Tales from the TinkerShed

I thought this would be a good place to keep track of the Projects that I am working on. Couldn't find a better category (is not Off Topic, is not an Article?), so hope I'm alright here =)

So not finished yet, but here we go:

I always fancied to make a clone of good old 'Tempest', an arcade shooter that kept me busy for ages ... long time ago ...

Since first I couldn't find the original level data I settled for a similar 'Tube Shooter'.
Here the level generator I created for that concept:
https://microstudio.io/TinkerSmith/tubes01/EA72TC9Y/

But guess what, once done I found the original level data, as it so happens.
So that's what I'm up to at the moment, building the whole thing step by step. So far I am able to read the original level data, convert it and project it onto the screen, and I even have a little dummy player (that just moves around to test the perspective).
Nothing else yet, no enemies, no shooting, no sound, no animations ... there is a long way ahead.

Here the project so far:
https://microstudio.io/TinkerSmith/tampered/25NZE99Z/

Any suggestions are welcome. I'm actually thinking of keeping the tube generator and add those random levels too. As mentioned I added a slight perspective shift to the level when the player moves around (the original was static). Gonna keep that one, I like it so far.

That's all for today, more to follow.

Live Long And Tinker

P.S. and yes, the working title is TAMPERED .... MUAHAHA

...

So, how does the game basically work? It seems to kind of be 3d... or is that that the perspective change.

Good old arcade games, so simple yet effective (although simple is not necessarily the right word to use for us single person coders)

It's 'half' 3D, partially using the same formulas that are used to project 3D points onto a 2D plane. Only difference, the front and back plane stay parallel to the screen with this simplified version (instead of rotating too). I might create a version doing that, just to see how it looks. But first I want the whole prototype to be sort of functional.

It's always like this... halfway through you think 'darn, should have done it the other way around'.

LIVE LONG AND TINKER, SMITH OF TINKERING! :)

Little tinker update:

Had a play with pixel stacking, had a look into Voxel models and ended up with:

POXELs

©TinkerSmith ;)

https://microstudio.dev/i/TinkerSmith/poxel/

Don't ask why, haha. But I kinda like it and might improve it.
But in that case I will ditch the 'map models' and read the data straight from a spritesheet (would make it easier to use common voxel editor exports).

Comments welcome :)

Live Long And Tinker

Haha, that looks great! And I love the naming ability ;). I feel like it would be better with increased res, especially.

Also, I contest the copyright to the name poxels in court. I copyrighted the name first, you see. I call open judge thisnameistaken (without underscores) to judge who is in the right!

I propose to share any pixel income, lol, oh thisjudgeistaken.

Yes, higher resolution will be the next try, would be too painful to use the map editor for that. Maybe in the future if the great creator adds an option to import them. The great one that goes by the (untaken) name of @gilles.
For now... ruthless sprite abuse is on the agenda.
MUAHAHA

Live Long And... Poxel

And another thingy for my tinker log.

This time it's about how many 3D points (and lines) I can process before it just gets too slow.
And my first try to switch from one game state (Title) to (Game).

Not sure if this is the best way of doing it, but reassigning init/update/draw seems to work fine. Any better way of doing it?

Regarding point processing, my old tinkerbox is fine up to about 2-300 of them, at around 1000 I end up with something that looks like 1-2 frames/sec, HAHA.

The link:
https://microstudio.dev/i/TinkerSmith/quadrant01/

Live Long And Tinker

And for a change, for you a'maze'ing peeps out there, a simple random maze generator.
I thought it might be of use for one or the other.

https://microstudio.dev/i/TinkerSmith/rndmaze/

Live Long And Tinker

My test project list is filling up with 'obsolete' items and I decided to release one or the other instead of deleting them.
Nothing finished, buggy, so I'm jumping over my own shadow releasing 'unfinished' snippets (oh the shame).
Why? Because I think it might be of use to one or the other... or general amusement ;)

As in ..

• oh .. that's one way of doing it
• or .. what the #$%^ was he thinking, LOL

Either way, comments are welcome.

Ok, what do we have today.

:embed https://microstudio.io/TinkerSmith/dice/

(https://microstudio.dev/i/TinkerSmith/dice/

A little dice game tinker that I did as a precursor to a dice game I'm working on (the ones that are on Discord will have seen the layout prototype).
The tinker itself could have more action phases (multiple rounds, high score, select dice to hold), it's all in there ... just not done in this version :)
I was mainly trying out different ways of structuring things. Still not happy with it, but I think I'm getting there.

On a side note, what do you think about the mouse2key function, another one of my 'lazy' approaches, HAHA

As usual

Live Long And Tinker

P.S. If we had online high scores we could play against each other on the forum, HAHA

Nice! :)

My best score was 24 - beat that! And love the working title 'dice thingy'

Easy 'taken_one' ... I just add some dice MUAHAHAHA

Hehe, but back to tinkering. What I needed next for my dice game are some buttons. So another tinker bites the dust =)
Here what I got so far:

:embed https://microstudio.io/TinkerSmith/spritebuttons/

Link: https://microstudio.dev/i/TinkerSmith/spritebuttons/

Nothing special about it, just publishing for the same reason as usual, might be of use to someone.
If so, please let me know and I continue releasing my 'mini-sub-tinkers'

P.S. ... details are in the Doc

Live Long And Tinker

Another side product of my tinkering, toggle switches.

:embed https://microstudio.io/TinkerSmith/toggleswitch/

Link: https://microstudio.dev/i/TinkerSmith/toggleswitch/

Have fun and I hope its of use for some.

Live Long And Tinker

And another side product of my tinker explorations. But you know me, too colorful to be dismissed, LOL.

Actually I am playing around with random terrain generation at the moment. This is based on the 'bullet' principle where you shoot an imaginary bullet at random angle & velocity into a random direction and calculate where it hits the ground.
Then you would use that information (in a 3D environment) to lift the ground vertices at that point. The outcome would create a vulcano like mountain shape. My other sub projects actually shift the origin around to create rugged islands.

So this was just to evaluate the distribution in a 2D environment. Reminds me of some Nebula images :)

:embed https://microstudio.io/TinkerSmith/cthulhu/

https://microstudio.dev/i/TinkerSmith/cthulhu/

Live Long And Tinker

Category: tinker, snippets, no use at all - but cool to look at, LOL

Had a play with colour gradients and for sure it ended up as another little punch. Not much to it, but you know me guys ... if it is colourful I'm all in :)

(That's why I loved my AMIGA .. reminiscing )

:embed https://microstudio.io/TinkerSmith/orbit/

Link

Live Long And Tinker

P.S. no_trace_was_taken ;)

no_trace_was_taken lol

Anyway, the gradial effect is quite an interesting idea - I think that it could be quite useful in a 3d engine with spheres and triangles - because of how realistic it is.

And also, you could do a really cheap specular lighting (when the light reflects of the sphere) by just making a circle on the sphere which has the same position as 'pos' but smaller eg.

screen.fillRound(pos/150*45,0,10,10,"rgb(150,150,0)")

Then it ends up like this:

:embed https://microstudio.io/this_name_is_taken/orbit/WREJF838/

Not quite right, but something like this might work!

Nice :).
I love it when people tinker with my tinkers. The specular effect will actually come in handy.

Hmm, I should have added some y movement, lissajous style, hehe.

Actually this 'test' is for a top down grid based dungeon idea. So the player will light up the surrounding floor tiles, BUT NOT THE WALLS. There I imagine to just light up the wall edges towards the player ( for the top down feel). Similar to how the planet edges light up when the little sun is behind it. That was the whole purpose of this little tinker.
To see how it looks.

But looks like I won't get away without any casting/ tracing, lol.

** hypnotizing voice whispering into gilles ear **

... need more shaders ... need more blending modes ...

And my lunchtime tinker from today :)
Something 'oldskool' , as in, I use good old color palette shifting for the effect.

:embed https://microstudio.io/TinkerSmith/plasma/

[Space] or [Click] for new plasma field
[1] [2] [3] to change the color palette

In complete tinker condition = not optimized, a mess, but just dig in and have a play with the parameters

Live Long And Tinker

And for sure, after the Plasma I also had to play with Fire.

In a way its just a basic cellular automata connected to a colour palette. (Still have to optimise that one)

:embed https://microstudio.io/TinkerSmith/fire/#transpiler

I left the original plasma colour palettes in there, you can switch with [1] to [4]
... uff, that is getting slow :(

Live Long And Tinker

:embed https://microstudio.io/TinkerSmith/planet2/

Have an idea for some kind of space game and wanted a quick&dirty way of animating some planets. Tried 'real' 3D mapping first, but it was just too slow.

So here is the Low-Effort-Fake-Projection , fast and I am actually happy with the outcome :)

Live Long and Tinker

:embed https://microstudio.io/TinkerSmith/panels/

Just a GUI test

Need spaceships for your next shooter? I have about 4 billion spare, help yourself, LOL

:embed https://microstudio.io/TinkerSmith/spritegenerator/

First draft, needs more templates and colors, but I'm already loving it

Live Long and Tinker

Project Link

The recent mentioning of sprite stacking triggered the idea:
Hey, we now have 3D, why don't I just turn one of my sprites into a 'real' 3D model.

So here we go :)

:embed https://microstudio.io/TinkerSmith/babylonsprite/

Mouse to move the camera a bit, [R] to reset it

Project Link: https://microstudio.dev/i/TinkerSmith/babylonsprite/

Was digging through my old projects and thought this one really needed to be spiced up.

TinkerSmith Creations Presents:

SPRITE GENERATOR V2

:embed https://microstudio.io/TinkerSmith/spritegenerator2/

Now I only have to work out how to create an editor for it :)

Live Long And Tinker