Minor Downtime

I was shocked when I saw the server was offline this morning. I had been staring at the homepage not too long before that, and it worked fine. So naturally, being used to HostMDS, I freaked. I sent in a ticket right away.

4 minutes after that, I got a reply, and everything was working fine again! Did I mention I love Namecheap? I do. Very much.

ShinosTotalWar.com

It expired... and apparently GoDaddy is holding on to it, so I can't buy it (yet).

So, use http://www.shinosoft.com/tw/ now!
Tell your friends!

Twitter

Greetings, blog-o-sphere!

I recently discovered Twitter. If you want to follow me, be my guest! (Actually, be my follower. Heh heh.)

Drano? What?

OMG BIRTHDAY

It's my birthday today! Yay!


I thought about making an event for today... but I didn't get around to actually making one. My brother got new computer a few days ago, so I had to install it and stuff. Anyone who has done that before knows how long it takes to format a brand new harddisk into NTFS! (And I know EXT3 is faster, but meh, let's stick to Windows here.)

Soooooo... I just cranked up the EXP rate in STW to 200%, and added a "Birthday Cake Piece" crime drop. I thought that would be nice for t'day. Some other event may be coming soon.

In other news, Drano's looking good!

BYE.

Shoutbox: One For All!

That's right! ONE shoutbox for everyone!

Well, maybe not everyone. I just fused the world shoutboxes. The guild shoutboxes will still be separate. Ever since the shoutboxes in lower worlds started dying, I've been thinking of fusing them. I wasn't really sure about it, until DrRetard gave me the suggestion to just try it out. So now, we're trying it out!

I'll change it back if it doesn't work out. If, like, level 1's start begging in it, which could potentially annoy people in 200+ worlds. Or... if people really want megaphones to have use again. We'll see.

In other news, there's no ETA for the new world yet, which isn't really news. And how about Easter events? Anyone up for those?

The New World!?

So... we've hit that point again when people are 50 levels into a world, when worlds are designed to support only 30. Do we need a new world? Yes. Do I have time to make one? *shakes 8ball* ... Ask again later.

Worry not though, for I am constantly working on new worlds... in my head. So far I have "Cheese Empire", "Muffin Land" and "Inside a Vending Machine". Coincidentally, they were all invented at school, the day I forgot my lunch. Go figure.

Seriously though... Muffin Land could work. I also still have ReVeNgE's "Space Zone" idea, BoBpringle's (and Fallen's too, I think) "Drano", Pit's "Paris" and an entire topic filled with ideas I'm too scared to read through. Then there's kirb's "Alpha Sector" I never finished (and now use as an admin stuff dump world), and the unfinished Halloween world. Maybe I should let the people decide...

I'd want something that fits Spring or Summer though, since it'll probably launch during that period. (Assuming the procrastination levels don't surpass "Zomg Extreme".) So far Jagd Island is my personal favorite, so maybe we'll go for something like that.

Eh, this requires more thought and spare time. Sounds like a perfect job for Future Shino. Yeah. He's way more capable of handling this one.

Blog you later!

Trebuchet MS fails it

This is totally unrelated to STW, but I figured I needed a new post on here.

Ever used Trebuchet MS? I really like the font, until I checked out the accuracy of some of the characters. Check this out:

$ ¥ &

Seriously, the dollar sign misses the main part of the vertical line, the yen sign misses a horizontal line, and the ampersand just looks weird. Amirite? Amirite? Good thing they didn't screw up the euro sign.

Also, lol:
http://www.fonts.com/FindFonts/detail.htm?pid=427496&cur=USD

Who would pay 80 dollars for a font?

Cheerio

The Past, A Look

What do you do when you find some old STW code in a lost folder? You get it up and running and laugh at your past self!

I found the code for STW version 2. Officially, it's 'only' one version behind (we're running 3 now), BUT there have been a LOT of changes. See for yourself! (I actually didn't find the old v2 database, so I used the v3 one. Hence the slider.) Comments are added in the funny black font.

Double EXP Mania!

...or Dementia?

So we're like 8 or 9 days into hardcore double EXP. I think I'll let it go until Friday Sunday. I mean, we can't have double EXP forever, right? And, as always, "lite" versions of the double EXP coupons can be bought in the Argos Magic Store.

As for the attack turns, I'm still thinking of a good way to do that. Oh and I'm working on the auto guild pay-out thing. Busy, busy! I'll have a week off school for CARNAVAL next week though, so maybe I'll actually get things done. (Yay for Dutch holidays!)

Shino, OUT!

Valentine's Day

Hey everyone!

Happy Valentine's Day! I hope you're all well. I may or may not add a little Valentine's Day quest to STW... nothing too fancy though. If I do, it'll probably be later on in the day. (Surprise surprise! :D)

Have a good one!

The Return

[I planned on releasing the server past sunday... then the error showed up. It's fixed now though. Here's the message I would've posted (unedited):]

We're back!

» Click here «

What? A deadline I didn't miss? Well, not really... See, I figured I'd start converting the HTML output to the W3C standards while the servers were down. I only finished about half... I'll finish the rest during next week and update it then. Anyway, the game should run fine. It's just that only half of the pages use validated HTML, and the other half doesn't. The unvalidated pages may cause a few bugs, but nothing seriously crippling.

Something that I did finish is the new shoutbox. It now uses AJAX instead of a frame. I tested this in most popular browsers (IE7, FF3, GC). I'm not sure if it works in all browsers though. If it doesn't, send me a PM. Oh, and it doesn't work in IE5 (I tested that too), but that browser is 10 years old, so... meh. I also haven't tested Netscape. Is anyone still running that?

But yeah, I'm going to bed now. I hope nothing screws up while I sleep. Also, I'm surprised you're still reading this. THE SERVER IS BACK!

G'night!

Strange PHP Bug

Here's a little more info on the strange bug I encountered...

In PHP, the pow() function is used for calculating powers. "pow(a, b)" returns a^b. Then there's another function called rand(), which can be used for generating random numbers. "rand(1, 100)" returns a random number between 1 and 100.

What do these functions have in common? I don't know. Apparently though, on the new server, once a random number is generated, the next pow() function will always return 0. Mind = blown.

Example:

<?php

echo pow(1.1, 50); // Prints: 117.39085288
echo pow(1.1, 50); // Prints: 117.39085288
// etc...

$rand = rand(1, 100);

echo pow(1.1, 50); // Prints: 0
echo pow(1.1, 50); // Prints: 117.39085288
echo pow(1.1, 50); // Prints: 117.39085288
// etc...

?>

So really, the delay is not my fault! I submitted a ticket to NameCheap 5 minutes ago, we'll see what they make of it.

Bayo~

Little Delay

I was actually planning on going live today... I uploaded everything to the new host, set up the database and everything. I was just about to open the login page, as I discovered a little bug in the crime page.

Somehow it's not calculating the user's total experience right the first time (it returns 0). If I do the exact same command twice, it does work the second time. Since the game relies on a lot of calculations, I don't think I should open it up just yet with mathematical bugs on the loose. Some more testing is needed. It also doesn't do that on my server, or the Beta server.

So, yeah. Server will most likely be up tomorrow. It's a shame... I had my blog post already typed out, saying how this would be the first time ever I updated before a deadline.

Oh well.

Coming Soon & Guild Logos pt. 2

Things are looking up! The new server is making progress, and will probably be done tomorrow (or Sunday). You know how terrible I am with deadlines, so don't hit me if I don't make it! I'll try my best to get things up and running though.

I also hope you all found your guild images back. I wasn't able to find anymore in my browser's cache folder, sadly. I did find an old Wiki article about the game though, which has some guild images.

Hm, maybe I'll make people new ones by request when the server is back. I'm no expert at making guild logos though, so I might leave that to the professionals. (JackBond? curbee? Sorry if I forgot anyone.)

But yeah, it's getting late for me now. I guess I'll go get some sleep.

Cheerio!

So It's Next Week...

STW has now been offline for a week or so, maybe longer... But the new server will be up soon! It should only take a few more days.

In other news, I restored the old database on a local server to see if it needed any updates. (This is just my test server!) Here's what the levels look like on the first page, in case anyone's wondering:

Upon further inspection, I noticed I forgot to change my job title back... I'll go do that now. Also mention-worthy is that I'm the only active player at the moment. It's slightly depressing. :(

Oh, and there's one thing I never really bothered to back up. (Because, really, I never expected a total disk wipe.) Screenshot:


So, yeah, I'm talking about the guild images. If you still have your guild image, please hang on to it! You'll be able to restore it when the new server goes live. After scavenging my hard disk, I came up with ASDF's, Silvanus's and The Hobo's logo, so they don't have to worry. I might be able to find more.

Oh, and reactions are welcome if you have any questions. You just need a Blogger account.

Bye!

Blog Redirect

Finally! After some fiddling with my internet connection, I got access to the FTP server and changed the homepage on shinostotalwar.com. It now redirects... here! If you don't know why STW is offline yet, be sure to read the article below!

Downtime And Things To Come

STW has been down for like a week now. Maybe more. The server initially went offline because there were some hardware failures at HostMDS. Normally, they would fix it and get the server back up, but this particular failure corrupted the server's harddisk in such a way that HostMDS was unable to recover the data. They sent the harddisk out to specialists, and kept the sites offline. (They told me exactly what happened, but only after I asked them.) A few days later, they informed me the harddisk's data for STW was not recoverable. *sigh*

The servers are now back up, but because I haven't been able to reach it, there's no STW on it yet, there's just a little note from Cassius. That's right, I can't reach it. They say my IP isn't blocked... but I think it is. I'm going to try and reset my router long enough for it to change my IP tonight, maybe that'll help.

So, as for Plan B... I'm in the process of buying some new webspace. When it's operational, I'll upload STW there, and put up a link at the old website. Should be done somewhere next week. Sadly, the latest backup of the game I have is Jan 1 2009, so we'll be forced to do some catching up.

In the meantime, I'm optimizing the code for STW and validating the HTML (something I should've done a long time ago). In the end, we should have a harder, better, faster and stronger STW.

Final Summation:
- Shino's Total War is coming back soon!
- We're moving to a new server.
- The server is rolling back to Jan 1. (Anything that happened before Jan 1 is saved.)

I'll keep you updated!

First!

Hey everyone!

I thought about making a "developer's blog" for STW a long time ago, but I never actually felt like creating one. I then stumbled upon this awesome website, which literally let me create a blog in under 10 seconds. I didn't even have to log-in! (I was already logged into Google, and apparently Google Accounts work on Blogger.)

So, here we are. I'll post some news about the downtime later, this is just a quick first post.

Bye!