
## In Progress

---

Decks of the Hunter is a working title for my next book.

I have set myself a goal for this book to write over 300 pages. I really want to dive more into the ideas around some elements of the first book, and really flesh out the world and characters of Lovecraftian 1920s New Zealand.

You can buy [The Dark that Dwells Beneath Te Aro](https://www.amazon.com/Dark-that-Dwells-Beneath-Aro/dp/B09JVFJKFX/) on Amazon. Please consider leaving a review on amazon, it will help toward my next novel currently in progress.


Decks of the Hunter


## Preamble

---

As part of my weekly routine, Monday's at 7:30pm NZT I sit down to watch Twitch for a couple of hours of Dungeons and Dragons from a local D&D crew.
Hosted by an old collegue of mine, [Getting Dicey](https://twitch.tv/gettingdicey) is alot of fun. Just, a bunch of kiwis having a laugh after work.

The Twitch stream has been rather successful over the last 3 years, gaining over 900 followers, with plenty of regulars and subscribers tuning in every Monday from around the world (_waves_ to Kyosti).

## The Idea

---

Host and Dungeon Master (whom I'll call our Product Owner) had a desire to introduce something to the channel, something that users could participate and engage with while on stream, but without them having commit to paying with real money.

There are a few ways viewers can support Twitch streamers, either following the channel, which is free, or paid methods such as Subscribing or buying and giving the channel 'Bits', a digital currency on the platform where you can buy a bundled amount and share with any channel you are watching with the click of a button.

Twitch released a few years ago another support method, Channel Points. These accumulate beneath the chat (twitch viewers can interact with Streamers via chat messaging as well), as you watch the stream, you are awarded roughly 30 points per 15 minutes. Viewers can, like Bits, select an option below the chat to spend their Channel Points on various rewards curated by the broadcaster.

## Could I do it?

---

The first thing I did was sit down and take a look at Twitch's developer docs. After about 2 hours of looking over the documentation, it did appear to have a very extensive [Rest Api](https://dev.twitch.tv/docs/api/).

The Product Owner and I had a chat on the community discord, so they could brief me on the idea, I then broke it down into a simpler user story.

> As a Viewer
>
> I want to spend Twitch Channel Points to unlock a random getting dicey trading card
>
> So that I can collect and view them

From here I could break down the objectives...But before I open an editor, more research was needed. I knew [Twitch Extensions](https://dev.twitch.tv/docs/extensions) existed, I knew there was a developer community out there, and I hadn't written any code in a very long time...

## Presentation Proof of Concept

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I wanted to learn a few things with the proof of concept:

- React.js
- Displaying _n_ number of cards nicely and intutively

My gut estimate was this was going to take 3 weekends of schedule, roughly spending 2 hours each day, and my lovely wife would take the kids out for a couple of Saturdays so I could spend roughly 3 to 6 hours each weekend. That was my goal, and enough to keep me motivated.

### and 3 weekends later...I had a PoC.

---

![Proof of Concept of trading cards](/GDCollectionPrototype.gif "Animated gif of prototype") ![Proof of Concept of trading cards card flip](/GDflipfix.gif "Animated gif of prototype")

## PoC TICK!

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Now that I had a PoC. It was time to understand if and how I could store data, thats where [MongoDB](https://cloud.mongodb.com/) came in. Now it was getting tricky. You see, there are some limitations with [Twitch Extensions](https://dev.twitch.tv/docs/extensions), particularily what you can, and cannot do client side in the extension itself. Twitch hosts the client side code to iframe the application in various views, Twitch do not provide a backend. I needed to store various things, OAuth API tokens, viewers card collection data etc. This needed a backend. After, a few hours of reading, I learned alot about Twitch Extension architecture, such as the EBS or "Extension Backend Service". This has to be hosted by you, the Extension developer, and Twitch provides the preferred mechanisms to connect to that EBS using JWT or [JSON Web Tokens](https://jwt.io/).

[Heroku](https://www.heroku.com/) to the rescue! Wow, we live in an amazing time in the web, I haven't been this excited since Flash and ActionScript...Anywho, Heroku _is a platform as a service (PaaS) that enables developers to build, run, and operate applications entirely in the cloud._ What this means, is I am able to easily set up a Node server on Heroku (for free) under the Hobbyiest tier (though we are now paying for the $7 tier now that it's live), and it only took an hour to learn and deployments are simply a git commit. A Special thanks to my work colleque Feng, as here is where I got a bit stuck...

I learned HEAPS here:

- Nodejs
- Authenticated Headers
- fetch
- CORS...so much CORS

This took a fair bit to do, lots of trial and error, but with some perseverance, and some help from what I consider a real developer, we got it all working.

## Twitch APIs and ComfyJs

---

This part was actually pretty simple, I had come accross a open source JavaScript library from Twitch developer [instafluff](https://www.instafluff.tv/) called [Comfyjs](https://github.com/instafluff/ComfyJS). This essentially reduced a ton of effort to set up the functionality to unlock cards. But, it did introduce a problem, I originally had this in the client side application. Without thinking too much about how authentication works on Twitch Extensions, so a big learning for me here is that Twitch has no (to my knowledge) way of setting up environment variables or secrets. These need to be stored on your EBS, and thus a refactor was needed to put it all server side on Heroku.

A benefit is, moving things sever side actually cleared up a bug where if viewers had the stream open in more than one browser tab they could unlock multiple cards for each screen they had open, yup, thats software dev, you never really know what will happen until users get a hold of it. We had run a few live tests with a few users during development, it was hugely helpful to see how different viewers interacted with the app.

## Release v1 - 3 Months after POC

---

![Release version one](/Walkthrough1.gif "Animated gif of first release currently live")

We did it team! We went live in October and the app is running and it still has some features and improvements to come. Though I will be taking a small break to write my second book, which I have been procrastinating from since starting this project, reduce work in progress!

You can come check out the app and collect some trading cards over at [https://www.twitch.tv/gettingdicey](https://www.twitch.tv/gettingdicey) Live on Mondays 7:30pm NZT


Getting Dicey Trading Cards


## Preamble

---

I was about 7 years old when my teacher got fed up with my horsing around in class when we were supposed to be practicing writing. I don't recall her name, but she definately started something when dragging me out of the classroom to the school library, sitting me down at a small lonesome desk with several sheets of lined paper and a pencil. "You write until I come back!", and she proceeds to shut the door behind her. So, I put my head down and begin to write what I recall was 22 pages of a knight facing off against a dragon until the teacher returned an hour or so later.

I felt proud of myself, I think the teacher was also, or maybe she enjoyed the peace and quiet.

Since then, most of my writing has been in video game magazines, software development proposals or contracts. There was definately an itch to learn to write a novel or short story at some stage.

## The Idea

---

With most of my projects, some inspiration generally sparks a thought which can snowball into a _sense of purpose_.
I participated in a text adventure with our online friends during COVID lockdowns, and the Game Keeper had curated a completely unique setting using the [Choasium Call of Cthuluh](https://www.chaosium.com/call-of-cthulhu-rpg/) rules. Instead of playing on a table top, we simply played out the adventure online, in text over our Discord, and it worked out surprisingly well.

It was such a great experience, I had an idea to write out that adventure from my own characters perspective.

## Learning to publish a book

---

For this project I didn't set out to write something to make money from it. I wanted to write a story and learn how to write something that could potentially be published.

I didn't really have a well established or thought out process for writing a book, so I simply just started by opening a word processor on my computer and began from the start. I knew I didn't want to focus on spelling and grammar, like my "blogs" I just write what I think, and do my best to tidy it up later, I think you get a more personable reading experience. One of my friends (hi Russ) has always insisted he review my emails, documentation, and proposals, and he said I am getting better, which is what counts in my book. In any case, spelling and grammer can be fixed later in the process.

## Kindle Direct Publishing

---

It didn't take me long to learn about Kindle Direct Publishing or KDP. Amazons publishing platform is by far the cheapest and most accessible platform I could find. It also has guideance on how to write a manuscript, though I didn't take one source on that, I surfed the googlesphere for "Novel Manuscript example" and "Novel Manuscript templates". There is plenty of information out there.

An interesting thing about KDP is, while you start with a Kindle or e-book release, there are options for printing (on demand) paper and hardback copies as well, the latter becoming available after 6 months once you have set up paperback copies. There is no need to hold any inventory.

A thing to note with KDP. If you are intending to make money, know they withhold the revenue until it reaches a threshold of $100 of your countries currency, and depending on your book it may take some time before this threshold is met.

## The writing process

---

It was 2 months in and I had a bulk of the 79 page story done. Spending 2 hours a day, and couple of weekends here and there I could spend a bit longer writing. I would find myself writing the fun parts first, the more interesting scenes in my mind, then going back and forth between pages joining up the scenes and events as I write them.

I had several locations in mind the protagonists ends up, until the big ending, so I was simply peicing the journey together, filling in dialogue and events on the way.

## Grammar and structure

---

English is hard, I also feel like punctuation can be subjective at times. But, the best tool you have is your users, or readers in my case sharing my work with others offered some great feedback, and the great thing about the KDP platform is that you can fix mistakes at anytime and any new book printed comes with those fixes, and your e-book updates automatically when you upload a new manuscript file.

For the first months of release, I first printed a proof copy, read it over a few times, fixed a few issues, then I printed a few paperback author copies, sent some friends and workmates a copy of the manuscript for constructive critisim. People tend to respond posititvely about the story and the book, and provided some edits here and there.

Now I have a hardcover available, it may still have one or two incorrect spellings "heals" vs "heels" (thanks Barb), so far readers have enjoyed what matters, the story.

## Dont be afraid to just start

---

You can buy [The Dark that Dwells Beneath Te Aro](https://www.amazon.com/Dark-that-Dwells-Beneath-Aro/dp/B09JVFJKFX/) on Amazon. Please consider leaving a review on amazon, it will help toward my next follow up novel currently in progress.


L.J. Percy

Workin progress.