This was a quieter year for me, mostly due to some changes at my day job really making it hard to be in the right mental space for extra things in life. All is good, things still got done and awesome growth has happened for me and my skills - but just all different to what I was thinking from this time last year!

At the end of 2024, I was pumped to start making major progress on one game project - and here at the end of 2025, I’m still pumped for that game project plus a gamedev tool project!

I like creating things - I just need more hours in a day!

Saying that though, some cool work was done this year. Read on!

Released This Year

1. NodeJS Trickplay Generator

• GitHub
• NPM

Fun and quick little project that started off as a mental exercise for systems design! If you’ve viewed any video using an app or website and clicked or tapped through to a different time in that video, and doing that showed different image previews of the video based on that timestamp you’re tapping past - that’s trickplay. You provide a video, the tool processes that and creates a tilesheet - then, it’s up to the client app (not included) to parse the tilesheet and show the right image based on the position of the video time position.

The tilesheet looks like this:

This tool would be used as a larger part of a back-end system for video content management, like any video upload portal for Netflix or other streaming platforms. This tool was specifically inspired by Jellyfin, a self-hosted streaming service!

2. ReactJS TypeScript Component Library NPM Package Demo

• GitHub
• NPM

Very much an educational-focused project, made to prove that (1) it can be done in a simple way with no complex build pipeline or dependency chaos and (2) I can do this and (3) you can learn to do this, too!

This project does what it says on the tin. It’s a ReactJS project written in TypeScript, and it contains very basic ReactJS components exported in a way that they can be downloaded and used in other projects. If you see yourself needing to make reusable components that will be reused across multiple projects, or if you want to make a component library for others to use (and/or buy), this project can teach you something!

3. GitHub Actions NPM Package Publishing Demo

• GitHub
• NPM

Another educational-focused project! This one should get turned into an article on either this website or my personal website soon, but in short: NPM changed their authentication requirements this year and it completely wrecks existing/legacy automation workflows for publishing NodeJS packages to NPM.

This project shows you the right, modern way to automate your NPM package publishing - and covers the gotcha you’ll see when trying to automate your first package version’s publishing as well Spoiler: you can’t automate the first release of an NPM package at the time of writing!

Started or Progress Made This Year

1. TCG Set Designer

The trading card game content designer and manager for self-hosted content lovers. Basically aiming to be a Jellyfin of trading card design content.

I definitely did not see the GameFreak leaks and realise that the official TCG content management is roughly on par with what Pokemon fans are doing for making fake cards. Nope, not at all. And that definitely does not suck, because some of the fan-encouraged ways of doing things when making trading card designs feels janky and hacky and like there’s a better way to do things if we could just build a dedicated tool for the task.

So, I’m working on a dedicated tool for the task of designing and managing trading card game content. This one should start releasing in 2026!

It’s a bit of a doozy of a project, but mostly because I’m trying to make it maintainable from the start. Not just one giant server-side-rendered app that people might think of making - but I’m looking at the big open source ecosystem and seeing how the successful projects are structured, and building like that from the start. Many parts, in essence:

• The TCGSD API is well underway, almost ready for publication .
• The TCGSD Web Client is in progress, just needs more functionality pending the TCGSD API’s progress.
• The TCGSD Project Website is in progress, mostly just “groundwork” at the moment though. This one covers developer and end-user documentation, too!

Lots of things to build just to hit the ground running and be ready for larger-scale usage from its first release. Open-source projects - when done properly - can be more-structured than most “real work”!

Summary

I know the above is just a few things, not much compared to 2024 - but definitely more skills grown and gained this year through the above work!

The other projects from last year’s post still exist and still are intended to be worked upon soon, but I’m just prioritising what I can to get things done amongst the day job’s big phase of strategic change these days. Sourcepool and Patron Simulator and even the old “The Bestest Beehive” projects are still in the works, but I think the TCG Set Designer will be the next big thing to show off from my end.

Lots to do, lots to learn, lots to create!

Thankyou for your support in 2025, and stay tuned for more updates throughout 2026! Happy New Year!