Archive for the ‘Metroplexity’ Category
Monday, June 15th, 2009
After a lot of deep-thinking and soul-searching, we have a temporary answer to the question “I just donated, can I use my presents after resetting?” If you’re asking that question, go ahead and talk to Zack, he may have something for you.
For now, you’ll just receive your coins and puzzle boxes. I’m still not entirely clear on the path going forward, but wanted to get some sort of solution in for people.
So we’re 100% clear: this is just the plan for Beta. The final system that replaces it will have a lot more options, but probably will not include this one.
Thanks to everyone for their input on this. Hopefully this’ll take care of things for the time being.
Cheers!
Kinak
Tags: Beta Reset, Donation Items, Donations, Zack
Posted in New Features
Sunday, June 14th, 2009
So, mostly worked on chat today. Hopefully, the weirdness with it refreshing and losing what you’re typing or focus or both should be gone. Works like a charm for me, at least.
On a related note, you can now see the current time by mousing over “Who’s Here?” to go with the details on when messages came in by mousing over them.
Other Updates:
- Added some pretty cool functionality to contacts, where I can plug in floating conversation bits (like asking Hawk about your friends or the Squatter King’s son) separately and have them show up as needed. In the process, Lo started blabbing about some crazy puzzle box. Thanks to Justin and Thrillhouse for helping me get him back under control.
- The images in the Mall preview now link to their item descriptions. The text still links to the listings. Good suggestion, RazielSonOfKain.
- Log messages for Gang Warfare should be showing up consistently now. Thanks for the bug report, Mag.
- Beancounters should no longer get stealth-demoted everytime somebody leaves a gang. Thanks to PaidPiedPiperPal for helping sort this out and RazielSonOfKain for being the test subject.
- Also thanks to RazielSonOfKain for reminding me that I hadn’t turned off image borders everywhere. Shouldn’t have to worry about them again.
- Thanks to Cristiona for snagging a typo for us.
Cheers!
Kinak
Tags: Chat, Contacts, Cristiona, Justin, Mag, razielsonofkain, thrillhouse, Vholes Piper
Posted in Bug Fixes
Saturday, June 13th, 2009
Whole bunch of updates today. Mostly expanding the Chat interface, but snuck in a few other updates as well.
Chat
- At the bottom of chat it’ll show who’s viewed that chat recently (last five minutes or so). Good suggestion, the Kitchen Sink.
- The Gang Warfare messages showing up in chat have been revamped. I think they’re clearer, but the secret is this: the first name listed is your gangmate.
- The autorefresh should no longer clear out what you’ve been typing. Good catch, Cryptodynamic.
- Your name will now also show up in bold in the chat as it does in the gang log. Thanks for the suggestion, The Kitchen Sink.
- When you mouseover a comment in chat, it’ll display the time posted. Remember that is server time, which is set to GMT. Thanks for the suggestion, Cryptodynamic! Always up for a good excuse to use mouseover text.
Other Stuff
- You can now search in the OmniMall ignoring items in your inventory/equipped by checking the “Listings Only” checkbox right under the search. Thanks for the suggestion, Wyrd!
- The Gang Log now includes people entering the gang, leaving the gang, promotions, and demotions. These are under a new section called ‘Members.’ It’s pretty cool. Good suggestion, The Kitchen Sink.
- Shard will now be encounterable after luring a guard away. Thanks for the bug report, Cryptodynamic!
- The Mall Previews on the front page now have images. It’s kind of shocking how much more interesting that makes them look. Good call, RazielSonOfKain!
- Third Eye Stashes you collect from now on (using Big M’s Maps) will now show up under your completed quests. Good suggestion, Harrakan.
- Also corrected a typo from PaidPiedPiperPal.
Cheers!
Kinak
Tags: Chat, Cryptodynamic, Gang Warfare, Gangs, Harrakan, Mall, razielsonofkain, The Kitchen Sink, Vholes Piper, Wyrd
Posted in New Features, Updates
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
