FartDump Feed

Website Menu

It's rather embarrassing how long I have put off rebuilding the desktop menu. Websites are like upside down buildings. The header is your foundation both metaphorically and literally. The Header code determines most of the way the site actually functions. For that reason I haven't really wanted to mess with it for the longest time. A hamburger menu on a desktop site is lazy and bad UX/UI, but fuck you, this is a hobby project. Also, I wanted to keep the site minimal looking as I could.

But.... I think the reason the secrets are still the main attraction at FartDump is because, well, that's all you see when you first hit the website. Most people that stumble across FartDump see that secret submission form and either roll their eyes and bounce or drop a secret, maybe read a few from the wall then leave. 

Less than 20% of visitors(I'm spit-balling) actually find the other features. So, it was time to bring the desktop menu back to showcase some of FartDump's other content.

I've been testing on as many devices as I can, as well as in dev tools. But sometimes, dev tools lies to me. If I broke the layout for you in any way, let me know!

If I got it right, you shouldn't notice any change on mobile.

Rectal Blaster 9000 Improvements

Rectal Blaster has been an ongoing pain in my ass. How appropriate. I was having difficulty getting the game to render well across all devices. So, instead of using the canvas width and height, I switched over to using DPR, which uses your devices pixel size instead of the canvas size. This took me a bit, but I think it was worth it. It plays much better on phones now. It does on mine anyway.

Health clouds were added so you can extend your play indefinitely if you get good at the game.

I also added a pause button just under the mute button with a pop-up modal. This is typically done on games where I use someone else's music in the background. It's a good way to take care of two birds with one stone. Versioning information can be put on the modal as well as giving the musician proper credits, and you can pause the game if you are on a roll, but need to pause for a moment in order to bear down on that mighty turd you are inevitably working on while visiting FartDump.

The plan is to have the pause button toggle to a play button, right now you have a huge resume game button so it isn't dire atm. I'll also mute the music when paused later as well. For now, I'm tired and need a break.

If you haven't played it yet, play RECTAL BLASTER 9000 and let me know what you think.

Sniffing Your Own Farts Is Good For Your Brain

No joke, a recent study on mice has shown that the hydrogen sulfide in your farts may improve memory and stave off the effects of Alzheimer's. As if I needed a good reason.

 >>>Article Link<<<

I Don't Usually Do This

I've been looking for a house for some time now. Desperate to find anything, I stumbled upon this shady real estate agent's website. I called the number and long story short, it was a 900 number and cost me a $200. The agent said he would reimburse me if I promoted his website on FartDump, apparently he is a fan. In hindsight, I wish I would have looked around his website a bit more. But, here goes...

Brock Nebula is the best, most greatest real estate agent around. If you are looking to buy or sell or rent in the near future contact Brock for all of your real estate needs.

Visit BrockNebula.com

Rectal Blaster 9000

I have been working on a new game for months now. It was a betting game where you guess which ball would win, then you unleash them and it turns into a bit of an ASMR ball physics scenario. It never felt right. After numerous rebuilds and tweaks and just trying anything to make it feel like a fun experience; I couldn't make it work.

Last week, I got the idea to just turn it into a sideways shooter. They have been done to death, but most of the games on FartDump have a predecessor in one form or another.

So, that's how Rectal Blaster 9000 was born. It still plays absolutely horrible on phones, but runs pretty good on pc. It's actually kind of fun to play. There are many features that still need to be added, but I thought I would go ahead and put it up on the homepage so everyone can try it out.

I started to call it Fart Blaster 9000, but decided to go with Rectal Blaster 9000. So, I keep messing up and typing Fart instead of Rectal, lol. Check back often as I keep adding new features and functionality. For now, my brain is fried. It's time for a break.

Good Morning!

I'm beginning to awaken from my game induced coma. Where I was once sitting on my sofa building this site in my living room; I have now setup a "home office" where more attention can be directed towards my websites.

Some minor style and quality of life changes were made today.

Yesterday, the Dotz game got some much needed love. I have found myself playing it quite a bit more. Go check it out and let me know what you think.

Did you know

 An orgasm can temporarily dull pain better than morphine. Brain scans show it floods the body with endorphins and oxytocin, enough to reduce migraines, cramps, and even tooth pain. Your nervous system basically yells "SHUT IT ALL DOWN, SOMETHING AWESOME IS HAPPENING."

The next time you get a headache, skip the Tylenol, and go fuck yourself.

Sorry for the radio silence. November is my annual "vanish into a video game" month, and this year I bought Farming Simulator 25. Considering I sank almost 3,500 hours into FS22, this shouldn’t shock anyone.

I probably won’t touch FartDump’s code again for a couple months. That’s fine. Breaks are good; when I come back, the codebase will get a fresh pair of eyes run over it.

I’ll still pop in to clean up hate-speech and obvious bot spam, so the Wall of Secrets won’t turn into a war zone.

FartDump isn’t abandoned. I’m just plowing digital fields to distract me in these colder months. Keep posting your secrets. I’ll be back when the crops are harvested.

Click The Potato Broke Again

I noticed today that I was getting several 1 point Click the Potato games. That's weird because it's so damn addictive, no one can resist clicking at least 2 times. 

After some debugging I think I found the problem. PHP and the Database were not agreeing on timestamps. The time change in the USA seems to have knocked the two off by a few seconds.

I added some reinforcement to the logic that I hope fixes the problem for good. Penis Fingers crossed.

Couple of Bug fixes

I came across a couple of bugs today. Sometimes on Click the Damn Potato, the potato would appear off screen. I was tweaking the sites CSS last week and must have adjusted a value that the potato game didn't like. While I don't recall messing with viewport sizes, maybe I did. Who knows.

To address the issue, I just adjusted the createPotato function math to ensure that even if you change your viewport by say flipping your phone mid game, the potato should still land within the actual viewport.

Another bug was found while playing around with the DuckDuckGo browser on my phone. That browser along with a few others doesn't respect keyboard focus on canvas only pages. So, when it was time to enter your initials on games, the keyboard wouldn't pop up for you. I had to do some digging to find a fix for this.

I added an invisible modal for adding your initials that is off canvas and it seems to have done the trick, though I haven't applied this fix to all canvas games yet. Plunger Drop is fixed, but Code Breaker and Baby Launcher still need the patch. If you add your initials on a non-canvas game, it will work and save your initials in your browser so you only need to do it once.

I've taken a break from working on the website these last few weeks and have been playing some Timberborn, so I'm not really in the mood for coding. I only found those two bugs while taking a shit.

Gotta get back, my beavers are waiting for me.

An Effort To Keep Your Attention

I don't have large tits so I have to try harder to keep your attention. Progression is addictive, so I added it to FartDump. Doing it without logins is tricky, but not impossible. 

Everything happens client-side. When you hit a new feature for the first time, your browser quietly logs it and flashes a little toast telling you how much of FartDump you've explored. I use local storage a lot here; it's my lazy way of tracking progress without making you sign up for anything.

Right now, it's just a visual pat on the back. Maybe later I'll throw in an Easter egg for anyone who hits 100%, which is nearly impossible at the moment as I have included some pages that aren't available to you just yet.

The focus lately has been polishing what's already on the site instead of cranking out new stuff. Most of the games still need some TLC.

The only thing slowing me down? Timberborn. I fired it up again a few days ago, and I'm addicted all over again. Progress bars are great, but beavers with lumber mills? Irresistible.

Today, I increased the amount of content that is cached through Cloudflare. If you have visited FartDump before, hopefully you noticed a difference in speed. If you find stale content let me know.

For instance, if you leave a comment on a secret and it's not showing or a missing high score after playing a game.

Small Fartle Update

After submitting your score in Fartle you get asked for your initials to submit your score. Then after submitting your initials, you would get a second confirmation modal. This was annoying and not necessary at all. So, I ditched it.

I thought this would be an easy win. For most developers, it probably would have been. But, I'm not that smart, lol.

I have a function that refreshes the daily scores table so that your submitted score will be included after playing. That function was tied to the second confirmation modal. It shouldn't have been to begin with as it was just bad logic.

I moved the call to the function over to the initials modal logic, but it kept creating race conditions that would return an empty response from the database. It took me too long to realize I was trying to call it too late inside the actual modal buttons logic that was also nested inside the initials modal logic. This was causing a race condition where the high scores table would not populate at all.

I've tested it several times and it seems to be working. I'm worried that this introduced some other bugs because the whole endgame flow was disrupted by this one small change. If you notice a bug with the Fartle game or anywhere else for that matter; let me know.

TLDR; I'm an idiot, but it's working now, i think. 

The Wall of Secrets

When I visit the wall of secrets, I always immediately click the newest tab. It occurred to me that maybe everyone else does too. So, I changed the default landing to the newest tab.  The Hot tab is still there for people new to the site to check out, but if you are returning or just wanting to see if your secret has any engagement, the newest is the best way to find it.

I had the idea long ago to put a subscribe button on a secret so you can follow it, but I don't want to store your personal information on the servers. It feels counterintuitive to the FartDump experience.

A way around this could be by using local storage. I could add a follow link to each secret and it would store the id of that secret on your device and it would persist until you clear site data. Then if you have followed any secrets, I could add a new tab so you can keep an eye on your secrets or others you want to follow.

This feels like the right move, because even if you deleted the site data, that wouldn't be the end of the world. It's not like this site is or ever will be that important. It's just a place to kill boredom.

I think I'll do just that, the problem now for me is motivation. The code running the secrets is becoming very technical and adding new features nearly crashes my simple minded brain. But, it is on the list.

Reviews

Every legit website needs reviews, right? Several people have left reviews as secrets, so I thought it would be fun to slap them up on the homepage.

I giggle at the folks that are hesitant to use the site because it doesn't seem legit anonymous. So, I added those type of posts to the reviews as well.

When you post a secret, your IP is used to ensure you don't keep spamming the site. I chose to use IP's because any and every site you visit gathers IP's in their logs anyway. IP's don't reveal much especially if you are using a VPN, so they are fairly meaningless to me.

If you are reading this, I know my word doesn't mean much since you don't know me, but I promise that not only do I not try to gather any personal information, but I genuinely don't give a fuck who you are. I'm just a dude with a weird sense of humor that likes building websites.

I miss the old days of the web when it felt alive. The dead internet theory is a real and terrifying thing. I don't want to see it die and am just doing my small part in keeping the internet alive for real people.

Now, go tell your friends about FartDump, because I want to see real people here.

Nobody Cares Poll

I had a fun idea today... a poll. But, instead of just slapping a poll up on a random page, I built a whole back end where I can add many polls then serve them all over the website.

You will start seeing them pop up in random places. They are all simple two choice options, and after voting, you can see the results. Not ground breaking, but fun, and interactive none the less.

I'll try to get a page built that shows the results of all polls if the feature gets used enough. If not, I may just scrap it. It may even be fun to allow folks to submit their own polls to put in the rotation.

You can actually do that now by throwing me some questions on the contact page.

Baby Launcher Scores Disappearing 

I noticed that the high scores for Baby Launcher seemed to be disappearing. Today, I was finally able to dig in and figure out what was causing this. I searched through every file pertaining to the game and found nothing. 

It took 30 minutes of whispering, "WTF?", before I realized my screw up; I put a foreign key on the baby launcher scores to tie it to the session when I updated the way scoring worked a few weeks ago.

What was deleting the scores was a random cleanup function I added to the game that would prune older sessions from the database from time to time. Every time this triggered it also deleted the scores that were tied to the deleted sessions as well.

Simple mistake, hopefully, it's fixed now. I'm still trying to remember if I actually needed that foreign key, lol. If you get an error while playing the game, please let me know via the contact form. 

When I built the Wordle clone, Turdle, I didn't bother searching to see if that word had been used already. Of course, it has been used a ton. So, today I renamed the game to Fartle. That word has been used as well but not as much. I googled the word and there is even a website for it but it doesn't appear to be working right now, so I decided Fartle would be better here, lol.

I haven't been working on the website much these last few weeks as I had some other projects that needed my attention. I'm mostly caught up, but I think I'll play some video games this week and also watch the new season of Futurama which dropped on HULU today. YAY!

Baby Launcher Fun

Thursday, I posted about making Baby Launcher smarter and integrating some anti-hack measures. Yesterday, my logs grew by over 300%! So, after some more testing, I realized the new setup was basically a small DDoS generator. The game was hitting a beacon script on the new updateSessionDistance function which was being called as the baby flew at 60 frames per second.😥

After some more digging around, it was clear, the entire logic was wrong.

TLDR; I rebuilt how the scoring backend works completely to be more efficient. The bad news is that the leaderboard has been wiped clean, as the game was moved to its own table in the database. I believe that I was the current high score holder, so this may be a good thing.

Fingers crossed that its working correctly now.

Today's Fun Fact

In ancient Greece, they believed hippos (yes, the animal) had the most reliable method for contraception. Women were told to smear dried ground hippo dung inside themselves to prevent pregnancy.

No surprise; it didn’t work. But apparently, Greek dudes were just fine with their partners smelling like a zoo exhibit.

Secrets Update

The load more button on the Wall of Secrets turned out to be more trouble than it was worth. Keeping the algorithm working after each click was a pain in the ass, and I even had to maintain a completely separate file for SEO. The codebase was ballooning; just to support one button.

To make matters worse, if you scrolled way down, clicked into a secret's comments, and then hit the link back to the wall, you'd get dumped right at the top again.

I finally had enough. The Hot, Newest, and Oldest filters were already on my to-do list, but I'd been putting them off because of the extra complexity the load more button created.

So the button's gone. In its place is good old-fashioned pagination. Combined with the new search feature, navigating secrets should feel a lot smoother now.

Minor update to Crypto Puzzle

On touch screen devices if you tapped on the background to hide the keyboard, the modal would disappear and you couldn't submit your score. This was addressed and the pop up modal for your initials respects the viewport of your device better now.

I'm this 🤏 close to moving the game onto the canvas element so I can have better control over how it's displayed. When a puzzle has a longer word it still looks bad on phones. 

Part of me wants to just rebuild the entire game, though I still haven't made up my mind.

Building a virtual keyboard similar to how I did with the Fartle game may be the way to go; that would fix most of the issues I have with smaller screens. ATM I can't shrink the input boxes on small screens to make them fit because it would shrink the tap area too much, that's why the longer words push off screen.

One of these days, I'll get tired of patching a turd and just completely rebuild it, making this post irrelevant. Which would be on par for how I do things, most of my update posts age like milk.

Baby Launcher got a little bit smarter today. No one has tried yet, but you could easily hack in made up scores and submit them to the leader board. In an effort to keep things fair, I beefed up the backend so cheating is quite a bit more difficult.

The Best score is your all-time highest score still, but the game now runs a session and you can submit your best score when you are finished playing without wiping your all-time best score. So, there is no need to spam the submit button, just play away and only submit your best game score when you are finished playing.

Baby Launcher Update

New Obstacles, Powerups, and Night Mode

After a 24-hour coding session (send coffee), I finally split out the obstacle logic into its own management system. That means I can now drop in new obstacles and powerups without tearing the game apart. Oh, and obstacles now have some basic physics; watch out.

• New Obstacles: The old placeholder thorns and spikes are gone. In their place? A tower of blocks and a jack-in-the-box.

• New Powerup: The rubber chicken, which works a lot like trampolines, but, you know… funnier.

• Visuals: Hit the 10,000-meter mark and the background shifts into night mode. Keep flying, baby.

The farther you go, the more obstacles outweigh the powerups. My plan is to eventually reset things every 10k–20k meters with brand-new backgrounds and mechanics; almost like hitting a “new level.” That opens the door for some absolutely ridiculous high scores.

Future ideas floating around:

• More quirky, comical obstacles/powerups (leaning back into the humor).

• Tap-to-destroy mechanics so players can interact mid-flight.

The game’s nowhere near finished, this is just the start of making Baby Launcher as ridiculous and chaotic as it deserves to be.

>>>Play Baby Launcher<<<

I started working on a new game today called Plunger Drop. The plan was to get the game started and then I would work on it next week. This turned into a 6 hour jam session where I got the game nearly functional with assets, music, and physics nearly complete.

While not nearly finished yet, it is playable right now. So, if you're reading this you can be the first to check it out.

>>>Play Plunger Drop<<<