Archive for June, 2009
Saturday, June 13th, 2009
Gang chat is in! It doesn’t really have bells or whistles at the moment, but we’ll burn those bridges when we come to them.
The gang warfare messages will get reworked to fit in a little better with today’s changes (both the Gang Warfare change and this). But for now, they’ll be their old selves.
As a side note, I don’t intend to interfere with gang internal politics, which includes moderating your chat.
Thanks to Mag and Lord Finisher for errors that occurred while chat was rolling out.
Cheers!
Kinak
Tags: Chat, Gangs, Lord Finisher, Mag, New Features
Posted in New Features
Friday, June 12th, 2009
Put in a fairly significant Gang Warfare update today, which I’ll try to explain below. Short version is that defending in Gang Warfare now involves actual fighting and less staring at non-combats.
How It Worked
Once you beat down the previous defenders in an area, you’d gain control through non-combats (which prepare fights for future challengers). Then, after a while, it stops queueing fights and you just get the delicious, delicious benefits.
The Change
Now, when someone is challenging control of your area by defeating your defenders, you need to actually beat them back down instead of just having another non-combat to repair the damage. Assuming you’re successful, you repair the damage just like the old non-combat would.
These new sort of queued fights also can transition over into Control when you take out the old controllers, so you might be able to skip the “gaining control” non-combats entirely.
Why
So defenders in Gang Warfare get to actually fight people rather than hitting a bunch of non-combats. And so that there’s a little more symmetry between attacking and defending. Previously, there was nothing an attacker could do that the defenders couldn’t undo with a non-combat, where now, both sides win or lose in actual PvP.
Other updates for today:
- There were some SQL connection errors which have apparently been resolved by our hosts, but if you run into any more of those, give me a holler. Thanks to Thrillhouse and JTN2002 for reporting these.
- Resolved the PHP errors related to last night’s account preferences rollout. Thanks to Borkman, Lord Finisher, and Hastur the Unspeakable for isolating these.
- Recipes that you cannot complete due to missing components will now have their radio buttons greyed out. Good suggestion, Al and xKiv!
- And also thanks to Jick and Pyren for taking care of some typos for us.
Cheers!
Kinak
Tags: Al, Borkman, Gang Warfare, Hastur the Unspeakable, Jick, JTN2002, Lord Finisher, PvP, Pyren, thrillhouse, Updates, Xkiv
Posted in Updates
Friday, June 12th, 2009
Account preferences are in!
They can be accessed at the bottom of your character sheet (click your name in the left pane).
Three things can be modified in there currently:
- Whether the combat hints (the question marks) are displayed.
- The default sizes of the frames can be changed permanently.
- You can set it to display your top level location (Southside Park, The Docks, etc.) in the left pane along with your current adventuring area.
And, possibly most importantly, this means there’s a convenient place to store some other stuff. Which crafting screen you were using will now be stored across sessions, as will which logs you were looking at in the gang logs.
Cheers!
Kinak
Tags: New Features
Posted in New Features
Thursday, June 11th, 2009
Whole bunch of updates from the last couple days.
- Thanks Jick for pointing a bug where Zack wasn’t redirecting to his shop properly.
- Combats will end appropriately even if you get Broken Bones in the last round. Thanks PaidPiedPiperPal.
- Multi using Castor Capsules will give energy appropriately. Good catch, Jimmythy.
- The close combat needler now has an image. Thanks, Jthizz.
- The smuggler will now give a hint about why custom weapons aren’t on the list if you don’t qualify for them. Good suggestion, PaidPiedPiperPal.
- The order for the areas you control should match their order in the agenda list. Thanks for the suggestion, The Kitchen Sink.
- Your lifetime Gang Warfare record will be reflected on your character sheet, just as it is on your profile page. Thanks for the note, RazielSonOfKain.
- Also, thanks for some typo fixes by Jick, Wyrd, The Kitchen Sink, Mag, Thrillhouse, Shademaster00, and PaidPiedPiperPal.
I also retooled the way entering and leaving gangs is handled from the back end. This has a couple results:
- When you leave a gang you are whitelisted to, it’ll remember your rank when you come back. Thanks to The Kitchen Sink for the suggestion here.
- Leaders can leave the gang if they are not the sole leader. Another The Kitchen Sink special.
- Getting kicked from a gang by its leaders removes whitelists.
- I’m pretty sure it’ll properly remove you from Gang Warfare now, so you probably can’t fight yourself anymore. Sorry about that.
Cheers!
Kinak
Tags: Jick, Jimmythy, Jthizz, Mag, razielsonofkain, Shademaster00, The Kitchen Sink, thrillhouse, Vholes Piper, Wyrd
Posted in Updates
Monday, June 8th, 2009
The first donation item is now up! Check out Zack at Mikhail’s in Southside for some details.
It has a lot going on, more than many donation items probably will. It lets you interact with attributes in a couple of new ways, has several forms, and can be upgraded as you learn its secrets. Using it works sort of outside the normal Energy structure, so you can play with it without worrying about running all your Energy out.
I think it’s pretty cool, but I’m new at this whole “donation item” thing, so we’ll see how it turns out together.
This item will rotate out eventually, but it probably won’t be for quite a while. I’ll give quite a bit of notice before that happens.
As a side note, the item is only tradable in one form. You can change it back and forth from that form, so it’s not soul bound or anything, it’ll just work better if there aren’t four versions of the item in the Mall.
On a people are awesome note: unearthly coins were being duplicated due to a bug briefly today and both people who the bug affected reported it. Three cheers for ThrillHouse and PaidPiedPiperPal. Hip hip huzzah!
Cheers!
Kinak
Tags: Donation Items, thrillhouse, Vholes Piper
Posted in Announcements
Saturday, June 6th, 2009
The big update today is a revamp of how enemies are treated, both NPC enemies and other players in gang warfare. Basically, the game now keeps track of various special traits about each enemy, such as whether they’re a drone and whether they’re wearing a gas mask.
This nerfs some Techniques and buffs others, but is mostly there so things make more sense. No longer will Helicopter Drones have coughing fits!
This was a long standing request, so lots of folks have asked for it. Give yourselves a pat on the back :)
Other Changes:
- Internet Explorer users should be able to search in the Mall properly now across the board. Thanks to Happy Yeti for reporting this!
- You can now talk to your old friend Mikhail if you do to the Deli without reading his note, if you so desire. Good sugestion, Argeth.
- You can now talk to Dr. Amundsen about encryption even after you’ve freed Hel, although the text here will change with the Survivor’s quest. Good catch, Happy Yeti.
- Fixed a weird crafting error at zero Energy. Thanks, Mag.
- Also thanks to LlamaMan, Caradal, and Man Mobile for some typo catching :)
Cheers!
Kinak
Tags: Caradal, Combat, Durgen, Happy Yeti, Llamaman, Mag, Man Mobile, MoreUmlaut, New Features, Twitch, Vholes Piper
Posted in New Features
Thursday, June 4th, 2009
So, the second part of the University Update is in. Less new content and more tweaks.
- Both the rescue fights have a little bit more scripting now. This should cut out the weird, “spend one more Energy to see if they’re dead or rescued” bit by putting that information at the end of the fight.
- The Shard (David/Lo rescue) fight also has another option to tune the difficulty and risk/reward yourself. This is in addition to the old method, so you can now get a pretty neat spectrum of difficulty.
- Credits people give you for crates of Eclipse now represents the street price a little better. This is about half overall.
- Multi-opponent fights, in the Univeristy Quest and elsewhere, should now give you substantially more credits, where appropriate.
Cheers!
Kinak
Tags: Quest, University
Posted in Updates
Thursday, June 4th, 2009
There’s been a lot of feedback about how the Gang Log could provide better information since it’s inception. I went ahead and implemented a bunch of them today. Thanks to Man Mobile, Jick, The Kitchen Sink, PaidPiedPiperPal, and everyone else for their feedback.
- The logs are now filterable. This isn’t 100% yet, because posts older than about noon today aren’t categorized (they’ll all appear under Gang Warfare).
- Donations to the Gang Stash are now visible in the log. This, coincidently, is why the ‘Stash’ isn’t checked by default in the filter, it’ll probably get spammy.
- The logs are now kept for 72 rather than 24 hours.
- For now it’ll remember the chosen filter for the length of your session, but it’ll probably store it permanently once I get account options in.
- Buying hideout upgrades and unlocking hideout upgrades are now both visible in the log.
Some other updates:
- Hawk will no longer offer to set your dead friends free. He’s not a great guy, but he’s not that mean. Thanks Man Mobile and PaidPiedPiperPal for helping me sort out what was going on here.
- Similarly, the watch-coveting Third Eye won’t talk about going to guard a dead Dr. Amundsen anymore. Good catch, RazielSonOfKain.
- The repeated function errors last night are resolved. Thanks thrillhouse!
- The ‘Rest Here’ link in the Hideout page will now always rest in the Hideout, even if it has to take you out of your current area. It will warn you first and only take you out if needed (Ghost Ship and Below the Charnel House, specifically). Good suggestion, The Kitchen Sink.
Cheers!
Kinak
Tags: Bug Fixes, Gang Warfare, Jick, Man Mobile, New Features, razielsonofkain, The Kitchen Sink, thrillhouse, Vholes Piper
Posted in New Features
Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009
Along with the donations page, I’ve managed to sneak in some other changes and fixes.
- There is now a Completed pane of the Quest Log. Thanks to Metro and razielsonofkain for the suggestion.
- When loading the login page, the username field should get focus automatically. Thanks bonbon for the suggestion.
- Buffs granted at the end of combat shouldn’t decrement right away. Good catch, Argeth.
- On the Docks, the two choice encounters with dockhands (for coffee and armwrestling/fishing pole) have been combined into one. Thanks for pointing this out a while back, razielsonofkain.
- Gangs with quotation marks should now display correctly in player’s profiles. Thanks Olaf!
- The gang description preview should no long display the BRs to go along with your newlines. Thanks for the bug report, The Kitchen Sink.
- Also, thanks to Mag, The Kitchen Sink, Argeth, DanBob, and Wyrd for some typo catches! Yay Typos!
Also a couple fixes on the new University update:
- The quest log for the extended Hawk subquest shouldn’t jump ahead if you’ve calmed down the Quad. Thanks Wyrd!
- When defeating The Hammer, he will not display debug information, as appropriate as that may be for his character :) Thanks Lord Finisher and Olaf!
- Hawk will still be available to talk about your friends after the Trouble on the Docks quest. Good catch, Starwed.
Cheers!
Kinak
Tags: Argeth, bonbon, Bug Fixes, Lord Finisher, Mag, Metro, Olaf, razielsonofkain, Starwed, University, Updates, Wyrd
Posted in Updates
Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009
Okay, the donations page is in along with new face at Mikhail’s to help describe the process and reward a bit.
For the moment, only the basic reward (the Mr. A, if you will, the currency that is both neat on its own and can be used to buy future rewards) is in. I want to make sure the donation system is working properly before I start layering more stuff on top.
The link between us and Paypal isn’t tested out 100%, so there might be some weirdness there. Rest assured that if you donate, you’ll get your present quickly and you’ll be helping debug any problems there may be. In theory, it should be automatic as soon as your donation clears Paypal. Which is pretty cool.
Edit: The automatic processing seems to be working properly. Huzzah!
Cheers!
Kinak
P.S.: As with many things in Metroplex, the reward is a bit more than meets the eye. Zack has some hints.
Tags: Donations, New Features
Posted in New Features
