Gen (@eclectech.bsky.social)

10 Aug

Someone mentioned a couple weeks ago how hard the PAPERWORK is when you're starting to make money independently, and holy crap am I ever feeling that now. Anyway. Haven't done much dev work the last couple weeks, it's all been contracts and taxes, hoping to get back to fun things soon...

7 Aug

AHHH I AM BACK. I had a contract to win (done), now I’ll have time again, I think.

31 July

PHEW BACK AT IT. It's been a low-activity couple weeks due to sickness and some non goo-grotto related contract work. But I'm currently working on the ability to juice your slimes! As in extract juice from them. Not to give them performance-enhancing substances. Although... #indiedev

27 July

Between being sick/tired and having an important non-project deadline on Wednesday I feel a bit bad for neglecting my project. SIGH

23 July

Today I was feeling a bit down and went through some old racing clips. I feel like there's a lot left to do, but it's also good to remind myself I've done a lot, too. (please don't make fun of my iMovie skills 😭) #solodev #indiedev #googrotto

22 July

Ugh, I don’t think it’s going to be a productive week because I have been slowly getting sicker for the last couple days and it’s coming to a head now I think. 🤧 I’m keeping my GitHub streak going for sure but it‘ll just be small things, I guess.

20 July

someone played my game and sent me a picture of their high score!! ahh!!! :) #gamedev #solodev

cash4ennui.itch.ioThe Bigger Picture by cash4ennuiExpand your horizons to jump out of the pit!

19 July

Took a break from working on #googrotto to participate in #myfirstgamejam. :) I think yesterday is actually the first day in over a month I haven't worked on my #virtualpetsite but I had a lot of fun participating! It was my first time using #itch.io as well! Learned a lot.

17 July

Zoom kind of works!! All done with CSS and JS and SVG.

17 July

Phew, doing some camera work. I'm hitting a point where the complexity of the system might justify the introduction of a library, which I think means... time to let it sit for a while rather than getting tempted to re-implement something that is already "OK" for now. #indiedev

17 July

(I'm kind of pleased with just how far I've gotten with pure JS + CSS + HTML on this...)

16 July

Working right now on what I think is going to be the most technically challenging part of the races... adding in slow-mo and zoom that gets triggered automatically when something dramatic happens in the procedural physics sim... eesh...

hypermedia.systemsContents

16 July

hypermedia.systems/book/contents/ How am I only just finding this now? Really cool book, and I think it makes a lot of salient points. #webdev

15 July

The further I get in this project the happier I feel about not using React. 🥳 #webdev

15 July

I was going to make a last-minute entry to the toxic yuri game jam with a friend of mine, but we ended up not being able to do so because she had a horrible break-up with her partner. the irony is not lost on me. #toxicyuri #gamejam

15 July

Spent all of this morning fixing a bug that would sometimes cause a page to load for 30 seconds if a user hit it at the wrong time. Kind of a complicated bug, but alas, nobody to explain it to... #solodev ? More like ... #lonelydev ... 😔

I was thinking of doing a weekly thing where I play a game from a beginner #indiedev or #solodev on stream/video and give impressions as I go. It seems like getting honest feedback from strangers is a big challenge for many.

Ideally the game would be available through a trusted distributor, otherwise I'd sandbox it. I don't think I could do mobile games currently but that could change. The person would also have to be comfortable with the video being public, at least for some set period of time.

I dunno! Maybe. I feel like I'd probably get some bites. I think my main motivation is to feel like I'm contributing to a community rather than just exploiting it or posting into an automated marketing-bot void.

Phew. Did the thing today, maintained my dev work streak with a small UX update. But that might have to be it for now, feeling kind of tired. I'm switching gears.

12 July

Do other devs sometimes take a break from their main project to do some work on a smaller one? I have been DYING to build something with spacetimedb, and I got an idea... Tell me about your side project's side project! #solodev #indiedev

11 July

I feel like I should chill with some of the other slime related devs… some kind of slime club……

11 July

Cleanup weekend! I made a lot of DB changes, focused on that this weekend. I might also do up a blog post on how I made the deterministic racing sim... #solodev #indiedev

If there's one thing I've learned from working on Goo Grotto the last little while, it's INVEST IN YOUR TOOLING. A test harness I wrote to tune race balancing, with a little tweaking, has now become the part of an odds engine for realistic wagers. O:

Okay, I gotta put racing down, but currently I think it's in a good state! - slimes collide with each other and transfer momentum - slimes attempt to find the ideal racing line on any circuit, depending on how smart and nimble they are - slimes attempt to pass each other!!! this took forever

I am taking a BREAK today!! Time to play video games!!

my current favourite constant in my codebase is JUICY_DRAG. anyone else have a fun one? (this is actually for #slimeracing) #solodev #justdevthings

9 July

Trying not to sit around and twiddle my thumbs while I wait for GitHub Actions to come back but it seems like that's what the universe might want for me a little bit #github #solodev #webdev

@officialkaylune.bsky.social

8 July

I'm hitting a flux point where adding new features requires a lot more work to integrate with what's already there. I want to post more too but it's like... about what, haha, folks aren't gonna be interested in my solid queue refactor... uh, probably. #googrotto #solodev

Gen reposted

Kaylune

7 July

Thank you everyone for your patience with regards to Kaylune's slightly delayed monthly update. ⋆ ·˚ ༘ Pet creation! ༘༘⋆ˎˊ˗

5 July

Partner came home the other day with two iced coffees and a vanilla ice cream cone. The ice cream cone was for the dog.

5 July

Two weeks ago I said to a couple interested parties I'd have an alpha site in "about two weeks"... I think I was about a week off but I don't think I'm doing too bad, actually!... #solodev #virtualpetsite #webdev

4 July

Code cleanup weekend. Phew. This one is a big one. I've had a really high velocity the last week and I'm working on something cool and mathy I'd normally write about, and I haven't done that yet... oops.

3 July

Of course, all animations on my site can be toggled on or off, and they obey reduced movement rules. I was a bit sad about how this made the races less interesting, but then I realised... #virtualpetsite #indiedev #solodev #webdev #disability

3 July

... my "drama" layer can double as a way to keep the racing fun and interesting for people who need this accommodation. :) I can spit out a log of interesting events about the races in text. I'm really excited to be able to provide this.

3 July

I am starting on the infra lift for slime racing! Now you can compete against your friends. This is a lot of "invisible" work and my to-do list gets longer with everything I add, haha. Just gotta take things one step at a time. #webdev #solodev #virtualpetsite #SLIMERACING

2 July

Sneak peek at slime racing...! Slowly getting there. Just finished adding in a "drama beat" framework for comments on race occurrences; right now it only does passing and photo finishes but I'm hoping to expand this in the future! #virtualpet #virtualpetsite #solodev #webdev

1 July

Happy Canada Day 🇨🇦

30 June

Took a break for racing, spent some time on the list page... wouldn't say it's in its final form, but I like that they get to be in a pasture instead of in a white void. :) The component has a custom scroll bar for macOS related reasons. I don't want to talk about it. #webdev #virtualpetsite

29 June

I think the thing I'm proudest of right now is avoiding Shiny Object Syndrome. Augh... does it get easier?... #solodev

29 June

I've been working on a new feature for the last several days - slime racing. It's not QUITE ready to be shown yet but I think it's starting to look really good, there's just one more major change I want to make mechanically/visually... #indiedev #virtualpetsite #webdev #browsergame

29 June

(And then after that there's a TON of infra lift to do on the back-end w.r.t. making the races persistent, matchmaking, scheduling them etc... phew...)

27 June

Tech debt Saturday is going well. Always easier to clean as you go so I never really have all that much to do, but it's nice to have the time. Anyone else set aside specific days or times to address tech debt or other little annoyances that tend to fall through the cracks? #webdev #solodev

25 June

The racing is actually coming along a treat. :D I'm excited.

25 June

The beginnings of HIGH OCTANE HEART-POUNDING SLIME RACING - procedural racetracks! It's splines all the way down, babes. #solodev #webdev #indiedev #virtualpet

guess what i'm up to today! #indiedev #webdev #solodev #iwillneverstop

Made some fixes to my slime exporter and slimes can now be exported to .gif! I exaggerated the movement to make sure I could see it working.

Just went down the rabbit hole learning about metaballs. Very cool stuff!

Really productive day today! Nothing glamorous, but I fixed a few rendering bugs and got my user settings working and did a WCAG compliance pass. :) #solodev #indiedev #webdev