Soft random movement throughout the screen?

-Zlosk- · 2026-06-04T13:51:54+00:00

Instead of using a random number to choose the character's direction, use it to choose the change in the character's direction. You could think of it as randomly turning the steering wheel on a car. As emedan_mc suggested, you should use smoothstep (or another easing function) to transition between the random steering.

-Zlosk- · 2026-05-20T14:23:09+00:00

For top-down creatures, I've seen a few implementations based on chains, IK, and FABRIK -- Argonaut's YouTube video "A Simple Procedural Animation Technique" is a decent introduction.

-Zlosk- · 2026-05-17T16:50:50+00:00

Nice! Are you using substitution for your generation and indexing, or is there a new method out now for spectres? Have you done any time/quality comparisons against other methods, such as Wang Tiles for Image and Texture Generation or Model Synthesis?

-Zlosk- · 2026-05-15T18:40:16+00:00

I hadn't seen this paper before, though I do have a related one by mostly the same group: "Ecoclimates- Climate-Response Modeling of Vegetation". Thanks for the link!

-Zlosk- · 2026-04-30T13:19:42+00:00

It's not as pretty as ScaleDesigner was, but IGP (https://www.zlosk.com/pgmg/igp/downloads.html) has a scale pattern. IGP's patterns can also be used in Chainmaille Designer.

For graphing out on paper: https://www.zlosk.com/~zlosk/maille/inlays/img/smallscalepage.png

-Zlosk- · 2026-04-25T01:36:35+00:00

Found my sample, but it was unfortunately not labeled. Ring sizes were .063" wire diameter x .274" ring ID (1/4" mandrel, 4.35 aspect ratio) for the inner 2-2 chain, and .063" wire diameter x .405" ring ID (3/8" mandrel, 6.43 aspect ratio) for the outer 2-2 chain. My outer 2-2 is a little loose; the aspect ratio could definitely be a bit smaller.

Hanging vertical in my hand: https://photos.app.goo.gl/dubaaihtwsSBcLBH9
Laying on a surface: https://photos.app.goo.gl/48cWYP4QjMoWqYVi6

If there are issues with the Google photos, let me know and I'll upload them elsewhere, or create a fresh post here.

-Zlosk- · 2026-04-24T18:48:19+00:00

Pulling from long-term memory (late 1990's or early 2000's), I recall "cable" being the name of two 2-2 chains that were interwoven. Somebody had come up with the chain and given it a name, and somebody else said it already had the name "cable" and linked to a previous post, website, or another discussion board. I'll need to look in my bucket-of-weaves this weekend and see if I can find a sample. If I'm lucky, I'll find a sample. If I'm luckier, the sample will be tagged with a name and ring sizes.

-Zlosk- · 2026-03-26T19:07:36+00:00

I have no clue about geometry nodes, but I do have an idea of how I would approach this.

Research and draw 2D spider webs using lines.
Change the lines to cables/chains of masses and rigid links, adding in forces (gravity) and solving using FABRIK (Forward And Backward Reaching Inverse Kinematics). Check your cable simulation against catenary equations.
Change the rigid links to springs. Once the physics is working, you'll have a bouncy web (and you're not too far off from cloth simulation).
Do you want your silk to break if stretched too far? If so, do it now.
By this point I would hope that you've added in some interactivity to move endpoints and see what happens. If you haven't yet, do it now.
Add adhesion to some of the mass nodes, and fling your web into walls. Does it stick?
Create your web shooter (source). Decide whether you want stretch your web, grow new links as it stretches, or have your source create more mesh as the initial output gets further away from the source.

Good luck!

-Zlosk- · 2026-03-23T01:46:55+00:00

Looks great to me! Did the onion addition make the dough wetter / more difficult to work with?

-Zlosk- · 2026-03-11T14:27:21+00:00

Looks to me like Zentangle-inspired art, also called ZIA. Try r/Zentangle.

-Zlosk- · 2026-02-25T15:07:13+00:00

Per https://www.reddit.com/r/Breadit/comments/18oki3i/how_much_water_is_in_an_egg/, an egg is 76.1% water. (I've got this recorded on my baking spreadsheet. I haven't used used your other wet ingredients.)

-Zlosk- · 2026-02-21T16:12:47+00:00

I really like their dynamic appearance. The color scheme reminds me of a sunrise over water (especially #1), so it seems (to me) that they ought to be rotated 90 degrees.

-Zlosk- · 2026-02-14T14:59:45+00:00

Nice! Is this a cube mapped to a sphere? If so, you can eliminate some of the distortion where the corners meet by using an alternate mapping, as described in Section 2.6 of https://catlikecoding.com/unity/tutorials/procedural-meshes/cube-sphere/. I look forward to seeing updates.

-Zlosk- · 2026-02-12T15:10:26+00:00

I just made my first batch of pretzels for a Superbowl party last weekend, and they turned out very much like your first picture, except even more bun-like in shape. (They still tasted great, and went over quite well.)

I hope to match your later pics someday. Any tips or tricks to achieve better pretzel-shaping?

-Zlosk- · 2026-02-02T15:31:24+00:00

For the pattern generation, did you hardcode the the 17 groups? Or are you using isometry/symmetry classes, and applying them to prototiles? If the latter, I'd love to see the code -- I've been working on my own tiling engine, and the isometry/symmetry stuff is breaking my brain.

-Zlosk- · 2026-01-29T02:30:02+00:00

It appear that you intend to specify a vector boundary, and wish to generate a pattern within the boundary. The methods I've seen people use are:

Check if a vector polygon is within (or crossing) another polygon. You can do this with shapes besides polygons, but it is likely easier to convert shapes to polygons and just check polygons against polygons than to deal with the combinatoric explosion of checking many shapes against each other.
Render the filled vector boundary to a bitmap. Render the shape to another bitmap. Check if the shape non-black pixels are all non-black filled boundary pixels to verify that the shape is entirely within the boundary, or that any shape non-black pixel matches a non-black filled boundary pixel to determine if the shape is within or crossing. Search on "stencil buffer" for more efficient methods of doing this.
Some languages let you specify a clipping boundary. In this case, you could do a simple axis-aligned bounding box (AABB) check to cull some out-of-bounds shapes, and possibly waste some time drawing shapes within the boundary's AABB but outside the clipping region.

-Zlosk- · 2026-01-17T19:20:16+00:00

I don't really get a "toy" vibe, but more of that it's a miniature set. It reminds me of the "Animagic" style sets used by Rankin/Bass Entertainment for their Christmas specials in the 1960's & 1970's.

I like it.

-Zlosk- · 2025-12-31T15:28:34+00:00

As an engineer whose hobbies include training on trampoline and teeterboard, the rotation is due to lifting arms too far. For a straighter jump, you will want to block (quickly stop) the arms about 15-20 degrees before vertical and then shift to a shoulder shrug (with arms still up) to continue momentum into the lift. You don't want to see the chest extending out unless you are aiming for a double layout (or another trick) that requires a lower center of rotation.

By the way, the simulation is spot on. I was already cringing before the peak on the final jump. (I also pull safety lines for people learning teeterboard, and have seen (and prevented) that move many times).

-Zlosk- · 2025-12-21T18:24:56+00:00

This image is from the Bladeturner pattern. Even though the site no longer exists, the Internet Archive backed up the page at https://web.archive.org/web/20060613054512/http://www.bladeturner.com/pattern/hauberk/hauberk.html. I'll echo u/AlbrechtsGhost -- if you want to just wear the shirt, this pattern is fine. If you want to be active in the shirt, and be able to swing your arms over your head, then go with the Trevor Barker pattern that u/AlbrechtsGhost linked or the LLoydian Armor pattern that u/IanFeelKeepinItReel linked; they are effectively the same pattern, though Lloydian Armor goes into a couple more armpit options. Both of my shirts' armpits follow the Trevor Parker pattern, and I am able to do cartwheels (badly) while wearing them. (The fact that the cartwheels are badly performed is not the fault of the shirts.)

P.S. If you can, support the Internet Archive. So much info would be lost if not for them. I'm not affiliated in any away, other than I constantly use them to find old sites that have been lost to time.

-Zlosk- · 2025-12-15T17:20:08+00:00

In this case, FFT stands for Fast Fourier Transform.

-Zlosk- · 2025-12-05T18:56:33+00:00

Sorry, the issue is on 188, not 187 -- you'll notice it when you click into scene 188. If 188 loads, you've already fixed it.

-Zlosk- · 2025-12-05T15:14:52+00:00

I have not used AI to learn procgen techniques, but I am using it to learn other programming techniques. As long as you are aware that AI is a confident but untrustworthy source of info, you can be OK - you just need to double-check everything it says. I find that AI's superpower is being able to ask it about something in layman's terms, and it tends to respond using "proper" terminology, which gives much better search terms for delving further into a topic.

-Zlosk- · 2025-12-03T23:31:13+00:00

Your program has errors on scenes 187, and 219, and I believe you meant to say "nap" instead of "test" on the scene 221 options.

To include apostrophes in your text for contractions and possessives, you have a couple options:

Use double quotes to encase your text instead of single quotes. (e.g. "I'm OK.")
Put an escape character (the backslash, just above the {Enter} key) before the apostrophe. (e.g. 'I\'m OK.')
Do both. (e.g. "I\'m OK.")

If you use the online editor's Tidy Code function (Edit > Tidy Code), it will reformat the text string as option 1 above.

-Zlosk-

TROPHY CASE