November Progress Report and INFO DUMP: Friends and family alpha has started

Hey there, Patrons! Just wanted to give a quick (LOL JK) update on the status of LegendKeeper. Last week I did a week-long code-a-palooza during Thanksgiving break. I was able to clock in 10-12 hours a day of coding on LK, which was AWESOME and sometimes brain-melting.

First off, I've officially deployed a staging build of LegendKeeper to the interwebs.

In a software project, you have a few "environments" for your application. Usually these are "Development", "Staging", and "Production". Each of these are clones of the infrastructure--entire copies of the application--used for different purposes. The app is created in the "Development" environment. "Production" is just like it sounds: this is the version of your application that real-life users, i.e. you, use. "Staging" is in the middle: It's an exact replica of what production is, but it's exposed to a smaller set of people. Staging is used as a testing bed for early builds of the application, new features, bugfixes, etc. 

This is a big milestone because there are people other than me using the application now! The super-private alpha has been released, which means we are getting damn close! The testing has already turned up some bugs to fix, which is exactly what a release like this is meant to do.

Progress Report

Last month I enumerated 5 big steps left for LegendKeeper. Those were:

• 1. User account creation flow.
• 2. Text editor features.
• 3. Secret feature
• 4. Finish image and map manager
• 5. Prepare for production.

Task #5 is 100% done: My kubernetes cluster is ready to host the production version of the app when it's code complete. I also finished out the map and image manager with proper delete functionality, completing task #4.

The Text Editor

I finished some important text editor features and eliminated a few bugs. The editor will now auto-save changes to your documents whenever you take a break from typing, and will preserve undo history between saves, which it wasn't doing before. The editor now supports creating related articles as you type. For example, rather than @ mentioning an existing thing, you can opt to create an article from scratch from the text you type. This article will automatically be linked in the text and given a "TODO" tag in the wiki, so you can easily find it later. You can do this via pressing a button on the menu, or without leaving the keyboard by using a special command paradigm I haven't revealed yet.

The text editor now has well-known shortcuts for common actions like bolding and undoing, as well as a traditional toolbar of buttons for those that don't want to use shortcuts or the aforementioned command paradigm. Sorry that's ambiguous: I've still got a few text editor secrets I'm saving for just before launch. Anyways, barring a few formatting buttons I might sprinkle in, the first iteration of the text editor is done, finishing task #2.

That means there are two big things left: User registration and the secret feature, which I've actually spoiled in a previous post if you've been paying attention. Honestly, I might save the secret feature for after launch so I can get the public test release out sooner, but I haven't decided yet. The registration flow is obviously mandatory, and I'm working with a designer to get the landing page and login page to be functional and sexy af. 

Finally, one of my internal testers is the designer helping me with the overall aesthetic of the app. He'll have a lot of notes for the app's design, meaning I'll need to do a good amount of CSS tweaking.

WHEW, ok that was a lot! I got a ton done last week and wanted to share with you.

Alright! Bedtime! Goodnight!

Braden