20
votes
Timasomo 2023: Week 3 Updates
Upcoming Dates:
Week 4 (Final) Update Thread -- Sunday, October 29
Timasomo Showcase Thread -- Sunday, November 5
November 1-4 are for putting finishing touches on the project to ready it for the showcase. We are quickly closing in on the end!
Update us on your progress so far!
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What did/didn't you get done this week?
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Anything go according to plan?
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Anything go off the rails?
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Any successes or struggles to share?
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Do you need feedback or help on anything?
This is your topic to share anything and everything you want about what you’ve made so far.
I have to tap out of Timasomo, unfortunately (as a creator, not as the organizer -- don't worry!).
I was hesitant to even commit at the beginning, and it turns out that hesitation was well-founded. October was already scheduled to be a really busy month for me, and I also have a very challenging bunch of students this year, so work is extra exhausting. Most days the little time I do get I've been using to recharge. As such, I haven't been able to allocate time or energy towards getting of the ground.
I'm at peace with that though. Despite me not doing my own projects, I am so incredibly stoked about all the other incredible ones in progress. It has been a joy to keep up with everyone else's projects in the weekly update threads. Even though I haven't commented much, know that I've read and kept up with every word that gets posted in those threads.
I genuinely cannot wait for the final showcase. I think it's going to be incredible.
Star Trek, text-based interactive fanfiction in Inklescript
I didn't progress as much this week, but progress was made!
Given that my updates got a few votes before, I feel I must stress that I am not a developer and this is my first "game". I am excited about the project, but I wouldn't want anyone to think I'm going to deliver something polished or long. You've been warned!
My impression is that I can spend 4 hours working on something people will breeze through in a minute or two. I like what I am doing, but in the end, it's just not a lot. I could be going faster, but I don't see the point of doing that because, without interesting interactions every step of the way, it would feel like reading a book.
I got to make my first dialogue, it was fun but also messy! "Spaghetti code", as they say.
I don't know what bug bit me, but yesterday I wrote an entire science-fiction short story unrelated to the project. I think this project is helping me overcome my writer's block. It's an entirely different way to think about writing and maybe this unlocked something.
You can read my post on ~creative, but I am also pasting it here because, even though it is not directly a response to the challenge, I think it only happened because of the challenge.
Beam of light in the sky
Last night I saw a beam of purple light in the sky. It was a giant, vibrant thing, like something done with a brush. There was no one with me at the time, but if it had been, they might not have even seen them. It was like that space between two blinks of the eye. Like film photography. Nothing in this world flies like that, and it wasn't like it flew either, it was more like a stone thrown from afar, falling in the distance in a perfect parabola. It fell without a sound, and the earth trembled beneath my feet. When dawn came I went to the beach where I saw the beam of light fall. The tide was coming in but had not yet erased the large circle of burnt sand. I turned on the television waiting for the news, and also looked on the internet. Anything.
The days passed, and, as the memory mixed with other things that were happening, it became more and more distant.
Perhaps there are many inexplicable facts out there about which sensible people think it best to remain silent. My grandfather painted crosses on the doors of his house to ward off werewolves. In the past, some people had statues in their living rooms to ward off hauntings.
We pretend we live in this world here, but the beyond is always out there pressing on the walls of reason. The word is a lamp — it clarifies what is in reach while it reveals and accentuates the darkness that cannot be reached.
Only rarely does what we see on the vigil have the truth of a dream or nightmare. The remaining events are like shallow pencil lines, or they do not penetrate the brain.
I still remember the beam of light in the sky. Even if it haunted me, I could never forget it. It was a little secret that made me special. Taking the subway, buying bread, or walking around the neighborhood, I was more than a man. I was a man with a mystery.
***
There was a tall, thin guy in the middle of the carriage. He had a backpack over his shoulder, arms splayed at the waist. Only us both on the train. During the thirty-minute journey, He maintained balance without using his hands. When I looked at his feet, I noticed that they were floating half an inch off the ground. I felt watched and looked up. He smiled at me. His eyes were milky white, without divisions. A white ball looking towards me.
***
Team meeting at work. Someone commented about the party the previous weekend. Of course, I wasn't invited, and if I was invited, I wouldn't go. There's something very artificial about the way normal people move. Hundreds of muscles to say "Good morning", pull up a chair, display agreeableness, and perform belonging. All the time performing what they already are, lying so that others believe what they already know to be true. It's not enough to be good, you also need to dramatize your own goodness. And they are, in fact, good.
Because they're good, they invite me to the party next week (I'm not going), because they're good, they ask my opinion on all important topics (I don't care), and, because they're good, they'll never say there's no place in that group for a nasty, ugly, stupid guy like me.
I remain in the transition space.
But none of that matters. I am special, and I have an unbreakable, inherent, ontological value. Something that none of them had ever dared to know or conceive.
***
The more books I buy, the less books I read. I cook some rice without anything, open a can of beans someone talks to me on television (fortunately I don't need to respond). I don't own a mirror. The goal is not pleasure, but rather to distract myself from any deep, real, or revelatory thoughts. I don't want to find out anything about myself -- I already know I'm a piece of shit, and that's enough for me. Sometimes I masturbate and I always regret it. I sleep quickly, so terrifying thoughts can't reach me. I always have nightmares, and then completely forget about them. If I don't remember, did it happen? Past me deserved it, present wants nothing more than for him to go fuck himself.
***
I have a recurring nightmare. Like a sheet of paper, my body folds. And folds. And folds. Infinite times. Until I exist in the space of a millimeter, which, in turn, folds as well. Now I am an atom and continue to shrink. I am a quark, a Higgs boson, a proton, a neutron, an electron, a neutrino, and finally, a massless particle. Nothing. However, my incorporeal consciousness, against the laws of physics, still exists, and slowly slips into a black abyss, reflecting, in recursive despair, on the sadness of its own end.
***
I had to change the gallon of water in the office. That's not my job, but someone asked me once and I thought it would be better to keep doing it than talk to a human being. I don't drink water. If I can hydrate at the same time as I kill myself, why make two trips? There's a minibar full of Coca-Cola under my desk.
***
The secretary drank three liters of water without breathing. When she noticed me, she looked back, moved her face robotically toward me, and smiled at me with white eyes.
***
I didn't expect my psychologist to believe that I saw the beam of light in the sky. If the poet creates worlds, science destroys them. The delusional paranoid, the prophet of the non-existent, the depressive, and his pain, all need to be medicated, tamed, and boxed. The cure for insanity also kills terrifying, exciting, and poignant delusions, bleeding into reality with its pulsating, quixotic beauty.
But what if I was right? What if what I saw also passed through my corneas? How many patients are just healthy people reacting appropriately to the inscrutable? And if logic says they exist, why not me?
***
When I left the house a man ran up to me, held my arm tightly, and whispered in my ear with a breath of vodka: "Don't drink the water".
He had a glassy stare, focused on a point in the distance, or maybe some hallucination that was very present to him. He spent a second like that, to emphasize the point, looking in my direction but clearly not seeing me. And he drove away between the cars, his soot skin melting into the asphalt.
***
I tried to buy a soda, but the vending machines, kiosks, and snack bars were selling water. Exclusively. The subway station was crowded and silent — these adjectives never go together in this city. No one elbowed, cursed, or complained to get on the train. The groups followed as a block, with constant speed, as if governed by the same principle and identical motivation. There was beauty in their movements, which resembled more the constant flow of homogeneous fluid than the inherently human chaotic traffic.
***
I didn't change the gallon of water that day. I opened my Coca-Cola and watched. Nobody called me to the team meeting. When I approached, they closed the shutters. I stuck my ear to the door. Total silence. I knocked on the door. After a long wait, someone opened it enough to poke their face out. -
"Yes?"
"I still work here."
I defiantly took a sip of my Coke.
"Ah... yes... you don't drink water, do you?"
"No."
"Oh."
He seemed to be relaying a distant signal. Cleared his throat.
"Maybe you should do that."
***
I texted my psychologist. He told me that in these situations it is important to drink lots of water.
***
The transition was slow and orderly. The city was taken over by a horde of calm people, and even in the subway, there was an unearthly silence. Apparently, they kept going to their jobs every day, repeating a simplified and useless version of their host's everyday movements like lobotomized automatons incapable of strong emotion. I can't say who was the theater for. Perhaps there was, in their consciousness, a remnant of what they once were, which they needed to attend to in some way to maintain them in that state.
On TV, on all channels, non-stop advertisements. "Water is life", "Drink water, join us!", "In this heat, nothing better than a can of water!". Every now and then someone would run outside, looking around like in a horror movie. It's been a while since I've seen anyone.
***
The calm of the Others is unnerving. When I go out on the street they don't chase me, approach me, or show any hostility. They're just there, and because they're there, they make me want to kill them.
The sea wave is not hurt by my punches.
There are always a dozen of them planted at the entrance to my building. They never react. But sometimes they talk.
"You look thirsty"
"Today is a beautiful day to drink water."
"Did you know that the human body is sixty percent water?"
A six-year-old boy turns to me. He wears pants and suspenders, like a child of the 1940s.
"Why don't you love us?"
Even though he's just a puppet, it's hard to ignore the kid's endearing appearance.
They want to convince through emotions, and maybe one day they will.
"Ask that to the boy who lived inside you."
"We are Peter, and Peter is us. Don't you understand? Before he was fragile, now he is eternal..."
I didn't wait for the end. They were making too much sense. I smashed his head with a paving stone.
A fat, hairy man without a shirt continued without wasting any time, in the same ethereal monotone. He didn't bother to disguise his milky, inhuman eyes.
"You are one, and you wish to always be one. For you, it is not possible to be without subtracting, and the existence of the Other in you is the dissolution of everything you value most. If there is a face in God, it looks at you. There is nothing that we are not, and everything in the cosmos pulses with us."
***
It's just a matter of time, and they have more than me.
Sitting at the kitchen table with my last three cans of Coca-Cola, there was no alternative. The glass of water in front of me.
I drank the water.
I remembered when I cried in a movie theater, and the sensation of not being touched.
My fears, memories, traumas, weaknesses, and talents.
The edges of desire and a love that is lacking.
A scream without an answer, a cry without comfort.
A crazy, immense, unruly passion.
My identity, my gender, my name. The edges of my body.
Dissolving gently...
Sweetly welcomed into everything.
How sad to be no longer, because I long for my pain.
I am meaningful. I am meaning.
No more hunger without food, no desire without fulfillment.
My pain consoles others as the pain of others consoles me.
There is nothing in me, I am nothing, everything in me registers and erases.
Lost in translation, I die.
Pretext of conscience.
Massless particle.
Nothing.
I am no longer one.
There is nothing that we are not, and everything in the cosmos pulses with us.
I got more done than I expected, although it wasn't all plain sailing. The main box part of the USB charging station is complete, structurally. As is the drawer which fits into it, and the drawer slide installed. I need to veneer the outside and do a little tuning of the base to make it sit flat - but that's the majority of the main woodworking tasks sorted. I did make a drawer pull but a last-minute error rendered it junk and I've had to order more metal for that one. I also discovered I'm pretty much out of gold leaf so will need more of that. On the plus side I did discover a gilding system I wasn't previously aware of which appears to give crazy good results, so I might invest in that.
I also discovered that one of the usb power hubs I was going to use is unsuitable, but it is the old and relatively low power one, so I ordered a replacement for that, which arrived a few hours ago. Not had time to do anything much with that so far!
Then I fought with FreeCAD for a few hours to design some parts for the cable guides only to discover that my 3D printer's sd card reader is toast, and Peopoly don't seem very interested in supplying the required part to replace it. So I ordered a new printer, I'll fix the Moai when I get the chance and sell it - which I've been meaning to do for ages because while the print quality is great, it struggles when it comes to dimensional accuracy and that's a thing which matters for the kind of printing I tend to do. I suspect that the Elegoo Mars 4 I bought will be a better printer for me, and not having to boot into Windows to use Peopoly's utterly dreadful slicer will be extremely pleasant and might lead to me doing much more 3D printing (and getting better at CAD/Blender, which I really must do!).
So, ups and downs. I filmed a lot more stuff this week, which I will compile into a video for the showcase thread.
Oh, and if anyone in the UK wants a Peopoly Moai 3D laser printer which only needs a new SD card reader... drop me a message :)
I've been... slow, working on my chessboard. But I have a clear plan to follow over the next few days: the board is super simple. Big square with holes punched for magnets. I'll switch to white filament for the top three layers, which will make the checkerboard pattern. Superduper easy, though I might try to find a way to make the squares all flush so you can slide pieces from spot to spot instead of having to pick them up. That'll be extra credit, if I have time.
The pieces were giving me a bit of trouble until I remembered that svg files were a thing. Next chance I get, I'm just going to open up fusion360, make a 1" diameter cylinder tall enough to cover the magnet, punch a hole for the magnet, fillet the bottom to make it easier to pick up, then import an svg of each piece (thank goodness lichess is open source), pop that svg on top of the cylinder and extrude the shape. I can switch filament colors for the art. Barring any unforeseen issues, it should be dead simple. The pawn I might redesign to account for promotion, so it can be rotated to indicate what it's been promoted to. That'll be extra credit if I have time.
Edit to add: I... Cannot believe it was actually that easy to design the pieces. I was expecting some unforeseen issues, but it was literally as simple as I said up there. I forgot how satisfying this hobby can be!
A simple hollow half cylinder with a magnet in it on the side of the board should be good enough to hold the pieces that aren't in play; the magnets I got were stronger than I thought they'd be, so that's good.
Then I just have to put lil holes in the corners of the board so it can hang on push pins, and make the sliding turn indicator. I can do that in Tinkercad, I just need that last minute panic to set in to motivate me.
I can promise you at least a WIP upload on Thingiverse by the end of the month, if you want to print it out yourself
Your Laptop Is Now A Typewriter (YLINAT)
I've almost caught up to where I wanted to be after making zero progress last week. It's really starting to come together!
File i/o is done, and the autosave is working nicely, but one of my TODOs is to set up a file type filter because if autosave is on and someone opens a file that isn't plaintext then it'll break that file almost immediately.
The word count feature is finished, and it tracks both total word count and how many words you've typed since you last opened your file.
Font options are in, but color options are not yet. I'm up in the air about whether color options are really needed... but people like their dark modes. If you're one of those crazy fools who plans to actually use this, let me know either way!
One fun feature I added this week is a set of little (hopefully-)motivational phrases that appear on the "blank page" before you start typing. I wrote a few of them, and ChatGPT helped me out with a few more.
The most important thing left to do, aside from that file type filter, is reading options from a conf file instead of assuming defaults. I also want to add in an optional line width limit (thanks @lou, good idea) and maybe add an option to shrink the text box so you can only see the last few lines (shoutout to @Handshape).
I haven't really been making comments on these posts since I don't have anything shareable, but fuck it -- I've been putting in word on my Goblin conlang since the beginning of this month, more work than I've put into conlanging in months otherwise. And it's going well! I've got a nice list of sound changes sorted and I've put in a bunch of work into semantic paradigms that I didn't have in my older work on this same idea. Probably won't be anything worth showing Tildes folks by the end of the month but it'll still be a lot of progress compared to where I was at beforehand!
My game is quite playable now. Simple economic strategy game where you build up an island and try to make your islanders happy. Game is text-only output, keyboard-only input. Quick to play, games can be won in 5 minutes if you know what you're doing. Not sexy-looking, this is mainly a learning project for me to focus on code and processes.
Download link for the windows binary is in the link above, which also has more details about how to play. Also, here's a video of the game being played.
There are some minor display glitches like misalignments, they'll hopefully be cleaned up next week and don't affect gameplay.
(The flickering when you advance a week is not minor. It's because the screen is redrawn line by line via the console. That's something I'm accepting as a system console project.)
Quite happy with what I managed this week. I tend to overthink and struggle with lots of problems like anxiety when I code, but this week it generally felt smooth and purposeful. There are plenty of places in the code that are far from 'ideal', but are good enough for this project which is nearing completion.
Next week should be mainly tuning costs and interface touch-ups. (I really should add the ability to start a new game without closing and restarting!) I haven't looked at Haxe file I/O yet, a save game feature could be impetus to learn this.
4WD Tercel Wagon Suspension Setup
Week 3: Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.
On Monday of this week I got my long out-of-service 3D printer back up and running. Which, as I mentioned early on, was a needed step to print the seal installation tool. Ran some calibration tests and got to printing! The person that made the file for the seal installation tool had mentioned that some goldilocks-ing of the file might be needed since printers are never 100% dimensionally accurate. So I did some quick hollow draft prints at 99%, 100%, 101%, and 102% versions, 101% was the right size for the seal to sit on the rim so I went with that. Come Sunday and while the seal sits on the rim correctly, the shaft that inserts into the front differential is too large so it won't seat. Measure the shaft and see it's 25.5mm, measure the same area on the actual axle and see it's 25mm, check the file and see the original model is 25.3mm, so the model was wrong from the outset. Lovely.
Did I mention that my printer died again on Thursday so I can't print new install tools until the new parts arrive this week?
Yeah...
Fine, move on to other things when you hit a roadblock.
So I head to the transmission output, remove the old seal, get my box-o-transmission parts, grab the seal I've labeled "transmission output shaft" immediately notice it's not the same as the old one, not even close. Check my list that goes with the labels to make sure I didn't misread, nope. Check the part number online where I purchased it, says it's the transmission output. It's obviously not, their system is wrong.
Did I mention that I was pumped to work on the car on Sunday because it looked like I would be done ahead of schedule and have the car on the ground that day only for it all to be dashed.
Another weekend down, this one just ended up being utterly fruitless to no fault of my own.
Of the, reordered, list we're here now:
Install outer tie rodsInstall steering bellowsInstall ball jointsInstall knucklesPentominoes updates:
I "released" it to a Discord I'm in and asked for feedback, and some of those features were requested by users, and I also have a feature request to make a random puzzle (I think this will be enabled only for the 8x8 square with 4 pieces of terrain - checking whether a puzzle is solveable seems pretty hard, but there's like 4 total invalid boards + symmetries of them so I think I'll just not worry about that detection.
Someone also requested a "tetris mode" since in my repo I gave this project the description "Tetris, but with 5." I would implement this as: Every time you place a piece, if there's no piece or terrain immediately below it, it falls down until it can't anymore. So, if you want to do a puzzle with specific terrain, you can' t preplace the terrain, and you also have to start solving from one side.
I'm not really sure how fun this would be, but it sounds like an amusing feature to add, so I might do it. The biggest challenge here is UX I think, I'd need to animate each piece "falling." I know a bit about FramerMotion though, so I bet I could make it work with this library, and possibly even without displaying the intermediate state of the piece occupying squares in between its initial & final locations.
And...I still need to add proper validation to the Settings menu. Ngl I've been procrastinating on this because it sounds boring, but I'll get to it this week before Timasomo is over!
I may ditch the alternate input UI though, partially because it would need its own hotkeys which sounds a bit irritating, and partially because I think that with the icons, the current input UI is pretty easy.
(I don't think I'm going to start the project I meant to do this month, which was a Projective Set game...but actually finishing a project instead of abandoning it when it's 95% done seems a lot nicer than starting something new.)
I have one of my angels to go. I've opted to not create some sort of poem or story to accompany them as that's not something that would go over in my family. Next week I. Going to figure out my packaging / wrapping options.
First, before I begin, here's a link to the current version of the game: itch.io link -- to access the page you will need to use the password
timasomo. (If you play the game please let me know what you think! anything that confused you, that you liked, or disliked -- all feedback is useful!)I wanted to record another video to show how the game currently looks, and I recorded a whole run, but afterwards I found out that I didn't set up the screen region properly in OBS so part of the game was cut off... oops. I might try recording another run later, if I do I will post it here.
Still quite productive. I did manage to add another music track, which was the one goal I mentioned last week, so now during the run you don't have to listen to the same thing song for most of the run. After some feedback from lou and my friend I added an option to auto cast spells -- you can now hold shift and you will instantly cast spells when they get charged, or press T which will toggle auto casting until you turn it off again. I added daily runs to the game -- this is a run that should be basically the same for everyone who tries it on the given day, similar to what most roguelites have. I added a run history window where you can see the results of your previous runs. The game now also has 3 characters instead of one. I am not really sure what exactly I want to do with the characters -- currently they change which elements you have access to, which doesn't change the game that much in the grand scheme of things. Maybe I will change that more in the future. At minimum I like that the player doesn't play as a super static character now, at least the player now has some extremely simple animations when casting spells. And as always I just added more stuff. Let me count some of it... ...ok I am back -- so there are now 71 items if I counted right, 29 spells and 3 characters which use 12 different elements.
Next week is the last full week of Timasomo, I am not sure yet what all do I want to do. On one hand there's a lot of stuff that I could add. On another hand I think I might actually try to fully finish the game by the end of Timasomo. It would be nice to have the game done and put it on Steam. If people play it and like it I will keep working on it, and if they don't, well I guess that would be it and at least it would be finished.
I also got sick this weekend, it didn't really stop me from being productive and I am still doing a ton, but it's still super annoying to be sick... I am so snotty and feel so disgusting.
Oh and another thing! The results from Ludum Dare got published, my game got 61st place overall, which is solid, and 12th place in the "fun" category -- which I think is pretty nice! Hopefully that means that people do like the concept of the game!
Congrats on the Ludum Dare placement, looks promising!
Some quick thoughts from playing past 20:
QOL
Gameplay
If it ever did become relevant it wouldn't be satisfying to have a run end because the "build" I'd spent time on was destroyed by chance.
Thanks for playing and for the great feedback, really really appreciate it!
QOL
Definitely should be an option, agreed!
That's a good idea, I'll have to think about how I can do that
Yep, that's a good idea, I'll add always showing that as an option when auto casting is on.
I don't want the game to completely play itself so I think I am not adding this, I want the player to feel like they are still doing something. Not that there's anything wrong with autobattlers, I do love them.
Gameplay
The ascensions are based on the ascensions in Slay the spire -- they are basically modifiers that make the run harder -- stuff like variant spells are rarer, enemies have more health, enemies spawn quicker, etc -- currently there are 10 of them. Beating the game on ascension 0 unlocks ascension 1, beating the game on ascension 1 unlocks ascension 2 etc. I am mainly trying to balance the game around beating the game -- which is currently beating wave 20 and not endless mode. I would like ascension 0 (the game when you play for the first time) to be easy, so most players win on their first or second run, and the ascensions afterwards to be where players can get really challenged.
Agreed! Enemies that buff other enemies sounds good and interesting, but I will have to really make sure that they stand out and are very noticeable.
It is mostly deterministic -- it's a bit similar to how tetris works, basically what I'd call "4 bag" -- you always get the 4 spells you have shuffled up, and when you cast all of them you get a new bag of 4. That also means that you can get the same spell twice in a row, but maximum once every 4 spells. I am not sure if I want to change this. Initially the system worked as you describe but I think I like the current system more as it adds more variety and you have to pay more attention.
I think synergies being triggered for having a 3 of a kind won't get changed, from the options (2, 3 and 4) it feels like the most interesting one to me. Quite often I feel like the run is pulling me in a few different directions which makes the choices interesting -- do I get rid of my wind synergy which is currently made up of only common non-variant spells to get this strong variant spell? Do I maximize the amount of "explosive" spells which an item I have encourages, or do I aim to keep my synergy instead? Do I use my skip right now, risking that I won't be able to keep my item active at the final wave, but being able to keep a strong spell? Often I try to hoard my skips to make sure that I will be able to use them on the last few waves, but this way I miss out on the best spells being more common, which is also an interesting dilemma! (this isn't documented anywhere, but the further into the run you go, the better the chances are to get variant spells and rare spells)
Once again, thanks for playing the game and writing out the amazing feedback! I'll try to implement as much of it as possible by next week.
Targeting 20 waves with difficulty coming from ascensions probably fixes a lot of my impressions! Definitely take the feedback with kilos of salt. One play through from someone who isn't much of a gamer doesn't give much insight into the game loop.
I think one of the things that works really well with tetris (or some TD games?) is that the player is rewarded for keeping themself on a razors edge on difficulty. It won't fall below some threshold (ascensions / difficulty setting), but if it isn't stimulating they press ↓ or send a next wave.
The bag approach is fine, but I think your game is a little different from tetris. In tetris I can glance at the stage and know what's going on, keeping a lot of my focus on the next block.
In your game there's multiple enemies spawning with dynamic movement behavior. Their density/location is what attracts my attention and I'm not sure if I'd know what's going on if I looked away. You also have a larger pool of spells, modifiers, with varying timers. The progress bar can also be a little ambiguous (iirc?) since you're incentivized to choose the same element/color.
Being able to plan something like "3 shots boss, 1 shot AoE"-- as a quick impression-- feels more rewarding than trying to react in the .5 to 2 second charge time of a random(ish) spell.
Ah, I see, I did unlock the ascension, just wasn't clicking at the right place to adjust it! I see the 10 notches but with only the first unlocked it's either at 0% or 100%, not sure if something like 3 unlocks would have it getting off-center for the notches? An indicator like "0 / 5" might also help, or some arrow buttons?
Cheers, and again, nice work!
I actually already fixed the ascensions slider always having 10 notches even if you didn't unlock the ascensions yet -- yeah that was confusing haha.
Like some others in this update thread, progress has been slow this week. Life gets in the way, it happens.
Last week I planned on completing five tasks. I completed two, but had to be away from my PC most of the weekend, so used that time offline to work on some math for a third task and fourth task.
Remove (rather, disable) the debugging tools I built to verify planets' orbits and positions.
Improve
resolutionprecision.These are done; the scale of the solar system is now fixed, and the focal point of the camera controls is locked to the player's spacecraft. I can still verify positions of objects by dolly-zoom, but I can't warp to any arbitrary position. The odd rippling of positions is no longer present, so everything has nice and smooth motion on screen.
Improve rendering. Nothing fancy - some basic features to help the player orient themselves. [...]
I made no progress on this task. Hard to work on graphics code when I'm away from my PC.
Heads-up-display indicators. [...]
Numerical values. [...]
I'd already done some brainstorming on these, and I think I have some good ideas. However, I realized I'd underestimated the complexity in the math to support them.
Parabolas and course planning
The core of my idea is to use the current state of the player and the target (position, velocity, and thrust) to extrapolate the player's position relative to their target. It traces out a parabola in space, so if I draw that parabola centered on the target's current position, I hope it would be an intuitive navigational aid for the player.The apex of the parabola indicates the player's lowest speed relative to the target. The player wants to adjust their heading and thrust so the parabola is narrow (low transverse speed) and the apex of the parabola is near their target (low longitudinal speed at closest approach).
There will also be (up to) two points of closest approach; the player also wants to adjust their heading and thrust so at least one point of closest approach occurs at the apex of the parabola.
My hope is that the player controls on thrust and heading will have intuitive effects on the shape of the parabola. My intuition is that they will. We'll see once I get things implemented. For example: Increasing or decreasing thrust directly away from the target should bring the apex toward/away from the target. Fine adjustments to heading should move the parabola in roughly the same direction.
And similarly, if the target adjusts their heading or thrust, it would be immediately reflected in that extrapolation so the player could compensate.
However! My error was in assuming that computing the time of closest approach would be simple. The formula for relative position over time is a quadratic, so I assumed that solving for closest approach would be a matter of solving a linear equation. It's a classic minimization problem in calculus, right? Well, no. The equation for relative displacement is a quadratic, but the formula for relative distance is (bounded by) a quartic. Not so easy to minimize.
Imagine the player makes a fast close approach on their target, but overshoots; they continue accelerating back toward their target, and make another fast close approach. In the one-dimensional case, those close approaches are in fact collisions, and correspond with roots of a quadratic. The classic quadratic formula works, and things are good! However in the three-dimensional case, those close approaches are almost certainly not collisions, and instead correspond with minima of a quartic. That's harder to minimize, and things are bad.
So while I was offline this weekend, I brought a notebook and pen, brushed up on my multivariate calculus, and hashed out the math to find time of closest approach and slowest approach. All that (should) remain for implementation is to compute those dot products and plug them into the cubic formula to find roots.
Project: Photo Zine
Short and late update from me. Been pretty busy with work, unexpectedly had to do some local travel for a video shoot. But I'm still on track, I think.
This week I was focused on layout and sequencing for the zine. So far, I have 14 pages 'done' (as in, in a good state to leave them for now, before a final pass on everything.) I did discover this week that I had made a mistake with my templates, but it was pretty minor. Didn't take up too much time to correct the pages that I had already laid out.
That's kind of it. In the thick of it, but keeping a decent pace. I think it's pretty reasonable to expect that I'll have it all done by next week's post!
(Edit: fixing punctuation)
The challenge
Create something, every day for the month of October.
(Something can include, but is not limited to, making music, drawing pixel art, writing 1 page of fiction, or going out on a photography session. Anything goes.)
Additionally, finish, mix, master, and upload online at least 1 song by October 31st.
How's it going
Read Week 1 update here.
Read Week 2 update here.
Week 3 can be summarized as "life's been getting in the way, and I've helped it do so".
The weekend was very full and exhausting so I didn't find the motivation to do anything. And during the week I kept creating excuses.
However, I've tackled one of my main issues with making music - composition/arrangement and expanding an 8-bar loop into something bigger.
I've found writing down the ideas in my head, to be very effective. Describing exactly how the intro sounds in my head, and letting that inner music play out the way my brain wants it to and then describing what follows, helped me trace the outline for a different progressive house idea.
Basically the intro starts with some bell/xylophone sounds, then a piano playing chord stabs, and swells up into introducing the lead playing the main melody. White noise effects and some light percussion peppered throughout.
I now need to find a good drum kit for the chorus, but that's on hold because of the next thing.
I've started to hit the limitations of my DAW (Cubasis 3 on my Android phone). I needed a clip distortion effect and it doesn't have one. The Android version doesn't support third-party plugins, only the iOS one does. So I tried using a trick I learnt, where setting a compressor with a very low threshold, attack and release, can sometimes cause it to distort, however it doesn't work on Cubasis' compressor. Maybe it was a quirk of Rough Rider, the plugin I used years ago when I had my last musician phase.
I've been thinking of switching (back) to Bitwig Studio, but I currently don't own a laptop besides my work machine and my SO's laptop, and I don't want to clutter his computer. (Unrelated - can Framework shut up, take my money and give me one of their laptops, please? Their EU expansion has been painfully slow.)
Also today I joined the Patreon of one of my favorite artists as a teen - Obsidia, and he's put out a set of hardstyle kicks I want to play around with, so I know what I'm doing tonight.
Pi plant watering
Good progress overall, but I’m not as far along as I’d expected at this point. Prototype case works well in PLA so I’ll be printing it in ASA after it’s had a bit of testing. Solenoid and water reservoir (coke bottle) works well leaving two main items that need addressing. My moisture sensor setup leaves a lot to be desired it’s functional, but a mess and difficult to tinker with and my cabling is awful and exemplifies a millennial with good computer skills and fuck all hands on ability. I have a plan to get some terminals and multi-core cables that will hopefully improve that.
The code is still barebones, but does the job. I’ll refine that as I go. I think I’ll meet the Tiamoso deadline for a simple prototype, but how pretty it will be is very up in the air.
Alright, I have what is most likely gonna be sad news: I'm not sure I'll be able to finish Timasomo. I got sick this week with a nasty cold that has just floored me. Out of energy, especially after the days I had to work while still under the weather, and it means that I just haven't had enough umph to get things done.
I still wanna see what I can get done these last couple days, but I'm not holding my breath to have a finished, or even very complete, project by then.
It sucks, 'cause I started with energy and high hopes, but things just didn't work out well. Such is life sometimes. I'm still psyched to see what others show off though.