TODEPOND TIMES: Only Three Tools

Welcome back
to another weekly edition
of the

🐸 TODEPOND TIMES!!! 🐸

What's new this week?

Touching

When I made CellPond, I tried to make every interaction possible with just the left-mouse-button. My reasoning was this:

If everything could be done with one button, it could also be done with one finger, or one trackpad, or one anything. It would truly be cross-platform.

However, I failed fairly quickly at that. You need to right-click to pan the camera around. And over time, I've added more-and-more multi-button interactions.

ScreenPond was similar. I tried to make it a one-button thing. But to cram in every possible interaction, I put half of them on the right-mouse-button.

And on top of all this, both tools rely heavily on 'hover' indicators. For example, when you hover the cursor over the edge of a Screen, the cursor changes to indicate what you can do. And the same is true in CellPond. These indicators are relied upon, but you don't see them at all when using touch controls.

For sure, I could go back and make touch interactions work better - and I probably should. But right now, I'm working on the next engine for the next video. It's called Arroost. And I swear - this time I'm making it work well on touch screens. The way I'm doing it is this:

➡ Everything that you can do by drag-and-dropping, you can also do by point-and-clicking (and vice-versa).

Hopefully this makes it a whole lot more accessible too!

(The image above is a silhouette of a diagram mapping out the different ways that you can interact with the engine).

Three Tools

I've been scripting more of the video! And I've been figuring out how to introduce the engine to the viewer.

I've broken down everything you can do in the engine to three tools, which get introduced one-by-one.

The arrow of creation creates things. Any time you want to make a new arrow, or duplicate something, you use this one.

The arrow of destruction destroys things. It's for deleting things, or chopping them up into smaller pieces.

The arrow of connection connects things. It lets you point one arrow to another arrow (arrows for arrows-to-arrows). And this is the fundamental building block of how the engine does things.

Everything that you can do in Arroost - you do with these three tools. For example, you can create a sound by using the arrow of creation on an empty space. You can make two sounds play at the same time by connecting them with the arrow of connection.

Some interactions are more cryptic. You can create a cellular automata world by using the arrow of destruction on some empty spaces. It's like you're destroying the nothing-ness of the void, by creating something in its place.

I realise that this might all sound completely barmy at this point. All I can say is: I'm really excited about this one. It combines together a lot of the things I've learned from past projects. And I hope to show you more in the coming weeks!

Thank you so much for supporting me! I consider myself very lucky to be able to share this with you all. It means the world to me! Wherever you are, and whatever you're doing - I hope you have a splendid week 🐸🐸🐸

Days since tode fell asleep: 92
Days since bot went missing: 57