Game changes - Announcements

[Greek]

Server move
Today Cantr was down for some time, because Pies has finished the server move that was announced some day in the past.
There is still some work to be done, but we don't expect more downtimes because of that.

There still are some issues, e.g. wiki is still pretty unstable, but it'll be fixed soon. Please report any other troubles on general support forum.

EDIT: And now we had an unexpected downtime, but it was short

[Greek]

Change of the skins
The skins have been changed to look more flat and work better on mobile devices.

The green-orange skin has been changed most.
If you prefer its old appearance, then you can easily turn green skin to look like the previous version of green-orange. It's enough to paste the following custom CSS in player settings -> interface:

Code: Select all

a, .ui-state-default a,
.ui-state-default a:link,
.ui-state-default a:visited {
    color: #FF9700;
}

so the links will be orange.

[Greek]

Location info box
I'm back and I'm going to implement things.

A few years ago I've implemented a character info box, which displays a brief character info to facilitate common tasks like renaming characters. There was a plan was to do the same for locations. Unfortunately it got delayed so I'm going to implement it right now.

When you click on a location link, then, instead of going to another page, you will see the following panel:





As you see, it's possible to alter the remembered name, see all the signs, enter the location and read the building's description (when being inside).

This panel is able to be displayed everywhere, not just on the events page, so sometimes this panel may be misplaced.
Please report the situations when that's the case.

If you don't like the feature then you can turn it off in the account settings.

[Millhouse]

Welcome back, Greek! That's great news you're back.

Is this already implemented? It doesn't seem to be working at all on my end. Click on any location still brings me to a separate page.

[Greek]

Real-time event refresh

Hello,
Today I have two small announcements.
First of all, I'd like to explain that it's very hard to test User Interface changes, considering the number of existing devices, browsers and operating systems.
For this reason I've created a new option called "Early access to test UI changes" available in the interface section of the player settings. It's an option that can be enabled by players willing to contribute to the game development by getting access to the new interface elements which become available during the open tests.
After the testing phase the changes will become available for all players.
Of course this early access will concern only interface, because it wouldn't make sense to differentiate access to anything else.


Enabling it right now will give you access to the new mechanics:
- real-time refresh on the events page (instead of querying the server every 3 seconds)
- highlight the active characters on your characters list when new events are available

I hope it'll become available to everyone after a short period of tests.
If the feature in testing phase causes any trouble, then you can disable the "Early access" option to come back to the stable version.

[Pilot]

Dear Players,

GAB is planning some adjustments to radio networks. Radios have not been serving well the dynamics of a slow paced game, they have shifted focus away from local environments, and they have placed unnecessary pressures on players attempting to keep apart the interests of multiple characters in the same region. For these and other reasons, we will be disabling repeater-repeater transmission, and reducing the base ranges of all units. We understand that these changes will prove inconvenient for some characters, however we'll ask for some patience in making adjustments. We will reconsider any future adjustments only after evaluating effects over some time in multiple regions. In order to allow time to prepare for these changes, we will delay implementation for some days. We also hope to be announcing more new features and game changes soon.

Thanks for your patience and cooperation during implementation of these changes.

Game Administration Board

[Pilot]

Dear Players,

Combat changes are overdue. Longstanding discussions remain ongoing regarding a complete overhaul of the combat system, but some adjustments to combat effects within the current system are necessary in the short term and will be implemented soon. The most noticeable of these changes will be that Dragging of characters will produce a tiredness effect similar to attacks. The second change will be that Damage will no longer be a factor in character vulnerability, either for dragging or subsequent attacks. This should render group attacks on passive characters less overpowered. Note that no current possibilities will be eliminated, including instant actions. The largest effects will be for repeated actions.

These adjustments should allow more players opportunities to participate in combat roleplay, in a manner consistent with a slow-paced game. While conflict is essential to the game, instant mass murder is not. We will hope to enable a greater variety of combat scenarios.

Thanks for your patience and cooperation in adjusting to these changes.
Game Administration Board

[Joshuamonkey]

The Cantrian community has undergone a major development, with the release of a new channel for communication: Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/rpquAWT. Click the link to join Cantr's chatting server, and make an account. There is a Discord app you can download for your mobile device as well. The Cantr staff, including Jos himself, are excited for this new discussion channel. Come and discuss new ideas for Cantr, get support, or joke about Cantr. There's also an optional voice channel. Try it out!
Also, the #cantr IRC room, the Polish room #piwniczka.cantr, and the Spanish room #cantr_hispano have been linked to Discord, so you can use either IRC or Discord to connect.

[Greek]

Changes in displaying locations/objects visible from the distance

Hi,
I almost forgot how to push new changes to the game, but I've introduced some regarding how objects and locations visible from the distance are displayed (lighthouses, signal fires, ships, coastal locations, harbours). The goal was to make it display exactly the same data, but have just one universal list on "Location" page. If some of these things suddenly ceased or started to be visible, please report it.

[Joshuamonkey]

Recordings and transcripts of the Q&A sessions can be found at the following link: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1W37GF ... pX6bdYLu7c
To allow a community effort in providing these sessions in a helpful format, all visitors should have "comment" permissions to suggest edits.

[sherman]

Resource Changelog 19/12/2019 - Holiday Update

LET THEM EAT CAKE

With the introduction of the butter churn, new resources butter and margarine (a vegan friendly alternative to butter) have been added to the game. These resources are required to make several new foods that eager chefs can start to whip up just in time for the holidays - an assortment of cakes. Lemon cake, coffee cake, fruit cake, and butter cake are now all available for baking. (And berry cobbler, too.) There are also options to frost plain butter cake with buttercream icing to produce a frosted butter cake. Chocolate cake will be coming in the new year, with the addition of cacao beans.

In addition to the new foods, several existing recipes (I'm looking at you, pancakes) have been adjusted to require butter.

MEDICAL COSMETICS

Several new cosmetics are going live for our aspiring doctors. You can now create platinum scalpels, rubber gloves, and surgical masks. Expect more hospital themed cosmetics in the pipeline, including stethoscopes and hospital scrubs.

HARVESTER CHANGES

Harvesters have been changed now so that they use up a constant number of the limited gathering slots available for a town. This change affects the number of people who can gather resources at once. The number of gathering slots taken by a harvester are always the same regardless of whether the harvesters are used, and increases by one as more harvesters are added, starting at 1, then 2 (3 total), etc. This increase is by type (for example, drills are a different type than harvesters, so 2 harvesters and 1 drill would be 1+2+1 slots), but we're starting by only applying this change to food harvesters, but it will eventually apply to all harvesters in the game.

This change is to encourage the use of complex foods, and to encourage the use of machines over manual gathering.

Unused harvesters are able to be dismantled and will free up gathering slots once removed.

[Joshuamonkey]

The recording of the meeting last Saturday is here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1yUnUc ... GR4ZDR2iXN
40 minutes long

[YuukiSagawa]

Today at 9 PM PST there will be another meeting on relevant issues. It will be in audio and chat in #general (audio channel) and #Meeting (text channel). You can access the notes as a fixed message and comments from the last meeting in #meeting_30_apr_2020 on Discord.

[sherman]

Here's some recent changes into the game

02.01.2020

Cantr has clarified its policies, which all players must agree to. We expect that these policies will make the rules clearer and help the Players Department act consistently. Players may not be punished for anything not mentioned in the game rules. If you don't see a translation in your language, check back in a few days.

Here are the links:
Game rules: https://cantr.net/es/index.php?page=rules
Privacy Policy: https://cantr.net/es/index.php?page=privacy
Cookie Policy: https://cantr.net/es/index.php?page=cookies
Terms of Use: https://cantr.net/es/index.php?page=terms

We have clarified consent for sexual or graphic content, and are defining consent to be between 2 characters only at one time, with no other characters present, and such content may not be in notes. You can find the reasons and definitions here: https://tinyurl.com/qqe28p9 (this will be posted on the Webzine).

We are also limiting punishments or warnings to 6 months in most cases, and have provided a simple process for previously banned players to return to Cantr.
We are also clarifying principles for game mechanics, to be published later, and there are significant changes coming these next weeks and this next year.

Two examples:
A new type of vehicle and transportation
Each character who has spoken within the past day or two will make it much more likely for newspawns to appear. So don't forget to speak or roleplay!

03.01.2020
Starved domesticated animals go to wild even if the pack has too many animals

[sherman]

09.01.2020

Players may request consent for explicit content with more than 2 characters present at this form (still being translated): https://forms.gle/W8B5aFmR14z3rq7a9 (see instructions at the form). You'll find the form on the Game Rules< page (there is a link on the bottom of every page). We expect to approve this in most cases where all involved provide consent. This consent may be facilitated by Cantr's website in the future.

New effects of weather will be enabled soon (probably within a couple weeks). Weather will significantly affect the efficiency of farming agricultural resources, for better or for worse, based on the amount of cold, rain, and sun. Some areas generally have better farming weather than others, and in time of winter farming progress may go to 0. The weather will be displayed in two places: 1. The location page. 2. The project information page (if weather affects the project)

14.01.2020

- When sailing, the event about a dockable location in proximity is displayed only when it becomes dockable for the first time. It's to reduce spamming with the same events.
- Similarly, for fueled vehicles, the information about being out of fuel is displayed only once.
- The problems preventing project progress (e.g. no tools, repaired object not there) are displayed immediately with a red exclamation mark next to project name, instead of displaying events every hour

15.01.2020

There are new descriptions for each of Cantr's staff departments:
http://wiki.cantr.net/index.php/Cantr_Staff
For each team it lists "Most common activities", "Qualifications", and "Benefits".

In "Character Settings" at the "Life & Death" tab the minimum age requirement for a character to die from old age was changed from 60 to 30. We understand that you may have OOC reasons to want to remove a character at an earlier age