Emet.ca

Over the summer of 2021, I spend a notable amount of time working on Valkyrie, a UCI-compatible chess engine written from scratch using C/C++.

Consulting chess theory and programming guides, I created a chess engine that could beat myself and many of my friends. In designing the engine there were three notable challenges: implementing the rules of the game, establishing a sense of strategy, and building the engine fast/efficient enough to run on a modern-day laptop.

Tired of always seeing the same desktop wallpaper, in March of 2020 I set out to program a way to see a new desktop wallpaper every time I looked. I soon discovered how I could use Blender, a 3D graphics engine, with a scripting API to create 3D renderings using only Python.

Using Blender, I attempted to automate the process of creating visually appealing background images. The idea was to use an automated process to create several similar, yet unique images to use in a slideshow as my desktop wallpaper. By using a slideshow of similar images, I was able to create a desktop wallpaper that changed enough to seem new but didn't change so severely as to be a visual distraction.

I soon settled for a design of cubes floating and casting shadows over a three-colour gradient.