Evolving From A Blog To A Game Site
Infrastructure Almost Ready
The last two weeks have been all about building out the infrastructure for the games and getting a uniform score submission system in place. It's almost ready. I don’t want to add any new games until I’m sure this setup isn’t going to change again. There’s still room for improvement but I’m close.
I want this site to be easy to use. No accounts, no signups, just play games and go about your life. I wasted too much time coding user account logic, but I honestly don’t see the point. You shouldn’t have to register just to put your name on a scoreboard.
The idea is simple. Visit Wisedocks, play some dumb games while you’re on the toilet, and move on. Same logic applies to FartDump.com. Both sites are basically evolving in parallel, just with different flavors of humor. FartDump gets the lowbrow, Wisedocks gets the dark and sarcastic. Either way, you’re here to be entertained and waste some time.
The games already live on the site are still in beta, and they’ll go through a bunch of updates as I keep improving the backend. Right now, you can submit your scores by just typing your initials, arcade-style. When you finish a game, you can either play again or leave. I’m still playing around with how those prompts work. I might drop the popup and just stick a leave button somewhere. We’ll see what feels right.
High Scores
Now that anyone can submit a score, I set up a homepage marquee to show off the latest high scores. Building the actual marquee was easy. Writing the database query to make sure it wasn’t full of spam and duplicate entries was a pain in the ass. The simplest features always end up taking the most time. But it works, so go try “Click The Damn Potato” and see if you can break 40 points in 30 seconds. Good luck, it’s tougher than it looks.
Once the backend is locked down, I’m getting back to work on Baby Launcher. That game is basically broken on mobile screens, so fixing the canvas size and baby physics is up next. I’m also considering adding a random foot to kick the baby for you. Just because. I’m still new to building HTML5 games, but I’ve learned more JavaScript this month than in the last twenty years. At this point, I should be a pro, but here we are.
FartDump
Spent around twelve hours reworking FartDump yesterday. The header still looks chunky, but the site flows better now and the secrets form is on its own page. It’s not as simple as it used to be, but traffic has stayed steady, so I’m going to keep experimenting. At this point, I’m just treating Wisedocks and FartDump as sister sites. Wisedocks gets the cynical stuff, FartDump stays lighter and sillier.
Blog B Gone
The blog is coming off the homepage. Nobody reads it anyway, and it just confuses the hell out of search engines. If you are reading this, hi, send me a message if you want, but don’t be surprised if I don’t answer. I’m always open to feature requests though.
Google is making it clear that informational sites are done for with AI Overviews, unless you’re an AI chatbot or a billion-dollar publisher. Traffic on Stellar History has tanked since AI results took over. That’s what finally pushed me to pivot to games and interactive features. So, thanks Google, you greedy bastards!
The internet keeps changing, and you either adapt or you get left behind. I’m honestly enjoying it. Building out the arcade-style stuff is what I always wanted for Wisedocks but never bothered to finish. It’ll take time, but I’m actually having fun learning new things again.
Alright, that’s it for now. Bye. Go play something.
