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Phinxel's Field Notes, a supplemental guide to Decker Sticky

A topic by ahmwma created 3 days ago Views: 120 Replies: 3
Viewing posts 1 to 3
(1 edit) (+5)

After I made The Riddle of the Temple last year some people mentioned that the behind-the-scenes area with Phinxel (a little sphinx character) was helpful for learning a couple of things about making projects in Decker.

I've learned a lot about the program since then and so Phinxel is back with enough Decker facts to fill up a medium sized notebook.


https://ahmwma.itch.io/phield-notes

The book is divided into sections that each have their own indexes and there's a search engine contraption in the appendix if you're trying to find something specific.

It's a little silly but I really hope it's helpful!

(+3)

Wow, that looks amazing. It's a pretty thick deck, too!

(+2)

I was having a rough day yesterday, and having something so beautiful and cheerful and playful to look through absolutely brightened my day!

I did find some minor problems:

On the card “lockeddecks”, the label “How to lock a deck” is editable, and I think it shouldn’t be?

On the card “gridscale”, it says Decker’s Fat Bits mode was named after “a program that magnified the screen on classic Macs”, but it links to a program for OS/2, not for classic Macs, and the program came out six years after MacPaint was released with a Fat Bits mode.

I think the real reason Decker has a “Fat Bits” mode is because somebody somewhere had the experience of using HyperCard (or MacPaint), seeing “Fat Bits” mode in a menu, enabling it out of curiosity, and then (after a moment’s confusion) realising it was a super-power for making even better art. “Zoom” is a thing you find in professional software like Microsoft Word and Photoshop, “Fat Bits” is playful discovery and better suited to Decker.

It’s hard to squeeze all that into a little “why is zoom called fat bits” aside, though. :/

Still, this is an amazing resource. There was a lot of stuff in there I didn’t already know (especially about the art side of things) and probably things I didn’t know I needed yet - but at least now I can look them up easily. I will definitely be showing it to people who want to know about Decker!

(+2)

Thank you very much! I've quietly fixed both things. (And another unlocked field I spotted on my way there... there's a lot of widgets in this thing.)

I admit that the sidebar about FatBits was kind of written on the fly and not adequately fact checked (in terms of Mac history, or with IJ  himself about his inspirations, haha) so I've put a more neutral mention of MacPaint there instead and I appreciate the correction.

Really, thank you for checking it out and enjoying it! It means a lot.