Stefan Hodgson-Grove

Design enthusiast

[Stefan Hodgson-Grove @giftedapollo]

I just became the newest member of XCT - XBOX Collection Tracker on Ko-fi! ❤️ https://t.co/MvFW5YVt9R

[Stefan Hodgson-Grove @giftedapollo]

Not laughing now are we boys? @SouthamptonFC

[Stefan Hodgson-Grove @giftedapollo]

Had to end up using the prompt feature to get something close to what I wanted (props for this feature, very cool) but why wasn't I presented with it? I would have shared it everywhere

[Stefan Hodgson-Grove @giftedapollo]

@Spotify missed a HUGE trick with their recent 'The Party of your years' feature. Here's why 🧵

After the animation and the quiz (having been a member since 2009) I was really looking forward to a spotify wrapped style playlist which covered my top 100 songs of the last 17 years

[Stefan Hodgson-Grove @giftedapollo]

Because everyones start date is different, it means people would be triggering these milestones every single day, you could have 1 year, 2 year, 5 year, 10 year 'party of your years' - this would mean there was a constant cycle of people sharing their own

[Stefan Hodgson-Grove @giftedapollo]

@RaelJamsesh https://t.co/ISzhQMiIQO

Already been done (doorcam) brilliantly

[Rael Hodgson @RaelJamsesh]

🎮 Shipped xct-win8bridge.

Microsoft quietly retired XBL2.0 tokens — the whole Windows 8 first-party Xbox Live catalogue (Mahjong, Minesweeper, Jigsaw, Taptiles…) silently 401s on sign-in.

Result: gamerpic gone, friends gone, achievements invisible.

Until now. 🧵

[cinesthetic. @TheCinesthetic]

PULP FICTION as a video game from the 1990s. This is incredible.

[Rael Hodgson @RaelJamsesh]

Claude Code Tamagochi is live

type /buddy to hatch

[Stefan Hodgson-Grove @giftedapollo]

@RaelJamsesh @jamseshgame Another way of looking at is to think that, at the time, this stuff wasn't possible. It's like mourning time spent waiting for dial up web pages to load.

Make the most of NOW.

[Stefan Hodgson-Grove @giftedapollo]

Having had to essentially become a designer again in the last 8 months, I've really given Adobe Illustrator a good go and I can report, it's absolutely HORRIBLE to work in.

[Rael Hodgson @RaelJamsesh]

UI stack workflow for @jamseshgame over the past 2 weeks:

🎨 Figma Make → Figma Design → Unity native via Figma Importer ❌ Looks good but slow iteration, hover states/transitions need adding manually

🔌 Figma Make → Figma Design → HTML/CSS via Anima plugin → Vuplex WebView ❌ Slow process, designs came out wonky, and Anima is $50/mo lol

🔗 Figma Make → Figma hosted prototype URL → Vuplex WebView. Felt promising but hooking Unity calls into Figma's JavaScript engine was complex. Also doesn't scale — not designed for production.

☁️ Figma Make → GitHub → self-hosted on DigitalOcean VPS. Solves the scaling problem but had to optimise the build from 300MB down to 150MB with Claude Code — still bloated for a UI. Plus the Unity-to-JS issue persists 😔

⚡ Ditched Figma Make entirely → pure Claude Code → HTML/CSS. Make already helped me find a solid design foundation anyway. This is working super smooth and very lightweight. BONUS: told Claude Code we're using Vuplex and it analysed the restrictions and is setting up buttons to hook straight into Unity callbacks.

🧠 What we learned:
The Unity Figma Importer plugin was $95 and non-refundable. It's tempting to keep forcing a tool to work because you've already paid for it — but sunk cost fallacy will cost you way more in dev time than the price of the plugin.

Pick your stack for two things: speed of iteration NOW and ability to scale LATER. We went through 5 approaches in 2 weeks, but the final one ships faster, weighs less, and scales cleanly. Sometimes the best stack is the one that removes a dependency entirely.

[Stefan Hodgson-Grove @giftedapollo]

@bnj @variantui Yes please!

[Rael Hodgson @RaelJamsesh]

The @DecartAI video just hit 30k views.

The numbers don't lie - The mix of AI and VR is a powerful combination of tech that certainly gets people intrigued.

Another validation for the @jamseshgame mission so we are feeling pretty hyped about adding music to this mix.

- Better internet connections
- Bigger capacity batteries
- More compute
- Better resolution and FOV

All coming in near future, its going to get crazy 🚀