Mastodawn

Mike Cook

@mtrc

494 Followers

111 Following

751 Posts

AI, creativity and procedural generation researcher. No, not that kind of AI. I write and make games and take photographs of cities. Senior Lecturer at King's College London.

A prototype for a much larger system

www.possibilityspace.org | he/they

Games	https://illomens.itch.io/
Blog/Research/Profile	https://www.possibilityspace.org/
Photos	https://www.instagram.com/mikecooktookthis/
Bluesky	https://bsky.app/profile/mtrc.bsky.social

Mike Cook 12h ago

New Blog: Let Games Die

"Let Code Die is rooted in a trust that if we have code that we like and we lose it, we can write it again. What would it mean to trust ourselves as game developers, designers, critics and players in the same way?"

https://www.possibilityspace.org/blog/posts/let-games-die/

Mike Cook Mar 29

sunday magpie hacking some new features #picotron #pico8

Mike Cook Mar 16

I've written a book! Next Level: Making Games That Make Themselves is the story of procedural generation - the tech behind games like Minecraft and Dwarf Fortress. It's about how it works, the games that use it, and the art and magic behind it.

Out May 7th, in bookshops: https://linktr.ee/next_level 🎲🔮

Mike Cook Mar 6

New Release: Magpie (v0.1 - Sorrow)

Magpie is a visual livecoding tool made in Picotron! Make little art performances in crunchy 480x270 resolution, by writing Picotron code. It runs in the web, on desktops, and on #Picotron itself. This is an early release.

Get it here: https://illomens.itch.io/magpie

Mike Cook Feb 22

@pixienop Hey! I'm making a livecoding tool in Picotron called Magpie, and I'm including some sample programs I wrote to help people get started. I wanted to include a few tweetcart examples too - would you be ok with me including a variant of your tunnel tweetcart code? I can include a link to your itch page or something in the comments for it too, if you like. Let me know what you think!

Mike Cook Feb 10

They're calling it the Least Compressable Gif Ever. #magpie

Mike Cook Feb 7

New blog: Visual Silence in Livecoding

How do you start a livecoding set? What's hard about it, how do other livecoding tools solve it, and why is it tricky to do in a tool not designed for livecoding? A little blog about #magpie's progress.

https://www.possibilityspace.org/blog/posts/magpie-part-two/

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Mike Cook Feb 4

Magpie v1 is actually very close to release, the thing stopping me from putting it out is actually needing to write tutorials, text for the itch page, etc. But actually most of the tool and interactions have been cleaned up - it's messy, but functional.

I'm also waiting for research ethics to clear something for me, as I'd like to get feedback from people who use it to write about the tool one day!

Mike Cook Feb 4

I missed Algorhythms tonight because my arm is still completely busted, so to console myself I finished off an exciting feature for Magpie: audio reactivity. Thanks to a suggestion from another #picotron user on the Discord, I can have python listen to the microphone and send FFT data over TCP to Picotron, which means Magpie can listen to music!! So excited. Video accompaniment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_NiMAEsP14

Mike Cook Feb 2

@zep Hey! Small error in the picotron manual (I think): it's no longer 0x5400 to peek at controller state in memory (as far as I can tell), it's now 0x005580.