Mr. Baby Paint and accidentally discovering a new cellular automata
3 days ago
- #software-development
- #creative-coding
- #parenting-tools
- Developed Mr. Baby Paint, a co-op drawing app for toddlers and parents, featuring a fullscreen canvas with no menus to prevent interruptions and keyboard shortcuts for parents.
- Implemented drawing mechanics: left-click draws, scroll drops sand, right-click paintbuckets; used Catmull-Rom splines for smooth curves and sound/visual effects for rewarding actions.
- Accidentally discovered a flood-fill cellular automata by allowing multiple simultaneous fills, where fills collide and create organic, semi-stable patterns.
- Created 16 fonts, many from old computers, and developed pixel-fattening algorithms to thicken bitmap fonts, settling on a method preserving gaps via JFA distance field with white-space skeleton detection.
- Made Mr. Baby Paint available for sale on itch.io for $4.99 across Mac, Windows, and Linux, selling about 30 copies, and applied the font pipeline to drawings and promotional materials.