iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

mantis @imakecoolstuff.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Getting rid of proprietary software, subscriptions and services arc officially started. Time to degoogle myself. 3D printed rack feels great. Cheap second hand hardware to host my shit on even more so.

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mantis @imakecoolstuff.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

While yeah, all the newer systems and consoles running on Ayn Thor are really cool, the capabilty to easily run 486+ era games in DOSBox is that little extra that makes it magical for me.

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mantis @imakecoolstuff.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Ayn Thor is amazing. Managed to get my game running on it via GameNative. Wooo!

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mantis @imakecoolstuff.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

Ok, screw cutscenes. How in the everlovin flippin heck do ledges and cliffs in a 2D beat em up work? I spent the entire night thinking about edge cases regarding both in-game jump/movement pseudo-3D physics and AI interactions and I'm barely conscious now.

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mantis @imakecoolstuff.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

Sometimes it's the features you don't expect that are the most complex. In my game, that was the internal scripted event player I designed the framework with it in mind, with all the inputs routed through hot-swappable components, but even basic implementation still was somehow more than I expected

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mantis @imakecoolstuff.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

It's friday! Time to *checks notes* continue working on my game!

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mantis @imakecoolstuff.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

Ever had that moment when you fix one bug just to discover that its quirks masked errors from untold layers of cross-related bugs and the code that you were actually quite proud of turns out to be a jenga tower one block removal from collapsing? Because oh boy did I. #indiedev

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mantis @imakecoolstuff.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

I'm doing first draft of playable character skins for The Tiny Kaiju Game and having tons of fun. #indiedev

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mantis @imakecoolstuff.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

Adding support for multiplayer. Different kaiju color schemes and multiple input sources support is ready. Now only thing left is to actually spawn multiple kaijus and have enemies interact with them properly. This will be easy, surely. Right? RIGHT?

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mantis @imakecoolstuff.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

Experimenting with hue shifting shader is fun. While not perfect, as I am looking at the results, I can get like 8 distinct-enough colors. Ok, now the question presents itself: dare I implement 8 person multiplayer in my beat em up? I'm not sure if I'm crazy enough. #indiedev #godot

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mantis @imakecoolstuff.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

Testing how different Sue colors for multiplayer would look if I'd hue-shift 4 main colors in fragment shader. Not bad to be frank. At this point I did it by eyeballing it in aseprite, but the principle seems sound.

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mantis @imakecoolstuff.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

Ok, we've got serious main menu thing going on.

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mantis @imakecoolstuff.bsky.social · 03/05/2026

As I make my game I realize that many of my assumptions are wrong, and the milestones that I've designed shuffle features between them. Freedom of being indie means that when I realize that for example in-game cutscenes depend on multiplayer feature, I can move that one up in the pipeline #indiedev

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mantis @imakecoolstuff.bsky.social · 02/05/2026

Since I'm already working in stage progression, I have decided to throw in some nifty screen transitions shader for loading in and out of a level. Yeah, I'm re-using transition alpha textures from Roarr. Honestly, I think they're neat. #indiedev

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mantis @imakecoolstuff.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

I'm working on adding custom scenario event triggers for my beat em up. Today: enemies in standby that can be woken up by proximity triggers. This is actually the first part of remaking my stage system into something robust, supporting complex enemy spawn waves and bosses with phases. #indiedev

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mantis @imakecoolstuff.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

Was visiting the seaside for a gamejam. There was a storm during the night so I decided to go out for a bit of regeneration and look for amber. It was windy and cold but I've managed to find my very first one. Size of couple grains of sand, but still.

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mantis @imakecoolstuff.bsky.social · 23/04/2026

Tonight I've started adding part of a complex interlocking code at the meeting point of spawn/walkable area/ledges and holes/wave/enemy navigation and stage progression systems to my game. The task is daunting and will definitely take me couple days at least, but I'm getting it done step by step.

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mantis @imakecoolstuff.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

Sometimes developing a game starts with doing goofy shit and finding it hillarious. #indiedev

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mantis @imakecoolstuff.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

While not yet completed, the #pico8 arcade cabinet v1 is slowly coming together. Prints took forever, but the two most impotant panels (controls and the screen bracket connecting four 64x64 LED panels together) are finished!

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mantis @imakecoolstuff.bsky.social · 12/04/2026

After some prototyping test prints, the panels for LED screens and input seem to be properly dimensioned. Now it's time for 10 hours of 3d printing and crossing our fingers in hopes that the print won't crash. Let's go.

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mantis @imakecoolstuff.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

Ok, the alpha version of Pico-8 LED based arcade cabinet project is ready for prints. For now keeping everything as open as possible to allow easy access to electronics for test setup. FreeCAD feels about as complicated as Blender - plenty of power but easy enough for basic uses for newbies.

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mantis @imakecoolstuff.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

The gaps for cabling and heat exchange were particularly annoying to make, but with everything fully parametrised, even if I screwed something up, I should be able to re-model on the fly.

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mantis @imakecoolstuff.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

Learning FreeCAD to make the case for my Pico-8 arcade cabinet. Takes time but I think I'm ready for the first test prints of LED panel holding frame

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mantis @imakecoolstuff.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

Preparing my 128x128 LED Pico-8 machine, currently testing at 64x64, screen mirroring is looking fine.

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mantis @imakecoolstuff.bsky.social · 22/02/2026

Spent the weekend experimenting with 32x32 LED matrix panel, controlling it with ESP32. The goal is have a 1bit 32x32 bitmap (with a dropdown shadow) displayed on hue-cycling background, so that I can display icon or some text. The graphic system is set up, now to create data uploader.

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mantis @imakecoolstuff.bsky.social · 23/01/2026

Found this little gem on discord.

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mantis @imakecoolstuff.bsky.social · 08/01/2026

I have decided to make a hot sauce out of my very first home grown carolina reaper.

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mantis @imakecoolstuff.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

Seems like the camera system is doing the camera system things like I wanted it to. Good. Belt scrolling unlocked.

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mantis @imakecoolstuff.bsky.social · 03/01/2026

After taking my xmas rest and returning to Godot I was staring at this line and couldn't figure out why the engine was shouting at me. After some time I realized that I goofed with the variables in function definition. Guess 30+ years of C-based programming is a hard habit to shake.

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mantis @imakecoolstuff.bsky.social · 01/01/2026

Ok, the festive resting period finished, time to return to making the game. Next items on the menu: general level progression.

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mantis @imakecoolstuff.bsky.social · 18/12/2025

Drillers got second attack, a spike from below. They are now straight up bullies :D

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mantis @imakecoolstuff.bsky.social · 18/12/2025

To create full variety of enemies for a beat'em'up, I'll need certain amount of attacks: IN -regular -jump -charge TO BE DONE -spawned entity (damage/DOT/CC) -shot -weapon/item throw -grenade -shield/defend -extending hitbox -active multihit -grapple/stun -throw Time for the spawned entity type.

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mantis @imakecoolstuff.bsky.social · 17/12/2025

The solution? Have players' box separated into multiple colliders, and make sure that each attack can hit particular opponent only once. As far as multiple hit attacks go, I'll have the flag reset over course of the animation.

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mantis @imakecoolstuff.bsky.social · 17/12/2025

Charge attack gave me a unique problem. As opposed to any regular attacks in the beat em up, which come in from the side, this one can hit you from any point on screen, including above. That meant that I could have hitbox collide with hurtbox outside of Z-check. Another 2D beat em up quirk.

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mantis @imakecoolstuff.bsky.social · 17/12/2025

Sketched a quick temp art for the second enemy to test out new attack types. First one is in: charge.

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mantis @imakecoolstuff.bsky.social · 15/12/2025

Sometimes you spend couple days refactoring and you end up with code that isn't exactly yet at the point it was before refactor I now have a bug with Octis sliding when entering idle state that wasn't there earlier, but the new architecture is way more customizable and less spaghettified. Good shit

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mantis @imakecoolstuff.bsky.social · 12/12/2025

Ever had that moment when you want to add a feature, take a look at your month old code and you want to rewrite it from the start because nothing makes sense any more? So I wrote it down as a UML to wrap my head around it and did a tiny bit of refactoring. Now looking at it pains my soul bit less.

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mantis @imakecoolstuff.bsky.social · 10/12/2025

Adding juggling to my tiny kaiju beat'em'up and it's SO MUCH FUN to test :D #indiedev #gamedev #godot #beatemup #pixelart

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mantis @imakecoolstuff.bsky.social · 09/12/2025

Things that you don't have to give a damn about in 3D: properly displaying particles in Y sorted environment is a relatively challenging thing What I ended up doing is spawning a particle prefab at the same Y position as the enemies for sorting purpose, but its internal sprite node gets a Y offset

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mantis @imakecoolstuff.bsky.social · 05/12/2025

Slowly adding steering behaviors for enemy scatter mode, to make them feel bit more alive and fun. Octis are REALLY active at this point in time, but I need to add switching between aggressive/scatter states before I tweak this behavior.

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mantis @imakecoolstuff.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

Working on scatter movement for my beat'em'up enemies and how to make it dependent on enemy aggressiveness. The idea: pick a random point to scatter towards, and then shorten the vector between it and attack position depending on desired aggro level, allowing for quick transition into attack mode.

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mantis @imakecoolstuff.bsky.social · 24/11/2025

I am cataloging my old games. Some of them got lost to time, some I've found screenshots of in the archive.org, and some I still have the source code for. Managed to compile this dungeon crawler made in a "7 games in 7 days" solo jam in 2014 Yes that is a Thong Goblin. #gamedev #indiedev #gamejam

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mantis @imakecoolstuff.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

Putting finishing touches on the second tutorial game. Juice it or lose it!

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mantis @imakecoolstuff.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

You know you've been working with snake_case for too long when you mindlessly add commit message like this.

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mantis @imakecoolstuff.bsky.social · 15/11/2025

Oh no! The kaiju are attacking!

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mantis @imakecoolstuff.bsky.social · 12/11/2025

Today I learned that Jane (as pictured here on a Wikipedia article photo) was in high probability not in fact a T-rex, but rather a Nanotyrannus. My reality split asunder! Desire to learn more intensifies!

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mantis @imakecoolstuff.bsky.social · 11/11/2025

Since I'm way ahead of the schedule (6 days), and I'm really enjoying TheGamedevTavern's tutorials, I'm going through the second one - arcade style soccer game. Having so much fun.

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mantis @imakecoolstuff.bsky.social · 10/11/2025

Followed TheGamedevTavern's 20 episodes long tutorial on beat em ups and as I started plugging in my own art I realised that I want to make a full game about tiny Kaijus. The preprod period is coming to an end. Time to evolve the concept and make something awesome. #gamedev #indiedev #godot

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