Taconite

@taconite.bsky.social

Game Dev and Math Nerd. Making a couple projects: - Dark-Fantasy Ancient-Greek Retro-FPS - Meditative game about canoeing the Great Lakes - Goofy Off-Road Rum-Running game https://taconitegames.itch.io/

Photo of socks in a store with a label that says; "socks that plant trees"

Screenshot of "Mare" enemy from Lunacid; a floating black horse head with glowing eyes

Screen capture of donkey kong tv show; dk sitting by the sea, booty sticking out, single finger raised

Screen recording of the unity editor showing a blue sphere guy learning to run. Debug visualizations show forces, points of contact, and the CoM's path.

Screenshot of Wikipedia article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sword_and_sorcery

"Such a story combines the color and dash of the historical costume romance with the atavistic supernatural thrills of the weird, occult, or ghost story. When well done, it provides the purest fun of fiction of any kind. It is escape fiction wherein one escapes clear out of the real world into one where all men are strong, all women beautiful, all life adventurous, and all problems simple, and nobody even mentions the income tax or the dropout problem or socialized medicine."

Screen recording of the unity editor showing a physics prototype; a blue sphere guy learns to walk.

Screenshot of Wikipedia article for Wang tiles:

Wang tiles (or Wang dominoes), first proposed by mathematician, logician, and philosopher Hao Wang in 1961, is a class of formal systems. They are modeled visually by square tiles with a color on each side. A set of such tiles is selected, and copies of the tiles are arranged side by side with matching colors, without rotating or reflecting them.

Image taken from:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weird_number

A table of numbers classifying them into different types; composite, abundant, perfect, deficient, weird

Screenshot of eXistenZ (1999) showing a video game called "HIT BY A CAR, the game that puts you in the driver's seat!"

Screenshot from:
https://fredmhaynes.com/2019/09/22/taconite/

Screen capture of video, showing a motorbike mid-flip. The landing ramp has the words "nitro circus" on it.

Photo of Jack Quaid doing mocap for the new GoW game, he's in a black suit with a cube of white pipes hanging off his shoulders like a bankruptcy barrel.

Screenshot of the evil bishop from Ladyhawke (1985)

Screenshot of linked article:

The activity was sometimes accompanied by wing flapping and vocalisations not typically heard from the birds. Asked if they showed any signs of self-loathing or Catholic guilt, Heys thought not. “I don’t want to say satisfied, but they do look different after they finish. It’s obviously doing something for them.”

Screenshot of an article found here: https://research.swtch.com/divmult

"Division by constants that aren't powers of two are a little harder. Jim Blinn dedicated his November 1995 column (“Three Wrongs Make a Right”; subscription required) in IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications to tricks for computing x/255 for 16-bit x (a common computation during alpha compositing). Since 1/255 is approximately the same as 257/65536, you can get pretty close to x/255 by computing x*257/65536 (aka (x*257)>>16)). 257/65536 is a tiny bit bigger smaller than 1/255, so the approximation is sometimes too small by 1. Adding 257/65536 to nudge the values slightly upward results in a perfect approximation: for unsigned 16-bit x, x/255 = (x*257+257)>>16. No division!"

Photo of an end cap (7 shelves at the end of an aisle) full of lao ganma

Way to zoomed in screenshot of that just says:

"...mitting your appli..."
"...xpect to hear bac from us a ..."
"...eeks of the application dead ..."

$A black and white screenshot of a hexagonal fractal; 6 arms branch off a central tile, each arm then branches 5 times repeatedly. The overall shape matches the Gosper curve, helping reveal to me the inherent connection between space-trees and space-filling-curves$

Zoomed in screenshot of the bookshelf with Dan Simmons's "The Rise of Endymion" circled

$Screenshot of C# code: // Cast check direction to determine grounding Vector3 strt, end, cntr; float radius; RaycastHit ht; if ( ( grndChk.useRagdoll && Physics.SphereCast ( this.ragdollParent.position - (dir * this.navCldr.radius), this.navCldr.radius - 0.05f, dir, out ht, this.navCldr.radius * 3f, this._groundLayerMask, QueryTriggerInteraction.Ignore ) ) || ( MathExtras.GetCapsuleInfo ( this.navCldr, new Vector2(0.15f, 0.85f), out strt, out end, out cntr, out radius ) && Physics.CapsuleCast ( strt - (dir * radius), end - (dir * radius), radius - 0.05f, dir, out ht, radius * 2f + (this.navCldr.height * 0.15f), this._groundLayerMask, QueryTriggerInteraction.Ignore ) ) ) { this._lastGroundedTime = Time.time; this._groundContactPoint = ht.point; this._groundNormal = ht.normal; this._groundCldr = ht.collider; }$

Screenshot of three enums in C#

Leaving the 0 value as INVALID helps identify unset variables, "defaults to null element of the set", etc.

public enum Health.State
{
INVALID = 0,

HEALTHY = 1,
STUN = 2,
KNOCKDOWN = 3,
DEAD = 4
}

public enum RagdollController.State
{
INVALID = 0,

ANIMATED = 1,
DRIVEN = 2,
RAGDOLL = 3
}

public enum Movement.State
{
INVALID = 0,

WALK = 1,
CRAWL = 2,
JUMP = 3,
FLY = 4,
FALL = 5,
SWIM = 6,
STUN = 7,
DEAD = 8
}

Screenshot of C# code:

private Vector3 GetDisplacementForShapeChange(CapsuleCollider cldr, Vector3 pos, float nextRadius, float nextHeight)
{
// Get current capsule info
Vector3 strt, end, cntr;
float radius;
MathExtras.GetCapsuleInfo(this.capsuleCldr, out strt, out end, out cntr, out radius);

if (strt == end)
{
// Capsule is too short, displacement is just change in radius
return (nextRadius - cldr.radius) * (pos - cntr).normalized;
}
else
{
// Get closest point along centerline of capsule
Vector3 closestPt = MathExtras.GetClosestPoint(pos, strt, end, true);
Vector3 offsetFromClosest = pos - closestPt;

// Adjust "closest point" to account for new height
Vector3 newClosest = cntr + ((closestPt - cntr) * ((0.5f * nextHeight) - nextRadius) / ((0.5f * cldr.height) - cldr.radius));

// Scale original offset to match new radius
Vector3 newPos = newClosest + (offsetFromClosest * (nextRadius / cldr.radius));

// Displacement is difference between original and new position
return newPos - pos;
}
}

Screenshot of the unity editor showing a debug visualization. A capsule collider (light green) is smoothly changing in size, multiple points on it's surface are traced as it changes shape (white lines). The diamond region in the center shows how it handles the transition from sphere to/from capsule.

This view shows sphere -> capsule

Screenshot of a jar of Lao Gan Ma® Fried Chili in Oil

Appropriated meme; "he thought the cycle of death and rebirth was for one lifetime only! He mad!!"

Photo of 4 jars of homemade kimchi (napa cabbage, carrot, daikon, green onion) on a black table.

Screenshot of a text editor showing the line count of the different C# scripts in the project, totaling 5361 lines!

Looking at the commit history, none of this existed two weeks ago (yes, I know the jam was only a week long, but I was traveling during some of it...)

Screen recording of the unity editor showing a WIP tactics game. Two survivors spawn in next to three doors, one is opened. Using the "Use" action, the survivors can open and close doors.

Doors can also be attacked, and will get destroyed if enough damage is done to them.

Screen recording of the unity editor showing a WIP tactics game. Two units spawn in, one picks up a nearby wooden board, hits the other unit with it, and throws it around.

Screen recording of the unity editor, showing a WIP tactics game for WheelJam 2026. Two "survivor" type characters spawn in on a grid based map, the player interacts with both the UI and the world to have them move around.

"Dawn of the Dead" (1978) poster edited to say "Dawn of the Wheel"

Screenshot of code; extreme closeup of the access modifier "public" annotated with "31 references"

Screenshot of unity AnimatorController for just moving a camera through a "3D menu" style environment. Probably could simplify/standardize, but it's not too bad imo.

$Screenshot of C# code for choosing random names: public static string RandomName { get { if (_nameShuffle == null) { _nameShuffle = new int[_randomNames.Length]; MathExtras.GetIdentityIndices(ref _nameShuffle); MathExtras.FisherYatesShuffle<int>(ref _nameShuffle); } if (_nameShuffleIndex < 0 || _nameShuffleIndex >= _nameShuffle.Length) { MathExtras.FisherYatesShuffle<int>(ref _nameShuffle); _nameShuffleIndex = 0; } return _randomNames[_nameShuffle[_nameShuffleIndex++]]; } }$