Nigel Kennington
banner
nigelkennington.bsky.social
Nigel Kennington
@nigelkennington.bsky.social
I teach to make money. I design games to make it go away again.
OK, so this week we have #noscreenshotsaturday. I love #monogame, but the 3d support is massively behind the 2d and my early decisions have started to smell so it's time to refactor of the 3d backend (a grander name than it deserves!) and clear some technical debt. Hopefully it won't take too long 🫣
April 26, 2025 at 2:44 PM
Yes, I am petty, why do you ask?
April 24, 2025 at 12:49 PM
With some better code underneath - time to work on the card actions again. Firstly lets get some animation going as the cards transition between placements - a little lerp should do for now. Might make it fancier later...

#monogame #indiedev #screenshotsaturday
April 19, 2025 at 11:53 AM
With a digital #boardgame like Microverse, the ability to cache player actions and undo them seems pretty important, so this week we have a simple command pattern layer between the player inputs and the game world.

Very satisfying to build a galaxy and then undo it!

#monogame #screenshotsaturday
April 12, 2025 at 11:57 AM
Late again!

Microverse players now have their stock of influence and hexes, which doesn't sound like much, but it involved refactoring a bunch of stuff to c# Interfaces that *should* make things easier later on.

Also cute rollout tooltips for funsies.

#monogame #indiedev #screenshotsaturday
April 6, 2025 at 12:25 PM
Very litle time to work on Microverse this week.

I wanted to get the "weird" systems implemented for #screenshotsaturday, but the Binary Star was being a bit of a dick so the Nebulae and Black Hole do exist, but the underlying code is bit of a mess.

I'll regret that later...

#indiedev #monogame
March 29, 2025 at 12:06 PM
Satisfying one this week!

Cards are now in "hands" or "displays" and have backs. AND systems can now hold and display their influence totals. First time for #screenshotsaturday that Microverse has started to feel like the beginnings of a proper #monogame #boardgame thing!
March 22, 2025 at 2:55 PM
My god, it's full of cards! I think going "full nordic" with the feedback animations would be inappropriate for the theme, but a bit of bounce is still nice.

#monogame #boardgame #indiedev
March 16, 2025 at 11:48 PM
Skipped last week: away somewhere lovely. Back for #screenshotsaturday now though and we have a skybox and a bit of 4x style camera control. Might need to dim the textures a wee bit though to keep the eye focused on the "table".

#monogame #TheresNoSuchThingAsParallaxWhenYourHeadsInABucket
March 8, 2025 at 10:17 PM
Damnit. Missed #screenshotsaturday, but gotta keep it going! Got the grid done thanks to the most excellent www.redblobgames.com/grids/hexagons/ and a small amount of whimpering. Also, hello Binary Star: you were MUCH easier to casually write into a rulebook than to add to the system code.
February 24, 2025 at 4:05 PM
Microverse is very much a "spare time" project, so progress will be slow, but #screenshotsaturday will hopefully help keep it going!
This week: all basic system tiles now have game traits. Oh and billboarded glow for the actual stars. Cause pretty things are pretty.
#monogame #writingbadcodeslowly
February 15, 2025 at 8:26 PM
So: we were working on a #boardgame, a sequel to Microbrew: Microverse. It was a tiny abstract 4x game in a mint tin. It kinda got mothballed mid-pandemic but its been poking at me recently so I'm going to work on a #monogame version a bit and see what happens. Here's a VERY basic 1st POC! #indiedev
February 8, 2025 at 7:37 PM
The lego league regional at dundee and angus is the largest (i think) in Scotland. 16 teams of young people completing robotics challenges they've been preparing for for months. (This is one of the robot game judging tables mid-match!)
January 31, 2025 at 11:17 AM
Hardware lab at Edinburgh College is looking pretty festive!
December 17, 2024 at 3:15 PM
The problem was as soon as I tried to work with it in a practical scenario, well, I think the repo can speak for itself...
December 15, 2024 at 1:47 PM
More like Pinkishorangesky this morning...
December 12, 2024 at 9:28 AM
Oh, been there my friend! Soldier on, you got this!
November 27, 2024 at 8:01 PM
Pretty chuffed with how my hacky little #monogame asset processing widget for my novice/student game developers is working out. (Assets by @kenney.bsky.social and sample sheet by lyaseek.itch.io)
November 26, 2024 at 11:36 AM