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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · 3h

forest clearing, day / night

(wondering if this palette is too dark — it looks good in isolation, but it’s a bit muddy in screenshots/on a light background)

Screenshot of a world made using 2-colour (plus black) 16x16 sprites. A knight stands in a forest clearing, the ground a busy carpet of grasses, rocks and leaves.

The same scene at night, the edges of the image fading into darkness. A warm, dim light is visible around the knight.

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · 1d

added damage numbers & some hit fx — trying to make combat feel both snappy and juicy. (no audio yet)

#gamedev

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · 5d

Thinking about coins. having only a single “gold” currency in a game is easy and intuitive, but I think some complexity here is good: many overlapping currencies from different times and places; different regions and social classes having their own understandings of value

#gamedev

Screenshot of a loot inventory showing many different coins of various metals: classic-looking Empires, Crowns, Nails and Grains; gold Denas and silver Drams with a hole through the middle; squarish Solts, Sems and Pirons; ancient-looking Wheel and Axe coins.

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · 9d

yes! this makes me think of Morrowind’s quest directions (“follow the road east past Fort Moonmoth, then cross the bridge over the foyada until you see the ruins on your right”), which is a feeling I’ve long wished more games would capture

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · 9d

I’ve been thinking about this for my own project, specifically with the angle of multiple maps showing different, opinionated ‘facets’ of the actual territory

Like historical T and O maps, Inuit driftwood maps (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammassa...); information relevance over geographical accuracy

Ammassalik wooden maps - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · 10d

the font I’m working on atm is readable at 3pt, which is both very satisfying and also not something I expect anyone to ever take advantage of

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · 13d

worst case areas ~40ms per frame → 15ms

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · 13d

~30% of my render time is now a single “find actors at this location” function call. which feels like a pretty easy win if I can get it running faster

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · 13d

- Rewrote the lighting engine to fix performance issues
- Performance issues were actually caused by Vsync so it didn’t make any visible difference
- Still got lighting time down from ~4.7ms per light to ~0.3
- Added columns & sarcophagi (as a treat)

#gamedev #screenshotsaturday

Screenshot of a top-down tile-based crpg thing. 16x16 2-colour (plus black) pixel art sprites. A knight stands in a crypt of rough stone bricks, dimly lit by candelabras. Through an iron gate to the left can be seen a hallway, the walls lined with stone columns and sarcophagi.

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · 14d

improvements to the lighting system: walls are only lit if you’re on the same side as the light source. (map editor is already hugely useful for creating specific test levels)

#gamedev #screenshotsaturday

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · 15d

built a (pretty rudimentary) map editor this evening.

Adding actors is done by typing their ID and clicking on the map — I’m wondering about some kind of visual interface, but honestly this setup feels good. (maybe just needs autocomplete based on the actor ID database?)

Screenshot of a basic tile-based map editor. A simple level with 4 rooms, some doors, chests, enemies and lights. A toolbar below shows a dropdown menu for ‘Edit Mode’ (currently set to ‘Actors’) and a text field ‘Place ID’ (currently ‘candelabra’).

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · 15d

Screenshot of the Godot engine editor. The open file is ‘test_map_editor’, showing a grid of tiles with some walls arranged in a smiley face, and some purple goblin sprites.

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · 17d

René Magritte painting titles that sound like procedurally generated Dwarf Fortress tavern names

A painting by René Magritte titled ‘The Catapult of Desert’ (screenshot from wikiart)

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · 22d

Added a basic lighting system (& made the isopods react to it).
#gamedev

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · 27d

heard you like containers. so I put containers in your containers
(implemented chests, randomised loot & openable items)

#screenshotsaturday #gamedev #roguelike

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · 29d

this cube on the System minisite nearly killed me, but it is possible. feel free to try an off-the-shelf solution rather than trying to bash it together with css ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Screenshot of the MD System microsite (system.mass-driver.com) showing an isometric cube, with the developer tools highlighting a face to demonstrate that it’s made from HTML elements.

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · Sep 17

→ Actors have a ‘request_verbs’ method
→ it sends a signal that components can listen for
→ components respond w actions they theoretically support
→ request_verbs checks which are valid in the current context & returns a list
→ UI panel shows the list

(I am v satisfied with how this is working)

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · Sep 17

lmao it just happened again (that’s twice in one evening)

Rutherford @craze.co.uk · Sep 17

living next to a tram line has taught me that:
1. a single driver parking badly can make 500 people late
2. this happens about once per week just on my block

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · Sep 16

let’s call it an oldschool crpg? Mostly programming practice for now, maybe it’ll turn into something later :)

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · Sep 16

I’m definitely still figuring out colours (not just for this project but my intuition in general), was quite happy with the way clustering lighter-coloured berries top-left also suggests a highlight there

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · Sep 16

with apologies/gratitude to @lorenschmidt.bsky.social, I had to try this idea for tiling patches of trees (each tile is 2 colours + background)

#gamedev #roguelike

16x16 tilemap. Two forest ‘blocks’ (one deciduous, one coniferous) are made from repeating tiles, a small number of variants (6 total for each type) softening the square grid & repeating texture somewhat.

The forests are surrounded by a scattering of shrubs, rocks and mushroom tiles, as well as various ‘empty’ tiles with different textures of scattered stones, grasses and leaves.

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · Sep 15

nearby / item interaction / inspect UI (I’m using keyboard inputs but this also works with a mouse)

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · Sep 14

I definitely want to lean into that contrast, both with the pixellation next to smooth curves, and with the visually busy dithered tilesets with super minimal typography.

As always, Goodspeed has a board with perfect examples
www.are.na/elizabeth-go...

Future Medieval | Are.na

Medieval revival with some hints of baroque, renaissance, and turn of the century inspired design. Green Knight / Poor Things / prestige Lemony Snicket.

www.are.na

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · Sep 13

I think I’m getting a feel for what this UI could be. Minimal, trying to avoid most common tropes (geo sans-serifs, little bits of art-deco filigree)

Pixel art top-down tile-based dungeon screenshot. Arrows point from the player to adjacent tiles. A black box with pale grey outline over their head reads ‘Select a Direction’ in an incised sort of Albertus-like typeface.

‘Select an Item’ modal listing a gold coin & pewter goblet, both displayed as a 2-colour pixel art sprite with the item name in a sort of squarish neo-grotesk. On the right hand side of each item is a letter (A, B) representing the key which selects that menu option.

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