Archive for June, 2009

Damage Report

Sunday, June 28th, 2009

So, The RTB3 Forums & Download System are live and minus numerous small bugs, there have been no system-crippling issues (yet). The RTB Mod Bot has also not hijacked the forums yet so I’d call this release a smooth one. I’ve also noticed there is much confusion over RTB3/RTB2 and all that jazz that I will try and sort out. First off, it was just the RTB3 Forums & Download System that were being released on Saturday - not RTB3 itself. Secondly, the RTB you use on Blockland right now uses the RTB2 downloads system which people have stopped submitting things to, and RTB3 uses the RTB3 downloads system. It makes sense really, but it can be a little confusing.

Anyway obviously this is a bit of an awkward interval between RTB2 and RTB3 since nobody is submitting stuff to the old system (and rightly so, once you go v3 you don’t go back … generally) and honestly, RTB3 won’t be “ready” for a couple of months so here’s the plan:

Despite you guys voting that you wanted a full RTBv3 release I have decided that you really don’t want to wait for it and instead I am going to wrap up everything, get it tested speedily and release it lacking quite a few minor and a couple of major features. Once this is out I will be attempting to add these minor/major features on a weekly basis. That way you can enjoy the new system sooner, and still get everything promised in v3. Feel free to criticise my violation of the system of democracy (like politicans don’t do that every day!) in the comments section or the RTB Development Thread.

Oh and just to put the pressure on, Lets set the RTB3 release date for … July 25th, 2009

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Posted in Development | 21 Comments »

RTB3 Forums are Open!

Saturday, June 27th, 2009

Yep, the forums and download system for RTB3 are now open for you to register and upload your add-ons to. Please report all bugs in the Helpdesk forum, and enjoy toying with the new system.

http://forum.returntoblockland.com/

http://mods.returntoblockland.com/

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Posted in Announcements | 11 Comments »

Progress Update

Wednesday, June 24th, 2009

So, the new RTB forums are planned to be released this coming Saturday, thats only two-ish days away now. We’ve been ramping up the testing and found quite a few bugs so far, which have all been fixed.

You may have noticed recent RTB downtime which has been a problem. I investigated this today and discovered a problem with a php5 install we’re using so thats recompiling at the moment, but I also found a serbian IP that was accounting for over 15% of our traffic and I have blocked this from accessing the server now, so maybe things will be a bit more stable.

Anyway, we’re still on target for our saturday release and thats all that matters!

Posted in Announcements | 10 Comments »

RTB Downloads System

Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009

As some of you may know, the RTB Downloads System and our new Forums are going to be opened on Saturday, June 27th. You’ll be able to register a new account on our shiny new forums and more importantly you’ll be able to upload your add-ons to the new Downloads System in preparation for RTB3. I’d like to remind you to resist the urge to “help other people” but submitting their add-ons for them - Initially we won’t be accepting any submissions if the person submitting the add-on did not make it. With regards to the old downloads system, we will be leaving this running until RTB3 is released (and maybe a month beyond to encourage people to move their add-ons to the new system) at which point it will be shut down, destroyed and finally buried at the bottom of the ocean. This gives you plenty of time to download anything you want to keep off the system before it closes.

Finally, if you’ve been keeping up with this blog you’ll know all about the RTB Mod Bot but for those who haven’t, I’ll explain. The RTB Mod Bot is a robot who automatically creates a thread for any add-ons you submit to RTB in a new child board of the Add-Ons forum called “RTB Listings” which will be visible to everyone on Saturday too. The RTB Mod Bot also posts into this thread when you release updates for your add-on, and edits the thread when you change details. Overall she is a very handy robot.

Now, if anything should go wrong on Saturday (errors and such) please report them to support@returntoblockland.com so we can sort them out quick and make sure everything runs smoothly. Feel free to post questions about the system and how to do things in the Helpdesk of our new forum, which will be located at http://forum.returntoblockland.com/

See you guys on Saturday.

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Posted in Announcements | 6 Comments »

So - what’s going on?

Monday, June 15th, 2009

Hi.

So, as you know - v12 is out and it is good. It introduces a couple of things that allow RTB to run nice and smooth, namely the ability to tell the game that files exist without having to force the game to re-check the entire Blockland folder for new files. The second is a bug fix for the fileDelete command that actually forces the game to forget the file existed (otherwise things would mess up).

As for progress on RTB, I’m sure you’ve seen a few of the pictures lying around - obviously things are getting done, just not at a very speedy pace. I’m going to just whack out a list of items I have left to complete before we can happily release, the ones with a star mean high priority.

  • In-game Comment Submitting/Viewing *
  • YourMods “Group View”
  • File Update Checking *
  • Overhaul RTB Options GUI
  • IRC Bugs
  • Server Control Bugs/Suggestions *

That is essentially the list of things left, minus a bit of testing here and there. Now given that RTB is taking such a long time, I’ve been considering releasing it with a few features missing (such as IRC Fixes, the YourMods Group View) to speed things along - and these could then be released in a smaller patch along the way. The second thing holding us back is our new forums. I haven’t actually finished the reputation system yet so it’s somewhat broken, but if we were to push for an early release I could disable this and get it working after RTB3 at some point.

Now, incase some of you haven’t seen the new Mod Management view, check it out now:

View of the "Your Mods" category

View of the "Your Mods" category

So what I want to hear from you now is whether you think we should go for an earlier release with a few items cut out (to be added in a patch soon after release), or just keep plugging away at development until it’s good and ready? Let us know either in the comments or in our Development Thread.

Love Ephialtes

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Posted in Development | 7 Comments »
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