iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I had to rig my tomatoes for heavy winds. The larger ones were starting to get precarious anyway, but we're expecting 50mph gusts over the weekend with 25+ sustained. Maybe next year I should get actual 8' cages instead of placing a 4' one upside down on top of another.

An L-shaped garden bed with three large tomato plants being held upright with string secured to stakes in a neighboring bed.

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

It's nice to be at the point in my game where I can comfortable dedicate a day or two to something almost entirely cosmetic and not be worried about schedules. I've been wanting to do particle beam punch-through for years and now I finally have the time. #gamedev

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

There's a great post by J. Michael Straczynski (creator of Babylon 5) which covers this pretty handily.

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Damage decal transfer to the weapons makes the effect look so much more cohesive. I knew this would be a big fidelity boost but seeing it on the hulls with the larger mounts for the first time makes me really glad we did this. #gamedev

The bow of the Solomon battleship from Nebulous Fleet command showing heavy armor damage and heat effects appearing on both the hull and the two top forward mounts.

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

Sometimes I forget how many weapon we have. I just spent day upon tedious day updating all of these prefabs with new models, rigs, and textures to match the updated ship hulls. Best of all, they're all configured for the damage decal system. Now to test them and see which ones I broke... #gamedev

A layout of all of the weapons and other surface components from Nebulous: Fleet Command, 61 in total.

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Seeing today's Discourse(tm) and thinking about the mountain of spreadsheets I have produced of the course of Neb's development... Here are just a few I've used for balancing:

A screenshot of a portion of a colorful spreadsheet for balancing spacecraft fuel and speed in the game Nebulous: Fleet Command.

A spreadsheet for determining how changes in the skin thickness of missiles and spacecraft affects which defensive weapons will penetrate for full damage.

Black highlights a changed value from the current state and dark red or green indicates a changed result (pen or no pen).

A spreadsheet for determining how changes in weapon armor penetration affects usefulness against different hull types.

Black highlights a changed value from the current state and dark red or green indicates a changed result (pen or no pen).

A spreadsheet for balancing missile seeker costs

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

My entire house smells like basil but I just made the best batch of pesto maybe ever. This isn't even all of what we have growing in the garden. Kalliope for scale.

An orange and white cat sniffing a pile of freshly cut basil that is roughly the same size as the cat.

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

My Assistant Narrative Designer, Polymnia, posing with the mission outline for Act 2 of our campaign. Each white card is a room. Blue is things you get/do. Yellow is key plot points you learn. Pink is character beats. Purple is complications to keep the mission interesting. #indiedev

A photo of two walls in a red room, with a white door sitting slightly ajar. Index cards and sticky notes are plastered up on the wall. The cards are arranged into groups with numerous colored sticky notes sitting below each index card. A very soft gray cat sits on a filing cabinet below the cards, looking a little tired after all her hard work.

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

Uploading 13GB of new 4K textures to our git repo. I've been keeping them on my hard drive without committing them for months in case we had to make changes to any of them.

A command prompt reading
[scrambled for privacy] MINGW64 /d/Projects/Unity/Nebulous Campaign (campaign)
$ git commit -m "Campaign update act 1 release. May Git LFS forive me."

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 24/05/2026

Quote with your purple art! These are the original concepts I did for Pillars and Nyx's Eye. They look very rough but they accomplished their purpose. We didn't have a dedicated concept artist back then so I had to do.

A rudimentary concept sketch of a collection of tall, sharp-edged asteroids in a tight cluster.

A rudimentary concept sketch of a broken ring shaped asteroid formation.

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

Some AI work to start the day: tactical pathfinding. One of the biggest remaining issues with the AI is its tendency to drive craft straight through enemy sensor coverage to get to what it wants to kill. Now I'm working on some methods to give it smarter pathing. #gamedev

A pathfinding octree with nodes colored by how many overlapping threats can see them. The image shows a naive direct route through the graph from the origin to destination, passing through the threat spheres. A magenta line shows a tactical path that avoids the threat areas by routing around them.

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 03/05/2026

I can't read any discussion about "hard sci-fi" without thinking of this. It's lived rent free in my head for years.

G.K.: The fatal flaw of hard sci-fi is that it's not interesting to anyone except for fans of science fiction. Its main course are scientific explanations, and even though there are many different stories, in the end they always give way to walls of scientific text. But readers, except for sci-fi fans, barely feel any catharsis from that. Let's be honest, what's so interesting about having to read a longass explanatory infodump? That's why the sad reality is that hard sci-fi won't spread beyond the sci-fi fanbase. However if you make that hard yuri sci-fi, the scientific explanation segment becomes a scene of women having a conversation with each other. In other words, a yuri scene, something that all of you love.

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

Spent literally all day re-rigging all of the OSP ships with the new meshes and textures for the art refresh. What idiot decided it was good idea to build two of the hulls out of 9 different pieces each? Oh right, the idiot was me. #gamedev

A collection of game asset prefabs showing the different pieces of the randomized modular hull system for the OSP's ships.

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

More octree fun. Building a set of nodes which hug terrain, for ships that want to stay close to cover and not wander into open space. The set also includes the direction from each node to the cover, so which nodes provide a tangent to the target can be determined easily. #gamedev

A screenshot of the octree debug view showing a set of nodes which hug closely to map terrain.

A closeup of the previous screenshot, showing vectors from the nodes pointing towards the obstacle.

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

Multi-parameter optimization for AI movement candidate selection. This is for a sniper ship, finding the node in the set with line-of-sight that is both closest to the current position and maximizes the distance (and thus safety) to the enemy. Also, octrees are really pretty. #gamedev

A screenshot from NEBULOUS: Fleet Command showing the AI debug overlay. There are a series of colored cubes rendered on screen, ranging from red to green by their score color, and the AI ship has a move order visible to the best candidate.

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 06/04/2026

Quote Post with an old piece that you still like! I think I did this one back in 2006 or 2007, back when I still had time to dedicate to drawing and painting.

A faint blue supernova remnant with arcing halos of dust around it, seen through a hole in backlit clouds.

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

Kind of weird that Unity HDRP v10 doesn't have lens flares built in considering flares and bloom (and motion blur, but wow fuck motion blur) are kind of a meme of "high definition" games. But whatever, I made my own.

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

Inner arm closeup. Her color work is so exquisite.

A close up of the sleeve from the previous image, centered on the inner elbow. It shows the iris, columbine, violet, alpine aster, sweet alyssum, enchanter's nightshade, and wild grape. You can also see a little bit of the gladiolus peeking around from the tricep.

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

After five months of work (and two years of planning and anticipation) my floral 3/4 sleeve is finally finished! At least for now until I inevitably decide to extend it. Done by the incredible Hayley Savage at Take Heart Tattoo. (sorry my camera kind of sucks)

A woman standing on front of a mirror showing a floral sleeve tattoo on her right arm. The flowers are: Lilies, Yarrow, Persicaria, Gladiolus, Iris, Chamomile, Sweet Alyssum, Columbine, Hellebore, Violet, Sky Pilot, and Alpine Aster. The greenery is a mix of the leaves of each flower, Enchanter's Nightshade, and Wild Grape.

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 16/03/2026

It's often very easy for me to get down about the quality of my work, but then I remember that I created a space ship name generator that regularly spits out gems like this one and it lifts my spirits just a little. #gamedev

A carrier hull in Nebulous: Fleet Command showing the name "Weeny Icing".

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 14/02/2026

Should I give her a half cup of soft butter? (She really wants it)

An orange and white cat sitting at my feet with one paw raised and her ears pulled back, yearning for a half cup of soft butter being held near the camera.

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

It never stops feeling cool seeing my game get mentioned on Spacedock. You're going to love the Mercator class in the campaign too, Hooj.

The Mercator replenishment ship with a heavy cruiser and destroyer docked to it, all ships moving in unison.

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 12/01/2026

You know it was annoying problem when it results in a method that is 50% comments by volume. #gamedev

A blurred screenshot of a piece of C# code, half of which is large paragraph-style comments.

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

Code review. She doesn't look too impressed...

A gray cat sitting on the lap of a woman wearing a blue flannel, paws over her arm on the desk, squinting at the computer screen behind the camera and looking unamused.

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

While it was hard to find the root cause, in the end the solution was simple: remove the AddForce call in favor of integrating the velocity for the body manually. That way I could be sure the velocity I was using the do the lookahead raycast was always accurate.

The final code for fixing the issue:

// Integrate velocity directly instead of using AddForce because with AddForce
// the modified velocity will not be calculated and set until the end of the
// FixedUpdate when the physics solver runs. This results in the missile
// potentially skipping past the end of its lookahead raycast and phasing through
// objects. This was also the root cause of "the clonk" bug.
_body.velocity = Vector3.ClampMagnitude(_body.velocity + (thrustVector * (motor / _body.mass) * Time.fixedDeltaTime), speedLimit);

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

The collider it hits is the one on the right, which is used on the physical hulls. This is a giftwrapped convex version of the left collider. After the hit is detected the UV to apply armor damage at is sampled using the collider on the left. You can see there is a hole there.

A comparison of the full mesh collider and the giftwrapped convex collider used for physics calculations. The full collider has a hole corresponding to the bottom platform on the hull, while the giftwrapped one does not.

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

Here's an example on the bottom of the Ferryman. The gap goes across the bottom edge of the collider, but because there is also a collider underneath it still detects a collision.

An example of the raycast gap falling perfectly on the edge of a hull surface, causing it to not be detected before the missile steps through it.

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

I have finally fixed a longstanding physics bug, "the clonk", where missiles would hit ships and do no damage. The cause was the result of multiple parts of the damage and physics systems all aligning in the worst way which made is extremely difficult to reproduce and thus fix. So, the details:

A screenshot from the Unity editor showing a missile and it's collision raycast with a gap between the end of the raycast and the current position.

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 23/12/2025

Nearly 8 months of work for a single pot of my mom's tomato sauce (a winter tradition in my family) and damn was it worth it. The depth of flavor was incredible. After dinner was over we had 4 large jars saved as well, plus all the meatballs and sausage we pulled out, so a few more meals ahead.

A row of tomato plans growing, cherry tomatoes in the front and sauce tomatoes in the back.

A pot of tomato sauce with meatballs and sausage, made from home grown tomatoes.

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 20/11/2025

It's honestly a miracle I can get any game dev work done at all under these conditions. This happens constantly. I took this picture yesterday and she's currently standing in front of my monitor in this exact same pose right now.

A beautiful grey cat sitting prim and proper in front of a computer monitor with code on it, staring at the camera.

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 31/10/2025

Well, I successfully got the enemy AI to stop focusing on the flagship. Caught some rockets in the process...

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 31/10/2025

Gazing into the abyss of my AI mission prioritization system. I started my day trying to diagnose a strange behavior with the enemy AI and instead ended up making this AI state viewer. #gamedev

A debugging window for the campaign editor. The left scroll view shows 3 task units and their composition and assigned missions. The main area shows each round of bidding for missions, the selected mission at the top in green, and missions that were removed from the bidding in red.

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 23/10/2025

No one ever tells you how much math there is in gamedev. I just spent *all day* figuring out the correct formulas to remap the UVs for the socket's damage mask to the individual modules of the scalable VLS launchers. At least it finally works. Just ignore that we haven't made new textures yet.

A module missile launcher with 1-2-3 written in damage decals across the surface.

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 20/10/2025

Still in there, 5 years later. Still don't really know why...

Code:
// Why did I do this??
power *= 100000.0f;

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

The funny part is that the barrel needs to be squished to fit inside the mount space. I guess we'll see how this works for turrets with more significant barrel overhang, like the 450s...

The projected damage UV map of the Mk61, showing the barrel squished lengthwise.

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

The most annoying part was accounting for the fact that smaller components fit in larger sockets, so the UVs stored in the socket need to be scaled accordingly. Here you can see the gray box takes up more space than the turret base. That took a little bit of napkin math but it worked in the end.

The editor view of one of the turrets from above, showing how the socket bounds extend beyond the mount's base.

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

Time for some more #gamedev #techart: Damage effects from the hull being mapped onto the turrets! Using the alternate UV map hack we came up with for the engine damage decals we can now make damage appear on components mounted on the hull as long as their material has the correct properties.

Two Mk61 turrets on the Raines frigate, with damage decals mapped onto them from the hull.

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 12/10/2025

After a whole season of harvesting and freezing tomatoes from our garden, it's finally time to make and jar some sauce. This pot is like 15 or 18 quarts and it barely fit half of them.

A large metal pot filled to the brim with tomatoes.

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 04/10/2025

The engine bells are projected flat on the UV2 map, down onto the surface that contains them. This allows us to sample the same damage mask from the hull under each point on the bell, and doesn't require another hull segment with its own mask. This works for the small maneuvering thrusters too.

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 04/10/2025

The updated ship models and new damage shaders allow for damage effects on the large engine bells and maneuvering thrusters. The way we did this without adding additional colliders for them is actually a pretty funny hack. #gamedev #techart

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

I'm not a communications expert but "Unity Platform Protection" sounds like you're trying to push a branded security product on me and not a notification of a *critical security vulnerability*. Maybe lead with that next time. #unity #unity3d

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 02/10/2025

Somehow ended up with Gold Vauxhall. Gotta say this is a first time error for me... #gamedev

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 05/09/2025

More #gamedev tools for our singleplayer campaign: In order to balance the ammo economy, one must understand the ammo economy. We're about to start testing the third (of four) zones in the campaign, and testers were reporting how they were starting the feel the resource strain by the end of zone 2.

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 23/08/2025

There's nothing quite like wasting an hour debugging a simple issue to make you spend the rest of your evening (and the next morning) making an in-game visual debugging viewer for your homebrew campaign scripting system so you can see the values being passed around in real time. #gamedev

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 14/08/2025

Hmmmmmm...forgot to add 1 to my offset index #gamedev

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 11/08/2025

Last night was my real playthrough of the first 8 missions of my campaign, and despite knowing everything that was going to happen and constantly stopping to fix bugs I actually enjoyed playing my own game for the first time in years. It helped me remember why I got into #gamedev in the first place.

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 30/07/2025

Maybe we should plant less cucumbers next season...

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