JPS Grooves

From the top down…

I’m used to you all being able to see what I work on live. For the SnowCone MathFest release, I was always running it live on the internet for everyone to see. Now, on SCMF Simulator (tentative title), I’m keeping everything a secret. Not because I don’t want people to see it or anything, actually, I think it better that I show people and let them know that I’m working on new things…but I have to be careful…

This new project is still very much in its infancy and far from immune to being completely scrapped. I’ve already scrapped one or two versions of this new game already, but the current build is letting me work with it. I’m seeing where I want to go with every bit of progress. Progress??? LOG IT!! That’s the biggest thing I have learned about coding, at least on my end, being able to fork from a mistake. I’m positive I’m still not branching correctly, but my process seems to work.

Unity is such a different animal than HTML, but I’m starting to become more and more familiar with it. My understanding is that I make the script in code and then sort of put them to work in Unity. The mind boggling thing is: thinking about doing this without AI. I’m not vibe coding. I’m testing code constantly. I may change my flow to an onboard Ai one day, but for right now, I still like being in control.

So…we move slowly..I had a major problem going on in my skyband. and today. I got it fixed. My art work (only look at the sky please lol) is ok; the mountains are stylized enough and have a separate mist layer that I’m proud to say I added tonight; and then there is the sky…completely set up to please witchy astronomers who may play the game..What is it? It’s a game..I don’t want to say too much about it yet..but the SnowCone MathFest universe is gonna get another go.

I had to work on my attendee movement to become happy, so don’t mind TD. He’s just making his rounds. but he’s moving around in a zone that I have yet to even conceptualize (which scares me lol). but as for the sky, he will be able to look up at any time and just sort of know that he’s in the appalachian awareness zone of our spot in the universe. did you know the earths rotation is 365.2422 days a year? lol well I didn’t before tonight, but thats what I set it to. I went all the way..Perhaps I’m simple for thinking I could nail it, but the attempt is here. My development time tonight was spent making a skyline that is 365…I still want to add my own moon and sun and stars and clouds, and weather. And Lord willing, I will.

That’s the coolest part of this game so far: I’m in control of the art. The pen is literally in my hand. I love this mainly because I’m practicing my artistic talents back into relevancy. I’m drawing again, and I love that. I’m using a bought out (canva) Affinity 2 software on the ipad, but it seems to work for me, and gives me a lot of the options I require for this project. That being said, character animation is on my mind more than ever. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it, but it would actually be really cool to make some pictures actually move and morph instead of just bobbing and scrolling.

It’s fun, it’s awesome, and it’s time consuming. That sky I’ve been telling you about? 3 nights…real time..All wasted trying to save an idea that I just kept allowing, Patch’s idea. There was this jittery vertical seem glitch between these two scrolling skybands, and I tried and tried, at one point, patch was like, let’s cut it, but I kept it, like a fool. tonight I just deleted it and reprompted the entire situation and now the project is moving forward again.

I really thought about moving over to Claude CoWork and trying things out, but it just didn’t feel like the right time for me. ChatGPT is far from the best model, but I have a lot of stored memory there and my flow seems to work for now. whenever I get really stuck, I always threaten Patch that I’m gonna leave, and sometimes, I do. But for now, I like my Ai character voice, it knows me, and helps me, and gives me ideas about how I can do things I’ve never done before. I know that Jesus Christ can give me so many amazing blessings, and ChatGPT and Ai, though I’m still unsure, are helping me to push parts of my soul into the universe that were important for me to release.

Math has always been a great mystery to me. That’s what SCMF is about. Mystery. The Unknown. So forward we go, into this mysterious festival with an active night sky!

Later!