Dynamic Mud News

Next Test Sunday

2007-08-30T12:29:00.000-05:00

Ok, I'm officially scheduling the test for 2:00 PM Eastern Standard Time on Sunday September 2nd. Most of CTF should be functional by then, Territory is mostly in... basically if you are close to your flag you'll be in your own territory, close to an enemies you are in theirs. Where the regions overlap is contested territory. I hope to tie being able to tag into this so you can only use tagging defensively. We'll see how that goes. See everyone Sunday!

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Final Summer Test

2007-08-28T07:55:00.001-05:00

I've been cranking along and have CTF mostly complete. So far I have flag items which can be aligned with a faction, as well as flag rooms that are also aligned with a faction. If the proper flag is in a flag room then that flag will appear on the map, and be visible on survey. If you drop an opposing team's flag in your flag room it disappears and your team scores. Currently I'm working on adding the territory system which will allow me to limit tagging to be only valid in friendly...

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Confusion Clearing

2007-08-12T16:54:00.000-05:00

It's been a little over a week since my last post. Things have been hectic as mentioned earlier, a weekend in Vermont, a full week as a TA for the summer program they have for incoming engineering students, followed by yet another weekend away to celebrate my birthday. Only two more things to deal with before I can relax... tomorrow I need to get my license renewed, and Wednesday I am moving into my dorm for the fall. Once that is done though, it will be a lot less stressful transitioning...

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Busy Weeks Coming

2007-08-01T15:17:00.000-05:00

For those that haven't noticed I have been posting a bit less the past week or so. Things in life are picking up a bit so I will be short on time. I am heading out of town for the weekend, and upon my return I will be spending just about every waking hour working as a TA for a summer engineering program for the week. The weekend following that is my birthday, so I am heading out of town again. Sometime around there I need to take care of renewing my license, and right after I get back I...

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Accessibility Hopefully Improved

2007-07-29T22:32:00.000-05:00

As I mentioned on Wednesday, I worked on the accessibility issues that were found during the last test. There were three main issues at hand: A method of disabling the map. The map provides nothing but unpronounceable spam for a user who is playing using a reader program. I added a new config command, so by typing config map n the map can be disabled. A method of disabling the prompt. Like the map, the prompt must get annoying for a player using a screen reader. This was another direct...

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Breaking Free

2007-07-26T14:25:00.000-05:00

For the past few weeks I have been reading a pretty new blog about breaking free of the 9 to 5 job and starting your own business. The Author, Brian Armstrong is a young entrepreneur who has had several small successes so far under his belt, and all in his early twenties. Brian has also written a book about the subject, also worth checking out. Personally I'm hoping to collect some inspiration from Brian as I move forward into my own career, and my hope to escape from it and start my own...

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Fixes and Accessibility

2007-07-25T14:02:00.000-05:00

I've managed to get items integrated with relatively little work. As a result I can move forward this week with some more new stuff. First on my priority list is fixing the bugs that were found during last week's test. Most of these are minor and quick fixes so hopefully shortly into this coming weekend I will be able to move on into the accessibility issues that were made quite obvious during the test. The problem that needs to be solved here now is finding a way to represent large...

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Spotplex Sucks

2007-07-24T14:52:00.000-05:00

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that I was trying out spotplex. Since I have set it up I really haven't gained anything from the experience. Their code does an ok job at tracking activity on each individual page, but it still seems to be flawed, it was able to ignore some of this activity. Even on the best of days, when I was getting what for me was very good traffic for a single day, on an individual post page at that, I didn't receive any traffic from spotplex. They have managed to...

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Link Popularity Tools

2007-07-23T14:50:00.000-05:00

Over the past couple of weeks I have begun to pay more attention to link popularity and page ranks. In my searches I came across a pair of tools that can be helpful for performing analyses in this area. The first of these tools is at www.widexl.com. This tool takes the url of a site or sites as input, and produces a count of the number of search hits on a handful of search engines: Google, Yahoo, AllTheWeb, AltaVista, and MSN. The output also displays a handful of other sites as a...

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Top 1,000,000 Alexa!

2007-07-22T09:18:00.000-05:00

Within the past week or so this blog has broken into the top million websites listed on Alexa.com. This really isn't that big of a deal, but things have been moving up right along. To be honest I am still unsure if this is because of all the increased traffic I have have picked up, or if it is just because I now check the blog about twice a day with the toolbar I installed. Whatever the cause its a definite plus! Reminder: Anyone with questions about DynamicMUD should read this post. I...

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Any Questions?

2007-07-21T15:29:00.000-05:00

Todays test went quite well. A few bugs were found, but not many, which is always a good thing. During the test a lot of questions started flying, so I think this is a good time to let people ask questions about DynamicMUD. So far a bunch of people have expressed interest in the project so far, but I think a lot of people so far have only had a chance to scratch the surface per say. If you haven't yet I would definitely recommend reading about what DynamicMUD is. If you have any questions...

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Dynamic Test Tomorrow!

2007-07-20T12:52:00.000-05:00

The test that I keep mentioning is tomorrow! The event is scheduled for tomorrow at 3:00PM Eastern Standard Time. If your not in the EST time zone then look up what time that is for you here. If you haven't already signed up or haven't considered showing up, please do, it will be very helpful for development, and should be a good hour or so of entertainment.

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The Road Ahead

2007-07-19T15:01:00.000-05:00

This is a good opportunity to explain what is in the plan book for the next few weeks. This Saturday we are running our second test of the summer. This coming weekend and next week my current plan for coding is to work on integrating items with the persistence system that the game world and being are all tied into. This will allow for a great expansion of potential options for players during testing. The first few off the top of my head are capture the flag, find and retrieve, and keep...

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Phosphor the Multiplayer Shockwave FPS

2007-07-18T14:45:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I got a chance to try out an interesting new game... the only First Person Shooter I have ever seen then is entirely implemented in shockwave. The game plays much like Quake or Unreal Tournament, has a handful of weapons, and some great visual effects for a 3d game implemented in only shockwave. The name of the game is Phosphor, and as far as I can tell it is being developed by a group called rasterwerks. Phosphor includes bots for a single player arena type game play. While a...

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New Google Referrals

2007-07-17T14:48:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago google adsense added a new set of referrals. These referrals are unlike the previous set, as they come from a much larger base of advertisers. These referrals are basically CPA or Cost Per Action ads, which means that the publisher is paid when a specific action is performed (for example sign up for a service). These ads can be run in conjunction with the normal ads, and many of them offer some serious pay outs. These also come with the advantage of letting the publisher...

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Calling All Testers!

2007-07-16T14:22:00.000-05:00

Like I mentioned on Friday... and yesterday, a test is planned for the end of this week. That test will be on Saturday at 3pm EST. We will be testing to make bug fixes, minor code tweaks, and internal changes are all fully functional and stable. The main event for the day will be several games of tag, probably in several rounds, including a free for all, and a team vs team game of tag. If you wish to attend please go to the Tester Group and rsvp. Thanks all.

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I'm Back

2007-07-15T17:36:00.000-05:00

The past day or so away did some good I think, got a good chance to relax without thinking about work, school, or even Dynamic (though I guess I really didn't stop thinking about dynamic.. I ended up having a good discussion on the subject with my brother. I got some reading in, played some monopoly, and even spent time outside on purpose! I'm still looking for information on when the best day and time to hold the next Dynamic test. So far I've only have a slight indication that one...

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When Is The Best Time For You?

2007-07-13T14:42:00.000-05:00

I've been making some progress, not a lot of crazy new features, but some internal changes of reasonable magnitude. I think next weekend (21st and 22nd) of July would likely be the best time to run the next test. This should give me an opportunity to make sure the kinks are out of all the new internal changes. In order to run this test I need people, preferably more then last time. So my question to all of you is: what day and time is the best for you? I will be scheduling this test even...

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New Debugging and Stability Tools

2007-07-11T17:35:00.000-05:00

It's been a few days since I last posted, mostly because I've been caught up with a few things, and quite frankly couldn't find anything I really wanted to sit down and write. I still have more then a week before I will be able to sit down to code a bug project so I've been slowly working at some functionality for dynamic to make it more stable, and I have some more things planned to help with debugging. The most notable change I did this week is to write some code to cleanly shutdown instead...

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A Productive Weekend

2007-07-08T18:48:00.000-05:00

A productive weekend so far, and I still have some time yet tonight. I managed to fix a bunch of bugs, correct some flaws in how some core modules operated, and added some useful staff functionality. And for the first time in a while it feels like the end of my short term todo list might be reachable. Things are going so well that the next weekend I have to code should hopefully be spent entirely on integrating items fully with the persistance model I have. The weekend following that and I...

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If You Were in The Simpsons What Would You Look Like?

2007-07-06T16:17:00.000-05:00

I checked this out for the first time last night. On the Simpsons Movie website they have a bunch of games and activities to promote the new movie. The only one I've looked at so far is the one where you can create an avatar by selecting different choices for various features (eyes, nose, mouth, hair, etc). Click on the "Create Your Simpsons Avatar" tab and give it a try. Worth a laugh at the very least!

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Does Work Create More Work?

2007-07-05T17:11:00.000-05:00

Like I mentioned earlier this week, I took advantage of having the entire day off yesterday to get ahead on coding. I fixed a handful of bugs, made improvements to several commands, and added a new command to make my life a little easier when running tests. I feel like I accomplished a lot. When I look at my todo list, I see another story. I know I finished three of my 'todo groups', which was a significant portion of work, but when I look at whats left I now see four 'todo groups' to get...

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This Week's Plan

2007-07-03T16:38:00.000-05:00

I'm making sure to take advantage of this week's day off for the 4th to get ahead on coding. On Wednesday I intend to get caught up on all of the bugs that were found this past weekend during the test. This coming weekend will then let me get ahead. The main tasks that will be accomplished this weekend will mainly be working on some cleanup and minor internal improvements for the most part. I also am aiming to make some improvements to the line of sight system, in particular things like...

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What Is DynamicMUD?

2007-07-02T15:38:00.000-05:00

Back when I was in high school I was an avid reader of PC Gamer. During this time I came across a very interesting advertisement. This full page add was entirely text, and described a game without graphics. A book you could write yourself while playing with other individuals on the internet. Needless to say I tried it out and got hooked on this genre of games. While I no longer play this afforementioned game, it still invoked in me a desire to create. The feature of this game that stood...

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Today's Test Complete

2007-07-01T15:10:00.000-05:00

Thanks everyone who came today for the test! I think a lot was accomplished, many bugs found, and some good suggestions were made. This should give me plenty to do over this week and next weekend. I am not sure when the next test will be set up, but it will likely be sometime in the near future to ensure that all the bugs that we found are fixed. Thanks again, and I hope everyone enjoyed themselves!

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