Driving Nowhere (on purpose)

These last couple of weeks have been a bit of a blur, but I want to keep a consistent schedule, so here we are with another issue of Ninja Sparks.

I’ve been trying to finish off Splatter Balls, my new (old) game. I thought it would be quick since it’s been running nicely on Brush Ninja for a while. However, there are far more ideas, tweaks, and improvements needed to make it commercially viable than I expected, so it’s taking longer than planned.

On the plus side, I’ve added a bunch of new features, and with my son’s help we’re now at over 100 levels, which is fantastic.

I’ll keep plugging away at it, but I’ll also keep building new things alongside it.

Besides that, I’ve made a new T-shirt store for Brush Ninja, although I haven’t really promoted it anywhere yet. The platform I’m using also supports stickers, pins, and notebooks, so if you fancy some swag, I’ve had fun designing a few things and they’re all available now.

I also mentioned in the last issue that I might build my own drawing timer app using local images. It turned out to be really simple, so I went ahead and built it. It’s now available on PhotoEditTools.

I’ve also started work on a new editor for PhotoEditTools. It’s actually the app I wanted to make when I first bought the domain. It’s a bulk photo editor where you can load as many images as you like, then build a stack of filters and adjustments that apply to all of them at once.

I have the basics working already, but I want to add more filters (and fix some bugs) to make it genuinely useful. The whole site is a side project and doesn’t make any money, but I enjoy building useful tools, and this has been a fun challenge.

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Slow Roads

Slow Roads is an endless driving simulator. You drive along a procedurally generated road, with no goal beyond the joy of driving.

It’s a relaxing experience with a nice soundtrack and a zen-like feel.

You can change the vehicle (car, bus, or a weird bike thing), the time of day, the weather, the environment, and the type of roads (straight, windy, or normal).

Having made smaller procedural things in the past, I can really appreciate the effort behind this. It manages to feel both relaxing and visually interesting, and it genuinely seems endless. At one point I tried driving off-road and it just kept going, across lakes and through forests, so even away from the main path there’s plenty to see.

Beyond the ground, fences, and walls, there’s minimal collision, so you can happily drive through trees and lakes and just enjoy the vibes.

There’s a Steam version in progress which appears to have more varied environments and vehicles, but the browser version is free and already packed with content, so it’s well worth checking out.

Try Slow Roads

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Kochi Animator Creator Awards

I’ll be honest, I can’t find much about these awards. There isn’t much online that isn’t in Japanese. What I do know is that they feature 36 short animated films made by Japanese student animators, and they’re great.

I’ve only watched a few so far, and I don’t understand Japanese, but they’re still really fun to watch.

There’s a wide range of styles, and many have minimal dialogue, so you can just enjoy the animation and storytelling. Most appear to be 2D, although I suspect some are actually 3D. There’s even a stop-motion piece that’s really impressive.

I’d definitely recommend checking them out, and if you like them, you can vote for your favourite.

Watch the videos

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Sparked Discoveries

Here’s a handful of links I found intriguing recently:

Web 1.0 Hosting

Web 1.0 Hosting is a service that lets you create and host simple websites using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. The design is very retro, reminding me of the late 90s web.

It’s a fun and cheap (often free) way to get a simple site online. It’s also privacy-focused, with no ads, cookies, or data collection, which feels refreshing.

There’s a paid option at $1 for 1GB of storage, but the free tier is generous and perfect for personal projects. I also like that they include WebChat, a forum, and an IRC channel, which gives it a proper old-school community feel.

Hermit Hire

A site that connects landowners with hermits looking for somewhere to live. It’s probably a parody, but you can apply both to be a hermit or to hire one.

Either way, it’s a bit of fun.

Tiny Snake

This is amazing. It’s a version of the classic game Snake where the snake is made up of subpixels.

Each pixel on your screen is made of red, green, and blue subpixels. This game uses those directly, so the snake can be incredibly small.

Fortunately, there’s an option to scale it up so you can actually see what’s going on.

It’s a clever idea and completely pointless, which is exactly why I like it. The developer also has a video explaining how it works.

Dialed

This is a simple game that tests how well you can remember colours. You’re shown a colour for five seconds, then asked to recreate it using a colour picker.

It’s simple but surprisingly addictive. I did better than expected, given I’m colour blind. I guess it doesn’t matter what colour I see as long as I can reproduce it.

I found remembering the general colour easy, but matching the brightness was much harder.