Apos's recent activity

  1. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    Apos
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    I mostly tested locally. Here is one I just uploaded: ProjectCore. It's an older game from a gamejam I did a while ago. The theme was "Change is good" so I made a tower defense game where you can...

    I mostly tested locally. Here is one I just uploaded: ProjectCore. It's an older game from a gamejam I did a while ago. The theme was "Change is good" so I made a tower defense game where you can move your towers and the paths also move. The towers have a reset mechanic when you move them which allows you to micro them so that they shoot faster.

    The controls might be a bit hard at first. You can right click to place towers down initially. To move them, you can left click on a tower, then left click somewhere else.

    There are 3 types of towers. You can switch the type of a tower by left clicking one and then using the keys 1, 2, 3.

    To go switch faster, you can instead use the columns of the keys. For the first tower, the keys are Q, A, Z. The second is W, S, X, etc.

    The game starts slightly slow and the difficulty ramps up as more and more paths are added.

    1 vote

  2. Comment on Toy Story's villain is a lie in ~movies

    Apos
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    I found this YouTube channel the other day after watching Pluribus. His analyses have been really interesting so far. He always brings new ideas that I haven't considered before that show movies...

    I found this YouTube channel the other day after watching Pluribus. His analyses have been really interesting so far. He always brings new ideas that I haven't considered before that show movies or series in a new light.

    I rewatched Toy Story 1 during the holidays and this video completely flips the story on its head. I had read some discussions about it the other day, since Toy Story 5 will be coming out next summer, and the fact that Sid becomes a garbage man came up, but I didn't think too deeply about it. iirc it was brought up in a negative light. I like this new framing that Sid sees value in trash. It closes his arc quite well. For him, things have value even if they aren't in pristine conditions.

    5 votes

  4. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    Apos
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    I've been making MonoGame libraries for a few years now. They help me create games much faster. Built on the same API as MonoGame, there's now KNI that allows building games for the web. This week...

    I've been making MonoGame libraries for a few years now. They help me create games much faster.

    Built on the same API as MonoGame, there's now KNI that allows building games for the web. This week I ported all my libraries to KNI and they all worked on the first try. It's pretty cool to have all my games instantly work in a web browser.

    I'm participating in a local gamejam next week so it should be fun to toy with this tech. I can write one codebase and release games on many platforms. The current platforms that I have tested are Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, web.

    8 votes

  5. Comment on Eric Barone makes a $125,000 donation to the MonoGame project in ~comp

    Apos
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    Eric Barone is the creator of Stardew Valley. MonoGame is a C# library that allows you to create your own game engines. Here's a (not complete) list of games made with MonoGame:...

    Eric Barone is the creator of Stardew Valley. MonoGame is a C# library that allows you to create your own game engines.

    Here's a (not complete) list of games made with MonoGame: https://monogame.net/showcase/. Some of the bigger ones include Terraria, Stardew Valley, Fez, Carrion, Bastion, Celeste, etc.

    Other places where this was posted:

    13 votes

  7. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    Apos
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    I've been working on my shape rendering library. snip It's a library that can render shapes in MonoGame projects along with other XNA derivatives like KNI and FNA. Recently I added gradients fills...

    I've been working on my shape rendering library. snip

    It's a library that can render shapes in MonoGame projects along with other XNA derivatives like KNI and FNA. Recently I added gradients fills which took quite a bit of research. Behind the scene, it uses signed distance fields.

    I'm adding new features so that I can use it next month in a local gamejam that I'm participating in.

    2 votes

  8. Comment on Who can name the bigger number? in ~science

    Apos
    Link Parent
    Another one that gives me a similar vibe is https://prog21.dadgum.com/. I was so sad when he decided to stop posting. I still didn't find another blog like that except maybe the one in the OP.

    Another one that gives me a similar vibe is https://prog21.dadgum.com/. I was so sad when he decided to stop posting. I still didn't find another blog like that except maybe the one in the OP.

    2 votes

  9. Comment on Who can name the bigger number? in ~science

    Apos
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    Found this article by mistake a while ago while coding my infinite canvas drawing application. It's not exactly what I was looking for but it brought me to a place that I'd never have expected....

    Found this article by mistake a while ago while coding my infinite canvas drawing application. It's not exactly what I was looking for but it brought me to a place that I'd never have expected.

    The question is simple but I think it quickly takes a philosophical turn.

    5 votes

  11. Comment on Gimp Tutorial for Idiot? in ~comp

    Apos
    (edited )
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    As a programmer, I love GIMP, it feels like it's designed exactly for my use case where other tools aren't as precise. For drawing shapes, if they are all the same, you can do your selection and...

    As a programmer, I love GIMP, it feels like it's designed exactly for my use case where other tools aren't as precise.

    For drawing shapes, if they are all the same, you can do your selection and use the Stroke Selection button (icon that's in the bottom right) in the Selection Editor. After you stroke for the first time, clicking that button while holding shift will repeat the same stroke. That should allow you to do a different selection and then shift click it for a faster workflow.

    Oh btw, every item in a menu should have a hotkey even if one isn't shown. For example, let's say you want to merge two layers, you can right click the top layer and hit W. iirc in the past, the letter to click was underlined, I don't know if they removed the underline but everything in the menus should have a button.

    Otherwise, you can generate the shape in an external program and paste it in GIMP.

    You should really view GIMP as an image editor where you work with existing images instead of as a drawing application.

    Edit: Looks like what I'm talking about is called an accelerator or an access key and you can see the underline when you hold alt and then navigate in the menus.

    Edit2: For every element that you hover in the user interface, you can hit F1 to bring up context appropriate documentation.

    7 votes

  12. Comment on Keynote - Blender Conference 2025 in ~tech

    Apos
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    They had a lot of interesting talks throughout the conference: Keynote — Blender Conference 2025 Compositing 5.0: Powerful yet Simple — Blender Conference 2025 Inside Blue Zoo's R&D: Building a...

    They had a lot of interesting talks throughout the conference:

    3 votes

  14. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    Apos
    Link
    I've been working on a shape library using SDF math. (Essentially math that point towards the edge of the shape, allowing you to know when a pixel is inside a shape, a certain distance from the...

    I've been working on a shape library using SDF math. (Essentially math that point towards the edge of the shape, allowing you to know when a pixel is inside a shape, a certain distance from the border, etc.)

    I finally added gradient fills which was a bit of a rabbit hole.

    https://github.com/Apostolique/Apos.Shapes

    This allows creating games without any sprites, or it's really useful for creating debug tools or various visualizations.

    1 vote

  15. Comment on One Piece | Season 2 first look in ~tv

    Apos
    Link Parent
    There's a new anime adaptation that's currently being worked on called The One Piece. snip. It will be made by Wit Studio (Attack on Titan, Vinland Saga, Spy Family, etc). They released this...

    There's a new anime adaptation that's currently being worked on called The One Piece. snip. It will be made by Wit Studio (Attack on Titan, Vinland Saga, Spy Family, etc). They released this behind the scene video: 『THE ONE PIECE』 Behind The Scenes of Production. I have high hope for that adaptation.

    They'll be remaking the whole thing from the start and it's supposed to be seasonal instead of every week.

    1 vote

  16. Comment on One Piece | Season 2 first look in ~tv

    Apos
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    They also confirm season 3 at the same time.

    They also confirm season 3 at the same time.

    4 votes

  19. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    Apos
    Link Parent
    This is quite likely what I'll have to do. I need to figure out a good way to represent any coordinate. I can represent a position with 3 values: X, Y and exponent. Those can all be integers. You...

    This is quite likely what I'll have to do. I need to figure out a good way to represent any coordinate. I can represent a position with 3 values: X, Y and exponent. Those can all be integers. You can think of the exponent as scaling the grid size towards or away from the origin. Works well for zooming in or out on the origin until I run out of values for the exponent (-2,147,483,648 to 2,147,483,647 which would be unimaginably large).

    I'm not yet sure how to represent X and Y values outside their range. If you pan away from the origin and zoom in, you quickly end up in a position way outside the range of any fixed size data type I could chose.

    2 votes

  20. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    Apos
    Link Parent
    I get a list of position and pressure from the tablet driver and I just create a line between the points. The line drawing is done with a signed distance field where I only draw a fill color and...

    I get a list of position and pressure from the tablet driver and I just create a line between the points. The line drawing is done with a signed distance field where I only draw a fill color and no outline. snip More info here.

    The mouse code shows it pretty well: https://github.com/Apostolique/Mitten/blob/9a5bf951d12face22420e49d3ceb36b302e61f04/Game/GameRoot.cs#L418-L443.

    The _draw.Pressed() starts the action. The _draw.Held() happens as long as the mouse is still pressed. _draw.Released() then ends the stroke.

    CreateLine(a, b, size) is the API to create a line. It doesn't commit the line to the history yet until the stroke is over.

    CreateGroup(); is what commits all the lines so far to history. That allows undo and redo to remove all the lines that constitutes the stroke in one go.

    The code is executed in a game loop over multiple frames.

    The StrokeWithTablet code is pretty much the same but there are a few edge cases to handle.

    2 votes