MakeHex is a live-play hex mapping tool. It excells at creating low-fideltiy hex-based maps that can be used in real-time during your gaming sessions to give players a clear and immersive experience of the game.
A key component of Hexmagon is its ability to be run and hosted easily by players that are so inclined. You can certainly create maps using our hosted service, but you are also more than welcome to host elsewhere and manage the tool yourself. There are a few components and configuration you should understand when setting up a MakeHex instance.
If you're lucky, you can kick off the app with two simple commands:
bundle install
bundle exec db:create
foreman start
Those obviously rely on bundler and foreman being installed. If it isn't quite that easy, read on for some more specifics.
The main web app is a Ruby on Rails app. It uses the Puma webserver to provide high-performance request handling. You will need to kick off the web server as the main component.
RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rails s
In order to avoid overloading the database with tons of updates, MakeHex batches layout updates and commits them via a background worker called Sidekiq. Again, Sidekiq is a Ruby library, so you will definitely need Ruby installed.
bundle exec sidekiq
MakeHex relies on Redis for many things. From websockets, to sidekiq jobs, to caching tile updates, Redis is absolutely critical. I won't get into the intricacies here of running Redis, but I'd recommend spending some time getting it right. It's a core piece of MakeHex, and it being performant will be very valuable.
Redis is usually started with
redis-server
Behind the scenes, keeping all of ur data safe and happy, is Postgres. There is not much to say here - you'll need a Postgres instance.
Postgres is usually started with
pg_ctl -D /usr/local/var/postgres start
All of the above in the Hosting section is likely a good read if you are intending to do some development, but I would very strongly recommend investing in getting foreman working if you can - it saves a lot of dev time. If you can make it work, just start everything up with:
foreman -f Procfile.local
