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.

July 19th

• A new zone, the DQS Kitchens, is now open for your adventuring pleasure. Consider this part one, because a bunch of new, related, stuff will be coming soon.
• Got a new cellphone and blew the entire day playing with it. Sorry.
• MINOR UPDATE: A couple of autosell values and consumption stats have been tweaked to bring them in line with the updates from a couple of weeks ago.
• For those who are still puzzled... no, we didn't forget to implement recipes, nor have we introduced a bunch of useless items. We decided that, rather than make you wait another week or so while we finished the recipes, we'd give you the new zone now and follow up with them when they're completed. Stay tuned.

July 24th

• We're working hard on getting the promised recipes out in the next couple of days, along with a new, and hopefully complementary, Limited Edition item. If you still want to buy Pranksta Spats, we suggest you do it soon.

July 25th

• All issues should be fixed. I'm still trying to find out WHY we have an apparently-broken version of PHP on the prod server, but it should be ok for now.
• Apparently the only serious problem with the new updates is the inability to actually log on so... nothing major then. Working on it now.
• I've just uploaded a seriously massive number of changes related to security and performance. If I did it right, you shouldn't see any difference. Any problems, please report a bug or find me in chat.

July 26th

• Despite every reasonable effort, and some seriously unreasonable ones, there's no way these new stuffs are going to be going out today. For various reasons, I'm not prepared to set another deadline at this. All I can say is that they'll be done as soon as possible and we'll keep you updated. Thanks for your patience.

August 1st

• The Pranksta Spats are no longer available in the Token Gear store.
• Oh, and the generic male/female/unspecified images have been made prettier. Ooooh! Aaaaaah!
• Just uploaded a few minor bugfixes and tweaks to chat (parsing of HTML commands), adventure stats (added "too long" count - ie. fights lasting more than 30 rounds), a small issue with avatar display for non-gender-specific players, and a speed tweak for the respect details page, when viewing players with a lot of respect/disrespect. Any problems, let me know.

Update is complete and all should be working fine, with one exception: If you click the title of an item collection leaderboard, it won't be able to open the item information popup. That'll sort itself out at intermission tonight.

August 2nd

• For those having trouble with the inline chat, I've tweaked the script a little so that, when you start it, it will automatically grow to a size that will fit chat without major display issues. You may need to refresh your browser to try it. If there are any further problems with it, please report a bug with as many details as possible.

August 4th

• Known recipes are now grouped together and can be filtered by "Food", "Drink" and "Other". You WILL need to refresh your browser for this to work. Any problems, let me know.

August 6th

• I'm about to make an update to a couple of database tables that WILL cause some things to not work for a few minutes. Nothing major, but if anything's not working right, leave it for a few minutes and try again.
• For anyone who's accidentally resized the chat pane so it fills the whole screen and can't be resized, there is now a "Reset Panes" function in the "Misc" menu that should fix it nicely (if it doesn't work, refresh the browser to get the latest script). Huzzah!
• When successfully combining items into a recipe, the game will now tell you how many of what items were used in the process. In case you forgot.

August 10th

• I've added a bunch of links to the top of various account-related pages to help you navigate around. It's the same stuff that's in the "Account" menu, but each to their own.
• Restore-type items will now prevent you from using more than you need. Regardless of how many you specify, ONLY the number required to restore to max capacity should be used. I think I nailed them all but let me know if I missed anything.

August 12th

• The Iron Toque has been modified slightly so that "special" item drops are now more in line with the amount of export required to make stuff. And by "export" I mean "effort". Backspace is hard to reach.

August 16th

• The game is currently suffering from lag caused by some idiot on our hosting node using far too much processor time. I've logged a support ticket (again) and hopefully they'll be able to sort it out before too long. Some day, maybe we can afford a dedicated server... until then, we're kinda stuck with it. Sorry.

August 23rd

• When an encounter leads to both a stat loss AND gain, you should no longer be told you gain then lose points/levels/etc. That's the theory anyway. Let me know if it's still weird.
• Those among you who are particularly astute will have noticed a handful of new items that are somewhat useless. For the most part, this is only temporary. See, we have a sort-of a planny-type thingy... it'll all become clear eventually. At least, clearer than it is now. Trust me.
• Please feel free to add your own enthusiasm to my last update. I'm tired.
• New zone is now available for adventuring excitement. Go crazy.

August 25th

• The account options page has finally been updated so it looks like the other pages, and a new email privacy option has been added (at the bottom, just scroll down). Don't worry, if you leave the new option turned on, you won't be bombarded with junk. I promise.

August 26th

• XP gain (ie. level progression) has been balanced better with other stat gains. Also, some pretty stuff on the main map page. More to come. Let me know if any issues.

August 27th

• The Wall of Scrawl has been updated so that the text is readable. And that's a GOOD thing.
• OK, I forgot the DQS Research Labs. It'll be next week now due to... other stuff I have to do in the next couple of days. Thanks to those who let me know.
• OK, I'm reasonably sure all maps now have images on them. Let me know if I missed any.
• I'm slowly working through all these maps and converting text links to images with text, for much prettiness. None of the images are perfect, but they're better than boring old text. Hopefully they'll all be done in the next day or two.

August 28th

• For anyone currently looking for birthday shiny, hold tight until intermission. It'll be there I promise.

August 30th

• A bug which allowed players to delete the inbuilt avatar images has been fixed.
• Given what several players have been trying to achieve (apparently), there are three new awards in Burt's store. Holy power-levelling!

August 31st

• I'm in the process of preparing the game for a new and exciting something that I'm not supposed to mention, but that will sound vaguely familiar to many of you. A few things will need to be tweaked/adjusted as a result, but should continue to work properly. If anything breaks, please report a bug.

September 1st

• Both stickers and awards in player profiles are now clickable per request. Additionally, a minor bug related to elemental damage calculations during combat has been fixed (thanks UnknownZ).

September 2nd

• We would like to remind all shoppers to take care during construction. Have a nice day!
• A slight change has been made to the script that generates the leaderboards at intermission. If anything looks hinky (and by "hinky" I mean "janky" obviously) please let me know.

September 6th

• The /whois chat command has been rewritten so it works properly with macros. If you have any trouble with it, refresh your browser and try again.

September 7th

• You can now set a colour for your own name to appear in chat. Ooooh! Aaaaah!

September 9th

• As part of preparation for <something>, and in a general effort to declutter, the "Quick Search" functions have been moved to the "Navigate" menu. This update may require you to reload your browser for it to work properly. Safari users will see some weirdness when selecting what to search, but I'm looking into it.

September 10th

• The search in the menu bar has been replaced and SHOULD now work properly with all browsers. I hope. It takes up a bit more space, but has the bonus that previous searches for all areas will be retained for the duration of your session. I'll leave the charpane search where it is for now, but it WILL have to go soon, so please try out the menu search and let me know if there are any issues.
• Charpane searching should now be working properly again (refresh your browser if any trouble), but I'm still working on the various issues with the menu search functions. Hopefully will have it all solved today.
• It turns out that menus and listboxes don't play very nicely together at all, with results varying widely (and wildly) between different browsers. Also that having search in both the menu and the sidebar... doesn't work either. Please bear with me while I sort this one out.
• Apparently IE8 has a similar issue with the new search menu that Safari does. I'm working on it. In the meantime, I'll put it back in the charpane until the menu is confirmed working 100%.

September 11th

• Charpane searching should now be working properly again (refresh your browser if any trouble), but I'm still working on the various issues with the menu search functions. Hopefully will have it all solved today.
• The search in the menu bar has been replaced and SHOULD now work properly with all browsers. I hope. It takes up a bit more space, but has the bonus that previous searches for all areas will be retained for the duration of your session. I'll leave the charpane search where it is for now, but it WILL have to go soon, so please try out the menu search and let me know if there are any issues.

September 15th

• The code for resting in your room has been tweaked slightly. Let me know if there are any problems.

September 16th

• Tomorrow's intermission is likely to be significantly longer than normal (possibly an hour or more). Also, if you want a Promise Ring, now is the time to go get one from Token Gear (TM), because they're not going to last long. Are those two sentences related? Who knows?

September 17th

• Something new and fairly major has just been implemented. Sure, it may not look like much, but it involved some major changes to the fundamentals of the game. If you find a bug, please report it. If you have general feedback, please head to the forums. We expect this will be tweaked/changed as we move forward, so share your thoughts! Also, new stuff in Token Gear (TM).

September 18th

• I've just been informed that the current lag is caused by the hosting provider performing a massive maintenance operation and that it should be completed in "6-7 hours". Yes, I had the same reaction. Nothing I can do about it, sorry.

September 23rd

• Handful of minor updates today: HoloPet equipment is now (properly) displayed in C.A.G.E.s, Holopets with maximum intensity (30) will no longer show a next level progress bar, and logged on players list now has a link to each player's C.A.G.E. (if they have one).

October 22nd

• Just found and fixed a small but rather important bug that was probably causing you all to miss out on not-insignificant amounts of moolah. Sorry 'bout that. Also fixed a bug with reset stats post-holopet quest and a few other minor things. See, I'm not dead. Really.

October 27th

• I've just fixed a couple of bugs related to display issues, predominantly in IE. You will almost certainly need to refresh your browser if you're currently logged on, or if you see any weirdness with the display of items.

October 31st

• Tonight's Intermission will almost certainly be slightly longer than normal. How much longer? How long is a turnip? Think about that while you wait.

November 3rd

• Observant players have probably noticed that a new Token Item is due. Overdue, really. With all the Halloween goodness, it's been delayed but is coming soon and will replace the Iron Toque when it arrives.

• After multiple requests to disable it completely, I've agreed to change the chat inactivity timeout from 15 minutes to 30 minutes. If it has a negative impact on the game now, or at any point in the future, it will be changed back. Make sure you have chat v0.7.13 to get the longer timeout (refresh your browser if necessary). Please, stop asking me to disable it entirely. It's there for an excellent reason and needs to stay.

November 5th

• Tonight's intermission will be longer than normal. As long as a turnip, as usual.

• Several updates... Chat now has an "away" function and will tell us who's lurking. There's a notepad. Um, player stores now show "-" for no limit instead of "0" (thanks Wilson) and a couple of other minor things. Worth waiting for? Turnip.

November 7th

• The new Token Gear (TM) Limited Edition Item will be here within 24 hours. For those of you who still want Iron Toques, now's the time to get them before they're gone forever.

November 8th

• Due to popular (and less popular) demand, somewhere between three and five (ie. four) relatively-easily-obtainable TP restorers have been added to the game. Check with Rex for the really easy ones. The others you'll need to hunt for. This update may or may not be related to the impending release of a new Token Gear (TM) item.
• Restore-type combat items are now consumed when used during combat, regardless of whether you needed to use them or not. Also, a couple of minor tweaks have been made to the combat script so that the combat round counter is now (hopefully) consistent whether or not you have auto-attack enabled. Yes, I know this isn't the update you were looking for, but give it a few minutes.
• The new Limited Edition Item is now available in Token Gear (TM) as promised. OK, so it was 24 hours and about 11 minutes but close enough, right? I'll leave the Toque in there a couple more days for those who kept saying "I'll get one... soon" and never got around to it.

November 9th

• The Placable Platypus holopet has had its formulae tweaked (oooh!) so that it will properly give a bonus at intensity levels beyond 30. This will make it slightly less effective at lower levels but much, much better at higher ones.

• In other news, the combat script has been adjusted slightly again to take care of an issue with auto-attacking when your opponent gets intiative. Of course, that meant I found something else that needs more tweaking so expect changes in the coming days. Any problems, please report a bug.

• And finally (for today), someone has finally noticed that "cheesy" has been spelt incorrectly in a couple of places for around two years. This grotesque oversight has now been corrected! Harsh words were said, tears were spilt, and accusations were made about the spelling of "saucey" elsewhere. Look, I don't want to talk about it, OK? That bruise? I walked into a door! Kids, go stay with your Auntie Maureen for a few days!

November 10th

• A minor issue with players joining chat but not showing up in the player list until they speak has been fixed. Update to chat v0.7.18 to see the change.
• Chat v0.7.19 brings us a reordering of the right-click menus. In general the new layout seems to make more sense, so please take some time to get used to it before you tell me you liked it better before. Also in v0.7.19, it's now possible to respect/disrespect people from chat/the right-click menus. I believe that's the last bit of fiddling with chat for a while.

November 15th

• The Iron Toque is no longer available from Token Gear (TM). That is all.

November 22nd

• The chat macro test feature, which apparently nobody actually uses, has been broken for some time but is now fixed. There was much rejoicing.

• All the main, non-animated, chat emoticons have been replaced with a new, original, consistent set of images. We're in the process of sorting out the rest. It might take a couple of days for your browser's cache to update, but it will eventually.

November 24th

• Chat v0.7.20 has had some tweaks added that should hopefully improve the horrible memory leak behaviour in Firefox. As always, refresh your browser to update and let me know if there are any problems.

November 25th

• In an attempt to further reduce memory leakage, chat (as of v0.7.21) will no longer scroll back infinitely, but is limited to 500 lines. Once that limit is reached, the lines at the top will start being removed as new lines are added. At some point in the future, this might be made configurable (if there's demand for it) but for right now, it's enforced so I can do some decent testing. Let me know if you have any feedback/thoughts/suggestions.

November 28th

• As many of you have no doubt noticed, we have been experiencing a ton of lag lately. This is the result of a problem with our hosting provider and we are currently working as closely as possible with them to get the problem fixed. In the meantime, please be patient - we'll get it sorted out as soon as we possibly can.

• There are a couple of things I can try which MIGHT help bring the current lag situation at least partly under control. Unfortunately they involve some down-time. Hopefully no more than an hour but that assumes everything goes well. I'll be doing that at around 8am AEDST, or 11am game time tomorrow. Please bear with me while I do that work and, if all goes well, enjoy the reduced lag.

November 29th

• There are a couple of things I can try which MIGHT help bring the current lag situation at least partly under control. Unfortunately they involve some down-time. Hopefully no more than an hour but that assumes everything goes well. I'll be doing that at around 8am AEDST, or 11am game time tomorrow. Please bear with me while I do that work and, if all goes well, enjoy the reduced lag.

• It turns out that 8AM AEDST is actually 11:30AM game time, which is approximately now. In a few minutes, the game will be going offline for me to perform some exciting database maintenance. Assuming everything goes well, it shouldn't be offline for more than 30 minutes.

• Maintenance done. Load on the server has been really low anyway for the last 18 hours or so, so it's impossible to tell if it's made any difference, but everything seems to be working just fine. Let me know if there are any issues.

December 1st

• The budget in the DQS Labs was approved so we now have real doors. Don't forget to knock.

December 3rd

• Discovered a logic error in the fight code that could lead to an opponent getting a second chance to get initiative, even after you've tried to attack it. The error required several minor adjustments to the code, but hopefully all is now well. Let me know if fighting is giving weird results (ie. repeated initiative messages, combat rounds not progressing etc.)

December 9th

• Just fixed a mail bug where, if you saved a copy in your "Sent" folder, and the recipient moved the message to their "Saved" folder, it would no longer appear in your "Sent" folder. No idea how that lasted so long.

December 16th

• Water balloons and Farts-In-Bags are now multiusable. I figure they're hard enough to obtain, might as well make them easy to use. Additionally, the Legion quest has been modified to be slightly less frustrating. If you're doing the quest, you'll see what I mean.

December 18th

• For reasons of great helpfulness (and suprising obviousness) the autosell page now orders items by name, which is sensible, rather than by item id number which... isn't.

December 19th

• So it turns out that image maps based on PNGs don't actually work in IE6 or below. Good job, Microsoft! Again. I've added a fix, so users with IE6 will be able to get around in the mall and the cinema, albeit with a less-than-attractive gif map image. Users with proper browsers still get the lovely alpha-blending from the PNG. That's win for everybody!

December 21st

• Despite some fairly major coding headaches, the new Limited Edition Item and some secret stuff I'm not allowed to talk about is ready to roll out. Because it's a fairly major update to some fundamental mechanics, I'll be migrating everything to the live server during intermission tonight. As a result, intermission will be longer than normal. Probably no more than 30 minutes if all goes well. If it doesn't... you know the drill.

• For those wondering... no, the Platypus will not be leaving the Token Gear (TM) store immediately. For future reference, though, once a limited edition item has been in the store for 12 weeks, you can pretty much assume it's going to be replaced any minute and make sure you get all that you need, because we can't do this every time.

December 22nd

• A new Limited Edition Item is now available in the Token Gear (TM) Store! YAY! In other news, some fairly major changes to some existing code have been made in the last few days. Everything SHOULD be ok, but be on the lookout for any weirdness, particularly when adventuring. If you spot anything, let me know. Oh, and while we're here... burn cream is now usable in combat. See, we do listen sometimes.

December 23rd

• The map image for the Wessonian Museum is EXACTLY the same as it was before. Any changes you think you're seeing are COMPLETELY imaginary. Also, I won 1,000 moolah in the lottery today, yay me! Who needs twitter, seriously?

December 27th

• The Placable Platypus holopet is no longer available from Token Gear (TM).
• For a couple of reasons, it is now impossible to create a player account with a name that doesn't contain at least one letter (a-z), though why anyone would want to do that in the first place is beyond me. Anyway, there it is.

December 28th

• The code responsible for selecting "random" encounters when adventuring has been tweaked to hopefully reduce the number of repeats. Repeats WILL still occur, but getting the same thing more than twice in a row should now be a lot less common. If you notice any issues, please report a bug.