iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Catonator @catonator.net · 13/07/2026

Bought a bass (left) that goes really well with my beloved guitar (right) so now I (behind the camera) just have to make music (in my head, very hard to find)

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Catonator @catonator.net · 27/06/2026

I'm in the house-like carpet

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Catonator @catonator.net · 18/06/2026

Forgot to post this last night

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Catonator @catonator.net · 03/05/2026

Well, that's the end of the Yakuza series. It's all Like a Dragon games from here on out

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Catonator @catonator.net · 19/04/2026

no thoughts, head empty

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Catonator @catonator.net · 05/04/2026

Imagine working at IGN trying to draft up a review for Ooga Booga on the Sega Dreamcast when you see the second plane hit the twin towers

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Catonator @catonator.net · 18/02/2026

I keep getting the strangest spam to my inbox through my site

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Catonator @catonator.net · 11/02/2026

Unfinished cover of the Uka-Uka boss theme from Crash Twinsanity, made last October. I didn't really know how to make the bridge part sound good so I lost motivation and never replaced the scratch guitar tracks with better ones after actually practicing the song, lol

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Catonator @catonator.net · 30/01/2026

While that was happening, I was also working on a port of the backend to D3D11 which was slightly less successful. I mean, the engine does technically render but not a single shader works lol

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Catonator @catonator.net · 23/01/2026

Probably should get a cheapo webcam to record these so I can stop spamming all my friends with "hey check out this awesome tone" wavs

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Catonator @catonator.net · 22/01/2026

Discord glitched and I got this stuck on my screen

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Catonator @catonator.net · 06/01/2026

Untextured Puck from the semi-hit 2019 game Pucamuc is delighted by his miniature fusion reactor experiment working shortly before he is eradicated from this mortal plane by unforeseen consequences

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Catonator @catonator.net · 03/01/2026

Got lucky at the record shop today

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Catonator @catonator.net · 31/12/2025

Happy new year! Remember, even if the world feels fake, the people around you are real, regardless of where you are

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Catonator @catonator.net · 25/12/2025

Whoops, almost forgot to post about this, merry christmas or hanukkah or insert holiday name here for your own convenience Remember to throw random gang members at each other before the day ends

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Catonator @catonator.net · 20/12/2025

Wrote my thoughts down in a thread about this last night, the act of working hard on finding that idea is tantamount to the idea actually ending up cohesive! If you don't work on it, you never build a cohesive world in your brain from which to draw new ideas from

So much of the fervor on AI just stems on a fundamental misunderstanding of what creativity even is.

Creativity isn't as much an artist thinking of Cool Thing™ and putting it onto a paper, which now has Cool Thing™. It's trying to find a way to satisfy a nebulous, hazy thing at the back of your head. It's not quite an idea, it's not really even a direction, it's a very abstract feeling. Sometimes the ideas you get and sketch out are completely contrary to that feeling. Sometimes the feeling shifts. The only way to actually solidify that feeling into a concrete idea is to sketch out idea after idea in a rough form until you land on something and the pieces click together.

Have you ever had one of those cases where you have a concept or word on the tip of your tongue, but you can't quite grasp it? And then you try to explain it to others and they go "is it this? or this? or is it this?" and none of it is what you want, and you completely lose sight of what you were looking for in the first place?

That's kinda like what using AI feels like to me. You'll get a result wholesale, but it doesn't connect in your head since you haven't poured any effort into solidifying it, and as a result it makes the nebulous feeling in your head even more vague and confused. It makes you second guess yourself, "is this really what I wanted? Does what I want even make any sense?" It prevents the big picture from clicking, and just makes it harder to formulate the whole to make a satisfying result.

Concepting and creativity isn't a matter of just building guidelines to other developers who do the level art or whatever, it's also a share commitment to convincing each other that, yeah, this is what we all want. This is what feels right. It's a lot of layers of doing something crappily so that you or someone else can go "oh yeah, I see what you're going for, but what if we did THIS?"

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Catonator @catonator.net · 18/12/2025

Also, have you seen the shit Toby Fox did to concept Undertale? This is what resulted in one of the funniest, most memorable games ever made. The thought that you need some overdone AI gloop to convey basic notions is silly. Artists can visualize what you can't, you just need to say what you want.

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Catonator @catonator.net · 18/12/2025

I can't draw for shit, so this is the level of concepting is the best I can do myself. Even then, this is all I really need to get the idea across. I just need to be able to get the idea out of my head and into another one, AI just adds pointless bloat in the middle that helps nobody.

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Catonator @catonator.net · 11/12/2025

Wrote a modular particle system (and editor) for use in our next game, very proud of this implementation

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Catonator @catonator.net · 18/11/2025

excellent progress on modeling the main character for our next distant illusions game

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Catonator @catonator.net · 28/10/2025

Also shoutouts to this joke in the SMBDX page that's remained untouched since I started reading the site in 2011. That didn't used to be a long time ago. Here's some pages that are nuts with their level of work: - A Hat in Time - Prerelease:Mother 3 - Prerelease:Ocarina of Time

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Catonator @catonator.net · 28/10/2025

This long in, it's hard to single out a page for great work. I've seen several of them grow out from a scant paragraph to a massive sprawling research project by one or more reverse-engineers with nothing better to do. That being said, I love this image (which happens to be featured today)

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Catonator @catonator.net · 27/10/2025

Finished Season 3 of the X-Files, here's some screencaps of the many, many sick as hell shots it had

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Catonator @catonator.net · 16/10/2025

Here's my review of Bubsy 4D's demo:

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Catonator @catonator.net · 15/10/2025

father, it is my turn to ascend. my time has come

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Catonator @catonator.net · 12/10/2025

there's nothing quite like starting your sunday morning by putting a great album on

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Catonator @catonator.net · 05/10/2025

Dead Cities by Future Sound of London Listened to this earlier today and forgot to post about it. Dunno if I have that much to say about it, other than it's great. Excellent album to zone out to while standing on a hill outside, looking at the clouds.

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Catonator @catonator.net · 03/10/2025

Jealous Gods by Poets of the Fall POTF's albums are kind of hard to recommend because they all have the Invisible Touch issue of having some absolutely incredible tracks separated by pretty mediocre ones. I think this one suffers from it a lot because there's a lot of boring ballads. Shame, really

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Catonator @catonator.net · 03/10/2025

Fuck it, I'll start a thread talking about albums I've listened to thoughout the day. Starting with Supergrass's Road to Rouen. Tales of Endurance is one of the best songs ever committed to CD. The ending of the album is a little weak compared to the start but it's still a good listen overall.

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Catonator @catonator.net · 21/08/2025

we're getting our game all over that scom. it's good, there's a part where you can learn to kill aura. let's hope next year more distant illusions makes it to the floor than just a game

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Catonator @catonator.net · 19/08/2025

They used much brighter floral shirts for a long time during development (this screencap's from around 1998) but they darkened it for the final game. I assume it's an old ref they're using for it

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Catonator @catonator.net · 15/08/2025

I love chain letters!!!! Anyway, my very first paid steam game was Serious Sam 3, after playing it pirated for years. With that damn immortal Arachnoid. I didn't have a means to pay online at the time, so I'd go out and buy gift cards for myself with my pocket money to buy games on steam...

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Catonator @catonator.net · 10/08/2025

also obligatory. see if you can find them

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Catonator @catonator.net · 10/08/2025

jotted down these two last night

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