Game Activity?

[Charles]

Okay, I've got bad news. Everything is fine on our end and the game server is up and running properly. Unfortunately, out IP address has been changed during the months we've been offline. That means that the IP address of the game server that's in the client software that all you guys have is incorrect and is looking in the wrong place on the internet for the game server.

To fix this, I need to edit the game client software to change the IP number, then upload a new version of the client software and you guys would have to download and install that. Then it would work.

There is, however, another problem. Due to an unrelated issue, I can't open the game editor software right now so I can't make any changes to the client software, not even to update the IP address.

This is not hard to fix, I just can't do it today. Sorry. The planned session for today, May 18, 2009, is canceled. I'll try to reschedule it soon, but it might not be soon. There are some other things going on that are making the next few weeks very hectic for me.

[Voidstar]

Ahh, well... I'll just keep up building up my anticipations.

[Xulai]

Meh, unlucky days are unlucky.

[Charles]

I am going to be moving my residence in a few days. Preparing for that is part of what has prevented me from rescheduling the demo game session.

I will probably not be posting here or reading posts here for at least a week. I'll try to post here again as soon as I can to let you know when I'm back.

[Xulai]

Charles I hope you're still bothering with the game, I don't want to see the game is dead post soon. Good luck with the move.

[Charles]

I'm not planning to give up on the game. It's just not currently my main activity and I don't have a lot more money to put into financing its development.

Another issue is that we have a problem with a vendor's software that has brought things to a halt and needs to be resolved before we can move forward.

I am hoping that after the move and after I do some things to get the money situation improved, I could possibly do a lot more on it than I have been doing for the last six months. Things should be clearer in a week or two.

[Charles]

A lot has been going on. We ended up postponing the move at the last minute. My wife has been accepted to law school. She had sort of given up hope of getting in because she thought she did very badly on the LSAT test, but we just got the call today that she has been accepted so now we are going to move to where the university is instead of where we were planning to move. Also, the timing has changed. Now we aren't going to move until about a month before her classes start in September.

In the meantime, I have gotten back to work on Magic of the Gods. I have been trying to resolve that problem that a vendor's software created that I mentioned. I'm working with people from the vendor and making progress. If we can get the problem entirely solved, then I could do the demo session after all.

If not, then we may have to just move on with what needs to be done next. Just so you guys know what's going on, here's some details on the software issues.

(1) Some problems have been fixed such as the one where creatures in combat are often facing the wrong way. That was really annoying and seems to be fixed. Another one that kept crashing the server may be fixed, but we're not sure yet.

(2) The new, higher quality graphics engine that we've been talking about for a year is now available, but the bugs haven't been worked out and I'm not sure whether it would be better to try to use it as is or stick with the old graphics until it's debugged, which could take months. I'm open to suggestions on this from you guys on the forum, by the way.

(3) New scripting language. We have made the switch to a new scripting language, but have not yet updated all the old scripts. We also haven't put the details of the new scripting language in the wiki so the players can see it. That all still needs to be done.

(4) Dreamora's Prophesy. As you guys may or may not know, there is an in-game legend called "Dreamora's Prophesy". In the game, Dreamora is one of the Elder Gods and according to Tronor, Dreamora supposedly told Kraylus that due to flaws in the magic of the world left over from the time of the Elder Gods, that the entire world would have to be destroyed and remade or the flaws would ultimately destroy the world anyway.

As with many things in the game, that is a reference to real world events. Dreamora is a real person who did in fact play a key role in creating an earlier version of the world that became the world of Magic of the Gods. Those we call the Elder Gods apparently made mistakes in some of the software we use. The errors were the result of a long series of software patches that didn't all work correctly. Files used by the magic of the gods game have been corrupted by this process and Dreamora says the difficulty of tracking down and fixing these errors is far too great to be worthwhile and has advised us to scrap the whole game and recreate it from scratch. At some point we have to do this and we are planning to do it before the game goes online again (except for the demo session).

The biggest question for me now is whether or not we should use the new graphics engine when we recreate the world. If we don't, we will have to convert everything to the new graphics engine later and that could cause errors. If we use the graphics engine before it is fully debugged, that could also create errors, not to mention the fact that the game may not work due to bugs. Of course, the bugs can be fixed. The advantages of using the new graphics engine immediately are that we may avoid having to recreate the game from scratch a second time. Conversion to the new graphics engine might not work. We might end up starting over now to deal with Dreamora's Prophesy and then have to take the game offline for months a second time and start over from scratch a second time to update it to the new graphics engine. I'd really rather only do that once. We should be able to convert it with special conversion software, but that hasn't been written yet and might not work right.

[Charles]

I think I have just found a quick fix that would let us run Magic of the Gods as a Demo. I'm going to test it out. I'll let you guys know.

[Charles]

Okay. The test worked. It turns out that I can directly edit the IP address without the game editor so that's what I did.

We can run a demo session whenever you guys are ready. By the way, we also have three more people who want to assist with game development who also have not seen the game yet so that's more reason to run a demo session.

Last time we tried to run it on a Monday at 1300 hours Los Angeles time (1:00 pm) which is 2300 hours Helsinki time. We can do that again, but if it would work better for everyone, we could do it at a different time. Another time that was discussed was midnight Saturday/Sunday night which is 1000 hours on a Sunday morning in Helsinki.

What do you guys say? Voidstar? Hywalker? Pkmnknight? Crossbones, you and your friends are invited to this session, too. When is convenient for you?

[Xulai]

I'd never be awake at that time on a sunday morning for me.

[Charles]

When would be good for you? What time zone are you in, anyway?

[Xulai]

GMT+1 is my time zone heh.
I'm not much of a morning person..
Oh and you should use the new graphics engine instead of the old one.

[Voidstar]

Hey,

I'm back. I was on vacation in Hungary with a group of friends for ten days and I just got back to Finland today.
I can do the demo session pretty much any time, only that for next weekend I have already other plans so I can't do it then. But mornings or nights are fine otherwise as I don't have school or any work or such now in the summer. Just let me know when you're good to go.

Voidstar

[Charles]

How about we do the demo session on Friday, June 19, 2009 at 1300 hours Los Angeles time (1:00 pm) which is 2300 hours Helsinki time? That's 2100 in London.

[Xulai]

Which is 2200 my time, Sounds great to me.