NBT - Lost in the Shadows

Video essay on a lesser-known file format, and the general principals of File formats in general!

We have many different types of files with many different ways to store data. Some types of files try to be very general in the data you can store. One very popular general-data format is "JSON." However, I believe there are alternatives that do a better job of storing data for programs and devices, and one of these types is "NBT."

QBasic 64 3D renderer

Drawing cubes in basic!

In the modern era of game engines on top of programming languages on top of hardware libraries and hardware acceleration, we have quite a handful of resources and headstarts when it comes to something as simple as drawing to the screen. And with hardware + software libraries such as OpenGL, DirectX, and Vulkan, we can accelerate the process of drawing 3d objects to a screen to an increibly short time-frame.

Knowing this, I decided to throw that all away and see how I could manage to draw something 3d to the screen in a close recreation of Basic, with absolutely no help whatsoever.

Solar Glyphs

A Starfield sequal

Solar Glyphs is a visually based solar system sim. Everything, is rendered as a glyph, using a technique written about by Valve. In this small sim, each planet and moon has it's own data you can read about, with all the information originating from NASA.

There is an actual simulation part of this project. However, this massively drops the framerate, and at high speeds, doesn't work as intended. However, it does look nice, and is a fun experience to play around with nonetheless.

Lants

Cellular Automata Simulation

This Cellular Automata simulation, is based off of Langton's Ant. Hence the name, being shortened to Lants. Langton's Ant has a few properties that are explored here. That being it's multiple rulesets, it's highways, and how ants should interact with eachother, even on different rulesets.

This sim is chunk based, so when an ant leaves the highlighted area, it will create a new chunk. This way, Lants has a very large area for ants to explore. That being, from negative (2^63) to positive (2^63) individual chunks, each with a 32 by 32 set of tiles, or cells.

Arvopia 0.8

A sneak peak into the plans for Arvopia

Arvopia 0.8 is a discontinued update for Arvopia. As things are moved over to C++, development on a new Arvopia in C++ will begin eventually. For now, however, Arvopia 0.8 has a sneak peak at what it was supposed to be.

Overhauling the graphics was a big change in this version, much more work on that was to be done, however the changes in this demo are already drastic. Lighting is revamped, player animations are completely overhauled, and it all (supposedly) runs at a much smoother framerate.

If you want to see the full details, or download and try it out yourself, head over here

Arvopia 0.7

The latest release of Arvopia

Arvopia 0.7 was updated with a heavy focus on modding support, and to be able to change anything about the game. Story lines and quests are supported, though not used quite yet. Creating NPC's is a possibility though.

But this update adds more than just modification support, it also adds player customization, new GUIs, better trading system, fully functional inventory, a full audio system refix ith a new song, as well as many redesigns.

Super Marbo

All 4 versions of Super Marbo are up for download

Super Marbo was a little project I started two years ago, just to see if I could recreate the classic Super Mario Bros. I then dropped it, and picked it back up in October of 2019.

It's essentially a buggy version of Super Mario Bros. with added features such as infinite lives, time, and unlocked screen scrolling, as well as New Super Mario Bros. mode and LAN multiplayer support. Worth the time though, it's very fun to play regardless of how buggy it may be.

Vector Fields

Eye candy

Another little project I had started a few years ago in the form of Flowfield, only to pick it up again in August of 2017 for my "Outdated Updates" video series. It is a simulation where you drop particles onto a 'vector-field' and let them travel around it to see what they make.

It's a fun little 'art tool' that can produce some very strange results. Anything varying from a galaxy to an actual painting that could be hung up in some modern art museum. Overall really fun to play around with.

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