Sunday Shout #4: Neocities VS WordPress.com VS Blogger

Its-a Sunday and I've decided to do one of my Sunday Shout blog posts. Just a general blog post about my site(s)/project happenings, and anything else that comes to mind.

Today's post is about Neocities VS WordPress.com VS Blogger, TinksJS game library development progress, Super Mario 3D World and Tea VS Coffee.

Neocities VS WordPress.com VS Blogger

Neocities, of course! But, this last couple of weeks I've been working on my WordPress Site and my Blogger Site as well. I enjoy messing with this stuff, and I figure it can't hurt engagement to use those platforms as well. Why pick one? Use all the things! I also plan to continue using these platforms, in addition to my primary website on Neocities, when blogging from now on.

WordPress.com

In my opinion, WordPress.com is a bit convoluted. Settings, layout, widgets etc are a bit difficult to find sometimes. I managed to find a decent theme, but the selection wasn't quite as good as those on Blogger. Once you are set up, editing posts is good. They have this system where you work in blocks and it's a nice way to do things. They also have a Daily Writing Prompt to give you inspiration to write, which I may use sometimes. And finally, WordPress actually puts your content in front of other WordPress users. I've had a little engagement on that platform, which is nice.

Blogger

The platform that can't decide whether it's called Blogger or BlogSpot lol. I'll go with Blogger. Overall, Blogger is very easy to use. There's a nice range of themes and I really like the one I picked. Once you are set up, however, editing pages and posts can be a bit frustrating sometimes. The WYSIWYG editor sometimes doesn't do what you intended, inserts random new lines, deletes too much, even when just doing basic editing using its own buttons. Fortunately, you can edit the HTML yourself, which, as a NeoCitizen, I'm happy doing. Blogger seems to have zero community and doesn't put your content in front of anyone in itself. It's Google owned however, so maybe your content will rank good on Google search.

WordPress VS Blogger: Conclusion

Both have pros and cons. If I had to pick one purely on functionality and fun, I'd go with Blogger. However if I were recommending to others, I'd go with WordPress simply because your content actually has a chance of being seen by a few others when you post. Of course though, if you're willing to learn some HTML, Neocities is the way to go.

TinksJS

This week I have continued development of TinksJS, a game library for making desktop web browser games. As all my projects do, it's taking longer than expected lol.

What's been taking the time this week, is deciding how to organise the audio functions. I don't want the library to take over the dev's entire game, but at the same time I do want it to be as useful as possible out of the box.

As such, I asked myself what I'd want myself if I were starting a new project. One thing that's a bit of a pain to do in a new game project is split the audio into Master Volume, Sound Volume and Music Volume. So I decided TinksJS would offer to handle this for you, and as a result the audio functions are split into sound effect calls and music calls. If you call playMusic(), the current one will stop. Music also loops by default. For sound, the opposite. If the dev decides they want to manage this stuff themselves, they can do so by just using the sound effect functions for everything.

Additionally, I've been developing a toolbar, which you can optionally activate programmatically. It shows a framerate, buttons for switching between embed/fill window/full screen, and volume controls for Master/Sound Effect/Music. Once again it's completely optional and TinksJS still provides functions for you to manage this stuff yourself if you wish. You could also just use it while developing your game.

I think I've got the design of the audio functions down now, and should be wrapped up on programming them soon.

Super Mario 3D Word (Meoooow)

Lately I've been playing Super Mario 3D World, and I'm close to finishing it 100%.

I've thoroughly enjoyed the game, and tbh I think I'm just gonna play Bowser's Fury as soon as I've finished the main game lol.

One thing I wish I'd known sooner is that if you press Select on the world map, and then R, you can see a page which shows you your Stars, Stamps and Flags for the current world. Mr Stupid here (me) was checking every level individually.

Also, if you're missing a Star, it very well might be the one in World Castle. There's a little stone on the floor you can press A on, it turns into a Pipe and you fight the Fire Bros again. Took me ages to find that lol.

Tea VS Coffee

I'm currently running a Tea VS Coffee poll and… coffee is WINNING! It's a sad day for those who prefer tea, like myself. Although this mighty battle is not over yet. They've both overtaken each other several times thus far. Things could still change. Have you voted yet? HAVE YA?!

The End OR IS IT

DUN DUN DUUUUUUN!!!