Yes, at last the initial testing has proven successful and I can feel confident about saying that this stage of it is done. So what’s next and what else does it need before players see the results?

Well all of the features and their options are entered into the system. I just want to review them and verify that they all have default settings. Then I want to write a conversion utility to switch players from the current feature system to the new one. After that is the tricky part - I need to tie the system into the Character Manager itself. This will take a little time but I’m hoping no more than 2 weeks or so.

The final step is to dig through over 5900 scripts to make sure they get any changes needed to work with the new feature system. This will be arduous and time-consuming but at least it won’t be complicated!

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Yes, I’m still working on the Character Manager project but I feel I’m making progress again at last. Here’s the issues that have been holding it up:

• Race determines potential age ranges, height ranges, and in fact almost all player feature options.
• Age determines weight based on race and height.
• Height (along with race and age) determines weight based on physique.
• Physique simply determines weight which is based on race, age, and height.

Problems arise when say a player is 4 years old (the minimum) and changes their race from human to giant. A giant’s minimum age is older than 4 years old so I need to adjust the age as a percentage of the range of youngest to oldest possible ages in order to maintain consistency. I also have to alter their height as a percentage of their original height of course. And since their age and height changes I also need to adjust their weight.

To add to the confusion, I also have to validate all the new values to make sure they are allowed for the given race. So I set the new race, validate the new age or height which calls the race value to establish valid ranges which calls the age or height routines to get valid ranges which goes around in a circle until the system regurgitates in a dizzying infinite loop!

The good news is that I believe I have a solution which involves smoother code flow and more logical subroutine progression. Keep your fingers crossed!

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After the auction I spent time with family for a couple of weeks and began preparing for the upcoming winter. I went a little hog-wild on cutting firewood to keep fuel costs down this year.

In-game, I made time to add bulk gem selling to jewelry shops and wrote some involved scripts to support the current Karina/Tryphon RP plot. Most importantly, I got back to looking at the Character Manager scripts. Here’s what’s holding me up…

I have to use the following facts to determine a player’s weight:
1. Player weight is based on their age, physique, race and height.
2. Since age determines the possible range of heights available to players, this won’t be a direct factor in determining weight. Yet it does help determine the end result.
3. Physique only alters the final weight by adjusting a base median weight (which is set by a given base weight for adults of each race times their age if they are younger than an adult).
4. Height only alters the final weight by adjusting the same base median weight by a certain factor that I need to determine by experimenting with what value would be appropriate. This factor also will differ based on the player’s race and possibly their age.
5. I then have to review potential results to see if they yield semi-realistic and appropriate weight values for each race with each physique with each height at each age. Ugh! And what if one player chooses to be a very tall, emaciated player and another is an tiny, obese player of the same age? Should it be possible for the emaciated player to be equal to or even greater than the weight of the tiny obese player? Do the resulting ranges allow a 4 year old very tall, obese human be able to weight more than a tiny, emaciated adult? And if so then should they and if they shouldn’t then what adjustments do I have to make and where? To the weight-to-height ratio? To the weight-to-physique ratio? How will these changes affect all the possible results and how will I maintain my sanity trying to evaluate them all again!?!

So now you see why this has been hampering me for so long.

I ended up making a spreadsheet (which I had to struggle to learn the details of formula coding in order to accomplish) and now have a somewhat easier method of testing results. I’m hoping to have everything worked out soonish and to start coding the final pieces of the Character Manager from the results.

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Last I stood, I had been working on the last of the main components of the Character Manager backend system. This was delayed by two things. One, the coding for the restrictions between ages, races and heights was taxing to say the least. Two, I took a tree branch to the eye which left me hardly able to see what I was doing.

The eye has recovered after getting a contact lens bandage for it but this delayed me until the mentor faire. Congrats to the mentors on a job well done! Most of the new prizes that you may have seen there were designed by mentors and coded by myself. The mentors have been reviewing their events and coming up with some new ideas and games for next year. Preparing for the faire delayed me from further work on the Character Manager before I was presented with a visit on short notice from my distant sister and her two kids. It was a great time but preparing for their arrival and spending the week with them also stole my time from working on in-game things.

After that I has a week to recover and lock down the house and make sure it was set while I went away for a week with my other two sisters to my dad’s hunting cabin upstate. I was tasked with loading a trailer and a truck load of goods and tools that we needed and with cutting up logs to give my dad a nice 7 or 8 cords of wood for the fire. It was grueling work and I pulled a muscle in my hand from all the heavy lifting but we had a great time going fishing, 4 wheeling, mini-golfing, toasting smores and my nephew shot his first game - a chipmunk! Since returning I had more cleanup and recovery of neglected housework to tend to as well as a slightly injured hand.

In the rare time I had during all of this to spend on the game I’ve gotten a couple of things done. First, I’ve been preparing items for the upcoming auction. There’s a couple of nice things started that I hope folks will like. Just one question - doesn’t anyone have ideas for items that aren’t weapons!?!

I’ve also been researching some ideas for advertising our game. I spoke to some of the Home Office people about the Buddy Referral program to see if it can be re-initiated for us. I also found a way to earn free advertising links for us by using some PTC (Pay To Click) advertising websites. I’m not sure if these have any real chance of roping in new players but it’s essentially free and is worth a shot. If you have any other advertising ideas then please be sure to post a comment here so that we can look into them!

For now I’m still focusing on my auction items. Thanks to Jostinian and Xxenos for some inspiring ideas. If you have other ideas then send them to aoh-jubalee at play dot net or post them on the message boards. I just want to get back to the Character Manager so I can reveal the sweet new features you all will be able to use!

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While waiting for player feedback, I’ve been working out the details of Height selection. The choices will vary based on Race and Age and the format of the choices list is a bit perplexing. Do I let players choose their height in inches? Is it appropriate to give human adolescents 8 choices and adult giants a whopping 48 choices all on one screen? Do I let players choose feet+inches, thus limiting the choice of inches to no more than 12 despite the fact that this will complicate the CM scripts and possibly confuse new players in the CM?

I’ve also tasked Jubalee with offering messaging for changing choices in the CM and have begun coding the actual rooms.

Aside from that I’m working on things behind the scenes and keeping busy with spring farm-work. I’ve got my garden planted and the fields sprayed, fertilized and seeded. I also had my sister and her friend and their families come to visit on their way up to Hershey Park so entertaining five children was quite the chore, but fun nonetheless. “Uncle Jeff” seems to have become iconic in their little circle of kids.

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“I’d trade Firefox over Internet Explorer any day!”

Well I’m going to rant about it again, only this time I’ll give clear reasons to all you FireFox virgins! This rant was spawned during the rewrite of the website which forced me to test the pages on IE as well as FireFox, thus reminding me why I loathe it so much.