Distension Beta Suggestions/Bugfix thread

[AcidBomber]

why the hell would you OR staff take this project that you have worked countless hours on, and endlessly listened to pointless harsh critism from forum faggots, and just hand it over to some washed up nobody who hasnt been seen in years. If you let this happen, I hope it dies along with your desire to finish what you started. qan, or anybody else, does not deserve any credit for your creation. I can only assume what kind of BS politics are involved that we don't know about, but I think you should suck it up and drive on, and finish YOUR project, THEN staff can suffer without you

I Lol'd in real life... ahaha Lizard is so OUT. ^-^

[gdugwyler]

I have to say i had no idea dugwler was Qan … et al

The short of it is that it was becoming so that most people were aware; first, I had to tell upper staff when I originally joined, and that will naturally leak as people ask. Whenever asked personally I wouldn't pretend. Eventually it spread to the point where the original intention -- quietly coding without any significant interaction -- was no longer a possibility. Couple that with the realization that without the title of a staff member I had little say in a small handful of things that I'd wished I did, and there is why I returned. By no means do I intend to do more than I am already, or do anything but quietly develop further. This simply allows more freedom. And it's really not that big a deal.

My reasons for quitting originally have not changed, no. I took a year off any activity in the game, clandestine logins or otherwise. After some time I began to miss coding -- not the game, really, or particularly the people (no real offense meant; I like many, but have personal friends that suffice and have never seen much of a point to the social text). Writing code/building things that were useful in some way is pretty satisfying. So I decided to ignore the problems that frustrated me, not become involved politically, and come back as a coder. Seemed to work fine. Now 2 years later, I'm realizing that I can do that, for the most part, also as a member of staff once again. Again, doesn't seem like much of an issue. If I'm reneging on anything I've said in the past, well, so goes the human spirit: change is the only constant, as (probably) first posited by Heraclitus, and I believe that -- and to keep it within the realm of pith and cliche, "old habits die hard."

Distension is death of TW, etc.

TW is in itself the death of TW. All begins, all ends. That the commitment of staff and coders is flagging to a game that can essentially never change from a set of fundamental, established rules is no strange thing. (As an aside, I think Christianity and all of the Old Gods have something in common with it here. Even the priests stop to believe, after a time. Poseidon will only be worshipped a certain number of years.) That players can't play the same game day in and day out while new and more beautiful things entice them is no surprise, either. In another 10 years, will TW still be around? If it is, only for the amusement of past players to occasionally frequent one pub of 10 or 15 people. Or as a radically different client with a new protocol entirely, quite separate altogether.

Now will Distension hasten the death of TW? I don't know, and I don't really care. Smoking may hasten your death, but smoking is also enjoyable, else people wouldn't do it; it's a risk to be balanced. Some people enjoy the game, and it might cause elims to be raided and the same base game that's played over and over to grow tiresome in comparison. Something new might be appealing to people, and might gut the other subarenas: or, it could bring much-needed interest back to the zone that refuses to change. (That is, of course, our strength and weakness, this refusal to change even the cute little trees in an elim arena for 5 years at a time. A player knows what to expect when they come here ... yet they also know exactly what to expect.)

To the more concrete: it's not replacing pub, it will be just "distension" as a subarena without the #, it will run regularly (maybe not 24 hours a day -- we'll have to see if there's enough interest, and if it's too taxing on other parts of the zone), and it will stop PMing you within the next few weeks. After talking with alinea I think we're just going to wrap up the beta test this week. (After this the bot will never PM you, PD.) There will be a week or so of time for making a few changes that reflect the differences between the beta and public, and then there will be a reset, the beta multiplier will not exist any longer, and we'll give it a run. All data after that will be saved permanently, barring unforseen tragedy. There may still be UP refunds as I add new abilities, and some changes as minor development continues, but we're pretty much where we need to be now.

Thanks to all the testers for your endless support, and especially to the die-hards who are testing right up until the end. I'll announce fairly soon a bit more about how you go about getting your reward for beta testing in the public release.

[Pressure Drop]

I have to say i had no idea dugwler was Qan …

I’m disappointed you would make a dramatic post in quiting, then change names to code in secret for 2 years letting it slip your Qan so that you think everybody knows then rejoin staff …

Do you think the original reason you quit has changed much? I think staff has deteriorated in my experiences of them …

Anyhow I’ll use this post to add in that I think all this continuous testing of distension is hastening the demise of this zone.

The population is reaching a critical low where many events and arenas are running on low amounts of players or not at all and yet we continue to diversify and create new arenas or leave ones running, sucking up the little remnants of a player base we have left … soon very little will be left except a few minizones and when people retire from them there won’t be the playerbase to replace them.

I really do not see the advantages of having a secret #distension arena when 2 pubs full is only peak times, ?go base is running rarely, belim is dead, wb/jduel run only at peak times when ppl advertise. Active TWBD squads are getting rarer as finding a squad to play against is harder now

Also the distension bot spaming me is fecking annoying – I don’t want to test distension stop it pming me…

What the hell is the point of all this distension stuff? Is it going to be a sub arena? An event? Why so much testing? Replacing the pub arenas??

[Maverick]

hahaha PUNK'D Lizard Fuel! :P

[roxxkatt]

why the hell would you OR staff take this project that you have worked countless hours on, and endlessly listened to pointless harsh critism from forum faggots, and just hand it over to some washed up nobody who hasnt been seen in years. If you let this happen, I hope it dies along with your desire to finish what you started. qan, or anybody else, does not deserve any credit for your creation. I can only assume what kind of BS politics are involved that we don't know about, but I think you should suck it up and drive on, and finish YOUR project, THEN staff can suffer without you

i lol'd at this.

but not many ppl knew all along as i did

[gdugwyler]

For the record, you are officially a faggot. All this time I've been using Qan whenever Q came up in acro in your remembrance, only to get punk'd. Whatever. Ignore the ?message i sent you on dugwyler, for that would only further my gullibility. Faggot.

I only did it as I was reasonably sure just about everyone already knew. No need to get so uppity about a little friendly jest. Take the pills, lean back, and chill the fuck out.

Just a little joke; didn't mean to cause any real trepidation. The truth is that I've been operating under the name "dugwyler" for the past 2 years -- I used it to come back and code without making contacts. Well, obviously that's no longer what is going on, so I've rejoined staff as qan. You'll see me on that name mostly from now on.

For the record, you are officially a faggot. All this time I've been using Qan whenever Q came up in acro in your remembrance, only to get punk'd. Whatever. Ignore the ?message i sent you on dugwyler, for that would only further my gullibility. Faggot.

[milosh]

Much agreed, Lizard Fuel :unsure:

I laughed.

[gdugwyler]

Just a little joke; didn't mean to cause any real trepidation. The truth is that I've been operating under the name "dugwyler" for the past 2 years -- I used it to come back and code without making contacts. Well, obviously that's no longer what is going on, so I've rejoined staff as qan. You'll see me on that name mostly from now on.

[DankNuggets]

too bad there's not a shear and utter disbelief smiley

:huh: :blink: :shock1:

[Maverick]

why the hell would you OR staff take this project that you have worked countless hours on, and endlessly listened to pointless harsh critism from forum faggots, and just hand it over to some washed up nobody who hasnt been seen in years. If you let this happen, I hope it dies along with your desire to finish what you started. qan, or anybody else, does not deserve any credit for your creation. I can only assume what kind of BS politics are involved that we don't know about, but I think you should suck it up and drive on, and finish YOUR project, THEN staff can suffer without you

Much agreed, Lizard Fuel :unsure:

why the hell would you OR staff take this project that you have worked countless hours on, and endlessly listened to pointless harsh critism from forum faggots, and just hand it over to some washed up nobody who hasnt been seen in years. If you let this happen, I hope it dies along with your desire to finish what you started. qan, or anybody else, does not deserve any credit for your creation. I can only assume what kind of BS politics are involved that we don't know about, but I think you should suck it up and drive on, and finish YOUR project, THEN staff can suffer without you

[gdugwyler]

Brief notice: the remainder of the Distension development and design will fall on the shoulders of some newly-rehired member of staff (qan is the name I believe). Sorry, this is out of my hands.

[gdugwyler]

• Refit: Sorry about the refit problems -- I pretty much just added it on the fly to see if it'd work. All of the issues mentioned should be fixed. Let me know if there are others. Also, Tactical Ops should now be able to be refit during this time.
• The auto-switchback system now should work a little more intelligently. When looking for a person to switch back, it will take the lowest-strength ships first, giving high-rankers a little more security. It also takes Terrs last. If a Terr is the only eligible candidate, it will only be switched if there's another Terr available -- or in the case of a two flag game, actually 2 Terrs still available. And if on the offchance that two Terrs are assisting, the weaker one will always be chosen.
• In-base killing deduction will now check for the location of the player killed rather than the killer.
• Sector hold participation reset changed to accomodate the various new game types and timer lengths. Now it occurs if you're within 40 seconds of the win for changing into support ships, and 60 seconds if changing into assaulters.
• Found a small bug where if a player specs and has lagouts remaining, and rather than doing !lagout, enters in to a different ship (even the ship that they were just playing), their participation was being reset. Should now attempt to subtract from # of lagouts. Note that because this is not a standard lagout, players are still subject to the ship change participation reset restrictions for armies that have a sector hold.
• !hideintro added, which will turn off any intro graphics currently being displayed. Note that due to how !intro is written it won't stop the intro altogether, just make the current screen go away. (Isn't it great how there's no easy way to send special input to the bot except in PM? For example, a key combination that would fire certain things would be very nice ...) This command isn't in the !help -- just tells you about it when you type !intro.
• Getting closer to reading all upgrades from the DB, after which I'll start pretty hard on new abilities.
• F1 help coming soon. I know, been saying this for a while, but it's really quite true.
• We're getting very close to public release. Please start to get very nitpicky. Development will continue after public, but in a slightly more restrained fashion -- meaning, I won't want to mess up too often.

[DankNuggets]

I still get placed back on my own freq after assisting 90% of the round (in a terr, the only terr of that team), and not getting any winner bonus for that. Also, ive noticed that if i burst, die right after, and then my burst kills people, the kill messages display ...-XX% OUTSIDE BASE- (or sth like that) is that based on where YOU are at the time of killing or where the nme is when being killed?

it must be where you are at the time of the enemy's death. i get this all the time in a shark when i'm respawning and someone dies to a mine.