"Projects, Ideas, and Announcements!"

Hallo cool people!

I figure now is a great time to write a post about what I've been up to since my summer started! I've been eagerly working on my projects again, as well as starting cool new things. I also have a couple announcements to make!

Here's what this posts talks about:

  • News about my upcoming album
  • New video series idea
  • Experimental texture program
  • Artificial intelligence teaser
  • The next Mine Blocks update
  • Spike Tower progress

News about my upcoming album

As of the time of this post, I've released 11 out of the 16 tracks. I planned to release the album on 6/16/16, but it looks like I got too far behind schedule because of my tough school semester. So, to make things more feasible, I've officially decided to delay release until July 16th.

The reason I'm doing this is simply to make a better album. I don't want to rush the last tracks, and I want to have time to fix up issues with the old tracks, make cover art, and prepare for submitting to iTunes/Spotify/other sites. I think the tradeoff is worth it!

I'm considering releasing the tracks individually on YouTube this year, as well as the usual "entire album mix" video. That's 17 videos total, haha, but I would release one video per day instead of all at once to reduce spamming my subscribers. I hope that's okay with everyone!


New video series idea

Speaking of spamming my subscribers, I had a great idea for a video series I could do! It would be a series on all of the weird experiments I do - I would explain how they work, what kind of math I used to create it, and the idea behind it all!

For example, I would explain how I made this:

I would describe exactly how the image is created, how it defers from Project 3D, and an overview of the maths behind it. Math is actually pretty amazing, and it would be cool if I could share with you some of the behind-the-scenes of making weird experiments.

What do you think of this? Let me know in the comments if you want to see videos like this, and if there is anything in particular you want to see a video on!


Experimental texture program

Speaking of cool experiments, this past week I fooled around with a thing called "cellular automata"! I'm not going to explain it here. But the important part is I can use cellular automata to create textures (for tiles in games, for example).

I had a short conversation with gapbrick and dekdev, and they convinced me to work on a tiny program for doing just that! It generates different patterns on the initial conditions that you draw out:

Also, a cool thing happened recently! I have been posting my weird animations to a website called Ello.co, and the co-founder, cacheflowe, has been super supportive of me. A couple days ago I found out he had made me a featured user on the site!! It's an incredible honor to be part of the website like this, and it's amazing to me that my experiments were noticed as a form of art. Because of this, I will start dedicating a bit more time to making weird stuff, and I will create a page on my site for it.


Artificial intelligence teaser

Speaking of making weird stuff, I had a cool idea for AI, so I started coding it in my free time. It'll take a while before the mock-up even works, but I wanted to share a little teaser screenshot just for fun:


Mine Blocks 1.28

Speaking of teasers, I've already posted a spoiler about the next update!

I'm extremely happy to be working on the next update of Mine Blocks again. I've added a handful of cool features, fixed a lot of bugs, finished a new mob, and started adding new items. Another big update is in the making! And for the first time ever, I have a decent timeline for when to release the update.

The likely release date is October 8th! I bet I can fit a lot of cool stuff into the game by then!

I've been working on the update too much to really research if a mobile version of the game is possible. If it runs at only 5 FPS on mobile, then a port wouldn't be worth the work. But I have my fingers crossed, because I think a mobile version of Mine Blocks would be the best thing ever!


Spike Tower progress

Speaking of mobile games, I've been slowly-but-surely working on Spike Tower, my first true mobile game! My goals are to get all of the menus and features working perfectly, so I can add a ton of characters and content for the release.

I would love to hear your suggestions for what characters I should add to Spike Tower! Leave a comment if you have a cool idea!

This game is going to be awesome, and I really want to finish it and release it into the world!


Thanks for reading :3

Speaking of finishing and releasing things, this is the end of the post! I'll leave you with some animated cellular automata!

Love,
- Zanz

PS! My friend from school is running a Kickstarter! If you like idea of space battles, give Disunity a look!

Posted 8 years ago.
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