Live Worms

Walk-making the road. Tech world dropout turned dusty garden rat. Cooperatively manufacturing aid supplies. Making music and games as Live Worms.

[Live Worms @mjacobs]

Swapped the smiley face for surprise. Also added dead face

[Live Worms @mjacobs]

Trying out some proximity-based effects. Enemy eyes follow the player with visual feedback and brief time-dilation when close. I'm thinking they should have some "ohshii" expression in that pre-/near-collision moment-- maybe excitement for the enemy and fear for the player

[Live Worms @mjacobs]

One of my fav levels so far. The pace feels right, and I think the loop works well with reversing (almost like record scratching). I’ve struggled to make the right background shader. This one is in-your-face while not annoying (to me), but I might keep tweaking

[Live Worms @mjacobs]

Smiley morning

[Live Worms @mjacobs]

Working on a new game with music tied to movement. One button reverses a little guy, the music loop, and other things.

[Live Worms @mjacobs]

latent space alienation invasion

[Live Worms @mjacobs]

I, for one, welcome our new absence of overlords

[Live Worms @mjacobs]

I look forward to my job being taken by AI— Alternative Institutions— and replaced with work based on cooperative principles and collective ownership that enables the restructuring of power, resources and wealth in order to protect and sustain human rights, dignity, and justice.

[lukexi @lukexi]

I think if I was gonna make a hierarchy of the root causes of human social and ecological problems, I'd probably put hierarchy right at the top

[Live Worms @mjacobs]

Friends! Our medical device manufacturing non-profit co-op is launching this week! We’re crowdfunding some startup costs and our first production run— tourniquets for medical aid in Gaza. We’d really appreciate any help getting the word out: https://t.co/NmgAtrJvUl

[Live Worms @mjacobs]

So I gave it an auto-close tolerance and the visual feedback of filling the shape (both visible in video), as well as a haptic buzz, when the shape is registered as closed by the game. Seems to have helped. There are a few other things I plan to add to increase the fun

[Live Worms @mjacobs]

A core mechanic I’ve been honing involves drawing shapes with your finger on the screen to capture items. Here’s a video of that from a few weeks ago, before I started theming things. If anyone knows of this interaction in use in other mobile games, please send it my way.

[Live Worms @mjacobs]

At first, the drawn shape had to be entirely closed—the line needed to self-intersect—for the game to recognize it. This frustrated some players, especially when drawing smaller shapes. The exactness created unnecessary friction.

[Live Worms @mjacobs]

Rummy played inside Fruit Ninja by Dr Frankenstein collecting body parts to assemble friends

[Live Worms @mjacobs]

Update! I’m a few months into seriously developing a silly mobile game—a wacky, kinetic, card(ish), adventure thing. It’s my first real attempt beyond little toy prototypes. Everything could change—it could all fall apart! Scary and exciting! Stay tuned for process shots/shares.

[Live Worms @mjacobs]

Another description of current game direction: 2014 hit mobile game Threes meets 1982 flop arcade game Quantum.

[hydr⬡ponic- tr∆sh @HydroponicTrash]

All of this is attainable, and there are actionable steps to make most, if not all of the stuff in part 1 and 2 of this thread below - happen right now. All of it compounds and snowballs into something bigger, action builds on top of each other. 🧵

[Live Worms @mjacobs]

First attempt at giving the new plotter a paintbrush. I created this in code first, then sent the instructions to the plotter. But a plot like this never turns out as expected. You can see in the first video that the… https://t.co/acvKWRrMsX

[Live Worms @mjacobs]

Finished piece from the previous post. Some minor issues due to shoddy software crashing and pen carriage sticking— but I like the mistakes. If I wanted perfection I’d have built the… https://t.co/RgewiiWjUd

[Live Worms @mjacobs]

First use of the re-re-built plotter on rails—now a monster plotter train instead of a truck. Without guidance, it was zigzagging down the slight slope of my garage floor. I believe that… https://t.co/RNtp77BNWb