Some stuff I've been working on from August till now

Over the past month I've indulged in every hobbiest's worst addiction or starting a bunch of projects instead of finishing any, so came here to just do a quick post sketching out a bit of each. In the future I'll write more detailed posts on all of them but for now the main things i worked on were:

• A sand powered automaton crafting project that i've been hoping to do for years
• Working on a tamagotchi based off of my friend's pet as a bday gift for them
• Made a Simon clone as both practice and a temp step towards a longer term project that needs a bunch of minigames
• Messed around with Ableton a bit for the first time to see how it works and get some sound effects made for games
• Worker out a prototype for a sound-based-traversal game with the aim of it being that it would be fully playable with a vision impairment/without a screen

Sand powered automaton

A few years ago i saw this video on sand powered automata

It felt really exciting and like a mechanism that could enable me to make a ton of silly projects. The main animations i'd like to make with it were a cat liking its paw, a guy rowing a boat, and someone casting a fishing line.

To get started i watched some more videos, mostly this one:

I then got the idea to make a “universal motor” for any sand powered automaton i'd like to make in the future by making an acrylic box with a sand hopper and wheel that would have a gear in front that could then be connected to any paper automata front end i'd like so that i could swap in and out different animations without having to remake the hopper.

I spent a week making it and trying to give it good love and attention, but ultimately i failed to make something that could spin fast enough to do anything. I shelved it for now but will come back.

Tamagotchi gift

To make the tamagotchi clone i started with a raspberry pi zero W and a small lcd screen with a few buttons. I hit snags early since the screen wasn't compatible with the latest raspi OS and getting it to work took like 3-4 hours of troubleshooting. After all that i also found that the raspi zero w was not actually compatible with godot games unlike what i originally looked up, so i had to pivot again to making a purging script that would orchestrate the whole game.

I eventually got a POC working for the screen and it was honestly working fine and looking easy to develop, so i got Aseprite and started working on the art. I was kind of blown away with aseprite, it's really easy and intuitive to use. I can't wait to make more with it.

I got the new art done, uploaded it to the pi, and was so happy with how it looked. Then tragedy struck! I dropped the whole thing and broke either the screen, the pi, or the pins between the two. Any run of the same game now resulted in crazy visual artifacts on the screen. I was heartbroken and ordered new parts but put it on the back burner while those came.

Simon clone

For the simon clone there isn't too much to say, it's just a remake of the simon game where you memorize the order of colored lights. I made it without assets again which is always fun. The only new info for me really was messing around with a game that is timer heavy, but it wasn't that different from programming Warpspeed where i basically have a state machine moving between states on events.

The only clone left to get to the larger project will be a subway surfer clone which i'm excited for. It'll let me mess around with 3D graphics a bit too.

You can play it on itch here:

Or directly in my blog here:

Messing around with Abelton

Ableton was so fun to mess around with!! I always found it intimidating because it has too much crap going on in it's UI but i watched this yt video by Matt Tinkler and it felt really clear

Going through that video i made this song that legitimately i like a lot:

And then i started making a mass of sound effects for games, taking built in samples and tossing on 50-60 million effects on top.

Stereobound POC

Stereobound was another game that i wanted to make for years. I like the idea of navigating a space just by sound, it lets me paint a picture of my surroundings in my head in a way that feels really unique. Spatial sound in video games feels like a mechanic that can be explored so much more than I've seen given how developed the technology is itself, and I think it could lead to not just more accesible/immersive games but also just new types of games.

I messed around with a 3D prototype first that i'll talk about in a future dev blog, but it felt too complex to manage for me and I moved onto a 2D implementation. While the game was “2D”, this was mostly relevant to the degrees of rotation which you could “shoot rays” from.

The basic goal was to make a maze that you navigate by emitters on the map, and by sending out a ray, until you reach the end. You can drop emitters to find your way back too. This can be expanded into a bunch of different game modes that i have planned for the future, and with the POC done i feel really motivated to. You can play the POC here:

This project I'm serious about and want to really add a lot to, so I'll make a proper dev blog for it soon. I want to focus on WarpSpeed for a while, and then possibly a friend slop idea i have, but this will be one of my major efforts.

What's Next:

I need to buckle down and clear some projects before picking up more. First i'm gonna finish a secret gift for my partner, then i'll focus on Warp Speed until i t least have a playable public demo. I want to have something up by the end of the year so that i can move on with treating game dev as a serious option for me, and to have stuff to show friends and peers to motivate us to work together. I got the creative itch though and there's nothing i want to be doing more than working on all of this.