ArcadeFly Blog

Slowly inching towards the end of phase 1 now. Over the weekend I managed to wrap up just about all the remaining login/user interactions in ways I thought were intuitive. For this project I am doing most of this myself, with the help of the RESTful Authentication rails plugin. I did run into one awkward case I should probably check on a little more though. If a user has signed up but not activated their account, and they complete the “forgotten password” form, I need to rework it. I don’t like the way RESTful authentication does this part actually. You cannot reset your password unless you have already activated your account. I’d say whenever someone changes their password also set their activation code to null, making them activated. This is sort of a side effect of changing password, but it makes sense. If soeone can change their password they should meet the conditions for activation as well.

So what does that mean…? Phase 1 will be pretty barebones unfortunately. It will be an internal release to whoever is interested in testing things out. At this point it will not be possible to add/edit games or arcades, but the functionality of registering, finding arcades close to you or games close to you is in there, as is mapping. Once I get to a good stopping point in phase 2 in the next week or so I’ll probably put it up. If you’re interested in trying out the beta, give me a heads up and I’ll send you the info.

Phase 2 will be a maintenance release. Forms will be spiced up, a little more sharpening of the main focus of the site — that kind of thing. No new functionality will be included for this one, other than the ability to add arcades. Working out a way to edit arcades/games is going to be a little tricky. I don’t want to open it up completely as if it was a wiki, but it shouldn’t be difficult for someone that wants to contribute to do so. Once it’s possible to do the main point of the site, and do it extremely well, I’ll start implementing the “nice-to-haves” like arcade ratings, popular arcades/games and that kind of thing.

ArcadeFly is a project I’ve wanted to do for a while. It’s one of those ideas that you just assume there’d be a comparable service for somewhere, but it’s just never been filled — and in the time meantime I’ve witnessed a drop in Arcades all around. It’s a shame to see so many great hangouts disappear, but hopefully those that do survive will adapt to service more people — the way the Wii has. It seems like Gameworks, Dave and Busters as well as mall arcades (of course) are doing well, but still I wish for more variety. So ArcadeFly is out there to help people with the same interest in finding new places. If you’re here you probably already know the basics of the (somewhat simplistic) site.

As for this blog, it’s mostly going to be a journal for the development progress to begin with. ArcadeFly is being developed by one guy (me), while learning Ruby On Rails, which it’s built on. I don’t see myself going into full blown tutorials on what I’m using, but more for design decisions, what plugins I’m using and where the site is at now. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to drop me a line.