For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been building Prime Time for the F*ck Capitalism game jam. I wanted to make a simple idle game with a message, using my own game library, beep8.| Ben Gillbanks
Social sharing links used to be everywhere. Blogs and news sites loved them. You’d see buttons for Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and more on every article.| Ben Gillbanks
I’ve always had a soft spot for retro games. Born in the 80s, I was lucky enough to be raised on them—though they weren’t retro at the time. For a while now, I’ve wanted to build something that makes rapid game creation easy. At first, I imagined a Mario Maker-style tool, but the more I thought about it, the more I realised I needed a solid game engine to build on top of. So, I decided to create an open-source retro games library, inspired by fantasy consoles like Pico-8.| Ben Gillbanks
The UK government is considering changes to copyright law that would allow AI companies to train their models on artists’ work without permission. This means that AI-generated images could be built using artwork taken from real artists without credit, payment, or consent.| Ben Gillbanks
Over on Brush Ninja I’ve been working on a free embeddable drawing app called Paint Ninja. If you’ve ever used Procreate or the classic MS Paint from the ’90s, you’ll feel right at home with this.| Ben Gillbanks
INP stands for Interaction to Next Paint. It measures the time between a user interaction, like a click, and when something happens on the page, such as rendering or painting. A shorter INP means a faster and more responsive site.| Ben Gillbanks
My friend Alex Denning recently asked me to write some bits about TimThumb for an article he was putting together.| Ben Gillbanks
Someone recently pointed out my post on new computer software (from 2007 😳) and going through it I realized how much things have changed in computer software. Previously, I was on Windows, and I’ve now switched to Mac, but that’s not the only difference. A lot of the tools are built into the OS, and some are entirely online.| Ben Gillbanks
I recently needed to create my first custom element - a custom color picker. I wanted to improve the color picker feature on Brush Ninja however I couldn’t find an existing solution that met my needs so I decided to take matters into my own hands.| Ben Gillbanks
I recently read a tweet claiming that in just a few months, individuals would be able to create Pixar-level movies on their home computers using artificial intelligence (AI). While this idea may sound exciting, the reality is that it’s not going to happen anytime soon. Sure, AI has its place, but there are many barriers and limitations that prevent it from replacing human creativity.| Ben Gillbanks
When I build things for the web, I prefer using vanilla JavaScript as much as possible. However, for more complex projects, I also like to use Reef.js. The Brush Ninja animated gif maker is built with Reef.js, as are the other apps on Brush Ninja. I also use Reef js on my personal website admin panel.| Ben Gillbanks