A few years ago, I backed a Kickstarter project to produce Insert Coin, a documentary of Bally/Midway games. The project finally delivered, and so far it looks like it’s been worth the wait. Luminaries from the arcade industry of the 80s and 90s, Eugene Jarvis, John Tobias and Ed Boone, and others give interviews talking about the development of classic titles from Defender to Mortal Kombat. If you’re a fan of these games, it’s well worth checking it out.
Let’s get rid of Flexible Spending Accounts for healthcare (and give everyone something better)
It doesn’t look like we’re going to get universal single payer healthcare in the United States in this lifetime. While I would in theory be willing to go to war and overthrow a government in order to change this, let’s hear me out on a proposal that will placate me for at least a year.
Get rid of Flexible Spending Accounts.
The idea of FSAs is that we should know ahead of time how much we’re likely to need to spend on qualified healthcare expenses, and put that that amount of pretax income into a special account that can only be used for those qualified expenses, thereby giving you a discount equivalent your income tax burden for the income you deposited there.
If you don’t spend all that money, you lose it. Meaning, you are effectively taxed at a 100% rate for whatever money you don’t spend out of your FSA. This encourages people to do two things: under-provision, and over-spend.
You under-provision, to ensure that you spend all the money that you allocate to the FSA, rather than lose it. And if you have any money left over at the end of the year, you have to go looking for anything you can spend it on, using it to pay for electives that you don’t need, or frivolous hoarding of supplies like first aid supplies and over-the-counter pharmacy.
A certain amount of money can roll over to your account for the next year, but anything over that amount is just… gone. Does the FSA administrator just keep it? Does it go back to your employer as refunded compensation? Does it go to the IRS? Doesn’t really matter, does it? All you need to know is it’s not your money anymore.
You can’t take money out of your “flexible” spending account, pay your taxes on it, and spend it on non-qualified expenses, or simply put it in a regular savings account. Suddenly need to pay for an expensive car or home repair? Have a lot in your FSA that you don’t need to spend on healthcare because you’re healthy? Too bad, take out a loan.
If you end up under-estimating your medical expenses due to your inability to predict the future, you end up having to pay the overage using post-tax dollars. There’s no way to adjust the amount of your pre-tax income goes into your “flexible” spending account. You set it once, and unless you experience a “qualifying life-changing event”, it’s fixed for the year. That’s kindof the opposite of most people’s definition of “flexible”, but what do I know, right?
Replace it with something better for everyone
So, really, the true solution is to replace our stupid, wasteful, evil healthcare administration system with a universal single-payer system, like the entire rest of the world has figured out is much better for everyone. But this is America, so let’s accept for the time being that this will never happen, because a ridiculous number of people do not like to be healthy, or have money.
What could we do instead of FSAs that would be better, easier, and available to everyone, regardless of whether their employer provides them with benefits?
Simply: make all expenses that are designated as qualified expenses for FSAs deductible from your gross income on your taxes.
Just spend add up all your qualified expenses over the year, and deduct it from your gross income when you file your taxes at the end of the year.
No special account. No account administrators. No claims and processing. No estimating. No use it or lose it. No under-estimating. No over-spending. Simply 100% of qualified expenses paid for with pre-tax income.
I mean, why don’t we?
“Atari VCS” launches
“Atari” has finally shipped a physical product to its Indiegogo backers.
I didn’t back the campaign, because I didn’t have faith in the company calling itself “Atari” these days to deliver value. One of the backers received theirs already and has published an unboxing/review on YouTube.
And there’s a lot of rough edges. The controllers work differently, depending on whether they’re connected via USB cable or by Bluetooth? Hitches in the e-commerce experience, getting double charged for a failed download? You have to pay for Atari Vault Vol 2, a collection of 30+ year old games? Browser accounts aren’t properly connected to the local user? Really? I wish I could say I am surprised.
The launch library is, as expected, sparse and uninspiring, offering nothing new beyond a warmed-over Missile Command remake. I haven’t seen the new Missile Command in detail — it looks OK, I guess — but having participated in numerous game jams, and knowing the original Missile Command, I know enough to say that a Missile Command reboot could be tackled with a game jam’s worth of effort — in other words, 2-3 people, 1 weekend, bam, playable new Missile Command game. Realistically, to be completely generous, a game like that could be developed in a month or so.
“Atari” have spent $3 million and 3 years creating a cool-looking case and joystick for a commodity PC that runs a Free OS and have developed a front-end for it that could be used to deliver new original games, first-party exclusives, if Atari had them. but all they currently offer is Google Chrome browser, Netflix, and a couple bundles of emulated games that have been available for 30+ years, and absolutely don’t need a new console to deliver them.
Legend of Zelda Overworld Randomizer
Another awesome Legend of Zelda romhack, this one by Garret Bright. This one is an overworld randomizer.
It takes the rom file for the original Legend of Zelda (not included), and replaces the original overworld map with a completely new map. The new maps are randomly generated by a seed function, and the seed value always generates the same map, so if you find one that you find especially interesting, you can easily share it with your friends, without copyright violations, by sharing the seed.
The randomized overworlds seem to be well designed, for a randomized generator, in that they feel like they are following similar design principles that are evident in the original game, meaning that the maps are playable, and feel like they are broken up into zones, much like the original. It doesn’t just take the existing overworld screens and re-arrange them, it creates new tile layouts for novel overworld screens that have never been seen before, and stitches them together to create a coherent overworld consisting of distinct zones.
But, curiously, some design rules that are present in the original game, are not followed in the randomizer. For instance, in the original, most dungeon entrances have a single enemy roaming around outside, but in the randomized maps, this does not seem to be the rule. Also, enemy placement seems to be less concerned about starting Link in a part of the world that is far away from the more powerful monsters. You can expect to start on a screen with the cave to the Wooden Sword, but you may find yourself surrounded by blue Leevers, Peahats, and Moblins sooner than you’d expect to run into them in the original. And the trick where leaving a single enemy on each overworld screen prevents the screen from re-spawning enemies again doesn’t seem to work any more.
I’ve always wanted to see more games made with the original LoZ engine, so this is probably one of the best things ever. Now I can play unique Legend of Zelda games for the rest of my natural lifespan. If only there was something that created new dungeon maps and new items as well. Perhaps we’ll get something like that one day. Until then, I’ll be burning every bush, and blowing up every rock, until I find every secret there is to find in a virtually limitless multiverse of alternative Hyrules.
If anyone needs me, I’ll be in world 25325045.
You can download the overworld randomizer at bitbucket.org.
Atari Age 2020 Pre-Order
Atari Age, the fan-operated homebrew operation that holds the most legitimate claim to the legacy of Atari-that-was, has opened up pre-orders for a new batch of games for the Atari 2600, 5200, 7800, and 400/800/XE systems, and even the Atari Jaguar.
I’m most excited about Zoo Keeper, a faithful port of the early 80’s arcade classic to the 2600 developed by Champ Games — who have been killing it with their talented Atari 2600 ports of classic arcade games like Galaga and the upcoming Robotron 2084 — and Ninjish Guy in Low-Res World, a homebrew platformer for the 2600 in the vein of Super Meat Boy. I’ve been looking forward to playing a 2600 homage to one of my top early 80’s arcade classics Zoo Keeper for quite some time.
Also-worth-a-look releases are Deepstone Catacomb, a zelda-like adventure game, which looks really well done for an Atari 2600 title. Venture Reloaded, another early dungeon crawler, finally does justice to the classic arcade game Venture, should appeal to fans of the original.
Fans of the maze genre should find Hugo Hunt and Robot City to their liking. Dare Devil shows off some impressive chiptune chops and parachuting action reminiscent of classic games like Frogger, Freeway, and of course Sky Diver. But it appears to be an update or direct sequel to 1983 release, Parachute. Cannon Head Clash is a really fun-looking 2p artillery duel with destructive terrain and frantic action. If you enjoyed games like Outlaw/Gunslinger, and Combat on the 2600, this is one to check out. It’s even available for SECAM60 television sets, which is amazingly rare for a homebrew. Avalanche should appeal to fans of Activision’s classic paddle game, Kaboom! Tower of Rubble features fantastic audio, and super-slick animation and platform-edge hanging action as you struggle to stay atop a crumbling tower of falling blocks.
All of these new games show that the Atari 2600, released now 43 years ago back in 1977, still has many extra lives nearly half a century later, and nearly three decades after the last Atari 2600 rolled off the assembly line. The dedication of the programmers who pull off these minor miracles to their craft is astounding. The fact is that every produced by the homebrew community these days are among the best ever released on their platform. While the prices might seem steep at $40-50 apiece, the games are produced by hand in small batches, and are every bit as professionally presented as the best games produced by top industry developers during the system’s heyday. If you’re a fan of the system and still have working hardware hooked up in your house, they are absolutely worth their price.
I haven’t even looked at the titles for the other systems yet, because my budget frankly can’t take it. Just about every game I have looked at looks like a game worth playing, with most of them being must-buys.
Legend of Zelda HD Remaster
The original Legend of Zelda has received a HD remaster treatment by the romhack community.
The hack is playable through an emulator called Mesen. Mesen is free, and you’ll need a copy of a specific version of the original of the Legend of Zelda ROM as well as the HD remake files in order to play it.
Applying the HD remake files to the game is not difficult, but requires following a series of instructions that are demonstrated in the video below.
I gave it a try. The graphical updates give it a look on part with the SNES, and have a look reminiscent of Zelda III: A Link to the Past, although the sprites appear to be original artwork, not rips from the SNES ROM. Likewise, the audio sounds much like a SNES update of the original LOZ soundtrack.
The terrain sprites are fantastic, and make old Hyrule look spectacular. The repetitive tiled look of the original is completely made over, and now overworld features like bombable rocks and burnable bushes are a bit less of a pain than they were before — rather than having to try to burn every single bush on the screen, there’ll be one bush (or a small handful) of bushes that will stand out and look suspicious from the rest of the background terrain.)
I’m not as impressed by the character sprites. Moblins, Goriya, and Stalfos all look less charming than they did in the original. Creatures like Octorocks, Tektites, Leevers, and Kees look like they are done better, to me.
One thing I notice right away is that Link’s HD sprite looks visually smaller than the original, but his hitbox doesn’t seem to have changed. This makes him feel somewhat clumsy, and I kept colliding with enemies when it looked like I should have a bit of space between us. While I’m sure this can be gotten used to, to me it’s an unfortunate, huge, and immediate negative. Ultimately, enjoying a videogame comes down to gameplay, not graphics, and gameplay is impacted by an improper hitbox like this. I believe the developers of the HD Remaster could fix this pretty easily by making adjustments to Link’s sprite.
Another thing I noticed is that when climbing up/down stairs, there is no animation showing Link descending and disappearing into the dark hole, as there is in the original.
The HD Remaster enhances the game in a few other notable ways: increased bomb capacity, pressing Select toggles your B-inventory item so you no longer have to pause to the subscreen to select it, text draws faster, and the dialogs are somewhat altered from the original, offering better translations and more useful clues than were present in the original.
I’ve played through the first dungeon. I notice that in the dungeons, the map doesn’t seem to give you any visual indication to differentiate between rooms you have visited vs. rooms that you have not yet reached. This is another gameplay issue that I feel should be rectified by the maintainers of the mod.
Overall, this seems like a fantastic mod, very well done, but not without minor flaws. It is nevertheless enjoyable and should not be missed if you’re a fan of the original game. Nintendo legal often clamps down on fan projects like this, so if you want to play this yourself, it’s best to grab it while you can. Although, the maintainers do appear to have taken pains to separate the mod pack from anything that directly infringes on Nintendo copyright, such as the original ROM that is needed in order to make the mod pack work.
Awakening from cryo-sleep
So I guess GDEX had a virtual event last weekend, or recently, or whatever. You know, because of the COVID pandemic.
I didn’t attend the virtual GDEX this year, and for the last year+ I have been inactive as a game developer, due in large part to the feeling of hopelessness that I have about ever doing anything meaningful or memorable in that field. The tools frustrate me, programming feels like drudgery, the market is brutal and impossible. So why even bother trying.
Mind you this is all in my head, I just have an incredibly negative, defeatist attitude about life, and this poisons me every day that I’m alive, and I wish I could have a brain surgeon cut that part of my brain out of my head.
An odd coincidence that Fri-Sat I made a tiny little snake game for my own satisfaction. I didn’t make it for any reason other than I wanted to make something, and feel what that feels like again.
For some reason though, this morning I recalled a dim memory of a GDEX from several years ago.
I was walking in to the event, feeling like an imposter, a nobody, never worked in the industry, just a wannabe who had a life-long dream of working in game development, ignited from the moment I played my first video game.
I was walking into the building where they had the event that year, this was the first year that they held it at COSI, and some random guy who was also walking into the event starts talking to me, and I tell him who I am, and as I’m telling him about my website and the couple of books on GameMaker that I donated my time to for no compensation other than my name appearing in the book, the guy KNEW WHO I WAS. He was like “Oh you’re that guy! I’ve read some of your tutorials! They were helpful!”
I’m standing there, not quite an important person, and yet there’s this guy who knew of me because of my work, and he had been helped by it.
I don’t need to be, like, a rock star, or anything, but being recognized on the proverbial street by a random person I ran into at an industry convention kindof almost made me feel like a rock star, almost. Like, yep, that’s me, the guy who can’t learn how to program good, so he publishes little tiny increments of progress on a website in order to not lose track of what little he could figure out because it sucks when you spend 12 hours pounding your head against some problem, finally figure it out, and then can’t remember it the next time you need to do it, so I put it on the web so I can find it again when I can’t remember it myself. That’s me. I’m that guy.
And I just kindof shrugged it off, and forgot all about how, no matter what other failures I don’t even bother to try to accomplish in my life, there’s direct evidence that I did a thing that was meaningful in the field of game dev.
OK, maybe I didn’t make Pac Man or Tetris or Mario, and I’m not a “successful indie developer” who has a following and a career and goes around saying important things to people who want to hear them because I’m the one saying them.
But I was able to figure out how to make some pixels wiggle on the screen using trigonometry, and because trig confuses the shit out of me and a lot of people, I decided to write up what I had figured out while it was still in my head since I’d for sure need it again, and to make sure it was really good I published it so that someone who reads it might suggest an improvement, maybe.
And then other people came by and read it, and I still get about 50 or more readers a day, and like 375,000 people have visited the site since I started it, which sounds like a lot of people. And they walk around in real life and you can randomly encounter them, and tell them who you are, and they will sometimes know who you are already, after you start telling them about you.
And then you still don’t have a million dollars, or any dollars really, but you feel different after that, you feel a way that you could never have felt unless you did those things.
And I realize, like waking up out of cryo-sleep, that I can, you know, keep doing things.
So, here’s a vlog from a guy with a successful youtube channel where he talks about astronomy, because he loves the cosmos and seems to know a lot about it, and his latest vlog is about how he’s glad that he’s no longer homeless, because vlogging about astronomy is totally a thing you can do if you really love astronomy. This seems like an important reminder for those of us who have a passion for a topic, or a goal of some kind, and can’t seem to believe in ourselves long enough to do a thing significant enough for us to feel like we did a thing of significance.
Tangle: A simple Snake clone
After about a year of not feeling like doing anything related to game development, last night I felt like making something.
So I stayed up all night and made a simple Snake clone that I call Tangle.
There’s nothing special about this project, it’s just a bare bones, no frills clone of the classic snake game, but I think for a few hours work it’s decently well done, and it plays well.
I think it took about 2-4 hours to build, and would have taken about a quarter that if it wasn’t for the fact that I haven’t done anything with GameMaker in a long time, and have never felt comfortable using GMS2’s revamped IDE. It’s minimalist, so don’t expect a whole lot, is what I’m trying to say. But enjoy it for what it is.
Thoughts on the problem of racism in the year 2020
I keep seeing posts from friends with sentiments to the effect of “If you’re a racist, you have no place in my life, so unfriend me” as a response to Trump’s loud and clear message to the Proud Boys in last night’s Presidential debate with Joe Biden.
A couple of things:
* I don’t think that goes far enough. We do not fix racism by distancing ourselves from racists. That only allows them to fester and multiply.
* I am avowedly anti-racist, and probably the most work I do in combating racism is finding it within myself and then removing it wherever and wherever I can.
This is a lifelong process that I could not have done at all on my own.
I recognize I was born in a culture where racism was commonplace, and takes on many forms, some overt and obvious, others insidious yet pervasive. The shit seems normal, because it IS normal. Normal and wrong, but very much normal. Racism is the norm, and we need to change the norm.
One of the earliest things I learned though was that prejudice, stereotyping, and hating people for things that they have no control over, such as the way the look, or where they come from, is wrong, and has caused tremendous suffering throughout our history.
When I speak of racism as being “the norm” I do not mean that most people are actively and affirmatively racist in thought and deed, and admire and agree with or belong to extremist terror organizations like the KKK, Aryan Brotherhood, Proud Boys, etc.
That shit is definitely NOT normal, but it is on the rise, and must be actively fought against.
What IS normal is that families are genetically related. Families support each other and favor each other. This extends naturally to racial identity and so forth. You root for your home team because they’re your home team, and you hate the team from the nearby town, because when they win your games, you don’t get trophies.
Racism begins from that point, and extends into pretty much everything you can think about. And that sort of cultural racism is like the air we breathe. It surrounds us and we don’t even think of ourselves as being immersed in it. We see an empty box as an empty box, not a box that is full of air. And like the air, it is necessary to an extent. We need it to breathe. We need oxygen to burn. We can put fire to good use. We can also burn ourselves and destroy everything we’ve built. We need shelter when the wind is too strong.
That is the way the world is. You can’t hate fire. It’s just chemistry. You can hate what fire does when it is out of control and destructive. You can also find that fire is very useful.
Love and hate are like sides of a coin. Love of self, hate of other. Extend the self to embrace love of all. Or hate everything around you and be consumed in the fire of hate.
Most of us have a fairly short love horizon. The self. Your family. Your child. Your friends. Maybe neighbors, if you have a strong community and good neighbors. The people in your home town. The kids you went to school with. The people who settled a geographic region and have existed there for generations. Not everyone in the world though, not Them. They look different, They turned to Other. They talk funny. They act strange. We cannot share with such people. They are not people. They need to be exterminated.
You can see from the above that the love horizon reaches out to a distance, and between the point of origin rooted at the self and that horizon there is a gradient. For those who’s love is greatest, it pushes all the way past the horizon to include all. For most of us, we fall somewhere short of this. For too many of us, we fall well short.
When we lose the ability to see our neighbor as an Us, and see them as an Other, that is the beginning of our undoing. If we try to turn Racist People into another Other that we can hate, that will be our undoing as well.
We need to recognize that Racists are Us, and that We are Racist. We need to address that fact, head on, and deal with it. We need to fix ourselves. Those of us who have committed to fixing ourselves are obviously not the clear and present danger of a militant radical motivated by racial hate to do violence. Those motherfuckers are indeed where the focus needs to be right now. I don’t know myself how to see Them as Us, and I am so revolted by them that I truly have no desire to. I would rather fight them and kill or be killed. But I know that if we go down that way, many of Us will be killed.
We need to know that just as you can’t live in a world where it is impossible for anything to burn, you can’t live in a world where there is no possibility that the idea that you favor that which is closest and most familiar to you will lead to larger harm outside of a circle that you draw beyond the horizon of your vision. We need to stand taller than that, and see further, so we can draw a circle that includes everyone.
I deprogram myself of racist tendencies on a daily basis. Like a computer defragmenting its hard drive. The way I look at it, it’s like the laundry. The laundry is never done. You get dirty every day, you clean yourself every day. You focus on this, you make your mind right.
I did not make my mind right in a vacuum. I did not make my mind right by being inherently right and just. I did not make my mind right. I am making my mind right. An ongoing process without end. I was put in a particular place and time by fate of birth, and I moved around from there. I picked up things that were readily available around me and built myself. I followed my instinct, and I used my mind. I questioned and I listened. I made judgments and then I questioned those judgments. I worked. I made better judgments.
I am not perfect. My dad was not perfect. My uncles were not perfect at Thanksgiving and Christmas. The founders of the nation were not perfect. We can learn from them. We can follow their example or we can learn from their mistake. And we can do both.
I think of myself as better than a lot of people on this, but still I am not perfect. I will never be perfect. I will always be in the struggle. Even when there are no fires burning, you still need the Fire Department. Those who recognize this see the world as it is.
When there is a fire that is destructive and out of control, you do not reason with it. You fight the fire. You can fight a literal fire in three ways: You take away the fuel. You take away the oxygen. You can take away the heat. We are the fuel. We are surrounded by oxygen. We must deal then with the heat.
My words reminded me of the great wildfires out west. These are the times we live in, now. We must deal with that. When the fire comes and is bigger than anything we can handle, we must run. Sometimes you can get far enough out ahead of it. You may need to do a controlled burn to prevent a wild fire from spreading. I like trees, but sometimes you have to cut down a swath to make a firebreak in order to protect the forest. You get the point. I don’t need to go on torturing an extended metaphor. You can see how it applies here.
I totally get the desire to remove them from your life. I did that with many people. But it doesn’t fix the problem. And as I see it, distancing from Others only serves to increase their Otherness, which is at the root of the problem.
So while it may be necessary in some cases, for mental health, or physical safety, for example, it’s not a solution. Jumping out of a burning building doesn’t put the fire out, but people in the burning building need to get out.
The solution is for people who have the capacity to engage, get close, and then smother the fire, get it under control, and find ways to tame and use fire, turning from a destructive force into a tool that can be used for good.
I know it sounds weird to call racism a tool for good, but that’s not what I mean. I mean turning the love of self from a generator of hate for others and into a love for the expanded self that includes all.
Zelda: BOTW Diary (92)
Three more shrines today. I looked them up on the internet rather than discovered them in-game through my own effort.
The first is one in Tabantha. I go there and there’s a mountain with a great stone door in the base, similar to the one in Hebra that I found weeks ago. Like that one, I have to bowl a snowball into it in order to open the door. But I have to carry a small snowball up a hill, then roll it down and have it hit the door. I do this, but the ball just sort of nudges the door, and it doesn’t open. So I hit it with time-stop, and put energy into it, and it knocks the door down.
I don’t really remember the inside of the shrine. I think maybe it just says you already passed the challenge by finding it, and gives me a spirit orb.
The second shrine was in the Gerudo highlands, near the area where I had to rescue some Hylian travellers who got kidnapped by monsters in the canyon ahead of the Gerudo stable. I explored one side of this canyon thoroughly, but the other side, I missed completely. Here, there are three Gorons who are challenging themselves to endure heat. I talk to them and they invite me to partake in the challenge. I put on the flame resistant armor and pass the first challenge, but then they tell me to take it off and prove myself for the second one. I take an elixir and endure the heat with no problem, and a shrine appears.
Inside the shrine, I have to use motion controls to re-orient a cube to electrify all 6 faces of it, to open a door. Then I get into another room, where there’s a more difficult puzzle, involving motion controls and a cube that has wind blowers on it that I need to aim to hit four turbines. Two turbines are on a lower level, but can be raised by activating a switch. There’s a metal box that I can put on one switch, but the other is harder to figure out. I eventually use inventory items to weight down the switch, and it triggers, and then I can blow all four turbines. This opens a third room.
Inside this room, there’s another cube, with six unlit torches on it, and two water fountains. I have to light the torches using a fire in the ceiling, and get all six sides lit without putting them out with the water. It’s tricky, and after failing once I decide to just cheat it and use fire arrows to hit the torches without moving the cube with the motion controls. This makes it easy, and I get a diamond and a spirit orb.
Outside the shrine, I spot another korok seed block puzzle that I hadn’t gotten before. I have enough seeds to buy another shield inventory slot from Hestu, so I go do that.
The third shrine is found by a shrine quest triggered at Tabantha Bridge Stables. I transport there, and there’s a man named Geggle, who I’m supposed to talk to during the day. It’s night, and he’s inside the stables, but talking to him doesn’t trigger the shrine quest. I go sit by a fire until noon, but then he’s nowhere to be found. So I talk to random people at the stable, and I find another korok race puzzle under Tabantha bridge. I can’t find Geggle anywhere, so I go back to the fire and sit by it until morning. At 5am I get up and go back to the stable inn, and Geggle’s sitting where he sits at night, and doesn’t do anything. I have to wait for four hours before he finally gets up and does something, which is to run out from the stable. I follow him, and try talking to him several times, but he just asks me if I need something. I continue to follow him to where he’s running to, and he stops and looks out across the valley. At the far end of it, he is looking at something. I talk to him, and he says he sees something out there, that looks man made, and asks if I can see it too. I use the sheikah scope to get a better view, and see a large design painted on the side of the cliff.
I mark it, and then look on the map to see how far it is, and it’s rather far.
I make the journey, climbing and gliding as much as I can, and get to the end of my trek. There’s s series of scaffolds and catwalks built into the cliff face, with monsters patrolling. They’re not tough, I take care of them easily, and continue toward the point I marked on the map, until I get to where I’m going. This involves riding up two updrafts with the glider, and then I’m there, looking at the giant design painted on the wall. It looks like in the center there’s a shrine pedestal. The painted design looks like lightning and birds, so taking a guess I shoot at the pedestal with a lightning arrow. I barely miss with the first one, as it falls slightly short, but correct my aim and connect with it on the second shot, which reveals the shrine.
This one is another no-puzzle blessing shrine, and I get a diamond and a spirit orb.
I have enough orbs to upgrade my stamina wheel, so I go to Kakariko village and do that.
So that’s 6 shrines in 2 days, and I think there’s now only 2 more left in all of Hyrule for me to find.