Big Screen

It's that time of the week again! It's time for the...

📺🦕 TODEPOND TIMES 📺🦕

The vote for what video I make is still open! You still have time to vote! (or change your vote)

Other than that... What's new this week?

Screens

I've been working hard on the next video! Which is called... 📺 Screens in Screens in Screens. And I'm building a new engine for it. Let me outline how the engine will work...

In the ScreenPond engine, you can draw rectangular screens. You can draw screens anywhere, like... inside another screen, around another screen, overlapping another screen. By the way, you can pick from 9 different colours when making a screen. And here's the important bit:

Whatever is inside one colour screen, is also inside ALL screens of that colour.

For example... let's say you draw two red screens. Then, you draw a blue screen in one of the red screens. The blue screen will also appear in the other red screen.

The fun stuff happens when you draw a screen inside itself. If you draw a red screen in ANOTHER red screen... then a red screen will contain a red screen, which contains a red screen, which contains a red screen, and so on... It looks like it goes on forever!

Screens in Screens

So far, I have been experimenting with how to make the engine run faster. This has been a bit tricky for me, because it takes quite a long time to display an infinite amount of rectangles.

I've experimented with a few different approaches. Here are a few things I've tried so far:

Depth Limit
I tried limiting how many 'layers deep' a screen can go. So... after drawing 10 screens in screens in screens (etc), the engine gives up. Usually, the screen gets so small, that it's not visible (so giving up is ok)! But sometimes, you could just about see the 'end' - and it was a shame that the illusion of infinity was broken. So I scrapped this idea!

Snapshot
Instead of 'giving up' when the depth limit is reached... I tried taking a snapshot of a previously-drawn version of the screen - and pasting this in the right place to effectively 'double' the length of the infinity illusion. However, I found it tricky to position the snapshot correctly. I think this would be a good idea if I was using a different language to make the engine, like WebGL. But I'm not! So I scrapped this idea too.

Gradual
Instead of trying to draw the whole infinity illusion in one go... I tried making the engine just draw SOME of the screens (to start with), and finish the rest of them later. This seems to help it to not get overwhelmed by drawing an infinite amount of rectangles in one go (fair enough).

I'll carry on improving the speed of the engine this week! :)

Big

Our discord server has started to get a bit busier. It's very nice that so many people are joining, sharing cool things, and helping to make it a nice place. Thank you to everyone on the server for contributing to this!!!

One thing I like about the server... is that it feels like quite a small+cosy community. A few other people have told me this too. I suppose... as it grows in size, this might change a bit.

Change is good! And as the server changes, I will try to maintain what I (and others) like about it. For me, I really like that the server is:

🐸 welcoming to everyone
🐸 a calm place (not an overwhelming place)
🐸 a kind place (not a harsh place)
🐸 and a hopeful place

It is also very important to me that the server is especially welcoming to people who are: women, LGBT+, black, neurodivergent, or from a less-represented demographic.

Over the coming weeks, I may start to experiment with some small changes to the server structure - to smoothly handle our increasing numbers. So watch out for those!

But I know I only play a small part in this! I know that everyone in the server will continue to help create a great atmosphere. Thank you! 💚

Thanks again for supporting me and my projects! Welcome to all the new patrons this week, and welcome back to all the old-time-tode-supporters! Have a great week! ⭐🦕

Days since tode went missing: 83 days