French Fries, Beer and Clan Lord

I was craving french fries earlier today.  I ignored the protests of my cuisine snobbery and went to a local "neighborhood grille" franchise.  I ordered my fries, a tall beer, and opened a legal pad of paper and worked on a Clan Lord quest.

Without revealing too much, the quest that I had in mind is similar to World of Warcraft's instance dungeons for a group of players.  I had envisioned one player holding a key to the dungeon, and – much like Puddleby Housing – the key holder would unlock the dungeon's entrance and the group would follow the key holder through the entrance.  A second group holding their own key would unlock their own copy of the dungeon.  But then I got to thinking (or maybe the tall beer was affecting me in a positive way): what would happen if two groups tried to enter the dungeon at the same time?  How would the dungeon differentiate between multiple groups?

While working on my second tall beer and a way to differentiate group access, another thought occurred to me: suppose a second group wishes to join the first group.  How would that work?  Would the key holder need to come out and unlock the dungeon door for the second group?  Suppose if the key holder was dead, or if the entire dungeon party was dead, and no one could come out to unlock their copy of the dungeon.  What then?  I feel that Clan Lord has taught us that some area access restrictions can impact rescues (like the Game Preserve or the Mushroom Hut).

By the time I had finished my second beer and my order of fries, I decided that perhaps instance dungeons were best avoided.  At least I think I thought that.  I can't remember.  I'm such a lightweight when it comes to drinking and designing.

Roger the Jolly

I ran a silly little invasion this evening.

There were numerous younger exiles within town earlier today, and all was peaceful.  I thought that it would be fun to run a lower-end invasion for them.

A ship sailed undetected to Puddleby docks, and Darshak poured forth onto the beach.

 

The younger exiles rallied to defend the town, and with the aid of some of the more experienced exiles, the citizens of Puddleby managed to control most of the battle.  The Darshak were strong-willed and would not be denied the prize of Puddleby Beer.  They pushed forward!

After much back-and-forth fighting, the captain of the raid, Roger the Jolly, took to shore and faced the defenders of Puddleby...

 

 ...with predictable results.

Thanks to who participated in making the invasion a lot of fun, and special thanks to the other GM who added some wonderful details to the event!

If I Only Had A Brain

The V687 update brings some new, subtle changes to the Clan Lord universe.  One new change is not so subtle: the problem concerning logs of wood inexplicably vanishing should now be resolved.

I had printed a copy of the script that powers the log of wood, read through it, and marked a lot of notes within the margins.  The script is not small by any means – it filled six printed pages!  I was mildly surprised that something as simple as a log of wood could be so lengthy and complex.  Moreover, as I reread the script, I realized two things: (1) I was out of practice in debugging scripts (shame on me), which lead to (2) I could not locate the cause of the problem within the script.

As the update drew near, I made a comment to the other GMs regarding this bug.  LogOfWoodGM responded by applying a patch to the script, and I would like to acknowledge that it was he – not I – who made the final fix.  My heart was in the right place, but my brain was not.

It's Log, Log, Log!

I spent a couple of hours this evening reading through the bug logs.  My guestimate is that there were 250 bug reports awaiting categorizing!  I filed away around 50 – maybe a little less than that.  Some of the bugs were "one minute" fixes (correcting spelling errors, removing NPCs from under chairs).  The most popular bug that I have noticed has been the "Log Of Wood" bug.

This bug is very basic (and apparently it is also very common): a player attempting to harvest a log of wood who is then interrupted will typically lose the log of wood without any notification.  Wood behaves less like a log and more like a fragile balloon.

This will be the first script that I tackle for a V687 repair, making it better than bad.

The Magic Elves Have Been Away, Too

I noticed that the bug log is behind within its categorization and organization.  I had secretly hoped that the magic elves would have maintained the bug log in my absence.

I know what I'll be doing this weekend!

Yappy New Year!

How YOU doin'?

One of my New Year's goals (and I am quick to note that this is not a resolution, as I seldom keep those) is to return to activity within Clan Lord.  I had a nice 10 week break – plenty of time to relax and gorge myself on Team Fortress 2 – and I feel ready to return to work.  I have numerous projects that need attention!

I stopped by the fairgrounds for some shenanigans after the V684 update:

Here's wishing everyone a healthy and happy New Year, and that 2011 brings us lots of gaming fun!  (That reminds me: I need to change the splash screen and update the copyright notice.)

Another Day AFK

Today was another day spent away from the computer.  I expect to get some CL work done on Sunday.

I have another large RL project that will probably begin this upcoming week, and my available CL time will reduce accordingly.  This will be a large project, too.  Oy.