MaxxHoorn

  I'm currently experimenting with AI, using Gemini and ChatGPT to create images as inspiration for new characters. For a game idea that I have in my head, which is a long way from any shape or form, so I won't get further into that yet. I fed Gemini and ChatGPT some of my earlier characters (actually my only set of characters that I published thusfar): the Cleopatra-zombie character set . And I'm using that to create better looking characters. So I might come out with a Cleopatra v2 set in the near future. Cleopatra Here's the first version of Cleoptra, dressed in white (part of a jump-animation) and the version AI made from it (with a spaceship background - which gives a hint about what kind of game I want to make), as well as a face portrait. The full-body image was created by ChatGPT. The headshot was created by Gemini, as you can see by the 'sparkle icon' watermark in the lower right corner. Gold Cleopatra I also made another 'skin' for Cleopatra, w...

  Last year, on May 23rd, 2025, I married the love of my life, Joey. We met on FilipinoCupid when I was looking for someone to travel with in the Philippines. We Skyped a lot in the months before the vacation, but we didn't plan to meet, because Joey lived in Baguio, a 6 hour drive from Manila. While getting my PADI diving certificate in Puerto Galera, we kept Skyping and eventually I decided to cancel the rest of my trip and travel to Baguio to meet Joey. We met on May 25th, 2013 and have been together ever since. Well, together as in a long-distance relationship. We did spent vacations together in both the Philippines and the Netherlands and  in July 2020, Joey and her sons Vash & Cloud, came to the Netherlands. In 2013 I also started experimenting with GameMaker Studio . I found some free game assets and got some sprites from the mobile game Marvel Alliance (ripped by Cyrus Annihilator ), which I modded to my needs. And with modded, I mean I ripped the heads off a...

  I've been trying out Spriter Pro, while following the Udemy course SPRITER 2D Humanoid Character Rigging & Animation for Unity by Billy McDaniel. In the course there is a lot of attention for setting up the character bodyparts in Photoshop and rigging it in Unity. However I don't use that software, instead I use Inkscape and Gamemaker Studio 2. Also, to have the program be really helpful you need to buy the Pro version (which I did) for just a few extra's. I did by a package deal where I will also get Spriter 2 ... eventually ... when it comes out. They've been talking about Spriter 2 since 2018, so when it will come is not really clear. I was able to download an Alpha version, but I haven't tried it yet. The industry standard for 2D animation is Spine, but that's quite expensive (at least for me as a hobbyist). It's 99 dollar (currently 69 dollar) for the Essentials version and 449 dollar (currently 379 dollar) for the professional version.  Spriter ...

  In 2018 I wanted to play a simple spaceship simulator game. A game where you start out with a simple one-room shuttle and upgrade it during your space exploring adventures. I couldn't find such a game, at least not for Playstation and the games I did find on Steam were too complicated or didn't have the style I was looking for. So I decided to make it myself. I did quite some artwork, but as a game it wasn't even 1%. So eventually I got tired and abandoned the project. I still do really like the ideas and the (ship) designs, as simple as they may be. Years later I found SteamWorld Heist, which was actually already out when I was toying with my ideas, but I just didn't come across it at the time. SWH had a lot of what I wanted to do: show a ship flying from the outside and then open it up and see what happens inside. It didn't really have upgrades for the ship though, that came in SteamWorld Heist II, but by then they had traded the spaceship for a submarine and th...

  I'm currently busy with creating some modular characters. "What does modular mean?", you might ask. It means I'm creating all the body-parts separately, so I create a body-shape and a head-shape and then I create ears, eyes, mouth, arms, legs, etc. I still head some ears and eyes that I was happy about from an earlier attempt to make modular characters. But I wasn't able to create human characters that I was satisfied with. So I switched to teddybear-like characters and so far I'm happy with the result. As you can see, I'm furthest with the white polar bear, who I named Polly . I exported the seperate bodyparts and I will now go through the course  SPRITER 2D Humanoid Character Rigging & Animation for Unity  by Billy McDaniel on Udemy. I have used Spriter and/or Dragon Bones before to animate my Cleopatra character , but I'm in dire need of a refresher. I don't think it matters the course is 'for Unity', I can also use the animations ...

  In this section I will talk about the things that inspire me in my game and asset making. Other games of course, but also movies, art and whatever inspires me in doing the things I do. The first inspiration I wanted to quickly talk about is the image borders on the Here to Slay DUNGEONS gamefound page on which I did a blog yesterday. I used images from that page for my blog and they all had a simple, playful border and a fixed square size. It fitted quite nicely on the homepage of my blog, whereas earlier images that I had posted had parts of it cut off. I could have just resized the images and make sure that the images where as long as they were wide, but I chose to make a simple border template for the blog, which I'll be using from now on. I reuploaded the pictures of all the blogs I did before (luckily I didn't write that much blogs yet), except for the Here to Slay images. I'll keep those with their original borders as a homage to the inspiration they gave me.

Outside of computer games, I also like to play boardgames. I have a cabinet full of them. I don't have a chance to play them that often, but when I do play with my family we usually play Dungeon Mayhem or Here to Slay. Especially my youngest son, Cloud, is a big fan of that game. On Christmas I bought the Here to Sleigh expansion and recently I also bought the Warriors & Druids and Berserkers & Necromancers expansions. We didn't actually got a chance (took time) to play the new expansions yet. But both Cloud and I got excited because Unstable Games  (also known for Unstable Unicorns) is releasing a spin-off of Here to Slay. It's called Here to Slay DUNGEONS and is currently in a crowdfunding campaign on gamefound . Their goal was 50k dollars, which got funded in 1 minute and 40 seconds. Currently the counter is at 3,9 million dollars.  They have a lot of rewards to choose from. If you want everything it'll cost you a couple of hundred bucks. This was appealing t...