Cellebrate

Welcome back! To the weekly...

🐸🎉 TODEPOND TIMES 🐸🎉

What's new this week?

Chance It

I've been working hard on getting CellPond ready for the next video! And, like I mentioned last week... I've added a new shape to the tool. The HEXAGON!

When you click on a hexagon, a little menu pops open (it looks a bit like a fidget spinner). You can click on any of the popped-out-circles to toggle them on/off. When a circle is 'on', it fills in that section of the hexagon. So... you can choose how much your hexagon is filled in! You could have all of it filled in... none of it... or some of it (in all sorts of different arrangements).

The hexagon will be used for various different things. But what I've been working on this week is: You can attach a hexagon to a rule to change the chance of that rule happening. The more you fill in the hexagon, the more likely it is that the rule will happen. A hexagon that isn't filled-in very much - will make its rule quite unlikely to happen.

This helps you to fine-tune the behaviours of whatever you create. For example, I've been using it to control the traits of a Fire element that I made. I can use hexagons to change how powerful/tall/wide/explosive the Fire is. And it's working quite well!

Join It

Another thing I've been improving is...

Ok, so, in CellPond, you can join different squares together. For example, instead of saying "turn green cells red AND turn blue cells red"... You can just say "turn (green AND blue) cells red". It saves you some time!

The problem... is that 'joined squares' were not visually clear. When you combined two colours together, the resulting square would flicker+flash between the two. It was hard to understand (and quite annoying). Also... any screenshot that you took of your rules... would only capture one of the two colours!

So... I used a suggested idea to show the joined-colours in a sort-of triangular display. I quite like it! I could definitely make it neater, but I think it's good enough for the video now :)

Celebrate It

Nine months ago, I opened up the TodePond discord server! (which is now known as The Lilypad). I made a little talking-head video to celebrate this! It's available within the server (you can join it by linking a discord account to patreon). I'll also write out the rough gist of the video here:

When I first started the server, I wasn't quite sure what its purpose should be. Should it just be a place to discuss my videos+projects? Or should it be a place to chat about anything coding-related? Or maybe just a generic chat-room?

Over the course of these nine months, the server and its community have grown quite a lot! I've been delighted to see all the creative things that people have shared there. Things that they've made, things that they've found, or things that they've made by accident!

I've also been delighted to see the kind response that community members give to these sorts of posts. I'm really pleased that it's such a positive+uplifting place.

All of this makes realise what I like about the server, and what I think it's good for!

I think: the TodePond discord server is a place for CELEBRATING creative things!

So... thank you if you've been a part of the server, or this wider community!

And thank you for supporting me here on patreon! Welcome to all my new patrons this week! I hope you're doing well, wherever you are in the world! See you next time 🎉🐸🎉