The Project

SkyChess is an airline business simulation game played in a ‘live’ environment. The game involves multiple teams running competing airlines, scheduling flights, making investments and trying to gain an advantage in a rapidly changing market.

The original game was built on an early Yii framework install with a lot of the logic handled in JavaScript on the front end. The software worked but was buggy and incredibly difficult to debug and maintain.

The Solution

The owners of SkyChess approached Cowshed:Works with the aim of adding features and ironing out some of the bugs in the code. After consultation it was decided that a re-write was a more cost-effective way to handle the new requirements.

We created a new game 'engine' in PHP to run all of the game's complex mathematics. The engine is separate from the framework (Laravel) that runs the gameplay side. Both the game engine and input side were built using TDD. The interfaces are all built in VueJS with lots of interactive features including a flight scheduler and live departure board. The system was introduced in late 2018 and is now fully operational being utilised at companies all around the world.

Languages & Frameworks

The Project

AutoInsider is a motoring website that allows car owners to post problems and get fixes and suggestions from mechanics and other motorists. The website launched in 2006 and has over 37,000 members, over 19,000 problems and over 33,000 fixes.

The website was recently acquired by Cowshed:Works with the aim of bringing it up to date and taking it forward with some fresh ideas.

The Solution

The site was built in PHP using completely custom code written specifically for the website. There was no framework and no third party code in use, everything was written in very old style PHP and would only run on PHP 5.6.

We created a process to migrate all of the data from the old database tables into a format and then TDD'd a brand new Laravel version of the website. Everything was re-written from the ground up.

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Visit AutoInsider

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Languages & Frameworks

The Project

The Association of Coaching Supervisors (AOCS) were in need of a revamped website and member management system.

AOCS came to Cowshed Works wanting to migrate from their current CMS platform that was struggling with performance and didn't really offer the flexibility and tools they needed to manage the membership. After consulation with AOCS we developed a refreshed design and plan for how we could modernise and improve the UX of their current website.

The Solution

The new website and admin panel is built on Mill, our Laravel-based in-house CMS. The new membership and profile search and management application was built as an extension to the CMS and provides members with their own profile management, article and event publishing facilities.

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Visit AOCS

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Languages & Frameworks

The Project

The business was struggling to find an ecommerce platform that could cope with their extensive range of complex product configurations and build codes.

The Solution

We provided a platform built on PHP (Laravel) and JavaScript (Vue JS) to manage the product data via a bespoke CMS and a front end product configurator for customers.

Whilst the configuration is complex behind the scenes the result is a smooth user journey for customers being able to seemlessly spec complicated products.

Languages & Frameworks