Game changes - Announcements

[EchoMan]

We are doing some updates today again, most of the things just cosmetic, like making sure all buttons are cantr-style buttons and so on. There can be some small glitches while we do this work, but we will fix it as soon as we notice them. Report problems in the support forum. Thanks!

[EchoMan]

We have release a bunch of small updates today. Mostly interface related things, like uniforming buttons in Cantr-style, adding lables to checkboxes and radio buttons, so you can click the description too, not just exactly on the box/button. You can now access a character by clicking its name too, not just the button. Enjoy!

[EchoMan]

It's update time again. The game might be inresponsive for short peroiods of time, but it should come back again fairly quick.

[Doug R.]

This isn't a game change, but I'm using this space none-the-less.

I've been getting some negative feedback about how the Players Department has been handling some specific issues. I want to make a few things perfectly clear:

1) The Players Department is not allowed to share confidential information with the players. This means we are not allowed to divulge player punishments or sanctions, nor are we allowed to divulge the findings of our investigations. This means that you will not know. It may appear that nothing has been done, but I repeat, you do not know. Following from this, claims based on this lack of information that the PD is ignoring your complaint, biased towards the subject of the complaint, or are simply inept are offensive and will be taken as such. The PD has held, since the dawn of the game, that account information, along with discussions between a player and the player's department, and the findings that result from those conversations and investigations are no one's business except the PD and the player involved.

2) The Players Department investigates all cases impartially. PD members that are too close to the case/player, or feel they are too close, recuse themselves from investigations. For guilt to be established, we need to determine, beyond a reasonable doubt, that a violation has occurred. The PD has a wide array of tools to assist them in gathering the information needed to make these decisions, tools that the general player body does not have access to. In all investigations, the PD attempts, to the best of it's ability, to balance fairness to the general player body and fairness to the accused. In situations where fairness to both cannot be maintained, it will favor the well-being of the general player body.

3) Why the secrecy? If it was a transparent process, then people would be able to see that the PD is doing it's job as I describe. This is undoubtedly true, but consider, if it was a transparent process:

-Player names, ID numbers, email addresses, and character names would be public information
-The tools and methods we use for data gathering would be public knowledge, and allow cheaters to evade detection, making the game inherently more unfair.
-It would open cases up to the court of public opinion, which by it's very nature is unfair, biased,and fickle.
-It would make it harder for the PD to conduct investigations in an impartial manner.

4) The PD forms it's opinions by piecing together information from a vast array of sources. One of these sources are players that report suspicions. If we are not aware of a suspicion, we won't initiate an investigation. An unreported suspicion is entirely worthless. Do not hold the PD accountable for not considering information that was never reported.

-Suspicions are just that, suspicions. Do not hesitate to contact the PD because you have no "proof." We understand that the players have a very limited insight on any matter, but that limited insight may be the piece we're missing. You will not be yelled at for reporting a suspicion.

-All suspicions should be reported to support@cantr.net, or using the contact form. Do not contact a PD member individually. If it's not a matter of official record, it never happened.

-The only time you will be told if your suspicion was correct is if it results in a permanent ban. Once a player has been barred from playing forever, we don't have a problem making that known, as it helps us detect if that player returns. In all other cases, you will not receive any "closure" on your suspicion report.

-All contact with the Players Department, be it IRC discussions, PMs, IMs, or emails, are recorded as a matter of official record unless otherwise stated by the staff member.

I hope this clarifies a few things. The PD exists to make the game fair for everyone. Just as it exists to protect the general player body from cheaters, it also exists to protect less popular players from the court of public opinion. It is up to the player body to trust that the PD is always acting in their best interests, even if, from their limited perspective, it appears that they are not.

[EchoMan]

At Friday lunch time (12:00 GMT) we will do some changes to the game that requires some downtime. The game will be locked from then and until we are done. Hopefully the downtime will not be very long. Staff is discouraged from using any tools that affect the database during this time.

[EchoMan]

The game is now locked during updates.

[EchoMan]

Today we did a few rather large changes to the game.

- Clothes are now objects, just like any other object in game. That means they are now found in the build menu with the rest of the manufacturable items.

- On the people page there are now icons showing Hunger, Injury and Working status of characters.

- On the objects page, you do now see contents of unlocked containers. Contents are ordered with the heaviest content shown first. Only the top 6 weighing contents are shown.

- Masts and sails of ships are now visible on the Buildings & Vehicles page and Location page.

Thanks to Psychowico and GreeK for their work.

[EchoMan]

We have now restored the missing drops from the bugged deaths yesterday. The items are located where the dead body is or where it was buried.

We still haven't got much response about the excessive piles dropped of some resources. We would appreciate if we made this a two way street. Now we helped you get the correct resources back, now you help us.

[EchoMan]

Amounts of resources inside a container are now listed on the page where you select what to take from it.

[EchoMan]

We have fixed a bug where you could dock to a harbor or landing stage without it generating a message to the people in town. It is no longer possible to sneak up on a town that way.

[EchoMan]

We now have a great improvement to the "select amounts for project"-page. The Resource Calculator!

You can now add any amount of raw you want to use or amount of days you want the project to last, and the rest will be calculated for you. This require that you have JavaScript enabled.

Thanks to Greek who implemented it in Cantr from his original Cantr Enhanced idea.

[EchoMan]

The event page might look a little strange. Do a hard refresh in your browser (Ctrl + F5) to clear the css cache, and the page should look normal again.

[EchoMan]

There is now a new button on the character page where you can go into a settings page, with settings for individual characters. At the moment there is a list of events, that if you check them, they will not highlight your character when new such events arrive.

Also, taking a copy of a note in a locked noticeboard now create an uneditable copy.

Thanks to Psychowico and GreeK for their work!


More to come soon...

[EchoMan]

We released a few things today:

* Many "behind the game" improvements. The one you will notice the most is that pages should load significantly faster, especially the events page.

* You can now see the percentage of completion on all projects on the Activity page.

* When dragging, the target select box is now sorted alphabetically on how you have named buildings and vehicles, and not by its default name. So change the view name of "Z's House" to "1 - Z's House" if you often drag resources or prisoners to it.

* We now have Event Filtering Groups. These are accessed on the new Character Settings page (Do a hard refresh; Ctrl + F5 when you get there). There is a link there to get a default set of filters. You can create new or delete filters individually, rename, change and save them to your liking. Play around with it! You can always reverse to the default filters or delete filters if they are not good. These filters will then be visible as tabs on your Events page.

Thanks PsychoWico for all your hard work!

[EchoMan]

... and while we are at it:

* A new, more user friendly "store in container" page.

* Graphical improvements to buttons and title bars.

Thanks also to GreeK for all your hard work.