FrontierNav Report: September 2019
Changes in September
I missed updates over August so I'll try filling in the blanks for this report.
- Added more editing features to the Data Tables, such as adding columns, tables, etc.
- Added interactive guides for Astral Chain (work in progress)
- Added ability to create Map Features directly from the Map
- Added ability to create Entities from the Universal Search
- Added ability to remove enforced filters from Universal Search (e.g. when adding new Relationships, you might want to point to an Entity that isn't currently supported by the Relationship)
- Added a dropdown menu to Entity pages to edit them individually (work in progress)
- Starting research into real-time features such as data entry collaboration, community features.
Guides for Astral Chain
On 30th August, Astral Chain released for the Nintendo Switch. So I spent the first few days after its release playing it to completion. After that I started working on an interactive guide.
Implementing the in-game "File Select" menu for the Web was a lot of fun. Getting it to flex and fit various screen sizes was the most challenging part. Game consoles have the benefit of rendering at a fixed resolution, the Web doesn't really have that luxury (unless if you're willing to compromise user experience).
I don't use the vh unit much in CSS, but it was perfect for this use case to scale up the size on larger displays. Dealing with the various behaviours of nested flexboxes was probably the least enjoyable part, but that's more to do with the tedium of setting up the necessary constraints rather than issues with CSS Flexbox itself.
Adding Features as Needed
While I was adding data for Astral Chain, I made the effort to use the editing features built into FrontierNav rather than writing single-use scripts. If anything I needed was missing or too tedious I made the effort to improve that workflow so that future edits can benefit from it.
This is probably the best way to work on FrontierNav going forward as it provides a clear acceptance criteria for each feature. i.e. did it actually solve the problem I was having and did it speed up data entry.
Real-time Features
I can probably start adding more dynamic features into FrontierNav now. Things like real-time collaboration, user-suggested games, image uploads etc. The only thing stopping me is server costs. The current income from Patreon won't be enough to cover it. However, it's a bit of a "chicken or the egg" situation. If I don't add these features, users will have less incentive to contribute in the first place. So I'll try adding them and hopefully it gets people to help cover the costs.
The minimum cost for most of this is around $50 per month, so I've set a new goal on the Patreon page. Please consider contributing if you haven't already on Patreon.
Thanks for reading.