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[SirNiko]

Whoops, looks like the server is down again. Such a shame! It seems like the traffic has been up, I saw 8 players on at once earlier today.

[Evan Balster]

Back up.  Man, I need to ditch this memory allocator if it keeps acting up.



EDIT: WAUGH.  Monitoring things is a gigantic time-sink, especially since my game's user base is getting big.  Close to 100 sign-ins in the last hour or two.  Several hundred screens in the world.

I had trouble getting any programming done last week for keeping an eye on kickstarter, my forums, the world and google, and I can only see this getting to be more of a problem.  What should I do?  I want to release big updates every Friday and I still have a life as a student, teaching assistant and audio programmer.

I know someone will say "moderators" but keeping the world in order isn't the hard part of all this...



EDIT 2: Apparently Laozi was talking about me...

Success is as dangerous as failure.
Hope is as hollow as fear.

What does it mean that success is a dangerous as failure?
Whether you go up the ladder or down it,
you position is shaky.
When you stand with your two feet on the ground,
you will always keep your balance.

What does it mean that hope is as hollow as fear?
Hope and fear are both phantoms
that arise from thinking of the self.
When we don't see the self as self,
what do we have to fear?

See the world as your self.
Have faith in the way things are.
Love the world as your self;
then you can care for all things.

[SirNiko]

Yeah, success can be a problem. You can get stuck in that midway point where you're just popular enough to make it a lot of hard work, but not popular enough to make some money off of it. Hopefully you can power through from one end to the other.

Spending less time on the forums is probably one thing you can do. Drive people to the twitter to get their updates, and make your important announcements there. Pick one or two days a week to troll the forum and respond to pertinent posts, and make a habit of not responding the rest of the time (Unless it's important stuff, like interviews with blogs that could lead to more players and funding). That could get you a healthy balance of being involved without wasting lots of time on PR.

As for keeping the server running, that's a tough call. Having an operational system is important when you're trying to attract players who in turn will attract funding, but at the same time, there's upgrades to be coded. You might have some luck if you purchased / rented a server that will be hosted by an outside agency. Not having to personally look after the servers will take one major headache off your hands. You should ask around (Business, Technical?) for some advice on getting a server run by an outside entity. Some more successful indies might be willing to lend you a hand early on, especially given this is a VERY promising project.

[tesselode]

Actually, I would say that checking the forum often is a good idea (in case there are bug reports, suggestions, etc.) But it sounds to me like you're checking some stuff too much? Kickstarter shouldn't take much time, and Google probably shouldn't take any of it.

And I'm going to go ahead and say it, maybe some moderators for the world would be good. At least in the future.

[Taiko]

Real cool!  The idea is solid and I can't wait to see what this plays like finished with sound and whatnot.  I love the zoom out effect and getting to see the world at large.

A couple of UI things to look at:

• Clicking the arrows on the Avatar selection screen should work too.
• Clicking on the Avatar image should select it.
• Is there a way to get the help screen to appear again?  I couldn't find the hotkey.

[Evan Balster]

I'm not talking about abandoning my community, just downgrading my check-in frequency from "obsessive" to "couple times a day" with various things.

Reinebold:  Good suggestions, and if you make your character stand around for five seconds, it slides back in.  I'll make "F1" pop it up, maybe.

[tesselode]

Yeah, that sounds good.

[jakten]

This is fantastic, I just made a cell and I really like it. My only qualm so far is you should make one size smaller on the drawing tool. I wanted to get really detailed but was finding it hard to. Also after awhile I got stuck at the accessing screen when I tried to edit a screen.

I'll definitely be making more screens as I find time to though :D

Edit: Also a zoom while editing would be nicely as well.

[Evan Balster]

0.2.2 is out

Though I can't test it, I'm fairly confident it should work on OS X Leopard now.

It also adds favorite locations that make traveling around easier, and fixes a few small clunky things.

The server's network connection is down right now; if and when that solves itself it'll be accessible again immediately.  Now I'm going to bed, because it's very 7:30 AM right now and I am very sleepy.


I still have not fixed the Black Box bug, but plan to attend to it and release a patch sometime this week.


@jakten You actually can zoom with page up and page down, with space+mouse to pan when zoomed in.  It's not mentioned ingame though. 

[Evan Balster]

The Kickstarter team mentioned me in their newsletter this week, and now the project is officially funded!  Huzzah!

I will try and make this next update super ultra awesome so as to match the awesomeness of the awesome folks who have in one way or another given me encouragement so far.  Awesome.  Regarding that, the plan is to try and launch Weekly Worlds as soon as possible, and maybe work at some of the things that make the game crappy to play, like slow load times and map lag.

[Evan Balster]

Lifting this topic from the depths yet again to release a new update, 0.2.3.  I'm a day late making this post.

Get it here

I was going to keep working until I had multiple worlds and a "choose entry point" screen, among other things, but that was taking too long and I was sitting on some good changes.  I've released a non-required update which improves gameplay in a few ways:

- No more monolithic cache (load times are gone)
- No more pipeline freezes (those caused graywall and disconnecting)
- The ability to reconnect when disconnected, so as not to lose your place
- Bugfixes
- A better camera
- Visual tweaks to the painter

Also, a video is up now.  




By the way, my Kickstarter finished, raising 238% of its goal!  :D

[Evan Balster]

THE BLACK BOX BUG IS FIXED!  Thanks to Landshark for helping me with it.

Clicky!

I hope those of you who couldn't try this before will give it a whirl now.  I feel really bad for not fixing this sooner.


And pardon this quadraposting I've pulled over these last few weeks; I consider these meaningful updates, so I don't feel too bad about it.

[EpicU]

What is the IP to go on the server? Whenever I go to click on a link, it gives a error. Please fix them and send me the IP.