James | CWS 🇨🇦

@coastwide.systems

1788 Followers 2442 Following

Game development studio building games for #linux (and other OS's too) using the #bevy engine and #rustlang. #gamedev #indiedev https://coastwidesystems.com/ https://discord.gg/Rg8MBJAvu4 https://ko-fi.com/coastwidesystems/tip

A photo of a home server rack, with a 4U server pulled out, opened and with its guts spewed out. In the background are some elderly displays
The Heat Retreat promo image adapted for Canada Day with a Canadian flag positioned centrally, and depicting the ubiquitous red 50's pickup truck parked on a dirt road next to a a small camp comprised of an orange tent, campfire and cast iron pan. Surroundings are a forest setting of mostly fir and cedar, with the ocean and coastline in the background. The style is pixel art.
The taco bun aka "unsloppy joe", unremarkable as a roughly perfect shaped white bun with fork holes on top and a small amount of cheese/sauce leaking at the bottom. It has been stylishly positioned on a plain white plate atop a grey marbled countertop
A flattened out round of white bread dough with "Taco Sauce" and cheese
Freckles the elderly border collie, caught on the couch in front of my laptop looking at me disapprovingly, with my abandoned coffee cup on an end table beside her.
A screenshot of a post by user @brunodias.bsky.social Microsoft losing the plot to the extent that games running on Linux through a compatibility layer are now not only faster but *assumed to be faster* than games running natively on Windows should be an even bigger story than it already is. For gaming, Microsoft views steamOS as the benchmark, and is working to optimize the platform so that steamOS and Windows gaming performance are comparable. Within the next year or two, it believes that Windows will be able to truly compete head-to-head with steamOS in gaming performance on identical hardware due to foundational changes that are being made to the platform in coming months.
A screen shot from sub reddit /claudecode that reads: "Inherited a 3-month old repo from a Vibe Engineer. Wrote the most satisying PR in my career" Followed by an embedded capture of their PR line change: "+10,197 -3,618,778" with 4 out of 5 blocks highlighted red
Freckles the border collie mix & Chief Napping Officer of CWS stationed at her (my?) laptop running Heat Retreat tests. She is lounging on a grey couch with (theoretically) protective red bedsheet. In the he background are mountains and somewhat gloomy weather working to decide if it'll be a normal storm or thunderstorm today.
Freckles the border collie mix & Chief Napping Officer of CWS, annoyed at being disturbed from her nap by my ranting about unexpected results from my math, resting on a grey couch with her head on an adjacent pillow
A small, unnamed lake deep in the woods, surrounded by trees (mostly fir) - some water logged & dead - with a few lily pads and driftwood in the foreground.
A screenshot of GitLab's GitHub migration page, with the following text: "Import repositories from GitHub Select the repositories you want to import Owned Collaborated Organization The more information you select, the longer it will take to import. To import collaborators, or if your project has Git LFS files, you must use a classic personal access token with read:org scope. Learn more. Use alternative comments import method The default method can skip some comments in large projects because of limitations of the GitHub API. Import Markdown attachments (links) Import Markdown attachments (links) from repository comments, release posts, issue descriptions, and pull request descriptions. These can include images, text, or binary attachments. If not imported, links in Markdown to attachments break after you remove the attachments from GitHub. Import collaborators Import direct repository collaborators who are not outside collaborators. Imported collaborators who aren't members of the group you imported the project into consume seats on your GitLab instance. No GitHub repositories found" Selected is the "Organization" tab, frustratingly showing "No GitHub repositories found" in bold text.
Photo of a beer can in the foreground and hot dog being roasted over a fire. The background is an unkempt yard with a kids playground and trees
Heat Retreat's wolf pixel art, walking
A screenshot of Heat Retreat's travel scene, depicting an 80's station wagon with headlights on travelling on a dirt road in rainy weather with forests and mountains in the background, done in pixel art. The foreground contains the dashboard UI showing various information to the player: a retro style digital thermometer taped to the dashboard for temperature, vehicle speedometer for speed, odometer for distance travelled, a classy digital calculator watch for time & date, an old smart phone with no reception for distance to next location, and a yellow milk crate showing current food supply.
Freckles, the black and white border collie and game development supervisor extraordinaire, asleep on a grey couch with her head resting on a blue pillow
Freckles, the border collie mix, "supervising" me doing game development & accounting on a dreary, rainy day
A tiny Grogu taking shelter in the hollow of a fir tree, with ample moss and lichen draping to provide dramatic effect
Freckles, our border collie mix of some sort, proudly surveying her domain on a trail among cedar and fir trees
One of several sketches made in GIMP concepting the look & feel of Heat Retreat's "first aid/triage" mini-game. Using lime green for illegible notes to self, including snippets like "flow rate indicator? RSB -> pressure to change flow rate", "clean antiseptic bandage", "health". At the top as title is "<Name>", with a copy pasted texture of pixel art first aid supplies with text "Qty: 12.8". Other elements include a central "swing meter" style game, on the right in red is the "health meter" showing time until death, and various poorly drawn sketches of possible UI buttons/controls/layout
The back of an old 1080p TV revealing a rats' nest of HDMI, ethernet and USB extender cables. A home brew "smart" TV. Buried in the wiring is an old, retired NUC mini PC
Three laptops arranged around a dinongnroom table connected to a switch in the center. Visible on the nearest screen is SuperTuxKart, with a dark red DualSense controller set beside it. In the background is a container of maple syrup, because Canada
A pixel art station wagon, slightly angled and with the hood open revealing the engine. This is one of three vehicle types in Heat Retreat and is intended to be part of the vehicle status check/maintenance view, thus is higher resolution than the usual vehicle assets
A screenshot of Gimp on the left with a butchered mockup of an 80's station wagon, attempting to represent what it looks like with the hood open at a specific angle. On the right are a selection of image search results showing various other angles of the vehicle
A screenshot of Heat Retreat's Makefile, full text exceeds character limits but the key sections contain: linux: @echo "Building Linux executable..." @mkdir -p ./target/release @if command -v podman >/dev/null 2>&1; then \ podman pull quay.io/cws/steam-linux-builder:latest; \ podman run -v .:/src:z -v ./target/release:/output:z -t quay.io/cws/steam-linux-builder:latest release; \ else \ $(CARGO) build --release; \ fi @echo "✓ Linux executable built" win: @echo "Building Windows executable..." @$(CARGO) build --target=x86_64-pc-windows-msvc --release @echo "✓ Windows executable built" mac: @echo "Building macOS universal binary..." @CC=o64-clang CXX=o64-clang++ LIBZ_SYS_STATIC=1 $(CARGO) build --target=aarch64-apple-darwin --release @CC=o64-clang CXX=o64-clang++ LIBZ_SYS_STATIC=1 $(CARGO) build --target=x86_64-apple-darwin --release @echo "✓ macOS executables built"
A screenshot showing my workspace for an in-progress station wagon art asset for Heat Retreat. On the left is the program Aseprite with an 80's era, classic wood panelled station wagon, and on the right is one of my reference images of said station wagon in a Firefox browser window. The desktop environment is "Sway" on Fedora Linux.
A photo of my border collie lying on the couch in front of my laptop giving a judgmental side look
A screenshot showing the updated, very work in progress party supply management view. Pictured is a tab style navigation bar to the left listing "Homestead", "Party", "Vehicle", Supplies" and "Leave". In the main view is the player wallet at the top showing $800, the blue hatchback vehicle with its trunk open and a full load of supplies: antibiotics, first aid, fresh (perishable) food, canned food, rifle/shotgun/pistol ammunition, water, duct tape (repair material), wiper blades, fuel and tires. To the right of the vehicle is some background art including an orange tent and camp fire. Not yet implemented are the remaining "upgrade" class of items, which will occupy the empty space.
A screenshot of Heat Retreat's "Game Settings" menu, showing a section of the "Appearance" category containing toggles for Parallax, Lightning Flash, and Health/Fatigue/Hydration/UI colour selectors. At the bottom of the screen are "Back" and "Reset to Defaults" buttons.
A photo of a brand new Pixel 9a booting GrapheneOS for the first time, showing the GrapheneOS logo and title against a black background for the boot splash screen.
A screenshot of a duckduckgo search result snippet showing the three dot menu with the new option to block a particular site from search results: "Block this site from all results [NEW]"
A poorly lit photo showing the Heat Retreat travel state running natively on a SteamDeck. In the scene is the red 50's era pickup truck and its stylized the dashboard UI showing fuel, outside temperature, date/time, speed, distance traveled (via the odometer), distance to next location and a simple high/med/low food representation using an ubiquitous yellow milk crate. The travel scenery depicts the truck driving down a small side road through a deciduous forest, with low distant mountains in the background and a sunny day with scattered clouds.
A photo of the bottom of my monitor with three orange post-it notes containing the topics "Travel", "Shopping" & "Settings". Each contains barely legible bullet point notes of bugs or pending features under each heading, with completed items roughly crossed out.
Heat Retreat's newly reworked shopping UI, showing the player's vehicle (a red retro style pickup truck here) on the left with sellable commodities arrayed (mostly) sensibly in/around the vehicle and a simple shop with a goods to buy displayed. Items all have a white outline to help show what can be interacted with, and focused items have a (configurable) coloured outline (red shown here). The shopkeeper uses a speech bubble to communicate to the player the item type & price per unit ("I'd consider $4/L for water" shown here). In the upper left region is the player's wallet ($658.00), the upper right corner has the pause/menu UI button shown as an ubiquitous double vertical bar pause icon, and the lower right has the back/leave UI button, shown as an arrow pointing right. Not shown here is the trade dialog box, where the player can see more detailed information about the commodity in focus & select how much to buy or sell.
A screenshot of the re-worked Heat Retreat shopping interface, with retro red pickup truck vehicle option shown on the left and shop consisting of a dark wood table, drab shopkeeper in a blue cap and brick wall in the background with a clothesline. In the truck bed are the player's sellable goods, showing water, fuel, first aid supplies, food (fresh and canned), and a variety of ammunition. For sale in the shop are tires, fuel, water, canned & fresh food, rifle/shotgun/pistol ammunition, and on the ground are duct tape and wiper blades (for vehicle repairs). In focus with a red highlight is the water sellable, with the shopkeeper speech bubble stating "The best I'll do is $4/L for water."
A screenshot of Heat Retreat's new shopping interface. In the foreground is the trade dialog UI box showing an example water purchase. The box is titled "Water $4/L", and contains the text "You currently have: 10.0 L", "How much do you want to trade?", a slider for selecting quantity, and below that is text showing the current selected quantity and sub-total: "3L | $12.00". At the bottom of the box are "Cancel" and "Buy" buttons for mouse/touch interactions. The background shows the red pickup truck vehicle option on the left, a shop with a red brick wall, dark wood table and slightly reclined shopkeeper wearing drab brown clothes and a blue cap. Arrayed in the truck bed are (mostly yellow/black placeholder) assets with white outlines representing the various items that can be sold & buyable shop goods across the shop space. The style is pixel art.
A red pickup truck rear view showing the bed & shopping items laid out on the left, and the right side is occupied by the shop with a table, wall and shopkeeper and goods arrayed about. A text bubble shows the tire in focus with the text "Tire $180 DELETE ME" (debug stuff).
A screenshot of the new work-in-progress shopping interface for Heat Retreat. On the left is a rear view of the pickup truck vehicle type with goods to sell arrayed in the truck bed. On the right half is the shop with goods to purchase arrayed around the shop environment. The shop itself is a simple pixel representation of a table, shopkeeper & brick wall background. In the center of the window is a dialog popup showing the trade interaction: "Fresh Food $12", "You currently have: 10.0 kg", "How much do you want to trade?" and a slider bar to select the quantity, with "cancel" and "buy" buttons underneath. Most item textures are using a placeholder yellow/black square, but fresh and canned food have proper textures closer to final art in place.
A video capture showcasing button input menu navigation in Heat Retreat's main menu and settings menu, with the menu theme music playing in the background. The main menu is a left aligned, column layout of buttons "Continue", "New Game", "Settings" and "Quit". The settings menu shows the (current) available configuration options and their interactions using button navigation, including "Window Mode", "Resolution", "Music Volume", "Sound Effects Volume", "Measurement Units", "Temperature Units", "Time Format", "Language", "Parallax Effects", "Lightning Flash", and several UI colour customization options. Also seen is the still work-in-progress Control customization header. At the bottom of the settings menu are the "Back" and "Reset to Defaults" buttons.
A screenshot showing the Coast Wide Systems quay.io repo with all the images fully updated by the automated updater.
The blue hatchback travelling in overcast conditions on a rural road through a deciduous forest, with distant mountains. The UI HUD is the (not final art) dashboard representation for the hatchback showing speed, fuel, outside temperature, date & time, approximate food remaining and distance to next landmark using the various themed widgets.
Heat Retreat's travel scene, using the coast highway background and featuring the blue hatchback vehicle option and its dashboard. As a work in progress it's lacking any detail, but has the "widgets" placed and bespoke speedometer & fuel gauge working
A screenshot of Heat Retreat's Steam Library view with the "Install" dialog in context, showcasing that the build is present & functional
A screenshot of Heat Retreat's travel scene, showing the station wagon on a coastal highway on a hot, sunny day with a few clouds. The lower 1/3 is the new UI being featured, with a stylized wood panel dashboard in line with the vehicle's real world counterparts. The speedometer is showing a speed of 50km/h, odometer 121.4km, fuel around 3/4 of a tank and there are a variety of "widgets" arrayed including a generic digital thermometer showing 23.9 C, a 90's calculator watch reading July 15, 2025 9:34 am, an old smartphone taped up informing there are 78.6km remaining to the next landmark, and an ubiquitous yellow milk crate giving an estimation of how much fresh/canned food is remaining. There's notable empty space to the right reserved for future, player obtainable upgrades.
A screenshot of Heat Retreat's travel game state, showing the 1950's red pickup truck travelling down a coastal highway on a mixed cloud & sun day. The UI consists of a stylized dashboard in the style of the truck, with widgets displaying additional info: a digital thermometer taped on for temperature (showing 28.1 C), 90's calculator watch (July 15, 2025 14:05), an old smartphone taped up showing distance to next landmark (12.0 km), and the dashboard's speedometer, odometer and fuel gauge showing their respective information (50km/h, 188.0km travelled and slightly over half a tank of gas left). The new additions are the open glovebox (empty for future additions) and ubiquitous yellow milk crate containing a variety of fruits, vegetables, meat and canned goods representing the quantity of fresh and canned (ie non perishable) food the player has remaining.
A video of Heat Retreat's "travel" game state, with the red 50's pickup truck travelling against a parallax effect beach background with sunny, partly cloudy weather. The video highlights the UI improvements, showcasing a stylized "dashboard" in keeping with the vehicle, with "widgets" tacked on to display information not native to the dashboard such as a classic 90's calculator watch for date & time (showing Jul 15 2025, 10 am to 11am), a working fuel gauge and speedometer/odometer, and a newly added "smart phone" duct tape to the dashboard showing the distance to next landmark.
A scene from Heat Retreat showing the archetypal red 50's pickup truck travelling down a coast highway to the left, with weather cycling between clouds, overcast, clear, cloudy, clear and overcast again. A beach and ocean in the background, with dark green grass in the foreground. Parallax gives the scene a sense of depth. The video highlights the new, very work in progress UI; specifically the functional speedometer & odometer showing speed changes on a circular guage with an orange needle pointing to various speeds over the course of the video. The odometer ticks upward at the indicated speed rate.
A video of Heat Retreat's "travel" game state, showing a red 50's pickup truck travelling down a coastal highway with the beach and ocean in the background during a thunderstorm. There are periodic lightning strikes, heavy rain and dark storm clouds with a brief screen flash during each strike
A small blue early 90's hatchback travelling a coastal highway with the beach and ocean in the background, with parallax effects giving a sense of depth. The video highlights new precipitation particle effects, beginning with small blue rain drops for "drizzle", larger blue drops for "light rain", more frequent large blue drops for "moderate rain", heavy grey lines slanted by relative wind speed for "heavy rain", followed by large meandering white pixel flakes for "light snow", more frequent flakes for "moderate snow", more and faster for "heavy snow", with a saturation of fast moving flakes for "blizzard"
A screen shot of my "Game Design Document" in AnyType, showing the addition of a social media "cheat sheet" for Bluesky where I keep track of tags & (eventually) other important notes for game related social media posting. Listed is the title "Bluesky" followed by the header "Tags" and a list of toggleable dropdown items including #feedbackwanted, #gamedev, #indiedev, #solodev, #bevy, #rustlang, and #pixelart. The feedbackwanted dropdown includes a quick summary reading "Inlcude the word 'game' in the post to automatically get add to 'Game Dev Feedback' followed by a link to the feed.