Tom Chapman

Seasons Change

A new season has arrived.

Something is different this time though: rotation data for Lost Sectors and Nightfall rewards – manually curated data which isn't available through the API – is now serverside. 

This means that I'll be able to update the rotation each day without deploying new code. 

You'll get accurate rotations faster and without needing to update Braytech.

As for content, I'm personally excited for this season because it means Dawning time. My...

Braytech Referrals

In addition to some other updates, Braytech now has a referrals system designed to help spread the good word of Braytech ^_^

You can unlock emblem codes by referring 10 new users. Is this a good thing/will it work/will anyone do it? The answer truly depends on whether or not you're asking optimistic Tom or pessimistic Tom.

Right-click for Details

Kind of huge–you can now right-click an item in your inventory to immediately go to the Details screen. You know, like the game.

The Patreon API

Patreon have a habit of changing their API without warning and without documenting before or after. Additionally, making OAuth work is seemingly impossible–a refresh token is provided but it doesn’t seem to ever work. Super frustrating for simple automation uses like Braytech’s.

Why can’t my Braytech notifications just be normal! You guys get notified about Xûr or lost sectors but instead my code screams at me 😂

Character: Progress Pics

• I've spent the past week buried in item-processing related code
• Items on your characters now only show plugs (mods) which are available to that item at that time
• Hovering over mods now previews stat changes just as hovering perks does
• Clarity data has been added to tooltips
• Did other stuff as well including displaying mementos on shaped weapons and ensuring the experience for mobile us...
  2023-10-29 12:16:42 +0000 UTC View Post

Character: Progress Pics

The last feature to bring into the future is the item details screen.

I've been working on a complicated mask to round the rough edges on the screenshot images and I threw Braytech into light mode to increase the background contrast to show it off to some fellow developers and this monstrosity fell before my eyes. I can alleviate the issue somewhat by sampling the average background colour of the screenshots and tinting the acrylic background effect with it.

Why mask the screensho...

Widgets

• And we're back.
• So here's what I've done with Xûr's widgets. Current users will notice that the display for when Xûr isn't present in game has changed (second image). Was always icked by the fact it was just a big blank space that occupied my screen (kidding I have Xûr in a smart stack with my other Braytech widgets so I look at the pretty Lost Sector one instead).
• For Xûr, it was high time I refresh the colouring to better match the vibrancy of the Braytech widget...
  2023-10-17 22:54:44 +0000 UTC View Post

Character: Progress Pics

• All character views now share the same interactable header UI: tapping a header such as weapon type as seen in the screenshots brings up an overview of the headings on that view - tap a heading to scroll to that section - super useful for small screens!
• Equipment and Vault views have a new and improved filter UI as well as a simple search box which filters based on item name
• Most of my time was initially spent on separating old cruddy code into useful views - I think I...
  2023-10-17 05:55:15 +0000 UTC View Post

Character: Design tips? Looking for advice and ideas for a better vault page.

The first image is a working copy of what I've got so far. The second image is the current vault page.

I always get lost looking for an item. It's the same every time - I'm mid activity and I convince myself I can tab out and grab something in 2 seconds but for some reason I just can't see it even though it's usually right in front of me.

Tips, ideas, suggestions? 😅

Status update

Facebook is permanently associated with the concept of a "status update" for me. Hi, I grew up in the 90s and that means I'm old.

I've been trying to do cool stuff with stuff and stuff that makes other stuff go better but I've continuously not quite made the cut (failed).

Some examples of my activities include:

• Decoupling profile data from the backend which supplies data to features like iPhone widgets and instead placing that load on user devices (programming in Swift...
  2023-10-11 16:31:14 +0000 UTC View Post

Record interval breakdown with score value

It really took way longer than it should have but this is finally a feature. Sometimes simple designs take years to implement. 👀

Fireteam Monitor

It's a new feature! It was built to spec for the people at D2Checkpoint to help them monitor their checkpoint bots. No idea what else you could use it for... But I thought it'd be a shame to not make it available to all.

Also, I made some improvements to the friends blade for wide-widescreen users. Previously, it would occupy an outrageous amount of space. Now it, like the rest of Braytech, is wrapped up.

New Triumphs

A suggestion was posted in Discord and I went to work but first I accidentally remade the entire view and anything adjacent. 

The original request was to highlight gildable seals. I made progress on that - they're floated to the top of the list now - but I'm not done with that yet though.

I've updated Triumphs to match the newer designs around the place, rewritten some clumsy code, and added some new features l...

Merch!

I'm trying something new. I've wanted to make tee shirts for months now and today I came across the perfect middle person to make our dreams come true.

NO TALK, ONLY LINK 

Back to talk, talk: the merch store is powered by Fourthwall and I'm telling you this because I think it's important to inform you of how the costing works: 

• Th...
  2023-09-10 12:15:35 +0000 UTC View Post

User tips

My favourite thing lately is these little user tips that both bring attention to features that could go unnoticed and can show the state of the feature as well, such as if it’s turned on 🥰

New Clan: About design ✨

• It was about time I made it betterer.
• Flipping the banner to The Other Side is especially beneficial for mobile.
• Clan banner now shows selected clan staff when available.
• Clan reward engrams are now displayed as... engrams!
• Clan about looks less goofy with more text. Sadly, I have no control over my clan's about text or the banner design 😒
• Thank you. I accept hugs and cold hard cash.

Style, Notifications, and Dermatitis

Hey Neon Nerds, how's the new content?

I'm dog sitting hundreds of kilometers from my home cave and I hate it. It seemed like a good choice before finding out I'd find myself allergic to either the dog or that I'm subject to spontaneous eczema. Of the very little time I've had with the new season's content, I'm looking very forward to spending some quality time with it, display driver crashes a...

Firefox and stickers

Hello Destiny 2 players!

This season saw Destiny’s content grow so large in volume that it triggered a Firefox-specific storage limit. To counter this, I have rewritten the code responsible for downloading and storing data from Bungie to use a different approach.

Tech talk: store manifest definitions across many IndexedDB keys instead of just one key and a object of definitions

This kind of change is frightening as it’s code which is critical to Braytech working. I test...

Clan roster

Woke up with a migraine (I never have migraines and I don’t know why I do now) so I did the only thing I knew I could: accidentally rewrote all clan roster code.

If you’re a Clan roster user and see anything wrong, this is why. All that I actually wanted to do was apply the same code I have elsewhere that prevents old profile data from being displayed when returned by the Bungie API. Otherwise, it should be slightly more performant and the code is way cleaner.

Let me know if a...

All Grown Up

Tech talk alert 🚨

Braytech no longer depends on/is subservient to create-react-app 🎉

I successfully ejected and deployed new code. Previously, this was a daunting task. After all, the whole point of create-react-app was to alleviate complexity for new React users. I’ve not been new for some time.

I no longer need to run scripts to alter create-react-app’s configuration - it’s all available to me now. That said, it’s old and full of things I don’t know much ab...

Just bit my tongue

update: doesn't hurt anymore

Mobile nav

Hello! Mobile users! Which nav style do you prefer!? The original flavour or an app-grid flavour?

Maps update!

I've added relevant destination rotations to each map! It was fun but exhausting to write "flair" text for each rotation.

Update: added public events! Wrote them out all by myself like a big boy! In unrelated news, I've been quite ill and I'm not McLuvin it.

Real fake weather

Just updated weather notifications to pull data from a real weather API (where appropriate) and and it’s so cute and I love it 😻

I absolutely did google “where is x” for ideas for real locations to use haha

Also: I updated Leaderboards again substantially. It is now complete. 🥳

Leaderboards (extended)

Our first patron-only feature!

Check out your clan! Click the divider line to compare players and display the difference in records and collectibles.

I've spent the past 8 hours working on this, non stop. Do not recommend! haha far out my head hurty hurty

Leaderboards redux

A brief history of Leaderboards on Braytech:

• Braytech had a Leaderboards page - I was a novice programmer
• I created Triumph.report as a brief reprieve from my work on Braytech but it soon went unmaintained due to Braytech needing my love
• My interest in leaderboards spiked and I recreated the Leaderboards page for Braytech!

It's pretty cool if this is something you're into.  2023-07-27 09:27:42 +0000 UTC View Post

Additional notification events added

I've added Weather Forecast (just for fun) and Overview (actually useful).

The numbers below the on/off switches are the number of subscribed devices. Push notifications use has really grown and that's super cool.

As of this post, notifications look like this:

Computers suck

If any of you are secretly an engineer at NVIDIA or Microsoft, could you please come over to my house and fix my computer?

Destiny has been triggering some inconvenient crashes, but lately, their cadence has bellowed from a monthly occurrence to every time I loaded into a Crucible activity. It’s not even a blue screen. I yearn for blue screens–so much more useful information.

So I gave up and reinstalled Windows. Back to irregular crashes and I can play Destiny and program Br...

Relationship update

Forget everything I said yesterday and instead look at this. This is the updated Clan Relationships feature.

• Toggle the time frame to load activities from - If you play a lot, this could take a while to load!
• See players who aren't clan members

2023-07-16 10:49:55 +0000 UTC View Post

Stickers 002

You’ll never guess what the sticker design is for this month.