mari's Scratchpad

Peaceful Disbanding

• Posted by mariteaux on February 5th, 2020 filed in Technologizing
• 2 Comments »

Seems like every day, I drag a new old project in here, but this time, it’s my first real big project, and one that’s a website away from being finally laid to rest: the Valve Developer Union. I’ve been writing out its history for the site itself all day today and I’m exhausted and trying to go to bed, so I’ll keep this brief.

For a long time after VDU went defunct, it just kinda…existed. Hell, the Linode instance even occasionally needed restarting after that because Oatload never stopped being shit. It wasn’t a good way to leave it because Jax was still running it and still owned the domain. It just couldn’t stay in his hands. It was always my project, and we both agreed on that.

So, in late November of last year, I finally got my way in securing the transfer of the valvedev.info domain to DreamHost. I quickly threw up a placeholder page…and left it like that for two months. Not the best look, and I always wished to get the VDU tool archive off my own site when I had a more solid place for them.

Well, enough dilly-dallying. With the HTML from the old VDU@IceQuake mirror in hand (and now the entirety of the site JSON and access to the old bucket again for the bits I didn’t save myself), I can finally get to work building the site that VDU should’ve had in the first place with a copy of absolutely everything that was ever posted. I’m still looking to punch up the design, but after the first day, here’s what I’ve got:

Based it off one of the old Steam site designs, if I’m honest. VDU launched with a green-and-yellow scheme like retro Steam, but Jax cocked it up and made it big and formless and ugly instead of tight and compact and retro like it should’ve been. He eventually used this to convince me that he should redesign the site, and I capitulated.

90% of the Markdown’s already got converted to HTML back when VDU@IceQuake was being put together, so this really shouldn’t take any longer than a week, maybe two. I’m not holding myself to that though, because every time I give myself a deadline, I end up hating everything until it gets done six months later. Still, I think this is gonna slap when it’s done. This is the site VDU always should’ve been.

As I said to dcb earlier today, if last year was about looking back on things, this year’s about putting them to bed. VDU, aphrodisiac, Calelira, smaller project ideas I’ve been wanting to do for a year or even longer now, maybe more. It feels like I’m in a perpetual state of transferring to the next phase of my life these days, but at least I’m with better people than I was back when I was doing VDU, so I don’t mind.

I’ll have more to say and potentially another mtlx track soon enough. Feels good to get the ball rolling again.