Paradox History: 2009

This page shows everything that happened in 2009.

January 1st

• Recipe, Equipment and Inbuilt Outfit listboxes will now show a wiki link (if you have the option enabled) as requested by... somebody or other. As always, refresh your browser to update the javascript and let me know if there are any bugs.
• Since everyone calls them "Quests" anyway, "Tasks" are once again known as "Quests". Refresh your browser to update the menu bar.

January 2nd

• Slight modifications to Inventory pages layout which means that people lucky enough to have wide screens probably won't have to scroll as much. In related news: CSS guru wanted to make the top of the equipment page look nicer.
• You know those links I mentioned earlier? They're on the mail and trade pages now too. FOR GREAT HANDINESS!
• Whaddya know? Turns out those links work when you combine or buy stuff, too. That just about doubles the amount of handy.
• Whenever you acquire items through adventuring, they should show use/equip/eat/drink/etc. links. Handy, or what?

January 3rd

• Since this weekend's focus is stuff that's handy, have some more. There's some extra (and handy) info on various inventory pages, and there are some handy-dandy noteb... er, "Select All" buttons on the Autosell Stuff page. Blue would be happy.

January 4th

• Email confirmation is now required if you want to change your email address. For security reasons. Because, sure you care.

January 5th

• Several small updates: Any updates you haven't read are now shown on the overview and main map pages. Which you've probably already noticed. Also, as per player requests, there's a "send a trade offer" link on player profiles and autosell has been vaguely randomised. You'll know it when you see it.

January 7th

• Since it's really really tedious, and mostly pointless, you don't have to anything for von Noob after you reset. Seriously. Try it and see.
• The adventure queue system has been completly rewritten, which should significantly cut down on the number of repeated encounters. Hopefully without breaking anything else. Let me know if there are any problems.

January 9th

• Radio Free Xangaka is officially Paradox City's offical radio station. Click the Radio link in your Misc menu or head over to the Paradox Forums for more information.

January 23rd

• MILESTONE! Stroby's added Paradox links to his Bookmarks Toolbar Folder! How exciting!

January 25th

• A new and exciting store has opened in the Moolah Rouge Mall. Much more exciting than, for example, this announcement. Go see Burt for all your awardy goodness.
• Addendum to the previous update: Some players may already have done things that would qualify for an award but may still not be able to obtain the award without doing it again. Sorry, some things weren't being tracked before. Lynch me if you like.

January 27th

• There are three new awards available. No, I'm not telling you what they are, but it might give a little hint if I tell you that the fight mechanics have been modified slightly in terms of how stat gains are distributed across Brawn, Brains and Bravado. Or maybe that'll just confuse you. Have fun :)

January 29th

• The adventure queue has been significantly tweaked, and should now be giving a better "random" adventure selection than actual random numbers. Go figure. Let me know if there are any problems.
• Chat command error messages have been extended to make them more user-friendly. Isn't that sweet?

January 31st

• It's only taken me about a year to get back to it, but Inventory sections now have links to the various subsections at the top, to cut down on scrolling. Let me know if you want to see them anywhere else.

February 8th

• Resetters Beware! We're currently in the process of making some fairly significant changes to the way reset works, which you should expect to see in the VERY near future. Leaderboards WILL be archived, and there are a number of other related changes that will make a difference to how you approach Reset. One of these changes will affect how certain devices are treated when you Reset. If you have any of the rarer Devices out on loan, I suggest you get them back asap.
• Fixed a small calculation error in the fastest quest leaderboards. Sorry about that.
• I've just been advised by Candy that she's rapidly running out of Infinite Rolls of TP. She says they expect to run out by the weekend, but there's some new stock (of something different) on its way to replace it. Just thought you'd like to know.

February 9th

• In a few minutes, I'm going to start uploading a huge bunch of changes related to the Reset mechanic. There should be no downtime, but you MAY notice some quirks, so I strongly advise you stop adventuring until the changes are complete. I will be in chat before and right through the update, so if you have any questions, go right ahead and ask.
• *PHEW* Ok the update is complete, and everyone should be fine to keep adventuring and test the hell out of the latest changes. That's what alpha is all about after all. If anyone has lost anything in the update, please pmail me with as many details as you can provide. Please note, insurance only covers real losses, not made up ones.
• One of the updates made today is concerning the way items show up when you acquire them, and there were some display problems in some (quite a few) places. I've fixed most of them but there are a few remaining that I'm working on. The problem is purely a display issue and has no effect on gameplay whatsoever.
• OK, so far as I can tell the display issues are sorted. Let me know if you find any more.
• Just a reminder to all players that, if they have a theory on how to exploit "loopholes" in the new reset system, they should discuss it with someone on the dev team before attempting to exploiting it. That's how "alpha" testing works. Anything else is risking account deletion.

February 10th

• Due to an overabundance of idiocy and an underabundance of flaming genius, the /flamewars chat channel has been disbanded. Probably permanently. For further information, go to /flamewars.

February 11th

• While reset restrictions are in force, Moolah from anything bought in your store will now go straight to your stash. You know, like the warning says it will. Thanks (and a shiny new bug zapper) to Invisible for bringing this and a similar store-related bug/oversight to my attention.

February 12th

• Another small bug related to resets (thanks again Invisible!) - New players are unintentionally subjected to the same restrictions as players who have reset, which is NOT intentional. I'll fix it as soon as I get home. Stupid work firewalls.

February 13th

• Ant gear items are no longer able to be stored or kept in quantities greater than one due to a potential issue with reset restrictions (think about it). If you had more than one of any of these in your backpack, or any in storage, these extras are gone now.

February 14th

• Intermission tonight will almost certainly be slightly longer than normal (like maybe 30 minutes) while we roll out some new content.
• There's a new store in the mall, and Candy's opened a new box of Token Gear goodness. Go get em, tigers! PS. Happy Valentine's Day!

February 16th

• /flamewars is back. Rules are simple: No "You're gay" jokes. No "Your mom" jokes. Don't be boring.
• Additional /flamewars rule: When the war's getting boring, stop it.

February 18th

• UnknownZ has cleverly pointed out that there are circumstances in which the new store could be used to generate an infinite amount of moolah, albeit in a very time-consuming and not-necessarily-reliable way. Bug fixed, zapper sent. Thanks, Z :)

February 22nd

• The City's Timekeepers have discovered a fairly serious anomaly with the calendar we've been using, which resulted in us losing 2 months a year for the past three Paradox years. Surprisingly, nobody noticed until now. Two months have been added back to the calendar (hooray for Oxtober and Goatember) and, oh yeah, it's 2009 again. This is all perfectly normal behaviour and nothing to worry about.
• Just for Kosh's benefit, this update is completely packed with fun. You'll just have to trust me on that one.

February 23rd

• The pocket calculator is now an offhand item instead of an accessory. If you had one equipped, it's in your backpack. If you had an outfit with one as an accessory, it's been changed. There's a good reason for it.

February 26th

• Minor change to how the sidebar search thing works. If you're having any problems, refresh your browser.

March 1st

• It's come to my attention that a code error has meant that Burt has been failing to correctly identify people who qualify for certain awards. I suggest anyone who's been trying to find them head back over to the mall and check. The junior programmer responsible has been fired.

March 14th

• You can now view extended reset and consumption stats from your overview page - if that's the kind of thing you like. Also, chat will count how many characters you've typed, so you don't accidentally run out of room for your critical messages. There's other stuff too, but nothing important.

March 16th

• St Patrick's Day content is in the works but may or may not be ready on time. We're doing our best but we can't guarantee anything. Apologies to the Irish.

March 17th

• Well, what do you know? We made it! Happy St. Pat's day everyone :)

March 18th

• Made some small changes to the way lists of items (mostly in stores) appear. It just looks... nicer.
• Riley has left Paradox, taking with him a gigantic stack of shamrocks. By way of thanks, he's left everyone who helped him a little gift. Check your inventory.

March 19th

• You can now "use another" or "use several more" of an item you just used/ate/drank/whatever, without needing to scroll down. Paradox! Proudly protecting Paracites from carpal tunnel syndrome (and exercise) since 2009.
• Now you can enter how many turns you'd like to spend resting in your room. I wish I could do that in real life.

March 20th

• I'm working on ways to make various bits of text tidier. If you see any changes, that'll be why. If you have strong opinions about the changes, let me know.

March 21st

• Rainbow Springy is no longer listed as a "Consumable" item because, hey, it ain't consumable. There was also a slight bug with that item related to consumption stats, which I've fixed (thanks Invisible again) but it's not worth trying to correct the historical data. Trust me (he said with a wink and a nudge)

March 22nd

• Due to the processor power required to generate them, leaderboards will now be generated once per day at intermission and displayed in game as a snapshot rather than being generated on-the-fly each time they're viewed.

March 23rd

• Due to a permissions error (thanks Linux) the intermission script failed to run last night. I've run it manually and, by way of apology, given everyone an extra 50 turns to play with. Sorry about that, folks!

March 24th

• "Invisible: Everyone it's now my fault." Any problems, you know who to speak to :)
• If anyone finds the new image, please put it on the wiki so Mack knows which one I selected :)
• CommanderMack has very kindly provided us with an image for the remaining adventure that was missing one. You know, because we did that on purpose and were just waiting for someone to help out. We really didn't forget. Thanks, Mack.

March 29th

• For those who don't already know, Festive Spirit Dispensers will be removed from the Token Gear store very (VERY) soon to make room for something new. If you want to get one while you still can, now's the time to do it.

March 31st

• A minor code change that turned major might mean there's a longer-than-normal intermission tonight. Shouldn't be more than 30 minutes.

April 1st

• A new Limited Edition Item is available from Token Gear in the mall!

• MrsORaptor has discovered and reported a rather nasty item dupe bug related to player stores. Needless to say, it's been fixed.

April 3rd

• It's a couple of days late I know, but for those who tried to get some easy win on April 1st, there's a new sticker in your inventory. Yay!

April 6th

• In the interests of proving we're actually doing stuff, have a map. No, it's not the one I was giving sneak previews of earlier. Feedback to the forums please.

April 8th

• You can't multi-use non-multiusable items by cheating any more. Blame (or thank) Commandermack for bringing that to my attention.

April 9th

• A small typo in some important code has caused all kinds of havoc with a couple of players' inventories today. For the most part, I believe this is fixed, however if you notice anything odd, please STOP doing whatever it was you were doing and report it through the Mail->Report a Bug link asap.

April 11th

• Due to an infwux of wascawwy wabbits, Paradox officials have declared it "Wabbit Season". Go see the Wabbit Hunter in town for more information.

April 13th

• Clumsy, ham-fisted oafs (you know who you are) will be pleased to know that the default value in the multi use popup box is now set to 1 instead of to whatever the maximum possible is.
• Fixed a couple of bugs related to moolah transfer and item consumption. Stupid similarly-named variables.

April 14th

• Thanks to the combined efforts of Pawacites, the Wabbit Pwague has been bwought under contwol... for now.

April 16th

• Thanks to... well, "magic"... all "magic helmets" have disappeared from the city. Don't worry, you won't be needing them.

• Server outage: Fixed? It looks like the hosting provider managed to fix everything, and we're back online. There's no obvious damage from the outage, but be vigilant and if you're absolutely certain something's wrong, send a bug report with as much information as possible and I'll do what I can to fix it for you.

April 24th

• I'm about to start uploading a few changes which may cause the site (and particular chat) to go weird for a few minutes. If it does, it won't be long.
• Updates completed. Paradox Chat is now at version 0.7.0 and there are a couple of new features that people have been asking for (chat macros and coloured chat channel names - check your Account-Options page). If you have ANY problems, particularly with chat, you should first try refreshing your browser to make sure you have the latest version of all files. If that fails, let me know.

April 25th

• Minor bug in chat. Fixed in version 0.7.1.

April 29th

• Added a bunch of new weapon combat messages thanks to jupider. If you have any suggestions for something you'd like to see in the game, please head to the forums. We're always on the lookout for new ideas

May 18th

• Water balloons and in-a-bags are now flagged as consumable items, so they'll show up in your consumption history. For those who like that kind of thing.
• A few new awards have been added, for which some people will almost certainly qualify immediately. Hooray!

May 19th

• Several updates made today. Added notifications on change of respect (which will appear on the main page if you're not a chatter). Also added three new low-level equipment items and created an RSS feed for the updates.

May 23rd

• Due to popular demand (well, a couple of polite requests), contact and ignore lists have been implemented. The ignore list functions are fully implemented, but the contact list stuff still needs some work to be useful. As usual, refresh your browser and chat to get the latest version of everything, and let me know if anything's broken.
• Hint: Check your Account menu. Be sure to read the documentation for some important information.
• The Paradox Conditions of Use have been updated. Specifically the section on Multi Abuse. Failure to read it is not an excuse for ignoring it so make sure you check it out at some stage.

May 25th

• A select box has been added to new mail/trade messages so you can quickly select someone from your contacts.
• Along with chat channels, you can now set a colour to be used for displaying messages from players on your Contact List. Refresh your browser so you get chat v0.7.4 to see the effect.
• The "LOGON" and "CHAT STATUS" options in your contact list now do what they're supposed to do.
• And so does the "RESET" option. Browser refresh to chat v0.7.5 might be required. Any problems, please report a bug.

May 26th

• A couple of options related to player store purchase notifications have been added, and you can now choose to login silently. Like Ninja. That will stop nosy parkers (and parkettes) being notified when you log on.
• Non-storable items no longer show up in your "Manage Stuff" lists.
• Item and Moolah drop rate modifiers now affect item and moolah drops from non-combat encounters as well as combats. Yes, I know you probably thought they already did, but now they do.
• Most combat items will now take your stats and your opponent's power into account when used. Yes, that includes healing items.

May 27th

• The "Manage Stuff" page has been tweaked to look a bit nicer and be more usable. You will almost certainly need to refresh your browser for it to work properly. Also, as well, in addition, the Backpack has been broken into compartments on both the "Manage Stuff" and "Store" pages. These compartments can be used as source compartments only! Use "Default (All Items)" as the destination for moving things TO your Backpack.
• Mutiple tweaks to item lists in various places. Lists should now grow and shrink to fit your browser window AND you should be able to select multiple items by holding down the CTRL key while you click - or whatever the Mac equivalent is. Refresh your browser to update javascript and, as usual, report a bug if there are any issues (and, frankly, I'll be shocked if there aren't any with this one).

May 28th

• If you're encountering any issues with any of the item management stuff that's been changed, please refresh your browser and retry before reporting bugs as I've already fixed a couple today and there may be no need to report it. If the problem's still there after refreshing, report away!
• You can switch between popup and normal chat using the "Attach" and "Detach" buttons. Expect this to be tweaked a bit over the next day or two.
• I'm aware that the chat attach/detach thing doesn't always work 100% perfectly and plan to work on it more tomorrow. Please don't report any bugs, because I probably already know.

May 29th

• You can now add moderators and devs to your ignore list for trade/store purposes, but you'll still see chat/mail messages from them, regardless of what options you set.
• Ok, you can now move stuff to your backpack regardless of which compartment is selected. Obviously, if you're viewing "Consumables" and you move something that's not a consumable, it won't show up in the list, but it will be moved to your backpack. Applies to both the "Manage Stuff" and "Store" pages.
• Recent chat updates not exciting enough? You can add TIMESTAMPS to chat now. Woooo! Check your Account Options... Oh, and refresh your browser. Again.

May 30th

• Clicking an effect name will now give you a vague (and mostly lame) description of the effect.

June 1st

• Player profiles have been slightly modified so that you don't have to scroll past the comments to reach the store/showcase/contact/respect stuff.

June 2nd

• For anyone who just got booted out of the game, I don't know what happened... Yet. I'll see if the hosting provider can give me any info, but I won't hold my breath.
• A few players have commented that the toolbar on inline chat takes up too much space. Fair enough. I've made the buttons half the height. Personally, I prefer them larger but I don't use inline chat so I'll let you guys tell me which you prefer. As always, refresh your browser if you can't see the difference or it's not working right. Feedback in the forums please.

June 3rd

• For those who are both ADD and OCD (ie. you like shiny things but only in the correct order) you can now reorder your awards and stickers and choose which ones you want to display to other people. Check your account menu for info.

June 5th

• The manage awards and stickers pages have been reworked to take advantage of... well, it's javascripty-ajaxy-cody-stuff but let's all pretend it's magic. Point is, when you move an award or sticker up or down, a full page refresh is no longer required. See? Magic.

June 8th

• Paradox now has a chat channel for RFX DJs and others who want to talk about radio specific stuff. Oddly, it's called "radio". Enjoy.
• Drugs are bad, mmkay?

June 12th

• Having trouble with the little spinny thing (that's a technical term for "loading progress indicator") not going away when it should? I've made a small change that should fix it. Refresh your browser and try again.
• Need to know what's playing on RFX but find actually tuning in too hard? Try the new "/rfx" chat command!
• Player Store searches now show a count of in-stock items on the results page, so you don't have to actually go and check.

June 17th

• There was a slight glitch in the intermission script that prevented store purchase logs being cleared and therefore prevented daily limits resetting the way they're supposed to. This has now been fixed. Sorry about that.

June 19th

• A fairly major bug resulted in all NPC stores (except Token Gear) selling all items for zero moolah for the last 18 hours or so. Thanks (and a bug zapper) to Jesus for pointing it out. I'm in the process of identifying those who have exploited the bug without reporting it (doesn't look like many). If that includes you, now would be an excellent time to let me know.
• As you can see, there's now a "Paradox Daily Lottery" which is... well, fairly self-explanatory. It's pretty simple (just log in each day for a chance to win) and the odds of winning are relatively good for the time being... enjoy it while it lasts!

June 20th

• A new LE item is coming within 24 hours and will replace the L.O.V.E. Bling... If you want to get more L.O.V.E. bling, do it now.

June 21st

• A new Limited Edition Item is now available in the Token Gear (TM) store. Enjoy!

June 22nd

• In order to make room for a bunch of new pre-Legion content, the Department of Questionable Sciences Laboratories have been made SIGNIFICANTLY harder. You're probably going to need to think a little bit, now. Trust me, this is a lot less arbitrary than it looks right now.

June 23rd

• Over the next few days we'll be carefully assessing and tweaking the changes in the DQS Laboratories. You can probably expect some things to change without warning.

June 24th

• A fourth leaderboard section has been added for archived boards, and now the reset boards on the normal records pages are sadly empty and in desperate need of someone to populate them. Go to it!
• The way damage reduction from equipment works has been... well, it's been changed for a very good reason. Most people probably won't notice the difference at this stage but if you do, it's intentional.

June 25th

• In order for the Paradox Geek Squad (that's me) to do some important database maintenance, tonight's intermission will be significantly longer than normal. I'm estimating it'll be no more than two hours (and I'm hoping for just one) but can't say for certain until it happens.

June 26th

• In addition to the database maintenance which is now (finally) complete, over 100 items and a bunch of opponent have been tweaked so that their properties better represent their actual approximate level in the game. Most of the changes involve autosell values (most of which have gone up) and attack and defence ratings (most of which have gone down). In most cases you won't notice much difference. As always - any problems let me know asap.

June 29th

• There are still a heap of leaderboard positions available since the recent changes to the reset requirements. I'd just like to remind everyone that these leaderboards will be retained permanently on the archive page, even after we go to beta and beyond, so why not go grab a spot while you can? Not only will you potentially get yourself a place in history, but you'll be helping us test the game as well so everyone's a winner (baby, that's the truth).

June 30th

• Despite last week's database maintenance efforts, there are still some performance problems with the database, notably when accessing information for people who've played a large number of turns. I plan to do some serious investisnooping and resolve these issues asap.
• Some favourite/most visited/most frequent information is temporarily unavailable while I investigate ways to improve database performance on one specific (gigantic) table. This will make a MASSIVE difference for some players' profile pages. Working on it.

July 1st

• Ok, the missing stats are back, but I've made a change that means this information is now ONLY updated at intermission. In testing, that resulted in profile information being displayed in one thirty-fifth of the time it was taking before, at the cost of extending intermission by a couple of minutes, which is still way better than it was before. Let's see how we go. Any problems, please let me know.
• Ok, intermission completed in 5 minutes today (down from around 20 last week) and profiles are now loading much, much quicker. Hopefully all the information in them is correct - let me know if it's not. Remember, information about things like "Favourite Food" and "Most Used Equipment" is now updated once per day at intermission!
• The Ultraspati...thing lab has been modified so that it gives less stats for a couple of encounters and, if you're snotless... well, you won't get much joy at all. Because we like to spoil your fun.

July 2nd

• The first of several new zones will roll out after intermission tonight. For those playing at home (and for those playing elsewhere) there's a hint as to what the new zone's likely to be if you're paying attention.

July 3rd

• The Long Wood is (finally) open for your beating-stuff-uppy-goodness pleasure. Enjoy.

July 4th

• You can now rest when you're snotless, even if your HP and TP are both maxed. Sorry, slight oversight on my part there.
• I've finally been convinced that the game should hold your hand when it comes to resting. Enjoy never resting for too many turns ever, ever again.
• One of the new old item drops (something that's been around for ages and just got reintroduced) was showing up in the combine stuff ingredients list by mistake. My bad. Fixed.

July 12th

• A smallish number of food recipes have been added, using existing items. Check your available ingredients list to see what might be combinable that previously wasn't.
• Funny how you can look at something every single day and still not notice the blindingly obvious. By which I mean Paradox University finally has a description that's NOT "Insert description here".

July 13th

• As per request in the forums: When regenerating items from Regeneration Nation, there's now an "Info" button that will let you check the selected item's details before regenerating it, and hopefully help cut down on unnecessary turn/moolah wastage.

July 17th

• We're about to upload some new stuff in preparation for tomorrow's new zone (around 24 hours from now). Nothing should change... yet.

July 18th

• The next zone will be opening in approximately 24 hours, give or take. This will not be during intermission, so be sure to save some turns tonight if you want to use them to explore.

• All files uploaded ok. You may notice a few zones aren't open until you reach a certain level/complete a quest, but the requirements are pretty minimal. Please report a bug if anything doesn't open when it should.