The Timasomo Showcase Thread
EDIT: We welcome your feedback and would love to hear your thoughts! Please support the creators by commenting on their work!
Introduction
The first Timasomo (Tildes' Make Something Month) has finished! A big thank you to everyone involved, whether you participated or spectated, and whether you finished or not!
Below is the work of the participants who have chosen to feature their Timasomo projects for the showcase. Enjoy!
Procedural Note
When commenting on specific works from the showcase, please ping those users using @username so that they get notifications.
Hope: The Stolen Wish
by @xstresedg
Link, itch.io link
When you pull the camera away, you get to see the world from a different perspective. This was the thought I had when bringing The Sword of Hope 2 from a Dungeon Crawler-like game into the style of a Metroidvania. However, with that came a number of challenges, such as dealing with the JRPG elements and utilizing multiple characters. While not present in this demo, they were idealized as possible, with tweaks. Regardless, while it isn't much more than a technical demo, I hope you enjoy this short jaunt of gameplay as much as I enjoyed making it!
Reusable Christmas Gift Bags
by @Akir
Link
Four Meetings
by @kfwyre
Download Links
PC Build (should work on Linux and Windows)
Windows Build (in case the PC build doesn't work)
Linux Build (in case the PC build doesn't work)
Game was tested on Linux and Windows, but not Mac. Let me know if you encounter any errors!
I wanted to make an interactive fiction story in Ren'Py. Four Meetings puts players in the shoes of Ms. Wilson, a high school teacher, as she makes decisions in four different meetings across four different days. It is a short story (10-20 minutes) meant to be played in one sitting.
Fragile Little World
by @Gyrfalcon
Link
Fragile Little World is a personal website, with a focus on sustainability and space. My main creations were the website itself as well as the first article, which covers the environmental impact of a web page and how that impact can be reduced.
Poetry
by @anahata
the city
Untitled I
Untitled II
fire
lost
Sir Curse Band Website
by @0d_billie
Link
I built this website for one of my bands, both to increase our online presence and also to (re)learn web design. It's pretty minimal for now, I'm waiting on things like a photoshoot, confirmation of a few gigs, and updated bios before I can get the rest of the site together.
That said it's been a fun exercise in web development, not least because I've been trying to keep it lean and light, so no JS or JQuery, and only a minimal CSS framework to work within. I've learned a bit of php, how to use github, and how to accept that Minimum Viable Product still has the word "viable" in it.
Topic-level pings do not work on Tildes yet, so I'm using this to notify everyone that their work is up in the Timasomo Showcase!
@xstresedg
@Akir
@Gyrfalcon
@anahata
@0d_billie
If any of you need any changes to your entry, let me know either here or by PM.
(Edit: sorry if this re-notifies everyone! I was editing it to update a username that had changed.)
Thanks for putting this together! Lots of great projects here.
You're welcome! I had a good time with it too!
When I originally proposed it I wasn't sure how it was going to turn out, but I'm very happy with how it went. I would love to see more events/tasks like this one here. Maybe not as large in scope (a month is a long time), but maybe stuff that takes place over a week or weekend.
Thanks for putting all of this together! It's things like this that really make me appreciate the tildes community <3
Thanks for this, kfwyre! I had a tonne of fun doing this and I look forward to the next event! :D
@bilbodwyer, your site looks good, it just needs more content. I especially wished that there was a quick blurb that told us something about the band, like what kind of music you play, where you guys are from, the names of the members, etc, but at the same time I know how things can go when you are waiting for a whole group to approve everything.
I like your layout overall, but I do have some nitpicks if you're open to them. The quotes section takes up too much room in mobile because you have an 8rem padding, and it makes the text very squished horizontally. I'd suggest either using a media query to set a custom one, or set the css to something like
padding: 8rem 1rem;. The other change I would make is to redraw the logo as an SVG and serve that instead. That will get rid of the white border issue as well as shrink the filesize to ensure it loads quickly.Working on all of that! We're trying to work out if we want it all to be accurate information, or part of the mythos of the band and the characters at the moment. Should hopefully have all that up in January :)
Thanks! As you can probably tell from the code, a lot of this has been bodged together and very much fathomed out through trial and error, so having someone that knows what they're talking about is very helpful indeed. I'll certainly try both of your recommendations out - hopefully it'll fix an issue I've clocked with the layout when more pages are involved...
@Gyrfalcon
I remember a while ago, for Earth Day, Google changed their homepage to have a black background instead of a white background. It included a message about how, in "turning off the lights" on their site, they were decreasing energy consumption across the world, across billions of pageloads. I remember thinking at the time that, if such a thing were true, why were they only doing it for Earth Day? Why not always?
I never really came back to the thought, and up until now haven't given much consideration to the footprint of websites until I read your article. You gave a thorough yet very readable overview of all sorts of efficiency considerations that is likely brand new information to many people out there. I always disliked "heavy" pages simply because they would load slower and sometimes perform slower too, but I never thought about how their "heaviness" correlates to real-world resources and consumption.
Great job with the site, and great job with your article. You have a gift for conveying technical information in an accessible way.
I remember that earth day thing, and I thought maybe it was long enough ago that everyone was still using CRT monitors. On a CRT it might make some difference, but not a lot. On an LCD, it probably won't make any difference.
Looking it up, it was to raise awareness for Earth Hour, where everyone turned their lights off for an hour, and raising awareness was the only point. LCDs were fairly common by that point. (wired article) Digging deeper, I looked up the archive.org version of google's page explaining that. (here) In a blog post they explain that 75% of users were already using LCDs by that point, and LCDs actually consume slightly more power when displaying black. (link)
Now though, we've come full circle and that might actually be a good idea to revisit. OLED screens, while not common on laptops or desktops, are used somewhat widely on phones. Any black part of an OLED screen is consuming no power, and it does make a fairly significant difference in battery life.
Thank you so much! It looks like @pseudolobster beat me to the punch on the relevant fun fact. Now I just need to hold my self to the 1 article per month I hoped for (its looking pretty difficult this month with Advent of Code!).
@kfwyre
I plan to give this a try in the next couple of days, so I'll have a few words to say then :)
@Akir
Those bags are seriously awesome. There's something more personable about those types of bags to me than standard gift bags or even wrapped gifts. Great job :D
@Gyrfalcon
Beautifully simplistic. Brings me back to the old style of websites and I really like it. I hope it turns out to be a fun project for you!
@anahata
Feel free to correct me if I view anything in a different light to how you wrote it. These are just my interpretations. I don't write poetry but I quite enjoy it.
the city: this was really beautiful. I felt that near the middle, around the veins and arteries portion, it would become intense in the way it would be spoken/performed. Accelerating up until "passion and drive", then a long pause, continuing with a calm demeanour. That's just the way my mind imagined it as I spoke the words in my head.
Untitled I: the way you write is very emotive and visual; I can see everything you write as if it's a detailed novel. I enjoy the twist later that the water is the love that we all want and the dam is the wall we create that prevents us from receiving it in full force. We think it's protecting us, and yet we crave it none the less. I like this.
Untitled II: Again, a beautiful piece. I feel as if this is an allegory for life and the slipping into meditation being reincarnation. You climb until you cannot any longer (die) and start again at the bottom anew (birth).
fire: Beautiful writing, as expected at this point. :)
lost: <3
@bilbodwyer
I'm in the same boat as Akir's first statement, it's a great looking site but it needs more content. Looking forward to more from it! :)
Thank you for the kind words on my work! I want to start by saying that I don't want to limit what people get from my work or how they interpret it. It's so important to me that people can take what they want from my work rather than me limiting it. That said, I do place value in authorial intent, but I don't want to limit what people think of my work based on that. It's not about "correcting", since there's no right or wrong way to interpret something, but I'm happy to share what was in my mind as I was writing things.
I didn't see the city that way; I find it fascinating that you do. I can see how you got that, though. Generally I use meter and rhythm to express intensity and calmness. I have something I've written that I've not yet posted on the site which demonstrates this.
It's interesting that you say that I write in a visual way; I'm not a visual person at all. It definitely seems that you were getting what I was aiming for with this work, though, and it feels great to be understood. :)
Untitled II was hard for me to write. Not because finding the words were challenging, but because it was about something I have a lot of trouble with. The meditation was actually meant to connote a period of rest and reflection rather than reincarnation, a way to center myself before attempting again. ... and it didn't work. That said, I find your interpretation equally valid, just different.
And thank you for all the kind words again! Very much appreciated. Feedback is why I post, and receiving feedback encourages me to post more.
Well I most certainly look forward to more :)
@xstressedg
I don't have a Windows machine readily available to test this, but will look into trying it out with Wine or something like that. I am curious to see what you've put together, though! I'm very interested in the dungeon crawler and metroidvania concepts (and the idea of a bright red meteor conjures images of Chrono Trigger, so you've got bonus points for that).
@Akir
Wow, thse are adorable and look really well-done! I seriously think you could sell these if you were into that kind of thing. They definitely look like the kind of premium product you'd expect to see in a well-respected etsy shop. Is this something you'd be interested in? The one with the dog with the Christmas hat is especially adorable. I could see myself using something like that as a shopping bag, actually, more than just a gift bag. I think, now that I consider it a bit more, that's actually where I'd be most likely to use these.
@kfwyre
Thank you for providing builds for different platforms! I also appreciate how simple it is to use Firefox Send.
As for the actual work itself, uh, yeah. That's going to take some thought and reflection. Lots of meaningful statements about the education system in a few short minutes. I appreciate how honest and real things are, and especially
spoilery spoilers
how Ms Wilson's responses to Mitch don't actually respect what you select at one point, which is actually a powerful way of expressing resignation and loss of agency (something I'm particularly sensitive to).I'll have to play through a few more times to see what other choices make possible. Very cool so far, thank you for sharing! I also wanted to mention that there are a few typos and spelling errors, but nothing ruins the experience.
@Gyrfalcon
The first thing I notice on your site is that the WebP image doesn't render in Safari. Are you able to use a different, more compatible format? And, amusingly, I was actually thinking "d'you have data to substantiate your claim?" when I read the description of your site on the front page... and the data is in the image my browser doesn't render. I understand from reading the first article that WebP has a number of technical advantages--it's specifically optimized for what you have in mind--but compatibility trumps that, in my mind. It doesn't matter how optimized the content is if a significant portion of your userbase can't access the content.
That said, though, I think you've done a great deal of work here both in setting things up and in the research, and I'd like to see more sites adopt these techniques (and that would, invariably, lead to WebP seeing greater adoption). You've cited many of the claims you've made and provided hard data for your claims, something that I appreciate as both someone with a scientific mindset but also who works in software as someone who actually writes the code and runs the machines (in other words, I see through the marketing nonsense). And what I see is that you've done some valuable work here. Well done!
About my own work, I was hoping to publish some more things, but a combination of life getting in the way and a lack of comments dissuaded me. I'll be more explicit about asking for feedback in future. I've considered getting something organized set up on Tildes for poetry, so maybe I'll make a post about that and see what peo
Thanks for the feedback! If you're wanting to retry choices on the fly (rather than committing to whole playthroughs), you can scroll up to roll back the text to before a choice is made, and then try a different one.
spoilery spoilers
The novel has basically no branching and no meaningful outcomes based on choice. I originally wanted to do something like that but had to get my feet wet with the engine first, so all choices lead to small divergent detours that then rejoin the same main trunk of story. Basically, the game forks for each choice, but then meets back up in the same place before the next one. This means you can safely roll back to try different choices in the moment and not worry about missing anything down the line. The only times the choices have any impact outside of the text that immediately follows them is in scene 3, where the principal's response at the end of the meeting differs depending on how much you counter him. No counters gives him a positive vibe; 1-2 gives him a somewhat critical tone; 3-4 gives him a pretty harsh rebuke.
My apologies for the typos. Normally, with a work like this, I would put it away for a few days without looking at it so that I could read it with fresh eyes. When I'm in a work constantly, I don't read what I've written, I read what I intended to write, which makes me blind to some very obvious errors. I can't tell you how many Tildes comments I've made that I find typos in a week after I post them, despite going over them word by word more than once prior to posting! Given the deadlines for Timasomo, this didn't get enough time to fully cook.
In fact, I was about ready to post the thread when I realized I'd never actually made a playable build of the game! I'd just been running through the dev environment, so I did a quick scramble to make the builds and then test it on another computer to make sure it worked. Luckily, it did! Otherwise I would have had some serious last-minute panic.
EDIT: I forgot to mention that Firefox Send, while wonderfully simple, does have some pretty steep limitations. The links are only good for 7 days or 100 downloads, whichever comes first. I can easily re-upload new ones, but it's a perpetually short-term solution. I used it simply because I have no webhosting of my own, so this was the best way for me to get it up and downloadable for others. I realize I could host it on itch.io, but I don't really feel this needs a "permanent home" online, as it's really just meant for Tildes and this event.
I will warn you that it's about 4 minutes of any sort of gameplay. It ended up only being a tech demo as opposed to an actual game with a quest or anything. It was far from complete. But let me know when you get a chance to try it. I'd love to hear your feedback :)
Thank you so much for the feedback! Would you actually mind taking a look at it again? I think I have fallbacks to PNG/JPG set up now, but I don't have a version of Safari to test with.
Yep, works now in Safari on both macOS and iOS. Thank you for fixing this!
@xstresedg, great work! Your game is lovely. It looks great and controls well. It's a wonderful start and is something I would absolutely play in its completed form.
Did you do all of the artwork yourself? Also, had you used the Godot engine prior to this, or was this your first project in it?
Apologies for being so late. I had a busy weekend haha.
Thank you for your kind words. I hope to do something with this prototype in the future, but we'll see. My mind changes a lot so I may end up doing a JRPG next hahaha.
I did make everything myself. I've been dabbling with pixel art for about 18-ish years now. I've actually had my artwork in a game, which I've just realized was from six years ago hahaha.
As for Godot, I've been playing around with it now for about nine or ten months, starting with building out a Zelda-like prototype, which the source and graphics are available on Github for anyone to download. I used @fornclake's tutorials as my jumping off point, adapting it to work in Godot 3.1, since some things had changed since 3.0 was released.
That all being said, this was my first export and "playable" release of a project since my early days in RPG Maker when I was a wee child.
No worries about being "late"! Not only is Tildes slower than most sites (an aspect of it that I love), but I know you're on digital detox right now, so don't fret about the timeliness of responses!
Knowing now that you did all the artwork yourself, I'm beyond impressed. The game looked fantastic and had a far higher level of visual polish and cohesion than I would expect from a tech demo. You have a real gift for pixel art, and with programming skills to boot! That's the indie dev total package right there! Thanks for sharing your skills with us, and if you ever decide to move forward with this or other games, please share them here. I will eagerly play them.
Thanks again kfwyre :)
@Akir, the bags look fantastic!
I will admit to having ordered some gifts on Amazon and having paid extra to have them put in what Amazon calls a "gift bag". In true Amazon fashion, the bags they used were in a terrible, unappealing fabric that looks like it was made for no other reason than to be thrown away. You wouldn't want to reuse them on any gifts, as they would make anything you put in them seem less appealing.
Yours are the complete opposite of those, with fabrics that look amazing and an implementation that begs for reuse! Great work. Have you done much fabric work before?
Oh, those polyester bags; I know exactly what you are talking about. Honestly, I wouldn't have been able to envision this project when I first came across the idea if I hadn't bought that service before.
I'm honestly pretty bad with fabric. It would have been much easier if I had a big sewing table to put everything on, but I actually did most of this in bed, narrowly avoiding cutting the sheets. :P
The only big project I have completed before this was a teddy bear I made for my boyfriend, which turned out terribly. He calls it bearcat because it looks more like a cat than a bear.
@0d_billie
I already said this to you, but I'll repeat it here: I've listened to your single multiple times and thoroughly enjoy it! It reminds me of the latter half of Panic! at the Disco's A Fever You Can't Sweat Out, where they go a bit theatrical with their sound, as well as Cursive's Happy Hollow, where horns feature prominently throughout. Definitely let us know here on Tildes when you put out new music!
I don't have a technical background to comment on the site other than that, as a user, I like that it's clean, simple, and straightforward!
Thanks, that's very kind of you! We have a new single coming out in February, which is a bit of a darker sound, closer to System of a Down I think. I'll be sure to post it when it's released!
@anahata
I took time today to sit with each of your poems. Honest self-expression, especially in the form of poetry, can be difficult to share openly, so I thank you for letting us in on your thoughts.
While I like each of them for different reasons, the two that stick out most to me are "lost" and "Untitled II".
"Untitled II" is a really great framing that I think works for a lot of things beyond just self-forgiveness. How many of us have idealized a goal, only to realize the path there isn't beautiful but difficult? And then how many of us have struggled along the path only to give up or face an insurmountable hurdle, setting us back not just to where we started, but below, because we now carry with us the weight of brand new failure? When I read the poem I was reminded of my constant attempts to get my weight under my control, and my seemingly constant failure to do so, and the requisite guilt and shame that comes with it.
"lost", like "Untitled II" has a wide resonance in the abstract, but I saw that you tagged it with
traumaand that really made it hit home for me. The conflicted emotions that you capture with your words mirror my experience as well. "I can't even hate them for it" is a difficult truth, which you continue to build during the last lines of the poem. The final line, "creamy center of a cyanide pill" is an arresting and powerful image that acts as a haunting metaphor for what you've expressed.Thank you for reading my work! I was hoping to get more published on the site, but a combination of other things coming up and a lack of feedback have dissuaded me. That you've provided some feedback--positive feedback at that!--is seriously so encouraging. Even if I'm writing for catharsis, the act of publishing is fundamentally one of wanting feedback and at least a little recognition.
I agree that the works you're describing have rather general framing. Initially I was disappointed at this, because I wanted the reader to identify with exactly what I was saying--but your own reflections show that there's absolutely a greater appeal for things with general framing and resonance in the abstract. This is part of why I value feedback so highly: it can lead to a better understanding of one's art and one's work in ways that one cannot possibly expect.
I'm happy to hear you've identified with my work in your own ways (... though that means life has been crap for you, and I'm sorry to hear that). This is another big reason why I write, so that I can conjure similar experiences in my reader's mind. I generally don't write about positive things, but having folks identify with my work through their own experiences is valuable in its own right.
I wrote "lost" at the end of a group therapy session, during some journalling time. I was, in fact, unsure whether to end it at "creamy center of a cyanide pill" or write something further, but the impact of that line suggested (nay, demanded) ending the work there. A writer friend would point out that "creamy center" is a cliché, but I'm actually happy with it because of how the line as a whole builds a strong image. I hope the words brought you at least a little solace in knowing that you're not alone.
I suppose that's something I could aim for, giving readers a feeling of solace or comfort knowing that they're not the only ones who've experienced what I'm writing about.
I think the idea of "creamy center" being a cliche is exactly what makes that line work! You take something familiar, with obvious positive connotations, and you subvert its normal usage by putting it within the "cyanide pill". I even took it a step further, because for me "creamy center" also feels like manufactured marketing speak -- what I might hear in a commercial for donuts or candy or something. The idea that even the "good" gets textured as being somewhat false, fraudulent, or constructed made it darkly sardonic, which drives the point home even more. I think the line absolutely works because of your word choice, not in spite of it.
Also, I'm with you on wanting feedback. I was hoping there would be a bit more discussion in this thread about the works in the showcase, especially from people who didn't participate (if any spectators are here reading this, please comment on others' works!). Maybe we'll see more in the coming days, but the relative silence took away some of the fanfare I was hoping the showcase would have, as well as leaving us wondering just what people think about what we've put out there. Feedback, good or bad, removes uncertainty and helps us learn, so I'm with you in wanting more voices sharing their perspectives on our work.
Oh wow. I missed @bilbodwyer's work. So, so sorry! Looking at that presently (adding another comment because I don't know if editing a comment to add a ping will work)...
I'm not sure what it is, but something about how the elements on the site are aligned doesn't work for me. There are three quotes, which suggests three columns of material, but that's not how the site is aligned. Maybe move the mailing list signup section into a third column? That's probably less effort than rearranging the quotes? I don't know, I'm not really a frontend person, but that seems like it'd be easier because then you'd not need to worry about getting a new photo background for the newly-arranged quotes if they went to two columns (and you'd not have an awkward short column in that case).
Also, I'm not entirely sure if my suggestions even make sense or follow good design practice; I'm just responding with what my brain thinks of. You've already heard folks say they want more content, but if you're just starting out that can be hard. I'd like to see more content not just to have more to look at but also to get a sense of how your design aesthetic works and how you do layout for UI/UX purposes. So I'm curious and would like to see more.
Again, sorry for missing you!