It has been some time since I last wrote a blog post, but I have helped create two very small and slightly bonkers ape-like descendants since then. So forgive me.

As part of my recent experiments and research, I have been looking certain technologies that have caught my eye over the last year. Always keen to find a “More Betterer” ™ arrow to add to my bow, or a better bow, or even a better concentric target rings… I thought I would checkout two key pieces of technology together. Phalcon and Docker.

I’ve updated the landscape generation code I’m working towards for ALWTM. There were a few bugs with the original code, and it needed refactoring in placed (in order to make things more portable). Read my previous article to know more about the implementation with Canvas and PIXI.js.

I actually started v4 at the beginning of last year, but have only had the time free recently to finish it. I think I can now safely say I know a great deal about horizontal parallax in websites (considering I’ve been working with one for over two years)! V4 was designed with an extra caveat this time however. It will need to migrate easily to v5 — which is already underway.

Above you should see some of the pixel keyframes for Annabelle. She is a character in my ALWTM game… and as such, she has been animated using at least five different systems over the years. I have versions of her character in SWF format, SVG animations, Canvas & JS, Spine both JS and Unity runtimes, not to mention other asset managers for Unity. Each time I’ve tried a new implementation I have discovered benefits and drawbacks.

If you’ve been reading anything of my online ramblings over the last decade, then you’ll know I’ve been working (veeery slowly) on a certain labour-of-love called ALWTM. Most of the work involved has been to find the technologies that suit that of the project, and my unpredictable, non-linear, constantly-evaporating free time.

Here I’ll go into detail on my recent landscape generator (thanks in part to PixiJS’s mesh rope), which is helping to push forward my latest JS/HTML5/Canvas version.

I’ve been working towards my Theory.js library for as long as I’ve been coding JavaScript. For me, it has been the search of how best to code in the rather odd world of a fast and sketchable “scripting” language.

I’ve been virtually designing a good way to achieve an animation system for a number of years, virtually, as-in thinking about it. a lot. So as I have a moment whilst out job hunting, managing to grab a burrito, I thought I should note these ideas down — in the off-chance that I ever actually get enough time to implement them.