Ross Karchner

I’ve submitted Pinball Putt to the 1-Button Game Jam. A mini-golf/pinball mashup where you need to earn enough points to pass a level, without running out of strokes. Most of the level designs and some of the art were made by my son, Benjamin.

My “chill mini golf game” for the 1-Button Jam is coming together– though I don’t think I’ll be done for the 5pm deadline tomorrow. Luckily, the organizer said late submissions aren’t a problem, so I’m going to spend a few more days on it.

The Smithsonian has a model of the ship from Close Encounters of the 3rd kind. If you look closely you can find R2D2 and a couple of other Easter eggs.

Another year in your feed

I was on the fence a bit, but I allowed my yearly micro.blog subscription renew today.

There are a thousand ways to put a site or blog up online, but I like the apps, and how micro bridges to BlueSky and the fediverse. I also enjoy the bookshelf feature, which seems like a quirky one-off (I mean, why not movies, TV, and games?) – which somehow makes it more lovely.

I had a couple of ideas for the Github Game Off, but I’m kind of feeling more motivated to work on SpinDoc– though I think my plan this month is to focus on building a level editor.

But, hmm, the 20 Second Game Jam starts this week as well, and that was really fun last year. We’ll see.

Not much obvious has changed since my last post about SpinDoc– I did rework a lot of how the wands work behind the scenes. I had been rotating the wand with code, but now it’s a RigidBody2d, with rotation being handled by the physics engine.

Maybe it’s time for for a little station ID?

Even though you might be seeing this on Mastodon, Bluesky, or elsewhere– you’re reading my (Ross’s) blog, which lives at ross.karchner.com. If that is distressing news, I apologize.

My posts get POSSE’d to other services via micro.blog.

SpinDoc

Some progress on “SpinDoc”:

  • “rings” (aka, dots you can only use once)
  • enemy wands that can move to appropriately colored dots

By the end of this month, I’d like to have the project in a state that at least resembles a game: a couple of levels, a few missing Spin Doctor features (in particular, doors), some sound and animation. In November, I’ll focus on the GitHub Game Off. When I get back to SpinDoc after that, it’ll be more level design, some original mechanics I’ve been thinking off, and polish.

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