Swirve Blog

It’s weekly blog time from Sean and Brian!

Comments here please as normal

First up, let’s give you an update on progress. The initial test group has been doing a spectacular job of finding and filing bugs from the Alpha game. We’ve been dividing our time between fixing these bugs and speeding up the performance of server in anticipation of inviting in the rest of the registered alpha testers. The performance work is nearly done, so we’ll both be focusing exclusively on bug fixing from here on in. There’s currently about 20 testers in the alpha split between two kingdoms. Our next milestones are:

1. Invite in all remaining alpha testers (about 180 players).

2. Go to Beta, which will basically mean replacing Genesis with the new code, and making it available for anyone to sign in.

3. Make the code active for WoL.

We want to move as quickly as possible, but can only move onto the next milestone once we have the bugs from the previous stage under control. We are aiming to invite in the remaining alpha testers next week, and estimate it that it will be the start of August before we can make the new code publicly available on Genesis. It will take us a week or two of hard work to fix the bugs that will be submitted at that point. This leaves us with awkward timing regarding the current WoL age - it is likely to be late August before the new code is sufficiently bug-free to represent an improvement on the current code. This leaves us with two options regarding the current WoL age:

* extend it to the end of August, and then replace it with new code.

* end at the start of August, and start a new short age on current code. The age after this short age would be on the new code.

We are mindful that the current WoL age was supposed to be a short age, so we are reluctant to just extend it without consultation. So, we’ve created a poll to gauge people’s opinions. This is available by following the link below, and will also be available from a link on the throne page at some point this evening.

https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dElRekRFcWE4TmRqUEh4X0xhOUc0RHc6MA..

Please take a moment to visit the link and let us know your preference.

In other news, we would like to announce the community wiki for the game, at http://wiki.utopia-game.com. As of writing this, it is password protected, but that restriction will be removed either today or tomorrow. It is far from complete, but is a great starting point. What the wiki needs now is some dedicated players to give it care and attention, to expand it and drive it forward in terms of content and accessibility to new players. We would like to ask anyone who’s interested in becoming an editor to get in touch with us. Just email us at utopiadev@utopia-game.com, and put WIKI in the subject line.

Questions:

Fate1316: Would it be possible to create a list of bugs that have been fixed and which ones you are working on?

Using the current bug tracking system this isn’t very easy, and for the moment we want to focus exclusively on fixing the bugs. There’s a lot of bug turnover right now, so it doesn’t make a lot of sense short term. Longer term, we hope to get around to exposing a limited view of approved bugs/feature requests that are in triage system.

Stella: By the look of the screenshots posted last week, it seems like you’re still using frames. Is that something temporary or will it actually be changed?

Styling is a touchy subject with a lot of people, and for many style-related decisions we’re damned if we do, and damned if we don’t. As it turns out, what you see in those screenshots aren’t frame borders - they’re just borders added in to divide the content, and styled to give the pages a bit of a ‘classic’ look. There are no frames in the new site.

Stella: What are the thoughts from the developers about different themes for the players to choose between?

We’ve mentioned this a few times in previous posts, if you look back. We intend to add this feature down the line, as soon as we have time. This will permit people to choose the old-school look, perhaps a new-school look or a work-safe look, and eventually we might even be able to support community-submitted themes as well. It would be a nice feature, and very useful for some people. That said, it’s relatively low priority right now, so we’re unlikely to get around to it for some months yet.