It has been a while since I’ve posted on this blog, but I wanted to let everyone know about my games catalog site at ldsmith.games. I have had that domain registered for a few years, but I’ve never done anything with it. Last year I got a new hosting account setup for it. I also started learning about Angular and the MEAN stack (MongoDB, Express, Angular, and Node). This is my first attempt at creating and deploying a MEAN stack, and it was not as easy as I had expected.
NoSQL databases are new to me, but I’ve been using JSON for various projects for years. Since MongoDB is primarily based around JSON, it was not too difficult to pick up. The biggest challenge was exporting all of my games data in MySQL into JSON format which can be loaded into MongoDB. Eventually, I was able to create an SQL query that captured all of the game data that I wanted to migrate to the games catalog site and was successfully able to import it into MongoDB. For this project, I have been using an Ubuntu VM in VirtualBox as a DEV environment, then I export the working components over to the live site.
After going through some tutorials, I was able to get an Angular environment up and running. The new Angular site displays previews of all of the games on the main page, and provides a search bar to search by title. The nice thing about Angular is that it allows the main catalog page to filter out the games as you type. I was able to configure it to pull all of the game data from MongoDB. The only downside is that all of the game blog data is included in one huge query, so eventually I would like to limit the size of that file and load in the game blog data as needed. I also need to write a script to pull all of the images down from this site, so that the images are hosted on the games catalog site.
Another problem I had was getting the web games embedded into the game details pages, which I have not figured out yet. I would really like to have it so that when you click on a game on the main page, it loads the game in an embedded window there without having to go to the details page. Currently, I just provide the links to the appropriate page on this site to play the game, which is an extra click.
I have been exploring setting up my own crypto token, which I was able to establish on the Solana network. The token’s name is LDSMITH and the address is EkJUhSQeQYuozWaberMqDELRahSkVgrUqYKRTw4e7EoK and can be viewed on Solscan. I may write a more detailed post on crypto currency at a later date. My plan is to allow users to connect to the ldsmith.games site with their digital wallet, and then use the LDSMITH token in the games. The token could allow players to donate to the development of the various games or buy digital goods that can be used in the games. About a year ago, I setup the Kitty’s Adventure digital trading card on the Ethereum network at OpenSea. Using digital currency and trading card in the games is still just in the planning stage. I also would like to create a new leaderboard that is blockchain based.
Eventually, I would like to have all of my games hosted and playable at ldsmith.games, then this levidsmith.com site would just be for development blogging. However, I think it may be best to keep each game’s canonical page on this site for SEO purposes, since many search engines point to this site for game information. Breaking those links would be like starting from scratch and losing years of indexing history.
