Over the last few days I started working on an app for audio-reactive visuals. The idea is to have a simple workflow for creating visuals for my own music and live performances. I won’t release it for everyone, I’m building it only for my own needs.

Song: Planetary Assault Systems – Retina Burn

Where it’s at

• All the parameters I need to create a wide range of visuals are in place.
• Audio playback is built in, so I can modulate any parameter with multiband frequencies from the track.

What’s next

In the next few days I’ll add support for a DAW and multi-channel audio interfaces, so I can modulate parameters with each separate channel from my music projects.

After switching to the ink look, everything started to blend together. Platforms, walls and objects all ended up in the same flat dots, only the outlines told them apart. This time I worked on making the world readable again without adding detail to the models.

What’s new

• Surfaces you can shift gravity onto are now drawn with diagonal lines instead of dots. You can see at a glance where you can go. Floors get sparse lines, walls regular ones and undersides are cross-hatched.
• Floors are lighter and undersides darker, depending on which way gravity points. After a shift, the shading flips with you.
• Edges you can stand on, like platform rims, get a thicker line, so it’s easier to judge where a jump ends.
• Objects in front get a thin white gap around their outline, so overlapping platforms don’t merge into one shape.
• Fixed big round halos that showed up around lights and when looking down into the void.

The nice part is that the drawing style now carries gameplay information, the lines tell you what you can use.

Today I tried simplifying the graphics while still keeping the game visually interesting.

Since I’m a solo developer, I want to simplify some aspects of the game so I can develop it faster and focus more on the gameplay and atmosphere.

What I tried

• The whole world is now drawn in black and white ink, like a manga page: black outlines, dotted screentone for shadows, solid black for the deepest ones.
• Lines are heavy up close and turn thin and dotted in the distance, so depth still reads.
• Fog is a soft haze of dots, stepping back into near, middle and far layers. Far structures fade into it but never disappear.
• Look down into the void and the world sinks into black, with whatever’s below still drawn in white lines. It flips with every gravity shift.
• Light shafts, ink dust in the air, speed lines when you go fast, and a negative shockwave on every gravity shift.
• The old look is still there, one console command away.

I think this approach could work, but I also feel like it could be pushed into something more interesting.

I’m not completely sure yet.

I’ve started exploring an idea, a private messaging app for mobile that is fully peer-to-peer. There’s no central server in the middle, and it should keep working offline.

Why

Partly I want the app itself. Mostly, though, I want to learn. I’ve never built anything in P2P networking, and I want to see how it all works under the hood. I’m also using this project to learn Rust, and building something real seems like the best way to do that.

The idea

Everyone builds their own network of peers. The network is invite-only and made up of your own circle of people, and anyone in it can invite others. I don’t want every user of the app to end up carrying everyone else’s messages. A small, trusted network fits the goal of a private messenger better.

The stack

• Rust for the core: networking, storage and the logic that has to be solid.
• React Native for the UI, so the same app runs on iOS and Android.

Scope for v1

I’m keeping the first version small. It will be 1:1 conversations only, with no central server and offline support. Group chats are something I want eventually, but not before the basics work.

What’s next

I’m still early, so the next steps are working out how peers find and connect to each other, how messages get delivered when someone is offline, and how to keep the whole thing private. I’ll write up what I learn as I go.

This one was mostly about crouching and sliding.

What’s new

• Crouching no longer slows you down. A slide can now push you a little past the top speed.
• You can slide down steep slopes. Crouch on any slope and you slide, even from a standstill.
• The camera drops lower when you crouch, and sliding has its own lean.