I'm sorry it has taken this long to make another blog post, but I have a good explanation! I was working. I have been working almost 17 hours a day for the past month and a half and I just have not had the time to create any blog posts despite me wanting to. Today is the day that changes! I now bare the fruits of my labor and I can now share all of the fun stuff I have been working on.
To start off I need to walk back something I have stated previously. I mentioned I was working on a navigation system for NeosVR and I mentioned that it would be complete and ready by the time another "secret" project I had been working on was complete. That's not going to happen... I still plan on finishing my navigation system and all, but they just won't be released at the same time. Why? Well It's the reason why it's taken me so long to create an update post. I just want to get this project out the door and bug tested.
What was this super secret project I have been working on?
⮺ Neos.Nexus
A brand new website created by me! This website makes it easy to share content you make for the game NeosVR on Steam. Why did I want to make this? Neos itself lacks sharing tools so it's up to the community and the creator to distribute their items. This inefficiency always picked at me but I have not had too much of a problem with it as there are existing solutions to this issue. The most common solution is the RedX search. There were a few issues with this approach in my opinion, most notably you can't really add or delete your own items. I have never been too sure how RedX even finds items to list in its database. After asking around and asking multiple of my friends, no one seems to know how RedX finds its items. Another issue is that when RedX does find your items you can not directly get rid of them. My solution to all of these problems is Neos.Nexus. This website allows a user to upload their own folders for other users to see, and they have full control over deleting their listing on the website. I am very excited about this project as it really tested my knowledge on website development. I learned all kinds of new things in the process like S3 storage and image optimization. Neos.Nexus is already active and online, however I will (likely) only be announcing it later today. So you readers will have a few hours head start to browse this website. As of this post, it is released in Alpha state and is not super duper amazing, but with time, love, and lots of bug reports it will get there without issue. At some point this website will become open source and I hope that because of that I will be able to better support it.
Here is a picture from the development of this website.
I unfortunately didn't save many more because when I'm working I get in TheZone:tm: and I simply do not think about taking screenshots. However I did take this one and I am very proud of what the guide creation page looks like now.
⮺ Small Hitch
While I was making this site, news broke about a "new neos" coming out. After doing some research it seems possible that there is some truth to this. However as of now nothing has been confirmed nor denied. It's possible that Neos just croaks and dies. In this event I will probably have no choice other than to shut .Nexus down completely. It's likely if this "neos 2" is true it will leave this Neos forever in limbo or in the hands of someone who doesn't care about the Neos community.
⮺ Overte
Over last weekend I heard about the game Overte. Overte is an open-source social game and if I'm not mistaken, it is also federated. This naturally got my attention. I originally overheard it months ago when talking to one of my bird-bros but I initially wrote it off because I had not seen a lot of progress being made on the game. Last week however I decided to log in to see what it's about. When I first visited the game I coincidentally ran into The Green, and that threw me into a loop. I genuinely was not expecting to see the Eastinator there, but he was. That was a fun time!
⮺ Applications
More on topic: I had been exploring around Overte and after talking to one of the people who helps maintain the game I started to poke around the code. I ended up creating some of my own content for the game in the form of a "application". Basically I re-wrote the existing chat client to be sleek, modern, and in line with modern aesthetics. While I was making the application I also decided to look though existing apps both out of curiosity and need. I needed to know what I was doing and the best way to learn for me is to take what works for someone else and reverse engineer it.
After looking though most of the existing community and integrated features I was a little surprised to see how poorly executed they were. This is mostly a personal opinion but as I have over half a decade of experience in programming and web development now, I saw a lot of things done in ways that I may not have done them. Many of the app developers were also using jQuery for reasons I can not understand. To my knowledge the web version Overte uses is still the one it has used before it was forked from Vircadia (or maybe it was forked from HighFidelity?) so I'm not sure what reason the developers of these apps needed jQuery so much. The reason I bring up the version is that the web version Overte uses is very old, but it still have almost every modern comfort. After reviewing a lot of the code it just seems like it was imported just because. I'm not one to quickly jump on the "Oh my gosh this is bloat! This is so bloat!" train but there comes a point when you have to ask yourself, "Do I really need this library?". Relating to jQuery answer is no, probably not.
⮺ I'm now a contributor! (technically)
Not only have I been working on a application for this game, I have also been working on the game itself. As of pull request #473 I am now technically a contributor! Woooo Wow! In all seriousness now, this pull was TINY. So tiny I had to make the word tiny in all caps so you can see how tiny it was. However this is a big start for me in contributing to this project and future projects. After all of my years on GitHub this project is really only the second time I've contributed code to someone elses project.
⮺ Project Exclusion
I have also made small progress with Project Exclusion since my last post months ago. GoDot 4 has proven so far to be a pretty easy engine to learn. I have created a basic test map with the help of a prototyping addon. In this test map there are only two "objectives" if they can be called that. Two control points that change color when you capture them.
You can also see in this last picture my Gnlock-Off I created for Neos a few months ago. Currently this pistol ho no function other than to block the screen of the player. That is mostly because there are no enemies yet. I don't anticipate enemies would be too hard to make. I have done it before and the AI is pretty good. The only thing I may struggle with are animations. I have NO clue how to make animations in GoDot and there doesn't seem to be any good resources about it. After looking around and searching around on YouTube for a while I found one video that may push me in the right direction but that is yet to be determined.