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posts filed under: general

Super Fast Lightbox

Super Fast Lightbox
One of the things I always make sure to include on any of my site designs is a cool way to view larger versions of images, and that usually involves using some sort of "lightbox." Nobody wants to click on an image and have it totally replace the page that they were browsing, or have it open in a new tab, right? Or maybe that's just me.

A lightbox is a cool way to have a full image display on a page without navigating to a new page, and without popping open a new window or a new tab in the process. Many many years ago light boxes were giant monstrosities of javascript and css that seemed to barely ever work when I tried to use them on my sites, but these days thanks to advancements in both js and css they've become a lot more simple to implement.

For my new blog design I went with a super simple lightweight bare bones light box called Lity. Lity boils down to a single css file, and a single javascript file, and was incredibly easy to toss into my design. There aren't any themes, or images, or crazy styles to worry about like so many of the other lightbox solutions I've tried in the past. Once the files are properly included in the html, all you have to do is add a data-lity attribute to a link element (the "a" tag) and Lity takes care of the rest.

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I guess that's all there is to this post! Lity is a simple and fast solution to lightboxes, and seems to work well on mobile too which is pretty dang important these days. If you have any other suggestions on lightbox stuff let me know

Quick CSS Animations

Quick CSS Animations
While I'm on a web development kick I thought it would be neato to point out some of the cool stuff I used for my new layout. I'm still working on game stuff that I am not allowed to share just yet so I gotta figure out other stuff to talk about on here!

Turns out in the modern era of browsers and css you can get animations with almost just pure css. When I redesigned the Super Meat Boy website I added some animations to a bunch of elements with just pure css. For more info on css animations check this out.

I wanted to get some animations going for hovering over image links on my new design, and some quick searching lead to animate.css. This handy stylesheet is full of animations that are super useful, but not exactly what I was totally looking for so I had to modify some things to come up with my own.

Fresh New Look!

Fresh New Look!
It is done!

The fresh coat of paint is still drying so some things might be still broken, but overall I think this is looking pretty good.

I really wanted to get a redesign of my site going because I honestly hated the artwork on the old one. If you draw you know what I mean. Your art doesn't age well usually. When you're constantly improving at your craft over time, you notice how horrible your older work is compared to your newer. I mean it may have not looked objectively horrible, but man it was so gosh dang old I couldn't stand it anymore.

I've been drawing a whole lot more lately so I thought my new website should reflect that and look all totally hand drawn. I tried to simplify a lot of things like the shapes and colors and textures of the site. My old site was flashy and a little complicated. I liked it, but I'm feeling like much more of a simpler look now without paint brush splatters and gradients everywhere.

Still to come is some more visual polish. You might notice that the site is now left aligned instead of centered (when it at maximum browser window size.) The right side that looks totally empty right now will eventually have some cool art in it. I just have to figure out what that art is going to be.

You might also notice that the website changes based on how large your browser window is! I hope to improve my site's performance on mobile, and also hope to keep the site pretty viewable on smaller screens while also taking full advantage of how high res everyone's desktops are now. The site's width has increased from 960 pixels to 1100 pixels or so, but that changes based on your browser's width.

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I also went through and took a lot of my "doodle posts" and rolled them into my newly named "draws" page. Everything that was on there before is now filed under "ancient" and you definitely shouldn't look at it because old artwork is terrible and embarrassing.

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That's all for now! More updates to come.

New Webzone Coming Soon!

New Webzone Coming Soon!
Say goodbye to this old and busted layout for my blog.

It's probably not that busted, but it is coming up to maybe 5 years old according to my first post here ever. I've spent the last couple of days cooking up something new! I'm still going to be using the same back end, so all of the posts and everything will be preserved exactly as they are, but the front end will look totally fresh.

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I think one of the reasons my anxiety flies so high is when I leave things the same for too long, and my website is one of those. For some reason I've just spent a lot of time being too intimidated to gut my site and start fresh. There's something about digging into an old project... it can be scary!

Anyhoo, enough talking about it. Probably at some point tomorrow I'll be migrating all of the front end to the new hotness.

April Status Report

April Status Report
Hey! It's me! The person who is supposed to be updating this blog a whole lot more. I really need to break the habit of totally ignoring my blog at the start of the month and then developing crazy anxiety about making a new post.

The majority of my time lately has been going toward stuff that unfortunately I cannot share with you at this time. It sucks, I know, but trust me when I tell you that it's a very cool project and I'm really excited to be a part of it. I wish I could go into any more details here, but maybe by the time PAX rolls around again this year I'll be able to talk about it more.

Other than that I've been tinkering with just some basic stuff for the next version of Otter, and working on my Pathfinder Character Sheet manager. I'm still finding time for doodling of course too, and for now I'll have to use my doodles as the primary feed of my blogosphere.

I'm also realizing that it has been many, many years since I've updated my website. I think my website has looked like this for about six years now which is actually pretty unbelievable to think about. When I was younger I wouldn't be able to tolerate a website design for more than a year at the most... but here we are. I'm an old man now and the years have all blended into each other. Obviously my art style has evolved a lot since I first put this site together, so it'd be nice to get something fresh running. I think I would be able to keep all of my posts in order, and maybe even still preserve this look somewhere in a different URL, but we'll see what's possible when the time comes. Not sure when I'd be able to squeeze in a complete redesign of my site at this rate!

Super Sky Sisters isn't dead, it's just asleep for now until I can find time to prioritize it again. I still want to launch it somehow. I'm just still being me and holding it back until I feel good about it.

It does feel weird not having my personal projects be at the forefront of my life right now, but I am having a lot of fun working on this secret game. I really really really want to post what I'm doing, but it probably wouldn't be cool with the other folks on the team. I tie so much of my self worth to my personal projects and sometimes that is tough, but I am making progress on things even though posts here aren't as frequent as they should be.

That's all for now! I'll check in again soon. Promise!

Sky Sisters Upgrades

Sky Sisters Upgrades
I think the last actual question to ponder in the world of Super Sky Sisters is the upgrade system. A long time ago when I demoed the game at an event in Denver I got some feedback that suggested that it would be more interesting or fun if the players had some sort of active goal to pursue. This came mostly in the form of maybe collecting something actively, or something along those lines. Basically the way that the game is played right now is that you are always just reacting to things and never just acting.

The strongest idea that came out of thinking on this for awhile was tying the upgrades to some sort of active goal that the players could pursue. I decided to go down the path of collecting things and put a small challenge in that involves the players guiding the orb along a predetermined path. When they completed a lap on the path they would earn an upgrade, and the path would then demand more of them for the next upgrade by either changing shape or adding more laps, and so on. At first this seemed like a good idea but lately I'm totally not sure.

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The upgrades are things like +20% damage, or +10% special recharge, or +50% loot range. I think the upgrades are actually a lot of fun and when I added them to the game it seemed to really fit and complete some sort of puzzle that I was staring at for months. It almost seems like a hack since it seems like players in general are always going to respond well with some sort of +X% of something opportunity in a game, but it also gives the sense of progress and that is actually quite difficult in Sky Sisters since the entire game takes place in a single square arena.

So right now I'm at a crossroads. I like how the upgrades require the players to do something actively to earn them, but the more I look at it the more complex it seems. Adding this new idea of an upgrade path on top of everything else just seems like a giant mess, and the game is already messy and chaotic most of the time (especially at the higher difficulties.)

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The more I think about it the more I want to remove this system entirely and make upgrades a thing you just earn halfway before a boss, and immediately after a boss. This is the super tough part of designing a game like this. It's not as obvious to me as say changing the layout of a level to teach a mechanic easier. It's a big system with a lot of moving parts and messing with one part changes all the others. When I watch people play the game it seems like they're already trying their hardest to just survive and go for a high score, so maybe I'm reading into this feedback a little bit in the wrong direction.

Back when I received this feedback it was at a point where the game was much slower paced, so maybe the player felt like they just wanted more going on and not so much down time. The idea is that during this "down time" the players can work toward some goal, but I'm not sure if this is the right way to accomplish that. Since PAX I made the game faster paced, and it worked out better than I thought.

Not sure what I'm going to do! I think I will probably remove this whole path tracking challenge to get upgrades. Or... as I've typed this out I thought maybe if there was something on the screen that the players could always shoot that might be fun... but ... now I'm already thinking of how that could go horribly wrong too. Oh well. Video games!