What do Osiris and GuardianForge have in common?

After nearly a year, GuardianForge is being revived from it’s coma! And all without Nezcafe…

I’m pleased to announce that I have FINALLY returned to this project, and to kick off the return I have built a pretty substantial update. This posts outlines what’s changed in Forge today along with a number of known bugs that I’ll actively be working on over the next few weeks, so lets dive in.

A return to the ways of old

No, this has nothing to do with Variks. Some time ago, I made the decision to essentially split GuardianForge into two, a public UI and a private UI. At the time, I thought doing so would help me maintain it by simplifying the public side of things, but in reality it gave me two places that I needed to build up and test. So the major theme of this update is reconsolidating the two sides of the site into one again. On top of that, I updated many of the website elements to match the Destiny game UI more closely. Here are a few screenshots of the old version compared to the current version.

Create builds

Much of the changes to the Create Build page have been strictly design related. Beyond the UI changes, creating builds will also require users to log in going forward, which makes for a much more streamlined experience overall.

Viewing Guardians and Builds

Much of these views are the same on the desktop, except with the new asthetic. On smaller screens, the buttons are now arranged as a grid, which should make them easier to tap.

User profiles

User profiles received a redesign. Separate areas are now setup as tabs instead of using a mini sidebar. As more functionality is added to GuardianForge, the available tabs will grow as well.

A new way to search

The previous areas of the app, while having a slightly different UI, largely remain the same. One major change is the Find Players & Find Builds functionality have been merged into a single modal called Search. Accessing Search from the navigation will display a modal where you can search both users and builds at the same time.

Outstanding bugs

While rebuilding and redesigning GuardianForge, I fixed a number of outstanding bugs that I could find, however there are still some that need a bit more time to nail down:

Login issues

Logging in works fine, however there are two scenarios that do not behave correctly. Upon initial login, you may be redirected to login a second time behind the scenes. This may stop the sites ability to drop you back where you were after the login button was clicked. Additionally, accessing builds among other pages directly immediately upon logging in may show a blank screen. A fix for the time being is navigating home, then back to the page you want. This is the first major bug I’ll be tackling but requires me to review the entire login system to find where the source of the issue is.

Editing builds

Editing builds works, but after saving the updates, only the name may change on the build page. Refreshing the page fixes this issue.

Incorrect mod cost calculations

When creating a freeform build, swapping items in a given slot might confuse the system in such a way that mods may be applied when their cost goes above the current available energy for a given armor piece, or it may restrict you from adding a mod that should be equip-able. This does not affect creating builds based off of other players, or your Guardians as they are in-game.

Provide feedback

GuardianForge is an open source application, all of the code is hosted in its own GitHub Repository. If you encounter any errors, you may log them in the Issues of that repository. Alternatively, reach out to me directly on Twitter @brianmmdev and I’ll do my best to help!