It’s been a while since we released the Episode 3 podcast and our users have resorted to threats of ransom for updates! As you can imagine, a lot of progress has been made towards finishing Episode 3. I am looking at my Episode 3 flowchart right now and far more is crossed off than isn’t, and every day I cross off some more. Right now the majority of the development is in my hands, as all the conversations/items/forums have been built for some time. ...
When Episode 3 of Forumwarz launches, there will be hundreds of new items available for players to obtain, trade and use to their advantage. Since we’ve covered the basics of Episodes 1 and 2 with itembuildr already, we’re going to hijack itembuildr for a while to create Episode 3 content. The content you guys create will exist when Episode 3 launches in addition to the hundreds of items we’ve created internally, so there will be plenty of new shopping opportunities. ...
I’m delighted to announce that after months of development, we’re going to launch the new gameplay enhancements on September 10th. Addtionally, the new gameplay features will also herald a new Domination season!. We due for a new season, and since things are changing so much we figured it would be better to not mess with the existing medals and winners too much. Important Launch Notes The migrations for the new gameplay changes are HUGE. The database has to change in about 20 different ways, some of which could take hours to process. So rather than do our typical “The site should be down for a few hours” thing, we’ve scheduled a full 24 hours of downtime. This will happen directly following the ending of the current domination round, at 9:30PM EST on September 9th. So we can expect the site will be up by 9:30PM on September 10th. ...
It has been about 6 months since we launched Forumwarz Episode 2! The initial plot for Forumwarz was written quite some time ago. Based on a few meetings where the team discussed what we’d like to have in the story, Jalapeno Bootyhole wrote up an outline. (At the time we were planning on releasing the entire game in one go, where half way through you’d be forced to pay to finish the storyline.) ...
As part of the continuous effort to introduce more players to Forumwarz, we have coded up a Beta system for running affiliate ads. We’re looking for people who have sites and are trying to monetize them. Basically here’s how it works: We give you ads to run on your site. We then give you a percentage of the revenue earned from any users you refer to us. We also give you a special tracking page to see how many people clicked on the ads, signed up for Forumwarz accounts, etc. ...
We’ve listened to your feedback on itembuildr and pushed out a few updates: The item-generating code is a lot better. There should be fewer random repeats of the same item class. You should never get the same item class twice in a row. Secondly, there are fixes to prevent pricing from going way out of whack (like with the Dragon Ball items.). Thirdly, we can create special items for all classes now (like Hackers!). Unfortunately, I had to make adjustments to a few of the existing items to keep their prices in line with our economy. There are two new E-Peen(tm) for itembuildr – one is for having your idea chosen. The second is for having your image chosen. A bunch of items built with itembuildr have been moved into the regular stores. Each item will display credits for its creation. They have subsequently been removed from the ItemBuildr consumer’s co-op. I’m hoping these fixes will go a long way to making itembuildr a lot more useful and fun for everyone. As always feedback is appreciated. ...
One of our most requested features for IDC is the ability to ignore other players. Lately I made some changes to how IDC works on the back end that allowed me to implement the feature. Here’s how it works: On the IDC console, if you type: /ignore name Will start ignoring the player in IDC with the name supplied. If you want to unignore them, simply run the ignore command again (it toggles.) ...
I spent some time re-factoring our image uploading system to allow for more user submitted content. It was a lot of refactoring, but from now on it’s much easier for users to contribute to our game. The first step was implementing custom emoticons. These can be purchased for 5BP on the Support Us page. A few have been added already: :highfive: :manphin: :goatse: They have to be approved by a moderator, but we’re usually pretty quick at doing that. Enjoy! ...
I’ve been updatting Twitter a lot more lately than the blog, mainly because most updates don’t warrant a full posting. If you have a Twitter account you can follow forumwarz for more frequent updates. Actually, even if you don’t have Twitter you can just subscribe to the RSS feed there and you’ll get all our updates. Here’s some stuff you might have missed: New Hardware The site has been pretty laggy lately. We decided to finally do something about it and ordered 3 brand new servers, all of which are faster than our current server. They’re currently being set up by our hosting company and hopefully we’ll be able to switch over pretty soon. ...
Today I’m delighted to announce the launch of itembuildr, our latest system for players to create content in the Forumwarz world. Whereas forumbuildr allowed players to create forums, itembuildr allows you to create items that your player can actually equip! Here’s how it works: Step 1. The itembuildr gnomes come up with an item type and stats. This is done automatically, and is mostly random. The item will either be an equippable item or a junk item. It can be anything from a .moar file (in fact, our first build is a video .moar file) to a tattoo or even a special item. Pretty much anything that can be equipped can be designed by our players. ...