🏰 Week 28: Kiek in de Kök, Tallinn

Kiek in de Kök

This week I visited the Kiek in de Kök museum in Tallinn, Estonia. Located in one of the old town’s towers, it’s much more than just a tower! It’s part of the old town wall, and after finishing the wall tour, you can explore an underground tunnel built during the Swedish occupation and extended over hundreds of years — different styles layered through time.

Walking above the wall and through the tunnels gives a really immersive glimpse into history. Such an amazing experience! 😲

Godot Development Experience

Last week, I worked with Godot 4.3.

• As a JIT script, GDScript can be unstable. I hit a circular dependency issue — something that languages like JS or Python fixed decades ago.
• The type system isn’t strict enough, so some errors only show at runtime, and headless mode doesn’t always catch them.
• The community prefers singleton patterns, which makes unit testing difficult, so major plugins often aren’t tested.

I switched from Dialogue Nodes to Dialogue Manager because the former sometimes caused silent build errors.

That said, the animation and canvas systems are fantastic. The animation system feels like an advanced Blender system — very powerful, even if the documentation is rough.

Sound Effects & MIDI

• ZzFX – a JS framework to generate sound effects.
• Online Sequencer – handy for making MIDI music. 🎵

Figma Insights

I got a temporary job teaching Figma in a summer camp… but lost it when the original teacher returned 😅. Still, I explored some great Figma tools:

• DesignDoc Spectral – generate design docs from frames
• html.to.design – import webpages into Figma
• Lorem Ipsum – generate placeholder text
• Unsplash – import stock images
• Dev Mode – better than the design document plugin
• Kigen – generates color palettes
• Zeplin – for smooth design handoffs

AI & LLMs

• MNN Chat – a local LLM chat app that runs on your phone 🤖