Triptych

Getting to working code is vitally important, as well as always making sure that your code continues to “work” no matter what. That being said, I now have a page up with YUI added, it tests the YUIGallery storage module, and you can click to get an alert dialog. Very humble, sorta worthless beginnings, but getting this to work means all the “library code” is working properly. Outside of YUI, the storage module, and the YUI2 compatibility module I’ll be adding, I’ll have everything I need to build this “html5app” as it’s being called.

Here’s a link.

http://whisperstorm.com/tests/arcadius/

Hopefully, every day for quite some time this will grow and adapt to become the awesome web app I want it to be.

See you tomorrow!

I’m trying to make short, useful, and relevant posts about my development process with Arcadius. One of the things I realized I overlooked was my development environment. For a long time I was a big proponent of TextMate on mac. I used Aptana off and on, but I was frustrated by the lack of good syntax coloring. However I’ve drifted back to Aptana partially because I work on both PC’s and Mac’s and Aptana finally has FTP support. If they ever get good syntax coloring I’ll be in heaven, but for now at least I’m not in dev hell with Vim or something. (No offense, since I know that many people swear by editors like that, I’m just a GUI kinda guy.)

Anyway, using Aptana I’m able to FTP files to my remote server.

I’m also using SmartGit on mac for updates, since I’m using GITHUB to host the code.

Tomorrow: Hello World in Arcadius! My first “live” file for you to see.

Arcadius will be a fun little web app that stores the games you play on the web, and allows you to do fun things with them, as well as discover new games.
The UI for this will need to reflect that, as well as take advantage of the latest CSS3 and other specifications. While I’m using some standard UI elements like lists, tabs, and trees, I’m also going to experiment with transitions, css gradients, and more. Look for something that is fun, fluid, and interesting to “click around” in .

Today I talk a bit about the tech I want to use for Arcadius. This application is almost 99% client side. Meaning if you went offline, you’d still be able to use this site pretty much the same way, although you’d not get feeds or be able to launch games. That being said, I dont expect too many folks to actually use this offline, so I’m looking at using a CDN-based javascript library for the core functionality. I’ve worked with both YUI and jQuery, and while I really like jQuery’s simplicity of syntax, I’m leaning more toward YUI right now. I’m also looking at using something called Alloy UI, as it’s YUI-based, and has some functionality I’d like to use. I’m also going to try out the Facebook javascript SDK, as it’s supposed to be really easy and handy to use.

So here are some links:
http://yuilibrary.com/gallery/
http://www.alloyui.com/
http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/JavaScript_SDK_%28Open_Source%29

YUI also has some attractive plugins for things like localStorage, which is one of the things I’m hoping to use.

So, now I have the goals, the tech, and tomorrow we can talk a little about the UI.

So, I’ve been thinking about how this application will work. Should I do it in Titanium? Should it be it’s own domain? What js library should I use? But then it struck me I was asking all the wrong questions. What I should be asking are things like “what problem does this solve?” “how is this better than what’s already out there?” and “Is this worth my time?”

Let’s try to answer these questions, since perhaps somehow this process I’m going through might help you out in some way.

1) What problem does this solve?

Arcadius is meant to be a way for you to store your web-based game links. It’s meant to be a place you go to when you want to play a web game, and a place to save the links you discover. For me, I have bookmarks here and there, and I can’t remember even then if I liked the game, or how often I played it. So all of those things I’m seeking to do. Here’s a summary:

• Save web game bookmarks
• Launch game from the bookmark entry
• Rate game / write notes
• stats on gameplay
• game “playlists”

In addition to this, I’d like to help folks discover new web games. So as a secondary feature, I want you to enter a site like Kongregate and see games from their “feed”

• Add web game feeds
• see a “random game”
• game recommendations — you like rpgs or shooters

There are other features, such as social stuff, but this is a lot for a 1.0 . One last thing. I want this to work with Facebook connect, so that eventually you’ll be able to share your activity on facebook, or send a friend a game recommendation.

So, second question:

2) How is this better than what’s out there?

As far as I know there isn’t anything like this out there. Other than just using bookmarks. The company I work at Raptr keeps track of your gameplay, but that’s way overkill for what I want to do for this – which is just to give you some idea how many times you’ve played some web game. So, as far as I can tell, this is unique.

3) Is it worth my time?
Well, I do play a lot of web games, so even if I end up being the only user of this, I think it is worth my time, because I have so little of it, and I usually want to find something quickly to play, and not waste time. Plus when I find something cool, I want to keep it here to be able to come back to it.

— So, right now it looks like a GO for my little project. More about libraries and such Tomorrow.

I’ve been wanting to keep going with blogging, and also work to continue a project I’ve been wanting to move forward on for a while, so combining those ideas, today is the first Arcadius development log entry. What is Arcadius? Well it’s a way to allow you to keep track of your web-based games. If you are like me, you play lots of games on Kongregate, Facebook, and other places. It’s easy to loose track of the good games, and find yourself casting about for something to play. The goal of this web app is to make that process both easy and fun. This is also a bit of a test bed for web technologies as well as my own coding skills. Let’s go!

I’m reading the excellent book “Unity Game Development Essentials” right now. It’s really a great resource if you are starting out with Unity and want to get a “start at the basics” approach. I’ll write up a more fully fleshed out review soon, but if you are planning to build a game with Unity, this book is a must-buy!

Micro Dungeon is a great idea from Fandrey which allows you to embed a tiny little roguelike game into your blog, etc. This is inspiring me to revive one of my own little projects soon.

http://jamiequint.com/lesson-three-spend-time-on-things-that-matter

Interesting article about time management.

Unity continues to amaze me with the depth and speed at which game developers are adopting it. It’s the Right thing at the Right time. They just issued a press release about crossing the 100K users mark:

http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Unity-Technologies-Surpasses-100000-User-Milestone-to-Expand-Platform-Support-1117508.htm