UltraCorps Change Log for 2007
December 27, 2007
- Added an .autobuild property to the worlds db. Changed player boot/quit code to set all of the nobody worlds in a quitter's cluster to switch to autobuild. Changed production module to look for worlds with autobuild=1 and queue up production orders there.
December 23, 2007
- Orn X-factor added: Thirus All-Purpose Saucers owned by Orn players get +10 DF.
- Festivus-1 and 2 will tick tonight.
December 22, 2007
- Kira fixed a precision problem with the Ring Mapmaker - homeworlds weren't being equally spaced around the ring; also thinned out the nobody worlds in the middle.
- Added a difficulty field to the worlds table. Used by the Ring Mapmaker; worlds closer to the center have a higher degree of difficulty.
- Modified the Fleets module to multiply unit quantities in nobody start fleets by the degree of difficulty. Also added new unit formulas for high difficulty easter-egg worlds; many of these now have licenses for OMG, Infinita, CR Org, etc. Mua ha haaaaa . . .
- Festivus 1 and 2 created and opened for joins.
December 21, 2007
- New ring games, Festivus-1 and 2, announced.
Race changes made:
- Arachnons will now get one extra population on the homeworld for every three enemy population they kill in a victorious battle.
- CNM starting ult down to 500.
- Ectonian starting fodder cut by 5 SSF and 5 X-5.
- Guir will now start with the Pside Car license and one Pside Car.
- Orn buff TBD.
- Swamp Beasts lose their BioBombs and get four each A-7s and Rovers.
- VaT'ak get two more E-class.
- Zenrin get 17 more v2 upgrades and one v3 upgrade, plus an extra X-8.
Unit changes made:
- BioBomb - Too much of a “griefer� weapon. We’re cutting its defense to 70 and not making it available until Turn 5.
- Nozama Fighter no longer gets an OF boost from the presence of a Queen.
- Nozama Queen spawns only 8-12 Fighters per turn.
- TK Bike attacks increased from 2 to 4.
- Zenrin Upgrades are less complex: 80 for v2, 800 for v3, 8,000 for v4.
November 29, 2007
- SJ updated the PUB game docco to specify when inactive games will be halted and deleted.
November 17, 2007
- Kira modified the Game module to not use storable files.
November 16, 2007
- Palatino tick crashed during the tick, "Magic number checking on storable file failed at blib/lib/Storable.pm". Uncertain why; possible disk corruption? Storable.pm is up to date. Kira extracted the backup data from the db and restored to the pre-tick conditions, then ran the tick manually about an hour and a half after the scheduled tick time.
November 12, 2007
- Palatino started with 261 players (out of 279 slots).
November 6, 2007
- New mega game, Palatino announced.
Unit changes made:
- BioBombs no longer have a Carry, and are now just called BioBombs (instead of U-90 Biobombs).
- VaT'ak no longer start with any Cargo Boosters.
- VaT'ak start with 15 X-8s instead of four.
- VaT'ak start with 550 population instead of 500.
- Nozama starting fleet reduced from 100 to 90 Nozama Fighters.
- Nozama Fighters now available on turn 8.
- Nozama Fighters gain SP 80 if in the same fleet as a Nozama Queen.
- Nozama base price raised from 7 to 10.
- Nozama Queen lock reduced from 10 to 5.
- Nozama Queens generate 15-20 Nozama each turn they are in a base fleet, but now per world, regardless of the number of Queens present.
November 2, 2007
- Revised Economy page of the docco to explain max and min costs.
October 30, 2007
- Kira finished the chat lock. Docco is updated.
October 27, 2007
- Tweaked some race descriptions and worked on plans for the next mega.
October 20, 2007
- Reviewed and refreshed the information pages. Corrected the docco to clarify that you do not earn XP on turns when you control no worlds.
October 13, 2007
- Tweaked the docco a bit and updated the Upcoming Features page. A lot of the things on that list have gotten done. Yay.
October 10, 2007
- PUB game owners and players can now use limited html (bold and italic) tags in headlines. Also, line breaks really work now.
October 4, 2007
- Fixed rankings bug in Oceans-23 (spotted by MrBlarney) - yesterday's change had deleted the 2x ult valuation for O-23.
October 3, 2007
- Modified rankings module to score based on any of the 5 scoring criteria (world count, net worth, firepower, population, win ratio).
August 29, 2007
- Fixed a bug where players could clone a spawned order for more than 50 nozama (thus getting around the max-50 lock). Thanks to ShadowbaneX for reporting it.
August 26, 2007
- Nozama queens, when in a basefleet, now spawn 8-12 Nozama fighters per turn.
August 14, 2007
Long dry spell ends. Stat changes made and announced.
- Infinita and Giganto to SP 70, and reduce Infinita license cost to 1250.
- Reduce OMG carry to 1000. Tweak the X-factor so it is inactive for 3 combat rounds instead of 4.
- R-Class - increase lock to 5. CA down to 300.
- Nozama speed increased to 60, starting cost raised to 7. License now unavailable until turn 10.
- Nozama Queen - Change her to 40 OF, 90 DF, 5 AT, 120 speed. (We are also going to try out a new x-factor if Kira likes the code . . . but first it has to survive exposure to the test server.)
- X-6 - Increase CPX from 23 to 25. Increase CST from 20 to 23.
- X-7 - Increase CPX from 23 to 25. Increase CST from 20 to 23.
- Biobombs: halve CST and CPX, both to 25. Increase DF to 80. Aaaaaand . . . give them CA 1. Kamikaze pilots!
- Ralpher made a case that Megabot cost needs to go up. So: increase of 25 on the bot, and on the v2 and v3 upgrade.
June 17, 2007
- Fixed a bug on the pub admin "run tick" page where player's e-mail addys were showing if they received tick notifications by e-mail. (Changed it so no addresses are visible.)
June 13, 2007
- N-space fiction contest ended! Winners were Lyfdel and Argrath. Runners up: Pastafarian, Kail, TomC, heyzeus23, and Thrognor.
June ?, 2007
- Re-added the arc cannon license back to Ectonians. (License only)
June 4, 2007
- Announced the N-Space fiction contest, for people who wrote stories for the game on the forums.
May 8, 2007
- N-space ended! UC_Rommel won again. 241 players remained (139 with 1+ worlds).
- Nerfed Ectonians by removing the arc cannon from their starting setup.
- Boosted Vat'ak by changing their EI to 35 (from 25) and RER to 200 (from 150).
- Changed the way Rating and MP are calculated; now it's the % of players BELOW you in total score. Your MP is now 10% of that, rounded down. Minimum is a rating of 10 (1 MP), if you have any worlds OR firepower left.
April 10, 2007
- Posted new art for Nozama fighters and queen.
April 4, 2007
- N-space started.
April 2, 2007
- Opened N-Space for joining. Classic scoring (# of worlds owned), 250 players, 35 turns. Sent invites to everyone on the game-request wait list.
April 1, 2007
- Fixed the empty-emote bug on ultrachat.
- Completed the "invite people on the wait list" code; ran a successful test case on the test server. Also set up the custom join code that limits joins to people on the invite list.
Mar. 30, 2007
- Set up the map for our next mega game, N-Space.
Mar. 29, 2007
- Modified the MapMaker module to create (optional) symmetric mega maps, with no world drift. This results in homeworlds very evenly spaced apart, and very few gaps in the map. Ran a number of tests, creating games using symmetric maps. We decided to use this sort of map for the next mega game.
- Fixed a bug in world collision detection (it was going on x/y diffs rather than actual distance. Changed it to actual distance.)
Mar. 26, 2007
- Posted MrBlarney's map of Last to the Last archive page.
- Modified the game-request page to include fields for game type, game length, and tick frequency. Worked on admin interface for sorting and refining the wait list based on various criteria.
Mar. 25, 2007
- Kira modified the mapmaker module to create exactly N worlds for a mega game, resulting in a partially-filled outer rim.
Mar. 22, 2007
- Much tweaking of docco took place. All references to newsgroups were removed or commented out. We decided that the process of joining a game was insufficiently documented, and worked on that.
Mar. 10, 2007
- Posted the "Edit Game Units" interface to the PUB game admin area. Preview of a premium subscriber feature; this allows pub game owners to change the stats of any combat unit in their game.
Feb. 28, 2007
- Added a message to the fleet section when a fleet is being disbanded.
Feb. 27, 2007
- Fixed the rss feeds for new games to show a placeholder feed until new news is actually posted. (Added a dhandler to the feed directory.) Also modified the game-deletion code to automatically delete that game's feed, if one exists.
Feb. 16, 2007
- Set up a script to run nightly, looking for walking dead PUB games (games that are still ticking but have no players, or the last player with any worlds logged in > 20 turns ago). Disables all ticks on those and umails the owner.
Feb. 14, 2007
- Fixed a bug where, when a player quits/is booted from a game, it could leave orphaned unread mail. Now when a player leaves a game, all their mail for that game is deleted.
- Fixed the bug where a pub game is set to auto-tick (tick when ready), and all players but one are done, and the idler quits/is booted. This used to leave the game hanging indefinitely, waiting on the game owner to force tick the game. Now the game ticks after the idler leaves the game.
Feb. 13, 2007
- Finished the PUB runner reputation system. Players can now rate the owner of a PUB game, based on how well the game was managed. Players are eligible to rate the PUB owner after the player quits, is booted, or after the game ends.
Jan. 24, 2007
- Fixed the net worth bug (upgrade units were being valued at 0). Now should be valued at the price of the base unit + price of the upgrade unit.
Jan. 21, 2007
- Modified map-maker to ensure there'll always be at least one world in the 50-70 range from the homeworld. Also modified the starting-pop formula for all hard worlds... (the old formula made it possible to tell which world had hurax.)
Jan. 12, 2007
- Undeployed auto fleets now show at the top of the world info page along with all other undeployed fleets.
Jan. 11, 2007
- Kira revised the Buy Licenses page so that upgrade units are shown below their base unit.
Jan. 9, 2007
- Set up the browse players page. Also set up a browse-badge-winners function, and linked that to the standings page (and vice versa).
Jan. 8, 2007
- Fixed the rankings page so racial ties are accounted for properly. Also fixed it to show placings for the top worlds.
- Added a count (# in chat) to the lobby
Jan. 7, 2007
- Tweaked the standings page so the fastest solos are listed with the most-recent winners first.
- Fixed the end-of-game code to post a headline announcing the winner(s), and also automatically award winners badges.
Jan. 6, 2007
- Fixed the css style of the "end solo game" page (might have been the last page with the old maroon/white colors?). Also fixed it to show the correct XP numbers won for very fast solos, and to display the badge won.
Jan. 5, 2007
- Kira created a separate Solo-Map-Maker module. This corrects the problem with some solo games having fewer than 12 worlds. It also paves the way for future solo games with more than 12 worlds.
- Revised the fleet formulas for very hard worlds in solo games. (Now you won't see an HC-4 or Giganto in a solo game... unless you build it yourself.) ;)
Jan. 4, 2007
- Added a 12-in-5 badge, with corresponding XP bonus. Changed the graphics on all the 12-in-x badges so that 12-in-5 is gold, 12-in-6 silver, 12-in-7 bronze, and 12-in-8 now "copper" (though it doesn't really look coppery).
Jan. 3, 2007
- Kira prettied up the solo game tick page.
