We have some topics on here about what people are consuming, but I can’t find one on what people are creating, which seems lacking as this is primarily a creative community. So here goes?
What creative projects are you working on? What would you like to tell people about them? Do you want feedback? Help? Or do you just want the opportunity to say “I’m doing something and it’s great”, or “Dang this project is giving me headaches!”
If it’s up to me, projects both IF and non-IF are welcome!
I’m working on too many things!
Yay I can say I’ve done a lot since the last time this questions was asked 
Currently :
Haha, I didn’t see that one – I was on an 8 month hiatus at the time.
I am actually on the beta-testing team for a system called Avenue!
I’m still learning; the format is series with episodes and continuing content. They are aiming primarily at mobile, but I’m campaigning for a desktop-app/browser based version.
Mostly non-IF but I did adapt the Visual Novel template for Ink I did for Geoffrey Golden’s Fix Your Mother’s Printer to Twine for Bez who made a jam game with it and is currently trying it for a bigger project (Twitter link).
I had fun back in March implementing Oskar Stålberg’s organic-looking quad-grids from Townscaper etc. and I just recently made it so it animates through the generation process. That was my “finally wrap my head around the quad-edge data structure for mesh topologies” proect. (and while I was uploading that I ran across this 3D animation of the Lorenz attractor equations that I did last summer: a lot of renderings just show one view, and it’s also fun to see what the parameters do)
I’m haphazardly tinkering with a prototype for a SpaceChem style programming game that’s trying to be about developing a creative programming practice rather than about competitive code-golfing, but who knows if that’s going anywhere?
I’ve been trying a “sit down each day and write some fiction for at least 15 minutes” experiment which has been interesting but I don’t know that I have anything worth showing.
I just made a formal announcement about my next, big, game, which I have previously referred to as “Zork Zero II” or the “cave game.” It’s maybe 37k words at the moment, with a lot to go. But… a lot of systems are done, which helps.
I’ve also resumed some I7 for beginners stuff at the same site.
This past weekend, I released a new podcast, rambling about “The Craft of the Adventure,” “Trinity,” and… Xbox studio closures
I’ve been streaming mainstream commercial games at Twitch. First, a full playthrough of Elden Ring, and now Arkane Austin’s (RIP) Prey. I want to stream either Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance or the Elden Ring DLC when it comes out next month; haven’t decided.
Busy busy! I have a post mostly ready for Gold Machine about Trinity, but I keep getting distracted with game dev. I’m also moving in a couple of weeks, which will slow things down. Oh, well, the move is good for us.
very cool! I have a lot of chaotic attractors around my house since my wife co-wrote this paper: https://www.ams.org/journals/notices/202011/rnoti-p1692.pdf
I love this idea. I love Zachtronics, but I do get tired of the competitive nature of some of those games.
I’m designing and developing a parser-based IF authoring system called Sharpee using .NET Core and C#. I’m also using LLMs to help.
Blog: https://sharpee.plover.net
GitHub: GitHub - ChicagoDave/sharpee: Parser-Based Interactive Fiction Platform Built on .NET Core and C#, using LLMs to help with rabbit holes, coding, and design tasks.
You mean the histograms at the end of each level? I’m bad enough at these games that those are like the punchlines - I somehow heave myself across the finish line and get to see I did ok on cycles, pretty bad on lines of code, and whoops-daisy, on the cost graph I’m six sigma off to the right!
(I am also in the market for Josh’s thing)
I’m working on a game for either ParserComp or IFComp-- probably I’ll need the extra time and will do IFComp, if it’s any good in the end. It came out of a desire to do 3 things:
1.) Write a wordplay game
2.) Incorporate choice elements into a parser
3.) Learn to do a scoring system that tracks choices throughout a game
It’s strange that I wanted to do #3, because I have never cared about score in a game. And in fact you can’t track your own score, the game tallies points behind the scenes and decides your outcome based on that.
I’ve started something like this game about 5 times and never liked the story or setup. But in typical me fashion, I realized I could merge the puzzle ideas with an idea I had for another game. Everything I write is a Frankengame, it seems, with starts and stops on two or more projects before I realize I can conjoin them.
I have no idea if it’s any good. I’ll see what the first testers say.
Sporadically working on Rez and on one of the games I am building with it. At the moment I am spending quite a bit of time writing behaviour trees and figuring out how to integrate them properly with the game.
Rez works pretty well but still has some roughish edges. At some point I have to go back and work on the errors coming out of the compiler. I can fix pretty much everything at this point but I think a new author might be flummoxed. I am not looking forward to this task so I’m putting it off.
…why is this paper taking so long to download? …oh, Modeling Dynamical Systems for 3D Printing. With pictures. That’s awesome.
I’ve made some simple logos for people’s projects (I think 4 or so in the last while).
Currently, I’m writing a mostly linear, short, medieval fantasy/comedy choice-based story to build up my writing skills. I’m also using it to see how impactful multiple font styles and colours can be when presenting text. It’s being built in iffinity; a relatively new Twine-like engine.
I have a parser/choice hybrid project that I tinker with where I use traditional point-and-click icons to drive a text adventure. Through the story prose, it generates parser commands at the bottom and you click the one you want to execute. Whether it’s enjoyable to use or not is the biggest hurdle, but I see it as a possibility to make text adventures attractive super sexy on mobile.
Reminds me of something Chris Crawford wrote about inverse parsers.
Opening my can of worms…
[1] Spent some time going through a bookcase full of crates with magazines like BYTE, Creative Computing, Micro Adventurer, and Dr Dobb’s Journal. My how time flies. Probably will put most of it in the trash, since very little what is mentioned in there is useful nowadays. I do want to keep the Adventure related issues, and some others (like a LISP special edition) which I fondly remembered. And I consider some of it as source material for IF related ventures…
[2] Played around with some editions of the Oregon Trail and Hammurabi, and a bit with Dendry. Maybe something will come out of it.
[3] Received feedback from all my reviewers of the V2 edition of One King (the Inform7 version of IFComp last year). Processing all that will probably take more time than I currently have, and most people will no doubt want to play all new games, instead of beefed up old ones.
[4] Building generalized mechanics for my current WIP “Pack Rat”. Since I am subverting parser mechanics once more, I cannot rely on Inform7 to do all my testing and I therefore wrote an external script to automate all that. Basically I want to ensure the game does not end up in an unwinnable and/or broken state. Currently implementing a library to hold some info dump material, which normally has less than 20 states. Adding the mechanic blows that up to over 4000, so some automation was definitely in order.
[5] Rewriting a lot of text for said WIP, since its nebulous origins predate Spring Thing 2023, and Much has Changed.
[6] I was planning to create a toned down version for “Zrok the Underground Impaler” to serve as tribute for the Dictator of the JAMS group, but it will probably end up in ParserComp instead, since the deadline is fast approaching…
[7] Made some rough plans, outlines, sketches, and the like for a potential sequel to “One King”.
[8] Cannibalized some mechanics from another WIP “Green Elephant” which may or may not eventually see the light when I finally get around to finishing up that monstrosity. Talk about scope creep indeed.
The obligatory “rock quarry” for the Dr Who IFComp24 entry.
My primary project list is my IF-Octane engine and working on the foundation for Silverbacks.
I’m trying to pull out of a severe depression episode, though, so I’m currently porting my “lost” visual game—called Invasion Burn—to the web browser, mostly because I feel like implementing it in Unity3D was overkill, caused some unnecessary platform availability problems, and also I’m worried about the Unity3D maintainers pulling another fast one while my games are open-source.
(I closed the source for the original Invasion Burn, because during the opening volley of madness from Unity3D, there was a concern that other people having copies of the source code and compiling it would cause a monetary fee against me. They’ve since backpedaled, but I also have zero trust in them, so…)
Trying to create a Cloak of Darkness in a OOP block-based environment called Snap!. There’s a major bug I don’t know how to fix, though, so if anyone has a decent knowledge of non-IF programming, message me because I need to progress out of this error.
I am working on a confusing and very difficult piece of IF that… Well, let’s just say it’s weird and breaks the parser down, duplicates it, and plonks it back together. I plan to enter it into IFComp 2025.
Outside of IF, I am making a short song right now, which is simply two notes played each for a bar for 3 minutes, with weird sound effects interspersed to make the song interesting; as well as that, I am not creating but instead am one week away from the Production Nights for a performance, and some of the scenes need some work.
