What programming/technical projects have you been working on?

Hey, all! I'm still working on my game. I haven't had the time to participate in this thread in a while, but now that I have some time, I wanted to share some updates:

Curse Mixing Mechanic

So I have this mechanic where you can apply "curses" on enemies. They don't do anything by themselves (I should probably change that), but when you mix two different curses, you get an effect! I've been working on this for a while, but I've only finally come up with a way to manage them in a sensible way - which is by making each word a keyword (or a curseword, if you will). Here's a little diagram showing the different curses and their combinations:
https://imgur.com/OqIP2kj

Prior to coming up with this keyword naming scheme, I was really just making things up as I went and didn't have a good grasp of how to go about pairing curses together.

Here's some of the effects in action - the last two videos were before I thought to name them by keyword rather than by color:

• DAMAGE + DEBUFF = Detonate Debuff https://imgur.com/S9pi0Cc
• SPREAD + DAMAGE = Spread Damage https://imgur.com/zf95aHc
• SPREAD + DEBUFF = Spread Debuff https://imgur.com/nyk9AYm

Level Editor

I also have a level editor for a hexagonal grid that I recently updated. The process used to be super tedious, so I updated it in a way that lets me "paint" things into a level. Here's what it looks like:

• Old Version - https://imgur.com/3kjuMEu
• New Version - https://imgur.com/0qCut1H

There's actually a built-in hexagonal tilemap feature for Unity, but I found it super limiting and didn't jibe with the coordinate system I wanted to use.

Classical AI Updates

I'm not talking about LLMs, just good old-fashioned gameplay AI. I recently started creating levels with more enemies in them, and I discovered a few bugs with pathfinding and decision-making.

Here's one where if an enemy couldn't find a path to you, it would just attack you from afar: https://imgur.com/TyRNeWo

I came up with a fix about a month after I discovered that bug. Now the enemies would:

• No longer use melee attacks from afar if they somehow run out of things to do
• If an enemy doesn't have a path towards you, they will recalculate a path that ignores other enemies on the map, and then follow that path until they run into an obstacle.
  Here's what that looks like: https://imgur.com/Nq2WXtF

I also found issues with my ranged attackers - they would do nothing if there was no clear path to the player. They were also super simple and naive - they'll just stand where they are and not move unless the player is out of range. I updated them so that:

• They would try to maintain a distance away from the player - exactly the distance they would need to hit the player from afar
• They would try to hit the player from afar in spite of obstacles or initial pathfinding failures

Here's how it looks like now: https://imgur.com/0vKoYZZ

Personal Task Management Woes

I hope I'm not alone in this but... when I make one of those checkbox items on Obsidian, I tend to lose track of them, especially when I jot them down on a daily note. I've been trying the Tasks plugin for Obsidian (from here: https://publish.obsidian.md/tasks/Introduction) which has been pretty fun to use. It will try to find all checkboxes in all of the notes of your vault and collect them into a list. It also has support for task schedules, prioritization, and scriptable filtering/sorting among other things. I like it!

⚠ A word of warning, you MUST specify a global filter if you don't want your Obsidian to crash on you, if you happen to be someone with a lot of checkboxes littering your vault. I made the mistake of ignoring the global filter (the instructions tell you it's a good idea to use it, I was foolish), and I had to edit a markdown file with another text editor to get rid of the issue haha.

If you made it this far, thank you for your time!

Continuing to work on https://gametje.com with a new game and fine tuning it. I spent the last week or so creating a blog using Hugo. It was difficult to pick out a theme I liked but I found a simple one which suits my needs.

Here's a link to my first proper blog post: https://blog.gametje.com/posts/2025-03-06/ which discusses the new game Sync Think and some of the design challenges. If you want to try the new game, you'll need to sign up and toggle the alpha tester checkmark. Looking to get it out of alpha soon.

I have been making some good progress on my diy MP3 player project. I have made a python class that can read in all the inputs from my clickwheel using the GPIO pins. Now I am modifying the codebase of the original app that I am forking from using an iPod clickwheel to my modern equivalent. The original code had the application written in Python and the clickwheel driver in C, with them communication via sockets. Since my clickwheel code is written in Python, I am trying to have it not communicate over sockets. I think my buttons are properly coded into the spotify application, but the clickwheel rotations are not coded yet. I tried testing by deploying the code with only the buttons working, but there seems to be an issue with either my modifications, I deployed it incorrectly, or the original code no longer works with Spotify.

My next step is to create a clean install of piOS and try deploying the original code to see if that is working. Part of that process will involve be configuring my screen and other features of my pi again. Therefore, I also want to create a snapshot of my SD card before installing the original codebase, so that I have an easy snapshot to revert to when I want to switch what software I am deploying in the testing process.

Edit: Another thing I have been working on is creating a portfolio website to hopefully start doing some freelance work. I have not realize in the past couple of months how much my web development skills have atrophied, in that I am finding I am googling basic syntax a lot more than I did a year ago, so probably a good thing I have started this back up again.

Edit 2: I have gotten the original code to work now. I originally deployed it wrong, so now that I have successfully deployed it, I should be able to easily deploy my own code, and then start the debugging mess on my code

sigh It's something to do backend when you don't have a whole lot of control over the front end. It requires you to hack in ways I really really don't want to. As a way to fend off frustration, I'm now going to begin writing lyrics based of '2 days into college'. Because man.

2 days into backend

I'm two days into backend, and I'm three stories behind.
There's this client, let's name them Client.
They say it works just fine.
But it doesn't really sit with me quite right.
'Cause they don't see what things are really like.
And I keep accidentally triggering a new set of functions in the middle of the night.

I write the code tired, and I write the code with bloat
And I didn't write the code that fired, but I'll just drink coffee cold.
See I don't like hacking things but must make this function as I've been told.
So I just write around and keep my head down
And hope my career unfolds.

And my seniors keep telling me that I'm coding so well
I try to trust them honestly, I find it hard to tell
If I need Copilot or I need Git
To try a lot or just a bit
To tell myself, I code the line in
"It's fine, I'll just hack it all in"

I tend to forget, my position here is quite young
In a way this career of mine has only just begun
And I've got time
I've got time

I'm two days into backend with a busy, busy mind
That feature we call Frontend is an enemy of mine.
My colleagues say I'm crazy say I took it way to far.
'Cause the frontend passed it over as it doesn't take the JSON as part.

I'm only two days into backend and my desk is now a mess.
There's just so much that I want to build that I have not build yet.
There's just so much I want to see and far too little developed.
On my mind, it runs so further away, it's easy to forget.

That to all end users it looks like I'm doing so well.
I try to see it honestly, I hack it all to well.
If I've code fully or there's something I omit.
I need to sleep after each commit.
They said "Push", I said "alright".
I think I won't, I maybe might.
I probably should just Fetch it slow.
I'll name the branch well, but coffee that I know.

The one thing that's important above everything else.
Is to learn not to push before the code is tested well.
I try believe it when I say
If it's meant to work it'll work anyway
I'll be true
I've got time.
I've got time.

That's where I'm at, to be honest.
Just two days
Two days into backend.