Greetings everyone! This is OG Jappleng, the sole developer of
well -- Jappleng.
This is the first edition of the Jappleng Development
Journal where I will be talking about various things that have
been happening such as events, development, releases and upcoming
patch updates. Before we begin, I would like to wish you all a
happy new year and hope that this year will treat you well!
The "New Jappleng" and the Current
Jappleng
You may have come to Jappleng and wondered why things haven't
changed in some time or perhaps the site looks pretty good but it's
fairly broken. That is because there is a new version of Jappleng
being developed without adding new updates to this version of the
website.
When I had released this edition of Jappleng early last year,
it was well received but had many complaints regarding what the
website was about, how to navigate around it and well, the bugs. I
was already burnt out and had exhausted my last bit of steam to get
to that point and needed a well deserved vacation while I plan out
how exactly can my vision of this project be properly placed onto
this website. At first I had difficulties with this concept, it was
hard because people would come to Jappleng and not understand what
it was about or how to even use it. It was clearly a lack of
planning that caused this and I apologize.
Fast forward to September, I had come up with a solution but
this solution required another remake. This is the "New Jappleng"
as mentioned in the headline. Cracking the code wasn't easy but I'm
happy to say that everything makes sense now. There will be no
remake after this, it's the Last Chance at publishing this
project in hopes it will be enjoyable.
I hope that the vision that I have for this project is well
received and can spark a fantastic community when it becomes
available.
Notable Changes With the New
Jappleng
This thread would be quite large if I had to write everything
that has been changed. There has been a complete rewrite of the
entire project (almost) and it has taken since September to
reach to where it is now. I will compile a short list of notable
changes that you should expect to see when the New Jappleng is
released.
- The Design is mostly different and vastly improved
- The Dashboard is now something that appears full-screen when
you click on your avatar, it gives you immediate access to a lot of
things, it's wonderful! It took a whole month to complete due to
the IMChat integration.
- Improved caching and other optimizations have been maded to
just about everything, making the website super fast!
- Jappleng has already been migrated over to the new server
hardware but it doesn't have the new software. This will happen
when I upload the New Jappleng.
- A complete revision of the IMChat has been made, it's wholly
different and amazing! There are so many fantastic features added
to it. If you love to chat, this will really excite you!
- Jappleng TV is a feature included as part of the Dashboard but
is currently mainly used in the IMChat. Simply post videos from
YouTube and add to queue. Join others with the fun! I have even
made a playlist system to manage what you are listening or watching
with control buttons.
- Memory leaks have been fixed, at least the known ones
- J-Spot Social has been re-written and redesigned. It is
functioning as it should. No more problems scrolling, no more
problems with new messages -- live post update while viewing
threads, threading has been fixed and so much more.
- Achievements, Notifications and other related features have
been added and completely redone. This is important because of the
way the previous system worked, it would break due to complications
and could not operate efficiently.
- Search system has been upgraded and is much better. Image
results are fantastic and both regular and image search uses an
infinite pagination system. Relevancy has been improved.
- Education system has been overhauled
- Club system has been overhauled
- Forum system has been overhauled
- It's possible to embed links by pasting them into your post.
This will auto-convert whatever you are posting given it has
support for it. For instance, youtube support.
- The sticker system is now a part of the publishing process. If
you have unlocked a sticker, you can use that sticker in your post.
Each sticker has their own function. For instance, a magic 8 ball
sticker will allow you to embed it in your post, giving it a
permanent RNG reponse to what you are asking it. There are many
other stickers to collect and of course considerable thought was
added for the RP community.
- Various improvements made to the apps provided on the site
- Yokai Trainers Development build has been taken offline due to
the fact that other priorities are ahead of it since it's a fairly
big browser game
- Completed the Vocabulary Tracker
- Dozens of new items added to the Jappleng Market (Redeemable
with J-Coins)
- Booster Items have been developed and implemented where they
can be used to buff users for a variety of reasons such as earning
more XP or J-Coins per post
- Many new user related features have been added including Online
Status (Online/Away/Want to chat/DND/Invisible/Offline), avatar
cover designs, avagar background design (for J-Spot), and more
- Friends system will be limited, meaning you will have to expand
your friends list using unlockable items. A hard cap will be put
into place at the release. This is intended to improve community
friendship rather than people making accounts for the sake of a
popularity contest. We're not Twitter or Facebook. We wish to be
above them where friends really are friends.
- Personal Statistics have been added, meaning what you know,
what you don't know about Japanese and Japan will be more
obvious.
- Leaderboards have gotten an improvement, in the future I would
like to have leaderboards as part of the "My Stats" page with
competitive tournaments and prizes
- Forums will be re-organized which will also include a new asian
wave category since Japan is popular but other places in asia have
also grown in popularity and perhaps there are many hailing from
those regions who wishes to speak about their culture or
Japan
- If you're offline you will know, it will inform you so you can
re-connect or at least know that you were disconnected
- 8k, 5k, 4k, 2k, 1080p, 720p, Tablet and Mobile phone support.
Please keep in mind that there is no mobile app (yet) so your
mileage may vary. I will try to improve it whenever there's
feedback. Jappleng is intended for PC use and you will be missing
out on a lot of features if you are using mobile. However, mobile
is better than nothing and an app will take time to make. If
Jappleng succeeds and people use it, then I'll look into building a
dedicated app for Android and iOS.
- Thread/Post creation is much better. I redid how the parsing
works and "it just works". Oh, no-- I've cursed it haven't
I?
- All of the Jappleng family logos have been redesigned
- Roadmap for the year ahead and other projects as part of
Jappleng has been developed
- Significant changes to other parts of the site such as
registration, login, user settings/profile, etc... Has been
made.
- There are so many other changes that have been made; it feels
like an entirely new website and it's great!
Monetization
Jappleng has never monetized itself and it likely never will
with ads. In the future, I would love to add the ability for people
to purchase tokens which can be exchanged for J-Coins. Hosting
Jappleng is expensive, and my time is also valuable so it's a big
donation of my time to volunteer for this project. I have other
for-profit projects that I'm working on but for the past 15-years
that Jappleng has existed and evolved, I always wanted it to be as
free as it could be. Even when I had no money to myself and could
only eat ramen noodles, I was still spending over $100 a month for
hosting alone.
I think that putting the option there as a voluntary thing is
worthwhile. I want to avoid paywalls as much as possible but it
would be nice if I could possibly even turn this into a career
even. Imagine teaching Japanese, studying the culture and writing
editorials about them -- creating new learning games and other fun
things. It sounds like a dream job to me. But I don't expect funds
to be that grandoise and rather hope that what people "donate" is
enough to cover hosting and other costs associated to it.
Building the
community
I know that hardly anyone participates on Jappleng anymore.
Many have left for good because it's been a very long development
process. In the coming weeks when I finish this project (less than
2 weeks most likely), I will release the new site on the new server
software and begin informing the world about this project including
sending out an e-mail to everyone already registered.
Hopefully, in the near future we can all come to Jappleng to
socialize about the things that we love about Japan and other asian
wave topics. Until next time!
