Introduction

Welcome to this new monthly update!

This month I worked on the usual projects: Pixel Wheels and Clyde but also on Nanonote and an old one: Cat Avatar Generator. Let's get started.

Pixel Wheels

As announced in January update, Pixel Wheels 0.24.2 has been released, adding 3 new translations (Hungarian, Esperanto and Turkish) and fixing 2 bugs:

• The display would sometimes stutter during races.
• In championships, the player rank could sometimes be wrong in the 2nd or 3rd race.

Since then, I fixed another bug which occurred while editing configuration keys (#326). I also included another translation, this time it's Italian, thanks to Dario Canossi 🇮🇹!

NPong

I continued working on my NPong proof-of-concept network game. I added Android support, host discovery and introduced Box2D, making the game closer to Pixel Wheels. This might actually work 🤞!

Introduction

Welcome to this January 2023 monthly update! This month comes with some Pixel Wheels work, an interesting Clyde store story, an update on Nanonote(!) and a new small project: TMFI. Let's get started!

This new bug fix release of Pixel Wheels brings 3 new translations:

• Hungarian, thanks to Balázs Úr!
• Esperanto, thanks to Jorge Maldonado Ventura!
• Turkish, thanks to nxjosephofficial!

I have been working on Pixel Wheels for a long time now. Granted it has not been continuous: I started and continue to work on other projects in between. But still, I would like to get this game "done", as much as such a thing is possible.

Until recently my "Definition of Done" was that the game would have at least 3 championships, with 3 tracks in each. That's not a lot, but it takes a long time to create interesting tracks, and I am having a hard time not "repeating myself" when creating a new track.

Introduction

Happy new year! Wish you the best for 2023!

This update is not about 2023 though, but rather about the last month of 2022. It contains the usual mix of Pixel Wheels and Clyde work, and some unexpected time spent on... Yokadi!

Let's get started.

A few bugs managed to sneak in Pixel Wheels 0.24.0, nasty creatures... version 0.24.1 fixes them.

Introduction

This month is pretty packed with releases! A new Pixel Wheels, a new Git Bonsai and two Clyde releases!

Pixel Wheels 0.24.0 is out! Just like 0.23.0, this version adds a new track and a new vehicle.

New track

This time, it's the "Square Mountains" championship which got a new track: "Up, up, up and down!". It's the first track where the trees are not behind barriers, so you can theoretically drive through them, but I am pretty sure it would not be a winning move because the chances of hitting a tree is too high. Having said so, there are two shortcuts to let you cut corners. They are quite tight though, so be careful!

New vehicle

The new vehicle in 0.24.0 is a monster, let me introduce you to... The "Broster Truck"!

The name is a reference to the Broforce game, I think some of the game characters would enjoy driving a Broster Truck!

Speaking of vehicles, they now have their own page. On this page you can see all of them and learn more about some trivia and references.

Introduction

As expected, this month was not very productive because of Inktober. I made some progress on Pixel Wheels and Clyde though.

Pixel Wheels

Android API Level

I am preparing the next release of Pixel Wheels. Google notified Android developers they would start requiring Android API Level 31 for updated applications on November 1st, I had to bump dependencies for the release. I try to avoid dependencies update right before a release because I want to have enough time to test the game after updates, but there was no choice here. Updating the Android SDK to API Level 31, in turn required an update of the Android Gradle Plugin, which itself required an update of Java and Gradle 😅.

After the usual battle with the build system, I managed to get the game to work again on desktop and Android, using Android SDK 31. We are good to go for the release!

Getting "turbo-blocked"

The new track features some shortcuts among the trees, with turbo cells to avoid loosing too much time by driving in the snow:

This triggered an "interesting" behavior: if you hit a tree while on a turbo cell, the turbo would continuously trigger, making it impossible to unstuck yourself. I modified the way turbo cells work to avoid that bug: now a turbo cell won't trigger again until your wheels have left it.

This year I once again participated to Inktober, the yearly challenge where you draw one drawing a day each day of October. The Inktober web site provides a "prompt list": a list of words for each day, which you can (but are not forced to) follow.

Inktober 2022 prompt list

I like to have an overall theme each year. This year I selected birds because... I love birds :)

I also decided to use a ballpoint pen this time, because I enjoy drawing with ballpoint pens, and also because I find it faster to draw with them. This is useful because at the end of the month I am often quite tired!