August 2016

August 9

I haven't posted anything for a while, and a majority of the reason is that nothing was actually being done. I wanted to get trolled by a +10 roll on the enhancement coupon like everyone else, so I needed a terminus essence.

Conceptual work such as planning/layout/etc was done during this time, but not a lot of it. It has probably been noticed by now, but there is an issue with the current Armory where in certain circumstances (I am not quite sure which) gear icons fail to load when the page first loads, resulting in broken images. I don't know why this is, but I assume it to be related to the number of images the page is having to load being too high. Optimizing this has been one of the focuses of my planning lately.

To try to keep this simple, I'll explain it very quickly and perhaps not 100% accurately. A page can request up to six files at a time from the same location, and no more than that. For files seven and on, those six requests have to fill first. Since every image on my site is currently a separate file, I suspect that this is causing the icon issues. It gets too backed up, and then times out and cancels the other loads.

With the v3 UI comes a new design for the header and maybe the footer, which is also a convenient time to mess with structuring. I will be consolidating several JS files into one, to reduce file requests on that end, and am also using the time to simplify the code somewhat, using its new layout. Under the new structure, each page will only request three JS files from my site, rather than the five currently used. In addition, I will be merging all of the background images on the page into one file (except for the main background), to shave off another 44 file requests.

Boring talk about background stuff aside, I have also recently begun coding back in actual Armory functionalities. The only new tab added since the last update is the Stat Results tab, which looks like this:



So far, I am working on coding the Base Stats tab to convert the given stats into actual usable base stats (the ATT without STR, etc). Since titles that give ATT/M.ATT directly now exist, it is important that this base amount is calculated correctly, or else all result stats will be inaccurate. Tab naming is also feeling pretty awkward between the two tabs, so I will likely need to rename one or both of them soon.

If you have good memory, you may have wondered what happened to the Buffs tab. It was postponed. I feel pretty confident in the design and structure of the UI now, and I'd like to jump straight into re-implementing base functionality at this point.

August 20

I'll start a new habit, for the sake of the Dev Logs as of today (which I will technically count as very late Saturday). From here on, any time that I haven't posted a Dev Log for a full week, I will post one on Saturday night.

I've spent a fair bit of time this week playing No Man's Sky and dealing with Ein Lacher, among other real world distractions, but conceptual progress was made (planning, as opposed to actually doing).

Base stat calculation that compensates for skill ranks and titles is now functional. Kind of. I've ran into an issue of trying to figure out how I want to format the data to be most useful/efficient, while still being flexible. For skill ranks/base stats themselves this is trivial. For titles, it's a whole other issue.

Due to the nature of the Ein Lacher titles, and Neamhain's reward stats, I am beginning to think that I need to create yet another subdivision of stats. Base stats, skill ranks, titles, and then achievements. Unfortunately, I can't actually choose to solve the problem this way. It would be impossible to determine which stats came from titles, and which came from achievements. For the sake of certain other features, it would need to be able to distinguish what is from which.

As a result, the only option is to stick with Base Stats, Skill Ranks, Titles. Even despite the fact that situations now exist where the same title can have three different sets of stats, and all the way up to six in the case of Neamhain's (sorta a title).

Being able to setup this data object requires that I know how the title data will be organized. Likely, I will end up subdividing titles into titles and achievements, creating another tab that in itself contains tabs, like the Gear pages. This creates a challenge in keeping the save data short for character profiles, as well as obvious difficulties creating a decent UI for it, but I can't yet come up with anything more elegant. This subdividing may sound like basically the same thing as just having four categories, but it is infact different in regards to how the data is/can be handled.

I've also been debating the issue of the new save data format vs the set links that people currently use, but I'll have more to comment on that once the v3 UI is actually functional enough to generate them.

August 27

A bit late, but the weekly Dev Log update has come!

While on the subject of dealing with formatting, a secondary concern arose, over whether or not I would actually try to incorporate the forums into the settings. I have decided that I want to go for it. Down the line, this will allow forum features such as hiding all signatures, reducing the size of/hiding all avatars, and so on. If I can find a way to convert the buttons from images to normal elements, I will adapt the forums to use your Vindictus Manual color settings, too.

Due to how these things work, this will require that I begin primarily using the http://forums.vindictusmanual.com URL again. The reason that I originally backed away from it was that it was acting strangely, and linking to a different site due to some weird thing forumotion screwed up on. I have been using the direct address to these forums, vindmanual.forumotion.com, while also monitoring the subdomain. It has been stable since, so I want to try again. I need it, for localStorage to be accessible from the forums.

On Saturday, September 3rd, I will switch all links back to the subdomain address. If you want a head start to get used to it, you can begin using the subdomain address again early. The reason that I am giving such advance warning for this is that to a cautious user, it will look fishy. The forums will look and act exactly the same, but you will probably not be logged in. This is because your login cookie is tied to the address you used, and the subdomain is a "different" address. You probably will need to log in again.

As a precautionary warning, though I do not expect the issue to return:
If http://forums.vindictusmanual.com ever links to a site calling itself OceanForums, or really *anything* that does not have the Vindictus Manual Forums banner at the top, notify me immediately. This will mean that Forumotion screwed up again. Note that I do not actually expect this to happen, due to my theories on what caused the bug before.