User blog:Pgrobban/Some notes on the future development of Crystal Calculator

Hi everyone,

I'm happy to see that many of you are still using my Crystal Calculator web app. I have been meaning to do a complete rehaul of the code for the release of the new season, but due to complications at work and my love life, I had to postpone my vacation, and consequently, my development on it for a while.

The new version will probably not bring any new visual changes (mostly because I suck at design, lol). It is simply a way for me to break down the code into more managable chunks and making it easier to do changes when it comes to things like Trophy Treasures. Hopefully I can get this version up and running within the next few weeks, if I can solve the technical difficulties.

Technical mumbojumbo
I want to do a rewrite of the code in ES2015 (a new version of Javascript) which allows for cleaner syntax and most of all, modularity. Browsers don't have support for this yet, so you have to use a transpiler, which is something that converts code from the new version to the old versions. This step is working for me.

The next step is that I want to have includes (require syntax) of other packages or modules, and bundle them into only one Javascript file of the app that the browser sees. This is what I've been having issues with, since I want to include and bundle a JSON to store the treasure data, as well as normal Javascript that I have required from other modules. I'm currently trying different build systems to achieve the result that I want.

I'm using Angular as the framework for creating reusable components (directives) as I have some work experience with this. If I had more time, I'd probably learn React+Redux (maybe for version 3?) Man, the Javascript frontend community changes too quickly.

Update July 12: I finally started my vacation and sorted out some issues with the build system. I have some minor issues left before I decide on how I want to structure the code. I expect normal development to start within the next few days and last about a week before I will release the new version.

Update July 15: Having some issues with dynamically generating the tables for Certificate and Trophy Treasures. I might have to hard code their data instead of calculating them as I did with the previous version. Another issue I have is the way the directives for generating the treasure rows for these treasures. When the user selects a treasure, it should replace the existing one, but it's not.

Update July 17: Finally got selectable certificate and trophy treasures to work due to some stupid mistakes in the code that took me two days to debug.

Update July 19: Alpha release

To-do list:
 * Setting up development environment Done
 * Setting up build system Done, although needs more optional steps that I won't bother with until release
 * Treasure row directive Done
 * Treasure table directive Done
 * Result box directive and main controller for calculating results Done
 * Selectable treasure options for Certificate and Trophy treasures directive Done
 * Add/Removable treasures for the Chest treasures directive Done
 * Possible alpha release In testing
 * Getting loading and saving data to work
 * Possible beta release
 * Adding minification to build
 * Possible final release
 * For v.2.1 integrate the different kinds of treasure tables into one directive