Tom Chapman
patreon
Green Witch
🕑 Added 2024-11-25 02:20:25 +0000 UTCI have a real clunker of a thought that I often struggle to express with finesse. Braytech used to be 3 pages–checklists and some triumph titles. It was easy for me to envision, in my mind, its value and the effort I had so far invested into it. I'm a "do everything in my head" kind of guy (as opposed to writing things down and using other physical aids) and I often run into a metaphorical RAM limit. This has led to the use of paper and pencil for understanding Braytech, especially when building something new.
Like most people, I'm emotionally crippled and often wonder if I'm enough, so I look to Braytech and try to assess its value as a function of my own value (this is, to a degree, exaggerated for the sake of humour). This has grown to be a problematic practice because Braytech is now (and has been for a long time) far more than 3 pages.
What I've realised is that while some of Braytech's features are not unique to Braytech, they're refined, and that's the point of this section: some of Braytech's recent updates are about the polish that distinguish Braytech from others.
This Month's Polish
Updated source data for all known emblems for display in Collections.
Added transition animations to dialogs to match the game. Tuning the animation duration was important for all of the usual reasons: to delight the user but without making the UI feel sluggish.
Added weapon ammo type and damage type to generated share link images. When you share a link to an item, Discord, Bluesky, etc., will request a dynamically generated image to match. Somehow, item ammo and damage types didn't cross my mind.
Now that I've recreated the game's updated activity modifiers, using the same style as a base for activity report embellishments felt out of place. Previously, if you completed an activity flawlessly, solo, as a duo, as a trio, or in contest mode, icons would appear on your activity report in circles, in the style of an activity modifier. I've dropped the donut border and made them bigger and better.
Updated the text message on item tooltips for uninstanced (a static roll, as it would appear within Collections) items for clarity. You'll almost always only see this tooltip on weapons listed on activity reports.
Hot in demand: being able to see seasonal materials. Seasonal materials have been added to Inventory.
Added exotic class item options to the filers for Xûr notifications. Who the heck is supplying the guy with this stuff?
Performed a bunch of check work and revealed "redacted" (unreleased) presentation nodes (if Collections and Triumphs are trees, presentation nodes are branches, and collectibles and triumphs are leaves) in Triumphs. The Triumphs UI in game has some bugs. Creating a consistent and reliable experience for users is important and Braytech... does it better than the game. Previously, as redacted presentation nodes never had any triumphs to display, I chose to hide them. But for the sake of making comparison to the game easier, I've made them a feature.
Subscriptions are the foundation of Braytech and my livelihood. That said, I've sometimes felt icky about investing development time into those areas, because well, money isn't my first priority in life (although I need somewhere to sleep at night so maybe it should be). I've sometimes felt it was too barren, and I wanted to improve how it makes a user feel, especially when it comes to authenticity and genuine value. If a user reaches that page and then leaves primarily because it looks like I won't care after they make the transaction, then that sucks. So, I'm trying to do better, and hopefully my renewed efforts will help to complete the loop between me and subscribers. It's weird–self-employed and self-taught, I never expected to have a proverbial business hat to don, in addition to design and developer hats!
Compatibility
Braytech has had eras. I won't try to name them, I'm not that creative, and certainly not when the room I'm sitting in is 30° (86 in freedom units) at 80% humidity.
I'd say this is its last ultimate era in that it fails gracefully and fallbacks where it can. Once upon a time, if Braytech has an Indexed DB issue, it'd explode. Instead, it expresses its discomfort and allows you to continue on. This is good!
It's been a long time coming, but I've massaged the relevant code and Firefox finally works with Braytech.
Indexed DB is a bit of a mess and Firefox, in all its wisdom, has a habit of implementing limits arbitrarily rather than in step with WebKit and Chromium. This means I can build for most people reliably and in accordance with the standards and developer-friendly documentation of the MDN (Mozilla Developer Network) but still find Firefox behaving as if it's Internet Explorer 6 (Firefox users in my comments section would be carving their mechanical keyboard keys right now).
To make developing products with Indexed DB (and other web features) easier, developers build libraries. I use Dexie.js–it's very popular.
After some exploration, I found that Firefox specially doesn't like Collection.toArrary(). Why? It doesn't say. That's part of the fun of Indexed DB. It doesn't throw many useful errors (and this is part of why Dexie.js exists–to try and make the developer experience more consistent and tolerable).
In any case, I needed to iterate over the collection, the table stored in Indexed DB, altering the structure and assigning its parts to another place.
So, I altered my approach and tried Collection.each(). This worked. Firefox only makes up 10% of users, but they're passionate and informed, and I'm sure that they'll appreciate that Braytech no longer wants to download the definitions data every time you launch the app anymore.
This is the developer experience sometimes. Sometimes, you get a useful error which can inform you of how to resolve the issue, while at other times, you get nothing. Your only fallback is to try a different approach to achieve the same effect (and that's if it tells you where in the code it had a problem).
In a similar vein, I noticed low-memory Android devices, regardless of browser have started to fail to store the definitions data.
I was using Table.bulkPut() to store all data at once as few operations is more efficient and therefore faster (less app load time). Using the singular Table.put() in a loop resolved this. It's a measurable change in speed but most people won't notice.
These fixes are really satisfying!
Bluesky
Braytech has joined Bluesky, because like, everyone is doing it. I really wanted Threads to happen...
Final Notes
Critically, some final notes: join the Discord server and scream you desires for Braytech (into the appropriate channels) and subscribe! I'm only asking you to subscribe, you don't need to click the bell or like, just subscribe!
Tom 🎃
