Weekly Recap #131: Wallpapers and new tiny clock project! (Patreon)

Unfortunate week.

This week I made a thing to store and generate wallpapers, I started designing a new, small project, and my laptop's hinges broke off.

I made this little software that can contain the code for multiple effects, list them, preview them, and generate wallpapers from them! The previews can even be animated as you can see!

This little software is not particularly user-friendly as of yet, so I'll be keeping it to myself for now. But if I do make it more user-friendly, I might make an Itch.io page for it, sell it and update it with new wallpapers occasionally! Let me know if that sounds like something you'd be interested in!

This was mostly a tiny thing designed to help me make wallpapers more easily and not lose the code for them as I tend to do. It was simple enough to make and it feels like it's gonna be useful!

By the way, I'll be releasing a new batch of wallpapers tomorrow!

Onto a new thing! I haven't coded any of it yet, which is why I don't have anything fresh to show, but I have been working on the design and mocking up some sprites!

Last week, I said I wanted to port a small Pico-8 thing of mine to Sugar. Well here is the thing in question:

That clock was never released for two main reasons:

• I felt it needed at least one more feature and I did not know what that could be.
• I would have wanted it to automatically be borderless and always-on-top.

Well I now have the solution to both of these issues! I have ideas to for new, simple features that won't bloat the project to an impossible scale, and SUGAR has both borderless and always-on-top* modes! (*on platforms that support it)

And so I've been thinking about the project, the design, the UI, etc, and started sketching it all down on paper. And it seems I can make something quite interesting!

The idea is that the clock sits in a corner of the screen, in a 128x128 window, while you work or do whatever, and you can click & drag it around if it's hindering anything. I'm planning on having unlockable customization elements, as well as a micro-Tetris and a micro-Snake, playable at any time. The focus here is usability, then fun, then cuteness.

I won't say more for this week, as this is all just on paper for now. But it will be a premium thing, with a low price tag. It's also probably going to be most of my month of November.

And that's all the work I can tell you about for this week, the reason being that on Wednesday evening, one of the hinges that hold the upper part and lower part of my laptop together, detached itself from the upper part.

Maybe you can imagine my shock, especially since we're talking about an MSI 'gaming' laptop that a very good friend bought me just about 5 months ago. Well it turns out that MSI laptops have a pretty shitty build when it comes to those hinges. Aparently they often happen to be too tight (which creates more pressure on themselves) and also they're extremely small and barely support the weight of the screen in any way. It's litterally a 3x2cm piece of metal on each lower corner of the screen, holding to the plactic cover of the laptop with four small screws each. That is supposed to support a 17 inches display.

Anyway, that happened and so the next day I glued the hinge back to the plastic cover of the laptop. And then the day after that I went to a hardware store to buy what I needed to loosen the hinges. And while doing that, not only did the glued-on hinge detach itself again, but the other hinge did just the same thing.

So I finished loosening the hinges and glued them both back with some sort of paste that takes 48h to dry out, then waited those 48 hours, barely touching my laptop (even though it was, and still is, fully functional) out of sheer fear of breaking anything again. After those 48 hours, the second hinge was still broken and I still haven't tested the first one because I'm scared.

Right now, my laptop is immobilized on my desk, and I think it's going to stay that way for a while. I'm thinking of tinkering an external metal contraption to hold the upper part of my laptop together, but that's gonna take some time.

The reason I'm telling you about all this is that I think this is part of indie game development. As-in, shit happens and it's part of the ride. And normally in this kind of situation I would freak out. But there, I went literally beyond that and somewhat felt peaceful, because it's not the end of the world, not even of my world, it might change my habits a little, but maybe that's for the best. In fact, it was a pretty good opportunity for introspection and realizing that all things considered, things could be a lot worse!

I'm sorry if that wasn't super interesting! I did want to tell you about it because it was a sort of eye-opening situation for me, and again, shit like this happens and handling it genuinely is part of the job.

That's all for this week! I want to thank all my Patreon supporters for making my life about 360$-per-month simpler but also for all the continued love and support! Here are the names of all the 3$+ supporters!

☆Joseph White, ☆Spaceling, ☆Ryan Malm, Anne Le Clech, rotatetranslate, Andreas Bretteville, Austin East, berkfrei, Bitzawolf, Chris McCluskey, Christian Östman, Cole Smith, Dan Lewis, Dan Rees-Jones, Dave Hoffman, Flo Devaux, Giles Graham, HERVAN, HJS, Jearl, Jefff, Joel Jorgensen, Marcin Majewski, Marty Kovach, Meru, Paul Nguyen, Reza Esmaili, Sasha Bilton, slono, Thomas Wright, Tim and Alexandra Swast, Wojciech Rak, Zachary Cook, amy, Andrew Reitano, Brent Werness, Collin Caldwell, Finn Ellis, Giovan, Jakub Wasilewski, Pat LaBine, Qristy Overton, Sam Loeschen, Andrew Reist, hushcoil, Jacel the Thing, Jesse Bergerstock, Max Cahill, Pierre B., Sean S. LeBlanc, vaporstack, yunowadidis-musik

This coming week, I'm working on the clock project! There's a lot to be done and I'm excited to get to it! I'm also releasing one or two new wallpaper batches!

Have a nice week!

Take care!

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