Dokkan Wiki - Week 19 Developer Update

Late update…sue me!

Focus: Bug Fixes and Performance

With last week being focused on automation of new updates, this week was primarily bug-fixes and performance.

Even thought the automation was done, it was untested, as we hadn’t yet gotten a DDL yet. So when the DDL hit, there were some things to fix.

One of the main things was the site wasn’t refreshing it’s data after the new download. Basically when there is a database update, the entire server is restarted. If it’s assets or news, refresh the cache. The problem? I locked the databases as read-only and immutable, so the server never checked for updates. Oops.

The next thing was I wanted to improve how the content of new DDL’s are conveyed. I started with the two primary motivators: new cards, and release dates. With that, the Upcoming New Cards section was added to the home page. I stole the look from Dokkan news, and after some tweaking, was happy with the result.

As we all know, I’m terrible at updates. So I wanted to post a screenshot to Twitter. So I created a new hidden page https://dokkan.wiki/updatebot. This page displays information a bit different, and is easier to screenshot. Hopefully I can expand upon this page and add other interesting content to the update post.

I took a small detour and replaced the font used in the news. I ended up getting an Adobe Font subscription so everything was legit. I’m not 100% happy with it, but I think it’s better.

Finally, I wanted to improve the start-up performance of the server. On launch, the server needed to execute every game Lua file (super attack scripts), to determine which had KO screen animations. This…kind of sucks. Especially now that there was 5 more game regions to scan. So I moved that effort to the asset download process. Server now restarts in under a second, nice!

Stealth New Features

While I was bug fixing, I added some new features that had been requested but not really prioritized:

First, an option added for Sticky Navigation. You can turn this on in the options. What it does is that it keeps the main menu on screen as you scroll. It also makes the menu a bit more compact. Finally, clicking on a blank area causes you to jump back to the top of the page.

Second, the card-has-a-sticker animation is now toggleable in the options. The same animation the game uses to indicate that you have applied a sticker to a card now indicates that a card has a sticker on the site. I have it off by default for now, for performance reasons, but you can turn it on in the options.

Patreon Requested Features Progress

The previous Patreon feature poll included News, Events, and Summons.

This week, I’ve laid the structure for the summons. A new feature like this has a few steps: how do I get the data, how do I store the data, how do I efficiently request that data when someone goes to the site, and how do I best display that data.

In the global database leak that happened a while back, we have a complete understanding to how Dokkan stores summon banner data. I…don’t really like it. Not to say Dokkan engineers did a bad job, it’s just not how I would do it.

For the display part, I definitely am planning on having the new animated banners, rates, featured and unfeatured (with all the standard search, filters, sort goodness).

It’s coming along nicely and Supporters should be seeing some demos and examples very soon.

If you want to support the site, influence its direction, and get perks like ad-free browsing, support Dokkan Wiki on Patreon.

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