@winslowjosiah@hachyderm.io
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winslowjosiah

@winslowjosiah@hachyderm.io

Hobbyist programmer. Have an AAS from MATC (IT Web and Software Developer).

I've started lots of programming projects. If only I could finish them...

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winslowjosiah, to genart
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📝 New post: Snake, in 500 characters

https://winslowjosiah.com/blog/2024/05/15/snake-in-500-characters

winslowjosiah, to python
@winslowjosiah@hachyderm.io avatar

Currently trying to use (a in ) to make a personal .

Turns out it's excellent at making a that is a blog, but it's not great at making a site that has a blog.

Wrestling through a whole mess of options... 😵‍💫

winslowjosiah, to Blog
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I think it'd be a neat idea to start a , and I'm brainstorming how to do it.

Not gonna use . sounds promising. There's an alternative called that, as the creator of the the Pelicanizer, would be fitting for my blog.

Does anyone else have suggestions?

winslowjosiah, to RaspberryPi
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I got a Raspberry Pi 5 a while ago, and little by little I'm adding some software I'll find useful (and also figuring out how the darn OS works; I've never used Unix-like OSes before).

#raspberrypi #raspberrypi5 #unix #linux

winslowjosiah, to random
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I was recently at the Dr. Mario Championship, and it was super fun!

Here's a highlight reel for one of my qualifier games, which was streamed live on Twitch at the time.

An edited highlight reel from the first qualifier game between Josiah and Peter at the Dr Mario Championship.

18+ winslowjosiah, to python
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Now that Day 1 is over, here is my solution.

Part 1 was straightforward, but Part 2 required me to work around an edge case. (The last number string in "oneight", for example, is "eight", not "one" as a naive solution gave me.)

winslowjosiah,
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@0xSim Ooh, you're doing it in PICO-8? Hm, I'm curious how the solutions will look. That should be interesting!

winslowjosiah, to boardgames
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A nice man at a Barnes & Noble showed me this new he invented with homemade materials. It's an impressively strategic he calls "Ferret".

Let's see if I can adapt it to (and if I can get his permission to release it once it's done, if I finish it!).

winslowjosiah, to random
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Just realized that everybody else who lives in my house has an E in their name except for me.

It's the most common vowel! Why don't I get one? 😛

winslowjosiah, to programming
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I've compressed an into 1KB of for the game .

Play Kilothello in your browser now: https://winslowjosiah.itch.io/kilothello

A pixelated Othello game with a minimalist aesthetic, entitled "Kilothello".

winslowjosiah, to programming
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There's a small called going on right now, where you make games in 1,024 (compressed) bytes or less.

I decided to do a of sorts. I took the essential bits of my newest game, Apathello, and whittled them down into this cartridge. I call it Kilothello.

A PICO-8 window running a pixelated Othello game with a minimalist aesthetic. The title screen says "Kilothello", and many graphics are represented with text.

winslowjosiah,
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@Liquidream Just did! 👍

winslowjosiah, to gamedev
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Day 43

Just got done with setting all the points in the game when I want the sentient dark void to talk to you.

Here's one of them, which displays when the void's been talking for so long that the game's already over. (The text will be replaced with actual conversation!)

A pixelated Othello game with a minimalist aesthetic. The message "20: I've got time to tell you a random tip for playing Othello." appears at the top of the screen. The user quits out of the game back to the title screen. Then the message "23: I've talked for too long, and now I'm rambling." appears at the top of the screen.

winslowjosiah,
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Did another pass of token reducing. I'm using _ENV for the first time in a function. This alone saved me over a hundred tokens.

function call(str)
local func,args=unpack(split(str,"|"))
return _𝘦𝘯𝘷[func](unpack(split(args or "")))
end
--usage: call"circfill|46,82,4,7"

rasterweb, to gamedev
@rasterweb@mastodon.social avatar

Some great PICO-8 resources from @Achie7240

➡️ https://github.com/Achie72/kofi-articles

winslowjosiah,
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@rasterweb Same to you! Have you done any PICO-8 projects I should know about?

winslowjosiah, to random
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🧵 Day 1

After prototyping a decent Othello AI, I'm trying to decide how to represent the Othello board in PICO-8.

  • 2D array
    pros: intuitive
    cons: slow to use

  • bitboard
    pros: uses bitops on 64-bit nums (fast!)
    cons: PICO-8 doesn't have 64-bit nums; will have to adapt

winslowjosiah,
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Day 17

Sadly, no progress today. I slept through most of the day, actually 😅

winslowjosiah,
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Day 18

I should really get started on a title screen, but I decided to do something else first.

To save some memory, I'm storing the AI's calculated moves in a different format (a single cell index, instead of a full 64-bit mask). But at first, I almost broke the AI...

A pixelated Othello game with a minimalist aesthetic. After a few moves, the white AI player gets stuck moving back and forth between two squares, and the game softlocks.

winslowjosiah,
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Day 19

Working on my dialog system! It now closes when it's done (if I don't specify to keep it open).

I'm also brainstorming what I want the dark void to look like by itself. I don't want it to be entirely dark...but having only a set of twinkling stars seems cliche.

A white box comes down from the top of the screen, excitedly tells you a mundane math fact, and goes back up past the top of the screen when the user presses a button.

winslowjosiah,
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Day 20

Because I'm using everywhere, I decided to create a centralized system for them, instead of having like 4 systems that each work differently.

Now it'll be easier to run things like the and the box at the same time. (Check out that box!)

A pixelated Othello game with a minimalist aesthetic. Every so often, a white box drops down from the top and a test message is typed onto it.

winslowjosiah,
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Day 21

I'm getting very near the token limit, so I'm including a function I wrote called "tablefy" that converts a specially formatted string to a table.

We'll see if this affects my plans for making the dark void interact with you during games.

winslowjosiah,
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Day 22

Holy crap, I just found the subtlest bug in my Othello .

I'm using alpha-beta pruning w/negamax, and my alpha starts at 0x8000 (-32768). With each call, beta becomes -alpha.

Trouble is, -0x8000==0x8000. Which sometimes leads to stupid moves...

Some PICO-8 code for an Othello game is shown, with the constant value 0x8000 being highlighted. The game is run, and the AI in the game makes a silly move that quickly leads to the human player moving in a corner. When the constant is changed to 0x8000.0001, the AI makes a far less silly move somewhere else on the board.

winslowjosiah,
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Day 23

No more fooling around, time to actually get a title screen done.

I want to have the dark sentient void introduce itself if it's you first time playing, and then I'll transition to a cool-looking title screen.

I've written the introduction. Now to code a galaxy.

winslowjosiah,
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Day 24

For the opening cutscene, at first I wanted to represent the dark void with a spiral galaxy animation.

But I think this one fits the context slightly better. It reminds me of neurons & synapses.

Inspired by a from @twitonatrain! https://twitter.com/twitonatrain/status/1650909706020372480

An intro cutscene to a video game. Many gray-ish lines move in all directions while materializing in and out of existence. The player goes through a series of dialog boxes before the scene transitions to a placeholder title screen.

winslowjosiah,
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Day 25

I'm still working on a title screen, but I thought I'd also add a neat feature: every few seconds, if the is still thinking, it'll hover over the best move it's found so far.

I like how this makes the AI feel.

A pixelated Othello game with a minimalist aesthetic. Two AI players are playing against each other, and before they commit their moves, they bring their cursor over squares they're thinking of moving on.

winslowjosiah,
@winslowjosiah@hachyderm.io avatar

Day 26

The deadline was just extended by 2 weeks. What a relief; I don't even have a title screen!

But here are the beginnings of one. That board in the background is meant to evoke the cover art, but I probably won't keep it. Besides, I'm running out of !

An unfinished, experimental title screen for a game called Apathello. The game's name sits over a background of stars that move up and down with parallax. A faint Othello board steadily moves by at a tilt in the background.

winslowjosiah,
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Day 27

Guess who finally made a title screen?

The is getting messy behind the scenes for the sake of fitting within the limit, but that's to be expected at this point.

I think I like how this looks and feels.

A demo of gameplay of version 0.8.1 of Apathello. After an intro with credits and legal text, the title of the game flies up from the bottom of the screen, revealing a difficulty setting menu. Once a difficulty is chosen and the player selects the "Play" option, the title flies back down, the game board flies up, and gameplay starts.

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