Website Redesign & New Direction
A Fresh Start
Welcome to the new jamestbarry.com! After letting this site sit as a useless peice of junk for over a year, I decided it was time for a complete overhaul. I got tired of paying $30 a year for this domain and hosting without a need of having it. So I made a need to have it.
What Changed?
The entire site. Everything. The old site was extremely outdated, carrying old information about projects and one blog post from OVER A YEAR AGO. I decided it was time to ditch the old, retro look and go for something more modern and clean. So, here it is.
I decided to make the title page a little more interesting, giving it a nice image to look at. I also added mobile support, so you can use your phone with this site now (Finally!)
The About page now talks about what I ACTUALLY do instead of just a brief overview. The projects section shows stuff I'm currently building now - AltOS, AlTerm, and a retro FPS game. I added a dedicated AltOS section because I felt strongly enough about the project that I thought it deserved its own page. I relaunched the blog with actual development updates instead of letting it sit empty for a year.
What's Next?
Now that the site doesn't look like it was abandoned in 2024, I'm going to actually use it. Expect regular blog posts about AltOS development, updates on the retro FPS game and AlTerm terminal (plus occasional posts about books or other stuff I'm interested in).
The whole point of this redesign was to have a place worth updating. The old site was pretty terrible and wasn't something I was excited about updating. This website is.
Other Projects: Retro FPS Game
While working on the website, I've also been building a retro-style first-person shooter in Godot (A game engine). It's heavily inspired by Marathon (which I play constantly via AlephOne), with influences from Doom, Wolfenstein 3D, and Quake.
I currently have a working player that can shoot bullets, run out of ammo, and reload. I have a pixely animated sprite to go along with it, too. However, I don't have any enemies, levels, or interesting things to do. Hopefully this will change in the future.
Why Now?
I'm fairly serious about AltOS, which is something I started planning about 2 months ago. AlTerm is coming along, and I'm enjoying working on it. My untitled retro FPS is looking pretty good to. I guess you could say I remade this thing because I have projects to document at all now.
The old site was fine when I was just learning to code and didn't have much to show. Now, however, I have actual things worth posting, so what's a better place to do it than the website I PAY for?
Closing Thoughts
The old site was bad. Very bad. But now, jamestbarry.com is good, so feel free to check it out a little more often expecting updates. I liked the retro vibe from before, but it didn't do anything. Now, this is something slightly interesting.
Thanks for checking it out. Next post will dive into AltOS - why I'm building it, what problems I'm solving, and where development is headed.
- James