busybee comics

I went and finally made it so that I can put high-resolution (aka HiDPI or retina-ready) graphics on this site. So far I’ve only updated the images for the various Unity series and for a selection of other recent comics.

The way it’s implemented is, as is always the case with these things, a little bit hackish, so if you’re noticing anything particularly weird (like images being doubled, extra stuff being downloaded, or high-resolution images being loaded on normal-DPI screens), please let me know!

So far I haven’t replaced any of the site graphics themselves; that will have to come later, because I actually don’t have high-resolution versions of those assets, so I’ll have to recreate them (or use this as an excuse to make better ones or whatever). But in any case, now comics look a lot better on my Retina MacBookPro and on my iPad.

(Of course this does complicate my publishing workflow so I’ll have to figure out how I want to handle that going forward… bleah.)

Also, this is only on the site itself for now, because I can’t figure out a good way of doing this that’s RSS-compatible. I put in support for the HTML5 draft specification but most browsers don’t support it just yet.

UPDATE: If you would like HiDPI images in the RSS feed, just subscribe to http://beesbuzz.biz/d/rss.php?hidpi=force instead.

So, there’s this thing called Patreon where you can send a few bucks the way of your favorite creators. A few folks have asked me why I don’t have one, so now now I do.

The way it works is that you pledge a certain amount of money for a certain amount of creative output (in my case, every time I post a comic or a song or whatever), and you can set a monthly limit and so on.

To sweeten the deal, Patreon backers will often get stuff before everyone else; for example, when I’m working on music, Patreon gets the tracks first! And, if I ever get in a spot where I actually have a buffer of comics again, Patreon backers will get to see them before they go live on the site. I’ll also eventually set up rewards for the bigger backers, if I can figure out what those rewards should be in the first place.

This doesn’t mean I’m going to start charging for my content or anything. This is just a way for people to send me money for the things I’m already doing anyway, and it is totally optional (and completely understandable if you don’t chip in).