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What creative projects have you been working on?
This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.
Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.
If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.
I'm working on a short (visual novel-esque) video game experience. That explores the relationship between the artificial and authentic, parenthood and how the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves shapes who we are.
The story unfolds semi-nonlinearly through an exit interview between a tech company's HR department and an android after a series of malfunctions and incidents forces the company to evaluate the android's internal belief system for changes.
Instead of branching narratives that are hardcoded I plan to build a database of questions and then move through a decision tree to select the next question based on game state, previous answers and stuff. It's early days so I am still writing the storyline and working on the schema for the database of questions and responses, so I can make a system that feels reactive and logical without having it on rails.
It may end up on the cutting room floor eventually, but I've made a few games now and think I have it scoped in a way that I can live up to the vision I have.
Beauty - I'd be curious to see a visual of the branching pathways or any supporting visuals that you've created in order to get a sense for the big picture!
I am actually working on setting up a tool for authoring the question pool, responses, their impact on game state and all sorts of metadata this coming week. Ideally that tool shows a visualization of which questions pertain to which story beat, so that as I build the question pool I can get a sense of where I am too thin or too thick on content. If that's interesting to people here I will share how that starts to come together!
Please do! My favourite thing is seeing a visual for how people's brains work :D
This project sounds super intriguing! I hope you keep us posted on the progress.
I'm expecting to receive acrylic prints for my home arcade this week which is exciting. Here's a test print of the bottom portion of the control panel that they completed the week before and a design file of both layers together.
Print sample: https://postimg.cc/XZZN5t7q
Control panel design: https://i.postimg.cc/K8ZgcNP2/Artboard-1.png
We've made some changes since then, but the goal is to have an addressable lighting array inside the control panel that shines through select parts of the print job. From there, the light strings will work their way up through tubes behind each monitor and along the ceiling and walls of the long hallway it lives in.
3D render of the arcade: https://i.postimg.cc/htS74rLK/Seat-lightcables-inside.png
Multiple screens: https://postimg.cc/623Sj4mV
For those who aren't acquainted, the the arcade building is a group of people who conservatively approach design and are pretty quick to jab people who make unconventional choices in design. After building 3 semi-conventional machines, I figured "Fuck it, I want to make something crazy" and here it is. It's a wall-sized unit that's meant to serve all possible play styles, give seizures when asked for and act as an archivist's wet dream when it comes to presenting supporting ads, videos and other memorabilia from old games.
I'm excited to make a big post here once it's all done.
That is legitimately the wildest arcade cabinet I've ever seen. Does something like this use Retro Arch on the backend? I am so curious about putting all those screens to good use with memorabilia and stuff.
Haha thanks -- It's been a meandering journey trying to find a cohesive style for it, but what I've landed on feels very 80's anime mecha-cockpit meets retro futurism (As I have a panel of old CRTs and Vectorscopes on either side of the chair). It sounds crazy because it is hahah
It's all Launchbox, and the coolest thing is that the plug-in Third Screen (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgGmJ87qOoU) which allows you to target different game information (banners, advertisements, videos) to each screen. It works quite seamlessly and so far, I'm super impressed.
omg this is WILD, can't wait to see more progress / the big post!! LOVE it
Thanks!! I'm looking forward to the day -- unless it eat me before then :D
took some video of my coffee brew for today to edit later for social media, just because that's a fun way i can still interact with platforms and spread small joys
also with a fun clip where i start to grind my coffee with my Kingrinder K6 hand-grinder, but then show off the fact that the shaft that the crank slips onto for grinding by hand also can fit a hand tool, so I show grinding some coffee using a Milwuakee drill to power it instead of my hand. just for fun mostly, i tend to want to do it by hand instead :)
3D printing more things and continuing to learn. printed a couple of adapters/mods (not designed by me) for my OXO Rapid Brewer to add a couple of features / fix annoyances. it's awesome.
Thinking of potentially attempting to set up an Etsy/similar business selling 3D-printed coffee mods and other small useful doodads
Small joys are the best joys! A happy maker-journey to you!
Picked up some photos I printed yesterday, which is the first time I have had my photos printed. I realized how colour inaccurate my monitor is now. These photos are for my in-laws who paid for a family vacation for all of us. I am sending them physical copies of a selection of my photos from the trip, then once they see the physicals I will share with them the digital copies of all of my photos. I felt that seeing physical photos first would be a fun experience for them. I also wrote on the back of each photo why I chose to have that specific photo printed for them, which will be a fun experience for them.
I am also picking up my test prints for a select few of my photos today. I got them printed in 4x6, with the final plan to get them printed 11x14 to frame and hang on my wall. This test print was to just check colours of my photos before paying for the larger prints. After the first batch of prints I printed for my in-laws, odds are that I will need to do more colour work before printing the final 11x14 prints.
Fish poop coins in my game. You can click to collect them, or have a treasure chest do it for you. (Links go to my bluesky posts with videos so you can hear the coin pickup sound effects.)
I last shared about my itsy bitsy fishy desktop pet fish game a couple months ago. I've still been working on this regularly, just mostly backend stuff that I couldn't really show off with cute screenshots. The game still looks mostly the same as in my last post, but there's just way more stuff going on under the hood now. Stuff like save and load, autosave, saving all window positions and sizes, inventory system, shop system, etc. But I just added "loot drops" / in-game currency in the form of coins, so I have something sparkly to post now!
I'm planning to create some cosmetic skins for the treasure chest, and I am indeed taking in suggestions just in case anyone has any :D I'm thinking of making a "mimic chest" version and also something that kinda looks like an anglerfish...
Painting with acrylic paints! Ever since I was a little kid and got my hands on MS Paint, I've enjoyed making digital art as a way to unwind. My process is often just messing about with all kinds of textures, effects and tools in a "wrong" way. I put on some good tunes, get into a creative flow and just go wild on blending modes, masking and adjustment layers in Photoshop, for example. While I've done graphic design professionally for over a decade, this particular way of making art is just for unwinding and meditation. No goal but to see where the piece takes me this time.
I haven't really done much of actual real life painting since middle school, I think. Somehow I never had the epiphany that I can do the same method of just fucking about with colors and textures on an actual canvas. So, thanks to my wife's acryllic paints and her repeatedly telling me to try them out, I did. And I'm having so much fun! I love making weird rough textures with different mix-ins and improvised paint applying apparatuses. I love picking/blending some nice tones, then hardly mixing them with each other and smearing them with a piece of cardboard. Or maybe a holder from an empty roll of tape. By the time I have something on the canvas I usually know where the piece should actually head and maybe apply some thought to what I'm doing next to properly finish them.
Why did nobody tell me painting is so fun?!
(They did. I think it was just my executive dysfunction doing it's magic.)