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1863-project · 2 years ago

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Okay, i'm going to give some information on the Megaten games since I feel I should.

Basically they were inspired by a old japanese book series, basically about how computer coding is sorta similar to the strict, arcane rituals of summoning demons. In this case, demons being anything from any religion/folklore/mythology. (This also includes some closed religions, which is where some of the offensiveness comes from. At the time when the games were first made, it wasn't as well known that it was offensive, so it was sorta grandfathered in? Its probably not correct, but its one of those things that i'm not sure how you'd change if you could? )

Games tend to be very dark in tone, especially the modern ones. Basically, end of the world happened, and you're not going to stop it. But you can determine the path going forward. Each game has multiple endings, and none of them are considered a 'golden ending'. The neutral ending tends to be the closest, but even then it can be bittersweet, or asks you to consider the other choices/think about wether or not this is truly a good ending/a good future. It can make for some pretty powerful story moments.

People often describe the gameplay as "I'm being literally tortured, I love it :D" The games will throw so much terrible, awful, monstrous game design decisions at you, depending on how old the game is. Such as 'teleport maze where there are no visible cues, invisible walls, pitfalls/spin traps, and no map'. or just flat out kill you randomly in a random encounter, setting you back to wherever the last save was. So its just, this very rough game, but a sort of viciousness that someone could find enjoyable. Not everyone, but it absolutely has its audience.

The 3ds has Soul hackers (a sega saturn game that's actually getting a sequel soon!), Shin megami Tensei Strange Journey (A fairly dark-in tone game but also well liked ) Shin Megami Tensei IV (A mainline game many people consider to be the best, and has a lot of trigger warnings to it. They all do but I have seen some of the most messed up things in that game specifically. ) Shin Megami Tensei IV apocolypse (A sequel that people don't like as much as the original)

It also has Devil Survivor 1 and 2, A tactics like game that was meant to introduce people in the west to the franchise. Unlike most of the games that one's actually rated T, which makes it a bit more accessible/easy to recommend. The first one tells a dark, but hopeful and interesting storyline about the breakdown of society during a lockdown. It deals with serious topics like competition over food rationing, police brutality, personal responsibility, a comparison of the internet to the mythical tower of babel, and the fear/stress people are going though as the week continues, but in general has a relatively hopeful tone.

That game was made before 2020, by the way. Which I feel is incredibly important. As that game is probably going to read a lot different now then it did back then. Which is why I wanted to be very specific about that one's plot.

3DS Games Anon - here's another recommendation for you from another anon re: Shin Megami Tensei!

#replies #Shin Megami Tensei

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suzanneshannon · 5 years ago

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Where to Learn WordPress Theme Development

Over a decade ago, I did a little three-part video series on Designing for WordPress. Then I did other series with the same spirit, like videocasting the whole v10 redesign, a friend's website, and even writing a book. Those are getting a little long in the tooth though. You might still learn from watching them if you're getting into WordPress theme development, but there will be moments that feel very aged (old UI's and old versions of software). All the code still works though, because WordPress is great at backward compatibility. I still hear from people who found those videos very helpful for them.

But since time has pressed on, and I was recently asked what resources I would suggest now, I figured I'd have a look around and see what looks good to me.

Do you like how I plopped the WordPress logo over some stock art I bought that features both a computer and a chalkboard, by which to evoke a feeling of "learning"? So good. I know.

Who are we talking to?

There's a spectrum of WordPress developers, from people who don't know any code at all or barely touch it, to hardcore programming nerds building custom everything.

Pick out a theme that looks good, use it.

🤷‍♂️

Hardcore programmer nerd.

I can't speak to anybody on either edge of that spectrum. There is this whole world of people in the middle. They can code, but they aren't computer science people. They are get the job done people. Maybe it's something like this:

Pick out a theme that will work, use it.

Start with a theme, customize it a bit using built-in tools.

Start with a theme, hack it up with code to do what you need it to do.

Start from scratch, build out what you need.

Start from scratch, build a highly customized site.

Hardcore programmer nerd.

I've always been somewhere around #4, and I think that's a nice sweet spot. I try to let off-the-shelf WordPress and big popular plugins do the heavy lifting, but I'll bring-my-own front-end (HTML, CSS, and JavaScript) and customize what I have to. I'm making templates. I'm writing queries. I'm building blocks. I'm modularizing where I can.

I feel powerful in that zone. I can build a lot of sites that way, almost by myself. So where are the resources today that help you learn this kind of WordPress theme development? Lemme see what I can find.

Wing it, old school

There is something to be said for learning by doing. Trial by fire. I've learned a lot under these circumstances in my life.

The trick here is to get WordPress installed on a live server and then play with the settings, plugins, customizer, and edit the theme files themselves to make the site do things. You'll find HTML in those theme files — hack it up! You'll see PHP code spitting out content. Can you tell what and how to manipulate it? You'll find a CSS file in the theme — edit that sucker!

Editing a WordPress theme and seeing what happens

The official documentation can help you somewhat here:

How to install WordPress

Developer Resources

Google stuff when you get stuck

To some degree, I'm a fan of doing it live (on a production website) because it lends a sense of realness to what you are doing when you are a beginner. The stakes are high there, giving you a sense of the power you have. When I make these changes, they are for anyone in the world with an internet connection to see.

I did this in my formative years by buying a domain name and hosting, installing WordPress on that hosting, logging into it with SFTP credentials, and literally working on the live files. I used Coda, which is still a popular app, and is being actively developed into a new version of itself as I write.

This is Nova, a MacOS code editor from Panic that has SFTP built-in.

Hopefully, the stakes are real but low. Like you're working on a pet project or your personal site. At some point, hacking on production sites becomes too dangerous of an idea. One line of misplaced PHP syntax can take down the entire site.

If you're working on something like a client site, you'll need to upgrade that workflow.

Modern winging it

The modern, healthy, standard way for working on websites is:

Work on them locally.

Use version control (Git), where new work is done in branches of the master branch.

Deployment to the production website is done when code is pushed to the master branch, like your development branch is merged in.

I've done a recent video on this whole workflow as I do it today. My toolset is:

Work locally with Local by Flywheel.

My web hosting is also Flywheel, but that isn't required. It could be anything that gives you SFTP access and runs what WordPress needs: Apache, PHP, and MySQL. Disclosure, Flywheel is a sponsor here, but because I like them and their service :).

Code is hosted on a private repo on GitHub.

Deployment to the Flywheel hosting is done by Buddy. Buddy watches for pushes to the master branch and moves the files over SFTP to the production site.

Local by Flywheel

Now that you have a local setup, you can go nuts. Do whatever you want. You can't break anything on the live site, so you're freer to make experimental changes and just see what happens.

When working locally, it's likely you'll be editing files with a code editor. I'd say the most popular choice these days is the free VS Code, but there is also Atom and Sublime, and fancier editors like PhpStorm.

The freedom of hacking on files is especially apparent once you've pushed your code up to a Git repo. Once you've done that, you have the freedom of reverting files back to the state of the last push.

I use the Git software Tower, and that lets me can see what files have changed since I last committed code. If I've made a mistake, caused a problem, or done something I don't like — even if I don't remember exactly what I changed — I can discard those changes back to their last state. That's a nice level of freedom.

When I do commit code, to master or by merging a branch into master, that's when Buddy kicks in and deploys the changes to the production site.

CSS-Tricks itself is a WordPress site, which has continuously evolved over 13 years.

But like, where do you start?

We're talking about WordPress theme development here, so you start with a theme. Themes are literally folders of files in your WordPress installation.

root - /wp-content/ - /themes/ - /theme-name/

WordPress comes with some themes right out of the box. As I write, the Twenty Twenty theme ships with WordPress, and it's a nice one! You could absolutely start your theme hackin' on that.

Themes tend to have some opinions about how they organize themselves and do things, and Twenty Twenty is no different. I'd say, perhaps controversially, that there is no one true way to organize your theme, so long as it's valid code and does things the "WordPress" way. This is just something you'll have to get a feel for as you make themes.

Starter themes

Starter themes were a very popular way to start building a theme from scratch in my day. I don't have a good sense if that's still true, but the big idea was a theme with all the basic theme templates you'll need (single blog post pages, a homepage, a 404 page, search results page, etc.) with very little markup and no styling at all. That way you have an empty canvas from which to build out all your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript yourself to your liking. Sorta like you're building any other site from scratch with these core technologies, only with some PHP in there spitting out content.

There was a theme called Starkers that was popular, but it's dead now. I made one called BLANK myself but haven't touched that in a long time. In looking around a bit, I found some newer themes with this same spirit. Here's the best three I found:

HTML5 Blank

BlankSlate

_s ("Underscores")

I can't personally vouch for them, but they've all been updated somewhat recently and look like pretty good starting points to me. I'd give them a shot in the case that I was starting from absolute scratch on a project. I'd be tempted to download one and then spruce it up exactly how I like it and save that as my own starter in case I needed to do it again.

It feels worth mentioning that a lot of web development isn't starting from scratch, but rather working on existing projects. In that case, the process is still getting a local environment set up; you just aren't starting from scratch, but with the existing theme. I'd suggest duplicating the theme and changing the name while you hack on it, so even if you deploy it, it doesn't affect the live theme. Others might suggest using the starter as a "parent" theme, then branching off into a "child" theme.

To get your local development environment all synced up with exactly what the production website is like, I think the best tool is WP DB Migrate Pro, which can yank down the production database to your local site and all the media files (paid product and a paid add-on, worth every penny).

Fancier Starter Themes

Rather than starting from absolute scratch, there are themes that come with sensible defaults and even modern build processes for you start with. The idea is that building a site with essentially raw HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, while entirely doable, just doesn't have enough modern conveniences to be comfortable.

Here are some.

Morten Rand-Hendriksen has a project called WP Rig that has all sorts of developer tools built into it. A Gulp-based build process spins up a BrowserSync server for auto updating. JavaScript gets processed in Babel. CSS gets processed in PostCSS, and code is linted. He teaches WordPress with it.

Roots makes a theme called Sage that comes with a templating engine, your CSS framework of choice, and fancy build process stuff.

Ignition has a build process and all sorts of helpers.

Timber comes with a templating engine and a bunch of code helpers.

I think all these are pretty cool, but are also probably not for just-starting-out beginner developers.

Books

This is tough because of how many there are. In a quick Google search, I found one site selling fifteen WordPress books as a bundle for $9.99. How would you even know where to start? How good can they be for that rock bottom price? I dunno.

I wrote a book with Jeff Starr ages ago called Digging Into WordPress. After all these years, Jeff still keeps the book up to date, so I'd say that's a decent choice! Jeff has other books like The Tao of WordPress and WordPress Themes In Depth.

A lot of other books specifically about WordPress theme development are just fairly old. 2008-2015 stuff. Again, not that there isn't anything to be learned there, especially as WordPress doesn't change that rapidly, but still, I'd want to read a book more recent that half a decade old. Seems like a big opportunity for a target audience as large as WordPress users and developers. Or if there is already stuff that I'm just not finding, lemme know in the comments.

Perhaps learning is shifting so much toward online that people don't write books as much...

Online learning courses

Our official learning partner Frontend Masters has one course on WordPress focused on JavaScript and WordPress, so that might not be quite perfect for learning the basics of theme development. Still, fascinating stuff.

Here's some others that looked good to me while looking around:

SuperHi: WordPress

Chris Dixon: WordPress 5 Theme Development Academy with Bootstrap v4

WPSHOUT: The Basic Course

WPCasts (free on YouTube)

Know The Code which teaches with specific theme frameworks.

Udemy: Zac Gordon's Complete WordPress Theme & Plugin Development Course

Zac's course looks like the most updated and perhaps the best option there.

A totally different direction for theme Development

One way to build a site with WordPress is not to use WordPress themes at all! Instead, you can use the WordPress API to suck data out of WordPress and build a site however the heck you please.

The WordPress REST API (built-in!) which you could use to do something like this.

Gatsby and WordPress

Use GraphQL instead of REST with wp-graphql.

This idea of decoupling the CMS and the front end you build is pretty neat. It's often referred to as using a "headless" CMS. It's not for everyone. (One big reason is that, in a way, it doubles your technical debt.). But it can bring a freedom to both the CMS and the front end to evolve independently.

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shogunchelios · 3 years ago

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Seven Sins: A Discussion and Ranking

When I was 17, I declared myself an atheist and went along my merry way. twenty years later, I merry'd my way back to the discussion because it turns out, there's more to it than that. The whole concept of god and the afterlife and guardian angels and devils is too fantastical for me. I thought that was what being in a religion was about. believing all the crazy parts of the holy books as literal. it wasn't until I started to introspect full blast (because I was fully blasted on the ganja) that I understood what religion truly was. The real meat (that you can't eat on fridays) of religion is to provide a structure, a rulebook for life. Being an angsty teenager, I didn't mind throwing that out along with the supernatural stuff. How dare you impose rules on me? I'm a legal adult! Now that I've been developing into an actual adult, I see that rules aren't things to hold us back. It's the rules that make everything work better. Just like the universe wouldn't exist without electromagnetism, weak and strong nuclear forces, and gravity, life doesn't function as well without some restrictions. like in wrestling, the matches aren't as good if the referee just allows anyone to interfere, anyone to get pinned, etc. We fall into chaos when there is no order, which is what Jordan Peterson's book is all about. Last weekend, I was at a family gathering of in-laws and someone there was really into 'the secret.' The dude is even going to come out on the new documentary they're going to put out after the success of the old one. the old one was something i hated because it was so dumb. The video is just folks saying 'well, i just focused my thoughts on checks arriving to my mail, instead of bills, and now a year later, checks are coming in every week!' It's like those workout videos that show a fat person and a muscular person three months later. they leave out the part where the entire lifestyle (diet, sleep, consistent workouts) has to change. the secret left out the part where you still have to do some work. But when the dude started explaining why he enjoyed the secret, most of it was what I read in Jordan Peterson's book (fix yourself first, be grateful for what you have, etc). Which in itself is just a guidebook of rules to follow. It seems non-secular folk spend a lot of time searching out new religions, as long as they're not called religions. The ones I've gravitated to are buddhism (life sucks, so make the best of it) and the self-help corner (make a plan, distract yourself from sucky life with material/emotional successes). none of them have god in them. which makes it tougher because if you have some all-powerful being you're disappointing, it motivates you, especially if he can see you at all times (like santa. didn't like to disappoint him either). But when it's just me I'm disappointing, well, I don't care as much, because who am I to try to impress myself? fuck myself, that guy sucks anyway. which is why my roaring twenties were spent going the opposite way. if there is no god, and it's just me, then fuck it, let me do all the things i shouldn't and see where it gets me! then god is sitting there, like thanos in endgame, telling me 'where did that bring you? back to me. I am inevitable.' Then he caused a huge flood and killed half the population. but it's not all bad. We learn from our experiences and the mistakes teach us the most. I haven't touched a stove burner since I was five and touched it that one time. so, without further ado, here's a ranking of the seven deadly sins in order from worst to best! 7. wrath not too surprising that wrath would end up pretty low on my list, considering my usual happy-go-lucky baseline. it's in there though. i feel it, like when i'm driving somewhere and the asshole in front of me is tapping on their brakes even though there aren't any cars in front of them. or when i want to turn right and the dude in front of me isn't turning on the red light and waits for the green light TO TURN RIGHT. my biggest wish from when i started driving was

that every car had some sorta phone and everyone's carphone number is the same as the license plate. that way, i can call the asshole in front of me and go full sam kinison on them. 'FFFUUUCCCKING GOOOOO YOOU GOODDAMMN MOTHERFUCKER SONOFAFUCKINGBITCHMOTHERFUUUUCKEEEERRRRRRR!' other than the road rage though, i don't partake too often in the fun of wrath. i know i have more in me because at least a couple times of year i have a dream where i'm beating the crap out of somebody. but like, excessively. and it's never anyone very specific. that's why i'm not sure if a memory i have from my youth is real or not. i think i had sent that story already, but when i was about 4 or 5 years old, i was at my grandpa Chorizo's house and i beat the everloving shit out of some neighborhood kid while my brother and uncle egg'd me on. then we never spoke about it again. so was it real or a wrath dream? the world may never know. 6. envy this one would've been ranked higher about 10-15 years ago, right at the height of myspace/facebook/google+ (i swear it almost became a thing! you should've given it a try!). it's not just wanting what others have though. it's also taking pleasure in their misfortune (good ol' schadenfreude [i had to google 'buddhism' to spell it right, yet i got schadenfreude right on the first try, which says a lot about me]). social media and envy are like jerry and beth when they go to the alien marriage counselor. alone, each one is bad, but obvious. together, though, and they're unstoppable, one feeding into the other endlessly. healthier folks can channel their envy into something positive. "i want to go on a cruise too, i'm going to work harder to achieve it!" for unhealthy assholes like me though, it's more "why is this big-bootied chick with that schlub? i'm much handsomer! i should homewreck." but even if it were to happen, at that point, i wouldn't even want that chick anymore. no one wants to be part of a club that would have themselves as a member. the longing and wanting is the best part of envy, which is why it's ranked this low. that part sucks. i like getting what i want and having it. the anticipation is the part i dislike the most. waiting in line brings up my wrath and that takes up way too much energy. 5. pride according to my extensive research (wikipedia), pride is the worst of the worst. the father of all sins. pride leads to every other vice. it is the complete anti-god state of mind. they have the tower of babel as their image to define it. believing we're powerful enough to build a tower high enough to reach god, how dare us? putting ourselves first before all, that's not too good, says the bible/god. but wouldn't that make god prideful? the dude doesn't allow us to put anything else before him, that's the biggest unchecked pride i know of, but i guess when you create existence, you can be full of yourself. my pride is mostly all about my looks, as if it wasn't obvious. sometimes i think i suffer from low self-esteem, but that's mostly about my inside, i feel like i'm a piece of shit. but the outside, i think i've got a decent situation happening. it's that belief that throws gas on my fire of superficiality. no fat chick would ever have a chance with me, because, c'mon, look at me, i can do better than you. that's why i befriended all those fat girls that later were ready to divorce to have a chance at me. i figured 'well, they don't give me boners, so it's totally safe to be charming/flirty.' not even considering that they may be catching feelings and ready to risk it all for a taste of my sweet chocolate lovin. i know, seems like i'm high on pride, so why is it so low? because it's exhausting. i'm constantly in a state of mind of 'i'm the star of the show' as if i'm being filmed for a reality show that's being filmed in secret, truman show style. it's why i alternate hairstyles so often, because i have to keep things fresh for my audience. practicing my facial expressions in the mirror, telling anecdotes to myself ahead of time,

expensive haircuts, it's time consuming. the buddhism helped bring my ego into check. it's about controlling the hungry ghost. or, like in 'community' where the gang go to a party as celebrity impressionists, i was going through a jeff winger inflating apple moment until it burst (britta came up with the metaphor, which to her is 'an idea with another idea's hat on' which is such a perfect metaphor). now, i try to spend less time on my looks, and more time on my rotten insides. 4. greed isn't the quote 'greed is good' (i hate putting punctuation inside quotes when they don't match the quote, so here's a sidenote to make space for the question mark)? i think folks can manage and be decent even if they've got some of that greed in them. It helps them make a lot of money, which they can use for good. unless they have a lot of pride, then maybe not. it's the combinations that get you. the reason I'm ranking greed higher than pride, though, is because i'd definitely rather be rich than handsome. with money, you can hire people to tell you you're good looking. like prostitutes, lots and lots of them. but then you can never get your fill. greed is weird, because i feel like it's the basis for the rest of the sins at the top of the list. wanting more and more of something. i don't have as much greed in me as some of the other ones, so i guess maybe i'd like to have more of it? shit, there just isn't much to say about it. maybe that's why it's in the middle of the list, it's the humpday of sins. yeah, no one likes greedy folks, but everyone would love to have a wealthy friend. so this is one of those sins you can get away with, as long as you don't pair it with pride, or wrath. because then you'd be beating people with sacks of money. let's move on. 3. gluttony i almost ranked gluttony much lower, since i've had a complicated relationship with food. sure, it gives me nourishment, but also, that one time, i got hepatitis from church's chicken. then also, there's the time i smoked, early on, maybe my 3rd or 4th time, and i had sorta had sex with a pizza. now wait, hold up. let me rephrase that. no, let me just start the topic over, because i've had this in my head as a short stand-up comedy act. by a round of applause, how many of y'all here tonight have had sex with food? ok ok, hold on, i think we're all thinking of different things. some of y'all clapped and you're thinking of the classic strawberries being rubbed on your nipples or whatever. no, no, i'm not talking about that kind. nice work, though, keeping it classy. not like the other folks out there. i can see by your face that you're on the other side of the food sex spectrum. not that i'm judging, by all means, more power to you. but, no, i'm not talking about american pie, cut a hole in a melon, condom on a cucumber type of events. but again, you do you, friends. no, what i'm talking about is, have you ever eaten something so delicious that it gave you a boner? halfway through the brooklyn style dominos pizza, i realized that loud heavy breathing was coming from me, and my hips were involuntarily thrusting while i deepthroated the cheese and pepperoni. that's why gluttony got ranked this high. at this point, the sins are just fighting over order of preference. in our barest, most honest versions of heaven/paradise/nirvana, having all our favorite foods is basically near the top. there's only one thing that would stop me from a boner pizza. 2. lust yeah, i know, i figured this was an easy swish for the number one spot. but believe it or not, a lot of care went into this list. trying to figure out how to rank all these activities, I had to come up with criteria. and the first thing i thought of was, what gives me the most pleasure. then i subtracted out how bad i feel before, during, or after the acts. and lust only has the middle part as a high, and the rest not so much. but boy is that high super high. during the act, whether with a partner or solo, there's nothing better. flash a bag of money, a pizza,

pictures of myself, nothing will take me away from it. the problem is that it's too good. once it's over, what else is there? have a cigarette? drink a beer? what's going to bring you up to that same high? what else can compare? that's why whenever you find out someone abstains from drinking and drugs (which both fall under gluttony, i think. another reason it was ranked so high), they're usually addicted to sex or porn. like chris d'elia and all his pervy activities. it can fulfill your every desire. but after the eleven minutes (much love Paolo Coehlo) are done, what's left? if you're in love, then you bask in the love. if it was with a random, then you bask in the awkwardness. and if you were alone, then you bask in the shame. all that basking puts a filter on the goodness. then I also thought about the boner pizza, and the only thing that'd take me away from that pizza is some good ol' fashioned homespun luvin', but the only thing that'd take me away from that good ol' fashioned homespun luvin' is some even better activity. one that can not be replicated. 1. sloth taking a siesta. becoming the devil's plaything. tirando la hueva. i always get mad when folks say 'oh, i love the rainy weather!' because when i ask why anyone would like a gloomy day, they say 'oh because it's great weather to stay in and watch movies!' uh, you can do that shit on sunny days too. you're just looking to be lazy and need an excuse. just be lazy and be done with it. don't evoke mother nature to give yourself an excuse. like the covid overreactors. you know a lot of them acted terrified because they wanted a reason to not have to go to work. just fucking admit it! we get mad at others for what we hate in ourselves, which is how I know this one is a sin. I hate that my favorite all-time pastime is just shooting the shit, watching the world pass by. this is why sloth is number one. i'm a lazy fuck and i'm not ashamed. it's the sin that I most identify with and it's the one that has slowly been taking me down. at its own pace and leisure. well, I'm not 'not ashamed,' since i still get offended when someone other than myself calls me lazy. only our kind can use that word. call me unmotivated instead. that's the proper term. all the time i've spent trying to understand myself this is the one that i can't explain. it's been my dark passenger for as long as I could remember. i guess tv is my dealer. that's what keeps me the slothiest. but i also vegetate when i have something pending to do. or if there's a situation i don't want to deal with. like when lucy got mis-diagnosed and i thought she was dying, for days i couldn't do anything. the only thing i can accomplish when i fall into a slothhole is smoke the green. which makes the inactivity so much more exciting and fun. still though, you can't defeat it. it keeps you out of trouble, outside of the existential kind, and is completely free. you can partake at any moment, but it gives you the biggest rush when it's right before a major project is due. or even when it's a completely voluntary project that you use to self-impose deadlines that you then ignore, so you don't finish your 'seven deadly sins ranking' idea you came up with in april until mid-june, a week after you were going to send it. You know I have it right. Shit, I know you probably skipped down to look at number one because you were too lazy to read your way there. The best sins are the ones that feel the best and are secretly the worst. During lust, you can feel yourself going ape-like sometimes, and you feel like a fat fuck when you're devouring your third helping, but scratching your balls and watching TV while the world is on fire? That sin right there is a slice of heaven.

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