Getting clip navigator to not look like garbage on mobile required wrapping the video iframes using this technique and switching out the iframe that embeds the react app into the blog with the script and link tags generated by create-react-app.

Embedding the clip-navigator directly into the page required parsing the index.html that is built by create-react-app, querying for all links and scripts, and outputting them to a new file called out.html. I do this in package.js and then move the file to my jekyll _includes folder for generation when the blog deploys.

Finally, I moved the clip tools into their own drop-down menu and changed the hotkeys, hence the major version bump. Still some work to have mobile auto-play.

clip-navigator | Source

Clip Navigator now supports the Vzaar video player, which is what most of the videos submitted to Twin Galaxies use. There was no readily available npm package for the vzaar player so I had to instead write a wrapper around around their javascript API.

The data schema is updated to support a type of either YouTube or Vzaar and the player will automatically switch based on the type of the currently selected video.

Support for Twin Galaxies videos means I’ll be able to include a lot more videos in the bubble bobble comparison.

clip-navigator | Source

I’ve implemented JSON export which makes building the data Clip Navigator needs easier - an export button now exists to copy the JSON payload directly to the clipboard, rather than snooping around in browser storage to find it.

Clicking buttons also felt a bit slow when creating and removing clips, so I’ve added some more keyboard shortcuts to speed this process up:

• Z - New clip at current location
• X - Delete last clip
• Left Arrow - Scrub -5sec
• Right Arrow - Scrub +5 sec

clip-navigator | source

The activity Start Stop Continue is now renamed Retrospective and allows for any section-split retrospective styles, including, but not limited to, Start Stop Continue. Upon commencing the activity, the Presenter can select section headers from a list of presets, or, enter their own custom headers. Participants will have the section names as buttons on their device when submitting responses.

Additionally the activity now saves state to localStorage, allowing presenters to export data even after closing and re-opening a lobby.

digitalicebreakers.com | PR

I deleted a lot of code that was used for features from the earlier version as it was hurting my brain understanding what was currently needed to run the game. I also switched out the Speed Dial for normal buttons as it was annoying to have to constantly open it.

I implemented Chad Steele’s Hotkey approach and the three buttons can be used to add commands to the players command queue.

With that, the first section of the roadmap is complete, the game is nowhere near fun, however some ideas have arisen and part 2 of the roadmap is now up.

garage v0.8 | Source

Fist of Five is a great way to get a quick feeling on an issue amongst your team or to start off a continuous improvement catchup like a Sprint Retrospective. I’ve used this technique a few times with different teams and thought it’d be an easy addition to Digital Icebreakers.

In my implementation the presenter’s screen can toggle between a waiting for responses view and the result view. Participants are presented with the options 1-5 and can lock one in, similar to Trivia/Poll. The result view displays the audience’s selections and an average score. The Presenter can reset the activity and/or export the results to file.

I was able to reuse the participant components already in use with the Trivia/Poll features, so only needed to implement the Presenter view and the reducers. It took a bit of time to refactor some of the existing reducers for sharing and all up the change took about three hours. I still feel this is too long for a somewhat simple activity and I can possibly reduce this time by finding a way to reduce the plumbing code needed by dynamically building RootState and RootReducer.

Digital Icebreakers | Source

I decided to thin the project down and focus more on earlier game mechanics. I’ve raised the most basic of roadmaps and begun implementation. After cleaning up a little of the existing codebase and removing features I don’t want to focus on now, I feel like I have something I can iterate on.

The canvas represents now only a player-influenced unit, and the means to direct it via commands. Only one command exists for the moment: Go Anywhere - and it does precisely that.

Play garage v0.7

Start Stop Continue is a retrospective format used by teams that are looking to improve the way they operate and I’ve added a new activity to Digital Icebreakers with the same name. Some time ago I had a branch where I was extending the Idea Wall activity to have swim lanes for each category but it got super annoying attempting to squish the idea notes into the lanes at different Presenter resolutions.

The latest attempt at Start Stop Continue implementation is much simplier: Players use a similar idea entry format as Idea Wall but their submission buttons are split into Start, Stop and Continue. The presenter just displays the already categorised cards under the headings of Start, Stop and Continue using a Grid. Clear and Export menu items are available. This approach took only about an hour as opposed to the prior attempt.

As part of this PR I also switched out the explicit C# game constructor calls for a dynamic reflection approach. This is the first step towards supporting activities as plugins.

digitalicebreakers.com | Source

The Trivia activity is now integrated with Open Trivia DB. Instead of adding your own questions, Presenters can now click Auto Questions, select the number of questions and the difficulty, and the session’s questions will be populated by Open Trivia DB.

This update was preceeded by a number of refactorings and bug fixes that took time but had little outward facing change. Upcoming work on the project is listed here.

digitalicebreakers.com | Source

Shorter join codes had been on my mind for some time - lobbys were joinable via a URL and their id (a guid), but joining via UI and a short code entry had been a feature requested a few times. I started the branch at the end of October thinking it would be an easy change but after a couple of sessions it still wasn’t anywhere near being completed.

Procrastination featured a lot, and over the weeks I slowly plugged away at it, but each time I made progress, some other problem revealed itself. I changed my approach twice, with the third finally revealing the path to the goal. As how things usually turn out, increased test coverage at both the unit and end-to-end levels allowed me to confidently make the change and catch bugs introduced.

39 commits later users can now join lobbys via a 4-character code and the domain alias ibk.rs.

digitalicebreakers.com | Source