WEEK OF 2023/01/27: THE SECOND BLOG POST LOL!

right now these are manually created by me...but eventually... they will be automated too hahahah!!!

I gotta fix somethin up with github actions and payments, we have a crazy automated system with FNF, but since it's on a private branch, we only have a certain amount of MINUTES we can use! I need to write something like a discord bot that can run 24/7 and/or doesn't USE the as much Github minutes... in the FNF repo, there's definitely room for improvement in terms of like... MINUTE optimization... lol

anyways this week was a bit of a slow week with the BLOG DEVELOPMENTS. It's mostly me, ninjamuffin!! writing blogs this week! I'll try to give people some insight on some things we been cookin up

FUNKIN RESOURCES

written by cam :3

This week I started what is currently known as funkin-resources on the FunkinCrew github. The TLDR is that it's hopefully our little central place for people to add to and contribute neat little FNF related things. Modding tools, music tools, anything related to the game like that. Right now it's very much focused around modding and whatnot, but I do wonder with some of the tech stuff we are cooking, if things might shift in a different way. If we make some crazy high score stuff, maybe there will be stuff like high score guides? IDK but I think it's interesting to watch hehe..

As mentioned in the repo, it's inspired by the "Awesome" lists on Github. Personally whenever I've found myself interested in something, a coding language, topic, or interest, usually... there's a pretty hefty "Awesome" list on Github! peer to peer? the rust programming language? terminals? If you spend any amount of time in the main github Awesome list you're likely to find a topic you've been curious about but maybe didn't know where to start! It's like if you asked someone, "hey, I want to learn X, but how do I start?" and they give you every damn website/article that helped them personally and send you on your way. A nice little shortcut like that!

In a broader view, it's good to cultivate self sufficiency and fulfillment from self-teaching and learning with a community! And we can't take credit for too much of that in terms of Friday Night Funkin'. There is a god damn SHIT TON of resources, guides, tutorials out there that have existed long before I even thought of something like this, and there's already been many successful communities of people coming together to help each other! Discord server, people asking for help on twitter, watching tutorials with each other. So far it's been pretty damn thriving!

I think it can be just slightly one step beyond though. I like to hope with us being the official real mf devs, the tighter we get into those aspects of the game and COMMUNITY, all the more enriching it can possibly be, especially for outsiders who haven't taken a look at much modding stuff yet.

Ideally I'd like to cook up a bit of a section in each of these weekly blog posts. Maybe showing the past week's worth of additions to the resources list so that people can keep an eye on just the fresh stuff (inspiration by haxe.io weekly roundups). Or maybe each week there's an addition that's the "resource of the week" type deal! Could all be fun I think! And makes things play nicely together with this blog, and other aspects of our lil ventures or whateva heheh

Anyways, you can check out funkin-resources on Github: https://github.com/FunkinCrew/funkin-resources

Eventually we also plan on it being directly on the website itself! Nice little homepage for all that heheh.

Ease of use: Blogging

written by cam ninjamuffin99

One thing about quirky little blog stuff is sorta EASE OF USE. I want our blogging system to be as easy and intuitive to use as essentially posting small updates to twitter, and be accessible to anyone on the team internally to write nearly whatever they please.

It's a hard job to get artists to write and format markdown files on some niche internal blogging software, hell, even getting someone to open up Google Docs can be fussy. The idea I have is to connect it to a Discord channel/bot, and then "write" blog posts within discord. Everyone on the damn internet uses discord, and it's available on mobile, PC, and even web. It would be trivially easy to whip up something small, and post it to the blog. Then anyone on the team has the ease of use and access to post to a blog.

I do want to put more thought into this ease of use stuff. I DO want these blog posts to continue on as long as we can. We've been thinking about it for a while, and a few inspirations always come up. Factorio has an awesome dev log series "Factorio Friday Facts" and they really dive into the nitty gritty of their work. Another is the S&Box and Garry Newman's blog. It's definitely been done before, but the S&Box devlog is inspiration behind having just a bunch of "mini" blog posts within a larger post. Something as small as a tweet, within a blog post!

Even now, the system is merely setup for Github issues, and I don't have the Discord bot just yet, but already it feels pretty damn slick to write things that are on my mind, and post it to the Github issues and jot it all down.

I like the idea of a Github bot because I sorta wanna refresh my skills with DEPLOYMENT bullshit. I rarely mess around with any of that stuff, and I find it very interesting!!

I also think writing Discord bots are a nice cute way to practice coding in a new language, so I will be a freak... and program it in a language I've never used before! It's good to expand ur brain bwah!

Small Kickstarter update

written by ninjamuffin99

Small kickstarter update is that pins, and posters and whatnot should be HOPEFULLY beginning manufacturing sometime next week. Will be another follow up blog about it sometime next week!

Closing thoughts

it's been on and off in terms of game stuff biz stuff and cute lil side project biz. wrapping up dipshit tax prep, which the deadline is on the 31st!!! unfortunately as we get a bit busier with game work, we have less time to write for this cute little blog but I hope that this week is still decent substantial heheh

as mentioned earlier, we also ran out of github free minutes lol, by the time next blog comes out we'll get new minutes... lol!

SONG OF THA WEEK: