Archive for March, 2013

End-of-March Status Update

Posted on: March 29th, 2013 by T'nara the Wise

So, here it is, the end of March, and … oh, excuse me for just one moment (Conjurus Rotten-Tomato-Deflection-Shield) … and, we are not quite ready for alpha.

We’re truly sorry to make you wait even longer, but we’ve had this horrendous gremlin infestation! At night, for entertainment, they’ve been swapping random lines of code, just to see how long it takes us to figure it out. I just heard a mischievous giggle. It’s been exceedingly inconvenient.

But seriously, we’ve had some rather bad luck these last few weeks. It does feel alarmingly like gremlins are messing with us. For example, the magical gateways we call portalums were in need of an upgrade to make them more flexible and user-friendly. I thought it would take a few days. Instead, because of one subtle bug after another, it’s been 3 weeks. And then there was the bug that caused Val and John to have to re-make some things in the world because the walls and floors didn’t know where they were supposed to be. (Oops!) And, of course, there was the bug that caused the client to go 246 frames per second, so it looked like you were whizzing around the world at 500 miles per hour. That one was quite entertaining, at least.

So, alas, we’re not quite as far along as we expected, but even so, every day, Mage Faire is richer, more magical, more beautiful, and more fun than the day before. Val and John have made some awe-inspiring places where we can run, jump, and play. Sounds and painterly user-interface elements have been added. The initial experience of learning how to move around, chat, and so forth has been put in place in a uniquely fun way. And the portalum upgrade was totally worth it, because they are delightfully mind-bending.

“So, when will alpha be?” you ask. Well, now we’re reluctant to put a date on it. We feel like saying in writing that it would be the end of March was a jynx. The closer we got to our expected alpha date, the more the gremlins came after us.

What we can say is that we honestly thought we could be done by the end of March if things had gone well. There’s not that much more left to do. We have a finite number of tasks on the to-do list, and we will start alpha when they’re done.

“Anything I can do to help?” you ask. Yes! In fact, there are two things you can do. Thanks for asking! (1) You can be patient. We know you’re camped out at the door waiting for us to open. We’ve heard lock picks mentioned. We’ll open as soon as we possibly can. But there’s also another thing you can do: (2) Please beseech the code gods to banish the gremlins from Mage Faire Studios, so that we can have smooth sailing from here on in. Apprecio!