JPS Grooves

Looking back, I see the mountain. They say that on any journey, when you begin you see the mountain; when you’re on it, the mountain disappears; and when you descend, the mountain appears again—behind you. Each piece of this SnowCone MathFest journey has felt exactly like that. Tonight… I see the mountain that was Kids Camping—and it’s mostly behind me. 😅

All week I’ve been pushing and pushing to get this mode done. It was definitely my least thought-out mode, and every time I tried to build one of my ideas, I was humbled by the coding. It started with my usual grid battles, plus all the stuff I’ve learned lately—like proper CSS scaling (we’ll talk about that later) to keep the grid sane. None of this HTML/CSS/JS behaves like it does in my head, but I’ve learned to appreciate the intricacies at this point. 🧩

After the main grid, we had the inner grids. I placed the tent game first. It’s fully updated now—flashing and ready to light up in multiple ways. It’s probably my favorite game in the mode, especially after I added swipe functionality. ✨

Then I went to the parking game—which I now love. The intro just needed what it has now: Mario Kart–style drive-bys from various festival goers waiting to park their cars. GPT-5 handled the request well and needed about 10 tries to get it right, but it’s looking pretty good. 🚗💨

Then there’s AntAttack. I’ll probably turn this into a full game someday. Play it—you’ll see: it’s easy, infinite, and has some sneaky complexity if you want to stay undefeated. Beware those red ants sending extras into the empty field to guard the food they’re stealing—they mean business. 🐜🍧

And finally, we added him… that annoying MF we all know—mosquito.png. This MF was being ironically mosquito. I tried to kill him (which is the game: you kill him, he comes back—they always come back), but no matter what I tried, the functions wouldn’t kill him. He was too powerful… too global. So I asked Patch: should we lock him in the game container? Let’s just say he dies when you close the mode now. I promise—I made sure of it. 😈🦟💥

I’ve wondered if I did too much with Kids Camping… but whatever—I’d rather do what I want than fit into a mold. What we have here is busy, but if you’re willing to try, there are four mini-games you can play all at once. That’s what I like most: they aren’t hard, but each hits a different part of your brain. I’m not sure they have unlimited replay value (yet), but once I add badges tied to them, it’ll feel good to jump in and unlock new badges and backgrounds.

Also, it’s kind of set up as the XP fountain zone. The Camping Score silently awards +100 XP for every 1,000 points. That parking game can give you ~2,000 Camping Points if you finish it, so who knows if it’s balanced—but I know what it is: (mostly) done! 🏆

SnowCone MathFest v0.7.0 is live!

• Kids Camping is ready for parking.
• Infinity Lake is perpetually jamming (needs some polish).
• QuickServe Pavilion is serving equations in a timed mode (maybe some polish there too).

Why revisit those modes? Because GPT-5 is strong, and I’m glad. Grok was kind of running circles around it for a minute, and now OpenAI opened the floodgates on full file refactors. They definitely had a ~350-line limit before, and now that seems gone. It tried things with code I haven’t seen it do yet—but also, it wasn’t always helpful. I had to tone it down and say “follow me”, as usual. Still, it was more enjoyable to use tonight (last night, not so much). Very powerful stuff… but we still try and fail as often as we get it right.

I tried to trust it with scaling in my modes, and that’s where it offered something new. I didn’t fully understand it, and as I implemented pieces, it started messing things up (sometimes you have to implement all of it to see the intent, but I’ve also wasted hours doing exactly that). So I looked at the code and realized what I wanted was simple, and I needed to be brave enough to try it my way. Now the ant game scales really well. 💪

Speaking of scaling: I spend a lot of time wondering how small I can push this game in a viewport. Tonight I added a 400 × 500 px browser window warning that lets the user know the game will break if the viewport is too tiny. I don’t like barriers, and it was always an interesting challenge to go smaller… but now I’ve got some sanity back, knowing I only need to go so far—and the game saves itself. Mobile is working perfectly. This is really starting to feel good! 📱✅

So… I’m not afraid of AI (social media tries to drum that up daily). It deserves respect, and people should learn more to demystify it. I’m glad I’m still making the decisions and still learning. Do I want the AI to do it all? Honestly, I’d be fine making the music and steering the creative vision. 🎶

From a coding standpoint, sure—people years from now might just ask it to teach them and tweak the outputs (it’s going to get really good at seeing its product and reacting). But me? Since starting this wild ride in May 2025, I’ve had to learn:
HTML, CSS, JS, Vite, Python, AI model prompting, PNG editing/processing, cloud stuff, terminal woes… and honestly, that’s been good—challenging—and something I’ll take into future projects. I’m doing this at the right time.

This festival is happening at the right time.
Right here. Right now. 🎪✨

What’s next??
Maybe some Infinity and QuickServe GPT-5 polish. Definitely Story Mode next!!!

Tomorrow? Maybe I just wash the dishes and take out the trash. 🧼🗑️

Sincerely,
JPS Grooves 🌀