iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Tana ⭐ PAX AUS!! @tanamakes.games · 06/10/2026

How it started: How it's going:

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Tana ⭐ PAX AUS!! @tanamakes.games · 05/10/2026

Made it to #MIGW and I'm so tired but we persevere because we got cool things happening this week 💪🏽

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Tana ⭐ PAX AUS!! @tanamakes.games · 01/10/2026

i love the nuw zulund video game "shape center deluxe" with the loveable main character "cindy"

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Tana ⭐ PAX AUS!! @tanamakes.games · 21/09/2026

NZGDC next week! If you wanna see me, I'll be talking on Friday at 12pm AND that evening at Communion so pls come say hi!

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Tana ⭐ PAX AUS!! @tanamakes.games · 16/09/2026

new shape sender deluxe key art just dropped

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Tana ⭐ PAX AUS!! @tanamakes.games · 13/09/2026

Shoutout to the one homie from here who watched this 🥰

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Tana ⭐ PAX AUS!! @tanamakes.games · 10/09/2026

what if you could watch videos while playing Shape Sender Deluxe adding brainrot as a feature is the real benefit of the custom wall shader

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Tana ⭐ PAX AUS!! @tanamakes.games · 01/09/2026

Big corpos using 'skux' is cringe, but indies using 'skux' is cool and sexy

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Tana ⭐ PAX AUS!! @tanamakes.games · 28/08/2026

Managed to repair a Canon AL-1 back to working order that I got from an op shop! These cameras famously had terrible battery doors but someone designed a 3D printable replacement! This is the real value of 3D printing, not mass-produced, landfill-destined dragon trinkets 💪🏽

The battery door inside - the original connector plate in use but with new screws. The previous one was plastic-rivited on that I had to melt off.

The 3D printed outside of the battery door, with a little switch to lock it in place.

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Tana ⭐ PAX AUS!! @tanamakes.games · 19/08/2026

I made this anim for the "Fresh" themed Loop de Loop animation challenge a few months ago and forgot to submit it lmao so here it is! Made in Picocad 2 :)

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Tana ⭐ PAX AUS!! @tanamakes.games · 14/08/2026

this is who you're forcing to program support for ultra-widescreen when you buy a forty two thousand by 13 pixel resolution monitor by the way

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Tana ⭐ PAX AUS!! @tanamakes.games · 13/08/2026

trying to be in my "very actively and publicly hating on AI" era and now I'm highly considering buying @aftermath.site merch

a listing for a 'Destroy AI' Long-sleeve shirt with a sick-ass design

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Tana ⭐ PAX AUS!! @tanamakes.games · 09/08/2026

Another fun benefit of replacing the Unity Tilemap with my own system is that I can swap out the rendering with an ultra-specific shader which is a lot more performant and doesn't instantiate hundreds of sprite renderers! Details in the alt text for nerds 🤓

A Shape Sender Deluxe screenshot showing walls in brown (rendered via sprites) with offset walls in red (which are rendered by a custom shader).

The shader takes a texture where the RGBA channels store info about if a certain triangle should be turned on. For example, a corner wall on the top right would have the north triangle and the east triangle enabled.

In this screenshot you can also see artefacting of diagonal lines due to an early version calculating the triangles twice rather than just using the inverse.

The final product of the shader, coloured appropriately and also accounting for physics. The previous implementation used sprites and positions to create a combined collider (though I'm sure I could write that manually too), so I still had to store what sprite was used and what orientation (for corners), but I don't render them, just use them as data.

The artefacting is also fixed here, so it looks smooth and connected.

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Tana ⭐ PAX AUS!! @tanamakes.games · 07/08/2026

Latest haul! A lot of Italian funk and disco but my bank account is crying

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Tana ⭐ PAX AUS!! @tanamakes.games · 29/07/2026

Absolutely insane to me that Unity's Dropdown doesn't support auto-scroll for gamepad out of the box (that I can find). I know it's a fairly easy fix for me to write, but c'mon man.

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Tana ⭐ PAX AUS!! @tanamakes.games · 27/07/2026

looks like it is a co-speaker & panelists thing, speakers get a full pass - at least you get invited to the AI Hui lmao

Co-presenters/Panellists receive a Day Pass (incl invites to the
AI Hui, Speakers & Sponsors Party, and NZGDC After Party). An
optional upgrade to a Full Conference Pass is available, and
includes invites to the Women in Games, Māori & Pasifika in
Games, and Celebrating Diversity events.

Your Speaker Ticket
Your speaker ticket includes:
Full Conference and Kiwi Games Zone access
Networking events included with your ticket
Invitation to the Speakers & Sponsors Party

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Tana ⭐ PAX AUS!! @tanamakes.games · 23/07/2026

Somehow game development has lead me to the wiki page for "Romantic Chess" where it was more about styling on the homies than winning

By Josef Danhauser - Belvedere Wien, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37641407

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Tana ⭐ PAX AUS!! @tanamakes.games · 18/07/2026

AI-slopping? No, I'm backslopping.

Pouring the juice from old sauerkraut into a freshly prepared batch which is ready to be fermented.

Backslopping is a vital technique in prepping microbial environments for fermentation and will come up numerous times in this book... The idea is basically to give the substance you intend to ferment a boost of beneficial microbes by adding a dose from a previous batch of the same ferment.

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Tana ⭐ PAX AUS!! @tanamakes.games · 15/07/2026

I completely replaced the Unity Tilemap system for a portion of the game to improve performance and got >100% performance increases for my use case! It's really stupid to post a before and after but the fact that there's no visual change is a huge win and I needed that hahahah

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Tana ⭐ PAX AUS!! @tanamakes.games · 09/07/2026

and this looks like such a tiny win but I finally fixed a bug this but that's been there for literal years and re-enforced the pipes 💪

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Tana ⭐ PAX AUS!! @tanamakes.games · 09/07/2026

There's been a bug in the game FOREVER which was that you could sneak shapes in behind the pipes because the pipe collision didn't stretch when the visuals do. In my levels it's not really an issue, but with the community-made levels, people make stuff like this 😂

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Tana ⭐ PAX AUS!! @tanamakes.games · 29/06/2026

I'm speaking at NZGDC this year! Something I love seeing is people just showing off the tools that made their games, so I'm doing the same! This session will be an interactive project tour of all the random bits and pieces that helped make Shape Sender Deluxe ⭐

The Shaping of Shape Sender Deluxe. Want to see behind the scenes of Shape Sender Deluxe? In this session, Tana Tanoi exposes it all, with a tour of the Shape Sender Deluxe Unity project. You'll see level loading tools, useful libraries, hacky implementations, design rambles, build systems, marketing tools, gif capture tools, and so much more.

This session will cover: * Tools, with discussions of how they ended up where they are and why * What libraries were used for Shape Sender Deluxe and why * Some horror stories of hacky implementations * Discussions on the build system tools and how to make the most of Unity's build profiles * What tools are worth implementing early as marketing tools * Any questions from the audience of what they'd like to see more of

There are countless lessons learned while Shaping the world of Shape Sender Deluxe, and you'll be able to pick up many of them in this unique, interactive, audience-question-forward session.

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Tana ⭐ PAX AUS!! @tanamakes.games · 23/06/2026

This will mean very little to most people but: I wrote a script to group by level, arrange by pack, and colour code by purpose my @yarnspinner.dev script nodes and I'm proud of it 😌

neatly arranged yarn script nodes that are colourful and pretty

manually arranged yarn script nodes with zero rizz

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Tana ⭐ PAX AUS!! @tanamakes.games · 08/06/2026

mine was similar lol, the ol' magnet/spring combo

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Tana ⭐ PAX AUS!! @tanamakes.games · 07/06/2026

this is a very satisfying loop having the pipes basically connected

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Tana ⭐ PAX AUS!! @tanamakes.games · 04/06/2026

rolled credits on Cyberpunk last night and I have SO MANY thoughts but instead here's some photomode pics i took

moody restaurant interior with a grand piano in Cyberpunk 2077

inside a megastructure in Cyberpunk 2077

a falling pop star as part of a musical act in Cyberpunk 2077

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Tana ⭐ PAX AUS!! @tanamakes.games · 21/05/2026

Newest addition to my embroidery practice hat

Hat that is badly embroidered with "DON'T TALK TO ME ABOUT AI."

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Tana ⭐ PAX AUS!! @tanamakes.games · 05/05/2026

I forgot to post this very important Pokopia update that I'm sure you were all missing! It became a bakery for dogs 😌

a beautiful bakery in pokopia next to a water wheel with a lil garden

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Tana ⭐ PAX AUS!! @tanamakes.games · 30/04/2026

Kia ora gamers! I'm speaking at Play by Play about how to make players creative and it's gonna be a banger ⭐

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Tana ⭐ PAX AUS!! @tanamakes.games · 22/04/2026

Shout out to @bittodev.bsky.social! Got to play Mega Man Battle Network 5 Double Team DS on my flight back the other day 😌

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Tana ⭐ PAX AUS!! @tanamakes.games · 19/04/2026

ALT:GAMES has been a really cost effective way to hang out with all the Australian homies 🥰

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Tana ⭐ PAX AUS!! @tanamakes.games · 17/04/2026

Does anyone at ALT:GAMES have a 3DS charger so I can continue to play Mega Man Battle Network Double Team DS on my flight home?

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Tana ⭐ PAX AUS!! @tanamakes.games · 14/04/2026

POKOPIA HACK: you can put a kit inside a frame to make it look like a cute painting

Pokopia screenshot with a frame with a kit inside

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Tana ⭐ PAX AUS!! @tanamakes.games · 13/04/2026

where game development has led me today

DINGUS Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster tab

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Tana ⭐ PAX AUS!! @tanamakes.games · 10/04/2026

So locked in to Pokopia I'm sketching designs before I even start building

A photo of Pokopia with a sketch of a bakery building over the top. Bonsly is circled with a heart ❤️

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Tana ⭐ PAX AUS!! @tanamakes.games · 26/03/2026

I'm like 0% kidding, she lost her mind at these when she came back and saw what I was up to in her world

a habitat for bulbasaur with a mossy topped roof

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Tana ⭐ PAX AUS!! @tanamakes.games · 18/03/2026

lil #nzpol Wellington post for a second - but the feedback for the second tunnel in Mt Vic has been published and 59% of people think it will be worse or no different - so maybe we shouldn't spend FOUR BILLION DOLLARS on it

How much difference will the proposed SH1 Wellington Improvements project make to
you personally? To the wider Wellington region? It will make things…
Much worse: 30%
Worse: 19%
No Difference: 10%
Better: 11%
Much Better: 30%

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Tana ⭐ PAX AUS!! @tanamakes.games · 17/03/2026

picoCAD 2!! played around last night and it's really cool

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Tana ⭐ PAX AUS!! @tanamakes.games · 07/03/2026

Humans are pretty sick tbh 🤙🏽

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Tana ⭐ PAX AUS!! @tanamakes.games · 06/03/2026

Latest @bandcamp.com Friday haul! Soooo happy Young the Giant is on here now! Really awesome that bigger bands who weren't there previously are migrating here

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Tana ⭐ PAX AUS!! @tanamakes.games · 06/03/2026

the are probably the 9 most influential games on my game design style It's very different from my top 9 games of all time which I think is interesting 👀

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Tana ⭐ PAX AUS!! @tanamakes.games · 18/02/2026

Made the most of getting trapped in Christchurch: ⭐ Saw the BRUTALIST TIMEZONE 🟢 Got the most beautifully made matcha latte 🟧 Cat cafe!! 🔺 Christchurch game dev meet up! (plus hung out with the homies)

It's a timezone arcade but surrounded by nothing but concrete

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Tana ⭐ PAX AUS!! @tanamakes.games · 03/02/2026

It's been 6 months since I struck out on my own to be come a studio director and it's about time I did a talk about it! 🫖 Wellington devs: come see me ramble next Tuesday at 6pm! www.meetup.com/game-develop...

Presentation slide: "Tana is (slowing learning to be) a Studio Director"

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Tana ⭐ PAX AUS!! @tanamakes.games · 01/02/2026

Everyone in the Lucy Dacus crypit at Laneway can thank me because I met her in 2023 and asked her to come to New Zealand 🥰

A polaroid of me and Lucy dacus in a glittery container

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Tana ⭐ PAX AUS!! @tanamakes.games · 29/01/2026

I visited a friend there who's at Playground and it was a lovely quaint British town - I can see the appeal for a quiet life there for sure!

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Tana ⭐ PAX AUS!! @tanamakes.games · 29/01/2026

Got a really useful playtesting report commissioned and it's already super duper useful but I'm also not immune to feedback anxiety so it's curry laksa time to calm the nervous system 😌

Vegan chicken noodle laska and green tea

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Tana ⭐ PAX AUS!! @tanamakes.games · 14/01/2026

bummed about SXSW Sydney closing its doors - last year I made so many awesome friends and after a big MIGW, it was such a friendly, games and music filled week that I left feeling fulfilled and hyped ✨🌟

The Shape Sender Deluxe booth at SXSW Sydney 2025, including a model Sendy!

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Tana ⭐ PAX AUS!! @tanamakes.games · 28/12/2025

Your last saved meme is your moral philosophy

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