Casual Gaming Online

Well, the old hosting company made me sufficiently mad to the point that I couldn’t stand it anymore.

I shelled out the cash, contracted to a new hosting company, and moved the site over.  It’s been running VERY well since then.

It’ still not the best that I could hope for, but it’s a heck of a lot better than it was.

I hope that you all enjoy the added bandwidth!

Jeff

Long time ago, I saw a comedy special on Showtime. It was call “Steven Banks - Home Entertainment Center”

I had it on tape for a long time, but the tape went bad and I lost it. It was one of the funniest shows that I had seen and was upset that it was gone…

But thanks to YouTube, I’ve found it again (in like 7 parts):

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7

Enjoy!!!

Check out episode 2 and enjoy!

One of the members of Mutant Battles wrote a comic about the game! This will be an ongoing comic and you’ll be able to catch all of the issues on the link on the page link section! This was written by the group Bird House.

ENJOY!

So, the new message boards are now in for the syndicates. It took a long time to get them to work so it’s a good deal to have them done. They now work just the way that you’d want them to!

I’m still planning on moving the main board over to it, I think that it would be an improvement that’s worth putting in. To do that though, I’ll have to keep track of where you came from and then adjust which boards you see based upon who’s looking at them. If you’re comming from the main area, then I’ll only display the main boards. If you’re comming from the Syndicates page, then you’ll get the syndicate board.

I’ve got some other little things to put in there quick, like the name adjustments so that your group name will have the identifier on it. I’m planning on just adding it to the name as an extra set of character, but I’ll have to fix up the login then to make sure that you don’t need to type in the extra characters.

I’ll put out some new additional information about syndicates and the syndicate points and the Fortress of Power in a later post. It’s going to add in a whole new dimention to the game, and really make the regular fighting a lot more important.

Till next time!

Jeff

Today? Well, a bit ago I put out the calendars on the syndicate pages, so that’s new. I also redid the initial syndicate page, and redid the common room. So that leaves the message boards to work on.

I’ve got a quite a few of them that I’ve been working with to see what one would work the best, and so far the answer would be none of them. I’m in the process of ‘changing’ one of them a bit so that I can add it in to the game without major rewriting or major hacking.

Once I get that in place for syndicates, I’m going to put that out as the main one. It’s going to have a lot of new things with it, including threads, forums, and will integrate with your existing accounts.

I’m even working on getting profile pictures for you to choose from, so that when you post on the board your picture will show up. That’s not till after I get the board though.
That’s it for now, I’ll post soon.

Jeff

Well…  Been a bit since I posted out here.

Lots have been happening in my real life, as opposed to the life here.  My job has a lot of pressure right now, so it’s hard to be able to spend the time that I want to on this game, but I’m trying.  The kids sure keep me busy as well, but for all of that I have no complaints.  I’m working on trying to start another business again.  I’m partnering with a business firm that helps set up businesses.  I’m going to be helping to set up all of the IT for them.  It’s like a CIO for hire.  It sounds like a ton of work, but a ton of fun!  Time will tell.

I did get some time to work on some things for MB, like a combat limit to help keep cheating down.  Since I can’t do anything to the document objects after they leave the server, I can only do so much to stop people from cheating.  One way is to limit the number of combats that someone can do per day.  Other ways are still being built.

Something else is on the news page.  I’ve got a new login page that I’m building.  I put it out on the news page, I hope that everyone gets a chance to see it and comment on it.  Let me know what you think of the new look.  You should be able to see it here.

I’ll be getting back to Syndicates as soon as I get the page finished.  Hope that you like the way things are going even though it’s going slow right now.

Till next time.

Jeff

Next is the invite and request functionality, then the management screens. This will allow you to turn your groups from pending to active members! This will also let members leave a syndicate if they want to.

Also, some rules about God Fathers leaving syndicates. If the GF leaves, then the First Lieutenant will take over, being promoted to the status of GF. At this point, there will be no FL for that syndicate. They will have to appoint someone else to be the FL. If they then choose to leave the syndicate, then if there is a FL, they will then be promoted to GF. This will continue as long as there is a FL to be promoted. In the case that the GF leaves, and there is no FL, then the syndicate will be treated as if a disband has taken place, and all the disband rules will happen (inventories dumped, money gone, and syndicate removed from the list)

Last but not least, there will be some more info about what Syndicate Points are going to be, and how they will be used after I put more of it on paper. Trust me, it’s going to be worth it! And before you ask, no I’m not going to extend this beyond syndicates, it’s a bonus for being a part of one!

Jeff

Couple of things that got done this last weekend and tonight.

First, I got the disband a syndicate working. The God Fathers are now able to disband a syndicate. God Father and First Lieutenant are able to invite others to join a syndicate (not there yet, but I’m working on it). Basically this is going to drop all items that a syndicate has stored in their equipment storage rooms (I need a name for this!!), all of the money that they have in their vault, any message boards that they might have had, and all of their syndicate points. Then the members will be removed, and the group will be deleted.

I’ve added in more checks to help stop cheating, and the account that was caught doing this has been ‘modified’. Nuff said. PLEASE don’t use automated scripts, or other mechanisms to play this game. Thank you. Do I really need to keep saying this though?

There was a bug in the syndicate creation code, but that has been fixed now. If you wish to create a syndicate with a larger set of groups, you can access the additional fields by selecting the number of groups that you want to add in at creation time on the pull down option. The problem was the counting of how many groups that you have in a syndicate. This was done with an array counter, but I modified the array so that you could select zero extra groups when you created a syndicate. I didn’t change the counter though! DOH! That’s fixed up now.

There was a bug in the reordering of your buddy fight list. This has been fixed, and anyone that has a buddy list that isn’t working correctly (i.e. you can’t reorder your groups), please let me know. I will need to run a utility on it that will fix the list, and place the teams in a random order on it. For that reason, I don’t want to run it on EVERY account, just the ones that need it. It came about from deleting a group from the main fight page, and not through the preferred list management screen. When you dropped someone, it didn’t reorder the list so that it worked out correctly. That’s fixed up now so that no matter where you delete the group, it reorders it correctly.

Lastly, there was an error in the calculation of the damage reduction in the war combat code (the same one that was in the fight code, but the fix never made it over to the war code). This has been fixed now. Yes, this affected previous wars, but there’s no crying over spilt milk (or blood!). It’s there now, so it’s going to change the dynamic about wars from now on! Maybe you don’t want your lowest level group at the front, you might want your damage absorption rich tanks in the first slots, and then fill in with your heavy hitters! Who knows how it’s going to go!

But most of all, have fun!!

Jeff

Brain Dump Time (BDT).

So right now I’m working on the creation of the Syndicate Creation feature. But what to put into the DB is not easy. I need to think out all that it’s going to need and have before I can build it, and then I need to set it up so that I can come back in and add to it for the things that I forgot later on.

Right now I’ve got it split up into two databases. One for the group, and one for the members. Groups have an ID and a name. They will also have things like money, number of members, etc… Members have a mutant group ID, an syndicate ID, and the mutant group’s name.

I know that I’ll need things like who is the leader of the syndicate, and things like messages waiting, invites, and responses. But what else?

And is this structure the best for this? Should I split it up differently? I have to make enough links between them so that I can go from one table to the other, but what else needs to be there?

I’ve been distracted by other issue for the last little bit where I’ve put in some new features that should help prevent cheating, as well as monitor and report on excessive use which is a potential cheating indicator. But that took time, and focus away from Syndicates. That’s frustrating. I want to trust people, but it seems like I need to babysit some of them. What a waste.

They’re also asking for a different bulletin board system. I need a free one that I could link into the current game, keep the session alive, and yet has all of the advanced features that I need for a BB. Most of all, it needs to be free, and easy to set up and integrate. I’ll have to do a search for one, but that will also take time.

Rant done. Thanks for reading.

Jeff