Improbable Island Message of the Day (MoTD)
A terrible evil has befallen the land.Admin CavemanJoe – 2010-08-26 22:38:40
A huge monster strode across the Island in the middle of the night, helpfully "correcting" certain things in people's Dwellings. Quotation marks became skewed. Hyphens became elongated. Ellipses were reduced to single characters. Then the monster disappeared, never to be seen again.
It was the Word Processor Monster, and it borked a lot of people's Dwellings.
If your Dwelling has been affected by this disaster, please see the "Dwellings Cataclysm" forum topic in the Enquirer.
(in other news, the new Hunter's Lodge is open!)
Poll: Mount Naming module to be deactivated
Admin CavemanJoe – 2010-08-25 19:30:58
Hey, guys. I'm thinking of deactivating the function in the Hunter's Lodge that allows you to name your Mount. It's not as awesome as the other custom naming modules (it doesn't allow you to change a Budget Horse to a Ferocious Lion - it just lets you call your mount "Lion the Budget Horse") and the way it operates means it takes up a horrendous amount of server resources, hooking in at every page load - disabling it will mean the game runs faster. But I figured I'd ask you lot first! So, how do you feel about this? There's a topic in the Enquirer about it right now!
I would be devastated. (18 - 3.6%)
I'd get over it. (52 - 10.4%)
I wouldn't care in the slightest. (62 - 12.4%)
Faster server? Do it! (363 - 72.6%)
I'm gonna post my bit in the Enquirer. (5 - 1%)
One hundred and fifty years!
Admin CavemanJoe – 2010-08-18 21:17:15
Improbable Island's World Community Grid team has just passed ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS of computing time! Suck it FarmVille, we're curing cancer!
A few words about World Community Grid, from a previous MotD:
There's a lot of stuff wrong with the world. The fact that you're not dying of malnutrition right now puts you in a four-out-of-ten minority. Oil's getting more expensive, and as the population increases exponentially we're gonna be in trouble before too long. Cancer, Muscular Dystrophy, West Nile virus, Yellow Fever, Hepatitis C and AIDS all conspire to make their presence felt by the not-so-subtle means of killing our friends and family members.
There is something we can do about all this doom and gloom.
There's a lot of info here, so I'll just tell you how the first problem can be solved. Let's start with 58% of the world's mortality rate being tied in with malnutrition. The whole world hunger thing.
Rice is the main staple food of more than half the world's population. So, if we make rice better, more nutritious, easier to grow and cheaper, that should help things out at least a bit. We can make better decisions about what strains of rice to breed with each other to create our Super Awesome Rice if we determine the structure of the various different rice proteins.
Problem is, it's horrendously expensive to do that sort of thing. You need a supercomputer. And there are thousands of distinct proteins in rice. A bunch of clever bods at the University of Washington have sorted out some good software to do it, but we still need a lot of hardware, with massive amounts of computational horsepower.
There's an amazingly powerful supercomputer called the IBM RoadRunner - many hundreds of thousands of times more powerful than the computer you're using right now. RoadRunner would probably do the job, but right now it's busy trying to compute exactly how daft an idea it was to engage Russia in a nuclear dick-waving contest and then leave loads of rickety old warheads lying around all over the place.
(No, seriously - that's what it was built for. If you could call Douglas Adams on the Phone of the Dead and tell him that, I don't think he'd believe you.)
RoadRunner will probably be too busy figuring out an answer to this question to help us for quite a while, so we've gotta take matters into our own hands.
Using a little program called BOINC - and yes, I do find the name wonderfully amusing - we can make a supercomputer ourselves, out of our own machines all connected together. The idea is that whenever your CPU isn't being used for anything, the BOINC client will use it to make Super Awesome Rice. And dengue drugs. And a cure for AIDS. And cancer. And the next generation of ultra-efficient (IE "actually worth the energy taken to make them") solar panels.
So far, our little supercomputer has done a hundred and fifty years' worth of humanitarian research. Pretty soon we'll be working on some Rather Awesome In-Game Incentives for our players who decide to become part of the supercomputer. To join our distributed computing team, head into Cobblestone Cottage, located in Common Ground - pretty soon we'll be awarding players with a new currency based on how much they've contributed to the project.
Go, little supercomputer! You can do it!
This is why I'm not richer.
Admin CavemanJoe – 2010-08-18 07:50:43
So I'm working on some new Hunter's Lodge code that'll let you give gifts to people, and if I know anything about game design, I reckon that'll make me loads and loads of money.
But the code is so, so boring, you guys. So, so very very boring, because right now I'm just converting the old Hunter's Lodge things into new versions compatible with the new system. I'm rewriting things that already exist.
So I decided tonight to say "You know what, screw it" and instead work on increasing the character limit for commentary to 255 characters per post, up from 200.
This is why I'm not rich like those Farmville guys.
Enjoy your new, loooooooooooooooooooo-oooooooooooooooooooo-ooooooooooooooonger (yeah, that much longer) commentary areas!
50 Emily Bundles now on sale!
Admin CavemanJoe – 2010-08-18 06:42:37
Hello folks! Just a reminder, today the Emily Bundle goes on sale again - there are fifty Emily Bundles available, and after the last one's gone, that's yer lot. Have fun!
EDIT:
Well, we timed that pretty much perfectly, because five minutes after I posted that announcement, Emily's
EDIT EDIT:
Okay guys maybe I didn't make that as clear as I could have.
I'm putting the Emily Bundle out again because last time it was out, some people tried to buy it by eCheque (which is where you transfer money from your bank account via PayPal, rather than using a card), which takes a few days to go through - so by the time these people got their points, the Emily Bundle had all sold out. That wasn't really fair, so we did another limited run to give those guys a chance. See the previous MotD for more info on this.
So, if you want the Emily Bundle, giving me twenty-five bucks via eCheque is probably not the best way to get it! Because by the time you get the points - yup! It'll be sold out again! And if I do another Super-Special Limited Run (Last Chance (Honestly Guys I Mean It This Time)), then I'll end up looking like a complete plonker, so I'm not gonna do that.
So! If you want your points straight away so that you can buy the Emily Bundle, use either money that's already in your PayPal account, or use your credit or debit card via PayPal. Thanks!
Further availability of the Emily Bundle
Admin CavemanJoe – 2010-08-09 19:15:31
Hey, folks! When I originally released the Emily Bundle, quite a few people donated via eCheque in order to buy it. eCheque is when PayPal takes the money straight from your bank account, rather than using a card. The problem is that it takes a week or so for the money to go through and for the player to get their points.
So people were donating for points, and then didn't get them until the Emily Bundle had sold out! That's not good!
So, I'm going to do one last run of the Emily Bundle, and I'm gonna give you plenty of notice this time. We have another fifty Emily Bundles, which will go on sale on Monday the 16th of August, one week from today, for the people who tried to buy, had the money, gave the money but still couldn't get the bundle because of PayPal delays.
Have fun!
Uppercase comments work differently!
Admin CavemanJoe – 2010-07-23 05:00:34
Hello! When you try to type something ALL IN CAPITAL LETTERS into a chat box, the game will now treat your input a little differently. Rather than posting it to the chat for other players to see, the game will have a look at your comment itself to see if it understands what you're trying to do.
For example, certain Dwellings have secret rooms that you can access by typing things like EXAMINE BOOKCASE or OPEN MUSIC BOX in the chat spaces.
(owners of Dwellings with secret rooms - you can update all your trigger phrases to use the new uppercase commands system just by going into your Secret Room's Management menu, and pressing Save)
We can use this special new feature for other fun Easter Eggs in Outposts, Common Ground, World Map squares - pretty much anywhere there's a chat area.
Another reason why we made it so that uppercase comments are handled as commands is so that people don't end up going around Dwellings saying "open bookcase" and having to type GREM after every comment that doesn't get them into the secret room.
Oh, GREM! Yes, typing "grem" doesn't work any more, it has to be GREM. Likewise with AFK and BRB (try them!).
In short, remember - type normally for Comments, and use CAPS LOCK for Commands!
Have fun!
Emily Bundle Sold Out!
Admin CavemanJoe – 2010-07-19 16:43:37
A huge thank-you to everyone who bought the Emily Bundle! I knew you guys were generous, but yikes. I had doubts about whether this would work, but then I watched the PayPal E-mails come in and thought "Well, that's me told, then."
Emily has turned in her letter of resignation - her last day is Friday! It'll take some time for her to get thoroughly acquainted with the differences between writing linear fiction and interactive fiction, and I'm still writing a bunch of plot outlines and character reference documents, but you should see some awesome new plot-related content appearing very soon!
You guys absolutely rock in the hardest way possible, and you can expect some nifty new features arriving very soon indeed.
Have fun!
-CMJ
The Emily Bundle
Admin CavemanJoe – 2010-07-01 01:25:35
So, Improbable Island has been going for a couple of years now and it's turning into something that can keep me alive and with a roof over my head without me having to do website design. It's turned from a hobby into a full-time job.
Since then, I've gotten married, and my wife, Emily(*), has gotten increasingly frustrated with her job. She does database work for a hospital; the pay's good, but the hours and the work itself is pretty depressing.
I've noticed lately that my original goal - "Hey, I'll write a text adventure game!" - hasn't quite worked out the way I wanted it to, because I thought it'd be about writing. I figured I'd have a plot, decent characters, a beginning, middle and end - you know, a story. But lately I've been doing a lot more building of games and systems than I have building of worlds, and I'm beginning to realise that that's what I'm good at.
The Island needs a writer.
A dedicated writer, so that I can be a dedicated coder. Recently I've done all sorts of stuff with Titans, Onslaught, new Commentary, Dwellings, and all that jazz - but the last actual piece of world-building writing that I did was in Common Ground, with its time-sensitive description text. I believe that was before Christmas.
Oh, and there were some lions, too.
To give you an idea of where I am right now, let's say this: the system is in place to extend that level of time-and-context-sensitive detail to every Outpost. I just don't have any writing to go in the system.
It's not that I don't like writing, and forgive me for parping my own horn but I don't think it's that I'm not good at it (although that sentence may have been evidence to the contrary). It's just that I have so much else to do.
I need help.
Hey, you know... my wife is an excellent writer.
Honestly I'd be doing this before too long even if I didn't need Emily to help me with the Island. She hates her job, I love mine, and that's unfair; it's imperative that the Island support both of us if we ever want to have our own house, or raise a family.
We've done our maths and figured out how much we need per month on which to survive without Emily's workplace sorting out our health insurance (that's the biggest expense, right there), and from that, based on historical data, we've figured out how much of an advertisement boost we'd need to get the Island up to that sort of level, and from that, how much money we'd need to get together by 'x' if we want Emily to be able to quit her job by 'y', with 'y' being "Before September."
In a nutshell we need to get some bread together so that we can expand our player base enough that casual everyday donations cover us both without me having to tell you all about it every time my laptop breaks, my car breaks down, or my lion gets into an argument he just can't win.
So, you can give me money so that the Island can have more juicy plot points and a better sense of place, or you can give me money so that Emily and I can be happier and spend more time together. Both are excellent reasons. I've got another reason for you:
Introducing the Emily Bundle!
The Emily Bundle costs 2,500 Donator Points, and it's worth well over three times as much. In the Emily Bundle for 2,500 Donator Points (that's twenty-five bucks, for those of you keeping track), you get:
* Permanent, unlimited free Avatar picture changes (never pay to change your Avatar picture again!)
* Permanent, unlimited free Custom Weapon changes (custom weaponry now sticks around properly!)
* Permanent, unlimited free Custom Armour changes (likewise!)
* Permanent, inlimited free Title changes
* Permanent, unlimited free Custom Name Colour changes
* Permanent, unlimited free Mount Name changes
* Permanent, unlimited free Commentary Race Name changes
* Ten cigarettes
* Ten thousand Requisition tokens
* Two extra Chronospheres
* All your current Chronospheres refilled
* Ten Special Comments
* A special, strictly-limited-and-not-to-be-repeated Medal
And if you've not already donated, you'll also get room for a ten-thousand character Extended Bio (players who've already donated already have this).
Now, the Emily Bundle is limited to two hundred players. That should give Emily and I enough of a financial boost to get this plan underway. If something stupidly awesome happens like the whole stock running out in a day, then I might add another fifty or a hundred or so, but no more than that (I'm not going to say it's strictly limited just to stimulate demand and then make it as common as muck - I want this to be a bit special).
So, help us recruit a writer and make the Island more awesome, more quickly - grab the Emily Bundle while it's still around to grab!
(*) Yes, I named the pickle-wench barmaid after my wife. Looking back, I could have made a better choice for an homage.
Custom Races!
Admin CavemanJoe – 2010-06-29 23:19:43
For those of you who are more into roleplay, there's a new option in the Hunter's Lodge to set a custom Race for use in commentary areas. Have fun!
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