lapfox

first update of the year

i was hoping to be able to make this update in january, but it wound up being a particularly busy month (adjusting medication, helping my partner get into the swing of full time art, etc). a lot still got done! naturally, this will all be about eos.

"game B," an unlockable game-within-game in eos, is complete, including a fully illustrated manual. this game has its own full soundtrack which will be released separate from the main game's soundtrack!

"game A" (that's eos itself) is going through another round of testing before the game's ending is finalized and put in place. the past couple months have seen a lot of bugfixes and general adjustments to get things feeling, performing, and playing as good as possible. the engine itself has seen further changes with more accurate & configurable horizontal autoaim, simplified joystick settings & improved analog stick reading, and other things. player movement changes, scoring system rebalancing, difficulty tweaking, and so on.

amazingly, this project is approaching the finishing line - finally! this has been an undertaking far greater than i ever expected, and i absolutely would not have been able to stay sane were it not for the support of my friends and those who have lent time to the project, as well as the ongoing support from all of you allowing me to actually see this through. thank you!!!!!

there's still work to be done, but i can see the end!

hyvää joulua | last update of the year

hey all. hope you're keeping well.

this year has been incredibly tumultuous for me, full of intense ups and downs, deeply traumatic and deeply healing experiences, and some of the biggest challenges i've ever faced and given myself. given everything going on, i'm very happy to have released the KIDNAMEDFINGER record with rowan and the lowerNofair EP both this year. most of my work however has gone into end of starchild, which is of course, still not done - but it's getting there! it's hard to know what i can or can't say about it, and i thought about making some kind of vague progress diagram showing the % of each part of the game that's done or something, but that's all pretty hard to measure. so i'll say "Game A is Approaching Final Draft, Game B is 95% Done" and let the speculation happen on your end. it'll still be a while, but it's pretty pleasing that it exists the way it does. the soundtrack is comically big at this point (i have relative confidence it'll be split into at least two soundtracks).

work has been particularly slow the past couple months as i've navigated a sudden onset of panic disorder that funneled into an extreme depression and the beginnings of intrusive thoughts about dying. i've been putting a lot of time and effort into building frameworks to work through a lot of things, but yesterday i realized that isn't enough, so i've boarded the antidepressant train for now. sometimes it's just what you need to prop yourself up. i have faith in it, and i've begun the process of learning to have faith in myself again.

i think that's just about it for now. wishing you the best these holidays. take care.

the annual bandcamp holiday discount

as is tradition, if you'd like to add my entire bandcamp discography to your collection for easy streaming from wherever, you can use the code 0506holidayz to get 90% off on a discography purchase, available from any page on my bandcamp @ https://halleylabs.com/

back catalog updates: it's all free, and more.

https://msx.horse/backcat.php

what it says on the tin. every last bit of it is available for free. making all of this freely available would not be possible without the ongoing support from patreon, bandcamp, and youtube, and i appreciate said continued support beyond words.

i figure some people don't want to deal with bandcamp, or really any friction between themselves and having some files on their computer, and this is the best way to accomodate that, as well as be incluse of those that cannot afford downloads, live in countries where they are inaccessible. etc.

as new paid albums come out, there will be a window in which they will only be on bandcamp, youtube, etc. after that, the downloads will be freely available here.

a file handling update has also been rolled out: downloaded files will now be formatted as "Alias - Album [Format].zip" rather than the short filenames used previously. if you still need the short filenames, you can right click and copy the download links.

thank you, and enjoy.

lowerNorfair - 000000 000004 000000 000004

EP available for download @ https://allsop-lancaster.com/ln/

lowerNorfair - tremor_

more of this noisy dark stuff; FLAC is attached.

lowerNorfair - the_pit

i don't expect this to be for most people, but i've wanted to work on some muddy, bleak, noisy techno for a little bit; dark times often call for dark art and all that. if you enjoyed my solo noisy techno stuff on the KNF record (ie. "CONCRETE") you might dig on this, which is very much a direct extension of that.

the alias is new-but-not; it's one of longneck's aliases as listed on the KNF page.

FLAC is attached.

have a safe and fun halloween. <3

slow, nonlinear recovery

hey all, thought i'd give an update for this month.

work-wise, there's not a ton; i've worked a bit on eos (most of that time has been put into the custom gzdoom build, especially with the implosion of gzdoom) and poked at some music projects, but there's not a lot to really talk about in this regard.

generally, i've been starting to feel less at the whims of totally disabling panic attacks and anxiety levels are slowly reducing. the process has been nonlinear and i expect it to take some time still until i arrive back at something close to baseline. i've been working with professional and have some interim treatment that is helping manage the worst of it.

at the moment, my energy levels have been remarkably low; simple tasks take a lot out of me and i need to take lots of breaks to recharge. after doing dishes, laundry, cooking, etc. as a result, most of my energy has been put into the basics and keeping myself healthy and active in the ways i can. generally i end up doing one or two things each day, and it's been hard to make work a consistent part of that. i've been trying to not be so hard on myself about that and acknowledge that it's going to take some time before i'm back to even 50%, letalone 100%.

thanks for waiting, and thank you for your support through this. i am looking forwards to being able to get back to things as i can.

finally hitting the wall

hey all, i'll be keeping this short as to limit my exposure to challenging stimuli at the moment.

between the passing of my mother, challenging work, and other factors, i've reached a point where total meltdowns/shutdowns are frequent and i need to take a break to recover from autistic burnout (a very different experience than simply being "burned out" on work). i hope to be able to get back to things soon, but my mind and body need me to slow down, and in some cases, stop completely or i'll just end up deeper in it and will take longer to recover, or put myself into a situation where my mental and physical health are at greater risk.

i wish i could give more information right now, but i'm at my total limit and have to respect that for a little bit.

thank you for your support, you are all helping make my dream project a reality.

august-september eos updates, other things

hey all. as usual, the past month has been loaded with long, rewarding days of work. more testing has been done, and as a result, more work has piled up. namely, a lot of "delete large chunks of maps and simply make them better." i've further developed a lot of skills that has allowed me to push the project that little bit further, and those i've shared the updates with have been really excited for where things are going.

i'm pretty deep into things, so saying too much of anything will be a bit spoilery, but know that these latest changes have been huge for accessibility to players of various skill levels in particular, in an effort to ensure everybody gets a similar experience. it's by far the hardest thing to balance, but i feel like it's getting pretty close to feeling right, and additional difficulty modifiers will always be available. it's still a pretty tough game and can't really account for being somebody's first or most accessible fast-skill-expression-fps-adventure-etc-game, but i do feel good about the progress.

there's still plenty to be done - and my personal goal is still to get this shit done by the end of the year - but i'm going a little easy on myself for the time being. i seem to have developed some kind of panic disorder a couple months on from my mother's passing, which from what i gather isn't an uncommon response, and i'm working through that as well.

i want to continue to work hard on eos, as the project is giving me life, challenge, meaning, etc. at the same time, giving myself a gentler outlook and saying "as long as it gets done eventually" instead of beating myself up over something needing to be done now is going to be important.

thanks for reading. i'll continue doing my best for me, for those around me, and for my work.

end-of-july-end-of-starchild-update

hey all

it's been an interesting month. despite everything, it's been a really incredible one for work on eos.

there's been a lot more testing going on, fixing up bits and pieces here and there, expanding greatly on some ideas, narrowing the scope on others. it's looking good, and for the first time, the project feels like it's really starting to converge, loose ends finding places to go, themes becoming clearer, etc.

the main section of the game is approachign "done"-ness. stuff has felt pretty good. lots of time this month has been spent overhauling parts that felt "weird" or "sticky," basically anything that felt like unintended texture as the game progressed. this can be anything from redoing visuals, textures, map geometry, etc to reworking major design elements. there've been easily over a hundred changes so far this last month.

the big one right now is that the last map in the main set - being one that i started early on and being so big that it never got a true second pass - needs its second pass. so i've started that, essentially amputating a huge chunk of it so it can be redone with my current eye for detail and design - both aesthetically and from a gameplay perspective.

after that, it's mostly down to testing testing testing and endgame endgame endgame. i'm sure it seems like i've been at the "endgame" state for a while, but it's more that i've been fixing so many issues and dialing it in. i'm not looking for perfection by a longshot, but i am looking for something that looks/plays/sounds/feels like i intend it to.

i've attached another couple tunes for the project (as a single file). enjoy, if you would like! or don't, if you would like to keep yourself in the dark.

take care.

end-of-june update

hey all; thanks for checking out me and rowan's project. we're stoked that folks seem to be enjoying it so much. today i put up the album as individual tracks on youtube, which was the last thing in the list of things-to-do regarding the album.

ordinarily, i would take a couple days to refresh at this point and then get back to other projects, but my mom entered hospice care and i have a lot of emotional processing to do regarding that and other family matters. despite not being too close with my family, the grief has been legitimately debilitating mentally and physically, affecting my ability to do even basic tasks some days without getting winded and needing to lay down. grief and autistic overstim/shutdowns are an extremely potent cocktail.

my hope is to continue to work on things. it's also clear to me, however, that there's no way i can feasibly push myself to exercise authorship while also looking after myself. i thankfully have somebody helping with that for a little bit, and i am hoping that gets me into a position of feeling a bit more able.

i hope to open new, less restrictive doors for myself through whatever processes this year presents to me.

thank you for the support, i wish to bring you more soon.

KIDNAMEDFINGER (KNF) ABLUM OUT NOW

PLEASE ENJOY IT COMPLETELY !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
https://allsop-lancaster.com/knf/
https://allsop-lancaster.com/knf/
https://allsop-lancaster.com/knf/
https://allsop-lancaster.com/knf/
https://allsop-lancaster.com/knf/
https://allsop-lancaster.com/knf/
https://allsop-lancaster.com/knf/

knf album debut stream - june 21 @ 7pm EST

JUNE 21, 2025 at 7:00PM EST @ https://www.twitch.tv/msx2plus

22 tracks and nearly an hour of insane hardcore, breakcore, experimental, noise, and everything in between

THE SOUND OF THE SUMMER!!!!!!

album will be available for free download after the stream

myself and rowan will be around for a bit post-album-listen to chat about it and whatever else!

see you there!!!

prioritizing family health

hey all; my mom was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and i'll be stepping away from responsibilities here for a little bit. i'd still like to do what i can with my work and all that for the joy it brings me, but i'm going to be a little occupied for a while. cheers.

eos + collab album updates

hello kind folks!

this month i have managed to do a bunch of unplanned work on eos, which has included major retooling of parts of earlier maps that i felt didn't make any sense as a standalone "not-DOOM" game. i am consistently pushing for this project to be the best it can in all ways, and sometimes that means scrapping and rebuilding pieces of it that don't line up with what the project has become. i hope you can all continue to look forwards to it.

this month has also seen me and rowan's collaborative record near completion. we're more or less in the mastering-and-visuals stage at this point, *and will have it to you some time in JUNE!* here is the tracklist as it currently stands (SUBJECT TO CHANGE)

- intro
- xenon
- thelight
- airpunchr
- roadtointersting
- concrete
- drumtrack
- partypeople
- 88‹æ‚ÌÉö’·”»ŽqŽ
- urbraininajarintheyear0x833
- romflasher
- dafuckindungeon
- vvronger
- wuzuphello
- peatmoss
- 53divinitymeltingpool
- ixnayontheaijoubuday
- omelette
- lalala
- 4321
- ballista
- postpyrebillowing

the album is just under an hour as it stands, and we are stoked to get it released. it will be available as a direct download only from a dedicated website for free - no bandcamp release, no itch release, etc! the album will also go up on youtube.

i'll be unavailable for the next few days completely, but upon return i'll be back to finalizing the record and working on eos as always.

thanks for the ongoing support in an uncertain world, it means very much to me.

knf - 4321

a fresh solo track of mine from me and rowan's collaborative project. as with just about everything of mine on the project, it comes via the old tecra laptop. in the middle of working on this, the file system corrupted itself in real time in front of my eyes (audio stuttering, drive light blinking rapidly, sudden blue screen, reboot, "no OS"), so i had to rebuild the allocation table to recover the project file then re-image the drive LOL; i'm very glad it survived

blog post: adderall / parallelization

ADHD musings and whatnot...

sorry for the radio silence - wound up putting in a bunch of work on eos this past month, as well as tons of time into me and rowan's collaborative music project, which is now somehow over 20 tracks long.

more news soon, take care and thank you <3

blog post: trying to find the spark again

knf - xenon

a track from me and rowan's collaborative project (the loud thing i posted previews of a little while ago), ENJOY. (rowan also provided the lettering for the cover art)

blog post: an extreme act of sobriety

blog post: return to the source

musings on my computing history and rediscovering the joy of computing

some little previews (loud)

been taking a little break from eos work to make a bunch of insanely noisy music on my windows 98 laptop, here are some clips. no projection on when this bunch of stuff will be done, but i thought i would share what i've been up to just a little. if you've popped by my streams lately i usually end up doing some kind of dumb music on that machine, so some of these might be familiar from there

the monthly update

meant to post this a few days ago but realized i had only drafted it but not clicked the post button. incredible stuff. here's the post:

been back to work (after some holiday time off) as of a couple weeks ago, restructuring some parts of eos after playtesting revealed some major issues in the flow of the project. it'll be a bunch more work, but as always, i think it'll be worthwhile. once all of that is in place and the bulk of the game is testable, i can finally move onto the End of the project with all the energy it requires, but jumping between that and fixing other things would be a bit chaotic, so i'm approaching it in a way that makes sense for me.

i have a couple other projects on the backburner (some fun music stuff, some fun plugin stuff), but i've mostly been occupied this week with restructuring my studio room a bit - it hasn't seen a "full" reorganize really since i moved in a couple years ago, so there's a lot to go through, find homes for, etc.

more news soon, stay tuned.

some finalized and new eos tunes

a couple finalized eos joints for yall along with a couple new ones. the first two were previously heard in the last soundtrack preview release, but have been touched up quite a bit (imo). the soundtrack is 48 tracks at this point (including 4 unused tracks) and well over 2 hours. \o/

for shits n giggles, here are the actual game format filesizes:
- the great scattering: 140kb
- her warm words in winter: 181kb
- nightshade: 51kb
- bad sea breeze: 132kb
- the whole soundtrack is currently 4mb

humorously, a bunch of other eos work happened this month - like, a catastrophically large amount! but it was all work without goals, seeking fun and rewarding activities instead of pushing up against something i didn't want to push up against. things like:

- player code refactored / rewritten
- dash code refactored / rewritten
- player weapon code refactored / rewritten
- all enemy code refactored / rewritten
- weapons use fewer alert calls, resulting in fewer iterations through sector-dense areas
- dynamic difficulty rank system added
- added enemy randomizer options
- added weapon randomizer option
- optimized crows, sheep, rabbits
- unlockable alternate music for several stages (yes, this game has nearly 3 soundtracks now...)
- added enemy glossary
- you can now customize your room after completing the game
- skate sounds now mix with different audio per-surface
- many sector trees replaced with 3d models of sector trees
- and so much more that i can't say anything about

this is probably going to be the last you'll hear from me for a little bit, so... hyvää joulua ja onnellista uutta vuotta.

end of starchild: the final 2024 update

it is unforunately true: there's no way i'm finishing eos by the end of the year. this is a project that has grown this year in unfathomable ways: i've made an almost entirely new set of sounds (over 600), done a ton of writing, have begun work in creating a huge set of new textures (mouse-painted by myself in photoshop), have greatly expanded the game's feature set on the accessibility front, have redesigned the entire enemy roster, have rewritten nearly every line of scripting for the project (i did this in the last month or so alone)... and so on. it is an enormous project despite its compact nature, and that's not even accounting for the ways in which friends are contributing to wrap this up.

this year, i got into a pretty intense cycle of overworking myself. i'm sure it seems like i'm doing "nothing" because i have nothing to show, but it's gamdev. it's thousands of assets, hundreds of test runs, iterations, etc. all of which i wish to continue to keep under wraps because this is such a special project to me. its secrets need to remain that way. but that's beyond the point. the point is that every time i say i'm dialing back work, i actually end up working more. it's incredibly weird how that happens. this ended up with my caffeine intake increasing greatly, which led to it being difficult to sleep at night, which led to a drink each night to wind down. as you might imagine, this compounded quickly, and i am currently in a position where i need to pump the breaks and turn the dial back on harmful habits that i developed so passively. i need to be ok with this not coming out by the end of the year, because it completely has the ability to hurt me in ways i don't yet understand. i need to dial back the pressure and intensity with which i'm working. i need to actually reconnect with myself and the people around me in a way that is not entrenched in work. i need to stop letting things happen and instead find a way back to doing them.

throughout december, i will be doing significantly less work on eos, and the work i do on it will be less goal-driven and more focused on what brings me joy. i will be doing less work in general in december. i am in desperate need of an actual, honest-to-god refresh and recharge. it is what i need for me, and it is what i need for what is at this point the single largest and most intensely personal project i have ever pursued.

i hope that you can find it in you to continue to support through this, but i completely understand if not. eos is going to be the first game i've truly finished in over a decade, and even if it is not for you, i hope there is something in it that you can appreciate.

thank you, i will talk to you all very soon.

eos work update + k2 modules

hey all,

i've been working hard on eos since the last major update. more graphics, more music, more sounds, more enemies, more textures, more code, more optimization, etc. as it stands, i need to lighten the load for a little while so i don't end up developing distaste towards the project, to keep my mental and physical health sustainable, etc. knowing me i'll probably end up doing some stuff anyways, but it's imperative that i take a week or two to step back and observe where things are, where they're going, and most importantly, recharge for what i hope is the final stretch. i will be doing everything i can while remaining in good health to get eos out by the end of the year.

in the mean time here are a handful of k2 modules (for playback in openmpt) - these are mostly simplified from the album versions and lack plugins, processing, and in some cases, entire channels. cheers.

between computers for a little bit

hey folks, just a quick work update: i'm kinda between computers at the moment and moving stuff to get situated with a new one. i'll probably be able to get back to work on current projects in earnest this week sometime, just have a ton of data to get situated, will likely have to set up some network storage, etc etc. thanks for your patience.

another "end of starchild" work update

hello all! dropping a quick work update here as this month is going to see me slightly more occupied with outside-of-work activities. i'll still be working, just likely not the 10ish hours a day on average i have been lately. more like the "normal" 7-8.

since the last update, there's been a ton of work done on end of starchild, though it is all very incremental. with every day, it drifts further and further from being a "doom mod" and closer to being its own weird mashup-thing, like most of my prior gamedev work. as a result, eos is now a standalone gzdoom project, which will not require doom to run. this will bypass a ton of issues in regards to gzdoom configuration and give me much more freedom moving forwards.

nearly every doom asset has been replaced, and the past month has seen an extraordinary amount of work done on that, as well as rewriting enemy routines, continuing to work on player weapons, and re-tuning level layouts to suit all of the New Stuff. along with that, there has been some away-from-the-computer planning work done on the final map along with several other things that need to actually... exist at all before the project can be called done. while most of the art is mashed up from here and there (though there is plenty new contributed from ohmiyoni and foxsnax), i'll be hiring on another artist for some additional assets as well.

the lead tester (rowan) has said that it "only gets better" with each thing i work on, and i hope that it will be worth the wait for you all as well! i have of course been continuing to work on the soundtrack, so even if you aren't super keen on the game, i hope the album that comes out with it (now clocking in at over two hours, and that's with only a couple tracks that loop, most of them are just long, multi-part ordeals).

thank you for the ongoing support, i will keep you all in the loop.

"end of starchild" dev update 20240731

perhaps the only dev update you'll get until this thing is done - which will be some time this year. plenty of incessant ramblings lay within.

thanks so much for the support, patience, love, and all that. i know this project is not everybody's thing, but i think there is an aspect to it - the world, the music, the aesthetic, the energy - that each person that is into what i do can enjoy.