Ship
I made this for another ysws program(soo demotivated after rejection). But yeah here’s how the idea came to be and my journey to make this.
Initial Plan:
To make a card highlight menu themed website that has options to launch different programs mainly first thought was making a Morse-code program and some space landing game (postponed)
And I would only use a single key for menu control, launching the program and for in-program movement
Ended Up:
The design changed to more like key-caps design then cards..
Becoming a circus mania of different programs:
- Morse Course: Using time interval per key press to write Morse code
- Roll A Dice: Added a dice (d-6) rolling program
- WikiTap: Press the key and land in random place of the knowledge kingdom
- Typing Mongo: Press the key and watch a cat mongo smack the laptop ( I encoded a thank you message in there for the original ysws org but he rejected the project so… I cant say anything about that )
- Landing CubeSAT: I intended to make a game about landing a cube-sat on a planet in space but since I was working on other stuff I had to postpone this
I intent to further work on this maybe as a personal site or for another ysws
Tech Stack Decisions:
“Tony Stark was able to build this in a cave! With a box of scraps!”
Yeah… But I am not Stark so here’s the thing I don’t know JavaScript….
So since I am comfortable with Python I used an alternate i.e Python’s web suit Brython and since I was actively working on a Pygame project hence this decision just so not to break the flow. If you know what I mean.
Brython Flow:
Brython allowed me to structure logic cleanly using python’s standard libraries while directly manipulating the browser DOM (Document Object Mode)
But but but the main problems I faced where in Brython I’ll explained in the CHALLENGES down below.
The Project workflow as a whole:
The main backbone sits in index.html and is the host that allows programs to run which are coded in .py file (i.e using Brython).
Active window listeners are placed that lookout for a key-down press and key-up and observes the time interval.
Time Interval per press is used to determine the menu navigation and working in the programs (to each its own rules apply)
CHALLENGES:
Window listeners:
- Apparently the listeners were not working when I launched the program locally i.e on device through its original file hence I asked AI for help and after a few tries to solve it it still remained non-responsive and kept breaking the other code
(Mind you I didn’t copy paste the code from AI….. He just later advised me to launch the code through a local server port)
Brython Scope and Variable Hangs:
- Perhaps the most annoying part of all this was when you use Brython to implement html…. you literally have to code all the tags and stuff and manually indent the tags that are not even color code.
- You dont get auto-correction or not even an auto completion since all the html code is written inside strings
- And if you’d give me a penny for every time I messed up html set-up due missing ; or attributes/ class setups for the tags. I’d have several grands on me
KEY LEANINGS AND TAKEAWAYS:
- DOM access via Brython
- API integration
WHATS NEXT?
Honestly so demotivated after my submission got rejected from another program even though I contested for little to no AI usage/slop.
But I’ll think about working on the following:
- Make the CubeSAT game and integrate it into this
- Work on this as a personal site as it seems cool using a single key idea
I am working on Terminal Based AI i.e Cli based. This is my first terminal app/AI project that I am making in python hence I am learning RICH and CLICK libraries for this. Right now I am working on the AI entity… That will appear and have different states of animation for ‘idle’ , ‘thinking’ etc. and this window will run once the AI is run in terminal. I have made the idle version in pygame as I have been recently active in game development. AGAIN: Every thing in this project is also progress of my learning side by side
Wizzardium Walk-iousa: You are a walker, Harry!