Silverwing's Lair

Princess Asurja's Morning 2.0

2026-05-08T00:00:00+00:00

Hello everyone!

For a long time we were thinking about giving my older games a proper treatment.

Princess Asurja's Morning was an experiment and, judging by player reaction, a successful one, so we've decided to start with it.

The update contains:

Cover image
Decorations and theme
Added music
English translation
Repackaged installers for all currently supported platforms

Download the game here.

Thank you for your attention! Until we meet again!

As always we are waiting for your feedback by mail

Ping - 2026.14 - One Final Ping, and It's a Good Thing

2026-03-30T00:00:00+00:00

Hello everyone!

As usual, time has come for us to share the updates. Despite a lot of work being done on Don't Follow the Butterfly, an ongoing work on Princess Asurja's Morning re-release, and good progress on Dreams of Space (I have not even announced this one, and maybe shouldn't have done it now), there is very little to report.

The reason for that is very simple -- most of the work happening now is purely technical, and for the foreseeable future -- it will be.

Don't Follow the Butterfly

The game is fully completable, but is far from completion. There is a huge list of issues ranging from small technical issues like invalid area transitions to entirely skipped portions of lore and story.

We have finally implemented a well-working alchemy system that I really like (we'll record a demo some time in April), but we'll need to add actual substance to it -- while we planned it, currently we have only a few usages for it.

Most of the work in front of us is either purely technical and there is very little to demo or lore-related and sharing it would be a spoiler.

Bringing the game together took a lot more time than expected, mostly because I was resolving the critical issues encountered at the same time, and there were quite some: originally I implemented alchemy in a very simplistic way, as a typical inventory puzzle, however this led to a few issues between chapters, for example allowing player to stockpile resources they were not expected, a lot of effort was put into implementing a ritual room in one of the chapters. Telling more would be a spoiler, but it's pretty central to the chapter, so has to work properly.

Princess Asurja's Morning

Yes, we're going to re-release it. Translated to English, with cover art and a custom theme.

I'm not sure why I only thought of this now, since it's a neat little game

Awakening

Yes, we're going to re-release it. Translated to English, with cover art, a custom theme and tolerable graphics (only going to replace what's in the game, not adding anything).

This was planned, postponed, cancelled and re-planned a thousand times. Now that we've finally announced that we're going to work on a remake, it's also time to give the original the care it deserves, to keep it available as a historical reference.

Dreams of Space

I'm still pretty hesitant to sharing this, but yes, I'm working on a musical piece that I intend to release either closer to the end of the year or the next year.

There's not really much to say, except...

Among the shadows I am drifting,
A remnant of the time long past
An empty whisper of the ages fading,
A ghost, a vision slowly crumbling to gray dust

End of Pings

Pings were intended as a form of regular update, showing that we're still here and still active. And they, kinda, serve the purpose. But, on the other hand I don't think there is any value in monthly posts on how we have done nothing again. Essentially it's just taking our time to write them and yours to read them. At the same time, in the nearest time we have quite some releases planned.

So, instead of spamming the feed with useless repetitive Pings, we are going to:

Add a projects page to list all our active and planned projects
Write meaningful posts -- demos, articles, archive additions. I'm thinking about writing some opinionated articles on various gaming and tech related topics, but I'm not sure if I'm going to do this or not
A yearly report will still happen, as a summary and for the announcement of changes

Thank you for your attention! Until we meet again!

As always we are waiting for your feedback by mail

A Dragon and the Tower - Wallpapers by Sabra Naikomy

2026-03-03T00:00:00+00:00

Sabra Naikomy has prepared some amazing wallpapers based on our game, A Dragon and the Tower.

You can download the game here. You will also find links to the same wallpapers in zipped format on the game's page.

As usual, waiting for your feedback: inbox@silverwing.one.

Ping - 2026.03 - Vacation's End

2026-01-18T00:00:00+00:00

Hello everyone!

My New Year vacation is nearly over. It's time to get back to main work and streams, as well as summarise what was done in two weeks of (nearly) unending coding.

Snail

You've seen it. I've tested what I could and decided to keep using Lua: the original article

Don't Follow the Butterfly

All chapters and locations are implemented to some extent:

Prologue: gameplay is nearly done. We need to clean up the texts and add sound effects. We don't expect significant gameplay changes here.
Chapter 1 (This is the chapter from the old demo version): it was poorly ported to INSTEAD a very long time ago by me. During the vacation I ensured it being playable and interacting with other parts of the game. Most of the work left here is adapting the gameplay and correcting texts to resolve discrepancies with the new game.
Interlude: gameplay is mostly ready, but the texts will need a lot of work. And of course sound.
Chapter 2, Chapter 3 and Epilogue: locations and walkthrough are implemented. There is a lot of work here in nearly every aspect.

A nice little touch: we have finally implemented quest log and notes system.

While the project is still very far from completion, it starts to take shape.

I could and should have done more during the vacation. A lot of time was spent on fixing already known gameplay issues and improving the code quality, as well as implementation of some particularly hard parts. I'm really happy that we can finally play-test the game, this will make further work a lot easier.

Thank you for your attention! Until we meet again!

Update: Runtime Choice

2026-01-05T00:00:00+00:00

As promised, I tried to experiment with various runtimes for our new engine. The archive contains:

A source code for implementation of a pathfinding algorithm in C, Lua and Pawn
A compiled amx executable from Pawn code (32-bit cell size)
A compiled Windows executable from C code (Mingw-64-10.0.0 with GCC 12, custom CRT and executable built for i486 cpu)
A compiled amx, lua 5.4 and lua 5.5 runtimes (Mingw-64-10.0.0 with GCC 12, custom CRT and executables built for i486 cpu)

WASM

Existing runtimes are too complex and either are written in not portable languages, or require modifications for portability (too strictly tied to OS versions). From actively supported and seemingly matching my requirements I found only two implementations:

WASM3 does not work on Windows XP or lower due to using some new api functions
I was unable to compile WAMR for Windows from GNU/Linux, so was unable to test

Compiling with existing tools is not possible on most platforms -- you'll have to run a fairly recent version of Windows or GNU/Linux to do this, limiting game development options severely.

Spending more time on resolving these issues is not feasible since there are too many unknowns + overall complexity of the platform may be an issue with porting.

Pawn

Compiling and making work required some effort(certain things are platform-dependent by default, but can be changed by compiler options; We are optimising for 32-bit systems, so we are using 32 bit cell size), however the runtime is lean and runs without any issues on Windows 95 out of the box (there is even 16 bit Windows support)
Has native support for fixed-point arithmetics. This is not highly critical, as it can be implemented in Lua pretty easily
Overall the language is pretty minimalistic
- String handling is done C way which is... problematic for writing games in the language. There are literally no built-in ways of complex string processing
- Only fixed (at compile time) size arrays -- this is critical to using Pawn in our project. This seemingly can be implemented in amx assembly
- No OOP -- developing a full-fledged game like that would be a pain.

Performance

I got these results on 86Box (5.3, build 8253 old dynarec; Windows 95 OEM, Pentium 133, ASUS P/I-P55TP4XE more details (PNG)). All times in seconds:

C: 23.5
Pawn: 694.3
Lua 5.4: 405.1
Lua 5.5: 401.9

And these on real hardware (Windows 98 SE; Pentium MMX 233, EPoX EP-MVP3G2, 256 MB RAM). All times in seconds:

C: 36.0
Pawn: 482.5
Lua 5.4: 270.8
Lua 5.5: 258.4

C is only present here for reference as "we can't be faster than this" (except by optimising). And Lua is a clear winner, so it stays as our choice. During the development of the engine we'll continue to check newer Lua versions and update to them if they yield any benefit.

I will update the original article with this information.

Thank you for reading, as always I'm waiting for your feedback on email. Until we meet again!

Ping - 2025.52 - Happy New Year! (Again already?)

2025-12-23T00:00:00+00:00

Hello and Happy New Year and Merry Christmas to everyone!

A Dragon and the Tower

A successful 1.1 release with Esperanto translation and Windows 95, 98, ME and 2000 support.

We have also opened all the scripts we used for packaging A Dragon and the Tower.

I would really want to extend INSTEAD-9x to more platforms. There's HX-DOS that can be used to run SDL apps on DOS. SDL 1.2 is available on ton of other platforms (what about bringing back Symbian, Haiku support, introducing AmigaOS support, maybe more). We are pretty limited by 640x480 resolution requirement, and I'm not sure what to do about that without butchering the graphics.

Don't Follow the Butterfly

Approximately 2/3 of the game's plot are implemented in engine. It doesn't mean that the game is 2/3 ready though. It's closer to 20-30%, since plot is only the foundation. We'll need to make the UI, polish the gameplay and flesh out the texts. We need music and sound (the sounds we'll be taking from available sources, but for the music we'll have to do it ourselves or find a real composer). This game will be much larger than A Dragon and the Tower, despite also being set in a quite constrained environment.

2026: This is our primary project for the year, and we intend to push it as far as we can.

This project is led by Sabra Naikomy and my role is purely implementing the stuff and, surprisingly, planning. As usual, it's going quite a lot slower than we originally anticipated. We don't even have the whole plot thought out, not even implemented. Planning a side-project is exceptionally hard, since nearly everything else has higher priority (work, daily routine, small errands and so on).

Snail

The beginning is set. The first published article was a result of long prototyping, trial and error. There are still things to research, but mainly the goals are known and we can proceed with making the Engine.

2026: We are going to make Snail into a foundation for our next games by defining the API, preparing the necessary libraries, and building the tools.

The idea of trying alternative runtimes is quite fresh. Initially, I was fully set on using Lua mainly for the reason "INSTEAD uses it". However making "my own INSTEAD" would be a fatal mistake. Although I need some features from INSTEAD, Snail needs to be designed for a completely different type of games, and thus has pretty different requirements. Not even speaking that INSTEAD never targeted the machines I'm going to target.

Awakening

This game was undeservedly (IMO) stuck in half-released state. I have had a lot of ideas of improving it, yet somehow never getting to them. I am also quite unhappy with the name, especially with ideas for a remake and a prequel story.

2026: Finalise the game, translate it to English, repackage it as version 1.0. Start the work on future remake.

The first pancake is always lumpy, I guess. This was my first "finished" project and I made a thousand of mistakes during it's development. However it's an important piece of my past, and nevertheless a curious game to be played. In the remake I would like to redo almost everything: the Na'vji'a'rr language, the puzzles, the gameplay, extend the plot and more. Essentially this will be a completely different game. That's why I think it important to preserve the original as is, translate it and make accessible to players as the origin of the story. I would also be happy to translate and repackage Princess Asurja's Morning, but it's too tiny to warrant a separate header.

Thank you for your attention! Until we meet again!

So We Want to Write a Game Engine - Part 1 - Setting Expectations

2025-12-09T00:00:00+00:00

As for any big project, the first thing to do when writing a game engine is to set the requirements. This will define the general direction of work and will guide all further decisions.

Right from the start we define compatibility and portability as the highest priorities for our project.

This also leads to an important decision: very strict limitations on data formats. While seemingly unfriendly, limiting support to a small number of the free and open formats with good cross-platform support (and some extra sane limitations) allows to ensure proper handling on all supported platforms.

Architecture

High-level architecture of our engine can be represented like this:

Let's dive deeper.

Graphics

The engine is made for 2D sprite-based games. So no per-pixel painting, no vector operations, no shading, no 3D transformations. Just painting bitmaps on the screen. This is already enough to make a huge variety of games, and most importantly -- this is enough to make (most of) the games we want to make.

Option: it may be cool to support arbitrary transformations on the sprites using matrices, but since this is not needed for our first game, I most likely will not implement it in the first version.

For our games we also need support for rich text. At the very least we need to be able to mix font families, sizes, weights and decorations.

The engine is going to handle anything painted on the screen as a layer. For initial release I plan these types of layers:

Sprite -- a simple or animated sprite painted on the screen;
Container -- a layer containing other layers; it's intended to be a convenient way for clipping and grouping layers and can be useful, for example in creating a GUI;
Text -- a layer containing text; it will natively support everything necessary for rich text handling: formatting, wrapping, scrolling and clipping;

This approach will allow optimising rendering per layer type and renderer used. For the initial version I am also considering a special Tile layer. On one hand it will simplify making tile based games (including our games), but on the other it will make the engine more complex (i.e. harder to port).

Since our games will mostly be pixel-art, we will need some kind of scaling. Using layers will allow doing this transparently. Layers can be scaled independently, depending on their type.

I will likely hard limit resolution to something very large just to be safe. Minimum supported resolution will be 320x200.

For maximising compatibility, we are going to support both paletted and high/true color modes. We will allow using both color-key transparency (for all modes) and alpha transparency (for high/true color).

As I explained above, we are going to strictly limit the supported file formats. For graphical assets these will be PCX (compressed and uncompressed) and PNG (compressed) files. For our games we will likely use PNG in most cases, however uncompressed PCX will load noticeably faster on low-end computers.

Sound

With only 2D games in mind, we don't really need complex audio. No matter how cool it would be to support all kinds of advanced stuff like 3D positioning and environmental effects, at the first stage we can restrict ourselves to only support plain old mono or stereo samples and music.

Once again portability defines the need to limit file formats to the following:

uncompressed PCM audio with 8 or 16-bit depth and 22050 or 44100Hz sampling frequency; container format is Wav only;
compressed Vorbis audio with 8 or 16-bit depth and 22050 or 44100Hz sampling frequency; container format is Ogg only;
For music we are also considering MIDI and tracker formats.

Uncompressed formats are a lot less CPU demanding, so can be used on slower machines; lower sound quality allows saving disk space and also reduces transcoding overhead on slower machines.

Input

This is the point where we cannot really afford any compromises. We have to support all mainstream types of input methods: keyboard, mouse and game controllers. Since input behaviour is highly game specific, we are not going to force any kind of input mapping on the engine level. Instead we are going to provide an optional and configurable library for this purpose. Obviously, we are going to optimise this library for our use-cases first of all.

Data

Usually game engines allow virtual file system approaches to allow seamlessly retrieving files from resource archives as well as local file system. This approach works well, but has an important caveat that file paths and file systems are in general not portable: some file systems are case-sensitive and some are not; file systems have different limits on length of the file name, number of files in the folder, allowed characters and so on. All of this not only forces the developer to constantly keep in mind the limitations of each of the supported systems, but also hinders porting to new systems (since their limitations may not be met by older games). More than that, it makes it extremely easy to make a game that only works in operating systems compatible with the one used by the developer.

It is also important to note difference between game resources, which should be read-only and user data which should be read/write. In general, writing files should be only possible within a specific "saved games" directory, but sometimes it is needed to make a file in an arbitrary place (for example if we are working with a map editor).

To resolve this I will:

find or implement an archive format, suitable for both reading and writing data (alternatively, I consider using SQLite database for saving games. The downside of this is requiring understanding of SQL language for handling saved games and configuration, as well as an extra dependency);
implement an extra API that will allow picking files from host file system. Obviously this will require some platform dependent UI, but most likely this will be necessary;
implement a debug mode that will allow loading files directly from the host file system (this is necessary to avoid repacking step after every change).

Runtime

To make the game truly platform-independent it needs to be run within some kind of virtual machine. It can be an interpreted language, a byte-code VM or straight-away an emulator of a real CPU.

I am heavily leaning towards Lua for this due to it's high portability and decent performance. Most of the engine's prototypes also use Lua. However I would like to at least mention some alternatives I am considering:

Lua -- a big advantage will be runtime's native compatibility with INSTEAD, which will simplify porting of my older games;
WASM -- a huge issue with it is a lot of different implementations and inconsistent tooling, as well as a compilation step required. Only worth it if performance is at least twice as good as Lua's;
Pawn -- I know nothing about this language, except that it's compiled and it's designed for embedded systems. Once again, only worth it if performance is at least twice as good as Lua's.

Runtime choice is crucial since we will not be able to ever switch it. This means that I have to carefully consider upsides and downsides of each variant.

Update:

We are going to use Lua due to it being reasonably performant, portable literally anywhere (C89 or C99 is the only requirement) and pretty convenient to use. More details here.

Target Systems

With the above said, we can set expectations for platform support. Realistically, using Lua as a runtime [1] will limit us to reasonably fast 32-bit machines. Of course a lot depends on the game itself. Ogg Vorbis music playback requires approximately Pentium MMX. High color graphics without acceleration is somewhere nearby as well (as a reference, A Dragon and the Tower with INSTEAD-9x can be checked).

For the initial release I plan to support:

Windows 95-ME (build for 486 CPU with FPU)
Windows 2000-11 (x86 builds only, running on x86 and x86_64 CPUs)
GNU/Linux (Appimage builds for i686 and amd64, anything else will need to be built on-premise)

We are also considering (but probably at later points):

Windows NT < 5.0 (we are not going to restrict the version, but we may use some APIs requiring a more recent OS)
DOS (using HX-DOS; may just work right away, but I'm not sure if I have time to test everything properly for the first release)
OS/2
Atari TOS / MiNT (ARAnyM)
AmigaOS (68K with RTG and PowerPC; will require quite fast machine) and AROS (x86-only)
MacOS <= 9 (68K)

Obviously for some of the machines only enhanced variants or emulators will be suitable.

Summary

To summarise, this is what we have:

I'm writing a game engine designed for 2D graphics with layer-based rendering
- a fully software renderer is required for maximum compatibility;
- an accelerated renderer is required (this will likely be OpenGL based, however I may also implement some platform specific renderers, for example DirectDraw on Windows);
- I will start with SDL 1.2 for it's wide platform support and once I implement what we need, I may add SDL 2 support if needed (it has some nice advantages, but has very limited platform support and also somewhat more resource intensive than 1.2);
For audio I will use SDLMixer with the necessary limitations imposed
- for MIDI I may include some software synth when applicable, but I still need to find one; this will also require us to provide some bank, so I need to find something suitably licensed and sounding well;
I will either find or implement an archive format that will be used for game data; it may also be used for user data or I will integrate SQLite for this purpose;
(Updated) As a runtime we are going to use Lua, version of the language will be locked at the release of the engine;
For API a few things are important:
- anything unsupported should be explicitly forbidden [2];
- graphics API must obey the game's expectations (with reasonable tolerance) or explicitly fail;
- audio API must silently ignore errors and behave as if everything is ok, even if audio cannot be played [3];
- audio API must provide a list of supported audio formats, so that game can react if audio plays a significant part of gameplay;
- input API must provide at least one of the supported input methods; the engine startup must fail in case of no supported input available;
  - I'll likely make a library to translate between input methods nicely; we are not going to force this in any way on the engine level, since handling of input is an important part of the game's UX;
- the engine should not provide any UI by itself, however a way is needed to transparently present platform-specific settings;
Once the engine reaches release state, implementation becomes the source of truth, and instead of correcting the behaviour of the engine, we will correct the specification instead [4];

Further Steps

Currently I only have plans, a draft of the specifications and a prototype implementation using SDL and Lua.

As a next step I'm going to (evaluate alternative runtimes and -- done) decide on storage API. After that we should be able to define the API specification and implement it enough to start working on a game.

We are going to open the source code as soon as we get the implementation to the Alpha stage, which is:

API specification defines all necessary functionality;
API is implemented according to the specification;
we have one of the renderers (likely the software one) fully functional, however it does not have to be optimal;
we will likely only support GNU/Linux and SDL 1.2 at this stage;
we have some parts of our next game implemented in engine (tooling, gameplay mechanics, etc.);

Thank you for reading, as always I'm waiting for your feedback on email. Until we meet again!

[1]	Assuming we use Lua, I have made a number of tests regarding Lua performance, and I'm not switching to anything slower.

[2]	This is required to prevent reliance on "undocumented behaviour".

[3]	Despite this contradicting the "explicitly fail" rule, in this case it's justified by requirement of portability and compatibility -- in most games audio is a nice to have rather than a hard requirement, so it's better to treat is as an option.

[4]	This decision is based on compatibility requirement; any games written with certain behaviour in mind will expect this behaviour, so we should not really change it; of course this does not correspond to obvious implementation errors (crashes, invalid rendering and so on).

Building SDL-INSTEAD for Windows 95 and Pentium CPU

2025-07-06T12:00:00+00:00

There are a number of difficulties with this:

VC Runtime 8.0 used in existing builds of some dependencies is not compatible with Windows 95(requires Windows 98 at least).
Most of the components are built with i686 instruction set, which is only available starting with Pentium Pro.

This article may be updated later if I find ways to simplify/improve certain steps or for newer mingw-w64 versions. Please email me if you find any errors or have any suggestions.

1. Prepare standard library

As of mingw-w64 10.0 on Debian 12, CRT is built with i686 architecture. This means that we need a custom one. I put the information about that into a separate article: Using mingw-w64 with Custom CRT.

I will be using crt_prefix in this article as a substitute to your CRT installation prefix.

2. Compile dependencies

I only list dependencies that need to be rebuilt. You can download all the libraries from INSTEAD-9x package here: Download INSTEAD-9x.

You'll need these environment variables for all of below:

export CC="i686-w64-mingw32-gcc -static-libgcc"
export CXX="i686-w64-mingw32-g++ -static-libgcc"
export CFLAGS="-O2 -march=i486 -Bcrt_prefix/lib"
export CPPFLAGS="-O2 -march=i486 -Bcrt_prefix/lib"
export CXXFLAGS="${CPPFLAGS} -static-libstdc++"

If you omit -static-libgcc or -static-libstdc++ parameter, the build will require extra dlls to work.

2.1. SDL

You will need SDL 1.2.15. Download SDL-1.2.15.

Configure and make:

./configure --build=amd64-linux\
    --host=i686-w64-mingw32\
    --prefix=sdl_prefix
make
make install

Setting sdl_prefix and make install steps are required for building SDL_* libraries.

2.2. iconv

I used libiconv-1.18 with these commands:

./configure --host=i686-w64-mingw32\
    --prefix=iconv_prefix
make
make install

2.3. zlib

I used zlib 1.2.3. Should be possible to use the latest available version.

./configure --build=amd64-linux\
    --host=i686-w64-mingw32\
    --prefix=zlib_prefix
make

Library will be built in the same directory, and you can pass it to dependencies directly (Referenced as zlib_path further)

2.3. libpng

I used libpng 15. Should be possible to use the latest available version. This one requires some extra steps.

Copy scripts/makefile.linux to makefile.linux.

Edit the file. You'll need to set some variables to other values. Replace existing declarations for following variables with provided ones:

LIBSO=$(LIBNAME).dll
LIBSOMAJ=$(LIBNAME)-$(PNGMAJ).dll
OLDSO=libpng.dll
# These will be a bit lower in the file
AR_RC=i686-w64-mingw32-ar rc
CC=i686-w64-mingw32-gcc -static-libgcc
RANLIB=i686-w64-mingw32-ranlib
ZLIBLIB=zlib_path
ZLIBINC=zlib_path

Replace all occurences of -lz with -lzdll.
make the library.

Library will be built in the same directory, and you can pass it to dependencies directly (Referenced as png_path further).

2.4. freetype

I used freetype 2.6.5. You can safely use later versions, but 2.13.3 has issues with loading raster windows fonts, so I decided to use the version I know is working.

I decided to disable some of dependencies, since they are only needed for special cases.

./configure --build=amd64-linux\
    --host=i686-w64-mingw32 \
    --with-harfbuzz=no\
    --with-zlib=yes\
    --with-bzip2=no\
    --with-png=yes \
    --prefix=freetype_prefix \
    ZLIB_CFLAGS="-Izlib_path" \
    ZLIB_LIBS="-Lzlib_path -lzdll" \
    LIBPNG_CFLAGS="-Ipng_path" \
    LIBPNG_LIBS="-Lpng_path -lpng15-15"
make
make install

Don't forget to correct png library name if you have used a different version.

2.5. libjpeg

I used jpeg-8d.

./configure --host=i686-w64-mingw32\
    --prefix=libjpeg_prefix
make
make install

2.6. libtiff

I used tiff-4.7.0. Later versions should work as well.

./configure --host=i686-w64-mingw32\
    --prefix=libtiff_prefix
make
make install

2.7. libwebp

I used libwebp-1.5.0. Later versions should work as well.

Threading will have to be disabled, since it uses some modern APIs, not supported on classic Windows versions.

export CFLAGS="${CFLAGS} -Izlib_path"
export CXXFLAGS="${CFLAGS} -static-libstdc++"
export INCLUDE_PATH="zlib_path:$INCLUDE_PATH"
./configure --build=amd64-linux\
    --host=i686-w64-mingw32\
    --prefix=libwebp_prefix\
    --disable-threading
make

2.8. SDL_image

SDL_image-1.2.12 is used.

You'll need to specify all of the image format libraries, as well as zlib paths for SDL_image to build properly.

export CFLAGS="${CFLAGS} -Izlib_path"
export CPPFLAGS="-Ipng_path -Ilibjpeg_prefix/include -Ilibtiff_prefix/include -Ilibwebp_prefix/include -Izlib_path ${CLAGS}"
export CXXFLAGS="${CFLAGS} -static-libstdc++"
export INCLUDE_PATH="zlib_path:$INCLUDE_PATH"
export LDFLAGS="-Lpng_path -Llibjpeg_prefix/lib -Llibtiff_prefix/lib -Llibwebp_prefix/lib -Lzlib_path"
./configure --build=amd64-linux\
    --host=i686-w64-mingw32\
    --prefix=sdl_image_prefix\
    --with-sdl-prefix=sdl_prefix
make

2.9. SDL_ttf

SDL_ttf-2.0.11 is used.

You'll need to specify freetype, zlib and iconv2.

export CFLAGS="${CFLAGS} -Izlib_path"
export CPPFLAGS="-Iiconv_prefix/include -Isdl_prefix ${CLAGS}"
export CXXFLAGS="${CFLAGS} -static-libstdc++"
export INCLUDE_PATH="zlib_path:$INCLUDE_PATH"
export LDFLAGS="-Lsdl_prefix/lib -Liconv_prefix -liconv2 -with-freetype-prefix=freetype_prefix"
./configure --build=amd64-linux\
    --host=i686-w64-mingw32\
    --prefix=sdl_ttf_prefix\
    --with-sdl-prefix=sdl_prefix
make

2.10. Other libraries

I did not rebuild any of the audio libraries, since they seem to work fine. You should be able to recompile them in a similar way.

3. Compiling INSTEAD

There are no plans of merging SDL1 support into mainline INSTEAD. You can get the source code here: INSTEAD-9x Source Code.

Copy or symlink Rules.mingw.sdl1 to Rules.make
Build the executable by running CFLAGS="-O2 -Bcrt_prefix/lib -march=i486" make -f Makefile.mingw.sdl1 all. In CFLAGS you need to specify architecture and custom CRT if you need i486/Pentium support.

Using mingw-w64 with Custom CRT

2025-07-06T00:00:00+00:00

This article is based on mingw-w64 version 10, which is included with Debian Bookworm. It should be pretty straightforward to do the same thing with other mingw-w64 versions.

Why would you need this?

Compiling standard library for a different CPU may yield more compatibility.

In my case, I would like to support CPUs starting from i486, while Debian-provided crt is built with i686 instructions.

In this situation you do not need to rebuild the whole compiler, only crt (standard library).

Compiling CRT

Download the sources for your version of mingw-w64 and unpack them to a directory.

Before calling the configure script you need to set CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS to the cpu you need.

export CFLAGS="-march=i486 -O2"
export CXXFLAGS="-march=i486 -O2"
export CPPFLAGS="-march=i486 -O2"

Important note is that if you omit -O2 here, you're not getting optimised code.

Then you need to specify proper msvcrt, in my case -- msvcrt-os which corresponds to msvcrt.dll, available in Visual C Redistributable 4.0 - 6.0.

Mingw-w64 recommends using a separate folder for building, so I suggest doing the same -- just run configure from the build directory.

path-to-mingw-w64/mingw-w64-crt/configure\
    --host=i686-w64-mingw32\
    --target=i486-w64-mingw32\
    --with-default-msvcrt=msvcrt-os\
    --prefix=crt_prefix
make
make install

Take note that make install will copy your new crt into the prefix path you specify, so unless you want to mess up your OS you should specify a custom path.

Using the compiled CRT

To build something with your new crt instead of the system one you can pass it with a -B parameter in CFLAGS

export CFLAGS="-Bcrt_prefix/lib"

Take note that you need the actual directory with .a/.o files for the compiler to find them. Also note that if you specify incorrect path, the compiler will use the built-in CRT, without raising any error.

A Dragon and the Tower 1.1.1 Released

2025-06-09T00:00:00+00:00

This update fixes an issue non-critical for game completion. We recommend you to update

A Dragon and the Tower updated to version 1.1.1

Fixed issues with English version of the game

Please report any bugs and issues via email: inbox@silverwing.one.

You can download the game here …

A Dragon and the Tower 1.1.0 Released

2025-05-18T00:00:00+00:00

This is a performance update, you don't need to update unless you've encountered any issues

A Dragon and the Tower updated to version 1.1.0

Esperanto translation added (thanks to arbtttrn6)
Tiny Instead and Plainstead support merged into the main branch
Massive performance optimisations and simplified animations mode for slower computers
Windows 95, 98 and 2000 support (i486 supported, reasonable performance on Pentium 2 or faster CPUs)

Please report any bugs and issues via email: inbox@silverwing.one.

You can download the game here.

Ping - 2025.19 - Monthly Report of No Progress

2025-05-04T00:00:00+00:00

Seemingly every time after an active month there is a month of decline. Project status:

A Dragon and the Tower -- 1.1 is still being worked on; Expected updates:
- Lowered system requirements: Official support of Windows 95 or newer, Pentium 2 CPUs; Unofficially -- i486-compatible CPU is required; You'll need something fast enough to paint 640x480 in 32-bit color; There's no way around that; Further optimisations are not planned;
- Esperanto translation by arbtttrn6;
- Unification with plainstead version;
Don't Follow the Butterfly -- still struggling with prologue; No major news;
"The Engine" (will be named when there is some code) -- some tests were run; some expectations set; still a lot of preliminary work before writing any real code;
- Requirements are going to be higher than previously thought if you want steady 60 FPS in 32 bit color;
- Portability stays a priority, but we may include some optimised algorithms in C code to ensure high enough performance on target platforms;
- Need to evaluate capabilities of various versions of directdraw and opengl for rendering; as well as software rendering performance;
- SDl1-2 is the platform of choice for initial implementation; Highly optimised and very portable; See no reason in using SDL3 -- it's not bringing any advantages over SDL2 for newer platforms and brings requirements even higher;
- Considering alternatives to Lua as a runtime -- just checking if there's something as portable, yet faster (something with JIT or even AOT compilation would be nice, but most of such stuff is restricted to certain OSes and versions);
Other
- Apple 2 GS build complete -- All of the planned upgrades installed, having a neat retro-gaming machine. Can finally enjoy Nox Archaist on real hardware;
- Amiga 1200 -- A lot of pain with this one. Starting with machine not arriving in usable condition, continuing with me making a lot of mistakes during ordering upgrades and thus having now a semi-working and pretty uncomfortable to use machine;
- Gaming
  - Ultima 6 completed -- the game changed drastically when compared to U5. New engine opened new capabilities, but at the same time the game was simplified and streamlined. No more first-person dungeons; No more separate buttons for every action (until you get used to that, you don't get how much more immersive that is compared to "U for use" approach); The world got a lot smaller; Maybe I should write a review?
  - TES: Arena started -- mage is a tough class to play at the beginning: very low hitpoints and not high enough mana (started with int about 60) made the first days in game really painful; After some leveling and grinding for gold though, playing became much more pleasant; The game is really technically impressive -- vast cities and wilderness locations, beautiful day and night cycle, weather effects, and even seasons, all in glorious first person perspective in magnificent VGA; Gameplay is simplistic though -- there is little more to do than some fetch quests and dungeon looting; Story dungeons are quite large, but I have only completed one yet, so still a lot to see;

Thank you for your attention! Until we meet again!

Ping - 2025.13 - Limited Success or Complete Failure?

2025-04-30T00:00:00+00:00

A month full of events:

Streaming continues steadily; No work done on systematising the played games though;
Website updated -- compatible with (nearly) all browsers now (for real, not just "latest-chrome-based-99%");
- "Compatible" does not mean that the site will look exactly the same; It does, though, mean that the site will be usable and look good enough;
- Let me know if there are significant issues with readability in your browser and we'll look into fixing it;
Instead-9x build is available for download;
- The project is on halt with limited success; for more details see here;
Plainstead compatible build of A Dragon and the Tower is added to the game's page; Work on 1.1 continues -- I'm keen on having it (barely) playable on my Pentium MMX 233 (not speaking of comfort here; Being able to play the game from start to finish and see the endings is achievable, though);
We decided to reveal the name of our next game; Obviously it's a full version of Sabra Naikomy's game "Don't Follow the Butterfly";
I've gotten into one other project that I'm going to reveal later once it's successful.

Some personal updates:

Finally got a power supply for my new Apple 2 GS; Sadly further issues awaited -- keyboard does not work at all; Waiting for the next package that'll help with revealing the cause (hopefully it's not a motherboard issue);
Finally got a mixer to avoid replugging my speakers every time I need to use a different computer; Still need to figure something out with my monitor (it has a lot of different inputs, but only a single VGA. A KVM may be an option).

Thank you for your attention! Until we meet again!

Ping - 2025.08 - Slow and Steady

2025-02-23T00:00:00+00:00

February is nearing its end and it's time once again to look back at what has been done and what is to be done.

No releases so far, but the progress is steady (albeit slow):

Plainstead version of A Dragon and the Tower has some critical fixes and can be downloaded here; Expect a usable package released in March; For now it will be a separate package; We'll check later if we can unify this build with the main one;
A Dragon and the Tower 1.1 is progressing:
- We have a fully working build of INSTEAD for Windows 98 and Pentium 2 CPU; Going further is much harder because I have to rebuild all of the dependencies, but I am going to at least try, to see if it's worth it (performance mainly)
- The game itself is currently loading a lot of stuff into memory at times, requiring up to 60+ megabytes of RAM; Even if we decide to limit our support to Pentium 2 it may still be a little bit too much; We'll see if we can optimise that without imparing the experience too much;
Prologue for the next game is being implemented; Most likely we will be able to switch to the first chapter in March already;
Streams are progressing steadily with 2 times a week; We still have a lot to play in the repo; I'm starting to think about making a small page on this website with basic info about each game and a link to the walkthrough;
I have started a limited redesign of silverwing.one; The goal is to ensure better support of lightweight and older browsers; I don't work on this intensively, so don't wait for this too soon (still, let me know if the site is displayed poorly in your browser of choice, and I'll see what can be done);
- Sadly, not every browser is like Internet Explorer and most of them have no way to provide unique markup overrides, so I will have to resort to javascript for this purpose; This leads to four levels of styling:
  - Baseline (no CSS)
  - Safe CSS (Will not require Javascript; Styles that are safe to use in any browser; Most likely will be limited to font sizes)
  - Minimal CSS (Will require Javascript; Will be enabled for older browsers with proper CSS support; Visuals will be simplified -- no rounded corners, programmatic gradients etc.)
  - Full CSS (Will require Javascript; Will be enabled for browsers supporting CSS3 or later; The site will look roughly as you see now)

Thus the plans for the March are:

Release A Dragon and the Tower 1.1 + INSTEAD-9x builds;
- Check if i486 builds provide sufficient performance on at least late Pentium MMX machines;
- Check if game can be optimised to use up less RAM in peak;
- Publish some INSTEAD-9x builds;
- Release A Dragon and the Tower installer for Windows 9x-2000;
- Release A Dragon and the Tower package for Plainstead;
Finish the prologue for the next game;
Continue working on website redesign;
Continue streaming; Maybe make a page with short games info;
If any time is left -- it's time to start working on the engine;
- Work on the engine will most likely lead to a number of articles supported by prototype implementations and parts of specification;

Thank you for your attention! Until we meet again!

Ping - 2025.04 - Chasing N hares

2025-01-26T00:00:00+00:00

Ambitious goals are good... When you can reach them. Which is not the case for us. January is over and the progress is... Modest at most.

It's not easy to work on projects in spare time, since you have to share it with a lot of other things. A lot of effort was spent on resolving personal matters, leaving only about half the planned amount to the projects.

Still, there is some progress:

A plainstead/tiny instead version of A Dragon and the Tower is mostly ready and can be downloaded here. We are planning to keep it as a separate branch for now, since it contains differences significant enough to warrant extra testing. As 1.1 in general will mostly be about graphics and performance, there is no benefit in having those changes in plainstead.
Design document for the full prologue of our next game is ready.

For the February we plan to focus on A Dragon and the Tower 1.1 update and implementing the prologue for our next game.

Thank you for your attention! Until we meet again!

Ping - 2024.52 - Happy New Year!

2024-12-29T00:00:00+00:00

Happy New Year, everyone!

Time to summarise the last year:

A Dragon and the Tower was released with 499 downloads across all platforms (gathered on 29.11.2024 в 19:18 UTC);
- My first successful attempt at writing music for a game; I'm not sure if I want to continue;
Kitty, my second short-story released on this website;
I've returned to streaming. Sadly, running two channels in parallel is not realistic, so I need to choose:
- I will finish current stream-series on my Russian channel and after that will move completely to English -- this will let me focus on a single channel;

And to share our plans:

Ping will come out monthly, we will use week numbers for them;
We are working on a new game. Right now we can only share so much:It is going to be a fantasy text adventure, noticeably larger than A Dragon and the Tower, but it will also has less graphics. We are actively working on prologue and chapter 1 right now. This is our primary priority for 2025 and we will put maximum effort into this project. Important thing is that it will most likely be pay-to-play;
Plans for A Dragon and the Tower 1.1 finally decided:
- Main effort will be on game optimisation and lowering system requirements:
  - Simplified graphics mode -- removing animation in main menu, replacing alpha transparency with more light-weight effect in the endings;
  - Working build of INSTEAD using SDL1, compatible with Windows 9x-2000. So far results are like this:
    - Playing on my Pentium 3 is much more pleasant. There are no freezes on Windows XP and on Windows 98 the game runs even smoother;
    - There are currently issues with file-system -- no saves, engine crashes when trying to show the list of games. These should be quite fixable;
    - I need to investigate running on non-SSE machines -- some of the dependencies included are built with SSE, thus requiring a Pentium 3 or higher CPU;
- Compatibility with Plainstead. Despite graphics being an important part of the game, the gameplay does not depend on it that much, so we can reduce the requirements;
- We will work on improving translations support as well -- details will come later(it still needs some further checks);
- Think (but do not promise) on possible support for resolutions lower than 640x480 -- here things are limited by the art, which is made for 960х600 and is cut for smaller screens;
We are starting the work on an engine for new games. Primary project goals are:
- Maximum API stability. A game written for an older version of the engine should work on newer ones without changes;
- Efficient sprite-based 2D graphics and formatted text;
- Maximum cross-platform support without sacrificing either of the above;
Smaller plans:
- I'll focus on streaming games from INSTEAD repository on my Russian-languaged Youtube channel. Streams will happen twice a week, unless otherwise noted;
  - This will most likely be the last series of streams in Russian for the foreseeable future;
- I would like to make a video-review on Outer Wilds in English. I'm not sure if I finish it this month, though;
  - Reviews will not be something regular, most likely I will switch to a textual format -- videos are taking too much time and effort, but I still would like to share opinion on some projects later;
- Write at least one short-story this year as well;
And finally some technical points:
- Most likely we will remove bug tracker soon -- we have switched to another tool anyway;
- We are still looking for a solution for EMail-subscriptions (it's not critical yet with our posting regularity);
- If the next game is going to be pay-to-play, we need to implement some authorisation mechanism for downloading it (we'll return to this closer to the release).

Thank you for your attention! Until we meet again!

A Dragon and the Tower 1.0.4 Released

2024-12-25T00:00:00+00:00

This update fixes an issue non-critical for game completion. We recommend you to update

A Dragon and the Tower updated to version 1.0.4

A couple of typos fixed

Please report any bugs and issues via email: inbox@silverwing.one.

You can download the game here.

A Dragon and the Tower 1.0.3 Released

2024-11-10T00:00:00+00:00

This update fixes an issue non-critical for game completion. We recommend you to update

A Dragon and the Tower updated to version 1.0.3

Change default text input method to correctly handle user's keyboard layout
Rope can now be used immediately

Game Manual is also updated

Added troubleshooting section
Fixed some typos
Added new setting description to the corresponding section
Added some extra hints to the walkthrough

Please report any bugs and issues via email: inbox@silverwing.one.

You can download the game here.

A Dragon and the Tower 1.0.2 Released

2024-11-02T12:00:00+00:00

This update fixes an issue non-critical for game completion. We recommend you to update

A Dragon and the Tower updated to version 1.0.2

An error in the terminal is fixed

Please report any bugs and issues via email: inbox@silverwing.one.

You can download the game here.

A Dragon and the Tower 1.0.1 Released

2024-11-02T00:00:00+00:00

This is a minor update, you don't need to update if you're already playing

A Dragon and the Tower updated to version 1.0.1

Improved automatic scaling on small screens

Please report any bugs and issues via email: inbox@silverwing.one.

You can download the game here.

Ping - May 2024 - A Dragon and the Tower - Beta Test

2024-05-23T00:00:00+00:00

The time has come to start the beta testing of our game.

If you want to participate, please contact me in any meaningful way.

Depending on the number of testers, I may split the process into waves, to show the fixed game to new people.

As soon as we are ready, we'll send you the link to the page, from which you can download the game and additional materials. After that the process is usual -- you play the game, and I wait for any feedback from you: bugs, advice, opinions and any thoughts about the game.

If you want you can continue playing next versions, or you can stop after the first walkthrough.

After the test all participants, who have finished the game and given any feedback, will be added to credits (Please clearly specify in advance what name or pseudonym you would like to use).

Ping - September 2022 - The New Beginning

2022-09-01T00:00:00+00:00

Lives of great men all remind us

We may make our lives sublime

And departing leave behind us

Footprints in the sands of time

—Hawkwind

Three months have passed since our last message, and, as expected, our actions brought the result. So we have some news:

We have resumed working on the game
This months I plan to do 1 or 2 streams
A short-story Cloud world has been published in both Russian and English

Our further plans:

Finish A Dragon and the Tower and release it
Move to a stable stream schedule
We are working on some unspecified projects -- we'll tell you, when we are ready

As always, waiting for your feedback on email.

Thank you for your attention! Until we meet again!

Ping - June 2022 - Light at the end of the tunnel

2022-06-02T00:00:00+00:00

After three months of inactivity, we think it is time to make some announcement. Though we cannot speak confidently about our plans and future, we still can give you some news.

Bad news first:

In the nearest month or two you'll most probably not hear from me -- I am extremely busy right now, but I will let you know across all my channels when I have some results.

But I also have some goo news:

First and foremost -- we intend to resume our work on A Dragon and the Tower, and after that -- on our other projects.

Second -- I intend to bring back streams, There will not be a lot of them at first, but at some point we'll get back to a stream per week schedule.

Third -- I intend to write more about non-project related things here, on my Telegram and Twitter channels.

But all of that will come later, and now I have to finish everything required to be able to create worlds again.

Ping - December 2021 - Happy New Year

2021-12-30T00:00:00+00:00

Happy New Year to everyone!

Sharing news and plans for 2022.

We will run 1-2 streams per month on Youtube. Announcements will be posted on our Twitter, VK and Telegram channels (only Russian, though I can handle discussion in English if anyone comes). I will mostly stream games for now. Polls regarding streams will happen on Telegram, as it's our only option currently.
We will share info on projects on this site and, if needed, in videos both on Youtube and this site.
We intend to release A Dragon and the Tower in 2022. Now we mostly work on graphics, music, UI and text changes. We have made some screenshots to show project's current state.

As always, we are waiting for your response on email.

Thank you for your attention! Until we meet again!

Ping - June 2021 - Cursed old forest

2021-06-21T00:00:00+00:00

Hi everyone!

We have released a new game -- Cursed Old Forest. A caravan of a trader, who decided to journey through The Dark Forest has a lot of perils waiting for it. It's up to you to help Vivar reach his goal.

This game is made for Locomotive and I have tried to make a small and simple game. This time I tried to make a CYOA-style game, with choices from a fixed list. Journey on a set route with taking various decisions on the way seemed like a good idea to me. It's up to you to decide whether the idea has been successful.

This time I used URQ DOS engine, and yes our new game works on MS-DOS!

As always, we are waiting for your response on email.

This time, exclusively for English-speaking audience I will give some explanation regarding our games.

Currently you see that none of our games are available in a translated form, be it English or any other language. The reason for not translating games is simple -- translation is a huge work, and the games I release usually take some time to update and fix. Having a translation increases all the work being done on text twofold, and I cannot afford that yet. We intend to change that soon with our next release -- A Dragon and the Tower.

Thank you for your attention! Until we meet again!

Awakening 0.10.5 Released

2021-05-10T00:00:00+00:00

Awakening has been updated to 0.10.5.

Some minor issues in texts and game logic fixed. Text issues in tutorial.

Thanks to Canwolf.

The game is also available on instead-games.ru.

Please report any bugs and issues via email: inbox@silverwing.one.

You can download the game here.

KUSBFloppy Formatter 1.0.2

2021-03-23T00:00:00+00:00

We have updated KUSBFloppy Formatter. Fixes:

Added progress bar for mass formatting.
Fixed work with new lsblk versions.
Allow editing image label from main interface(double click image name).
Fixed inability to format images without changing device.

You can download KUSBFloppy Formatter here.

If you have any problems, you may write us an email.

Ping - March 2021 - Site update, plans and changes

2021-03-21T00:00:00+00:00

Hello everyone!

Last month was not easy -- reality has insistently intruded into my comfy nest and required my attention. This is the reason we have fewer news, than we would like, but nonetheless -- here they are.

In the end of the last year we started to think about redesigning our site. There are several reasons for this:

Horizontal meny is not very convenient when there are too many elements. Nested menus can be made only by drop-out lists, and this will not work in some browsers(Netsurf, for example).
Overwhelmingly heavy background image 200 kilobytes in size. That's about 20 times larger than Awakening's page!
A constantly growing heap of files in corresponding directory.

You are looking at the result of our work and here is the list of changes:

Replaced background with a repeated pattern. As a result, we have changed appearance of the blocks: we have removed transparent background, but have added frame borders.
We've moved menu to the left part of the screen and separated it in logical blocks: language, main menu, news feeds. Headline is now only used to display site and current page name.
For your convenience we have added pages with lists of tags and categories to the main menu.
Now we fully support RSS and Atom feeds for both full list of news and for separate categories and tags.
Files were moved to files.silverwing.one, carefully put in folders and are available for navigation.
"Archives" section added for materials we do not own, but which have historical value.
We have added "Our friends" section to "About us" page with links to friendly resources.
We have added a button which you can put on your site with link to us to "About us" page. (Thanks to Sabra Naikomy for this).

Now about our plans:

A Dragon and the Tower is still in development. The game is slowly movig to beta version, but we are unable to give the exact date -- there are still lots of things that need to be done. The game will be released in both English and Russian. It will also be available on some external resouces(All links will be available here).
Soon we will update KUSBFF, improve UI and fix it in newer Linux distributions.
I have suddenly joined a small event -- a collective writing of parser game(in Russian). We'll see what'll come out of it.

Also, we'll try to remind you of us more often, and we are going to expand our list of materials on different topics.

As always, we are waiting for your response on email.

Thank you for your attention! Until we meet again!

Ping - November 2020 - A small video on A Dragon and the Tower

2020-12-13T00:00:00+00:00

Hello everyone!

We have made a small video on our next game. It will show you some new things.

Your browser is unable to play this video. Please download it using the link below.

If you are unable to watch the video in your browser or want to download it for any other reason, you can use this link: A Dragon and the Tower

As always, we are waiting for your opinion on our email address.

Awakening 0.10.3 Released

2020-11-16T00:00:00+00:00

Awakening has been updated to 0.10.3.

Some minor issues in texts and game logic fixed.

Thanks to Anton "bergentroll" Karmanov.

The game is also available on instead-games.ru.

Please report any bugs and issues via email: inbox@silverwing.one.

You can download the game here.

Awakening 0.10.2 Released

2020-11-10T00:00:00+00:00

Awakening has been updated to 0.10.2.

Some minor issues in texts and game logic fixed.

Thanks to Andrew Lobanov and Anton "bergentroll" Karmanov.

The game is also available on instead-games.ru.

Please report any bugs and issues via email: inbox@silverwing.one.

You can download the game here …

Awakening 0.10.1 Released

2020-11-06T00:00:00+00:00

Awakening has been updated to 0.10.1.

Some minor issues in texts and game logic fixed.

Thanks to Anton "bergentroll" Karmanov.

The game is also available on instead-games.ru.

Please report any bugs and issues via email: inbox@silverwing.one.

You can download the game here.

Ping - October 2020 - Closing the forums, updating server software, alpha testing of A Dragon and the Tower

2020-10-24T00:00:00+00:00

Hi everyone!

We are still alive. Maybe. Development of our projects is continuing and A Dragon and the Tower is now in alpha stage. which means that beta is coming. Wait for more news. For now, here is a new screenshot:

It is time for updates and changes. For awhile we have ignored the need to properly update our version tracking and bug reporting systems, but we should not ignore it for too long. Better late than never, so we are doing it now.

We have decided to close the forums. Two reasons lead to that:

Updating phpbb is not very easy and requires some manual work.
In nearly two years of forums' existence, no real users have appeared.

As always, waiting for your response on our e-mail

Ping - August 2020 - Participating in Locomotive and releasing Princess Asurja's Morning

2020-09-05T00:00:00+00:00

Hi everyone!

This time we're a bit late with ping, but we are ready to show you a new game. The game is called Princess Asurja's Morning and is available here. Currently the game is only available in Russian and we have no exact plans on translating it to English(but who knows?). It has no graphics or sound, and it is made specially for Locomotive 6 event(warning, the content under the link is in Russian). Because Locomotive is all about releasing the game in time, I decided to dedicate this game to the topic of Time. You will play as Princess Asurja and will help her to live a very important day in her life and help here finish all her tasks in time.

Maybe, in the future, after participating in more events and making a few more games in the series I'll think about it's further development(and translation to English). But for now this will stay a little experiment. It's up to you to decide if it's successful or not. As always we are waiting for your feedback on our forums or by mail

A new screenshot for A Dragon and the Tower

2020-08-23T00:00:00+00:00

Hello everyone!

We have added a new screenshot for our new project, A Dragon and The Tower. On the screenshot you can see the game's actual gameplay. This is a classic INSTEAD-game. You will explore the game world, gather and use items, talk to characters, solve puzzles and do much more.

Full information on the game is available here.

Ping - July 2020 - "A Dragon and the Tower" Announcement

2020-07-31T00:00:00+00:00

Hello everyone!

We have kept quiet for some time and there is a reason for that. Time has come to tell you about a new game, that we are making together with Sabra Naikomy.

A Dragon and the Tower

You are a dragon. A real one -- huge, winged, flying and even capable of magic.

For centuries you have been living on Earth. No, not among humans. Dirty and crowded cities of those creatures do not entice you. Moreover, you would have to hide your true nature from them.

Only here, in a system of caves created by your magic, you can be yourself. This place is reliably hidden from eyes of humans and their artificial aides -- radars and satellites.

But the time has come for you to leave your home. The old map, that you've been keeping since times immemorial, is now ready to unravel it's secrets to you!

This will be a small text adventure game, full of puzzles and entirely free.

All information about this game will be available here.

KUSBFloppy Formatter 1.0.1

2020-06-21T00:00:00+00:00

I have updated KUSBFloppy Formatter. Two problems have been fixed:

Impossible to format images starting from index 99
Incorrect numbering of images

You can download KUSBFloppy Formatter here.

In case you encounter any problems, you can use our forum or you can write us on our email.

Awakening 0.10.0 Released

2020-05-07T00:00:00+00:00

Awakening has been updated to 0.10.0.

Some minor issues in texts and game logic fixed. Added some words to dictionary. Battle with kraken slightly tweaked. A rare save-game issue should be fixed now.

The game is also available on instead-games.ru.

Please report any bugs and issues on our forums and feel free to discuss the game there. You can also contact us via email: inbox@silverwing.one.

You can download the game here.

Awakening 0.9.2 Released

2019-12-02T01:00:00+00:00

Awakening has been updated to 0.9.2.

Inventory did not hide in certain cutscenes.

The game is also available on instead-games.ru.

Please report any bugs and issues on our forums and feel free to discuss the game there. You can also contact us via email: inbox@silverwing.one.

You can download the game here.

Awakening 0.9.1 Released

2019-12-02T00:00:00+00:00

Awakening has been updated to 0.9.1.

Tutorial is now available regardless of how you install and start the game.

The game is also available on instead-games.ru.

Please report any bugs and issues on our forums and feel free to discuss the game there. You can also contact us via email: inbox@silverwing.one.

You can download the game here.

Awakening 0.9.0 Released

2019-12-01T00:00:00+00:00

Save games from previous versions are incompatible.

Awakening has been updated to 0.9.0.

A lot of changes and improvements has been made in various aspects of the game. Multiple quests have been fixed and changed. Some puzzles have been improved. Added a couple of texts, to give player more information on main story. Leviathan crew will now give slightly more pieces of advice. Added "thank you" section to the credits.

The game is also available on instead-games.ru.

Please report any bugs and issues on our forums and feel free to discuss the game there. You can also contact us via email: inbox@silverwing.one.

You can download the game here.

Awakening 0.8.0 Released

2019-07-21T00:00:00+00:00

Save games from previous versions are incompatible.

Awakening has been updated to 0.8.0.

Changes:

Saving is enabled in nearly all places(except battles and other places where character is endangered)
Added Atlantis map for easier navigation
Added(restored) radio for communicating with Leviathan crew
You can now "recall" the book if you have read it at least once
Removed unused objects
Lots of text changes
Reordered some paths in certain locations to be more logical
Changes in game logic in some places
Expanded music description in info section.

The game is also available on instead-games.ru.

If updating from 0.7.5 and lower: Game folder name has been changed. To use old saves, move the from directory ~/.instead/saves/atlantis.idf ~/.instead/saves/awakening.idf

Please report any bugs and issues on our forums and feel free to discuss the game there. You can also contact us via email: inbox@silverwing.one.

You can download the game here.

Awakening 0.7.7 Released

2019-07-12T00:00:00+00:00

Saves from 0.7 versions are compatible.

Awakening has been updated to 0.7.7.

Fixed tons of errors and typos.

Added snapshots, now you can retry easily if you fail.

The game is now available on instead-games.ru.

If updating from 0.7.5 and lower: Game folder name has been changed. To use old saves, move the from directory ~/.instead/saves/atlantis.idf ~/.instead/saves/awakening.idf

Please report any bugs and issues on our forums and feel free to discuss the game there. You can also contact us via email: inbox@silverwing.one.

You can download the game here.

Awakening 0.7.6 Released

2019-07-10T00:00:00+00:00

Saves from 0.7 versions are compatible.

Awakening has been updated to 0.7.6.

Fixed typos and logical errors.

Fixed improper work of some puzzles.

Game folder name has been changed. To use old saves, move the from directory ~/.instead/saves/atlantis.idf ~/.instead/saves/awakening.idf

Please report any bugs and issues on our forums and feel free to discuss the game there. You can also contact us via email: inbox@silverwing.one.

You can download the game here.

Ping - June 2019

2019-06-30T00:30:00+00:00

Hi everyone.

A few moments ago we have published news about finishing work on Awakening 0.7, and this means the game is nearly complete.

-- Wait. That has already been written. In the previous post. Why do we need ping then?

-- Yojj knows.

With these thoughts I decided to change the way how we publish Ping. Now Ping will only happen if there are no news for a month. In ping we will talk about our projects and how they fare. As before, we will issue at least one post a month.

Please, tell us your opinion on the changes on our forums.

See you in July.

Awakening 0.7.0 Released

2019-06-30T00:00:00+00:00

Save games from previous versions are incompatible.

Awakening is updated to version 0.7.0.

We have completed everything planned for 0.7. There are major improvements in the game:

Music has been added.
Graphics have been added wherever needed.
Custom theme.
Changed some gameplay moments, that we believe to be unsuitable.
Fixed lots of errors.

This version is complete and final. There are not going to be any major changes in 1.0. Now we'll concentrate on fixing bugs and making english version (which will be available in 1.0).

Please report any bugs and issues on our forums and feel free to discuss the game there. You can also contact us via email: inbox@silverwing.one.

You can download the game here.

Ping - May 2019

2019-05-31T00:00:00+00:00

Whatever

—Anybody

Hi everyone.

May is over and we are working on Awakening 0.7. We cannot yet make new version available, but we want to share some of the work done.

I find it very hard to share information about this game beacause I want to avoid spoilers at all cost, and nearly any gameplay feature I can display will be a spoiler. Nevertheless, I have decided to record a small video of the current state of the game, so you can see what it looks like.

Your browser cannot play this video. Please use download link below.

If you are unable to watch video in your browser or for any other reason want to download it, please use following link: Awakening Preview Video

As always, we are waiting for your opinion on our forums or on our email address.

See you in June.

Ping - April 2019

2019-04-30T00:00:00+00:00

Deep inside of our hearts beat sounds of heavy metal

—Pathfinder

Hi everyone.

April has passed and we still has nothing to say in ping. You can see that right now a new utility is available KUSBFloppyFormatter, which is very useful for users of retro-computers with floppy drives replaced by hardware emulators.

Awakening 0.6.0 has finally been released and, I think, it can be called Alpha, while 0.7 will become first Beta release.

What next?

Now we are working on completing Awakening. After that we have some new fun projects that we'll share with you as soon as possible.

Awakening 0.6.0 Released

2019-04-14T00:00:00+00:00

Save games from previous versions are incompatible.

Awakening is updated to version 0.6.0.

Our main goal in 0.6 was to finalize game's content. We have added missing dialogs and improved game's endings.

Now we are on a finish line - 0.7 is the last large update before 1.0. We will change how the game looks (Those wishing will still be able to use any other Instead theme).

We will not disclose the release date yet.

Please report any bugs and issues on our forums and feel free to discuss the game there. You can also contact us via email: inbox@silverwing.one.

You can download the game here.

Ping - March 2019

2019-03-31T00:00:00+00:00

I wander around the streets so lonely and empty

Lost in a crowd, but I can't hide

Is there a place where I can escape to?

A desert island where I can die

—Dave Brock

Hi everyone.

March is over and we haven't done anything. At least montly "Ping" is still here. We do not abandon any of our promises, but you'll have to wait a bit.

Awakening 0.6 will be released in two weeks and it will be a complete game in terms of text and plot. We will continue our work on visuals in 0.7, which will slowly get updated to final release in 1.0.

Also, we promised a small utility and an apt-repository and both will happen, but a bit later. Now we can say, that repository will not be available before Awakening 0.7, and the utility will be announced and released in April.

Ping - February 2019

2019-02-28T00:00:00+00:00

There is something called tomorrow

Keep it free and safe from harm

It makes you dream and ends your sorrow

Lead them all to understand

—Dol Theeta

Hi everyone.

Febrary got away from us. Awakening 1.0 is still somewhere behind the horizon and we continue work on it.

This month we have had two releases:

KCDEmu 1.0 - small, but hopefully, not useless project. At the very least, I use it as my main UI for CDEmu.
Awakening 0.5 - while game is still far from completion, this version can be played and you can even have fun from it.

What next?

Other plans are unchanged:

We plan to release one small utility in march and prepare apt-repository, so users of Debian, Ubuntu and distributions based on them can easily install our software

Also in march or in early april a new version of Awakening will be released - 0.6. We will add missing dialogues to it.

KCDEmu 1.0.0

2019-02-24T00:00:00+00:00

Today we present you with a small tool that we believe will be as helpful to you as it is to us.

KCDEmu is a graphical user interface for CDEmu, which is amazing optical drive emulator for GNU/Linux. We made KCDEmu in order to provide an easy way to interact with CDEmu from graphical environment.

KCDEmu is written using Qt5 in Python3 and thus should work on most modern GNU/Linux distributions without any issues.

KCDEmu is licensed to you with GNU GPL v3.

It is available to you here.

In case you encounter any problems you may use our forums or write us directly on our email.

Awakening 0.5.0 Released

2019-02-23T00:00:00+00:00

Save games from previous versions are incompatible.

Awakening is updated to version 0.5.0.

We have made lots of fixes. We believe it is finally proper to say that this version is stable and safe to play.

We still have lots to do in terms of missing content:

we will add some dialogues to make characters and game world more alive. This is our goal for 0.6.0.
we intend to work on visual aspects - you can still notice lots of placeholder graphics in 0.5.0. We still use default Instead theme. I hope all this will change in 0.7.0.

When will they be released? "When it is done", but I hope to release 0.6.0 in march or early april and give estimation for 0.7.0 after that.

Please report any bugs and issues on our forums and feel free to discuss the game there. You can also report bugs to our email address: inbox@silverwing.one.

You can download the game here.

Ping - January 2019

2019-01-31T00:00:00+00:00

Hey! You're banjaxed!

Hey! You're screwed!

And death is coming for you!

Trapped on an island, lost at sea!

Shipwrecked, you'll cease to be!

—Alestorm

Hi everyone.

January is over, and you still see no Awakening 1.0. No, we are not dead, we are working on it, but it appears that we'll have to change our schedule.

First of all -- Awakening will be released in 2019. Probably in two or three months.

We will release version 0.5 soon(probably in one or two weeks), which will include lots of important fixes.

After that, we'll switch to adding missing content which will, most probably be released as one bulk in 0.6.

And after some testing we will finally release 1.0.

Other projects' schedules are not changed - we still plan on releasing some stuff before the end of march, 2019.

See you in febrary.

Awakening 0.4.0 Released

2019-01-10T18:00:00+00:00

We have updated Awakening to version 0.4.0. Save games from previous versions are incompatible.

We have made a lot of changes to chapter 2 and epilogue.

The game still cannot be considered stable, so if you dare to play it - save often and in different slots.

Please report any bugs and issues on our forums and feel free to discuss the game there. You can also report bugs to our email address: inbox@silverwing.one.

You can download the game here.

Awakening 0.3.2 Released

2018-12-23T22:30:00+00:00

We have updated Awakening to version 0.3.2. Save games are mostly compatible except some rare cases.

We recommend to save often and in different slots(until stable version arrives).

What does it fix?

We have done lots of fixes in Chapters 1 and 2. From game-breaking bugs to typos.

You can still write us and we will fix your save game.

Please report any bugs and issues on our forums and feel free to discuss the game there.

You can download the game here.

Awakening 0.3.1 Released

2018-12-23T00:00:00+00:00

We have updated Awakening to version 0.3.1. Save games are compatible unless you have not already met an unwinnable condition.

What does it fix?

Unwinnable condition in Chapter 1
Some minor text issues
Some minor dialog changes

If you have encountered unwinnable condition -- you can write us, so we will fix your save game.

Welcome aboard

2018-12-22T00:00:00+00:00

Cause if you have a battlecruiser,

Hell, who needs a car?

—Level 80 Elite Tauren Chieftain

2018 is nearly over and we at last have some good news.

First, we are nearing the end of development of our first game - Awakening.

Right now we are presenting you with a testing version of it. You can download our game here.

Second, we now have our own forums, bug tracker and source-code repository.

What next?

Our nearest plan is to complete Awakening and make it available on this site. ETA: January 2019

Next thing is to make some of our smaller projects available including their source-code. ETA: March 2019

It is very important for us to provide a convinient way to install and update our games and software. First step to this goal will be an apt repository for Debian and Ubuntu with all our packages available. ETA: March 2019

And of course, at least one post a month.