April Newsletter - Lots'a Stuff

[Danny 2232]

 

 

 

The Lord of the Craft Newsletter 

 

1st April 2013

 

Howdy folks, and welcome to the Lord of the Craft’s monthly newsletter. We missed last month unfortunately due to the huge amount of work that we had to focus on when getting Anthos fully implemented to the server - however, we’re getting back into routine, and the newsletter’s of course back! This isn’t as long as it usually would be, as not much has really happened this month that’s actually suitable for the newsletter! However, I do hope that you enjoy reading through it, and have a fantastic day.

 

So, what’s in this month’s newsletter?

 

• April Fools!
• Most Noted Player
• A Call for Aid (seeking developers / technicians!)    
• Featured Video    
• The Help Station
• Development Blog        
• Website Updates    
• The Future                
• March’s donors            

 

 

 

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So, without further ado - let us begin on our journey,

 

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April Fools!

Yesterday, we celebrated the tradition of pulling a prank on people every year on the first of April. If anyone missed it, you can check it out further down in the Server News forum. Whilst this was obviously not serious, some of the points in it are actually things that we intend on doing. The things that were actually in the thread (in an attempt to make it more believable) are:

• “Firstly, I’d just like to say that we’re working on sorting the instability and roll-backs that have been occurring lately. This is caused due to a technical issue that we’re trying to solve currently - we can’t actually provide an ETA for this being fixed, however it shouldn't be too long. Please be patient whilst we try and solve this, and understand that it’s just as frustrating for us as it is for you.”
• “A website-based ‘Help Station’ will be released on the 2nd of April, that will work as an interactive knowledge base providing assistance on everything LOTC related.”
• “There will be some further changes to the forum skin, as we try and make it more eye appealing. This means that some of the buttons that are currently still sadly not fully textured, will be done soon.”
• “The VIP perk of ‘no advertisements’ will be returned shortly, and will be in full effect. We apologise for it not being sooner, however sorting the main skin was a priority.”

 

Well done to anyone who actually realised it was an April Fools joke - if you didn't, then you’re one silly billy.

 

 

 

Most Noted Player

We present the award of Most Noted Player to the member of the community that we - as a staff team - feel has performed the most notable deeds in the previous month. Whilst the player does not receive any actual reward, they do receive their mention here. Unfortunately, this month we aren’t featuring anyone as our Most Noted Player - however, be sure to make yourself stand out as helpful, notable and exceptional over the next month and perhaps you might be our Most Noted Player?

 

 

 

A Call for Aid

As I'm sure most of you are aware, we’re currently exceedingly short staffed when it comes to development and technical staff. We really, really do need to gather more plugin developers and other technical staff to our ranks in order to continue to develop the Lord of the Craft’s mechanics. If you are skilled with plugin development or know anyone who is, then please contact us via email ([email protected]) or pop myself or Tythus a PM, and we can talk it over. This really is hugely important for us - and we urgently need to find more developers to work on the various plugins that the Lord of the Craft is currently lacking. Without more plugin developers, it will be a long time until we’re able to provide the type of mechanics that we used to be able to. Just to note, anyone interested in working with us on the technical side of things would of course need to have examples of their work, and would need to be skilled in Java and experienced with plugin development in particular.

 

 

 

Featured Video

This is a new feature to the newsletter, that will showcase our favourite video created last month by a member of the community, this month’s Featured Video is a Let’s Play (the first in the series, which currently has two episodes) created by Dukester. It’s a fantastic Let’s Play, and I’m gonna lob it in here for you to watch.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qg3pH-ko_s8

 

 

 

 

The Help Station

The Help Station has been a personal project of my own, which has enabled us to provide you guys with an easy-to-use and access bank of knowledge. The Help Station (HS) is a large database, which will eventually contain hundreds of separate articles about how the Lord of the Craft server, and it’s various mechanics work.

 

The HS features a reliable and accurate search system, various categories and multiple other features. One notable feature is your ability to rate and comment on the HS Articles - to provide feedback on how useful they were, and how well they were written. You are free to comment and rate them, providing the content you comment with adheres to the server rules! You can access the HS here, or by going to Gameplay > Help Station. More content will be added daily (for the next while!).

 

 

 

Development Blog

We’re also very pleased to be able to announce that we are introducing a ‘Development Blog’ that will be run separately from the site, that will keep you updated on the upcoming updates to the server and make you aware of issues we’re facing in regards to plugins, etc. It’s been decided that we are to introduce this due to the recent lack of communication between ourselves and the community when it comes to things such as plugins and server stability. This should be up in the very near future!

 

 

 

 

Website Updates

As you will have noticed (if you haven’t, I’d be scared) the forums have recently had a huge overhaul. They feature an entirely new skin, and the entire website now runs on an integrated method, rather than having the main site detached from the forums. This provides us with much more freedom and gives us the capacity to make the website much more interactive than it previously was.

 

Over the past month or two, and over the future months expect to see further changes made to the website - mostly with regards to the pages themselves - which will all be announced in the ‘Website Updates’ sub-forum, so keep an eye on it and you’ll catch early wind of some nifty features.

 

 

 

 

The Future

This section is a rather short part of the newsletter, with regards to the future of the Lord of the Craft - what you can expect to see in the next couple of months. I’ll just throw it into a list rather than boring you with a massive wall of rather fatuous text.

 

• The return of ‘Wandering Souls’ - huzzah! We’ve not had wandering souls in-game for ages now, and it’s about time we returned them. The wandering soul system really does help players get the ‘feel’ of the server before they apply, so it’s definitely something that we will have to return. Progress on developing the Wandering Souls plugin is currently happening.
• A Dynamic Map on the website will also be returning. We’re currently trying to find a method of making a map that shows the current state of the map, without it being resource intensive. The way that we intend on doing this is running the dynamap off of the backups of the server, rather than it displaying a live feed - this means that it uploads the content less often, and saves server RAM - avoiding it dying due to lag.
• The mining system that we intended on releasing at the start of Anthos, will be released at some point over the next short while. Unfortunately, the plugin that we were to use for this broke at the last minute, meaning that we were unable to actually make the mines work, and resulted in us having to use a horrid temporary mining world. The actual, fully-functioning and efficient mines are just around the corner.
• The return of Soulstones - this will happen relatively soon. Unfortunately, due to technical issues the Soulstone plugin we had developed died on us - meaning, we haven’t had one for about a month and a bit now (we did have one for a short while), so we’re working on sorting that! So, soulstones will be back soon!

 

 

 

March’s Donors

This month was very successful in terms of donations, and below are the names of all who have pledged their money in support of the Lord of the Craft this month (ascending order from oldest to newest):

 

• Lynmic
• Scornofhell
• Spacewolf78
• JCW313
• Ladvay
• Botar
• juicebox182
• ConnorMagill
• Chriskw8910
• Tomurohen
• jaden568
• yimmya
• xsnakev
• thomascovey
• xSPULLERx
• Rurikk
• everblue2er101
• Weetos
• deadoor28
• Tha4threich
• nesoyaboy

 

I think I stand for all of us, when I say a huge thank you to all of this month’s donors - and indeed, everyone who has ever donated to the Lord of the Craft!

 

 

 

And finally, possibly the most important news of all - I got a new avatar.

 

Have a great month of roleplaying LOTC!

[Geo 1415]

Cake.  With a side of Scotland.

[Zarsies 6795]

Cool! I really missed the newsletters. :P

[TornadoWatch 364]

Danny, give more details on the mines, please.

Will we have the multiworld system as promised, where entering mines in the overworld TP's you to a center location, with mines being placed strategically in the world?

IE: In Oren, Uthor's county would get an iron mine, other mountain heavy areas would get iron, there would be coal mines, etc, based on geography? With the mountainous regions like the Dwarves getting plenty of mines? What about diamond?

Please don't tell me it'll be cookie cutter with 3 or so mines accessible by all races.

[Danny 2232]

Danny, give more details on the mines, please.

Will we have the multiworld system as promised, where entering mines in the overworld TP's you to a center location, with mines being placed strategically in the world?

IE: In Oren, Uthor's county would get an iron mine, other mountain heavy areas would get iron, there would be coal mines, etc, based on geography? With the mountainous regions like the Dwarves getting plenty of mines? What about diamond?

Please don't tell me it'll be cookie cutter with 3 or so mines accessible by all races.

 

We're going with the mining system we originally intended. That means that initially, each race will have a couple of coal mines, perhaps one iron mine. Gold mines will open up over the next couple of months, and diamond mines (if ever) in a few months. As the demand increases, and the longer we're in Anthos - more mines will be opened.

 

The Dwarves will likely be given more mines than other races, for obvious reasons.

[IrishPerson 693]

Nice avatar and newsletter!

[Nug 2011]

Lovely avatar... teehee.

[Bethykinss 158]

Newsletter and new Avatar, yay!   

[TornadoWatch 364]

We're going with the mining system we originally intended. That means that initially, each race will have a couple of coal mines, perhaps one iron mine. Gold mines will open up over the next couple of months, and diamond mines (if ever) in a few months. As the demand increases, and the longer we're in Anthos - more mines will be opened.

The Dwarves will likely be given more mines than other races, for obvious reasons.

Humans getting only one iron mine is gonna be a big issue.

I can tell you why in detail in private, but one iron mine in Oren is gonna seriously upset a delicate political balance. You need more like 3 in certain key locations.

Please don't make a final choice, I'm gonna write you an essay explaining.

[Kaiser 2347]

I'd love to help but I'm an idiot 

[Danny 2232]

Humans getting only one iron mine is gonna be a big issue.

I can tell you why in detail in private, but one iron mine in Oren is gonna seriously upset a delicate political balance. You need more like 3 in certain key locations.

 

Notice how I said initially. More are opened as time goes on / as required.

[MonkeyCoffee 516]

My crocodile ran away, whe- OH SH*T IT'S IN YOUR AVATAR.

[o_Ben_o 193]

Thanks for donating guys ! Also thanks Danny for the updates!

[TornadoWatch 364]

Sent you a PM regarding this issue Danny.

[LeRenardNoir 413]

Glad you followed through with the Dev Blog and thank you for clarifying the issue of mining. Good to see our pleas did not go unanswered. Bravo, Admins.