Build Servers & Adblockers

I focus on resolving build server issues this month, and continued development - updating the wallpaper, command prompt, and startup animations.

Oct 5th - Development Platform

I’ve built a solid framework for application development, enough to where I’m wondering if I should just try to just build a platform where users can create their own experiences. I feel like that would be a fun expansion, so maybe I’ll leave that thought for a later day.

I’ve been experimenting lately knocking off features I planned for down the road (Alpha, Beta, & Release Stages) and they paid off. So far everything I’ve attempted to do has worked, and I’ve given it enough time for it to organically grow into long term solutions. As oppose to my ad-hoc approach of finishing something, then moving on.

Oct 6th - Windows 11 vs Windows 10

Up until this point, Windows 10 was my main development OS. With the end of Windows 10 and the push to Windows 11, I’m now testing the game out on Windows 11. Everything works as expected, except for one weird bug. There is a very noticeable delay in startup now.

Instead of being an ignorable problem - happening outside of the UI. It was happening during an animation. In this case, during the initial load of the users desktop and files.

The first time I load GL in the process, there will be a 1-6 second delay. On Windows 10 there is no delay. I’m certain a real fix for this exists somewhere, but I’m not going to bother with that. I have a much better solution.

The fix I’m using, is the game needs to load GL in the background. Before I do that, the game needs to let the user know the program they started, has started. So it should show a splash screen, or some kind of animation, and then it should load GL. Once GL has loaded fully, then it should show the game.

I’ve added a command to skip the start animation on boot with -skipsplash & -nosplash.

Oct 6th - RIP Build PC. Long Live Build Laptop!

A couple days ago my build PC died. I was using this as a headless computer that would monitor the git, build the release binary, and repeat this process in a loop.

It worked well until the motherboard died. It was on it’s way out, and it finally died at 10:44 PM on October 4th. RIP.

So, I’m retiring the build pc, I have a spare laptop that I think would work as a replacement - I’m in the process of upgrading it to Windows 11 so it can run everything without any issues in the future.

The builds went from 5 minutes to 15, but what’s 10 more minutes of build time between friends?

I bet you thought I was joking

Oct 8th - Continued Adblocker

I mentioned earlier that I got chromium working in the release build. I’ve been using it on and off lately, mostly for fun to test things out. The number one thing I noticed though, is popups.

Popups are awful, and break the experience. Click hi-jacking feels like a virus. Literally, how is this allowed by the web standard. The modern web, without adblocking, is near impossible to use.

Since it’s chromium. Technically any chrome plugin will install perfectly. But I want to block this at the network level. Preventing the JS from ever reaching the browser in the first place.

I started slow, experimenting with blocking each ad provider that I came across. After about 30 of them, I stopped seeing ads on the test website I was using. Then I moved onto web games, after I had around 50 domains in my list I had the idea of merging it with a maintained hosts list.

I’ve used StevenBlack’s Hosts before. It has several lists inside of it, I picked a smaller one so I wouldn’t overload the game memory - as all of these domains are kept in memory to keep things speedy. This adds around 7,000~ domains (620 KB).

From here, whenever I encounter an ad on the browser. I block the ad providers root. So far this solution is working pretty well.

Oct 9th - Wallpaper Passthrough

I’ve been working on a concept called Wallpaper passthrough, essentially it involves taking the current wallpaper frame, and displaying it in various applications - explorer, cmd, etc.

Some assets used are not created by me, and will not be in the final game, this is developer footage only

Oct 9th - Build Server Take 2

I’ve got a build service setup. I wouldn’t call it a server. It’s a laptop that doesn’t have TPM, and windows declares is too out of date to support. I was able to get Windows 11 running on it, but I’m dubious of the results from running the build software on it. So far it seems to work, and produces okay results.

It’s on a laptop, so I at least have the benefit of the energy consumption being way less. The only downside is that translates directly to CPU speed.

I get roughly 2 minutes per build on my development computer. On the old build server, I was getting 5 minutes per build, 6 minutes on the low end.

Now, I get 19 minute builds. 20 minutes on the low end.

Not entirely unsable, but it definitely throws a wrench into things. Now I need to think of builds as more of a long term thing, previously it was a simple “go make some coffee” and it’s done. Now it’s more like, you could literally go and eat lunch now.

That’s not bad a thing, realistically I don’t need to push retail builds back to back, and fixing bugs in production would take me much longer to simply upload, than it would to preform these builds.

Oct 9th - Git Activity

Since I started this project full time (December, 2024), I’ve used git to manage the project. Previously I used GitHub to manage the files, but I moved to a selfhosted Git to ensure I wouldn’t be bottlenecked by the repo size.

I figured I would showcase my git activity for the project:

As you can see, there are a couple large gaps between development. But in general I’ve been pretty consistent with it..

As of writing, there are 2,210 commits.

Oct 14th - Busy

I’ve been working on a lot of things at once.

1. The name no longer suites the game, I don’t think at least. So I’m currently back to being untitled for now. The scope is no where near what it was in 2021 when I originally had the idea.
2. I’m working on the website, I’m getting really close to having everything ready.
3. I’ve been working a lot on the game itself, there are several small changes that I’ve been planning on finishing. I’ve been experimenting more with visual looks, and what the initial theme will look like.

Oct 15th - Expanded Command Prompt

I’ve been doing more CMD adjustments, in this case I’ve been trying to add any missing commands, and fix the last of the command interaction. This includes making the relative path for the command prompt actually have a use. Previously the command line was absolute paths only, so instead of being inside of /desktop you would have to do /desktop/example.lua. Now you can just do example.lua, as it knows that you are inside of a relative path.

Oct 25th - Startup Animations

I’ve been toying with startup animations, originally I was thinking of some kind of pre-rendered video. That would be cool, and I might still do that for release. For now though, I’ve been playing around with 2D startup animations and I’ve been enjoying what I can throw together.

Oct 29th - Graphical Modes

I’ve been working on graphical mode selections, and making the settings menu actually do the things it says it should. This includes adding Fullscreen mode, windowed mode, and borderless windowed mode. I’ve also added resolution settings, frame-rate settings, and even windows swapping. It’s been fun and I’ve been trying to push what I originally thought I was going to be able to support. My original goal was borderless windowed mode. I’ve actually had that mode working since the game started. But I decided to try adding exclusive Fullscreen mode with resolution changing. Not hard, and running it in 640x480 is a real trip. Totally worth it.