Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Paul Jensen @paulbjensen.bsky.social · 1d

And thanks to that article, I learnt about Bioswales in the Netherlands

urbangreenbluegrids.com/measures/bio...

Systems for infiltration, buffering and drainage - In bioswale systems, the water running off from roofs and roads does not flow into the sewers but instead is...

urbangreenbluegrids.com

Paul Jensen @paulbjensen.bsky.social · 1d

This long-read article on geoengineering is worth sitting down and reading.

Also, who knew that seaweed absorbs CO2 more effectively than trees?

www.governance.fyi/p/all-natura...

All-Natural Geoengineering with Frank Herbert's Dune

Can We Terraform the Earth Using Life Itself?

www.governance.fyi

1

Paul Jensen @paulbjensen.bsky.social · 1d

This is a lovely blog post on Will Wright’s thoughts about Game Design, UI, SimCity and the sequel that became the Sims.

donhopkins.medium.com/designing-us...

Will Wright on Designing User Interfaces to Simulation Games (1996) (2023 Video Update)

A summary of Will Wright’s talk to Terry Winograd’s User Interface Class at Stanford, written in 1996 by Don Hopkins, before they worked…

donhopkins.medium.com

1

Paul Jensen @paulbjensen.bsky.social · 1d

The numerous lights is impacting the frame rate a bit, so only the day/night toggling is enabled for the moment.

Click on the sun/moon (☀️/🌚) in the top bar to toggle.

Paul Jensen @paulbjensen.bsky.social · 2d

Good night from Babsland #gamedev #buildinpublic

1 5 19

Paul Jensen @paulbjensen.bsky.social · 4d

If you publish npm packages and want to make sure that the package.json is good, then publint is worth looking at.

www.npmjs.com/package/publ...

Publint.dev

#nodejs

www.npmjs.com

1

Paul Jensen @paulbjensen.bsky.social · 4d

It feels like it’s quite broad though - some people use AI for autocompletion, others for pair-programming, and some with agents which pause at intervals for human-in-the-loop input.

A vibe-o-meter if you will would be a good way to show how much input AI is having in the process.

Paul Jensen @paulbjensen.bsky.social · 6d

💯. Look what they did to the Home Screen - the weather temperature readings are practically hidden.

1

Reposted by Paul Jensen

KOJAMF🤘🖤🤘 @kojamf.bsky.social · 7d

Dr. Jane Goodall filmed an interview with Netflix in March 2025 that she understood would only be released after her death.

810 17K 38K

Paul Jensen @paulbjensen.bsky.social · 12d

Good morning everyone. Have a great day at work www.babsland.com #gamedev #buildinpublic

A game screenshot of some office buildings and their car parks, with some cars parked in there.

4 16

Paul Jensen @paulbjensen.bsky.social · 12d

When creating a new map, the max number of rows and columns that the device can display is calculated dynamically.

It even takes large image asset sets (with tiles as big as say 128px width) into account.

Paul Jensen @paulbjensen.bsky.social · 13d

Especially zoomed out (the map is 256x256 tiles, same as SimCity 4)

Paul Jensen @paulbjensen.bsky.social · 13d

It is starting to look really nice.

A screenshot of a game where you build a city. It features a city landscape where you have roads, trees, houses, apartment blocks, playgrounds, shops, a river, some beach, and other bits

1

Paul Jensen @paulbjensen.bsky.social · 13d

Added some pavements, even for the rounded corners. Not perfect but the image assets can be tweaked at any time (they’re just png images).

#gamedev #buildinpublic

A picture of a computer screen with a game loaded on it, which is of an isometric map engine.

1 3 17

Paul Jensen @paulbjensen.bsky.social · 13d

A classic photo of Higgs

A picture of a grey dog on a couch in a house, smiling as he is being scratched.

Paul Jensen @paulbjensen.bsky.social · 14d

Turns out different browsers/devices have different limits for how many pixels they can render in a canvas element.

Found a very good little library to help detect the supported max size jhildenbiddle.github.io/canvas-size/#/

canvas-size - Determine the maximum area, height, width, and custom dimensions of an HTML canvas element.

canvas-size determines the maximum area, height, width, and custom dimensions of an HTML canvas element.

jhildenbiddle.github.io

1

Paul Jensen @paulbjensen.bsky.social · 15d

Thanks. Because it’s a web site and a work in progress, I’m pushing all updates live to babsland.com

Babsland

A game where you can create your own maps, and soon your own adventures!

Babsland.com

1

Paul Jensen @paulbjensen.bsky.social · 15d

I think the first game will be a city builder, but with a Doughnut Economics theme to it: doughnuteconomics.org/about-doughn...

About Doughnut Economics | DEAL

Meet the Doughnut and the concepts at the heart of Doughnut Economics.

doughnuteconomics.org

1 1

Paul Jensen @paulbjensen.bsky.social · 15d

Famous last words - spotted that it won’t load 256x256 on IPad Pro.

Will find a way to detect the max map size per device and adjust accordingly

1

Paul Jensen @paulbjensen.bsky.social · 15d

Turns out html5 canvas elements have a hard limit of 268,435,456 pixels to render.

In other news, Babsland will let you make maps that are 256x256 tiles wide, the same number as SimCity 4 had.

#gamedev #buildinpublic

A screenshot of an isometric video game where the map size is very big, the view is zoomed out, and it has some roads and buildings

2 2 12

Paul Jensen @paulbjensen.bsky.social · 16d

Added some trees to Babsland. Pixel artist I am not, but will hopefully get better with practice.

Still amazed that the whole website (including assets) is only 110KB. Great job by @vite.dev and @svelte.dev #gamedev #buildinpublic

A screenshot of a web-based computer game with a flat land, some trees, a wind-turbine farm, and a river running through the woods.

2 15

Paul Jensen @paulbjensen.bsky.social · 17d

I watched the 2015 UK election debate. It was one heck of a time capsule:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WoL...

It’s amazing how many of the issues debated then (e.g housing, what happened in Ukraine) are issues today, as well as Nigel Farage’s obsession with immigration.

Shows how stagnant things are.

debate.it

1

Paul Jensen @paulbjensen.bsky.social · 17d

What about hanamirb.org?

Hanami | A flexible framework for maintainable Ruby apps

Hanami - A flexible framework for maintainable Ruby apps

hanamirb.org

1

Paul Jensen @paulbjensen.bsky.social · 18d

Also, added animated sprite support

Paul Jensen @paulbjensen.bsky.social · 18d

It’s windy in Babsland #gamedev #buildinpublic

A screenshot of an isometric map game with some green land, some roads, some water, a white car, and some wind turbines.

1 2 14