tv series Featured

The Tick

I suppose if you are a comic-book villain working to have your monolithic evil empire take over the world, you have to get to video streaming services sooner or later. Since 2006 Amazon had been experimenting with various video streaming services, but it wasn't until 2015 that the

book Featured

‘The Catcher in the Rye’ by J. D. Salinger.

I am coming to this classic of literary fiction rather late, but I had long known of its reputation as an Anerican classic, and a divisive work. Those who read it either loved it or hated it and many people who have never read it also seemed to either love

tv series Featured

Pluribus

Pluribus is a terrible thing — which is to say, a rather good science-fiction series written by Vince Gilligan. But, that's not why its terrible.

personal philosophy

Willow's Triptych - Everything I know about the fundamental nature reality

I know that reality is either infinite, finite, or some other category of existence. Reality must be one of those things; and yet, no matter which of these things it is, it would make no sense to me. As a finite being myself, I cannot understand the infinite. I mean,

personal philosophy

We are waves not the ocean.

We are waves on the ocean of reality, driven across time by entropy. When the wave meets the shore, all that we were remains— all but that which was us. I have always felt quite strongly that we are a pattern rather than a thing in the universe, and I

culture Featured

Emotions at Scale - Louis Theroux: Into the Manosphere

I recently watched the Louis Theroux: Into the Manosphere (2026) documentary. It was an interesting documentary, largely because it failed to make any significant headway. Louis Theroux’s trademark attempts to be disarming seemed unable to penetrate the paranoia of the many individuals he spoke to. No mere normal paranoia

ramblings

I made a blog

I have many websites. A strong argument can be made that I have too many. However, it seems that many of them are not really an appropriate space for me to just rant, so I made a new one. That’s right; the solution to having too many websites was

game development

Keeping it simple with skinny pixel art

After a couple of days trying to get the feel of Spine 2D and its skeleton animation system, I was forced to admit I was not enjoying working with it. I am sure it is a great tool when you know what you are doing, but I have not managed

game development

Experimenting with Spine

One of the things I have learned is that pixel art is time-consuming, animating pixel art even more so, and iterating on your animated designs is soul-crushingly time-consuming. As I experiment with different movement and gameplay mechanics for my player, the need for continuously revised and expanded movement sets keeps

game development

Better platforming with Coyote-Time and Pre-landing Jump detection.

These two tricks are great examples of where a game can be fair and yet not feel fair. By being more generous with the player’s inputs, you can make your game feel far more responsive. I recently added both of these behaviours to my game, and it instantly felt

game development

Things are getting pretty wired around here.

So these monsters were inspired by some pencil drawings my wife did while messing about with my iPad. She just scribbled some nonsense she thought could be a monster for about 20 seconds. She would be the first to admit she is not an artist, and in truth she was

game development

Primary school inspires new monster

The game’s Slimes were getting pretty lonely, so I created this friendly fellow. He was inspired by a clay monster I made once in primary school. I do not remember what happened to it, but for some reason I always remembered the shape, so I thought: why not add

game development

Spooky light up statue

After working on this switch quite a bit, I have now managed to wire it up to a statue that glows when you flick the switch. It might not seem like much, but this is super exciting for me, as it represents the very early signs of puzzles in the

game development

Bridge drop like batman!

I created a bridge in Aseprite, and so then I had to add bridge dropping so that you can be a bridge-dropping bad-ass like Batman.

game development

Bring on the Strawberry Jam

Using my newfound Particles2D skills, I added a little strawberry jam effect when you die.

game development

Crash zoom on death

This has been making me smile more than it should. The camera will now crash-zooms when you die. Sam Raimi would be proud.

game development

Bring forth fire!

Got my particles working thanks to the excellent Particles2D node in Godot and the excellent tutorial from KidsCanCode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awBfTnmgn7k

game development

Spikey death!

I woke up this morning and immediately realised what was wrong with my spike. It so often happens that I go to sleep with a problem I cannot solve and wake up the next day with the solution.

game development

Annoying spike immunity

Created some new spikes, but for some reason they are not killing the player on contact. … It is getting late, so I think this is a problem for tomorrow.

game development

Better Tile Set

I created a nicer tile set using Aseprite and TileSetter; things are looking a lot more fancy.

game development

Early Days with the Godot engine.

Early days here, and my little Godot prototype platformer is going great… no bugs here. Move along now—nothing to see. Thanks to the excellent YouTube channel HeartBeast for the game assets. They are part of his tutorial video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0713nlQxU7I. Sadly, his video

game development Featured

GameMaker Studio 2 or Unity - Dev Diary 2

In this video I unknowingly wondered into a number of hot topics. Namely what gamed engine to learn and ... Unity's rather odd Dark UI policy.

game development

Don't shoot the Alpaca

My first time messing about the GameMaker Studio 2. I learned a lot and created a random little platform shooting game.