Improbable Island Message of the Day (MoTD)
Help piss on McDonalds' bonfire!Admin CavemanJoe – 2012-01-15 21:09:53
Hello Islanders! This is a very hard MoTD to write.
That's not because it's anything horrible or serious - it's because I've been training in DVORAK for the past three days and now I'm at a friend's house using a QWERTY keyboard and I've completely forgotten how to bloody type. But I've got your attention now, so!
A good friend of mine needs your help, and I know you're a generous bunch, so here's the sitch.
I've got this friend, by the name of Joe, who is a very talented cook. Whenever a party happens, you'll find him studiously engaged in the kitchen, creating cunningly-composed culinary concoctions to captivate his curious contemporaries (you can probably guess where I'm up to in the DVORAK lessons).
I speak from experience when I say that his meatball sandwiches are perfect - the state of the art, the quintessential form, the exemplary subject. When you encounter something that's been created with thought and care and love, rather than thrown together out of the cheapest possible components at a minimum of effort and watered down for the blandest tastes of a mass audience, it does the heart a world of good.
Anyway, it has long been Joe's dream - and that of his wife, Sabrina - to introduce his meatball sandwiches to the world at large. An opportunity has presented itself, the timing has come up good, and the stars are aligned for Joe to open a little restaurant - the only obstacle right now is money.
It isn't very often that you get the opportunity to make a dream come true, and it's even less often that you encounter something perfect. The chance to both realize a lifelong fantasy and introduce something perfect to the world at the same time - that's very rare.
Here's his Kickstarter project. The voice you hear at the beginning of the video is me, talking through a mouthful of meat, bread, and sweet, tangy sauce. He only needs a couple of bucks from a few thousand people, and it's not like he's begging - you get stuff for donating. Like tasty, tasty sandwiches.
Please give generously, and have fun!
-Dan
Just in case you're wondering what I'm up to right now...
Admin CavemanJoe – 2012-01-10 04:09:34
My New Years' Resolution for Improbable Island is to code less, and write more - in fact, to release one new major plot point per month for 2012. Right now I'm working on the next part of Rohit the Robot's story.
If you're a new player and you'd like to play this story immediately when it comes out, complete the two story events "Mister Stern's Museum" (see NewHome) and "Rohit the Robot" (see Cyber City 404). Neither of these story points have a minimum DK or level requirement.
Have fun!
-CMJ
EDIT: Since you'll be needing a pub in which to meet Rohit, I've put a new one in Cyber City 404. The things inside are good for Robots!
We have a FaceBook, now? What? Also, character expiration.
Admin CavemanJoe – 2011-12-29 05:27:19
You might have heard on the radio about this "FaceBook" thing that everyone's talking about. Well, I looked at FaceBook today and there are a lot of pages about Improbable Island made by our fans. I figure we may as well have an "official" page, so I've made one, and here it is.
(don't worry, we're not moving the game to FaceBook. Bloody hell, can you imagine? Yikes!)
The thing about FaceBook, though, is that it's like that weird fellow you met at that party. You know the guy - the one who stood uncomfortably close, asked a lot of personal questions, kept surreptitiously sniffing you while he thought you weren't watching, that sort of thing. And then you found out that the party you were at was in his house, and all your friends hang out in his house all the time, even though it's full of spiders and it smells vaguely of wee. So you kind of have to roll with it or never see your friends again.
There's another guy called Google Plus, and I went to a party at his place one time, and it was all very nice - top-notch stereo, delicious beers and not a single disturbing stain to be found - but it was very quiet. In fact, the whole "party" was just me and him, smiling uncomfortably at each other.
If you're rare and lucky enough to have some friends on Google Plus, we've got a page on there, too, and here it is. So you can take your pick - creepy house where all your friends hang out, or lonely house where nobody tries to smell your hair. The future is now, you guys.
I think if you click "Like" or "+1" or whatever, a number goes up. I made a text adventure game, I know all about numbers going up. It feels good when the numbers go up, for some reason. Unless they're on a Geiger counter or something.
So I've been looking around the Internet to see what people say about Improbable Island. I keep noticing that people say "Oh yeah, I played that game a bit. And then I went back a few months later for another go, and my character had expired, and it made my face all sad." On the few rare occasions when I bump into someone in real-life who's played Improbable Island, they tend to say the same thing.
I don't want to make people's faces all sad. I've done enough optimization work on the game over the last couple of years that the expiration of old characters may no longer be as necessary as it once was, but only a good test will let us know for sure. So I'm going to increase the timeout to 180 days (up from 90), give it a month or two and see what happens. If the game slows down at all, we'll drop it back down to 90.
Tonight I'm working on a guide for programming Places, that shows you how to use that extra knob thingy that's suddenly appeared. Expect it in the wee hours of tomorrow morning.
(update: it's up!)
Have fun!
-CMJ
Here's your Christmas present!
Admin CavemanJoe – 2011-12-23 22:26:00
Hello, everyone on Improbable Island.
In fact, more than hello. It's the season, why the hell not? Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Joyous Kwanzaa, Diwali ki Shubhkamnayein, Happy Pancha Ganapati, Happy Bodhi Day (okay, so I'm late to the party with some of these, and early to others, but I hope you won't hold that against me). What do you say about the Solstice... uh, merry Solstice, I guess. Come to think of that, what's the expedient and polite way to say "I hope your Bodhi Day goes really well?" Or Pancha Ganapati, for that matter? Do you say "Happy," or "Merry," or "Joyous," or what? Does the etiquette change if you do it two weeks late? Does it even matter as long as you're saying "Hey, I hope have a good time?" Happy Holidays, Season's Greetings, and Generic Feelings Of Goodwill For Everyone I've Left Out, you crazy bunch.
And a very, very happy New Year.
I'm gonna level with you - this year, I'm hoping that next year goes better. For me, this year (and late last year too) has held a little bit too much death and sadness for my liking. I've seen too many friends go off into the big blue, and all of them too damned soon, and none of them in good ways.
The best way to see out a bad year is to blast the bastard out on a rocket-jet of funky good feelings. The shittier the year, the harder you've gotta party to get rid of it. I've been a gloomy sod for much of this year, and there's only so much you can let death get you down before you've gotta remember how to be glad you're alive, and with that in mind...
Our World Community Grid team has nearly gotten to seven hundred and fifty years of humanitarian research. For those not in the know - aw hell, I've typed this out a dozen times already, I'll just give you the Cliff's Notes version. It's a screensaver that cures cancer and AIDS, okay? You wanna know more than that, see the previous announcements on the Island, and check out this link: http://www.improbableisland.com/grid.html. Yeah, we're the text-adventure game that cures cancer. I said I'd give everyone some Supporter Points when we passed 750 years, and we're not quite there yet.
Well, you're getting your Supporter Points early anyway. Seven hundred and fifty years, seven hundred and fifty points, that seem fair?
Yes, everyone gets the present. Not just people on the World Community Grid team. Not just players who've been around for a while. Everyone, and that means you too.
Y'see, I'm an Evil Overlord Dictator. If I want to give away fifty grands' worth of Supporter Points to complete strangers, just because I feel like it, then damn it, I will! Otherwise what's the bloody point of being a tyrant?
(and let's face it - if you had a button you could press that would make six thousand people smile, you'd bloody well press it, wouldn't you?)
So, here's a present to say "Thank you for being a part of our world."
Next year, I'm going to stop smoking (I'm down to maybe one or two rollies a day right now), stop being a gloomy bastard, and try to release at least one quest or plot point per month (after all, the code is pretty much solid at this point). And we're gonna pass fifteen hundred years of research on World Community Grid.
I wish you every happiness the new year can bring. If you're feeling glum, my two recommendations are to read some Spider Robinson, and if your troubles aren't income-related, give some money away. If you're not feeling glum, good!
Have an excellent 2012!
-CMJ
Awful and Awesome
Admin CavemanJoe – 2011-12-20 05:17:34
This post contains awful things, awesome things and an important reminder. They're in different colours, so you can easily decide whether you're in the mood to subject yourself to stuff that is awful-but-necessary.
I don't like to get political on Improbable Island. This game isn't just my livelihood, it's my art, my passion, and my hobby. I really don't want to drag it into the thoroughly-imperfect real world by polluting it with a rally to a cause that revolves around my own egocentric opinion. This is very rare, but I'm going to talk politics for a moment, since it could conceivably impact Improbable Island's future. If you're averse to politics-talk, please skip to the green text.
I will only get political with my audience in cases of international emergency, or where the Island itself could be affected. One such event is happening tomorrow, as the American house of representatives (which is kind of like Parliament) get together to vote on whether to pass a bill called the "Stop Online Piracy Act," which people have been calling SOPA for short.
The most cursory of Internet searches will tell you that SOPA is widely considered a threat to the Internet and a Thoroughly Bad Idea.
In a nutshell, it gives copyright holders new powers to combat piracy - that is, by petitioning an ISP to prevent DNS resolution to infringing websites. ISPs (who are universally against the bill) will find they have to comply regardless of the validity of the request - due to the extremely vague wording of the bill (written by people who don't really understand how the Internet works), it is entirely possible to silence homage, quotation, reviews, tributes, and other fair-use cases (and hell, legitimate original content, why the hell not) without due process. In other words, the burden of proof is laid on the accused, while their website or resource is inaccessible.
You're probably already imagining the level of technical, commercial and political disruption that this will lead to. I bet you've already thought of at least three opportunities in which this new situation will be abused. It's not pretty, is it? That's why nearly all major Internet-based companies (along with some of the Internet's original creators themselves) are in opposition of the bill.
Now, I'm not the world's biggest fan of pirates. I don't like people who feel like they're entitled to take more than they give, although I'm honestly pretty much indifferent to the act of piracy itself (until people feel the need to brag about it all the bloody time as though they're doing the game industry a favour by not paying for anything). But what I dislike even more, what I think is far more dangerous than piracy itself, is overreaction to piracy.
I don't like copy protection. I don't like digital rights management. I don't like having to download patches, exploits, workarounds and other technical jiggerypokery from pirates to bypass the bullshit that the manufacturer included to stop pirates. I don't like thinking "I paid for this game... and it'd be a hell of a lot easier to run if I'd just downloaded the sodding thing."
If you use a machine gun to swat a mosquito, you just end up with holes in your walls and more bloody mosquitos. This bill is more like a bazooka.
If you Google it, you can find a PDF of the full text of the bill. It's important that you read it. I don't mean go and look at an infographic, or find a list of Seven Ways SOPA Will Destroy The Internet, or browse through the comments section on a blog post somewhere, or take the views of Some Bloke With A Game Featuring Budget Horse as gospel. I mean read the bill and do not trust me, because the good guys tell lies too.
To my players in the USA: Google will also tell you the phone number of your congressional representative. Being an immigrant to these United States, I don't have a congressional representative, but you probably do, and I urge you to phone them and tell them that you'll remember how they vote.
To everyone: Google will also reveal a full list of companies that support SOPA, both with words and with bribes, and... well, I'd say "think twice about giving them any more money," but I'm looking through the list and I can only see one or two that any of my players would ever knowingly support anyway. Talk about a rogue's gallery! Rupert Murdoch's publishing company. Rupert Murdoch's newspaper company. Rupert Murdoch's television company. It's pretty much a list of all the companies that the world would be better off without. It's certainly a list of companies who would have more money were the Internet never invented.
(I was very sad to see Toshiba on that list)
(and darkly amused to see Xerox, the photocopier company)
So. Please, please phone your representative, and make it very clear that you're watching them closely.
That's it. Enough of the politics. Let's move on to the awesome stuff.
I have not just one but two awesome things to tell you. The first is that we're going to be putting in some new functionality to Places this week, particularly to the programming interface. We'll have some new Contraptions and Contrivances, and a more flexible and intuitive way to arrange items and direct the logic flow. We'll also have support for "ELSE" functionality (that is, if the player is in X clan, proceed to the next row, and if not, then do THIS instead), and I'm writing a programming guide that should ease you into things nicely.
The second awesome thing is that our World Community Grid team has passed seven hundred years of life-changing humanitarian research, and when we hit 750 years (which should be in the next few weeks), I'm going to give everybody some Supporter Points for free. :) If you don't know what World Community Grid is, click on the link down in the bottom-right that says "Help cure cancer, get free Supporter Points!"
And now, the reminder - Undecorated and abandoned Places that were around before the tenth of September will be erased tomorrow. See the previous MotD for more details.
UPDATE: The old Dwellings have now been erased.
Thanks for reading all of that, and have fun!
-CMJ
Dwellings expiration next Tuesday
Admin CavemanJoe – 2011-12-14 05:40:33
Hey, folks!
It's been three months now since we put up our new Places system on Improbable Island, replacing our old Dwellings system. When the changeover happened, we demolished all the old Dwellings and replaced them with Land Claim Stakes and items containing materials and Stamina bonuses to rebuild. We said that the old Dwellings that didn't get reconstructed would be erased after three months, to make room for new Places.
We are now ready to erase the land claim stakes that have gone unloved and undecorated these past few months, and spark a land rush on their old locations.
But... well, I told you about the erasure three months ago. That's long enough for you to go "Oh, right! Well, if I've got three months, it won't hurt until I leave it 'til tomorrow..."
Yeah. You know how that goes. So, we're extending the deadline by a week. Here's what's going to happen next Tuesday!
If your Dwelling was around when the changeover happened on the tenth of September this year, and the converted Place doesn't have a title or description, it'll be erased, along with any items it once contained.
If your Place was built after the tenth of September, you've nothing to worry about.
If your Place has a title and description beyond "Untitled Place" or "Empty Plot," you've nothing to worry about.
If your Place was around before the tenth of September, and you haven't touched it since then, then it'll be erased if you do nothing. To keep it safe, all you have to do is give it a Title and Description before Tuesday the 20th of December.
Our legacy server is still alive and well at legacy.improbableisland.com, containing all the old Dwellings, so that any particularly-beloved Dwellings can be rebuilt into Places.
Thanks!
-CMJ
Commentary commands in Places
Admin CavemanJoe – 2011-12-07 19:34:28
Hey, folks! Just a reminder that in Places, commentary commands now work the same as everywhere else; start your comment with a /, instead of typing in capitals.
Also, once again, please clear your cache if auto-update seems stubborn. Petitioning won't work, logging out and logging back in again won't work, clearing your cache is the only way to fix this, okay? Okay? Okay. :)
More tweaks and bugfixes are on their way!
-CMJ
Once again,
Admin CavemanJoe – 2011-12-07 05:05:52
If auto-update stops working after a few seconds, clear your browser's cache.
New Commentary System going live tonight
Admin CavemanJoe – 2011-12-06 08:07:48
Hey, folks. Our new Commentary system is (hopefully) going live tonight, so this is a heads-up that we're going to be erasing the old tables. If there's a scene you want to keep, you'd best export it to HTML today.
Have fun!
-CMJ
UPDATE: We're going down in ten minutes, we're coming back (hopefully) about ten minutes after that. Not all commentary features will be available at launch - we're gonna give the core engine a jolly good stress-test before we enable the extra stuff.
UPDATE 3AM: Okay, that went about as well as it usually goes, which is why I released this at midnight rather than 3am. So that I could stay up for another few hours to sort out the inevitable Things That Work Just Fine On My Test Server.
So, we had a Javascript error that spawned an exponential number of timers every four seconds. If your computer begins to run slowly, or if auto-update stops working after a few seconds, clear your browser's cache. That should grab the latest javascript file and make things all nice again.
New Extended Play Bar
Admin CavemanJoe – 2011-11-28 21:49:56
Hey, folks! So, we've had this Extended Play bar for a while now, and for the most part it's worked pretty well. For those of you who are not in the know, the Extended Play Bar is the thing below the coin slot over on the right, there - whenever somebody donates money to Improbable Island, the Extend Bar gets filled up a little bit. Once it passes the $200 mark - which is what we need per day for server costs, advertising, and keeping a roof over my head (and my wife's head, and my cats' heads...) - everybody starts the day with 5% extra Stamina. Once it passes $300, everybody gets 15% extra starting Stamina. The bonus applies as long as there's more than $200 in the bar, and the bar declines at a rate of $200/day. If you've ever donated, your bonus is doubled, so the rewards go from a minimum of 5% to a maximum of 30%.
The problem with the Extend Bar is that it's kind of hard to get it to the $200 mark - and then, once it does pass the $200 mark, everybody goes "Right, time to donate to keep it up!" So if we go through a dry spell, people are less inclined to donate, and we go into a kind of downward spiral and Emily and I end up trying to live on twenty bucks a day. Again.
Another problem (although I hesitate to call it a "problem" per se) was that people would donate simply to keep the bar up - with a couple of necessary exceptions we try to make our donation items mostly cosmetic, so as not to unbalance the game too much, but this has the side-effect of people sitting around with loads of Supporter Points and not much to spend them on. We're not complaining about that - it happens that way because people are lovely. But if people want to be lovely and unselfish and donate just to get the bar up - and from a recent forum post talking about how we need some cash, it's clear that they do - then maybe we can amplify their loveliness.
So, we're going to rebalance the Extend Bar a little bit - so that instead of going from 5% (on a half-decent day, for a non-supporting player) to 30% (on a very good day, for a supporting player), it now goes from 2% to 40%.
We've added a level and changed the values, so now it goes:
0-$100: no bonus
$100-$200: Stamina Boost (2% extra starting Stamina)
$200-$300: Extended Play (5% extra starting Stamina)
$300+: Special Extend (10% extra starting Stamina)
So, it's easier now to get a small Stamina bonus, which I hope will stop the occasional bad day from turning into a bad week.
"But CavemanJoe," I hear you cry, "2% is not very much at all - it seems hardly worth it. Also, wasn't a Special Extend worth 15% before you mucked around with it? I don't know about you, but when I went to school, two tens made twenty, not forty. What's the deal?"
Aha, that's where the Multiplier comes in! Remember I told you about the people who donate just to keep the bar up? There's a new bar, just for those lovely people. There are Hunter's Lodge items that extend the Multiplier Bar - and advanced versions drop crates on the World Map and give everybody Favour bonuses, too. The Multiplier bar works on time, not money, and goes like this:
0 hours: No Multiplier (in other words, the Extend Bonus is multiplied by one, IE it stays the same)
1 second to 24 hours: x1.1 multiplier (so the Extend Bonus is amplified by 10%)
24-48 hours: x1.5 multiplier (a 10% Stamina boost becomes a 15% Stamina boost)
48 hours+: x2 multiplier (the Extend Bar stamina boost is doubled!)
Here are the altruism-class Hunter's Lodge items you can use to extend the Multiplier bar:
MULTITICKLER - 100 Supporter Points
Extends the Altruism Multiplier by one hour.
PROP UP THE BAR - 500 Supporter Points
Extends the Altruism Multiplier by six hours, and drops five Crates on the World Map.
I'LL GET THIS ROUND - 1,000 Supporter Points
Extends the Altruism Multiplier by twelve hours, drops twenty Crates on the World Map, gives everybody 10 Favour points.
THE GOOD STUFF'S ON ME - 2,000 Supporter Points
Extends the Altruism Multiplier by a full day, drops fifty Crates on the World Map, gives everybody 25 Favour points.
All of these items will also - if your Preferences say it's okay - put your character's name below the bar, with text like "Contestant LovelyPants tickled the Multiplier 10 minutes ago" or "Badass Philanthropist sprung for the Good Stuff 2 hours ago."
Now, for the bad news - we've had to scrap the "Donate a penny and get the Stamina boost doubled" mechanic, which sucks. There were just too many people abusing it; folks would sign themselves up as referrers, play their alts for one day, get one Supporter Point and call it good. That's not cool, but I really didn't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, so now we've got a Personal Multiplier too, which works on the total amount of Supporter Points you've ever had, spent-or-unspent. It goes like this:
No points: No multiplier.
100 Points: x1.1.
500 Points: x1.5.
1,000 Points: x2.
My rationale for this particular layout comes from looking at my stats for who donates what - as it turns out, nearly everyone who ever gives me any money at all (which is about 10% of all players who stick around long enough to know that they're gonna enjoy the game) will usually make it a fiver. You get another fiver's worth of points for signing up to World Community Grid and using your computer's idle time to help cure cancer (see previous MotD's), and then you get some more points every day if you keep letting your computer work at it. The way I figure it, even if you've got no spare cash at all (and a lot of us don't, these days), you can still work your way up to a tenners' worth through WCG pretty quickly.
Anyway, I've started the multiplier rolling by buying a round of the Good Stuff myself, and I've stuck a hundred bucks in the kitty to start us off - so, even if this doesn't work at all, have fun with the extra Stamina!
-CMJ
EDIT: I forgot to mention this in a previous MotD, but we've been doing a lot of bugfixes and tweaks, and the buggy and unbalancing Watcher's Blessing feature has been disabled while we think of something better to put on the FailBoat. New chat system next, then some new story, then Blessing replacement, then some more new story, then some new Contraptions/Contrivances, that's the plan right now.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.Game Design and Code: Copyright © 2002-2005, Eric Stevens & JT Traub, © 2006-2007, Dragonprime Development Team