iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Rutherford @craze.co.uk · 08/09/2026

It’s a bug but like… hell yeah

A giant eye-shaped arrangement of glitchy pixellated rings in bright purple-blue over a dark grey background. A few scribbled lines of the same shade of blue are scattered around as well.

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · 24/12/2025

I made mulled wine sorbet & there’s nothing on the calendar for the next week. Merry christmas

A small bowl with a single scoop of dark red sorbet. Warm lighting, dark wood tabletop, cosy vibes, etc

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · 20/12/2025

starting to feel much more comfortable programming complex systems. Had an idea yesterday for a kind of Dishonored-style character controller based on parallel state machines #screenshotsaturday #gamedev

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · 02/12/2025

drowning in paperwork this week but I made a muscovado & dalgona ice cream, which has been a huge morale boost

A scoop of pale brown ice cream topped with pieces of homemade dalgona.

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · 10/11/2025

implemented an action log & connected up the health bar. I don’t want to go overboard with text effects, but: - combat actions are colour coded - more important actions (like attacks) are brighter than others (like harvesting) - older messages are dimmed (also health bar lag)

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · 08/11/2025

thinking about UI. I don’t love the big sidebars & high information density of a lot of roguelikes — trying to come up with something that’s minimal but still shows everything you’d regularly need #gamedev #screenshotsaturday #godot

Screenshot from the roguelike/crpg thing I’ve been working on, showing a mockup UI.

A thin status bar at the top shows the player’s current location, the time, and the moon phase. The tile-based play area takes up most of the screen. Below it is a panel in three sections: a status area, showing the player’s health, XP and current target; a log of recent events; and a list of nearby items and their directions relative to the player.

The design language is very minimal, with white text on a black background and thin dark grey lines used sparingly to delineate UI areas.

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · 03/11/2025

this game won a Hugo Award and frankly it deserves another

Screenshot of a randomly-generated book from the game Caves of Qud. The text reads:
“Live and drink piss.”

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · 29/10/2025

smashed up a cabbage. played with knives. new combat sounds. (I don’t know what I’m doing) #gamedev #sounddesign

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · 25/10/2025

Made some sound effects for footsteps & potions. my first serious attempt at sound design, feedback is very welcome (Combat sounds are not mine, included so bsky compression doesn’t crush the volume) #gamedev #godot #screenshotsaturday

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · 24/10/2025

it’s pretty subtle, but I tried recording some of my own sound effects for the UI. (combat audio is placeholder/not mine) #gamedev #godot

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · 23/10/2025

Added some (extremely placeholder) sound effects to the melee combat and it’s starting to feel very satisfying. Might go ahead and add sounds to everything #gamedev

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · 20/10/2025

a heist with a hoist. looters on scooters. this is 10/10 stuff

Screenshot of a news article about the Louvre robbery, showing a furniture elevator leaning against the side of the museum.

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · 18/10/2025

the isopods don’t like it when you get too close #gamedev #screenshotsaturday #godot

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · 18/10/2025

map editor now shows tile variants (corner/side pieces, etc) & loads/unloads chunks dynamically around the cursor. Still very barebones (no undo!), but I could probably build most of a game in this #screenshotsaturday #gamedev #roguelike

Editor screenshot of a roguelike/crpg-style tile-based world. A forest with clearings and paths through it, and three small buildings.

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · 16/10/2025

added damage numbers & some hit fx — trying to make combat feel both snappy and juicy. (no audio yet) #gamedev

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · 12/10/2025

Thinking about coins. having only a single “gold” currency in a game is easy and intuitive, but I think some complexity here is good: many overlapping currencies from different times and places; different regions and social classes having their own understandings of value #gamedev

Screenshot of a loot inventory showing many different coins of various metals: classic-looking Empires, Crowns, Nails and Grains; gold Denas and silver Drams with a hole through the middle; squarish Solts, Sems and Pirons; ancient-looking Wheel and Axe coins.

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · 04/10/2025

- Rewrote the lighting engine to fix performance issues - Performance issues were actually caused by Vsync so it didn’t make any visible difference - Still got lighting time down from ~4.7ms per light to ~0.3 - Added columns & sarcophagi (as a treat) #gamedev #screenshotsaturday

Screenshot of a top-down tile-based crpg thing. 16x16 2-colour (plus black) pixel art sprites. A knight stands in a crypt of rough stone bricks, dimly lit by candelabras. Through an iron gate to the left can be seen a hallway, the walls lined with stone columns and sarcophagi.

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · 03/10/2025

improvements to the lighting system: walls are only lit if you’re on the same side as the light source. (map editor is already hugely useful for creating specific test levels) #gamedev #screenshotsaturday

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · 02/10/2025

built a (pretty rudimentary) map editor this evening. Adding actors is done by typing their ID and clicking on the map — I’m wondering about some kind of visual interface, but honestly this setup feels good. (maybe just needs autocomplete based on the actor ID database?)

Screenshot of a basic tile-based map editor. A simple level with 4 rooms, some doors, chests, enemies and lights. A toolbar below shows a dropdown menu for ‘Edit Mode’ (currently set to ‘Actors’) and a text field ‘Place ID’ (currently ‘candelabra’).

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · 30/09/2025

René Magritte painting titles that sound like procedurally generated Dwarf Fortress tavern names

A painting by René Magritte titled ‘The Catapult of Desert’ (screenshot from wikiart)

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · 25/09/2025

Added a basic lighting system (& made the isopods react to it). #gamedev

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · 20/09/2025

heard you like containers. so I put containers in your containers (implemented chests, randomised loot & openable items) #screenshotsaturday #gamedev #roguelike

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · 18/09/2025

this cube on the System minisite nearly killed me, but it is possible. feel free to try an off-the-shelf solution rather than trying to bash it together with css ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Screenshot of the MD System microsite (system.mass-driver.com) showing an isometric cube, with the developer tools highlighting a face to demonstrate that it’s made from HTML elements.

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · 17/09/2025

→ Actors have a ‘request_verbs’ method → it sends a signal that components can listen for → components respond w actions they theoretically support → request_verbs checks which are valid in the current context & returns a list → UI panel shows the list (I am v satisfied with how this is working)

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · 16/09/2025

with apologies/gratitude to @lorenschmidt.bsky.social, I had to try this idea for tiling patches of trees (each tile is 2 colours + background) #gamedev #roguelike

16x16 tilemap. Two forest ‘blocks’ (one deciduous, one coniferous) are made from repeating tiles, a small number of variants (6 total for each type) softening the square grid & repeating texture somewhat.

The forests are surrounded by a scattering of shrubs, rocks and mushroom tiles, as well as various ‘empty’ tiles with different textures of scattered stones, grasses and leaves.

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · 15/09/2025

nearby / item interaction / inspect UI (I’m using keyboard inputs but this also works with a mouse)

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · 13/09/2025

I think I’m getting a feel for what this UI could be. Minimal, trying to avoid most common tropes (geo sans-serifs, little bits of art-deco filigree)

Pixel art top-down tile-based dungeon screenshot. Arrows point from the player to adjacent tiles. A black box with pale grey outline over their head reads ‘Select a Direction’ in an incised sort of Albertus-like typeface.

‘Select an Item’ modal listing a gold coin & pewter goblet, both displayed as a 2-colour pixel art sprite with the item name in a sort of squarish neo-grotesk. On the right hand side of each item is a letter (A, B) representing the key which selects that menu option.

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · 13/09/2025

O grungy dungeon (grungeon), all filled with lice #roguelike #screenshotsaturday

Screenshot of a tile-based roguelikelike. A knight (white sprite with teal accents) stands in a filthy-looking brick room. In an adjacent room is a giant isopod.

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · 12/09/2025

I can’t remember how Qud does the “select nearby interaction” interface but I feel like it was something like this? either way I like this idea of highlighting tiles where something is available to interact with (pick up item, open door, etc), if there are multiple options

Screenshot of a tile-based crpg dungeon (very barebones). A knight stands in the centre of the screen. Arrows radiate from them, pointing into adjacent tiles (left, right and below) highlighted with boxes.

The same as before, except the knight has moved one tile down. Two arrows now point up–left and up–right, and the tile they’re standing on is now highlighted with a large dot.

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · 12/09/2025

it looks the same as it did ~6mo ago, but now the former spaghetti mess codebase is at least vaguely neat

Screenshot of a tile/sprite-based game in the vein of a traditional roguelike. A knight stands in a dungeon of rectangular rooms connected by corridors, in a large room with two isopod-like creatures. The walls use a simple contextual tiling with side, top, and corner sprites giving a minimal sense of depth.

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · 07/08/2025

Somehow a single flower from our Hydnophytum moseleyanum (epiphytic ant plant) was pollinated, so today we have a single tiny berry

A tiny orange berry nestled between a leaf and the stem of a plant, surrounded by a few dried old leaves and unopened buds.

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · 20/07/2025

Running Mythic Bastionland (@bastionland.bsky.social) for the first time this week. Here’s my attempt at turning the semi-random hex map we made into something more ‘opening page of fantasy novel’

Black and white fantasy-style map. The underlying structure is a hexagonal grid, but feature boundaries are deliberately indistinct.

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · 16/06/2025

Trying out some cacti, low poly / N64-style (by which I really just mean linear texture filtering). 64x64 & 256x256 versions

Render of three low-poly cacti (a spiny barrel cactus with a flower, a squat blueish one, and some kind of opuntia with a fruit). The textures are clean with N64-style filtering.

Same cacti as before, but with much higher resolution (though still small) textures. Detail on the spines & flower of the barrel cactus is much more visible.

Wireframe of the same cacti. The opuntia is made from 4 discrete elements mushed into each other and the barrel cactus has flat planes extruded from it to form the spines.

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · 10/06/2025

We’re going all in on Liquid Glass, right? #css

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · 08/06/2025

bitter about not having a switch 2 (yet) so I have decided to make my own, better version of mariokart. welcome to Greynbow Road

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · 25/05/2025

late night drawings of analogue storage media

Grainy, realistic vector illustration of a 3.5in floppy disc in semi-transparent dark grey plastic. The structure of the housing and the magnetic disc are faintly visible.

Illustration in the same style of an audio cassette in glossy transparent plastic. The tape spool is based on a scan I made of the shiny side of a CD, and the reflections are painted; everything else is made from vectors with a combination of gradients and layer FX.

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · 22/04/2025

I have been trying to get this 1bit+outline style right since *2016*. This evening is the first time I’ve been happy with it (and confident the outline shader component works reliably)

Wider shot of the corridor from the previous post. On the left, a device affixed to the wall beneath a sign reading ‘Access’.

Closeup of the bulkhead door, now open. ‘Mind Head’ and ‘Mind Step’ labels visible (and much clearer than before) above and below. Interior faces are covered in greebles and hazard stripes.

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · 20/04/2025

This week’s obsession is Graphic Realism / decalbombing #gamedev

Green-tinted black and grey lineart of a tall sci-fi-style corridor with a circular doorway at the end. The simple geometry is covered with hazard patterns and registration marks. On the left, a device attached to the wall is highlighted with a grid of blue squares.

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · 29/03/2025

starting to get the hang of Godot’s UI system. #gamedev #screenshotsaturday

Screenshot of a simple roguelike game interface with an equipment and inventory screen visible. Pixel art sprites but high-res text.

The equipment screen contains a grid of item slots, showing steel armour and a bow with one arrow currently equipped. The ‘Amulet’ slot is highlighted and a central window is prompting the user to select an item to equip there (in this case an ‘Amulet of Sparks’ is the only option available).

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · 20/03/2025

fly agaric cluster ↳ inspect ↳ harvest

Screenshot of a tile-based game showing a knight in a room with a small cluster of red mushrooms. 16x16 pixel art sprites (each tile at most 2 colours + black)

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · 13/03/2025

see also: that time I realised my 2-colour palette swap sprite shader could be done in 3 lines

Example of the palette swap shader. Two versions of a 16x16px knight sprite, the original with all pixels either pure black or pure white, and the final version in pale yellow with blue details.

$Shader code below. The basic idea is that the source texture’s red channel (which will always be either 0 or 1 if the source pixel is pure black or white) is used as a mask to determine the output colour (color_primary if 0, color_highlight if 1). --- shader_type canvas_item; uniform vec3 color_primary: source_color = vec3(0.5, 0.5, 0.5); uniform vec3 color_highlight: source_color = vec3(1.0, 1.0, 1.0); void fragment() { float mask = COLOR.r; COLOR.rgb = color_primary.rgb * (1.0 - mask); COLOR.rgb += color_highlight.rgb * mask; }$

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Rutherford @craze.co.uk · 09/03/2025

(I started working on this prototype [it’s not a roguelike but it’s like Rogue] and I’m doing my best to avoid the rat/goblin/skeleton enemy progression)

Screenshot of an early prototype game with similarities to Rogue. A top-down view of a partially-explored dungeon of simple 16px square tiles in the background.

An open inventory screen in the centre lists some items: a Colovian Fur Helm (value 20gp), Gold (10), Chitin (3), and an Anemone Siphon. Each has a small 2-colour sprite.

A status bar at the top lists the time as 17:01, the date as Barleywine 27, 4A201, and the moon phase as Crescent Fire.

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