1. The Allied GIs are really helpful. Select about five of them, hit 'D' to Deploy them, and your base is pretty much protected against all land-based attacks. Deploying five or ten GIs at the four corners of your base is pretty helpful, because not only are deployed GIs powerful, but they become Elite (three down-pointing arrows/chevrons) very easily. Just make sure they don't get run over by tanks...
2. If your MCV can be moved around, use it to your advantage to construct the War Factory and Nuclear Reactor away from your base.
I'll assume that you already have the game up and running, but here's what I want you to do - save the game as soon as you gain control, exit the game, and relax and read this walkthrough. It's the best way to read and derive the most from it.
When I sat down to write this little piece, I wanted to shout at the top of my voice, fill the air with foul utterances, and tell you to play this goddam game no matter what. And my failure to contain my excitement leads me to this: I am shouting already, my neighbours are looking out their window, and now I want you to "PLAY THIS GODDAM GAME!"
I've been happy using Vagrant for quite a while now. I work with AWS and DevOps tools, and installing them all on one system can mess things up. Vagrant is great for doing crazy things without actually breaking your system. And if you're not already using it, you should start now.
Static website generators and JAMStack have taken off in recent years. And with good reason. With only static HTML, CSS, and Javascript to serve, there is no need for complex backends. Not having backends means better security, lower operational overhead, and cheaper hosting. A win-win-win!
If you've been through my [Introduction to Vagrant]({% post_url 2016-08-13-introduction-to-vagrant %}) article, then you have a basic understanding of what Vagrant is. By using a Vagrantfile, you can launch a virtual machine of any operating system on your local system. This way you can have a completely isolated environment for your needs. Share this Vagrantfile with your team and they can have a Vagrant box configured like yours.
Vagrant is a great way of [managing VMs for development, testing, or anything else]({% post_url 2016-08-13-introduction-to-vagrant %}) you might be up to. Using a handy Vagrantfile, you can [customise your virtual box]({% post_url 2016-08-13-introduction-to-vagrant %}) and share the same specs with your team. Vagrant also has [several handy provisioners]({% post_url 2016-08-15-provisioning-with-vagrant %}) to set up the box during the init stage.
If you followed [my last post on the different deployment types]({% post_url 2017-09-14-the-different-ways-ive-deployed-code-over-the-years-the-road-to-immutable-servers %}), you’ll know that I talked about immutable servers. The idea behind immutable servers is that once provisioned, the servers should not be interfered with in any way, either for code updates or configuration changes. Any required changes to the server must recreate the server from scratch, instead of logging in and making changes.
In my last two posts, I covered [why immutable servers are important]({% post_url 2017-09-14-the-different-ways-ive-deployed-code-over-the-years-the-road-to-immutable-servers %}), and [how to use Packer to dynamically create AMIs]({% post_url 2017-09-18-getting-started-with-packer %}). In this post, I’ll cover how to use Packer and Ansible to deploy code and recycle machines.
I recently got some time to play with Terraform, the cloud provisioning software from the same guys as [Vagrant]({% post_url 2016-08-13-introduction-to-vagrant %}) and [Packer]({% post_url 2017-09-18-getting-started-with-packer %}). If you’ve spent some time with Vagrant and Packer, then Terraform will be pretty simple.
These notes continue what we've been talking about in [Getting started with Terraform]({% post_url 2017-10-17-getting-started-with-terraform %}) and [Working with Terraform Modules]({% post_url 2018-07-11-working-with-terraform-modules %})
Terraform has become a widely-used and vendor-agnostic tool for setting up infrastructure. The simple idea has appealed to many developers: [declare the infrastructure that you need and it is either created or updated to what you define]({% post_url 2017-10-17-getting-started-with-terraform %}). This simple approach gives us two powerful advantages:
Bitbucket now offers [pre-built Pipes to deploy Lambdas to AWS]({% post_url 2019-05-01-automating-aws-lambda-deployments-using-bitbucket-pipelines-bitbucket-pipes %}). But what if we want to deploy an entire Serverless stack? That's what we'll talk about today.
I've been spending much time with Pipelines over the last few weeks, first [deploying a serverless project]({% post_url 2019-05-01-automating-serverless-framework-deployments-using-bitbucket-pipelines %}) and then another [Lambda function using Pipes]({% post_url 2019-05-01-automating-aws-lambda-deployments-using-bitbucket-pipelines-bitbucket-pipes %}). I even managed to migrate some projects in my company using those approaches successfully. However, when using pipelines for CI/CD at a large scale, one essential feature that you miss is a Pipelines wallboard.
Bitbucket Pipelines has fascinated me for several weeks now. I've already explored using it for [Serverless deployments]({% post_url 2019-05-01-automating-serverless-framework-deployments-using-bitbucket-pipelines %}), and I recently spent some time exploring it for container deployments.
I recently had a use-case where I wanted to clone another Bitbucket repository during a Pipelines execution. Doing this is very simple, but there is a lot of conflicting information online, so I thought I would document the steps here.
Bitbucket Pipelines is a great deployment tool tightly integrated into Bitbucket. It allows you to trigger deployments directly from repository branches and tags, and you can customize your deployment steps as needed.
