The game can be played here. Source code is on github.

Info about the original 1989 Hillsfar game is linked from the demo! Enjoy.

See also the previous blog post about the spritesheet.

Hack-A-Day 2023 is complete. I did 20 projects in 30 days. Pretty good considering I got a new job and moved!

The overview of the month is here and highly recommended.

I plan to do a little more followup this year than last. Today’s last-minute fixes:

• Perquackey (01) works on phones, tablets, and with the mouse. There’s an easter egg that displays any words you missed at the end.
• Typewriter (10) saves progress, and lets you type more than 1 page of content.
• Screensaver (12) works on more screen sizes, including phones.
• Synth (14) looks better on a phone-sized display.
• Stuff.md (23) has an example from the database
• Timelapse (24) has a partial video
• Speed Reading (29) works better on a phone. It also saves your progress.
• Music of the Spheres (30) works on a phone. It’s also louder.

Hack-a-Day is a challenge to complete ~30 fun new projects in 30 days. In my case, I aimed for 20, because I knew I was getting a job and moving. I just barely made it with this last entry, a collaboration with nsh.

Music of the Spheres lets you hear songs on different tonal scales. Listen to the warped melodies. Watch the pretty planets orbit. Surely their sizes and orbits are significant and connected to the tonal scales? Go mad with afterimages of… okay, well it’s kinda fun, anyway. Demo is here, code is on github.

Yesterday’s project was Speed Reading. Experience what it’s like to read Don Quixote faster than you’re comfortable with. Source is on github as usual.

Two friends and I wrote the intro to “Pint-Sized”, a 90s sitcom that never existed.

We used DALL-E and stable diffusion for images, Photopea to add captions, and Google’s AI Test Kitchen for the backing music. Cheers were added with audacity. The video was edited together with ffmpeg.

Credits: za3k, stetson blake, jeremy mcintyre

I’m moving, so I have to pack. I thought I’d make it fun with two projects.

First, I entered everything I was packing into a text file, stuff.md. That way, I can find stuff later. I have two friends who have done something like this, so I’m curious how it will go for me. Here is a sample:

Box 01 - banker
======
- USB Receipt Printer - in trapezoid box
- Thinkpad 460 Charger (x2) - cardboard box (x2)
- Cardboard box "eink"
    - eink communications converter for 7.5" eink display
    - Piece of fiberglass sized for 7.5" eink display
    - 1.54" eink display 152z152px never used, with notes on yellow paper
- Airtec electric duster (AC) - cardboard box
- Tiny UPS for Raspberry Pi - cardboard box
- Wireless receipt printer - cardboard box
- Playstation Eye (x2) - cardboard box
- Mini-router (2 eth, 1 usb), unconfigured - in cardboard box
- Pipe-sealing tape for vacuum - loose
- Multimeter, Kaiweets brand - in cloth case
- $1 in pennies, and penny sleeves - plastic bag
- Engraving pen - loose metal case
- LED Light bulbs (one white, one red) - cardboard box

Box 02 - banker
======
- HDD Copier - cardboard box
- HDD Dock (x2) - cardboard box (x2)
- Butane soldering iron - metal box
- Doxie Go adapters - loose plastic bag
- "Faces" M5Stack development. Stacking keyboard and screen, etc. - plastic case
+ Magnetic metal parts tray
+ Neodynium magnets, two disc sizes - Loose box
+ Receipt paper roll - loose

Box 03 - banker
======
- empty

Second, I took a time lapse video of packing. I wish I had time-lapsed moving in at my current place, but I just wasn’t set up for it. Sadly, my camera battery died after 90 minutes, so I only have a very short video. Next time I’ll plug in a power cable. Here is a short example video.

Both are much too personal for me to post on the web in full.

For today’s hack-a-day, I meant to clone the Hillsfar lockpicking minigame. Instead, I spent all day just extracting the sprites. But I had a nice chill time, so it was great.

Edit: See the updated post for the finished game.

Here’s the original minigame:

Here’s my spritesheet:

I made it by splitting up screenshots:

Today’s hack-a-day project was a pencil-and-paper RPG. Based on feedback from people reading the rules, it’s notably bad and I don’t recommend it. Rules here.

My friend Kragen and I wrote a little bytebeat synth tool. You can mess around and have fun. Demo here, code is on github.

Hack-A-Day is a challenge to try and finish 30 projects in 30 days in November.

Today I tried to write a tool to make a floorplan. You can try it here. As usual the source code is on github.

This was an ambitious project for one day, and I didn’t finish everything I wanted. My original goal was to support

• drawing and erasing rectangles (done)
• adding, editing, deleting, and moving text labels (not done)
• adding, deleting, and moving icons (mostly not done)
• autosave (done)
• undo support (done)
• zoom and pan (not done)
• sharing finished projects (stretch goal, not done)

What I did do was pleasantly high-quality, and I made pretty good progress.