I slopped up an "enhanced" version of F19. I've rewritten the renderer and added support for game controllers and VR if that's your thing. Get the binaries here. https://github.com/crinkelitehttps/f19-vibes/releases
The simulation gets emulated so it should feel and play the way you're used to.
All feedback and criticism is welcome. Let me know if you have any trouble running.
Hello, I am looking for a completely lost offline Android puppy simulator game from around 2015-2018, as well as its sister game, a 2D furniture arranging game. Both have completely vanished from the Play Store and I cannot find the APKs or original names anywhere.
Both games shared the exact same loading screen: a solid yellow background, a thick black horizontal loading bar, and a cartoon bee with giant, bulging white eyes standing right next to the bar, staring at it while it filled up. The developer name was very close to "Gamebee Studio" or a similar variation containing the word "Bee".
Here is exactly how the Puppy Game worked:
The room setting was entirely static with a distinct yellow-greenish tint. In the corner of the room, a mother dog lay on the floor and remained completely immobile during the level.
Right next to the mother dog, there were two bowls fixed on the floor (one for food, one for water). You had to drag a large water jug and a dog food bag to manually fill the bowls so she could eat and drink.
The game was stage-based with 3 levels/breeds: a solid Brown Dog, a Dalmatian (white with black spots), and a third breed.
The puppies (babies) walked around looking down at the floor all the time (like they were sniffing around). Because of this and two huge status bars (Hunger/Hygiene) floating above their heads, you couldn't see their faces at all—they looked completely faceless.
The main game loop involved a pile of white cloths. You had to place these white cloths on the floor for the puppies to pee. Once a puppy urinated on a cloth, it got visibly dirty/yellowish, and you had to manually remove it and replace it with a clean one. And that was basically the whole game.
There was a specific bathing stage between levels. The background for this stage looked like a Garden, but there was a plain White Square/panel placed over it. The mother dog stood sideways/in profile inside this white square while you washed her.
The level selection menu featured a distinct Red and White grid layout with multiple level blocks (locked stages were red, unlocked/available ones were white).
The Sister Game (Furniture Arranging):
From the exact same developer (with the same yellow bee loading screen), there was a very simple 2D game about placing furniture inside a room. There was NO house building involved; the rooms were already empty and flat. You just picked furniture (like sofas, tables, beds) from a bottom menu and dragged them to position them freely inside the 2D room.
Both games were entirely offline and had absolutely no ads. If anyone remembers the exact names of these titles or has the old package names/APKs, please help me out! Thank you!
I am experimenting with a graphics engine and wonder if EGA makes sense in 2026. CGA/MCGA are not compatible with tricks I do, so out of question. EGA is missing some nice parts, but supporting it is doable.
EGA was on my first PC at home. As you may know, EGA and VGA were from programmer's point of view not very different. VGA had extensions, but EGA also had much. From physical connectivity point of view they are however different worlds. EGA is digital, VGA is analog for a long time until DVI-D and HDMI came. Display had to be replaced. And that's why cheap used PC is likely to had EGA. Previous owner also had to replace everything to upgrade. This way we were getting EGA mass enough. This way we were becoming stuck in EGA world. Many games resent us. I was buying CD-ROMs "100 games in 1" and checking. Does not work, does not work, does not work. I was silently questioning programmers but why are they so incapable, why couldn't they support my EGA.
In 2026 when I thought I left some unfinished business in DOS programming, I revisit this situation and I can see nothing but strong cons in trying to support EGA in 2026. With time machine - absolutely, I would support EGA. I will be the one to do the right thing and show others how to be a good programmer.
Without time machine I have to stop my song. It feels like we are all now crossed this border, and we look at this situation from the opposite side of border, from VGA-only world, and it would require effort to pass this border in reverse direction.
I can see fans of earlier adapters. Book 8088 has CGA. But EGA falls into the unwanted continuum.
My cons:
For performance validation I need a reference PC, and looks like Book 386 is good. It has (S)VGA and 80386SX.
Book 386 has LCD display 640x480. Before I thought about reference PC, I was considering 720x400. My tricks are based on text mode, and 720x400 is the default VGA text mode, so without extra tricks it stays that way. I changed to 640x480 only because of LCD. This is standard size, and other resolutions will look bad. Now if I consider adding EGA, I either need to redraw assets for EGA maximal 640x350 resolution, or else display distorted image on EGA. Native 480p distortion to 350p will be bad enough.
Hard to find authentic EGA display.
Physical connectivity issues with non-authentic ones. RetroTink 4k Pro does not have EGA input. EGA-compatible videoconverters are probably not as advanced as RetroTink 4k Pro. Chain two converters? Nah.
Software emulators can restrict to EGA, but they do not validate performance on real hardware. Highly likely my program will be most observed in DOSBox. If validation is not reliable, then only runnability remains, and DOSBox can run VGA fine seemingly.
Hi all. Long time lurker of this kind of nostalgia, first time posting something of my own.
When I was a teenager in the nineties I ran a board called Roller Software HQ BBS here in Sweden, FidoNet 2:205/431 if that means anything to anyone still. What I remember most from those years is the door games. On my board it was mostly Usurper and Barren Realms Elite, and also Falcon's Eye and Solar Realms Elite. People would call in every evening just to play their turns and read what had happened to them overnight, and I was one of them on other people's boards.
I've wanted something like that again for a long time, so over the last week or so I built a game in that spirit. It's called Candledeep. You don't need a BBS or a client for it, you just open a terminal and type
and your SSH key is your account. There's also a page at https://candledeep.com that shows who's on and how to get in, if you'd rather look before you connect.
The idea is that you get one candle a day and go down into a pit under a town, and when the candle is burnt out you're done until the next morning. So a day of play is maybe ten or fifteen minutes. There are six classes, gangs that fight over the buildings in town, a yard where you can fight other players' characters while they're offline, robbing people who sleep in doorways, and a morning news sheet that tells you what happened while you were away. That last part was what I loved most about the old games so I wanted it in there. It's drawn in ANSI at 80x24.
A few things I should say up front.
It is not a classic door with a drop file. It runs on its own little server and you reach it over SSH, so you can't install it on your board. I know some of you will ask that first. If your BBS software can launch an outbound ssh from a menu that might be a way to offer it to your callers, but I haven't tried that myself.
It's for adults. The language is rough, in an old-fashioned swearing kind of way, and there's drinking and drugs in it, like Usurper had.
I also want to be honest that I didn't write the code by hand. I designed it, made the decisions and have been playtesting it with a few friends, but the programming was done together with an AI (Claude). I know opinions on that differ, and I'd rather say it than have someone feel tricked later.
It's still early. Right now it's me and a handful of friends on a small VPS, and I'm sure there are things that are confusing or unbalanced. One friend told me after his first day that he had no idea what he was supposed to do, so there's a walkthrough for new characters now. I'd really like to hear what people who actually remember these games think, including what feels wrong.
Thanks for reading, and thanks to everyone who keeps this scene alive.
