JPS Grooves

Date: August 11, 2025

Tonight I wasn’t sure how much work I’d get done. I wanted to nudge Story Mode forward, but I’m still hunting for a format that actually makes me happy. It’s definitely going to be a reading mode, and I’m learning to be cool with that in a math app. 📖➕🍦

I did a bit of machine-planning and had Patch spin up a few models. Real talk: if I had GPT-5 six months ago, this whole process would probably be miles ahead. But hey, that’s fine. I already burned two weeks earlier trying to build a full AI learning model from scratch, so detours are kind of the vibe on this project anyway.

I’m stoked to be thinking about Story Mode again because writing stories is one of my favorite things. This one’s going to be a fun blend of pieces — multiple backgrounds, transition screens, PNG layers, and probably some music. I’ve got tracks I could reuse, but I also love making new ones, so… we’ll see. The complexity is going to be higher than I can picture right now, and that’s exciting and terrifying in equal measure. I want to keep it open-ended, too — maybe even carve out a bit of paid content to help fund development as it grows.

Tonight wasn’t a “big overhaul” night; I was tired. I did rip out the opaque gray background filter that was hiding my beautiful art. I’ve used that look in Quicksurve Pavilion, but not in other modes, and the backgrounds are too good to bury. I might pull it from Quicksurve Pavilion next to keep everything consistent.

Story Mode now has a lightweight intro flow — no character PNG yet, and the dialogue isn’t written, but you can click through and get a feel for how it might play. I’ll keep poking at that as the working model firms up.

Most of my actual progress tonight was re-framing Kids Camping into Camping Games — because it’s not just for kids anymore. It’s also more complex than I expected. I got a valuable Tiny Fingers test on mobile that revealed a long-press highlight issue that broke the fun. Patched. 🩹

I also revisited the Ant button. Turns out nobody realized it was a button. I restyled it to look tappable. It works now, but it’s not final-final. Progress over perfection.

On the Parking mini-game, I wrestled with slowing down the little PNG car. I ended up just stopping the drive animation and letting it bobble instead. I had to wrangle some sizing weirdness, but I figured it out on my own — and that felt good. (Sometimes the AI throws mountains of code for a speed bump, and that’s not helpful. GPT-5’s superpower is also its drawback if you let it “Grok-dump” and change little things you didn’t ask it to. You really have to be careful with the firehose.)

Anyway, we still have three mostly complete modes in good shape. I’m not pushing a 0.7.1 tonight. With luck, I’ll have a proper Story Mode intro locked by week’s end — or at least a solid direction. Work has started back up, summer’s over, and dev will slow down a bit. But we got a lot done this summer, and there are still breaks between now and January 2026, the target release window.

Thanks for following along — now go practice some math. ✌️🍦📐

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