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Started working on world 2, and one of the main mechanics of this world: quicksand. It won’t kill the player directly, but it will make it difficult for them to manoeuvre, and getting too low could cause death. Might be one of the more annoying mechanics in the game, but that’s kind of the point.
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The results of my first play-test are in. And overall, they were pretty positive: movement was good, hit-boxes were fair, and it was described as “quite fun,” which was better than I was hoping for.
One thing I’ll need to look out for is telegraphing secrets. The number of secrets is indicated at the end of the level, and based on the play-tester’s feedback, they seemed to have spent a lot of time running against walls trying to find them. There is one secret in the level 1-1 that I thought was telegraphed well, and I can confirm that the player found them all. But I will concede the others required the player to make a leap of faith, and fall into an area that the player will usually want to avoid, which is pretty unfair. So I’ll need to fix that.
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Ugh, dealing with financial institutions is so annoying. Forms, solicitors, settlements; everything’s more complicated than it first appears.
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🔗 How to create an animated tile in Godot 4's tilemaps
Useful tutorial for creating animated tiles. You don’t need to use animated sprites to do this. It can all be done using tilesets.
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Apple’s style of public writing is so grating. I’m sorry, but seeing thoughts written in a way to suggest that they’re made by someone who is “just a regular person” comes off as patronising when it’s backed by a three trillion dollar company. I just can’t suspend disbelief in thinking that these are genuine, off-the-cuff comments.
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Saw my barista put a few coffee beans in the chocolate shaker when he refilled it this morning. He says that it helps break up the clumps of chocolate powder that form near the bottom. That’s brilliant! I’m going to do this when I get home.
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Got some answers about the recent train shutdown. Reason why busses couldn’t run from our station had nothing to do with the overhead lines. It was just logistics; turning the busses around was easier to do at the station they did run from. Okay. Interesting to know that.
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As described by sod on Micro.blog:
It’s just people (not algorithms) sharing what they love. Hanging out there usually puts me in a good mood.
An apt description. I also like the ’90s early-web vibe they’re going with.
Via: Reply on Micro.blog
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Flexoki is an inky color scheme for prose and code. Flexoki is designed for reading and writing on digital screens. It is inspired by analog inks and warm shades of paper.
Always on the lookout for nice colour schemes, and this one fits the bill.
Via: Mastodon
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They used our building, so now we’re using their typeface.
This looks good: a font based on tags used by vandals. I have no need for this now, but who knows what the future may bring?
Via: Mastodon
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Origami is a new programming language that complements HTML and CSS for making small- to medium-scale websites.
This certainly looks intriguing.
Via: Mastodon
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🔗 Ente - Private cloud storage for your photos, videos and more
Might be a suitable system for my photos should I want to get off Google Photos.
Via: Mastodon
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🔗 YouTube: Replace batteries numpad Sculpt Ergonomic Desktop
It’s surprisingly complicated to open up the battery compartment of the Sculpt number pad. This video proved to be very useful.
Via: Microsoft’s Support Documentation
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TIL: CR2420 button batteries are not the same as CR2032, no matter what your eyes say to you.
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🔗 Incomplete JSON Pretty Printer
This looks pretty useful. Requiring JSON to be syntax correct prior to formatting it is a huge pain.
Via: Simon Willison
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I’ve started keeping links to interesting posts and software packages on a separate link blog. These links would usually go into my Linkding instance, but I may repurpose that for things I’d like to revisit later, whereas this site will be more of an archive of things I’ve seen.
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This site, now served from Europe. 🇪🇺
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Okay, I too tried out ChatGPT’s new image generator, mainly it’s graphics design capability. Got it to generate a logo for our bocce club. I’m impressed by the results: it’s pretty much what I imagining.
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A bit more on the Godot game this morning, this time working on background tiles artwork. Made some grey masonry tiles for the end castle sequences. Also tried some background rocks for underground areas. I’m pretty rubbish at anything organic, but they didn’t turn out too bad.
Right side has the background tiles surrounded with their complementary foreground tiles on the left. -
It pains me that Forgejo’s CI “pipeline running” animation spins anti-clockwise, as if you’re going backwards in time. A metaphor, perhaps? Services get undeployed, binaries go back to the source code, projects return to their seeds of ideas. 🤔💭
Oh, build’s done. Never-mind. 😀
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I don’t think I’ve ever regretted spending money on a solo or small team’s online publication. Sure I’ve cancelled subscriptions when I lost interest, but it’s not like I’ve said to myself that I wish I’ve never signed up in the first place.
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I always felt a little sorry for the front-end developers on their team: always under the pump when UI changes come through, and well… (whisper) the tooling. So it was a suprise to hear one frontend dev who’s starting doing backend work that he always felt sorry for us backend devs: having 10 different services that we need to change and worry about.
The grass is always greener… eh. Well, actually it’s more like the reverse: as in our grass is greener and we fell sorry for our neighbour who just can’t get a lawn established.
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One thing I’m noticing on Bluesky: very few hashtags in posts, including those in the Discover feed. I expected a hashtag-per-post ratio closer to that of classic Twitter, but it seems closer to that of Mastodon. It’s nice.
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Now that trains are running again, it got me wondering whether my temporary commute, where I drove to a nearby station, is worth keeping. I don’t think it is. It got me into work earlier, which is nice, but with all the road traffic, getting home was slower and more of a hassle.
