Lu Wilson

A Fresh Palette

Added 2021-10-20 19:05:16 +0000 UTC

Welcome back to the weekly...

🌈 TODEPOND TIMES 🌈

What's new this week??? Let me show you!

CellPond

I've been working hard to get stuff ready for my next video. It's going to be about how I might rebuild the SandPond engine from the ground up! (with the goal of making everything easily editable using drag&drop)

I've been rewriting my prototype engine in C, so that it forces me to really think about how I want stuff to work. Currently, I'm still experimenting with different ideas on how to make it. I hope that I can cache a lot of things so that the engine avoids doing the same calculations twice.

ColourTode

To go alongside the new engine, I've been mocking up a language that can be used to make elements. The most important thing about the language is that you should be able to type it as well as drag & drop it.

I've written up some early plans here: l2wilson94.gitbook.io/ColourTode

⭐ Special thanks to patron Max Bittker for providing some early feedback on it!

Palette

As part of the design of the new engine and language, I want to limit the number of colours that are available. This helps with two things:

1. Fewer colour choices makes a drag&drop UI easier to make and use.

2. Fewer colour choices means that there are fewer possibilities within the engine. This means that there is less to precalculate (if I want to do that to speed up the engine).

So... colours are combinations of three 1-digit numbers. The numbers represent red, green and blue. For example, black is 0, 0, 0. White is 9, 9, 9. Red is 9, 0, 0.

I have made sure that all of the colours in my usual theme are possible to make with these numbers.

NEXT: I am going to keep working on the engine so that I can make my next video. Alongside that, I will try to make a mockup of the visual UI for making elements.

As usual, thank you very much for your support! It means the world to me that you enjoy what I do. See you next week! 🐸🌈