8h 53m 48s logged

You want it, I got it!

How feedback from the community helped me improve Onlinja

When I shipped Onlinja, I did not think about much. I had plans, and I still do, but the most important direction this project went to, I think, is the direction real users wanted the project to evolve in.

I am super glad that the community’s notes are actually reported back to the developers. And, to my surprise, many opinions were highly similar. This shows 2 aspects:

I am doing something well, when most of the personalized reviews say they love the same features.
I missed some crucial points, when the same reviews point out similar improvements to be made, even without knowing what others pointed out.

Happily, I wasn’t lazy and I read through the opinions. Not only did they make my heart warmer, but also shown that I was not moving forward with the right features.

What exactly did I improve?

Although the UI/UX experience was regarded as one of THE best by some, it lacked one thing - clarity when playing. Whose turn was it? No clear indication when a turn changed if you didn’t notice small text changing in the header when staring down to a monitor for minutes straight. This is now fixed.

Also, a very simple addition included a “save and resume” feature within the tutorial. Now, even if you refresh the tab or browser crashes, you can’t lose tutorial progress!

What won’t likely be implemented and why that makes me sad

All of the things I said seem great - feedback-based improvements, better clarity and quality-of-life updates that make a project be worth the time spent creating it. But the 2 features I wish I could’ve added were:

BotLabs (custom bot maker)
Post-game analysis (like in Chess.com)

First feature was impossible to make the way I wanted due to how the game’s layout is constructed. I sacrificed this feature for a better overall coding experience. It’s not as vital for the project to live, but sad that I could not implement it.

The second feature was entirely possible, but very difficult to plan out. What should be the data flow? What controls what? That led to me making a compromise - post-game statistics, that tell you these things:

How many moves each player took?
How many extra turns each player got?
How many pieces ran all the way to the opponent’s base?

And I think it’s a fair update :)

In conclusion

I am very pleased with the reviews and Stardance in general. I get to create what I love and share it with people who might love it as well. I am happy that the feedback made me grow stronger and I am thankful for every single person that helped me improve this project anyhow, opening my eyes on what were the real issues.

This project is one of my most ambitious yet, and if you want to check it out, the latest version is out at Onlinja’s official site!

If you can, also follow me and star the project on GitHub!