Pixel Progression #12

Welcome to the Pixel Progression #12, marking THREE months of this blog being around.

Not too long ago, we talked about how development can sometimes take a left turn due to unforeseen circumstances. We have just, a day ago, hit some unforeseen circumstances. Lets talk about it.

We talked about multiplayer fishing coming not too long ago. The plan was for it to be on our site and have a lobby based system.

However, Discord changed the game on us in releasing a developer preview of something that is PERFECT for this functionality.

They're enabling developers to build activities directly in Discord, enabling functionality unlike anything seen before within the app. Played chess in the park? Poker night? Those neat activities in VC? Imagine one for Dank Memer fishing multiplayer!

This is the embedded apps SDK and what we plan on building out multiplayer fishing in now. The issue is, they're not quite production ready on Discord's end. So this will no longer be coming with season 3.

Season 3 will still release on the 8th, just minus this new feature. We'll instead be spending our time pushing forward other projects we've been slowly working on. Which brings us to our next topic.

We know people have been wanting an update on a roadmap from us as all these things have changed.

We are happy to introduce our public roadmap that we'll update every so often so you can know what's being worked on and what's in the pipe.

Read the cards on the left for more context into what things mean or how development looks!

By popular demand, this week I'll cover a bit of info on Dank Memer's origin story.

As you might know, I'm Melmsie. I created Dank Memer in 2017, but it was 2016 when I first started learning Javascript out of necessity.

I had dropped out of university after my first year, due to the expense of it, and with having a professor tell me this might not be the best path for quality of education vs money spent.

So I went to work managing a restaurant, and in my free time I decided to pick back up on learning the development that I had started in university. I learned the basics of HTML/CSS and CSS frameworks, and created a few websites for local businesses. By NO standard were they good, but I made some sales and enjoyed it. However, they lacked functionality, so I wanted to learn Javascript.

Since programming is much different than what I had done, I found a Discord server dedicated to helping people learn. From there, they were talking about the mod bot they had (Dyno) and how cool the Discord API was. I set off to learn by making something cool, and that turned into a bot named Markos.

Markos was super simple, and one of the worst codebases I've ever had the displeasure of setting my eyes on. However, it was mine. After some learning and working with a friend named Aetheryx, I got markos sending memes from reddit and doing some memey commands.

This was the birth of Dank Memer. I launched it with no hopes other than maybe getting 10-20 servers to add it and get some memes sent directly to their discord server. Now, it's the largest game bot on Discord by a large margin, and has been my full time income for the past 4 years.

I won't spend any more time talking about this, or pretend I have some profound outlook on life, but I will say just how much I've learned and grown on this platform working on this project. It's pretty cool.

Don't forget!

Because of the delay of season 3, there will be an increased amount of fishing events for the next couple weeks! We will also be scheduling some drops for some buckets and other related fishing gear during this period, stay tuned!

This is to give information on ongoing known issues or common points of confusion.

Known Issues

These are issues we know about, and don't need reported right now.

• The default grind flow is un-usable
• Valentines fish guidebook skin has broken pages
• Some commands aren't working in some larger servers, like user leaderboards
• Get the full list here: Public bug tracker

Upcoming Hotfixes

In the shorter term, likely before next PP, we'll be getting another small balance patch. Smaller than the last, and more focused on command cooldowns and freemium.

As you might have noticed, we skipped the community shoutouts this week.

Reason being, the format we're presenting them in just isn't super easy to consume, and we could see the lack of engagement on them despite the views these blogs get.

Do you have any ideas on how we can make that section better?

We'll think about it internally too, while we remind you to drink water. xoxo