#not bot posts

The pattern repository has been updated! Another batch of patterns is away!

whew! okay! the pattern repository is now fully up-to-date!

and these, like the last batch, include the pixel art of each sampler along with the pattern PDF and Pattern Keeper PDF. This should make it easier for y'all to remix or alter the designs-- and you always have my (the bot maker's) blessing to do that!

For time reasons, I do not plan to go back and add the pixel files to all the old patterns, but I do plan to fulfill requests if people have particular ones they would like the pixel files added to.

Have a good night, and a good morning!

we're so paperback

The pattern repository has been updated! I'll try and knock out another batch soon; it's not fully up-to-date but I've made PDFs for a good chunk of the backlog.

by which I mean, I gutted all the old code and made something new! Here are the goals I had:

Equalize the line lengths

Stop making 'scroll' samplers-- a 1:2 height:width ratio is okay, but a 1:4 is not

And here's what I came up with:

Once Samplerbot has the text it wants to samplerify, and has chosen its font and border, have it run the numbers for what the sampler size and line breakdown would be for a wide variety of potential line lengths. For each of those possibilities, Samplerbot calculates:

The standard deviation of the lengths of all the lines of text. This is the most important-- a small standard deviation in length means they're all close to the same size. Samplerbot starts by finding the fifteen line lengths that would lead to the smallest standard deviations, then runs the other calculations over those fifteen.

The ratio of total sampler height divided by width. It eliminates any options that are much wider than they are tall, and also vice versa, though it's less restrictive for height. Samplerbot then finds the absolute value of the difference between height/width and the golden ratio (and width/height and the golden ratio, whichever is smaller)-- another calculation where smaller is better.

Whether or not the given line length would create any single-word lines; if it would, it give that a value of '2', and if not, a '0'. Small is once again the goal here.

Samplerbot then finds the average of those three numbers-- standard deviation of the line lengths, difference from the golden ratio, and the single-word penalty-- and whichever line length has the lowest average is the one it goes with!

I've had it set up to make batches of ~50 test samplers at a time to see how they'll look, and I think it's a good improvement! Good enough that I considered figuring out how to have Samplerbot re-generate some of the ones already in its queue, but-- not this time!

The first samplers from this update will go live in late June.

Have a good night, all!

One year online and 150 samplers created-- wow! And many of them even look good! 😄

For Samplerbot's birthday, it has received one of its biggest updates yet: it can now do two new types of samplers!

I am calling them 'midpoint' and 'rooftop' samplers, and the ones it's been making I call 'loop' samplers.

From left to right: a loop sampler, a midpoint sampler, and a rooftop sampler.

A loop sampler (the OG type!) is made out of only two blocks: one for corners and one to tile around all four borders. The math for a loop sampler is simple: you take however wide the border block is, make sure the sampler's height and width are both multiples of that number, and then tile the border blocks and corners all the way around (plus some extra calculations in cases where the corner block isn't a square).

A midpoint sampler uses three blocks: a corner block, a border block, and a midpoint block, which is placed in the center of each of the four sides. Its math has a few extra conditions: along with leaving space for the midpoint blocks, it also needs to size the sampler so that there can be an equal number of border blocks on both sides of the midpoint.

A rooftop sampler uses seven blocks: it has one set for the 'roof' (a corner block, a border block, and a midpoint block), another for the 'floor' (corner, border, and midpoint), and a separate side block to tile the 'walls'. Rooftop samplers take a little longer to design than midpoint samplers, but their math isn't much different.

I think the midpoint borders in particular have the chance to be very, very beautiful-- I am excited to see them pop up as Samplerbot makes the next batches of samplers!

There are still many, many things to improve on with Samplerbot. Some of them are major changes (having it generate its own PDFs), some are small but finicky (text is still not consistently vertically centered), and some are pie-in-the-sky dreams (could it ever run online?). But whatever comes next-- I'm excited to see what Samplerbot looks like a year from now!

Thanks for checking out the bot, and here's to another year! 🥂

Continuing to chip away at the backlog-- another four samplers have been patternified!

Number two is a glitch, but I have made a pattern for it nonetheless... Samplerbot's glitches are some of my personal favorite things it makes!

Also, I fixed an error where I forgot to include the base pixel art for the samplers in the last batch, so I went and added those back in; if you downloaded any of these samplers, go back and redownload them and the pixel art will be there now! And you have my apologies for the error.

Since Samplerbot is still a long, long way away from being able to be used by others, downloading the raw pixel art is the best way for people to access its borders. So if you see a border you'd like to repurpose, know that you have my official blanket permission to use and remix it anywhere for anything!

Still busy busy but wishing y'all the best,