orels1

JS dev @x-team by day / game hoarder by night 🎮

[orels1]

My second Substance Designer material

This is a lot of fun! And yeah, still following tutorials. But closer to the end of it - I was diverging more and more - seeking a look that was more pleasing to my own eye.

[orels1]

My first procedural material made in Substance Designer

I mean, I was following a tutorial, but hey, I’m just starting!

[orels1]

Let there be light!

Continuing my blender stuff. Man, lighting really does make or break the scene.

[orels1]

So I got back to blender

After 2-3 months of not touching it - I went back and re-did the lamp I built as a first posable prop back in the day. And since I had to re-learn a lot of things since I totally forgot how all of that worked, but it was a fun process.

Here are the results of weekends spent with the blender.

I’m a complete newbie and there are still a lot of issues with that model, but I think it turned out pretty great nonetheless!

[orels1]

Lack of stuff

So yeah, I’m currently going through a weird “period” (not the best word, but it works for this thing quite well) in my life, when I’m crazy obsessed with something.

I’ve played 37 hours of Warframe in the last 7 days and I’ve streamed the majority of that on twitch. That’s not something I usually do, but it happens every time I get hooked.

And this is both a good and a bad thing. On one hand - it works well when I’m trying to do a deep dive into some kind of a new field for me, be it a new tech stack, a piece of software, a game, or something completely unknown to me before, like 3D modeling or even real-world writing (with pen, paper and all that stuff).

So yeah, I’m going through this with Warframe right now. I think I have a couple days worth of this left in me if nothing changes drastically, and then I’ll be able to get back to the routine.

So just bear with me. I have some cool things to share in mind, so I hope anyone who finds this blog (lol) will get something useful out of it

[orels1]

Main reason for me posting so little lately

Got a bit hooked on streaming... again.

Was really enjoying playing warframe, so I apologize.

Meanwhile, just got some swag from @StdLibHQ guys! They even wrote a little letter (you know, that thing where you write letters on a piece of paper by hand(!!)).

[orels1]

No more VPN pain 👍

So, here’s the deal. The client we’re working with here uses Cisco’s AnyConnect as the VPN client, and my god I hate it. It doesn't remember the password, slows down everything, and just generally not stable. It also dies when there is any other VPN connected at the same time.

I was looking around for the better solution, and I finally found it - Shimo! (#not sponsored).

Basically, it works just like any other VPN client (free Tunnel Bick, for example). But apart from OpenVPN protocol, it supports the old IPSEC/L2TP and Cisco’s AnyConnect!

What’s even better - it allows you to setup custom triggers, so when you open a particular website - it turns the specific connection on!

The above is especially important to me, since I use a lot of different streaming services, and most of them have content that is region-locked. Even when you’re paying for it, which is sad.

The only issue is - it’s pretty pricey. But! If you use SetApp like I do - it’s a part of their $5/mo subscription, which is way more manageable, considering how many other apps are there.

So yeah, definitely recommended https://www.shimovpn.com/

[vaniladesign]

from @angrymikko - ”Hidden Coffeehouse” #artwork Would you climb all the way up there just for a small cup of amazing coffee? https://www.instagram.com/p/BhGYtQ5gQfq/

[orels1]

Looks like something straight out from an Uncharted game

[orels1]

A Way Out impressions 🎯

So we just beat this one with a friend of mine, and I can say that it's one of the best story-focused games I've played so far.

If you need a good reference point for this one - you can look at David Cage's games (e.g., Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls). The core gameplay is mostly QTE and minigames, with some dialogue here and there and a couple of possible story branches. But since this game is aimed to be played together with a different person - that changes everything.

Every time you do something together - it feels incredible. In the Prison chapters especially.

All of those moments when one of you distracts a guard, while the other one does something sketchy - feel so good.

The game is also filled with different references and easter eggs from things like "Shawshank Redemption", "Scarface" and many others. And they are not as blunt as "here, look, this is a reference", but they all feel very natural and fit in the world quite well.

If you have someone to play this game with - you should pick it up 👌

[orels1]

Ready Player One 👌

[orels1]

Authenticated client in RAWGer

Eeeh, so, remember how I eluded to authenticated requests coming to RAWGer in yesterday’s post? Well, they’re here! At least in their basic form.

The authenticated client is available since v1.1.0

It breaks back-compat a bit (I’m sorry, but it’s not like many people using my lib, so I figured while I still can - I’d rather switch to something more future-proof sooner, than later. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The new way to init the lib.

const Rawger = require('rawger'); const rawger = await Rawger(); const { users } = rawger;

And to init an authenticated client.

const Rawger = require('rawger'); const rawger = await Rawger({ email: '[email protected]', password: 'do-not-share-this' }); const { users } = rawger;

I’ve also updated the fetcher to be authenticated as well, so if the lib doesn’t have a wrapper around the endpoint you need - just use the fetcher from the initialized rawger package.

const { fetcher } = rawger;

Fetcher has 3 methods so far, but that should be enough

get(path, options)

post(path, data, options)

patch(path, data, options)

They are not documented in the docs yet 😭should be soon tho, I promise!

Anyway, that’s it for now! I think I’ll take a break for a bit. So feel free to use fetcher for the missing stuff for a bit :P

RAWGer: npm | github | docs

[orels1]

So I've started a physical Bullet Journal to complement my digital one. And I can say that after months of not writing a single word by hand—this is quite an experience

[orels1]

RAWGer 1.0! Now with caching! ⚡

This was a bit of a long time coming, and it might be a bit too early to call it a 1.0, but it brought a major API change, so I thought that changing a major version was necessary.

The new setup is far more versatile and allows for greater expandability in the future ☝

Now a basic setup will look something like this

const Rawger = require('rawger'); // initialize rawger with default 60s cache // you can supply a different timeout (check examples in the docs) // or use rawger.purgeCache(); to force-clear the cache altogether const rawger = Rawger(); const { users } = rawger; // get user profile const profile = (await users('orels1').profile()).get();

You can also supply your own cache timeout

const rawger = Rawger(120); // for 120s timeout

Or purge the cache at any point if needed

const rawger = Rawger(); // do stuff rawger.purgeCache();

Cool, huh?

Still, a lot of work needs to be done, to make this package usable for anything sophisticated. Authorized requests are pretty high on my list so you can look out for those in the future.

Since, you know, auth handling is one of the main reasons you might want to use an api client instead of doing it yourself 😜

But for now - that’s it. Have fun using it!

RAWGer: npm | github | docs

[orels1]

[orels1]

I’m hooked on Notion 👌

So yeah. After it was shared on the X-Team slack - I kinda got hooked on it. And before i knew it - the kanban board and docs for one of my current personal projects migrated there. My weekly agenda migrated there, the travel plans and future logs are there as well! ⚡

And I don’t wanna stop at all. It just feels really nice to use. And I like that it’s all in one place so I can use it in any form I want. 

So if I have a thing and for some reason it would be awesome to have a structured table or a calendar or a kanban board right on the same page - I can totally do that. And what’s even better - you can use the same dataset with different views so you can have a list of completed kanban cards in a table and a usual overview board!

So yeah. i’m hooked… Just wanted to share so maybe someone will also give it a go 👍

In terms of pricing - it’s free for some time. They divide all of their data into “blocks” so a kanban card or a plain page is a block (basically any single piece of their modular system) and they give you 600 of those for free + you can add blocks from your mobile with any limitations. And after that, it’s $8/mo/user. Which is ok for me, since I use it as a personal tool.

Also - the ability to share their pages made it so I can publish docs for rawger right from there, which is a nice plus.

[orels1]

A vue.js-based project to practice transitions/animations

So here at X-Team we have a lot of weekly challenges as a part of different quests. Currently, I’m participating in the vue-quest, and the challenge this week was to make an SPA with vue and use transitions in different shapes or forms.

So here goes

Staggered transitions for the games on the deck

Button animations to give feedback when the game is completed

Route transitions between backlog/dropped

List transitions on items being deleted

Hoped to also add a notifications component (that was an additional task, but didn’t get to that, sadly).

Full-sized preview is available here (gfycat)

Was pretty fun tho! Also got to use my own rawg.io API client - rawger. And that was a good practice since I can better see the ways to improve that in the future. Caching is high on my list, for example.

Here’s the source of the project. If anyone’s interested.

[orels1]

RAWGer v0.4.0

Don’t know how long I will keep it up, but for now - another update

Added support for fetching user’s reviews

const reviews = (await users('orels1').reviews()).get(); // returns the list of user's reviews

In terms of the API docs

Added the documentation for the user’s reviews endpoint

And with that - time to sleep 💤

RAWGer: npm | github | docs

rawg.io unofficial api docs