#javascript coding questions and answers

[citrusbunnies]

brooooo does anyone know java or python bc im taking some virtual high school classes rn and im following along and dont understand shit and google is unhelpful bc everything i find is a paragraph of technobabble with no dictionary at the bottom, a subreddit full of the meanest old assholes that i never want to interact with especially about beginners stuff bc their advice seems to boil down to "yeah youll figure it out lol" or literal insults???, or a youtube channel that works for one thing but skips the next section that i ALSO need help with

[yan-lorkai]

.⁠｡⁠*⁠♡ﾟ A/n: totally not trying to learn html (which technically isn't a programming language, for what I had read), and well, if Idia was teaching me I would learn everything so quickly tbh. Or not. He would start explaining and I would have the sudden urge to kiss him, oh well it happens ig

"Uh... I think I have an error in my code." You break the silence, tone soft as the computer screen lights up your eyes just the right way for Idia to lost himself in the reflex. He love your eyes, your concentrated face, the way you stick out your tongue without realizing.

And he loves the way you timidly look to him, as if he has all the answers to your questions - which, about this subject, he have, by the way.

"Ah~ your closing array is missing a closing slash. Here, Yuu-shi." He pointed your error with a soft tone, blue nail hitting the screen, and a surprised pout grew on your lips.

He wanted to smother you in his arms, to pick you up and hold you till his arms fell off and his corpse rot - that was how bad he yearned for you, your skin, you smell. He breathes really hard to refrain from doing it, though. You wouldn't want that. He was just a mere R card, a lonely gamer, a-

"Thank you, Idia. You're the best." You giggle to yourself, feeling yourself warm under his eyes and lousy smile. Unbeknownst to you, the only things that were going through his head were about you.

Your smile, the way your eyes lightened up, your laughters and giggles, the messages you passed each other in class (when he was there in person), your secret handshake. Idia loved you. He loved your very dearly.

He loved you so much that he could cry.

"Uh... it's no big deal," yet his hair was getting hotter, rosey tone starting to burn brightly. "Don't forget the closing stash, and everything should work properly. This programming language is not that used anymore, but most can learn useful things learning it anyway. I think."

Idia had half of his mind to know that he was rambling again, talking so fast that he could make Eminem cry. But he couldn't stop when you looked at him with such big eyes filled with curiosity and wonder, taking notes of everything he was saying.

He noted then that you had hello kitty stickers on your page. A few drawings that Ortho made of him, Idia and you; that almost killed him right then and there.

"Ah... HTML uses elements, tags, and attributes to organize text, images, links, and other multimedia elements. It can be combined with CSS for styling and JavaScript for interactivity."

[directdogman]

hey dog! sorry to bug you with a coding question, but i'm learning rpg maker mv for a fangame & i'm wondering how you did a couple things. if it's not too much trouble, could you quickly explain some of it? i've scrounged around as much as i can but i cant find what i need so i thought it'd be worth asking directly ^^;

how did you get the players name to show up in the message log? i know theres a plugin that adds the name windows for other characters & i've got that figured out, but i have no idea how to get the players name to show up in the history after selecting stuff

how'd you get the graphic for the route diverging choices to show & play During choices? so far ive figured out that looping the images recreates the visual but then the game doesn't progress, bc its just stuck in that loop...

how'd you disable ( + grey out) dialogue options after selecting them??

how'd you add the fullscreen option? i found a code that was supposed to add a fullscreen option to the optionscore settings but that one just breaks the plugin & i simply Don't know enough javascript to figure it out myself

i'm using all the same plugins that dialtown has so clearly these are possible without extra ones, i just don't know how to do it,, thanks for explaining your pronoun system a little while ago btw! i wasn't the one who asked but your post was super helpful when i was setting it up for myself :D

It's been close to 6 years since I started making DT, and I had to figure out a few solutions to specific issues that cropped up which I've likely forgotten now, but I'll answer what I can remember. I'm also gonna give you some advice and advise you not to use RPG Maker for projects like these.

I basically Scott Cawthon'd DT and forced the engine to yield to my demands because I wanted to use the one I knew best. A few of these solutions are over-complicated because the easier ones (which would've worked in other engines) had to be constructed differently. I'll also mention a few solutions to problems you might not have encountered (but inevitably will if you try to recreate DT.) With that out of the way...

1)

You'll want these settings for the backlog plugin. the \c[x] commands refer to standard name colours. Log special inputs set to true, followed up by this below:

\n<\c[4]\n[1]\c[0]>%1

With \n[1] being the name you want and the number after the first c being what colour you want.

I'll also save you a potential future issue: I'd actually recommend you find the backlog plugin I used in DT's files (located inside the www/js/plugins folder) and use the version I have instead of the official release if you're not already, because I made a small change to fix an error. Basically, it breaks slightly with the plugin that lets you bring up the menu during dialogue because text reloads when you leave the menu and re-enter the text box, causing text to be logged at least twice after you pause it. If you keep bringing up the menu, you'll get constant duplication. I simply added a line of code that tells the log not to have two duplicates in a row. Not a programmer, but it seems works.

2)I did it in a funny way to ensure the engine wouldn't screw it up. Basically, there's 3 steps to the event and it's kinda hard to explain (and would be annoying to reproduce without a lot of trial and error for a beginner.) It's easier if I show my code. The first thing I do is run a common event (you can also just paste this code in and run it from the event) that renders the frames used by the popup, so they're loaded into memory + ready to go.

As you can see, they're set to 0 opacity but now ready to be used. Obviously they have to be on a layer that isn't being used by anything else in the scene (and won't be during this part of the game.) I run this event ahead of time, usually 4 messages before the choice comes up or so, so even slower PCs should have time to get them up.

The 'if head' thing just switches between the files for phone/typegingi's heads. I render each frame on separate layers and toggle their opacity from one to the next on a single frame to avoid flickering (bc RPG maker's renderer is hot trash and I have to work around it. Case in point.)

Step 2 is a second command event that orders the frames to fade in.

One layer is the text (which doesn't move) and the other is the first frame of the little head animation. A switch is also turned on at the end, and this signals the animation to go, which is handled by an event on any map where a choice like this comes up.

The event page that handles the animation itself has 2 pages, one to handle the animation as it goes and the other to handle when it stops (note that you could use one page and simply use a conditional branch. I didn't.)

Set to parallel so it runs in the bg behind normal events. As you can see, every 17 frames, I command one image to fade out over a single frame and another to fade in. It loops perfectly, cycling from middle frame, to left, to middle, to right, back to middle. Finally, when you select any route diverging choice, it sets off a second switch, which activates the second event page and commands the game to dispose of the graphics and then turn itself off.

Basically, it's the same animation but with a twist. The text is faded out over 60 frames and then the same animation is played as before, except the values it fades back into go from 255, to 170 to 85. Each of those commands is also followed by a 17 second fade to the opacity of the next frame. So, frame one renders in one frame at 255. Then seventeen frame fadeout to 170... Next frame renders for 1 frame AT 170, then fades out gradually to 85. Then next frame renders at 85 during 1 frame, fades to 0. This is how i synced the turning animation to fade out convincingly.

At the very end, I turn both of the switches this event page uses off so both event pages don't continue on loop. I also have a check for the first event variable to check if the game should still think the animation is running, as a failsafe. I don't remember if this mattered.

3)It's a function in the YEP Extended Message Pack. You'll see the commands for hiding (temporarily removing) + disabling choices (greying them out) as you scroll through the help list, almost 2/3 down. The thing you have to remember though is that messages that are commanded to be hidden/disabled will STAY disabled unless you turn them back on. So, ANY time there's a possibility to make a choice with a disabled or hidden message, add this plugin command to EVERY selectable choice

ClearChoiceSettings

This will ensure the game doesn't break from having a choice permadisabled. If you use loops or labels to make the game return to a previous choice, make sure the looping point is BEFORE any logic that may disable/hide a choice so it doesn't autoenable everything if the game has to go back.

4)Make a new RPG Maker project, copy the js folder from www/data/js and open the new project alongside your other one. Then check my YEP Option core plugin and follow this path in the plugin editor

This code should work.

On a similar note, I'd also take a look at how my plugins are ordered, if your list is different. I had to meddle with the list to make sure some plugins functioned correctly. This engine is held together with duct-tape and spite, so do what this advice what you will.

Hope this helps!

[qrowscant]

hi! sorry if this is a question you get a lot but i looked at your tags and i didn’t quite see the answer - i was wondering what software you use to code link rot? i’ve been trying to figure out what to use for my own project that i want to be multimedia/be able to click links and such and hosted probably on neocities and i just can’t figure out what program - if any - these sorts of projects use. (i would assume it’s html and css at the least, but is js needed too?) like can you still use twine for this kind of thing or rarebit or? if it’s a personal program/code i completely get if you don’t want to share it!! thank you either way :)

i use html, CSS, and javascript/jquery! you can absolutely use twine if you so choose, that's just a different language to learn to accomplish the same thing. most people code in visual studio code (its free!) and upload to their website, but if you're sick in the head (me) you can just code on the website directly

[seepweed]

Your site has convinced me to go make a neocities (tumblr glitching paranoia has gotten to me and by god I will be going back to the early 2000s if this place goes down) and oh my god coding is hard. I am in agony. Yes it's going to look very much like your site I am squinting so hard at your html trying to figure out how to do it. This is the worst looking thing I have ever made but there are three buttons that go nowhere now so I'm succeeding mildly at least

OMG PERCY!!! WELCOME TO THE NEOCITIES CRAZE!!! i'm literally so honoured to have inspired you to make a site. funnily enough, i *also* joined neocities after the tumblr-unfunctional-paranoia got to me, albeit in 2022. welcome to coding hell 😎

god, coding is hard. i hope you’re having fun, though. it's such a great hobby, once you're in The Zone. it’s a little like modeling a little clay image... digitally... anyways! i’m here to say: YOU’VE GOT THIS!!! feel free to reuse any code i’ve put down on octagon and PLEASE please please tell me your link!!! i want to look at it (regardless of “how much” is on there).

i’m sure you’re getting the hang on things fast, but since you activated my yapper mode, you now have to sit through unsolicited advice <3

if you’re looking for coding help, https://www.w3schools.com/ is a goldmine, as is https://htmlcheatsheet.com/. also, with CRTL+U you learn something new! ALWAYS investigate nice code to understand how they did that. and https://32bit.cafe/interactingontheweb/ has a lot of good tips for being social off of social media.

general rule of thumb is always: coding is digital arts + crafts. break your website. it’s more pronuctive than always coding in a breeze. never apologise for dropping off the earth and not updating in 6 weeks, 8 months or 15 years. some websites have been unmanned since 2001 and are still running, so don’t worry about it.

furthermore, i need to state that i'm a really bad example of a neocities coder LMAO. i code in the editor, i have 0 offline copies of my files and my form is chaotic at best. my website runs on pure html+css, i don't use javascript (yet) or iframes. most people code their sites in notepad, then run them in a compiler like https://playcode.io/html and THEN they post them to neocities. i am lazy. i do this directly IN neocities. don't be like me. save your page.

also. I’ve been doing this for 3 years. like, on the day for three years actually. here’s how my very first webpage looked in 2022:

anyways. HAVE FUN. MAKE FRIENDS. DON’T FORGET TO BE YOURSELF. SPARKLE ON!!! NEVER HOTLINK! you’ve got this, if you have any questions, feel free to ask. i’m not sure i will be able to answer, but we can try haha. and PLEASE TELL ME YOUR WEBSITE!!! i would love to look at it and in classic neocities fashion, i’d obviously LINK YOU.

and here’s some sites that are awesome :3

The Maximalists. mobile inaccessible, IMAGE HEAVY!

https://ninacti0n.art/ EYESTRAIN

https://olliveen.neocities.org/ EYESTRAIN

https://phrogee.neocities.org/ EYESTRAIN

The Webcartoonists. also image-heavy. also probably not mobile accessible.

The Minimalists.

[heart-forge]

Hello!

I'm sorry if this question is out of place but I would really appreciate some help 😅

I'm actually trying to make a twine game right now and I have a few theme variations (default light mode, dark mode, etc). I want to change the color of the cycling text (like hair color options when pressed) to be different to match each theme. For some reason it's not working and it's driving me crazy, and googling it isn't helping 😭 it doesn't help that I'm a beginner at coding. Basically when I try to change the color in the CSS, nothing happens at all. I also want the text styles like strikethrough, emphasis, etc to work but that also isnt working on anything else except the default theme. I saw that your games have themes and the cycle text is a different color. Do you know how to get this to work?

I hope this isn't too much of an ask! Thank you for everything that you do and I look forward to playing more of your games! 🫶🏻💕

Oh excellent news my friend, I made a whole PDF about how I did it. I also have a 'code help' tag where I answer questions like this !! If the PDF doesn't help just lmk: I'd need to see the code (the Javascript meant to change it, the CSS values you're setting, and the passage code where you're letting the player interact) to be really helpful, but hopefully the PDF solves the problem !!

[frenzyarts]

idk if u ever wondered this but i wonder why whenever people talk abt au characters there’s like an exclamation point in the middle. like example yandere!sans like what was up with that

Reddit has the answer :D from this Reddit post (copy and pasted here for your convenience)

“"! = The Exclamation Mark or 'Bang' Symbol -- refers to a short form for expressing the presence of a particular trait or defining quality of a character in a story. One which is usually not part of the original canon characterization, or is at least an extreme interpretation of the canon characterization. Most often written in the format of trait first and character's name last, with the symbol in between. (For example: "Smart!Jack" in Stargate: SG-1, indicating that the character of Jack O'Neill is secretly smarter than he pretends to be.) The compact format of [trait]![character's name] manages to quickly and clearly describe to the reader an accurate depiction of the author's choice in characterization before they even read the story."

http://www.angelfire.com/falcon/moonbeam/terms.html

EDIT: found some more

"Fan Fic communities will often have tags specific to their fandoms that they use to describe tropes that occur with some regularity (Slytherin!Harry, Future!Hiro, or Vamp!Willow, for example). The title of a given Fan Fic 'verse, or an abbreviation thereof, can also be used to indicate the version of a character from that setting, particularly when there have been major changes to them: UF!Utena, SME!Jadeite. Because this kind of tagging is ad hoc and in no way formalized, it's common to see unusual and/or idiosyncratic tags that indicate some truly wild variants, such as Cyborg!Xander or Amberite!Xena. The practice is starting to seep out from fanfiction, though, and can also be used when talking about similar things in the source material, such as, for example, Future!Hiro, Vamp!Willow, or Brainwashed!Undead!Starscream (Energon!Starscream for short). It's also used in a more tongue-in-cheek manner to categorize examples of the Mary Sue in a quick, concise form. It can also be used to identify a specific version of a character or work when it had been done by different people and/or in different media since those can vary wildly from the source material. Sometimes this uses the name of the specific author or simply the form of the work (Manga!Pride, Anime!Greed, Leroux!Erik, or Movie!Phantom) These tags are also occasionally used when dealing with customizable characters in computer games. In addition, tags like this are used in spreadsheet programs to denote what sheet the cell in question is on if it's not on the same sheet as the cell you're typing in. Bang paths were used in early e-mail to specify a UUCP route to a given user, and they're still part of the return path in Usenet"

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CharacterizationTags

EDIT AGAIN: Found even more. There seem to be conflicted views on the origins of this, but this one at least explicitly addresses them:

"Origins The adj!noun format is purported to have started in X-Files fandom. Good examples for this are Wombat's Spotter's Guide to the Common Krycek and the accompanying Spotter's Guide to the Common Mulder where several Krycek sub-species such as Bad to the Bone!Krycek, Bad but Lovin'!Krycek, Hot'n'dirty!Krycek or Misunderstood!Krycek and Mulder sub-subspecies such as Angst!Mulder, Basketcase!Mulder, HappySlut!Mulder, Sensitive!Mulder and WellAdjusted!Mulder are described. The first usage was Action!Mulder, referring to canon scenes where Mulder suddenly went all actiony (instead of talky), followed by Saint!Scully. Eventually they lost the initial capitals and the canon connections; by the time it hit other fandoms, it was being used to describe fannish things.[1] Some believe that the use of the exclamation mark came originally from coding, particularly javascript, where it has the meaning of "not". Thus, Saint!Scully would essentially mean, a characterization (in fanworks) of Scully as a saint which diverges from who Scully really is in the show. This possible origin remains obscure, though, and this belief about the bang appears nowadays quite rare."

http://fanlore.org/wiki/!

FINAL EDIT:

Thanks this was actually an interesting little side-trip into something I didn't previously know about.”

Also this:

“Thank you so much! This was exactly what I was after. :)

EDIT: I just found this additional explanation from a Tumblr post, makes sense!

It’s originally from C/C++ code. If you have a boolean variable that’s true or false and you put a ! in front of it, it just flips the value. If the variable is X and X is true, then !X is false. So it’s basically saying the character is the variable, ! activates a different version of the variable, and the identifier at the front tells you what version of the variable it is.”

I had wondered if it had something to do with programming, I’ve worked with C++ and javascript in the past 🤔 thanks for sending me down that rabbit hole anon!!

[kaiasky]

alright so we're tasting the corn starch, as folks are wont to do. and its yuckynasty, and we really wish we had some water, right.

oh no problem, i say, it looks like theres a corner store right over there! ill go grab a bottle or two. and before anyone can protest, off i go! store time! store time!

but dear listener. this was no ordinary store. for u see, the inoffensively-named "dashmart" may have conjured images of a grab-and-go convenience store, when i arrived it quickly became clear what this was. which was that this was a ghost-kitchen-style pickup location for doordash delivery service grocery shopping. it is immediately clear this is a disaster because the delivery drivers are having to present their phone for pickup, get handed some bags, step aside and fiddle with their phones, then present them again, get a new bag, over and over.

i awkwardly sidle up to the window, point at the water bottles that i can see in the shelves behind the man at the pickup counter. "I know this is like, an app thing, but is there any chance I can just give you a $5 and buy a couple water bottles?" i know even before I ask the question that the answer will be no. of course not. i am at the inconvenience store.

fucking FINE, i will download your stupid fucking app. and make an account, and forgot-my-password, and paste the code into the code paster thing. hey wait why

the spinner boxes on the code inputs block the boxes. on the phone it is impossible to enter the code. you cant even see half of the number that you input.

fucking FINE. maybe the app is out of date. i promised it would be a quick jaunt and ive been gone 10 minutes by now. do i text these new friends "hello. this store is evil. i have not forgotten about you. i will return as soon as i can"? or is that weird. updating app. oh hey it works now, it's letting me input the new code. WRONG. "ERROR DETECTED: <some hex string>".

fucking god dammit. i can see the water bottle. i am holding a crisp fiver. which can be, exchanged, for goods. and services. fuck this shit. fuck everything that tech has ever touched. there is a water bottle 10 ft from where I stand and a man who would like to give it to me and neither of us can do this because some chucklefucks in silicon valley couldn't do javascript good.

i bottle up this annoyance. i rap on the window, hi hello i cannot seem to get the app or website to work. i know this is silly but. if i give you $5, can you order me two water bottles on the app,?

uhhh, the man says. there's a service fee, and also I'm not sure, I might get in trouble for accepting cash, just check your email and see if you got a code, or...

FUCK this shit, i realize. there is a Real Ass Gronchry Store naught but 4 blocks away. that will have real things like "shopping carts" and "checkout lines, or perhaps self checkout". if i had not bothered with your fucking APP i would be back at the park by now. ridiculous.

[mournstera]

hi, hope you're well! i installed dusty and noticed that some photosets don't have rounded corners, even if the option is toggled on. i've tried to reinstall the theme a few times with the same result. is there an additional step i need to do? thank you!

Hi there! Good question! You're not doing anything wrong, I'm 99% sure that it's this:

smaller images or 'reaction' sized images are not being handled the way bigger single photos or photosets are being handled:

It's also got something to do with this post WIP made.

I *can* target each image, but then photosets would look like this:

It's an ever ongoing quest for me to solve. I'm still learning JavaScript, and there is possibly a way for me to manipulate the code, however I'm not there just yet. I hope I answered your question! and I'm sorry I don't have a proper answer just yet 🥲

[engelthm]

hi! is there a way to make aphaea theme have infinite scroll? it's so beautiful and fits well with my project but the next pagt thing is bothering me :(

hiya! thanks so much.

to answer your question generally, yes there probably is a way to add infinite scroll. unfortunately, i don't do theme customization (meaning i don’t add custom elements to my themes.)

infinite scroll works usually only if you create exceptions in the code for every individual javascript file, which for my themes that are quite js heavy, like aphaea, would be quite time consuming. As well, it could potentially mean that the end result would be laggy or glitchy.

sorry for the disappointment, however i hope you find something that better suits your needs!

[darkfictionjude]

I think I sent an ask, but it didn't work. If it did, ignore this one.

I'm the nonnie with the coding problems.

See, my JavaScript was empty. So I decided to write Config.history.controls = true; to see if that would work. It didn't.

It showed me Error [user-script-node-1]: Config is not defined.

Now, that probably means I didn't put some necessary code. Or that my project is doomed forever (I'm being a tad bit dramatic, maybe). The problem is I don't know what else to add. I'm someone who knows nothing about code, but I like twine better than choice script. So I'm trying to learn anyway.

I know you are willing to asnwer this sort of questions. But I still feel like I'm abusing your good will and stealing your time. After all, we are a pair of strangers, and I'm hidden behind the mask of anonymity. I feel like I'm finding you on a sidewalk and asking you how to do code out of nowhere just because I know you have done something similar before, even though you don't know me. Probably I'm just being paranoid.

If you don't have an answer, or aren't willing to continue providing aid and assistance, please tell me so. I'll stop asking about his specific issue then.

Ok two questions.

1. When you go to the Story in twine and click on Details does it say that the story format is Sugarcube? Make sure

2. Do you have more then one passage? Something after the first?

If both questions are yes then tell me and if you’re comfortable you could send me a private message and ss to see for myself

The thing is by nature the back buttons are defaulted to true. I just created a random story myself to test it and the back buttons are there with this version of sugarcube

But really don’t sweat asking me questions about this it’s no bother

[unsoundedcomic]

Hi Ashley, not your usual lore question here and maybe you've answered this before, but I'm thinking of venturing into webcomics and you're one of the prime examples of taking someone taking advantage of the medium's possibilities. What skills did you have to learn beyond art and storytelling to take advantage of the web in your layouts and page turns? Were there specific web design tools? And can you recommend any other creators/inspirations that push the bounds of web-comics?

Hey Patrick!

I was able to cheat a little with the web stuff because I already knew html and css from my fandom days. I used to build and run silly video game sites and character shrines. In the earlier days of the internet you really had to have at least a sketchy knowledge of web design to express yourself, whether through building a site of your own or putting together a forum signature.

These days not so much. There are programs that will design it all for you. I am not up to date on what they are because I still do it all by hand, but if someone could suggest a good wysiwyg web editor in the comments for our friend, that would be awesome.

Most webcomic artists these days are leaving this matter up to a third party host like Tapas or Webtoons. If you do host yourself, you'll need to buy hosting, upload everything to your own server, all that jazz. It's not hard, and many tutorials are just a Google search away.

All the fancy stuff? Animations? Page turns? Also a Google search away :) I can tell you what mechanics to pursue but I'd need to know the baseline of your knowledge. Are you familiar with html and css? Do you know how to work with javascript? These are the tools you use to get elements to do cool things in the browser window. You don't have to reinvent the wheel at all, you can find code elsewhere and tweak it to suit your purposes, but you might be lost if you don't first understand how a webpage is put together.

I learned all this stuff organically and on my own due to my aforementioned weeby fandom days, so it's hard to advise someone else on where to get started. Probably install one of the editors that someone is going to nicely suggest in the comments, build your layout, get your art together, put it all online, and then list out the concrete steps of what you want to do. Then you can start Googling for the code to get you there.

Good luck!

[radiation]

How is RPGmaker compared to Unity? Would you recommend it?

I think its difficult to compare RPGMaker to a lot of other game engines. Unity is pretty open ended in what you can make but you gotta know programming, whereas RPGMaker is kinda hard coded to make a very specific type of game very easily and without programming knowledge — the game in question being extremely generic retro JRPGs. If you wanna make something that extends beyond that you are gonna have to mess around a lot with plugins which alter and augment the preexisting structure the engine has in place.

The crazy thing is, RPGMaker (at least MV) is lacking MANY features that it by all means should have. My game doesn’t have a lot of mechanics and was designed around scope in a lot of ways, yet I am legitimately using 70 or so plugins that other people made to make it feel good. Some of those plugins’ functions include -Adding name plates over the characters’ text boxes -Making it so sprites don’t flash in and out when switching -Allowing for ANY kind of complexity in character animations -Giving you any sort of camera control -Hiding combat related UI in the menus. All of this being shit the engine SHOULD support by all means but for whatever reason it just doesn’t

I think if you’re someone who knows a lot about programming, the engine is probably gonna feel kinda bad and itd probably just be easier and less frustrating to build a lot of functionality from the ground up in an engine like Unity, GameMaker, or Godot. If you lack some experience and feel pretty confident that your game can reasonably fit within what the engine is capable of then RPGMaker is probably a good choice. And personally despite the lack of features being frustrating at times, I find myself having a lot of fun with the goofy wraparound method of problem solving you have to use and have found myself making some really cool creative decisions by working within the engine’s limits

It definitely helps a lot to know programming fundamentals either way (I’m not great but I have some experience with Java and C# and I feel like it’s been very helpful with managing project structure) so that’s something I’d recommend looking into either way if you’re not too acquainted

And I’ve mentioned it but again. Since RPGMaker is so limited you definitely DEFINITELY want to plan your project very heavily around scope especially if you don’t have much confidence that you can really delve into JavaScript programming. For example I wouldn’t recommend planning for complex UI - you will fuckin hate yourself for that. And if you’re adding combat you’re gonna wanna be super realistic about it. What I did to plan around scope was play ~10 different RPGMaker games sorta like what I wanted like to be before I started getting too many concrete ideas about what my game would look like so I could get a pretty solid idea of what was doable and mold my plans around that

Also I wanna point out - most tedious, large scope thing about my game is by far the character animations. Once I figured out just how itd work it wasn’t too bad but is still a bit annoying - but know I worked in a very very wraparound way that is way way way more involved than most — or hell, ANY RPGMaker games I’ve seen. It’s doable, can be really worth it if you’re willing to put in the time and effort, and is something I’d be happy to explain if anyone was interested. BUT i feel the need to make it clear that complex animation is very much not at all a baseline functionality of the engine since it might be easy to assume otherwise with how much it’s used in my own game

Apologies if that was long but I love talking about this stuff, and if anyone is interested I am always happy to talk about and answer any questions about my process especially with RPGMaker in mind :D

[eossa]

Change Post Type Indicator?

Hello, I have a question, maybe some of you have an answer / solution for it.

With the NPF posts, the default post type is always "text". In a theme, it kind of looks, well, silly if everything has a text indicator, even when the only content is an image or video.

I tried several things with CSS (tragically you cannot nest the :has() selector it seems) and consulted with ChatGPT due to my very limited knowledge of JavaScript. The result is something like in the JS Fiddle below.

While the code works in the JS Fiddle, it does not work in my theme, as can be seen in the example post below:

Thank you in advance for any suggestions, help, solutions to make this thing work! <3

Solved thanks to the amazing @lushwave !!

[katesprocessblog]

Week #3

Introduction

For this week I knew I needed to spend a little time narrowing down what I wanted my topic to be. Next week I plan on spending most of my time on that task but I still need to do some thinking now because I’m at a point where I’m encountering recurring issues:

Issue #1: I know I want to do something personal relating to finding one’s identity and how hard that can be growing up when you feel othered or like you don’t belong. I just don’t know if I want to use the lens of nostalgia, horror, or both to convey feelings of discomfort? I’ve enjoyed the research I’ve done but I just don’t feel totally set on that yet even though I spent the last two weeks largely looking into it.

Issue #2: I haven’t seen a lot of horror? It’s a genreI stayed away from for so long, and it’s only been a recent thing that I’ve felt like I want to explore more and I feel drawn to, but I'm not knowledgeable on the subject so I need to decide if I want to pivot off of this or not. I think the form of horror I’ve consumed the most is through video games so I could spend a week diving into that.

I am hoping my research this week leads me in the right direction.

Research

I sent out a google form this week asking questions related to horror/thriller genres in media people consumed growing up and how they might have been affected by them. I also wanted to know why people really like these genres or why not.

Do you consume media (games, films, TV, books, videos) containing horror/psychological/thriller elements?

When you were a teen/preteen, what were some of the memorable pieces of media in those genres that you consumed?

Are you drawn to these genres? Why or why not?

Do you remember any media in these genres being particularly nostalgic for you?

Are you easily scared or frightened? Did/do you have a lot of nightmares often now or when you were younger?

I sent this out on monday to some friends and as of writing my blog post I’ve gotten 8 responses. There is a wide variety of answers which I’m very happy about. I found it interesting that I had responses in all 4 quadrants of this table. 

Enjoys horror and gets scared easily

Doesn’t enjoy horror and attributes that to getting scared easily

Enjoys horror and isn’t scared easily

Doesn’t enjoy horror and isn’t scared easily

The question about nightmares led to some interesting thought processes and I might look into that more. Like I had one person say that they are super anxious and got a lot of nightmares as a kid but don’t like horror not because it’s scary but because they find a lot of it to be “cheesy”. Another person said they have to watch horror media during the day which I definitely relate to. It reminded me though how the dark is an extra layer of scariness because of the unknown that comes with not being able to see your surroundings well. 

Overall there’s a lot more that I learned from the responses so far and I think it helps me find some more things to look into as potential points of views surrounding maybe the eyes and identity or nightmares and identity etc.

Creative Research

One of my friends had mentioned I should look into OpenProcessing, which is an online platform that allows people to share and explore creative coding projects made with p5.js and other programming languages. It's like a social network for artists and programmers, where you can find, showcase, and collaborate on interactive artworks and visual experiments. I just started learning JavaScript and using the p5 library this year and the generative art side of the website drew me in.

Some examples of cool things that I was looking into on the website:

https://openprocessing.org/sketch/1270210

https://openprocessing.org/sketch/2065676

https://openprocessing.org/sketch/2095152

Over the week I ended up looking into tutorials on the basics of making sketches. This one guy has a good series on different topics like shapes, loops, color, trig functions, noise. I just spent time learning more about generative art and I think these skills can help me in the future of wherever I head in my project. 

Reflections

This week I think I gained some good insights. I know I want to work with identity and research something related to that pain and discomfort that comes with trying to find your identity, especially growing up in the preteen and teenage years. My creative research was not connected really to my reflection but I do think I will use what I learned in the future of my project. I know for next week I will continue to expand upon what we worked on in class with identifying a point of view and I have some really good ideas I just need to look for gaps in information now.

[izicodes]

woah! just saw your bio change to software engineer. how did you transition? is it any different than web dev?

i also went on a TikTok rabbit hole and people are saying it’s useless to learn html/css and it’s not an actual language. honestly idk why I thought it would be easy to learn html > css > javascript > angular > react and somehow land a good paying job…

it’s gonna take YEARS for me to have a career, i feel old… especially with no degree

Hiya! 🩶

This is a long reply so I answered your question in sections below! But in the end, I hope this helps you! 🙆🏾‍♀️

🔮 "How did you transition?"

So, yeah my old job title was "Junior Web Developer" at a finance firm, and now my new title is "Frontend Software Engineer"! In terms of transition, I didn't make too much of a change.

After I quit my old job, I focused more on Frontend technologies that were relevant, so I focused on React.js and Node.js. I used YouTube, books, and Codeacademy. My first React project was >> this Froggie project <<~! Working on real-life projects such as the volunteering job I did (only for a month) where they used the technologies I was learning. So basically I did this:

decides to learn react and node 🤷🏾‍♀️

"oh wait let me find some volunteering job for developers where they use the tech I am learning so I can gain some real-life experience 🤔"

experienced developers in the team helped me with other technologies such as UI tools, and some testing experience 🙆🏾‍♀️

I did the volunteering work for both fun and learning with experienced developers and... I was bored and wanted to feel productive again... 😅

So for transitioning, I focused on learning the new technologies I wanted to work in and got some work experience (though it was volunteering) to back up if I can work in an environment with the tech. I still live with my family so I could do the volunteering job and have time to self-study whilst being okay financially (though I was tight with money haha) 😅👍🏾

🔮 "Is it any different than web dev?"

The old job was focused on using C# and SQL (including HTML, CSS, and JavaScript but fairly small) to make the websites, they were fairly basic websites for clients to use just to navigate their information needed. They weren't fancy cool web design because they didn't need to be, which was what made me bored of the job and wanted a change.

I am only a week into the job and have been working on small tickets (features for the site), but I think after a month or two into the job I will make a proper judgment on the difference~! So far, it's kind of the same thing I did in my old job but with new workflow tools, React-based projects, and funny people to work with 😅🙌🏾

🔮 "People are saying it’s useless to learn HTML/CSS and it’s not an actual language."

Yes HTML is a markup language and CSS is a stylesheet but they are the foundation of like 90% of the websites on the internet, I wouldn't ever call them "useless". Frameworks such as React, Django, Flask, etc still require HTML and CSS code to make the website's structure and styling. CSS frameworks like Tailwind and Bootstrap 5 still use CSS as their base/foundation. Not useless at all.

Don't focus on what other people are doing and focus on your own learning. I repeat this all the time on my blog. Just because one or a couple people online said one technology is useless doesn't mean it is (this is applied to most things in tech). Someone told me jQuery was entirely useless and no bother learning it - I did it anyway and it helped me better understand JavaScript. Anyhoo, try things YOURSELF before listening to what people say - make your own judgment. Not going to let a random Tech bro online whine about how annoying Python or C or whatever is to ruin my want to learn something. (This is all coming from a girl who loves web development very much's point of view :D)

🔮 "I thought it would be easy to learn html > css > javascript > angular > react and somehow land a good paying job"

Web Dev route, I love it! That's literally the same steps I would have taken if I had to start again~! For each new tech you learn, make a bunch of projects to 1) prove to yourself that you can apply what you've learned 2) experience 3) fill that portfolio~! 😎🙌🏾

With Angular and React, I would pick one or the other and focus on being really good at it before learning another framework!

I also recommend volunteering jobs, freelancing, helping a small business out with free/paid m

Lastly, you do not need a degree to get a job in Web Development. I mean look at me? My apprenticeship certificate is the same value as finishing school at 18, so in the UK it would be A-Levels, and I completed it at the ripe age of 21! I have no degree, I applied for university and got a place but I will give that space up for someone else, I'm not ready for university just yet! haha... (plus erm it's expensive at the end, what? even for the UK...). Sure, I used to avoid the job postings that were like "You need a computer science degree" but now if I were job searching I would apply regardless.

People switching careers in their 40s going into tech instead are making it, you can switch anytime in your lifetime if you have the means to! (everyone's situation is different I understand).

I'm not too good at giving advice but I hope in the rambling I made some sense? But yeah that's all! 😎