Kodama Progress Report 2 - Dreams
The project survives into another progress report! This one is going to be a short and sweet, partly because I’m torn between a few other projects and because working on Kodama is just not easy.
redstrate's Blog
My blog where I post about the things I like and work on!
Latest posts
Kawari Progress Report 21 - Refactoring
This has been a relatively quiet couple of months, there’s no huge headlining features but instead I focused on improving the foundations of the project!
Kodama Progress Report 1 - Noise
So here it is, another progress report series 😭 I jest somewhat, but my opinion of whether to actually do this has been swaying back and forth for a few months now.
Can I have it without the slop?
I’ve been noticing this thing in a few feeds I follow - the “This Week in XYZ” posts that the community puts together for the projects they love. But…
Search Reduction - Hexadecimals
This is a new mini-series about reducing my reliance on search engines (specifically DuckDuckGo) for doing menial tasks unrelated to searching the web.
Kawari Progress Report 20 - Housing
I took a “short” two-month break from writing these progress reports, but we never stopped hacking on Kawari 🛠️
Stop sending me garbage
This isn’t a blog post, it’s a plea.
Kawari Progress Report 19 - Friends
So this one turned out to be a bit of a large one! More social features were implemented while I continued to work on the things we need for instanced content, and of course - plenty of bugfixes.
A better way to play FFXIV 1.x
I never played FFXIV 1.0 while it was running (I was like 10 at the time, okay?) but now it’s not even possible to try it! There are existing server emulators out there, but after looking up how to run them I discovered everything has bit-rotten.
Astra & Novus Status Update: March 2026
This was a surprisingly small time window since the last status report, but there’s quite a bit to get through here.
You should know more about microwork
Micro-working has been a recent hyper-focus of mine. I found that it’s not well-known, despite there being multi-billion companies and a whole cottage industry built around it.
Kawari Progress Report 18 - Sastasha
I decided to wait until the end of this weekend to release this report, because I was actively working on lots of big things!
Experimenting with creating zones in FFXIV
In a previous blog post I was exploring normally inaccessible zones in-game. But how might we go about creating our own?
Kawari Progress Report 17 - Strategy
It’s the new year! This seems to be another strong month as we implemented multiple features, renewed our focus on instanced content and did more ecosystem work.
Stopping Left 4 Dead 2 from crashing on Linux
I wanted to play Left 4 Dead 2 recently, but was super frustrated at it crashing in the middle of playing!
Astra & Novus Status Update: December 2025
Here’s the second (and last) update this year for my various FFXIV projects. It’s also quite timely since I’m cutting new releases this time of year too.
Kawari Progress Report 16 - Year's End
Happy holidays, happy new year and so on! This progress report includes many treats, including: more game features, framework for instanced content support and three patch updates!
Exploring dialogue scripting in FFXIV
Have you ever wondered how dialogue scenes work in-game?
The problem isn't Unreal
Sorry but I need to rant, naturally this was spurred by people spewing nonsense online. I don’t work in the games industry, so if that bothers you then you may want to stop reading.
Kawari Progress Report 15 - Parties
This is yet another delayed progress report, sorry about that. I was busy traveling and there was a flurry of interesting changes to cover.
The XP-Pen Artist 24 Pro works on Linux too
I recently upstreamed support for the 22R Pro to Linux, after battle-testing for years. But XP-PEN also happens to sell a very similar-looking tablet called the 24 Pro, how hard could it be to support that too?
Game Review: Stellar Blade
Didn’t expect another game review, didja? I was excited to play Stellar Blade once it launched on PC, but I actually didn’t follow the game initially - nor knew of it’s existence - until it was announced on PC.
How about this for a statement: Bye, Bluesky!
I have decided right now, to delete my Bluesky account. I might be impulsive, but I maybe I should lean into that sometimes. I went through a couple of drafts but ultimately landed to the only conclusion that made sense to me:
Akademy 2025
A few weeks ago was KDE’s Akademy which was hosted in Berlin, Germany this year!
Kawari Progress Report 14 - Variety
This progress report is a bit delayed due to KDE’s Akademy, but on the flip side that means it’s packed full of cool stuff!
Fixing Steam Game Recording for Baldurs Gate 3
If you play Baldurs Gate 3 on Linux, and skip the launcher you might find Steam’s Game Recording feature doesn’t work anymore.
Kawari Progress Report 13 - Navigation
There’s a nice mix of everything this week, from smaller bugfixes to bigger features!
The XP-Pen Artist 22R Pro works on Linux now
It’s been almost two years since my last update on the project, what changed? And if you aren’t familiar with what I’ve been working on, here’s a quick recap.
I figured out the API to sqexPatch.dll
One of my special interests lately has been exploring the different operating regions of FFXIV.
Kawari Progress Report 12 - Viewing
We have implemented quite a few game features now, and I feel like Kawari is close to completing it’s goal as a FFXIV exploration tool.
Accessing the inaccessible in FFXIV
A GitHub issue in a certain Dalamud plugin caught my attention, they were talking about accessing cutscene areas in FFXIV.
Kawari Progress Report 11 - Commands
It’s been a while since the last update, because I’ve been traveling and trying to relax a bit more. I still have a bit to update, including some nice additions from two contributors!
Of Mutuals and Firehoses
If you look at my Mastodon profile then you might notice I follow a ton of people. (On Bluesky it’s similar but a little lower than I’d like.) How do I manage them, and who do I look for when following?
Making It Rain with Matrix and Webhooks
How I personally grind the Gold Saucer event easily with Hooky!
Kawari Progress Report 10 - Polish
This update is all about polish and making Kawari easier to setup/use. What’s the point of building a project that’s difficult to setup?
Astra & Novus Status Update: May 2025
Sooo… it’s been a while since I wrote one of these. We have a years worth of progress to catch up on, so we’d better begin!
Thoughts on LGM + RMS
I’m attending the Libre Graphics Meeting later this month, and what a way to influence my experience with the event - before it even starts.
Kawari Progress Report 9 - Patch 7.21
Here is a new progress report, mostly smaller things but I managed to complete another patch update!
Morpho, my new Bluesky client
It’s with much duress that I announce I’m releasing yet-another-application, this time a Bluesky client.
Kawari Progress Report 8 - Multiplayer
Here comes several new features, including basic multiplayer!
Obscure Qt: Testing log messages
I noticed that I kept searching for “how do I check for log messages in Qt tests?” online. I figure that is a good enough indicator for “obscure” and now deserves to be saved on my blog
Kawari Progress Report 7 - Scripting
In this update: I added server-side scripting, touched on the client-side scripts it hooks into, and started playing cutscenes!
Kawari Progress Report 6 - Patch 7.2
The 7.2 patch released earlier this week, and I’m happy to report that Kawari survived it’s first major patch release!
Kawari Progress Report 5 - Persistence
Actual logins, character management, pre-built binaries and more!
Kawari Progress Report 4 - Exits
Not as big as the last update, but I implemented a few smaller fixes and finished another game feature.
Kawari Progress Report 3 - Appearances
I spent some time polishing up the project and implementing more packets.
Kawari Progress Report 2 - Foiled
This isn’t actually an update on Kawari, but building tools to make my life easier.
Kawari Progress Report 1 - Introduction
Kawari is a FFXIV server emulator project that I started a few years ago, and today I’m reporting some recent progress.
Reverse Engineering Dolls Nest (Demo) Saves
Dolls Nest released a demo recently, and I wanted to crack open it’s save data.
Navigating Washington D.C. with FOSS
I visited Washington, D.C. recently and want to discuss the open-source software I used to navigate the city.