iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Blaghs @blaghs.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Alert Roos (because some lumbering oaf walked near them)!

A photo of a side yard, five kangaroos stand in a loose group, looking around.

Blaghs @blaghs.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

A really cathartic credit sequence, as the group sits down and chats about everything we went through. I will be thinking about this for a long, long time.

A screenshot from Big Walk, three characters sit on couches / chairs as the sun sets, the credits on screen (credit to my friend for this screenshot).

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Blaghs @blaghs.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Fuck you, door. Get painted!

A photo of an open door, handles removed, with a corridor behind it.

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Blaghs @blaghs.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Right. If only there was some other way to know.

A screenshot from Steam showing a retail purchase of The Orange Box from May 2008.

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Blaghs @blaghs.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

I'm quite curious if this banding on the landscape in Dawnwalker is a result of my (quite low) graphics settings, or if it's the same sort of issue I've spent an age fighting in Unreal with little success (there's a way to avoid my problem, but I'd have to re-do so much).

A screenshot from The Blood of Dawnwalker, Coen stands in the middle of the screen, the screenshot shows Coen standing in a snowy area, when blending between the ground and the snow there are large "bands" of transitory colours.

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Blaghs @blaghs.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

I wasn't quite sure what to expect doing this as an Australian, but I guess this makes sense.

A screenshot of my "Dialect Map" it reads: "You talk most like someone from Rhode Island - about 51% of your answers match a typical resident."

The map is very heavily weighted towards the north-eastern side of the US, with a smattering of California, and a hint more than of Florida, somehow.

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Blaghs @blaghs.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

I've started reading Steel Ball Run recently, and it's sick as hell, the Jobros were right. I'm also now up to the part where Araki is putting little drawings in his text boxes, which is a delight.

Part of a panel from Steel Ball Run, Gyro is talking about Stephen Steel, and there's a little drawing of Stephen Steel's head taking up 1/3rd of the box.

Another panel, Sandman mentions Dio, with another little Dio head. He also mentions his horse's tracks, and hoofprints appear in the box.

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Blaghs @blaghs.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

I understand the, uh, logic of a pure logic puzzle as a minigame, but this one in FF13-2 has to take top place for greatest logical leap between the main game, and a mini-game. I am not sitting down to work this out. I will press buttons randomly, or use a solver.

A screenshot of Final Fantasy 13-2, Serah stands in the centre of a clock with 10 digits. Each digit is a number between 1 and 4. The way to solve this puzzle it to use a solver online.

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Blaghs @blaghs.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

While playtesting I've been catching up on Taskmaster, and the "Taskmaster International" playlist on youtube for NZ Season 1 is diabolical.

A screenshot of a youtube playlist of taskmaster episodes, showing the last 5 episodes in order: 6, 7, 8, 10, 9.

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Blaghs @blaghs.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

This is completely unrelated, but my attempt to see Saddam Hussein under that line has resolved into a woman with a very large head and excessively long neck lying on her back with her toes pointed down.

A graph of the SpaceX stock over time, with a ludicrously crude drawing of a woman with a very large head and excessively long neck lying on her back with her toes pointed down drawn over the top. I must re-emphasise how bad the drawing is.

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Blaghs @blaghs.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

The UI in FF13-2 is largely uglier than FF13 (they tried to make it a look a little more "classic Final Fantasy" but hit a middle ground that just looks cheap), but I will always go to bat for a level title placed in the world (even if it's a magical projection).

A screenshot from Final Fantasy 13-2, the sun is blocked by a large Fal'Cie, the lands of Pulse shrouded in darkness. Floating glowing letters with a slight curve to them sit in front of a nearby cliff:
"Episode 3
Part 1
Prophecy of Hope
Taschas Massif 010 AF"

(The subtitles additionally read "The path you have walked to reach there here and now will give you the courage you need to hope.")

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Blaghs @blaghs.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

After finishing 13 I told myself that I probably shouldn't attempt basically the same thing with 13-2, because if I finish it I might have to play 13-3 (which I've never played). Anyway, here we are.

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Blaghs @blaghs.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

I added a quick little particle effect to help with feedback (I am at war with the brain goblin that wants to increase the curl noise). An aside: It pulls from the G-Buffer to colour the particles, and I have to delay hiding the underlying mesh for two frames, or else it colours it from the dirt.

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Blaghs @blaghs.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

Might want to take another pass at that one, Google AI bullshit.

A screenshot of the Google "AI Overview" it reads: "Scarletite is a rare Rank 8 transformational catalyst in Final Fantasy XIII used to upgrade weapons and basic stat accessories. It is primarily farmed by defeating Sacrifice enemies in Eden Hall (Chapter 12) or Orphan's Cradle, or purchased from the Final Fantasy Wiki for 100,000 gil after Chapter 11."

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Blaghs @blaghs.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

Rather stark contrast between Romero and Carmack.

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Blaghs @blaghs.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Science Saru, I never doubted you for a second.

The Major in Science Saru's "The Ghost in the Shell" adaptation, standing in front of a temple hands on her hips, shadowed by a cherry blossom tree, as said blossoms drift down through the frame. The subtitles read "I guess that means he wasn't lying about that, anyway." The backdrop is bright, nearly tropical in colouring, while The Major is drawn in rich colours.

Batou, staring straight up at the camera, with an effect like a fish-eye lens. Images of other characters circle his head, and the whole image is washed in blue-purple lighting as he's in the middle of a brain-dive.

Rain patters as a man resembling robo-cop in a large armoured suit kneels, examining a child over his leg. Another armoured character with a large nose and red glasses over his eyes stands behind him. Flecks of rain fill the scene, with the sky in the background a mix of overcast with blue poking few small gaps in the clouds. It brings to mind for me Kurosawa's Ran, and its love for clouds.

The armoured character with the large nose perches on a tree, a streak of lightning in the background turns the flecks of rain into beams of bright yellow, and his eyes glow red.

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Blaghs @blaghs.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

The rewrite to make it noticeably less dumb is complete. While hardly *blisteringly* fast it now runs about six times faster (with a new, "worst case" designed around it), and supports divvying it up between frames (because I'm too lazy to make it truly async), where it takes about 1ms per frame.

A very cropped screenshot from Unreal Engine, it reads:
57110.187879
Complete
57110.157349

A close cropped screenshot of text inside unreal engine, showing groups of six times ascending the screen, the first 5 followed by the word Start, the last followed by End. Each group of times has approximately 1 millisecond between the first and last entry.

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Blaghs @blaghs.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

I set up a *very* crude solver to check "paths" through the grid (to access a tile there must be a free "path" to the entrance on the middle right) which was fine for a 9x9 grid, but to make routes more interesting I just upped it to 16x12, and performance is... not good. Worst case nearly at 200ms.

Layered screenshots of an Unreal Engine game, the main part of the image is an 18x12 grid of brown squares, which have trees and rocks and wheat in columns down them. The top left corner shows times.

The times as mentioned in the previous image, they are in pairs as follows:
51930.55183 & 51930.418055
52540.068861 & 52530.992878
53980.423381 & 53980.239904

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Blaghs @blaghs.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

What was in my head a game about making bread has instead morphed into "what if for the first three days of Stardew Valley you didn't leave the farm, and you're terribly unfit, and Damocles' proverbial hangs over your head in the form of increasingly large debts." You know, fun!

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Blaghs @blaghs.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

Oh yeah, that's the feedback you want to see for an incremental game, I am *so good* at meeting player expectations.

A tightly cropped screenshot from Discord, it reads "also, I'm not much of a incrimental kind of person but this game is VERY stresful"

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Blaghs @blaghs.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

There may be a *slight* issue with how I'm converting a float to time here, but nobody will notice once the UI abstracts it.

A closely cropped screenshot inside Unreal Engine, text on screen reads "Current Time: 8:60
Time Remaining Today: 8:00"

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Blaghs @blaghs.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

Given the prominence of "attraction" as an idea in Stone Ocean, and the way Araki describes his writing process, I think it's really fun that it's gone to the Kennedy Space Centre, and is talking about Gravity, and this isn't just because I'm Space obsessed.

A Screenshot from JJBA Stone Ocean, Pucci is on screen, fingers pressed to his temple in pain, the background dark, a crack on his face, and to the left side of the shot is a hand holding a big drink. The subtitle reads "The waxing and waning of the moon is said to affect the sea level by as much as 100 meters."

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Blaghs @blaghs.bsky.social · 21/06/2026

Stone Ocean has been so fun from a "what has Araki been watching?" standpoint. There's a two episode arc that is clearly inspired by Memento, and I'll eat my hat if this psychorama didn't appear after he watched Fight Club.

A screenshot from Stone Ocean with a murky background, a roll of film lays vertically across the screen, with one frame inserted of a faux coke bottle and cup, while the rest of the frames are of a man and woman.

Subtitles at the bottom read "Or a single frame being inserted into a film reel."

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Blaghs @blaghs.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

Fuck yeah Araki, you bet they are.

A screenshot from Stone Ocean's adaptation of a cloudy but bright blue sky, light shining on the clouds and virtual camera, with a text box that says "The Rods are still out there."

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Blaghs @blaghs.bsky.social · 14/06/2026

When someone asks for my favourite song in Elite Beat Agents.

A screenshot from JJBA Part 6, Episode 11. Jolyne and Weather Report float in the air bleeding, wearing space suits made of clouds, while the subtitle reads "Jumpin' Jack Flash is fuckin' sick."

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Blaghs @blaghs.bsky.social · 04/06/2026

I had a flick through the Lonely Hearts section of the classifieds, and while there's certainly formula or phrases that are common there's also such a wonderful breadth of length and... tone? Outlook? I dunno.

A cropped picture of a "Lonely Hearts" entry in the Classifieds, it reads: "1987
Could this be our year?
Ideally you would be a single, available, sincere, feminine slim attractive lady in her 20's or early 30's who prefers a lasting, secure, relationship with plenty of laughs, adventure and loving. Me, I am a divorced, professional, Englishman, resident in London with a homes here and overseas, mid 40's with a young, modern outlook, 5'6", slim and attractive, successful, well educated and wealthy with many varied interest and a good sense of humour and personality. Why not take a chance and find out? Your photograph and telephone number would be much appreciated."

A cropped picture of a "Lonely Hearts" entry in the Classifieds, it reads: "Exciting, Attractive trans-sexual, 24, needs understanding girlfriend."

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Blaghs @blaghs.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

"Oh wow, a Time Out Magazine from when my parents worked in England, what a time capsule, now let's just flip it over and- oh. Oh yeah, I forgot those were a thing.

A picture of a Time Out magazine from late January 1987, Sean Connery is on the cover in a piece called "Bad Habits and Monkish Business."

A picture of the back of the magazine, featuring an ad for Dunhill Cigarettes. "Blended to your taste, " and "The King Size from Dunhill" are written on the ad, which shows a packet of cigarettes on a table, next to a lighter. The bottom ~15% of the ad is dedicated to a Health Department warning about cigarettes.

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Blaghs @blaghs.bsky.social · 16/05/2026

Major body orbits have been updated to be deterministic, and I've started using a fudged gravitational constant to make everything consistent (0.000001 because anything smaller required too much work >.>). Next is adding elliptical & tilted orbits, then maybe an optional 3rd body influence.

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Blaghs @blaghs.bsky.social · 10/05/2026

Switched from a hack gravity falloff (inverse square, but with 10km as the ratio across the board) to an inverse square based on body radius, and now multi-moon systems are a lot more consistent.

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Blaghs @blaghs.bsky.social · 10/05/2026

There's a lot of trickery to not have this collapse in on itself (quite literally), but my orbital... simulacrum is working.

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Blaghs @blaghs.bsky.social · 05/05/2026

For All Mankind pulls a solar sail out in season 3, which of course I'm excited by, but my gut instinct is that that's way too small a sail for the acceleration stated. If I can work out Sojourner's size I can napkin math its force, but I'm probably too lazy.

A screenshot from For All Mankind, the Sojourner ship sits centre frame, quite small, with its solar sails -six large golden triangles- extending from it like a hexagon that was split up the middle.

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Blaghs @blaghs.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

For All Mankind has lots of shallow DoF shots like this, but for the most part the Bokeh shapes are only slightly hit by the iris blades. I adore this shot where it's clipped in with a curve so that it nearly looks like a star.

A screenshot of For All Mankind from Season 2. Margot stands right of frame in focus, the background of NASA has a series of lights that present as mostly blue / teal Bokeh shapes with a slight inward curve to the blades. so they resemble 8 pointed stars.

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Blaghs @blaghs.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

I know in my heart of hearts that the Space Shuttles were sort of disastrous, and with hindsight NASA would have saved money with a standard disposable system. But come on, look at that beauty.

A shot from For All Mankind. Text on screen reads "Skylab, U.S. Space Station" A shot from space looking down at earth, taking up most of centre frame is a space shuttle docked to a fictionalised version of Skylab still operating in the early 80s.

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Blaghs @blaghs.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

Finished Season One of For All Mankind. I must go back to making a game about space. (This janky little test is from so long ago, using pseudo-newtonian physics, and I'd started to implement, but didn't get very far on orbital mechanics.)

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Blaghs @blaghs.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

I'm cleaning out the garage with my father, and top of the pile in one of the boxes is an absolute banger of an album.

A photo of a pile of CDs, sitting on a retaining wall. The top CD is Fleetwood Mac's Rumours.

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Blaghs @blaghs.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

Looking through my blueprints to see if I can make a work-around for a weird UI issue, and why did I do this? What possible sequence of events could have caused me to duplicate this branch? (I know the answer is copy-pasting, but c'mon.)

A screenshot of an Unreal Blueprint, from the "OnPressed Torch Button" it runs to a branch which checks to see if "block first input" is true, and if it does it delays for a tick and then sets it to false. If it isn't true it runs to a branch which checks to see if "block first input" is true, and if it does it delays for a tick and then sets it to false.

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Blaghs @blaghs.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

Made a friend in a very bold Maggie, who flew right down next to me while I was digging a hole. I stepped back, they ate a few grubs, then I went back to digging. I offered them two worms, but they didn't seem interested. They then sang me a little song before flying off.

A photo of a Magpie standing next to a small hole in the ground, the tip of one of my shoes and my spade are visible at the bottom of frame.

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Blaghs @blaghs.bsky.social · 06/04/2026

GTA remains an occasionally gorgeous game, well over a decade since its release. (Red Dead 2 has possibly the most evocative lighting of any game, and the seeds for that were laid here)

A screenshot in GTA, a character in a top hat on a motorcycle, flying towards the sunrise. The distant sun is a yellow-orange orb, with its glow diffusing across the screen into pale-blue fog.

The same character in GTA, overlooking a small set of coastal buildings as the sun sets. The sky is a rich salmony-peach, reflected in the deep blue water. The ground is fading to dark, pockets of light from the buildings providing small moments of relief.

The character, standing and overlooking San Andreas at night time. The whole city is awash in pinpricks of light, the usual distance haze of GTA tinted to a more orange glow. Light pollution at its most beautiful, though stars still sparkle faintly in the sky.

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Blaghs @blaghs.bsky.social · 05/04/2026

Alright Hiromu, what've you got for me?

The title card of "Daemons of the Shadow Realm."

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Blaghs @blaghs.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

I finally have a proper dam setup in Timberborn, but since, like an idiot, I have the dam tops directly above the fill valves, the falling water causes them to overflow the top part of the river once every 20 seconds.

A screenshot of Timberborn. A small beaver colony with a very tall dam just up-river. The water is overflowing onto the tree plantation just beneath the dam.

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Blaghs @blaghs.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

I finally (Finally!) have a system in place to display changing/adding buffs that doesn't break everything. I have been procrastinating implementing this for... about a year.

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Blaghs @blaghs.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

Whenever I use a curve in Unreal I always forget that while you create a "*type* Curve" in the asset browser, you then need to set the variable type to "Curve *type*" in the blueprint. *Type* Curve also does exist in Blueprints, but it's there for... other reasons, I think(?).

A screenshot of Unreal, on the left we can see the "Vector Curve" AnimCurveBuffDisplay, and on the right in the blueprint the "Curve Vector" which has been set to the AnimCurveBuffDiplay Vector Curve.

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Blaghs @blaghs.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

I was often a timid child, and I vividly remember my Mum warning me away from the mangroves as a kid, so I spent years passively scared of them. In her defence, it looked like this and I guarantee that six year old me would have stacked it into the spikes (pneumatophores).

A picture of a tree on sand surrounded by thousands of spiky root bits that point directly up through the soil, its pneumatophores. Taken from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_mangroves#/media/File:Mangrove_and_pneumatophores_in_Moreton_Bay,_Qld.JPG

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Blaghs @blaghs.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

Slight fix to the performance (only slight) but a significant improvement in terms of visibility.

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Blaghs @blaghs.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

I'm also trying to work out why the pirate boss isn't firing its cannon. I haven't solved that, but I have found a very interesting little bit setup that I cannot explain from past me.

A screenshot of a blueprint in Unreal, the code triggers on overlaps, checking to see if enough time has passed since the last time it was triggered. It's setup with separate timers for both left and right sides, but strangely the "L Cone" section is checking the R Side variables, and the "R Cone" checks the Left.

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Blaghs @blaghs.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

Finally (finally!) implemented a way to see which buffs you've taken in Careening (though it's still very WIP), and it turns out it completely breaks when you have a cracked run. It displays incorrectly, and absolutely *trucks* the performance in the pause menu. More work needed, clearly.

The buff taken display in Careening, it shows 92 buffs taken, though they are arranged in strange columns, and in the top right it show an fps of 23.

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Blaghs @blaghs.bsky.social · 17/03/2026

I'm sorry, Spire, but I need more relics. You should give me more relics.

A screenshot of Slay the Spire 2, The Silent rests at a bonfire, the UI shows 29 relics, so many that they have escaped the containment of the first row, with three on the second.

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Blaghs @blaghs.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

I really enjoy this as an insight into people's taste (I would describe mine as varied).

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