Sorry for the lateness this week...someone gave us a free + unwanted security evaluation of our site and made me aware of a significant security hole at 16:59:30. Fixing this little issue (which we are more or less obligated to do as soon as we become aware of it..as leaving it open becomes corporate responsibility and to a degree liability from that point forward) involved harassing 6 different individuals in 3 different countries during the Friday night when they have just been paid. Seems good now at any rate.
We are always very grateful for this kind of information...security will ALWAYS be playing catch-up to those who take an interest in breaking it. Without the help of some individuals this would generally lead to larger issues and bigger messes to be cleaned up.
AGAIN..I am grateful the help...but really...**** YOU for the timing. Of the many times this kind of issue has been brought to our attention, be it exploit or security or gameplay related, it is statistically almost a certainty that we will be working on it Friday between 7 and 11pm. The equal statistical chance that this is when it initially is discovered is about the same as 99% of all the technical innovation in the Universe being discovered by the engineering staff of the USS Enterprise.
Again..I don't really want to seem ungrateful here...I'm just saying that if any of these EVER came on a Thursday or god forbid a Monday I would be MORE grateful.
Problems this week:
1. The developers of the Conan worldbuilding + resource database (built from ours as a starting point) for some reason decided to not bother changing the registry entry for their new version. Anyone having worked for AO first who then looks at ANYTHING in the Conan/TSW resource browser will crash our database....and keep it crashed as long as the registry key is installed on their machine from that point onward. It took almost an entire day with nobody able to produce new anything for us to discover that and fix it. The fact that Macrosun could find it at all was a miracle. I blame him for saying "I'm bored" loud enough for the code supreme being to hear that morning.
2. Render coding can cause illness...both render coders were ill Wednesday, Thursday and Friday this week...it must be true.
3. A great many playfields are being exported/committed to include "daily mission" content. Many of these playfields have not been committed inside the memory of anyone who still works here. Vanilla Ice was cool the last time these were exported. Mstrbstrd was wearing a skinny leather tie when this was committed last. I have no idea how these ever worked in the first place...they mostly work now..all it cost us was the general sanity and well-being of Flaptoot. The subway was super-broken...thanks to Flaptoot it might work ever again. I hope the strange facial tick he has developed this week goes away over the weekend.
4. Two million other small things my brain has conveniently forgotten. This includes me speaking about parts of my body in the third person in public correspondance.
Some might feel like we are making "excuses" when I tell you about some of the hiccups we have on a regular basis. I feel we do very very well...and anyone who works in any kind of develoment context on an older project will tell you this kind of thing happens all the time. The point is really "this stuff happens all the time" at this point we are quite good at dealing with it...my pulse no longer breaks above 45 bpm. But nothing we do ever seems to prevent it completely. Macrosun wants to make AO2...and after this amount of time dealing with code-archeology so do I. "Throw me the idol and I will throw you the whip!"
Some things still went well
1. Our goal of getting transfer up for the German dimension very very soon seems to be coming close to completion. It works It works! Just some testing and a few small details left then we can open it up.
2. The vast majority of the old engine has now been cut out of the new AO client. I thought this would take much longer than it did. Damn. I'm really hoping to get another video to you guys within the next 3 weeks. SOOO exciting.
3. A test server is up for the new balance work. I'll tell you guys where once it is acceptable to us so you can tell us why it isn't acceptable to you
4. The daily missions are looking very good as is Kintaii's instance. Without the multiple crashes this week there might have been a new version on Test today...as it stands that will be coming on Monday.
I am tired. Have a great weekend everyone. I'm sorry this is so late and will likely not het translated any time soon,..again my fault not Waldgeists.