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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<<<

I love when people exploit my code, it only makes me better. Click the Damn Potato was built mostly client-side, meaning your device handled the clicks and just sent the final score to my server. Lazy, yeah, but the game was never meant to be serious. I mean, who’s really bored enough to hack a potato game?

Well, today, someone was. You can fudge the score right from the console. Normally I wouldn’t care, but when I saw someone hit 100 points, I had to check. That’s basically impossible. Digging into the logs, I saw they were “clicking” up to three potatoes per second; which I know is humanly impossible.

So I took the hint and reworked the game: scoring now happens server-side. To whoever pulled that stunt, thanks. You pushed me to do it the right way, and I had a blast doing it.

Added a fairly major update to Baby Launcher today. I ran the JavaScript through Claude AI to help reorganize it, and the codebase is now much cleaner and easier to read. It was starting to get a bit unwieldy.

In-game, you’ll notice a small info link in the bottom-right corner that opens a popup (clicking “Baby Launcher” opens it, too). The modal shows the version, last updated date, and credits.

The main reason for the modal is that I changed the background music to “Children’s March Theme” by Cleyton Kauffman, and I needed a place to give proper credit.

I’ll use this modal for other things later, too.

I also tweaked character and obstacle positioning so they display better on phones. I’m not 100% happy with the layout yet, but it’s getting closer.

I've been on a bit of a break from working on the site this week. While there are still tons of features I'd like to add and a few minor bugs that need fixing, the site overall is running pretty smoothly. So, I plan to take some time away to play video games or something. I'll still be moderating the secrets to keep the really dumb stuff out.

I plan to build out search functionality for secrets, along with filtering so you can customize how the wall displays. The ability to track particular secrets is also on the agenda. But these features will take some time, so I want to wait until I'm motivated to sit down and bang them out all at once; probably live, because I’m lazy.

But for now, keep posting secrets, playing games, and sending me your ideas via the contact page. I'm listening.

It costs about $15 a month to run this site. Not a huge deal, but getting that to zero would be nice. I’ve had Google AdSense running for a couple years now (about 4 months on FartDump), and across all four of my sites, I’m making a whopping five cents a day.

AdSense also slows the site down, so it just isn’t worth the hassle anymore. Today I ditched the ads and started sprinkling Amazon Affiliate links around the site instead. I like this approach because one conversion a month can match what I’d get from thousands of ad impressions; and I can actually make the links funny, which is way more fun for me. These fit the FartDump vibe way better than generic ads. That’s a win for me and for you.

Small update to Click the Damn Potato

Lately, I've been focusing on making small improvements to the existing games. Little things that bug me as I play them. Today, I gave Tater a little love and tweaked a few settings.

• Added a countdown timer before Tater starts appearing.
• Music stops once the game is finished.
• Decreased the time between Tater spawns to speed things up.
• Added a margin around the area that Tater appears to keep him away from the edge of the screen.

I am trying to keep this particular game extremely simple on purpose. That's what is fun about it; it's simplicity.

>>>Play Click the Damn Potato<<<

Finally got around to creating an endpoint for high scores in Baby Launcher. Now after you submit your score, the leaderboard automatically updates without the need to refresh the page. 

This should have already been finished, but I kept putting it off. Sending JSON from the endpoint is the easy part. The JavaScript to send and receive the info and dynamic updating of the HTML is what usually trips me up. But, I got it and it's working now.

Also, I'm GOD on the leaderboards. I'm all over that bitch from testing. 😆

Fart Factory upgrade

You can now use your built-up farts to launch rockets! This gives you a reason to click away and collect as many farts as you can.

Go launch some rockets!

I was just about to make the Church of FartDump ordinations meaningful, but chose not to. At the moment, when you generate a certificate, the site generates a random certificate number. No data is saved or kept on the servers. 

I thought it would be fun to generate and store the names and numbers and make them meaningful, but opted not to. It's a dumb page, no sense in storing personal information for it. Let's keep it anonymous!

The page did get a slight upgrade. The certificate looks and feels more like something you would see on FartDump.

Made some more progress on Baby Launcher. The full screen API works much better now. Still need more tweaking on the positions of everything on smaller screens. This game is NOT optimized for tiny screens. If you play on your phone, flip ya shit horizontal!

Slowed down the background by giving it a parallax effect. It looks much better now. I may add some foreground clouds and things later.