Improbable Island Message of the Day (MoTD)
Merry Spooky Season!Admin CavemanJoe – 2024-10-01 13:48:23 [Permalink]
Hey folks, this month's Monthly Memento is the Spooky Tooth because I'm going back and forth to the dentist a WHOLE BUNCH for Reasons that I'll spare you from.
Speaking of horrific dental procedures, our Halloween candy has been restocked, rebalanced and reconfigured with new features! Check out the Candy Bombs in the Super Fancy Fun Club.
In the last MotD I talked about mobile-friendly'ing the Island's various pubs and restaurants, with the glaring omission of the Prancing SpiderKitty in Improbable Central. I've been working on the PSK since then, because it was the one pub that worked differently to all the other pubs, being ancient code from the Bush and Blair years. I'm in the process of updating it so that its backend works like all the other pubs, and then the PSK and its attendant games and sidequests will be mobile-friendly as well.
The Meat system has had a little cosmetic update when cleaning carcasses, to make it easier to see at a glance how much Meat you've butchered.
Expect more mobile-friendly updates soon, and have fun!
~CMJ
More mobile improvements, September's Monthly Memento
Admin CavemanJoe – 2024-09-16 18:38:17 [Permalink]
Hey folks, another batch of mobile interface improvements for you! I've added mobile-friendly Big Links to:
* Joe's Diner
* The Rook's Nest
* The One Hundred Mysteries minigame
* Cool Springs Cafe
* The Sunny Spot
* The Mouse Racing minigame
* BRAAAINS
* Vigour Mortis
* The Find-The-Brain minigame
* The flycatcher encounter where you learn Timed Fighting
* Mutated Munchies
* Kebabs N' Shite
* The Twice As Much Or Git Tae Fook minigame
* The Harp
* Family Fun Food Wacky Faktory
* The Glass and Mirror
* Pseudo-Random Amusement Trap
Some of the minigames got desktop-mode interface improvements as well (for example you can now click on the mice in Mouse Racing to mark them for a bet, which is easier than clicking on that little checkbox, and I've done the same with Find The Brain). This is all part of the project to eventually make Outposts fully mobile-friendly and we're getting a little bit closer every day.
This month's Monthly Memento is the Skronk Enhancer! You can use it to improve your, uh, yield at the new and improved Skronky Pot in Squat Hole.
Have fun!
~CMJ
Mobile improvements, food-related prefs, CoC update, wiki reopened, EDIT: Skronky Pot ReSkronked
Admin CavemanJoe – 2024-08-30 18:29:19 [Permalink]
Hey folks, I just dropped a big ol' chunk of mobile improvements! I've added mobile-friendly Big Links to:
* The Bank and its relevant Fast Banking additions;
* Council Offices (and associated free-stuff-for-humans and Mister Stern intro links);
* Travle Ajents in Squat Hole;
* Helter Smelter in Cyber City 404;
* Fresh Start Clinic in New Pittsburgh;
* Suzie's Hardware in Improbable Central;
* Maiko's Cookery Academy in Kittania (and an update to the meat and pans systems to make the interface less grindy);
* Outpost wall reinforcement;
* The Luggage Hut in Improbable Central;
* The Comms Tent;
* The Travel Agency in Kittania.
There's probably some others that I forgot to mention.
I also added an entry to your Preferences page to inhibit the display of food-related info on the New Day page, for those who don't want to see it. The system still works to add or remove Stamina as it's always done, you just won't get the New Day messages.
I've updated the Code of Conduct with a couple of minor thingies that won't affect most folk, go on and check it out, the changelog's at the top of the page.
The Wiki has been reopened, with a new spam prevention measure. Basically visit an Outpost in-game or you'll get logged out of the wiki. This should sort out the spam problems we've been having, without being too much of a pain in the arse for you lot.
More mobile improvements are on the way!
UPDATE 2024-08-30:
The Skronky Pot has been added to the above list of mobile improvements, and while I was in there I changed the way it worked. The Skronky Pot will no longer erase all of your Charm upon overskronking, instead docking you 10 Charm and all your Stamina. The reward for each successful expectoration is now tied to your cigarette addiction stat, and there's a new HoF entry so we can all see who's made the most profit in a single day and call them out as a disgrace to their species. I hope you enjoy the new ReSkronked Skronky Pot in Squat Hole.
Have fun!
~CMJ
New August Monthly Memento
Admin CavemanJoe – 2024-08-01 17:26:30 [Permalink]
Happy August, everyone!
Last month's Monthly Memento was enough of a success that y'all paid the entire year's hosting and advertising budget in a month, which... I'm honestly still wrapping my head around the sheer magnitude of it, so thank you!
This month's MM is the Can O' Spam, because the wiki's had a spam attack and I've temporarily turned off registrations until I can do a better login system later on this month.
August will be another month of mostly behind-the-scenes work to get things ready for a major mobile interface improvement in Outposts (and much of the rest of the game all at once), so if you don't see me beavering away very visibly, be reassured that I am in fact beavering. I'm beavering hard. Bit of raccooning going on as well.
Be prepared for a big mobile interface improvement later in the month, and have fun!
~CMJ
New Monthly Memento, Summer of Small Interface Improvements
Admin CavemanJoe – 2024-07-01 20:58:08 [Permalink]
Hey folks, this month's Monthly Memento is the Heat Wave, which is a new type of superweapon made by a startup company looking for investors. It's a shameless cash grab because I've just had to have some welding done on my car and also spend three hundred bucks on a new laptop; the more money we make this month, the more powerful this weapon becomes. Gimme yer money!
Also, this month's Bonus Monthly Memento is the Official Cat Commemorative Coronation Bowl, like the last few times we had a change of Official Cat (see previous MotD). You get it if you donate twenty bucks.
Like I said a couple MotD's ago, this is gonna be a summer of slow and steady interface improvements; you'll notice bigger changes on mobile, but for everyone most recently we've got some nicer jump links at the top of the Inventory page and some improvements to the Meat system that makes it take fewer clicks to cook a meal. If you've been wanting to level up your meatsmithing but were put off by the grindy interface, now would be a good time to revisit it!
Have fun!
~CMJ
Official Cat change
Admin CavemanJoe – 2024-06-19 19:49:38 [Permalink]
Some sad news; we lost Carl, one of our Improbable Island Official Cats.
Carl jumped onto my belly while I was out in the hammock one day back in, ooh, 2016 I think. I was just chilling there and from out of nowhere there was a flash of black fur and sudden pressure on my viscera, and I went "Oh, hello," and stroked him and wondered, even then, why I didn't jump in surprise. I think I passed some kind of test that day. He chilled with me for a bit until Emily came back from work and said "Who's that?" and I went "Dunno."
His sister Nola (Improbable Island's other Official Cat) turned up shortly after, and at the time they looked so similar that I thought they were the same cat but with radically different personalities from day to day. Nola grew round and soft while Carl maintained his pointy sleekness. They got to know us over the summer, and then when the weather turned bitterly cold we took them in, adding them to Harley, Stewart and Leo for a total of five cats and a baby on the way. Pretty full house.
Carl was a very chill beast in general. He enjoyed riding around on my shoulders like a scarf. He'd often wait for me at the head of the stairs so he could nuzzle me at eye-level; while he did this, he'd bow so I could skritch the top of his head. One day I bowed back, mimicking him, and he reached out and patted my head! The cat wasn't bowing his head down to show me he wanted pats, he was suggesting that I lower my head so he could reach to reciprocate. It took me bloody ages to realise that. From his point of view, this big daft pink thing had FINALLY gotten the point after months of him clearly and patiently demonstrating.
The vet said months ago that he had lymphoma, and he'd have a few days at most, and we could try giving him steroids. We did, and we got some unexpected happy months with him, during which time we spoiled him rotten and croissants became his favourite food and milk his favourite drink. He was active and affectionate and had a massive appetite. He stayed alive to eat my dinner and hunt the chipmunks in the yard.
When the time came, it came suddenly, too suddenly for Lap of Love to help, so we took him to the 24/7/365 emergency vet to see the kind lady with the good drugs. His pupils got very wide and his pain faded. I buried him between the trees, more or less where he jumped up into the hammock in which we met. There weren't as many roots as I'd expected and the ground was hard packed clay and coal, so his grave might well improve the situation there.
I'd already had the privilege of mourning him while he was still alive, before the steroids gave him a blessed couple of months of feeling like a brand new cat. I wish that he could have had the same death as Leo, with the very quiet woman with the heart-shaped face who knocked on the door with her bag of peace - or Stewart, who was fine one moment and gone the next with just enough time to take him outside and settle him on my lap. But he knew at the end he was loved, and gave me the slow-blink quiet purrs until he'd gone off to who-knows-where.
I'll have some more mobile improvements and other awesome things for you all soon. For now this is just me Telling The Bees. You are my bees. I hope you're having a lovely day, bees. Also if you're looking at your animal and going "Hmm, it's probably gonna be time to call the in-home euthanasia people within the next few days," I know it's horrible and weird to set up an Appointment With Death and then rattle around the house watching the clock, but these are the times we live in. Schedule it days in advance, everyone got pets in lockdown and these guys are SWAMPED and won't be able to come on short notice like they did in the before-time.
Nola is now our full-time Official Cat. Long may she (and her extra toes) reign!
~CMJ
June Monthly Memento, upcoming and ongoing mobile improvements, summertime hooray
Admin CavemanJoe – 2024-06-04 15:25:25 [Permalink]
Hey folks, June's Monthly Memento is the Guilty Gavel! You'd be forgiven for thinking this has something to do with Current Affairs, but it's actually a reference to me leaving the MM to the last minute again, any connection with that other guy is purely coincidental. Anyway, chuck it at a monster once a day to leave it stunned at the very thought of finally facing some fucking consequences for a change.
When I were a wee nipper and we had the six-week summer break it felt like a lifetime. I'd go back to school and pick up my pencil and it'd just flop about uselessly in my hand because I'd forgotten how to write. I was just reflecting on this because it's the last day of school today, and going "Welp, guess the Island is evening-work for the next month and a half," and apparently American kids get ELEVEN HECKING WEEKS OFF SCHOOL, so expect the summer to be less full of massive gameplay improvements like the Drives On The Map project, and more like another period of gradually sanding off the rough bits.
The next big change will be finally making Outposts mobile-friendly. This is actually a big problem, because right now people view the quicknav mobile interface as a thing that's a nice bonus when it's there, and when Outposts go mobile-good, we'll pass the tipping point where folk will expect mobile-friendliness everywhere, and will note its absence from other areas with frustration. Since smartphones got popular I've been giving mobile users a straw with which to suck the droplets of wine at the bottom of a glass full of sawdust. Every time I add a new mobile improvement I get delighted emails about how much you love the new straw, how much better it is at filtering out the plywood chips and bits of rusty nails. When we tip the scales, I'll get emails asking why the fuck is there sawdust in this glass of wine, and honestly that's a pretty reasonable question.
There are two stages to mobile outpost improvements - there's the links from the outpost into the shops (or facilities, bank and council offices and clan halls or even things like prefs and the new day menu or reinforcing the walls or whatever but I'm just gonna say "Shops" here because I'm not typing all that shit out every time), and then there's the links inside the shops that let you buy things or chat with the NPCs or whatever and return to the outpost. There are four ways we could do the mobile-outpost-improvement project:
1. Do all the outpost-to-shop links first and then make the shops mobile-friendly; while this is underway you'll enter an outpost and get a lovely menu that will disappear the moment you enter a shop, and that's shit.
2. Mobile-friendly each shop one at a time; while this is underway you'll enter an outpost and get a lovely mobile-friendly menu that only has half the shops in it, and this is even more shit because the newbies on their phones will miss half the shops.
3. Mobile-friendly all the shops AND do the outpost-to-shops links over the course of the next few months, and then upload/activate the whole lot all in one go. This is again a bit shit because while all this is happening, you lot don't see anything changing. Projects that take months, during which I'm working my arse off but you guys don't see any visible progress, are projects that I try to avoid these days because they're boring for you, they drag on for ages, and they take a toll on my own mental health.
4. Mobile-friendly each shop one at a time, uploading as we go, and then mobile-friendly the whole outpost all at once at the very end. This is the route I've decided to take, because it lets me do a bunch of small gradual improvements followed by one big awesome improvement without as much awkward half-done feeling in between. This is actually even easier than it sounds because I'm adding the outpost-to-shop links while I'm mobile-friendly'ing each shop, but just waiting until later to activate those outpost-to-shop links all at once. This also maximizes the "Ooh, lovely new straw!" factor.
Mobile users might have already noticed that eBoy's sucks a bit less now. Get ready for more of that. From now until August, I'm not doing any big massive changes, and you can look forward to the kind of slow but steady quality-of-life improvements that you'd expect from a fifteen-year-old website that has finally fucking calmed down a bit and has no more interest in the "move fast and break things" philosophy of software development, preferring instead to tread thoughtfully and make nice improvements.
Have (chill) fun!
~CMJ
May Monthly Memento, the Drive is on the map now
Admin CavemanJoe – 2024-05-09 14:32:47 [Permalink]
Hey folks, the Monthly Memento for May is the Foot Bags, because I've had so much basement flooding oh my goodness. Also, the long-awaited Drive Labs project is finally done, finished, uploaded, live, running right now! This update extends the endgame by placing seven derelict laboratories scattered around the Island. One contains the Improbability Drive, and the other six contain... other things. Mostly good things - permanent atk/def increases, cigarettes etc - and one or two spicy ones that might involve a bit of luck.
So now, when you hit Level 15, instead of hunting around the Jungle, check out the Comms Tent or venture out onto the map!
I won't spoil things too much, but to anticipate your questions: the labs will move randomly around the map, so don't go thinking "Wow, it'd be cool to set up a Place right next to a lab" and pounding in land claim stakes. Also, some labs will be in the same location for all players, and some will be in different locations for different players - I'll leave it up to you to figure out the details of how that whole system works, because I know y'all love that kind of thing.
Happy Lab hunting!
~CMJ
April Monthly Memento, flood
Admin CavemanJoe – 2024-04-16 14:00:11 [Permalink]
Hey folks, April's Monthly Memento is the April Bool, it gives you +1 Defence all day long.
I got the Improbability-Drive-On-The-Map project just about ready to release, and then we had record-breaking heavy rain and a basement flood. And then I spent a couple of days cleaning that all up and sat down at my computer and said "Right, where was I," and the sky said "Ohohoh, my friend, that was merely the overture," because that's how the sky talks, so we had record-breaking flooding again, breaking the record harder this time, and a much much worse basement flood, bad enough that I was constructing emergency dams out of leftover laminate flooring cutoffs.
So yeah, Island work has been kind of on hold for the past couple of weeks while I sort out all this water. I've got a few new flood mitigation measures installed, and hopefully work will continue and the much-hyped (by me) drive-on-the-map endgame improvements will be with us in late April.
Have fun and stay dry,
~CMJ
April's Monthly Memento will be late
Admin CavemanJoe – 2024-04-01 15:08:37 [Permalink]
Hey folks, April's MM will be a day or two late. Longer MotD incoming, watch this space.
Have fun!
~CMJ
