Even great stories start from humble beginnings. In the first session of a new round of Coding Games with a Story, some of our authors (9-11 year olds) successfully got a story up and running with a scene, background music, images of the person speaking […] [Original post on bonfire.mavnn.eu]

@[email protected] "See, the Staircase of the Monarchs!" "So if you make it to the top it proves you're the rightful heir?" "​No, no. But we gave it a name that makes it sound like that to filter out the stupid and those vulnerable to peer pressure. And it's pretty."

One thing I'll be forever grateful for my mum teaching me is not too be afraid of turning ingredients into food (and some basic rules for helping the results not be disgusting). We've opted for a rather more planned take on food than my family of origin in general, but sometimes you're tired and […]

To all of you who love your old school parser based #interactivefiction , the smack talk in this 1-1 game jam style competion over at the IntFiction forums is why the chef's kiss emoji exists... intfiction.org/t/iron-chif-s... > That’s not a verb I recognize.

New round of courses for under 18s interested in #writing #visualnovels starts next week, so it's time to start releasing the improvements to VisualInk that we discovered would be useful in the last run through of the course. bonfire.mavnn.eu/pub/objects... ​

Starting next week, we'll be hosting a writing club for under 18s doing something a bit different: writing interactive fiction. This is a space for people who want to actually write a piece of interactive fiction, so it does assume you'll be putting in time between sessions so that we can all […]

Prototyping a new view for allowing readers to view their history, and authors to quickly got an overview of the script. It's not quite ready for release yet, but it is starting to get there. Just needs a bit more love to get it formatted more like an […] [Original post on bonfire.mavnn.eu]

Know someone 9-18 who loves stories? Week starting 23rd February is the next round of "Coding Games with a Story", a five week introduction to creating #visualnovels using our very own VisualInk. We're also hoping to host a writing club for under 18s who have decided to build a full game now […]

@[email protected] To be fair, it's not like the banks don't take an interest as well. And... I even have some sympathy for why, given that fraud and money laundering are a thing. I've known some people who worked in fraud protection in banks and they were both horrified by how much […]

I had the misfortune to be reminded today that in the US it is still common to pay fees on domestic bank transfers. Not actually the biggest current issue in the US, but... seriously? (context for those of you in the US: while cross currency transfers or 'instant' transfers can incur fees in […]

var getOverHere: Array[Spell.Rune] = [ Spell.Rune.FindNearest, Spell.Rune.Move, Spell.Rune.FindCaster, Spell.Rune.Reverse, Spell.Rune.Push ] Actually... this #gamedev idea is working out well enough I'm going to build a mini-prototype at least. The idea […]

An old friend tried to head hunt me for a team at Salesforce a few years back and I'm now so very glad I turned them down. 404media.co/.ghost/activityp...

Thinking about an #indie #gamedev#indieidea which would have two different elevator pitches for two different audiences: * "a deep and mysterious runic magic system with a strong enough internal logic you can experiment and build your own spells" * "blow things up in real time with a stack based […]

Now that's the kind of content it's heart warming to see as a developer! > I’ve become sidetracked by the Visualink system. It’s very promising for students to edit and offers just enough asset options to give choice without overwhelming.

in 2017 a popular twitter game was to type a partial phrase then see what your phone auto-completes it with. this proved so popular that it is now the only business model in the US.

Exciting news! I slept decently last night! (The few fortunate among who have have never experienced insomnia, being a parent, a shifted circadian rhythm, etc, might think this is sarcasm. It is not...)

One more session to go on the current round of #interactivefiction writing courses, and the older teens have asked for the final session to be a deep dive into expanding a conversation because they felt it didn't have enough narrative depth. So that's pretty awesome. And now I get to have a […]

Managed to scrape together enough energy to move my blog from github pages to a repurposed Pi sitting in my home office. Because, well, reasons (_gestures at world_). Took the opportunity to move it from .co.uk to .eu at the same time given I haven't lived in the UK for years. blog.mavnn.eu/

Hello people who enjoy #writing! I've had some interest in a 5 week course for adult non-coders to try their hand at #interactivefiction - i.e. stories that include branching narrative based on the readers' choices. The course would cover some of the mechanics, but also advice on structuring […]

I've started doing some mentoring with general coding skills as well as the online VisualInk courses, so to avoid any privacy concerns (_waves at current world situation_) we now have a private code server where mentees can share their code (using #forgejo). Given I now have the server, it also […]

Things that should have been an #adhd tip off, part 3478: realising most people probably don't habitually check their sponge is wet as they leave the shower because of how often they forget to wash themselves inbetween the 'getting wet' and 'getting dry' parts of showering

today i'm back to reading this paper by @grimalkina about contest cultures and brilliance traps in software and I'm going to try to live tweet some notes because reading papers is hard https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/2gej5_v2 (1/?)

"on the average, we get about two percent efficiency out of schoolbooks as they are today. The future of education, as I see it, will be conducted in the medium of ____ where it should be possible to obtain one hundred percent efficiency" Wat hoort daar op het streepje?

Watching @[email protected] post about trust in computing and being reminded just how little most of "us" (developers, open source advocates, even just anyone with a senior administrative job) understand the amount we've learned about tech over the years. No, people aren't going to […]

We aren't even asking why ICE is even at these protests full of white ICU nurses and moms in vans. Like, why are they there? Looking for a Mexican drug gang in a suburban roundabout? Finding the secret foreign terror hiding in the trunk of a minivan? They aren't even pretending to do […]

mastodon.social/users/GeePaw... It's a painful realization that I missed two programming languages I've absolutely written code in while rolling to @[email protected] here. XML and yaml. Do better, industry, do better...

Today I was going to do ... something? What I actually did was update one piece of software that I accidentally misconfigured, which took down the database, which then turned out to be too old for the new version of the software (after I fixed the misconfiguration) which I then upgraded that […]

Question for anyone who's used ex_cldr and/or gettext in #elixir - I'm trying to compile something in a memory constrained environment and the gettext back end has started finding 130 locales out wants to generate on every build. I _think_ I've configured cldr to have only one allowed language […]

I decided to try out an experimental design for ordered data in Ink, and learn more about the run time in the process. I've blogged about the results with a bunch of examples, and I'm pretty happy with the outcome. Been looking for ways to include prioritization or limited resources like magic […]

App: "Error: Ad failed to load, check your internet connection." Me: "Error? You keep on using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

We got mentioned in a forum where someone was looking for a simple tool to create a #visualnovel, and the next reply was: > I tried this out a while back. It’s pretty cool! So proud :sniff:

Next week, we'll be looking at how to track character attitudes in #visualnovels using Ink. To see the techniques in action, we'll be starting with a rendition of one of the famous fictional first meetings. What _do_ you do know it's 1880 and you've just been shipped home from Afghanistan? Look […]

It would really nice if that naggy sensation of "my meds don't feel like they're working well today" turned into checking whether I'd actually remembered to take my meds today a little more often. This message brought to you by a morning where I have not achieved a great deal... #ADHD

And we're off! First class of 2026 saw three pre-teens starting their first #visualnovel with its first choice point, visuals for the speakers and scene backgrounds, and background music. Not bad for one hour!

Playing with #godot for the first time, and accidentally set some bullets to be rigid objects in the 2D physics engine rather than 2D 'areas'. Which was actually hilarious, because rather than making the enemies dissappear like a normal boring game, the 1kg bullets travelling at several meters […]

Last chance to sign up the under 18 budding #visualnovel author in your life for an online five week introduction to writing #interactivefiction - the courses start next week! thinkersmeetup.com/scholars/...

To my considerable surprise, we're launching an adult introduction to #visualnovel writing courses here at VisualInk. Someone has offered to pay my 1-1 mentoring rates for an introduction, so now we’re at the stage of seeing if other people are interested at times that can work as this is the […]

I'm running courses for under 18s on creating #interactivefiction (specifically, #visualnovels ) but I just had a request from one of the parents for an adult version of the course. Would you, or anyone you know be interested in a short course on writing interactive fiction? Would probably run […]

So - week starting the 12th I'm starting a new run of Coding Games with a Story, a five week course teaching young people how to write interactive fiction (in the form of visual novels, using Ink). Build stories that change based on the player's choices while learning about both good story […]

Peace and joy to y"all. And merry Christmas to those of you who celebrate!

Coding is a lot more fun when you don't have to keep jumping around to check you've used _exactly_ the right names for things. Which means we're constantly trying to up our game with the VisualInk editor to make the suggestions it gives as fast, context […] [Original post on bonfire.mavnn.eu]

Interested in quickly prototyping your #ink based #interactivefiction or #visualnovel? We're starting to look a pretty decent choice, with collaborative editing sessions and (if you're logged in) instant shareable "play" links. visualink.mavnn.eu/

That feeling when you realise tab didn't complete the filename you thought you that you've just tried to open a 30gb file on a USB drive in vi over an ssh connection.

There's this weird moment in refactoring code, when after hours/days of redesign, changes, and testing you bask in the glow of a job well done and all the improvements you've made... before running the code and seeing absolutely nothing in how it functions differently from the outside because […]

I think I've nearly taken enough stimulants to be able to catch up some sleep #adhd #insomnia

Some (most?) days teaching students to code is uplifting, feels worthwhile, and gives everybody involved a sense of satisfaction. Other days you discover one of your students hasn't been able to press "enter" for the last 2 lessons because they rethemed their keyboard and the theme turned the […]

Apparently 2025 is the year that has Weird Al singing 'killing in the name of'. Not a parody, not with sanitised lyrics. Just straight up 'fuck you I won't do what you tell me'. That's... not something I ever expected to see. io.mwl.io/@mwl/115698737174829

So I noticed yesterday that my home automation server (surprisingly useful when you have solar panels) was running out of storage space, and thought I was going to have to buy more. Then I noticed that I'd stored every change in fan speed of the ventilation system for the past 18 months because […]

I've been very impressed with the collaborative editing support built into CodeMirror. There's certain properties in software that still always feel magical to me, and shared code editing is very much one of them - watching changes made by other people spread around the world appearing in front […]