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v buckenham

@v21.bsky.social
8.4K followers 1.2K following 8.9K posts

hello again made (and continuing to make) downpour.games, a game-making app that anyone can use also i have a website: v21.io

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v buckenham @v21.bsky.social · 2h
a long time coming www.constructionnews.co.uk/buildings/bu...
constructionnews.co.uk
Police ask CPS to consider Grenfell manslaughter charges
The Metropolitan Police has asked prosecutors to consider charges including corporate manslaughter and gross negligence manslaughter in relation to the
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VØ₦ ฿Ø₲ ₩ł₮₵Ⱨ @bogwitch.bsky.social · 4h
Yeah, that checks out
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v buckenham @v21.bsky.social · 6h
@alienmelon.bsky.social btw you were in the first week's readings!
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v buckenham @v21.bsky.social · 6h
absolutely on my particular brand of shit with the readings for this week's lecture
Readings

Chapter 1 of "More Work For Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave" by Ruth Schwartz Cowan

Chapter 3 ("The Fun Community") from The Well Played Game by Bernie DeKoven

"Nudel's longest death" (blog post) by Lu Wilson
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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 19h
“…Muse can be easily prompted to compile dossiers on Facebook and Instagram accounts belonging to members of vulnerable groups – including undocumented immigrants, transgender teachers, poll workers, Iranian dissidents, and women who said they had ordered abortion pills in states with abortion bans”
hntrbrk.com
Dox for Me, O Muse
Muse AI can leverage Facebook data to build lists of people in vulnerable groups on request for ordinary users.
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v buckenham @v21.bsky.social · 19h
via @smarmy.space, this deconstructed self-describing HTML page: secretgeek.github.io/html_wysiwyg...
secretgeek.github.io
This page is a truly naked, brutalist html quine.
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Caræsten 🇵🇸 @cara.city · 21/09/2026
shoutout to infinite mac, without which this would not have been possible www.them.us/story/early-...
them.us
You Can Now Look Back at the Early Trans Internet. Yes, There Were Memes
Three years of TGForum posts were found on a CD-ROM — and uploaded for all to browse.
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Hannah Vardit @hannahvardit.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
you will encounter more opportunities in life to change the batteries on a smoke alarm than you will to run into a burning building and no one gives a shit you changed those batteries but it is still very important and why are you waiting on a burning building, know what i’m saying, it’s a metaphor
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Everest Pipkin @everest.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
I'm very please to announce a public release of my drag-and-drop bookmarking, game-making, and wandering tool Scrubjay! Scrubjay is a weird website builder that lets you cobble together web elements, images, links, text fragments, etc into a series of nested rooms...
"SCRUBJAY" sits over a bunch of images of frogs, birds, doors. it's a very 90s look
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Stacey Mason @stcymsn.bsky.social · 15/10/2024
Formal affordances are the elements that pull a player toward certain actions, they “cry out” for the player to take those actions. Material affordances are the actions a system actually allows the player to take. Agency occurs when the two are in balance. (Mateas 2001)
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Privaty Business @wanwanattack.qtbrewer.moe · 28/09/2026
Genuinely, this completely rules
-Recently, the game has been going viral on X for its beautiful undressing animations. I’ve even read in one of your previous interviews that the development team practiced stripping themselves as reference for the undressing animations. What was the process behind making the animations actually like?

Matsui:

I’d love to know how far that story has spread. It’s true.

First, we write a plot for each undressing scene, then draw storyboards, exactly as the original team did. Then the real work begins, because the animation is essentially all keyed by hand. A designer moves the clothing’s 3D model, frame by frame, manually. It really is pretty much like the claymation method I mentioned.

We did try automating it with physics simulation first, but it was a total failure. The cloth moved in a physically correct way, but had absolutely no allure. We learned a profound lesson: accuracy and sensuality are two unrelated properties. In the end, we accepted that humans would have to do all of it.

Then VR adds its own weight. In a normal game, if something becomes awkward, you can cut away or swap models between scenes. In VR, the player can look from any angle at any time, so none of those tricks are available. The same model has to undress convincingly no matter where you’re standing. When I described this to a designer at another studio, he said, “I would never do that.” I’ve chosen to take it as a compliment.And then, yes, the part you’ve read about. The undressing motions themselves use motion capture, but the deeper problem was that nobody actually knew the correct rhythm and order in which a person takes off clothes. So, the directors gathered and undressed themselves as reference. “That zipper is coming down too fast.” “She’d pause once before slipping her shoulder out.” These were serious, sober discussions. For compliance reasons, the Super Real Mahjong Venus Returns team works in a walled-off section of our office – and that was the moment those walls truly earned their keep.
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Duncan Hothersall @dhothersall.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
For all that it's been barely reported in the UK press, it's still hard to understate the importance of the stance @labourunionsuk.bsky.social has taken on trans and non-binary rights this week. Every single trade union affiliated to the party of government has stood up and said we will not comply.
Joint statement from National TULO

Solidarity with the trans and non-binary community

Labour's 11 affiliated trade unions stand in total solidarity with the trans and non-binary community.

Trans rights are human rights, and trans rights are workers' rights.

We in the trade union movement will do all we can to stand up for our trans members and all our trans siblings, to protect them from persecution, harassment and attack.

The government must act now to protect all trans people, to make sure their rights are protected, expanded and upheld in our workplaces and communities.

Labour Unions
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v buckenham @v21.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
still remember a particular decision in a Christine Love game which i had to get up, make a cup of tea, and consult my conscience for 20 minutes before making
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This skeet will self destruct @pardoguerra.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Do you mean “can the arts business model survive monopolies?” Half of the story here is of concentration of power in a quasi-monopsony (eg Spotify) and a de facto monopoly (LiveNation). That’s what’s actually killing the arts.
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Leigh Alexander @leighalexander.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
2009. you have no idea what it was like to be internet games famous in the before times
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v buckenham @v21.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
good news! they have a new process this year which should make it easier to get set up on the system.
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v buckenham @v21.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
my style of giving talks has been for a long time: figure out what i'm gonna say, and then only use slides to show things visually where that's helpful. if there's a good bit of talking which has no useful visual accompaniment, i will skip to a blank slide. listen to my words.
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v buckenham @v21.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
unsolicited recommendation: if you are going to buy a fountain pen and you don't already own a lot of fountain pens - you should get a TWSBI Eco. satisfying to refill, comes in lots of colours, doesn't dry out easily, writes well. mine cost about £40.
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Aura/Moom @moomanibe.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
thinking about this again today, and not even in the context of procgen. The thing about systems design is that it's so easy to get excited about making little sandboxes for yourself that you forget the player needs insight into it, lest it simply appear the same as complete randomness.
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Three More Years @threemoreyears.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Exploring the mythic unconscious for the "other" part of "a permanent echo". #screenshotsaturday #indiegame #indiedev
A Unicode rendering of a photo of a kitbash of a sad person on a sad horse, potentially related to the apocalypse.
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v buckenham @v21.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
the angle i take on this is: for ADHD at least, the thing people are generally seeking is not a diagnosis - it is care. medication, primarily, but also "reasonable adjustments" at work and access to SEND provision in schools. so what if... that stuff wasn't gated on getting the right piece of paper?
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𝔻𝕖𝕖𝕡 𝕋𝕙𝕠𝕥 @thatsgoodweb.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Louis Wain
Louis Wain
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v buckenham @v21.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
if you have assets of £10m, and you lose £10m a year... that's good, right?
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v buckenham @v21.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
fwiw i got curious and made pottage last year and it turns out it's pretty good. you don't boil the shit out of it, but keep it on a low simmer for as long as possible. whole wheat or barley grains don't turn to mush but are little chewy soft lumps. might make it for lunch today (if i start now)
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v buckenham @v21.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
I directed my first film shoot today! Like, a unit of, for a particular project I'm the main person on, with weird constraints that made it simpler than it might have been. But still! exciting new thing to get to do, and to get paid for.
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v buckenham @v21.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
three new Eleanor Davis illustrations : garden-variety.org/home/
garden-variety.org
Home
Eleanor Davis
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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
New Post: Why I Love AI Next month it'll be twenty years since I went to university, learned to program, and studied AI. I wrote about why I loved it, why I still love it, and why, unfortunately, it no longer exists. www.possibilityspace.org/blog/posts/i...
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blackle mori @blackle.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
his name is lethargic. he's an IRC chatbot I wrote in 2011 and has been through IRC, skype, and is now on discord (in private servers with friends.) the algorithm has been unchanged since the beginning.
Lethargic’s algorithm

Lethargic’s primary response generator uses a bespoke algorithm that uses neither templates nor markov chains.
Take the user’s input:
	Hello lethargic, how are you doing today?
Then pick a random message from a dataset of old IRC logs
	brb throwing my computer against the wall
Then we interlace these two sentences, one word at a time, excluding ending punctuation:
	Hello brb lethargic, throwing how my are computer you against doing the today wallLethargic's algorithm continued
Hello brb lethargic, throwing how my are computer you against doing the today wall
We replace “lethargic” with “me” and other pronouns so that they are inverted (like ELIZA)
	Hello brb me, throwing how your are computer me against doing the today wall
Finally we pass this amalgamation into google translate a bunch of times through multiple languages to get our response:
	Hey, wait a minute, how's your computer doing today after I hit my head against a wall?
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Alan Hazelden @alanhazelden.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Earlier versions of the game did acknowledge the creators of the original games at the start of each section, and I consider it unacceptable that this was removed at Jon’s direction. Stephen Totilo noticed this change and wrote a nuanced article here: www.gamefile.news/p/a-complica...
gamefile.news
A complicated game
Who gets credit for Order of the Sinking Star? Where should the names appear for the creators of its source material? And would you notice if a great game designer sat next to you?
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v buckenham @v21.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
despite liking a bunch of his books previously, i'm not interested in reading any new China Miéville. i don't know what happened and i have a pretty bad memory for the specifics of that kind of allegation, but i do remember feeling perturbed by the heavy handedness of the legal threats that followed
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caroline cash @cashbrowns.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Nancy 9/20/26
The age old “are we exclusive” conversation strikes again
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👁️saac 👁️o @eyesack.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
a cat tag, DNA, a mama, and Gattaca
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v buckenham @v21.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
huh this Jev thing seems pretty exciting when you test it against the things that make a tool good to use: blog.vbuckenham.com/some-thought...
blog.vbuckenham.com
Some thoughts about tool design and AI
Okay, so fair warning, this is a post about AI tooling from someone who does not use it much! I feel underqualified to write this post. But I think it'll be interesting to look back on. And being unde...
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Thew @amazingthew.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
god i love videogames. have you heard about "places"? they are called locations
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v buckenham @v21.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
ah this is great. recommended for people who like hyperpop but have been bored by it in the last few years carlstone.bandcamp.com/album/arthur...
carlstone.bandcamp.com
Arthur Fischl Conducts the Music of Carl Stone, by Carl Stone
8 track album
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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
But yeah, gonna say I saw this one coming:
A text block reading, "That in turn needs to influence political calculations about the costs and benefits of different courses of action: the cost for the United States of deciding to revise the status quo is potentially much higher than it seems, because it shakes the foundations of all of these mostly-invisible institutions that are in fact the root of a lot of the United States’ global power. Because the United States isn’t the king or general of the status quo coalition, it’s the ‘team captain.’ If it proves to be a bad team captain, the team may well choose a new captain, or disband altogether, with catastrophic implications for American interests."
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v buckenham @v21.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
spoilers for week 4 of my upcoming class
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v buckenham @v21.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
who goes looking for an ADHD diagnosis when it wouldn't benefit them? the people i know who seek formal diagnoses are either doing it to access medication or to access support that's gated on that. so if you took this at face value, who would it affect?
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v buckenham @v21.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
seems hard to square the two beliefs that the AI labs are being led by ideologues who all came from the same cult, and that the only reason they're proposing a pause is for cynical self-interested reasons (either along the lines of "cartel collusion" or "postponing an inevitable crash")
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v buckenham @v21.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
real missed opportunity for a negative and a positive covid test emoji
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v buckenham @v21.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
i had not heard about this! also: i love that the "madlad" and the "girl" are husband and wife. (also, yes, apparently they changed the logic for the ladies' room to the men's room)
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v buckenham @v21.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
new blog post, kind of a process post on last night's visuals set, but mostly a plug for an art film i love: blog.vbuckenham.com/last-night-i...
blog.vbuckenham.com
Last night I did visuals at Algorave Decelerate
Last night I did visuals at Algorave Decelerate for Pondskater. As I usually do, I used Picodevil, and the thing about Picodevil is that you need video clips to play with. I was thinking about the kin...
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v buckenham @v21.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
everyone seems to be doing the Camino! i mean, not everyone, just art-adjacent people in London. but still! who had pilgrimages on their bingo card for cool things to do in 2026?
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Frogboi 🫒 @frogboi.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Maybe you like to play a TTRPG as a little elf guy (or gal) and you're fed up with your usual green elf and semi spongey real DeviantArt adjacent art for your beautiful little elf guy (or gal) and so now you're thinking about switching up to a frogboi elf guy (or gal)
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v buckenham @v21.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
this is the gamer nostalgia I'm weak to. mix in some Flash games and that bit in Encarta where you could play with planetary orbits...
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v buckenham @v21.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
in my happy place (operating a computer while wearing hi viz inside a false wall within an under-construction immersive attraction within a very large shopping center)
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weapon2.bsky.social @weapon2.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
If you make physical games, video games or other software based on modifying or reappropriating existing games or software, please consider submitting your work to be shown in the quadrennial plunderludics exhibition, to be held in New York later this year: plunderludics.github.io/misc/2026-op...
plunderludics.github.io
plunderludics wiki
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v buckenham @v21.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
I need to teach my phone not to capitalise larp
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v buckenham @v21.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
they're putting AI in the toothbrushes now
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