Happening Now

This is a "Now Page", meant to provide a quick one-shot of things going on with the author of this site.

Life

I've kind of been living in "lurker mode" on most of the sites I usually frequent, as I'm still recovering from burnout and trying to build up the momentum to create things again. That being said, a few noteworthy updates:

  • On January 21st, 2023 (that's 1/21/23), I married Danielle Butler, who is now my Mrs. Tilley. We are living together in a lovely apartment in Goodyear, Arizona, with our two beagles.
  • I am entering my third consecutive year in the United States Air Force. I am currently working in aircraft maintenance, and my four-year contract will be up starting July 2024. I'm trying to figure out what I want to do next. High likelihood of going back to civilian life.
  • I'm still trying to figure out a way forward on my education. I still want to pursue a bachelors in Computer Science.

Personal Projects

Web

  • Spectra - this is a community PeerTube instance I've been running for the past few years, with an intent to specifically host creators who want to put original work onto the network.
  • VidCommons - another PeerTube instance that I've been running since forever, this one is specifically set up to provide Creative Commons and Public Domain works to the rest of the network. Unfortunately, it's somewhat lost traction, and remains perpetually on life support.
  • We Distribute - I run a news publication dedicated to open source, federated social platforms that interoperate through a common protocol. I sincerely believe that this network, called the Fediverse, is the future of the Internet.
  • Brands Town - an underground satire project on the decentralized web - a place where people pretend to be social media brands, and act as unhinged as possible.

Game Development

Occasionally, the desire to subject myself to game development rises up out of nowhere, and I pursue an idea until I literally cannot do it anymore. All of these projects are unfinished - I might try to revisit them at some point, or maybe not.

Games

  • Deep Cuts - I desperately want to finish this one. The premise is simple: you're a stranger at a party, who happens to have problems with anxiety and rejection. How do you thrive in this environment? The current design intent is to let players take potentially many paths to solve problems, but the game currently needs to be adjusted in terms of scope.
  • Moonbunny: Locked Out! - a cute little game about a bunny that lives on the moon. Originally intended to involve a stable time loop in which Future You stole the housekeys from Past You, locking Past You out.
  • LinkedOut - a job search simulator with a decidedly retro DOS-like style. Does some absolutely crazy things with Adventure Game Studio to make a desktop environment, where you look up jobs, respond to emails, and go to horrible interviews. The game stores your character data as a bunch of variables, so that you potentially get different interactions based on your gender, race, education, and work background.
  • Serious Business - an RPG based around stories my brothers and I made up when we were kids. As with the others, totally unfinished and desperately in need of a coat of fresh paint, but it's quirky and fun, and has a few technical achievements that I'm proud of.

Game Tools

  • ActionWheel - provided as a template for Adventure Game Studio, ActionWheel is a bespoke game interface that combines things I liked about Sierra's iconbar with LucasArts' Verbcoin. All of the point and click games I'm developing use this interface. Current work involves the possibility of making this UI work with a game controller.
  • AFVN - Formally known as AGS Framework for Visual Novels, this project a recreation of the UI and display system of RenPy, with the intention of using the power of my favorite game authoring tool to do more than what RenPy provides out of the box.
  • Promptly - Promptly is a framework to convert Adventure Game Studio into text parser-based interactive fiction, with minimal graphics (like Zork). On the surface, it doesn't sound like much, but the project is a total conversation for a game engine that largely relies on graphical ways of doing things. I've had to come up with lots of creative hacks to get around how the system works by default.