... hatari works but ... BUT ... aaaand euhm well no. I think someone said something there like "no need for greets, our little thing here is dense enough as is" ... WORDING YOUNG MAN, unto me they sayeth much back when i walked between humans as if i was one. Says i get that stick out you DO know what i mean ...

6:42 am ... STille nachtE , 1:42 with tempochanges (man thats been a while heh) looked around for "ZX paint windows" but it all points to multipaint which im already using, not sure if dithertron has one for zx ,... maybe i should, screen for ST can be a simple setup in blender dithered down, that always seems to get good results , pc is fine as long as it has TUX with a santa hat and .. i guess we keep 6for-last as thats gonna be most with the sidfile (would be really nice to hear how the other sounds on an emulator tho, we had one but it expired, I CANT BELIEVE SCENEROIDS WHO WANT TO CASHCOW THEIR EMULATORS TO KEEP THEIR MACHINE GOING , thats not very zealous ... the computergod frowns)
seven   ... overdid, its getting even BETTER anyway not like "you cant have the dark & light color in one character block" due to hardware mechanics with the voltage and what not but "thou shalt NOT have a dark AND a light colour in any combo within one character block" :p ...zxFolk sure must have perseverance, I AM BAFFLED by how this thing seems to be in the top 5 if not 3 most active retro computer scenes (looking at RGN and Retro dino et al they do plenty of reports on zx too , c64 reigns supreme, amiga has some spurts and ST seems mostly ded) ... so i cant have light green treegreen and dark red balls red then. Second cycle, ill need the pixelpatience for the game anyway and im almost getting interested in the ZX (sadly time is scarce in 24 hour chunks and alibazon hasnt sent my cloning vats yet - we thought it might be a good xperiment to grow more bodies and try to split the Ondergrond among them, army of we has more typists)

anyway ... i wonder if that psu from portugal will make it , all sites are on strike until Mister is repaired .... AND I NEED an emulator for this zx thing

13:50 pm ... systematic as always ... no midi imports in goattracker hm ... (figures somewhat) a bit scary how its made for stereo in the 1st place . Will the memory64 get defiled so bad by 2050 no one remember it didnt have a supercpu and 2 sids ? commander X16 also in TRSE apparently, all i need is a lvl 9 Gygax spell and well do one for each but only a pic with a tune ... (are you still reading this ? no complaining about how you dont wanna read this if you do plz, maybe you need to check your head ...)

2023 12 18 : night - our domain expands,

3:47 am ... the ST compile works under Hatari so we'll assume it will since it doesnt use any bug exploits or quirks from demoland, xmas card wa xmas card : a bitmap and a tune , it sounds like the music from Arkos2 to .ym gets a little more diff in conversion than the Spectrum one here. Sure would be nice to see TRSE grow, for a multi-machine collective without money to buy them stuff like this is gud stuff. Getting the pick down from "a blender" to "16pal ST" learned some undertherug trickery in the process moving over GIMP before getting it to dithertron (the guy who wrote 8bitworkshop must be one of those l33t people i heard about a lot when the world had money and time and work and whiskey and women ...) then multipaint and then TRSE. Importing the music is easy as goblin pie there. If one thing stands here it shows dementia hasnt set in in the slightest (looking round the family and environment it doesnt seem to be something to fear by tthe age of 80 anymore, BUT they warned that covid might cause a surge in brainrelated problems, ofcourse THE economy comes first and i bet jesus will come to save it by curing the lame so they can work for the pensionfund of el presidentes cousins crackpipe (and the meisjes natuurlijk) ... ) o well , even if it took two of our calendar days (that is !equal to 48 hours due to sleep disease and a body that acts like its 80 already - luckily without dementia) to get the core tunes and figure out "how to have bitmap and a tune on a spectrum AND an emulator that actually runs it at the very least we are still capable of moving from "temple of the cat-PC" and "middlersted-c64/easyflash(and no ones gonna tell you but show off how they can and even then none of the code i saw did what i wanted to do) to lets do 4 christmas cards for the machines we had and eventually start out with one you didnt : ZX that we are still somewhat able to adapt and with Hawking as extreme example : if he could win nobel prizes with 50 years ALS, as long as there is brain we can do lightweight afternoon tea coding with two fingers if the crippling continues ... right ... so spectrum and ST works, it needs polish but its not the 31st, not even the 25th (look at that partycoder GO! deadline deadline !) maybe first the .sid ... i bet thats gonna be the most work, i havent seen "import midi for notes if you need a quicky" here in goat so we'll have to "hear them out" i guess ...

04:58 am ... maybe try goat 2.76 bc the stereo wont be needed and its ... just a bit more complicated than arkos or ft2 i dare say

5:57 am ... i guess we have a concept there , if that gets to compiled TRSE we have 3, PC, as bitmap+sounds shouldnt be more than 10 or less lines of familiar program and were not writing to impress (ever - xept maybe temple but thats just as personal) so since its the 18th dare we try atari 2600 as well, after all the kid started on Ataripaddles ...

6:26 am ... dishes be dissin , feels like its getting colder again ... "something" runs when pressf5 (or whatever trse button) but the music exported from Goat 2.77 sounds like some kind of Pitstop press button to start fromthe 80s + i guess not having at least a simple scroller in anything 64 is next to sacrilege. Cant say i dont like sid "as a synth" going stereo but im wary of humans "bringing the c64 into the future" ... neo-retro supercpu's , VIC replacements and dual sids on board ... we move with 4gb carts that were there in the 1980s and even IDE64 as mass storage b/c its like 1000 floppies without swapping and doesnt touch the actual retro but we cant get down with the rest, thats all personal ofcourse , SO WHERE DO I GET THE PREV TRACKER, m sure its lying around somewhere from the prev experiments but it has to be still up yes ?

7:08 am ... i guess we have 3 concepts ...

2023 12 19 : ... having everything i could find together, sidwizard seems to be native64 but the converter isnt and to be complete an Atari 2600 card would be nice but tho TRSE examples work in Stella (emulator) theres none with sound ... to be totally complete we would need one for a Sega Gamegear, an Atari Jaguar and an Xbox 360 as well but i wouldnt even know where to find the ide for that and certainly not the time to start assembling and compiling with a wild compiler and a notepad/xed itor ... and then some, the fact that the Jag got rolled out with actual hardware bugs always has me thinking thats one of the reasons why theres no mister core for it : they would have to literally ENCODE the bugs into the virtual FPGA configuration otherwise the roms (which are written to work with or around the "standard" bugs in the machine wont work or only partially ... That certainly was Ataris darkest moment there tho ill never forget playing tempest 2000 to lvl 100 ... (without cheating hehhe) ... see where we get with what we have then.

hm huh, there seems to be something named Batari Basic which should compile to an A2600 rom (or so it claim) question is is that enough in 3 days trying to complete the other 3 and a pc-one (leaving out the DOSBOX b/c PC wa PC ...)

mmm the day is today is ...

2023 12 20 : most of the available screentime got spent (some might say wasted ... ) on battling half a scanline on the c64 xmas card . Thats just "us" : lets do a quick pic'n tune for a xmas card then end up with "Hey that thing HF released" that automatically extends scanlines on a bitmap , but ofcourse not using it but trying to just do it and for some reason ONE SINGLE HALF SCANLINE wont follow the lead, it either sticks too much to the left of the cycle or too much to the right, the amount of wait(x) (in TRSE it says wait(x) = (x*4) +2 cycles so i assume wait(3) equals nop 8 were 1 nop = 2 so 3 is 6 (+2) = wait (3) unless i misread) or nop(x) (which also seems to  be a command) wont have it behave, the thing is its not an equal line so on the left side it extends a few scanlines higher than it does on the right side, and ofourse, io altering the bitmap and lifting the right block a few pixels higher one just sits here tyring to figure out WHY THAT THING WONT DO THAT ON THAT ONE SINGLE LINE ... all the others seem to work (the halflines too) and its not even demosplits its just the background so maybe its something with the skank lines, not being tribal has perks but ofcourse  before you get to 35 years of xp on one machine it takes a while.
at the end of todays available screentime we just decided to move it up one (yes, "one") pixel and its okey , after all it was gonna be "just a pic 'n tune", which turned to lets do that for the ST , AND c64 and that ZX we tried AND ... for someone who doesnt actually LIKE programming but has to WIN or has to "do stuff that is monies" its probably hard to fathom and after that much time trying over and over again i have to say i understand them and monies never hurts but it seems to become a problem when its the goal, not the means to achieve the goal ... also possible is that the underlying code in TRSE doesnt always have the exact same commands AND also noticed while trying to turn cycles by simple "set background lightred" 5 times that the OPTIMIZER (post-) just kills that, and ALSO noticed that the standard code without the optimizer wrecks the whole scanline thing as it was WITH the optimizer so in essence its great, still great, love it but when it comes to SERIOUS democoding i suppose you would want to know what you're doing ... as for us .. we're more like "games" anyway so all that exactness isnt really 100% priority and once you move past the 16 bit dimension it doesnt even matter anymore anyway and so
. I think we'll just do a preliminary wrap and see what can be tweaked before Santa brings peace, love , russians bennu and gaza, americans , elections, inflation and child labor abused elves from the northpole ...

the perks of not being part of the incrowd, not "on the scene" and not a pro ... 

lightweight afternoon tea coding, certainly didnt unlearn much and maybe even some that comes in handy for the game. (or games, depending on how long til dead or demented, thats a variable beyond omega alas ...)

too bad TRSE doesnt do sound for the .A26 ... not sure if theres time to pickup Batari Basic FAST either ... ANYWAY, what a dlog this is becoming, we'll add it to the .nfo so certain types of people (are you STILL reading this?) can get another ulcer over irrelevant information (BUT YOURE STILL READING THIS?)

okay ...

2023 12 21 : actually its only the 21st ? hm - started on the pc thing its somewhat obvious that instead of one somewhat polished for our level ending up with 4 or 5 which dont end up like just a pic'n tune in some its more like compofiller material lol ... but its certainly interesting. The pc thing didnt wanna sit still either so its gonna be limited to inhouse primitives and single colour diffuse with a few lights + a midi rearrangement from a Spike Jones song. Someone remind me what were doing here. I dont even celebrate xmas or new year, cant remember the last time. Dinner with the Addamses but thats about it ... where did i pickup this idea did something conditional get through while i was sleeping and im oh or was it the exposure to MSN and now infected with Crotter trying to heal the extra damage ?

rite-o , somewhat amazing what you can do as a lamer in an hour or so these days, non programmers might even wahnotbad at it heheh ...

yasss .. time for first cycle (or did you think that went away just cuz everyone keeps pushing, lying and trying to rip me off ?) i guess unless we wanna add moving parts to the ST card that leaves some loose bytes and a scrolltext for the c64 .. SIMPLE ... i dont think theres time to disect DDYYXXCCPP by the 24th ... overdid it ... i can feel that its gonna hurt and i still wonder WHY DO I DO THIS (particularly this, its not like i dont like exploring the machines and the programming) ... the arkos to .ym really doesnt convert all too well id say ... if ever a real demo or game mind to noteself : use native tracker

2023 12 22 : man , pixelling is a nice drift but even at 16 free colors 320x200 doesnt make one a Sarge ... the scroller ate too much memory on the c64 so now at least we know how and where to put character sets ... the ST is calling tho ... tho that unreachable Falcon has been calling for over 20 years now ...

2023 12 23 : Since there WAS an Atari 2600 we cant help but try ... TRSE doesnt provide sound examples tho and most Ataridevtools seem to be stuck in the windows xp era ... no one bothered upping it to 64bit so we find ourselves one step away from the devil installing visualcode and some other things and already on reboot theres error messages . A nice reminder why we quit USA-DOS last century. Not sure if there is time to try and figure out how to run Batari in VScode AND have a playfield with multiple colors AND sound ... we can already safely say coding a card for the Atari Jaguar, Sega Gamegear and Xbox 360 will have to wait , the pc has about 1:42 of sound so thats at most 102 loops to exit, with a few tweens probably no more than ten. ... hour(s) later ... well if i thought SID was hard, .a26 is hardcore-der than spectrum. Especially the noise. Picking up a quicky of .a26 in basic after doing 4 cards is something i would not recommend to sane people unless you have a purpose with it, by now i somewhat understand the intelligence of 1960-1970 and over programmers, but mostly the perseverance lol. Anyway, even if not much we have ourselves an .a26 xmas card WITH SOUND ! (no one kinda thought we would get this down ... that leaves the pc and we have 5 unpolished cards, the kind you buy on your way back home in a gas station b/c you cant afford halmark ...)
Im sure the machines will appreciate serving their purpose and thats what its about after all.
Greetings to we have no friends :p - cards to the machine.

And thus ... 30 more seconds of tweening and we can compile UX and USA-DOS and claim 2 machines (?) ... hm ... not that it matters much, if it were over a deadline or for money it would be disastrous but no one probably would have had the bright idea yesterday to "O LETS TRY ATARI WITH SOUND !" from zit (we MOST DEFINITELY gained respects for spectrum and 1960s 70s programmers, they must have been badass infantry, paving the way for "chatGPT write me a demo ! = "LOOK WHAT I CAN DO !" ... euh hm ... guess after four (or 5 days) of screentime when available it would be a waste not to upload, and even so, we still consider it not the worst on the demozoo or pouet pages at all ... ofcourse, since we are not incrowd we dont do handshake day and we make for very bad idols ... but since we do it for the program nothings gonna stop us and having something thats possible even if all the body were to give in xept two fingers is somewhat ... WELL I CANT SAY REASSURING CAN I ? lets see if the world lasts that long first
. We also gained respect for manual pixelers, sidders and definitely wackos trying to create music on a VCS ... the gods understood diversity better than their spawn it seems ...

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JoG 2023

not just a doompatrol metafor , 
code Syntax Error, gfx Picato, muzx 81Cent, madness Catham Joker
