Website & Tendril Gun (Apr 19–25, 2026)
Life Update
Hey everyone!
Me again from Electronic Thinking Humans.
Last week was Spring Break for my kids. I was hoping to get some work or brainstorming done, but didn’t end up touching the project much. Probably a good thing. It was nice to relax, but it is always a bit uncomfortable since I tend to feel urgency when it comes to work, and especially now as a solo dev. The pressure to always be productive, and if you aren’t spending 60+ hours at work are you even working. It’s a bit toxic and yet I still find it hard to not have that nagging me in the back of my head.
We spent part of the week over in Kingston. Ended up being mostly rainy but still a great time. We explored new beaches, worked on puzzles, and caught a couple nice rainbows. Then we headed to Wenatchee where my wife was running her second marathon of the year with a friend. I had not been there since I was a kid. It is a really charming town with great parks and antique shops. We had a great time.
Lovely rainbow in Kingston
Dev Progress
Back to the project.
I realized I need to start building out my online presence (I probably should have started sooner, but better late than never!). I worked on getting a website up, which I thought would take half a day. It ended up taking almost a day and a half. That is pretty typical when diving into something unfamiliar. A lot of time goes into just figuring out the tools your not use to. Still, it is live now, which feels great.
After that, I moved onto the Tendril "Gun" upgrade.
The main goals here were:
Validate whether my module architecture supports more varied weapon types such as melee versus projectile
Clarify what each upgrade category is responsible for
The Tendril is essentially a melee style weapon, so it felt like a good test case.
It took a few days to get working, especially getting the AI pet to control it properly. The current AI was built around projectile weapons, so this exposed some gaps. I am still not fully happy with:
how the AI handles it
the "collapsed" visual state
But it proved the concept and forced some useful rework in the base classes.
Collapsed Tendril
Extended Tendril
Takeaway
Overall, I am happy with the progress this week. The Tendril helped validate some key architectural decisions, and I now have a clearer direction for refining both the upgrade system and AI behavior moving forward.
Excited to keep pushing on this next week.
