Earlier today, I did custom race thingies. You can go in the Hunter's Lodge and set a race - then when you post in commentary areas, your race will show up as a little silver question mark. When players mouse-over this question mark, your custom race is displayed. It's like a disguise! It's like the disguise that some of you asked for when race icons originally went live, and it's only now we've got the new commentary system that it's feasible! Better late than never I guess.

This evening I rewrote a whole bunch of the commentary interaction modules so that all icons and mouseover information can be toggled at will (this means that you can effectively go back to LotGD-style iconless chat).

I experimented with using a fixed-width font for commentary timestamps, and altering the format a bit - the result was that all the commentary lined up vertically all nice and neat, but it used up a bit too much horizontal space. That's sitting on my hard drive; I may or may not use it, we'll see.

Since then I've been rewriting the modules that interact with the Hunter's Lodge, in preparation for a little announcement that I'll get to later on.

The Hunter's Lodge is the biggest piece of evidence that shows that this game started off as a hobby. It's pretty much the only thing in the game that I've left at unmodified LotGD status. It's the interface and incentive for people to give me money, and I've barely touched the damn thing - go figure. It's not a proper shop, like eBoy's or Cadfael's, where iitems are stored in the database - it's just a page with modules hooking in to it. Every time I want to add a new thing, I've gotta write the logic for checking whether the player has enough DP's, running them through a confirmation screen, etc. It's like writing a whole extra shop for each thing I want to add. One day I'm gonna make it all shiny and pretty and have it so that you buy iitems representing the things you buy (and then click on them to activate their effects - or give them to other players), but not today.

While fixing up the modules, I made Custom Equipment work properly (IE "not go away whenever your weapon/armour changes"), cleaned up the page and tinkered with Avatars so that I don't have to go into FTP and change the names of each uploaded file (which will make validation faster and easier). I also added "permanent" options to each of the things that players might want to change regularly.

As it stands now, with something like a Custom Title, it'll cost you xx for your first title change, and yy for each subsequent change. With the permanent option, if you pay zz up front, you won't have to pay yy again, and can change the option as often as you like free of charge.

These options are applied to:
Avatars
Custom Armour
Custom Weapons
Custom Titles
Custom Name Colours
Custom Race Names
Custom Mount Names

So if you're constantly changing your Title or colours or whatever, you'll like this update.

I levelled things out cost-wise, too. Custom titles were 500 points to start, 25 thereafter; mount naming was 300 points to start, 50 points thereafter, and so on and so forth, all different prices with no real rhyme nor reason. It was honestly kind of a mess, so now everything's 500 points to start, 25 points thereafter, 1000 points for permanent, which I think represents roughly how people use the modules.

None of these changes to the Hunter's Lodge or its modules are live yet; I'm gonna sort out a deal where you can buy all the permanents for 2,500 points, and write up why I'm doing that.

Stay tuned!

This is going to be bad business for you CMJ. Bernard is going to save a shitload of DP on his title changes now...

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"Censure acquits the Raven, but pursues the Dove." "So, that means i'm -always- innocent, right?"

Permanant, free changes for everything for 25 bucks?

HELLO, I KNOW WHERE MY MONEY IS GOING NOW.

This is like a dream come true if it gets implemented. Even if not, I'll still spend the 30 bucks for it all.

Then I can finally not worry about saving for those and just buy some more chronospheres!

Or 5 accepted monster's

You get DP for monster submissions? Huh.

I was doing them for the honour. (Not that anything has been put on the island yet, but thats not the point..)

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"Censure acquits the Raven, but pursues the Dove." "So, that means i'm -always- innocent, right?"

Erm, so to clarify, does having the custom title now mean you still have to pay the full tenner to get permanent? Or pay the difference? I would probably do a 500 dp thing to upgrade, but I don't think I'd change my title enough to merit another 1000. Either way, you're very likely getting more of my money, I was just curious. I might even scrounge up the $25 to just make everything perm.

It's been said before, and I know this isn't the thank you thread, but I love this game. You are doing the Lord's work, Dan. You deserve every cent you get and more.

Cheers.

Just wanted to say: Good Luck with it all Dan, I woke up extra early this morning to log on and check what had happened, and had a real sense of bloody hell good-on-yer and... JEEZ LET ME DONATE MORE QUICK!

One question: Will Emily-the-writer have words to say about Emily-the-wench and can we expect the latter to change her name soon to Unholy-Bitch-the-wench?

Don't change the hunter's lodge...it's already used for RPing..

Actually, do change it...some of them need repairs, i.e. Kittania...falling through the roof of a building is rarely a good idea, especially from a great height.

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A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a trombone; what else does a man need to be happy?

http://enquirer.improbableisland.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=high_fall

How did you manage to misspell it so bad?

Actually, speaking of the hunter's lodge: Can I change my title and name coloration and custom race &c while on a Bastard Rank? Please? I don't want to buy req or ciggies...I just want to be able to swap things around.

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Isn't sanity just a one-trick pony anyway? All you get is one trick: rational thinking. But when you're good and crazy, oooh, oooh, the sky's the limit.

In regards to lining up the commentary timestamps, would it help to have the option to move the icons a line above the comment, Season 1 style? That way the timestamps could be lined up, and it would remove the problem of limited horizontal space.

Something else that may help organize the pages a bit is if special comments were another space after the previous comment, instead of it being planted immediately under the comment.

I absolutely love the fixed custom Weapons and Armour system, and the custom races. Also the ability to buy permanent changes is AMAZING.