Week 18 Developer Update

I struggle sometimes with consistency on tasks like writing updates. So I hope to start a format I think I can keep up by giving weekly updates.

Focus: Automation

The primary drive this week was to get the site updates automated. Up until now I have been retrieving the data downloads (DDLs), putting them into a ZIP file, uploading them to the server, unzipping on the server, restarting the server.

With the recent edition of the news being available, that was another thing that required automation to even stay remotely current.

So this week, I had to rewrite the software that we’ve been using for the past 4 years (May of 2018), from scratch. It needed to do more (news, events, summons, etc.), faster, and it can’t fail.

While I was at it, I also threw in support for various additional game languages (sneak peak: https://fr.dokkan.wiki).

Struggles

A struggle that I expected was that there’s a lot of components to this software, and I didn’t feel comfortable using off the shelf software to fill in any pieces lest there’s something wrong with them and then I’d be stuck.

A struggle that I did not expect was how do I tell the Wiki server that new data is ready? I didn’t want to restart the server every time, that’s barbaric. Plus, someone could go to the site or be in the middle of downloading an animation and their connection just dies.

The problem is the site runs off a 50MB SQLite database file. I can’t just replace the file while the server is running. I spent way too many hours fiddling with it. Any solution I found that worked slowed down the site as a whole so it just wasn’t worth it. I’ll stick with force restarting the server and live with the consequences of dropped users.

Another side-adventure was the Dokkan captcha problem. I was really hoping to avoid this issue but it reared it’s ugly head this week and had to be dealt with. Wouldn’t it be nice if Bandai had a public cooperation API? This was one of the things I thought Riot Games did very well.

Finally, there are a small but noticable number LUA animation scripts in Dokkan that are just broken. I don’t know what black voodoo the game uses to run them, but the rest of the world can’t. Previously I have been fixing them on the fly as the linked animation plays on the site. The problem with this is speed. Another thing that the new automation software is doing is fixing the game animations ahead of time. I’ve identified an additional 70 broken scripts to fix.

Results

The new software is now comparable to the older version so I can begin to use it on the live server. The next DDL should be done without my intervention.

For features that people are asking for, this is a pretty boring week. However, I believe it was important to build a stronger foundation before adding more to the top.

Next

The previous Patreon feature poll included News, Events, and Summons. So there’s still work left to do here. With news done, here’s the upcoming:

• Summons seem easier, so I’m going to start there
• Support animated summon banners
• Summon simulator may come with this update
• Events are going to be a bit of a big update
• Support incorporation of the maps
• Show enemy and boss information
• Show enemy and boss on the maps and be interactive
• Link event to announcement

Beyond

There’s two big things I want to focus on next: automated translations of the Japan game version, and finish super attack animation features.

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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