Platform 13She pulled the helmet tight, checking the clasp once more in front of the big metal dome as the cold morning air washed over her. Trains rumbled in and out of the station. Looking up towards the pink dust sky torn by gravity trails travelling south. She knew what lay south. It wasn't hope. She saw a single knotted rope of distortion tearing to the heavens, its frayed bottom torn
Leave it all BehindPickle approached Platform 13 with a smile and a confident step only to find a great deal of motion had ensued in her minutes in the office of the scribe. She paused to see Gunther locked in a shouting match with a small man who was wielding a stack of papers like a furious baton of authority. Meanwhile, a flurry of activity was happening on the platform behind them, the
Journey to the Edge"Easy there. You have quite the nasty knock there, Pumpkin. "Stirring from her dazed state and looking through powder mist as her brain cleared of powered frost and fog. She said the first thing which came to her mind, "For saying name's Pickle, not Pumpkin. ""Well, whatever it is, you still took quite a fine tumble onto our resident grump. I want you to
Echoes of SinWatching Malcolm's long dark frame sagging, all the threatening strength rushing out. A mountain of power collapsing in on itself. Falling to his knees, vibrant colours flowing away from him and washing over Pickle. The last echos of powerful magical work. Lost in amazement, as she let the coating of magic flow over her skin, Pickle felt at peace. A wake of rainbow glycerine
The Ball Twins"Lock it and stock it. " Gunther's voice brought her back into the moment as Pickle looked around the echoing underground train platform. The room was just long enough to accommodate the open train on rails with a small walkway upfront with a glittering bronze shaft perhaps two meters across running from floor to ceiling. The ceiling almost ten meters high above them,
New RoutineOver the next two weeks, Pickle started to enjoy life on watch. For the first time in her life, she had a routine. While her control was limited, she felt empowered and knew what tomorrow would bring. It was strangely peaceful. Gone were the endless days of darkness, crawling to find nuggets to extend her life, running from place to place, constantly on alert or surrendering to the
Can You BreatheThe air lay heavy with anticipation, the high sun casting shadows in sharp relief on the edge of the treeline. Pickle could easily pick out the twisted shape impaled with the javelin she had shot moments before. The corpse was bubbling and fuming with acrid black smoke. Now it appeared to be melting around the shaft, sliding down slowly. The screams had lasted less than a second,
First off new job which means a bunch of things but mostly a project update. The video should be on the main page at the time of posting but here is a link if your in the future. I've updated the experiments page with a range of stuff. Here is a brief overview. Software / Hardware DevThimBall Controller - Alternative VR controller designTinyXR - OpenXR / Vulkan engine with SDF / Volumetric
So I realised one of the reasons I don't post as often to my website is that often content is not blog worth but its more substantial than a tweet. When Twitter started we referred to it as a Micro Blogging service. There where some other competitors, such as Tumblr but it really stole the spotlight and solidified the idea. I still need to make my Golang static website generator update AWS but
Well, after almost 15 years chasing video games, I decided to do a bit of a side step. I still love games, and I could easily see myself working on them again. At this point, I looked out at stuff, and well, this seemed the right move. Leaving Mm and Sony was a tough call, but I wanted to push VR, and well, I knew that PSVR2 was mostly locked. I could see the road ahead for me in my role, and it
Recently I've had a bit more time between leaving Media Molecule and starting my new job. I want to explore a few concepts, some of which I think are worth writing up, if only to work the ideas through my fingers. Lip Syncing in virtual reality is an interesting one that seized my grey gooey bits the other day so let us explore it. The issues with computers are they like numbers. If we were to
I'm now officially protected against Covid, or rather in two to three weeks, have a pretty good immune response, with a second jab bringing me up to the high 90s. That is because I went I got my first jab thanks to the NHS deeming me a high risk younger person. No idea what put me in that risk group, potentially my weight which hasn't been great. I thought it might be helpful to note some
"There is some surprising complexity in this isekai. " That was the line my wife blurted after she asked me was it good. It's honestly a fun romp I would recommend to anyone as being both silly and wholesome. It maintains a unique flavour while "conforming" to several tropes. It has some surprising nuance in places for all the silliness of the premise and tropes of the genre. I
I've been running a DnD games again. I am enjoying it so far. It is good to be rolling dice in person again. The campaign is actually running across multiple groups. Some of which are at the London DnD Meetup. So I've decided to publish some of the notes on my webpage to make it easier for players to reference stuff and intro players. Second Moon NotesAlso, I made a fun video of the setting
Loving this idea of using Midjourney to document Dungeons and Dragons sessions. There is an issue with consistency and certain fantasy races but overall it really captures the feel of the sessions and the progress. It's great to see the session laid out visually. Brigadier's New Armor Kelly rallies the camp Public Whipping Feast to celebrate Dissection of Chiwi Chiwi Problems with
Are you ready for an adventure? Last week, I returned to the world of roleplaying for the first time in years. I journeyed to Con-tingency, an epic event held at Searles Leisure Resort in Hunstanton from 18th to 22nd January 2023. With three slots of four hours each, I delved into a diverse variety of roleplaying games, board games, and all-around fun. This event is the spiritual successor to
I've been thinking a lot lately about dice rolls as I consider reviving my old Channels of Power ttrpg and doing a v2. 0 and launching some new campaigns and modules but this got me thinking about my old friend, dice probability. The classic d20 is a flat probability curve with a BROAD range with small bonus meaning that the curves are wild. You ALWAYS have a 5% chance of guaranteed success or
Industry ContextRecently, I attended GodotCon and gave a talk at Develop North. GodotCon was eye-opening, and at Develop North, I discussed using Godot professionally. I shouldn't post the talk here, as it's better suited for a conference environment, but much of the information is already on my website in articles. I want to address a phenomenon being discussed in many circles: how does a
As part of my brain dump series on writing creative tools off the back of Substance 3D Modeler and Dreams I want to talk about the state of Virtual Reality for productivity and creativity. So let’s talk about VR fatigue. Conclusion ; TLDRUse VR, you will solve fatigue issues as you find themUser will be seated, head tilted down with arms at their sidePassthrough is important, immersion is
Taking a break from my tools articles to write about Godot on PS5 and PSVR2. I’m going to lay outMy disagreement with the statement givenThoughts on W4 vs Foundation linesGo over their reasonsExplain my studio plans, which include freely sharing any Godot port workI am sure that there are many things which triggered the Godot foundation to put out an article stating. . . The Foundation does not
There are many reasons I think that Godot is a great technical base and has a robust future, but chiefly among them is the modular way in which things are built and designed with the assumption that parts will be ripped out, replaced and improved. This is done through an easy to approach code base, modules system and robust support for addons and extensions through GDExtension (using godot-cpp)
At the backend of almost years of creative tooling work with Substance 3D Modeler and Dreams I am brain dumping lessons learnt and this week I want to talk about what the actual data handcuffs are. In a later article I will talk about higher level parts of this problem and solutions but today let’s talk about the true data handcuffs or limitations: HARDWARE!Conclusion at the top as always to
August 2nd was my last day on Adobe Substance 3D Modeller. There is an FREE Open Beta and you should go try it: Open BetaWhy? I’m starting an indie VR game dev studio. Could not be more excited!I can’t talk much about that yet BUT after working on PlayStation Dreams and then Modeller I think my time working on creative tools is at an end and I want to brain dump before this stuff fades from
It’s been a while since I started this little gamedev journey and I wanted to talk about all the bits that aren’t gamedev so I can share what I’ve been up to. This is also why I say making games as a hobby is a totally valid thing and the gap between hobbyist and professional is larger than people sometimes think. Though if you are interested in crossing the gap maybe this will help. This is
As part of my brain dump series on writing creative tools off the back of Substance 3D Modeler and Dreams I want to talk about technical innovation and the importance of your Tech Stack for Virtual Reality productivity and creativity software. So let’s talk about the speed of light and Godot. Conclusion at the top to save you timeSpeed of Light - What are the physics / hardware constraintsDesign
The long-established default in the modeling space has been the transition from pushing pixels to manipulating points in space. Originally defined with a lightpen scanning physical models or handwritten points in code into point clouds. Over time, the ambiguity of points in space led to the dominance of the triangle or surface representation. Today, we explore whether this is still the best
I’ve struggled the last two weeks to make time to write about creative tools and volumes. The subject still fascinates me but as I said at the start of this series it was a brain dump before lessons learnt paged out of my brain now I’m no longer at Adobe or thinking about Dreams. Well the brain was not fully dumped the hectic business of running a new studio has meant that it has been
A short article on a little hobby code project resulting in two watch faces. As long term fan of the best wearable, The Pebble Watch, my wife and I have a real soft spot for the long battery life epaper watch focused on time keeping and bits of useful functionality. The wearable market is dominated by wellness, fitness and subscription based services. The lack of a true pebble successor is a sad
I'm working on a VR game in Godot 4. x and well it has been long since that I admitted I would need to hack open the engine and make changes. I am trying to keep that to a minimum I talk about that about why the last game was shelved in this video. Now as progress on the new game is going well I want to talk about -two things- when you should C++. Problem: Cut a mesh in VR very fastGDSCript is
As part of my brain dump series on writing creative tools off the back of Substance 3D Modeler and Dreams I want to talk about WHY I was working on creative tools. Back in 2014 when I first interviewed at PlayStation with hope of being involved in the Morpheus Project, a wire basket VR prototype I had started developing prototypes for as a 3rd party developer at Climax and would later become
Disclaimer: This is a bad news bear piece. If you're feeling rough, have a coffee and skip this one. I have spent almost 20 professional years in what I would call the premium gaming market but now almost weekly I hear of layoffs and survive till ‘25 so what does our future look like?Last week I was at GodotCon in Germany which was a great time but a moment to reflect on the shape and scale
So recently I closed off my Second Moon DnD campaign after two and half years. Which was great and honestly give me a wonderful sense of completion. That being said I'm also really excited to dig into non-DnD systems again. On the table we discussed Heart, Scum and Villany and Wildsea. Obviously by the title you know we selected Wildsea. Once again I'm using my own wiki golang code to run
I've been doing a 30 day video challenge on YouTube and lately speaking a lot about VR topics. VR Standards DilemmaMessy History why PCVR is still a faffMessy History of VR Streamingand today onSplit renderingAnd I thought it would be good to get my ideas back in blog format. Conclusion at the top to save you timeSplit rendering will likely be a part of future of VR/AR technology, but it's
My lovely Ducky got me Artemis for Chrismas. I confess I skipped this one hearing mixed reviews, but with a lovingly gifted paperback sitting on the lounge table, it seemed time to tackle it. I quickly ate up the novel in two days, its an easy and compelling read but the entire time I was groaning and reading awkward passages aloud to her. Overall the plot will carry you through, and the science