Did you participate in the #DecemberAdventure this year?

I'm gonna write up a retrospective on my blog of this year's adventure -- I'm not 100% certain how I'm gonna use them, but, I'd love to collect some quotes from folks about their thoughts of it -- nothing fancy, nothing wicked long, just a couple sentences.

If you are interested in providing that sort of thing either do so as a reply to this thread, DM me, or email me by magically figuring out my email (it is on my website) https://eli.li/about

Oatmeal - About Me

Hello! I’m Eli, he/him, eli_oat most places online. This is my website. You’ll find a hodgepodge of all kinds of stuff here ranging from rambling

^eli.li

As the #DecemberAdventure continues to wind down, I did an update on the last few days.

https://eli.li/december-adventure-2023

Happy adventuring ya'll!

Oatmeal - December adventure, 2023

I’ll also be logging stuff on mastodon. I kicked things off by noodling with Decker. My goal was to get more acquainted with building and wiring up

^eli.li

For the last few days of the #DecemberAdventure I've been pretty quiet, but I've actually written the most code!

It isn't pretty, and it isn't even particularly useful, but I've continued to work on my silly little JavaScript game framework thing for making little sketches.

https://eli.li/_assets/bin/game-frame/

Don't collect the bike. It breaks everything...

Instead of a #DecemberAdventure today, here are some photos I took at the very foggy beach.

I also took a gigantic nap with the dog.

https://eli.li/2023/12/25/2023-12-25-16-34-16

https://eli.li/2023/12/25/2023-12-25-16-32-46

Oatmeal | 📸 Photo

Foggy Christmas adventuring

^eli.li

So far today I’ve done no substantial computering other than writing this #DecemberAdventure update. I spent most of the morning toodling around Portland on the cargo bike with a kiddo. We did the entire back cove, most of our neighborhood, a bit of the peninsula, and checked out a new playground -- it was fun (thought wicked chilly).

This evening I’m hoping to make either General Tso’s tofu (’tis the season) or dumplings, depending on what is in our cabinets.

I also got a package from a friend in Japan! He sent me a Japanese copy of Final Fantasy Tactics for the Gameboy Advance. I am wholly unequipped to play such a thing, but you bet your thumbs I’ll try!

For today’s #DecemberAdventure I did two things:

- I sewed a pink snake per my kid’s request
- I pulled together a basic IRC bot

I used to sew a lot before having kids; as an undergrad I actually TA’d for a bunch of animation and puppetry courses that involved a lot of sewing and practical sort of hand-making. I did a bit during the pandemic lock downs out of necessity, but not much. I’ve been staring at all my sewing stuff for years, though, and wanting to get back into the habit of making freaky little guys.

The IRC bot was inspired by some conversations I had on fedi: I’m wondering if it could serve as a good playground for making little narrative games, where, rather than having to build an engine and physics and and and on and on I plop some new interactive commands into an existing bot. I chose IRC because it is easy as pie (see what I did there?), but I could imagine migrating to something else one day.

Day 21 of the #DecemberAdventure --

Solstice! Today I hung out with friends, ran errands, made a big dinner, and generally chilled.

I’m sitting down now for the first time of the day at a screen.

Over the course of this adventure I’ve been reflecting on how what I always want to build is a game and how I hardly ever do it. I have countless (almost literally) starts at it, and hundreds and hundreds of ideas for games, but, when I sit down to do it I generally get eaten by technical hurdles that, paired with limited time, are a bit too steep to scale.

But on the inverse side of things, if I sit down to bang out a web app (what I do for work) I can almost literally do it with my eyes closed. The thing is, I have little to no interest in doing that in my spare time.

No real ask, or next step, just sharing this observation about myself that, is itself, not really new, but, remains true for me.

Quick part two for today’s #DecemberAdventure, day 19 part 2:

Everyone should go read the source code for @ratfactor's hiss — it is so legible, and stylish — not as in “cool,” (I mean, it is) but it has a style and is consistent. I adore that.

I think I could implement hiss’ parser using lil, but I think updating Decker cards dynamically is beyond my capabilities…and potentially Decker’s abilities. I’m gonna keep noodling, though.

http://ratfactor.com/hiss/hiss.html

http://eli.li/da-2023

Oatmeal - December adventure, 2023

I’ll also be logging stuff on mastodon. I kicked things off by noodling with Decker. My goal was to get more acquainted with building and wiring up

^eli.li

Day 19, #DecemberAdventure

I don’t usually like to do computer things in the morning — I try to preserve that time for reading. This morning, though, I woke up with an idea, so reached for Decker first thing.

I wake up between 4 and 5 AM to feed the cats and dog.

After they’ve finished eating there is almost always a strange and quiet moment where the cats sit right next to each other in the dawning light, and look out a particular window on to the street below.

The dog flops back to sleep, either under a desk or a bed.

Exploring my idea (to see if I could support @ratfactor's hiss stuff from within Decker) brought me to Decker’s pre-built module for visual novels!?

The kids are up now. The bustle of a day awaits! ONWARD ADVENTURERS!

#DecemberAdventure day 22

Success! I was able to edit and save my log with the typewriter 🙌​

Did the coding on the train, 7 hours to go, but I think I'll continue tomorrow.

Next up, making the code smaller and faster, and handling errors better.

https://git.sr.ht/~louismerlin/december-adventure

#DecemberAdventure day 19:

Leaving the rendering logic for now, I'm trying my hand at making a UI for the first time. First little step: an icon that shows which camera mode you're in ("first person" or "orbit")

https://ghettobastler.com/december_adventure_2023.html

Day 18 of the #DecemberAdventure wowowow!

It is so much fun reading all of the other adventure logs! Though, to be honest, I’m not sure how ya’ll keep at it! Especially on work days, after work I’m so wiped out I don’t have much mental power to apply to adventuring.

Shout outs to ya’ll!

I explored Decker’s contraptions today. They’re a way to make re-usable, custom widgets.

I also revisited my game thing today.

I think I’ve made an error in how player state is handled. I haven’t totally sorted out what is going on yet. Like I said, I’m wiped, but, will try to figure that out soon.

https://eli.li/december-adventure-2023

Oatmeal - December adventure, 2023

I’ll also be logging stuff on mastodon. I kicked things off by noodling with Decker. My goal was to get more acquainted with building and wiring up

^eli.li

#DecemberAdventure updates!

I let myself become very waylaid by scheme this weekend.

I created a scheme page in my wiki, and I captured a few useful bits of scheme code on the forget me nots page.

Later today or tomorrow I’m determined to return to Decker and lil to get my weird game prototype into a shareable state by the end of the month.

https://eli.li/scheme

https://eli.li/forget-me-not

Oatmeal - Scheme

A friend recently asked me why I like scheme so much. After a bit of thought, I landed on this as an answer – My straight sauce answer here is so

^eli.li

No adventure log for yesterday's #DecemberAdventure -- I went to bed early 🍻

Today, I walked to the local library. There, I revisited the game in Decker for a bit — mostly I drew a silly map for it. Afterwards I started roughing in the bones of a game system in scheme.

Not much to show for it, yet, but I do always love re-visiting scheme. My brain isn’t in scheme-mode at the moment, so things that I think should be easy are proving mind bending, which is fun.

https://eli.li/december-adventure

Oatmeal - December Adventure

The Advent of Code is cool, but a lot, and not everyone’s jam. The December Adventure is low key. The goal is to write a little bit of code every

^eli.li

For today's #DecemberAdventure I took a hiatus from Decker. Instead, I dove into @Sandra's brev. I also explored her cst, that turns s-expressions into graphviz diagrams.

I’m not sure if I’ll pursue this, but I was noodling on making a little text-based toy where the object of the game is to create graphviz maps of some space you are exploring — like a traveling cartographer game?

I also continue to read The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs.

https://idiomdrottning.org/brev

https://idiomdrottning.org/cst

I didn’t write a #DecemberAdventure update for day 12 because I was knee deep in potatoes making latkes.

I'm getting back into the swing of things after 2 days away from Decker. Today, Day 13, I added logic to the enemy in the combat system of my little game.

It is really boring, so I wanna tune it a bit, and maybe make it something other than just an “attack” or “rest” button. All the pieces are in place to start exploring different ways to handle these sorts of encounters, though!

I remain completely smitten with Decker and lil. Especially lil. It is a very pleasant programming system.

Tonight I’m going to read more of The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, too!

https://eli.li/december-adventure

Oatmeal - December Adventure

The Advent of Code is cool, but a lot, and not everyone’s jam. The December Adventure is low key. The goal is to write a little bit of code every

^eli.li

Day 11 of my #DecemberAdventure is another rest day.

I went back to work for the first time in a bit, so had a lot to catch up on. Enough computer time for one day. Instead, I read the first chapter of The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs.

I've read it before but it hasn't ever stuck. Hoping a re-read may help that.

#DecemberAdventure -- day 10!

The root of the issue I talked about earlier today was, unsurprisingly, my fault! Having cracked the nut, I got 2/3rds of my game's combat system done!

Next up, I'll be adding logic to handle the opponent's actions. I remain deeply smitten by both Decker and lil. I *think* I may submit what I'm making into the December Deck jam, if it is still running when I wrap.

https://eli.li/december-adventure-2023

Oatmeal - December adventure, 2023

I’ll also be logging stuff on mastodon. I kicked things off by noodling with Decker. My goal was to get more acquainted with building and wiring up

^eli.li

I ended up having a lot of time to spend on my #DecemberAdventure yesterday in the evening. I had a lot of fun -- I think I may have found a bug in how lil handles truthiness, or am maybe really misunderstanding how it should work.

My plan for today is to spin up a small sample project and reproduce the errors I've been seeing in isolation -- I'm hoping this will either help me sort out what is going on, or serve as a useful starting point for some questions on the Decker forum.

Big breakthroughs were made on my silly #DecemberAdventure game in Decker today!

I’m starting to find all the rough edges of both Decker and lil. None so bad, but fun little questions to noodle over as I make this thing.

…the siren song of array languages draws me ever nearer to the dastardly rocks. Will they be my desolation!? Keep watching to find out!

#DecemberAdventure update: the one and only internet-janitor (mind behind Decker and lil, and oK) responded to my question and I’ve been set forth! Onward!

The hiccup I was running into is that all queries in lil are pure expressions that can’t modify data in place and I was trying to modify an empty table instead of making a new one.

I jumped on to the #DecemberAdventure early today -- big ol' explorations and sorting out lil's table syntax, and how to programmatically handle data with it.

tl;dr it didn't go great

But there is hope, yet! https://eli.li/december-adventure-2023#section-8

Oatmeal - December adventure, 2023

I’ll also be logging stuff on mastodon. I kicked things off by noodling with Decker. My goal was to get more acquainted with building and wiring up

^eli.li

Day 8 of the #DecemberAdventure -- I’m gonna call this one a rest day!

I didn’t do any code-stuff, but I did write a blog post, practice doing some digital painting, and work on a story I’ve been working on off and on for a few months.

I also made an absurd amount of vegetarian sushi for dinner.

https://eli.li/december-adventure-2023#section-7

Oatmeal - December adventure, 2023

I’ll also be logging stuff on mastodon. I kicked things off by noodling with Decker. My goal was to get more acquainted with building and wiring up

^eli.li

A little itty bitty #DecemberAdventure for me today.

I didn't do much adventuring today, because the bulk of my day was eaten by a big ol' brain scan (hooray! brain bleed is resolved!) that left my eyeballs kinda fried. I did do a bit of sketching in Decker. I don't love drawing in it. I think I may create my maps and stuff in a different program and import them.

Anyone tackling 🎄Tiny Code Christmas 🎄as part of their #DecemberAdventure ?

It’s a relaxed series of 12 daily challenges based around Demoscene effects and Sizecoding on Fantasy Consoles, with videos covering both #tic80 and #pico8

There’s no time limit or leaderboards and you can start and finish whenever you want. There’s even some extra challenges if you took part last year!

Take a look at #lovebytetcc to see what people are making and then head over to the website to get started: https://tcc.lovebyte.party

The Game of Life is one of my favorite programs, but I've never tried to go deep in learning about it, and as a result I still learn fairly obvious (with hindsight) things about it. This time after https://akkartik.itch.io/carousel/devlog/650868/conways-game-of-life I realized two things:

* I don't need to keep checking if a cell is in bounds. Just don't update a border of cells!

* I don't need to clean up the new array at each time step! 🤦

#DecemberAdventure

Conway's Game of Life

Perhaps my favorite program. curr, new = {}, {} for x=1,Safe_width do table.insert(curr, {}) table.insert(new, {}) for y=1,Safe_height do table.insert(curr[x], 0) table.insert(new[x], 0) end end -- R...

^{Kartik Agaram (itch.io)}

For my #DecemberAdventure, I've optimized uxnfloppy so that it runs at 60 fps most of the time at 640x480! Here is a video of bunnymark.tal running on the laptop. It can draw around 2000 sprites before it goes below 60 fps!

#uxn #theWorkshop #theFurnace