What!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What do you mean, "not in word list!"

Tapping the Microphone

 Is this still on?

Now You're Thinking with Portals

So, finally, after a lot of work and testing, the Clan Lord account portal has been re-opened for business.

What completely blows my mind on this whole project is that a group of players contacted the GMs and totally offered to build this portal from the ground up for free.  And they wished to remain anonymous: no glory, nothing expected in return.  They were just passionate members of the Clan Lord community who wanted to keep the game alive and playable for a little while longer.

It's selfless actions of this kind that makes me fall in love with our little community all over again.

Sunstones in the news

From HelpfulGM: Scientists Think They Have Found The Mythical ‘Sunstone’ Vikings Used To Navigate Warships.

I had no idea that these things were real!

v900

Hip Hip Array!

I had a script working absolutely fine (by which I mean it worked "mostly fine"), and then I made some changes to it which involved the inclusion of some diagnostics.

And then the Bad Things began.

My script was basically building multiple arrays by collecting data and indexing it non-sequentially.  Instead of assigning data to my_array[ 0 ], followed by my_array[ 1 ], then my_array[ 2 ], I would first collect data for my_array[ 5 ], followed by data for my_array[ 3 ], and so forth.

My diagnostics printed out all of the data collected by the arrays, and that data was incorrect.  "Math," I cursed, and started debugging.  Socks recently supported negative indexes (which means instead of writing my_array[ index - 1 ], I could instead just write my_array[ -1 ] ), and I was convinced that my array index pointer was somehow falling into a negative number.  I added more diagnostics.  The correct answers were being displayed correctly with these new diagnostics, but the data was still wrong within the summarized diagnostics.

Three days of debugging and I found the problem: my script was absolutely fine, but my summary diagnostics were looking at the wrong sets of data types.  Once I corrected that, then all of the data matched.

I am such a chucklehead sometimes.

Math Is Fun

I've spent the past three days working on some new scripts.  One of the scripts required (ugh) math.  And not just X + Y = Z kind of math, but more like the A² + B² = C² kind of math.  I needed to draw some circles, but I forgot how to do that.  And by "forgot" I really mean "I was never really clear on how to do this in the first place."

So I asked Mr. Google.

Google returned, what turns out to be, a very good site: Math is fun!  The particular section that I needed was help on sines and cosines, and the mathisfun.com site explained these functions very clearly and simply.

Thanks to both mathisfun.com and Google for the help.  My script is behaving just as I had envisioned it behaving -- perhaps a little bit more.  I'm really excited, and look forward to finishing the script.  The hardest part has been done: arranging objects in circles on the screen!

Undercover Boss(es)

Tonight I tried a soft-open on a new monster type that I had discussed in the past.  While this whole concept is still in its testing phase (and I am aware of several bugs, so I know that this concept is far from being finished).  I was very pleased to see that my new monster template worked as intended.

Thanks to everyone who (unwittingly) participated!

Last Minute Art

I just wanted to say that the Clan Lord community has some great artists.

Not only will these artists take last-minute requests, but they will deliver it in time for the update packaging.

I am really excited for the upcoming update.  Too bad that most of the content is still in testing.  But it will look great.

You Have No Coins.

Yappy has been studying for 3 years, 11 months and 1 day.

*Buzzap.*

You Know You've Been Playing Clan Lord Too Long...

I quickly read (or misread) this headline from Apple Insider:

Apple seeds OS X 10.9 Mavericks Server GM to developers ahead of Oct. 22 special event

 ...and my reaction was "why is Apple giving the Clan Lord ServerGM a copy of Mavericks?"

4k

This is not helping the development of my Clan Lord projects.

The Twenty-One

I am about to undertake a major Clan Lord project.  The first step of this major project is to undertake another major project: updating the processes of the NPC training scripts.

This has been on my To Do list for some while, but only recently have I felt confident (and competent) enough to move forward with this huge undertaking.  This lead me to wonder: what else do I have on my To Do list?  While having lunch at a restaurant, I took out pen and paper and began compiling a list of open (outstanding) projects.  I was both impressed and horrified to see twenty-one items listed.

Some of the items on the To Do list are low priority (like creating a new Boss AI), while some of the projects are overwhelming in scope (like Healer subclasses).  They're all on my radar, and I've started initial first draft designs on all of them.  But it was this one particular project that I mentioned to another GM and was delightedly surprised to hear the GM commit 110% to this project.  We contacted a script helper, who also surprised me with his enthusiasm for the project and committed to the project on the spot.

So.  Big things in the pipeline, and we'll see it all "Soon!™"  As the other GM and helper begin with starting points of design, I have started the process of reviewing the training scripts.  My goal: have one less project on my To Do list.

Back in the Saddle

I'm back!

Tonight was Compiling the Update night, something that I should have done over the weekend but was all strung out from vacationing up in northern New England.  Lots of cool behind-the-scenes stuff going in.  Maybe you'll get to see some of it!

The Great AFK

I will be gone for the remainder of the week, returning this weekend.  I hope that my new script does not break anything in my absence!

And Now I Dust My Hands

I have completed my work on my latest script to the point where I feel comfortable checking it in to the script repository.  I began adding one of my "it would be nice – but not mandatory – to include this cool feature" ideas and quickly learned that Socks would not readily support what I wanted to do, and by this point I lack the energy and motivation to crowbar new technologies into this script.  As it stands, the script is "good enough" for now, and that future feature can simmer on the back burner.

Now comes the uncertain part: releasing the script into the wild.

I must say that I am rather pleased with the result.  Maybe one of you may see it in action sometime soon.

Literal Humor

I read this joke the other day and got a laugh from it:

A wife asked her husband to go to the market.  "Buy one carton of milk, and if they have avocados, get six."  A short time later the husband returned with half a dozen cartons of milk.  "Why did you buy six?" asked the wife.  Replied the husband "they had avocados."

After writing logic code for the past week, I found this especially funny.

Scripter Humor

I have been reading other scripts with the intent of plagiarizing becoming inspired by other GMs/scripters' works.

Scripters will often add comments within their code as to describe what task/role the section of code performs.  I was interested in how other GMs have handled math problems (like calculating the average size of a mobile), and while researching that subject I was entertained by some amusing one liners.  Or in some cases, multi-liners.

    // Initialize it, cap'n!
   
    //    This is a public file.
    //    Everyone is welcome, nay encouraged,
    //    to use it and add to it.   
   
    // OK, dumkopf. You use it, you lose it.
       
    // All the nifty display poo goes here

    /*
    **    utilities for manipulating the [player]'s store-string
    **    err, I mean the data-string
    **    no, wait, make that the thing-string
    */

And my personal favorite:

    **    **Warning** this code is god-like and perfect.
    **    When we work on it choirs of angels
    **    gather around and sing. Mortals must keep out.
    **    This code is so blindingly beautiful
    **    that your eyes will melt if you look at it.

Sign o' the Times

I have received some feedback on the new signposts from some of the players.  The feedback has been very constructive, and I spent this evening preparing the script and items for the next generation of signposts.

I just had an idea.  Neon signposts!  The action bubble box could change from red to blue to green!

The Back-up Back Up Plan

My creative patch for my current script did not work as intended, which means I go to Plan B.  Or am I now on Plan C?

Anyways, work continues on it, although sometimes it is discouraging.  I want to get it done and away from me so that I may work on something else, but then I also want it to work well.

Writing bad code is easy!  It's the good stuff which takes time.