Game changes - Announcements

[Doug R.]

Until now, there has been a very strict separation between Cantr II and it's associated social media (forum, irc, etc). Bad behavior on the forum was dealt with as a social issue and had no repercussions in-game. However, we are in the process of changing that. Since everyone is here because of Cantr, it stands to reason that disruptive or abusive behavior should have restrictions on play on the table as a viable disciplinary option. Since many of the game's most notorious cheaters have also been highly disruptive forum denizens, this should provide staff with more options to remove these players before they can do damage to the game. It should be assumed that a ban from Cantr's social media will also be met with a ban from the game itself.

[EchoMan]

It has come to our attention that this forum is cloned at other sites. These may be phishing attempts. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing)

Do not ever log in to the forum or the game, unless it has one of the following addresses in the address bar:

cantr.org

cantr.net

flizzle.net

Thanks!

[EchoMan]

Forum downtime!

The server that this forum resides on is going to have some maintenance downtime. The forums can become unavailable for half an hour or so some time between 9AM - 2PM Eastern Time, the 15th of September.

In other time-zones:

6AM - 11AM, 15th Sept, PST
2PM - 7PM, 15th Sept, GMT
3PM - 8PM, 15th Sept, CET
12AM - 7AM, 16th Sept, Eastern Australia

(I think I got this right, I hate time-zones)

[EchoMan]

There has been a slight change to the boat speed event handling. Previously, if you set the speed to 5% with a very slow vessel, the actual speed would have been rounded to 0%, but the event would still say 5%. This had the effect that some vessels didn't move at all, though the event led the sailors to believe they were in fact moving.

Now the event will communicate the actual speed after rounding, no matter what you originally tried to set the speed to.

[EchoMan]

Finally! After a loooooong wait the dynamic, java-script based build menu is back. Enjoy!

[EchoMan]

I thought I should post a little general status report of recent happenings and changes.

All departments in Cantr write (or should write) a status report to their members and GAB every three weeks, the so called Tri-Weekly Report. I did this for the Programming Department this morning and realized I haven't seen this kind of activity in the department in a long, long time. Doug R. suggested I'd share the good news with all of you, so here is a slightly altered version of what I wrote this morning, for public view:

------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRI-WEEKLY REPORT
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Council: Programming Department
Chair: EchoMan
Period: 3402 to 3423

------------------------------------------------------------------------
GENERAL SUMMARY
------------------------------------------------------------------------

I haven't seen the department this active ever. My only fear is that my workload (IRL) will increase again, making me the bottle neck until we can resolve issues about certain aspects of the release cycle and so on.

Things that have been released live this period includes:
- Increase new player minutes to 2000 (bug-fix).
- Project size text for >1 day projects (new functionality).
- Meta description in HTML code fixed (bug).
- Recipient name and raw-type in "give to" (new).
- Impossible to miss self when attacking (new).
- Dragging progress bar + wheelbarrow (bug).
- Cancel dragging from undocking vessel (bug).
- AfterRegistration link to forum (bug).
- Error message when picking a locked lock (new).
- Updates to various staff tools (bug/new)

Some things that have been started this (or a previous) period, and still in progress:
- Translation tool + build menu fixes (bug).
- Natural healing of injured characters (new).
- Updates to various staff tools (bug/new).
- Point at anything (new).

The plan for the next period is to continue working off tasks from the long backlog of bugs, suggestions and security enhancements. Maybe it's time to initiate one of the larger projects soon. We will see about availability and what members feel like doing.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
STAFF SUMMARY
------------------------------------------------------------------------

We have a new member in training: Madfish. Welcome to the team!

Both psychowico and *ono has advanced to full members.

I'm impressed with everyones energy and skills.

There is a thread for discussing Game Changes here: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=11012, if you want to give praise to our new and very active programmers, or discuss these recent changes.

[EchoMan]

We now have Natural Healing in game. This means characters heal physical damage automagically at a rather slow rate. Better fed and resting characters heal their injuries faster than others. Thanks to *ono for making it happen.

[EchoMan]

It's now possible to point at animals, as a first step on the way to be able to point at any object you can normally interact with. Thanks to Madfish for the implementation.

If the buttons doesn't line up in your browser, force it to refresh (Ctrl+F5 in FireFox, something similar in other browsers).

[EchoMan]

We have changed character encoding on our text database, and converted language specific special characters. We think that everything has worked fine, but please report if you notice anything strange.

This would probably only affect non-English languages with special characters.

This fix also means that it is now possible to search in the build menu with language specific characters.


(LO's or translators, please translate this and put it in your language forums. Thank you!)

[EchoMan]

It is now possible to wear up to ten rings at the same time.

[EchoMan]

We have released a lot of small clean-up and useability fixes today;

Player page:
- Credits and time left has been removed since they are not used at the moment.
- The Messages section doesn't show when you have no messages.
- Webzine section has been removed.
- The IRC applet now connects to a working server again.

Character page (s):
- Time left removed.
- Multiple notes: You can now click on the note name to select it, not just on the little checkbox.
- Same for radio-buttons and check-box on the Activity page.
- Same for animal attack check-boxes.
- Hunting and repair buttons removed for indoors and vehicle locations.
- Back-buttons has been added to the following pages: give, drop, take, store and to several pages where you change the name of things.

Thanks Psychowico for fixing these!

[EchoMan]

We now have lockable noticeboards in game. This will show up at the top of the object page, and it will contain a note. The note title will be in the noticeboard name, and the notes content can be read just like a note. It cannot be altered if you don't have the key. It can be broken into like any other locked thing. Thanks to PsychoWico for implementing it.

[EchoMan]

Today we have made another release concerning labels and addition of back-buttons to many pages. If you see anything that doesn't work like it should, please report it on the forum. Thanks!

[EchoMan]

We have re-added events that others see when someone stores something in a storage. This was once on the live server, but never committed to our source control repository, so when the game was down/moved/changed the events disappeared. Now it will also be visible what kind of material is stored.

Note that events created prior to now might look strange, e.g. 465-2.03: You see psychowico take #MATERIAL# out of a storage.

[EchoMan]

We are doing a rather large change to the behind-the-scenes system today. We have already started, and estimate to be finished within the hour. If you encounter anything that is not working when it comes to your session or login and so on, please report it on the forums.