After quite a prolongued cycle, the next version is finally nigh.
Normally I would quietly post on the
beta site, however with such a long absense I thought it more prudent to mention it here - most of the usual culprits probably gave up on beta a long time ago (except for Utsukushi, who decided to post something today just to prove there's always an exception!). (c;
Though I have done some preliminary testing at this stage it is a bit raw, so I would only suggest the brave of heart venture there. After a while the beta site should get more stable and those a little more cautious can join in with the testing.
As the next version requires some updates/upgrading to existing games to be done I have created a script that can duplicate your existing game from here (a.k.a. the "live site") over to the beta site. Instructions are on the main menu of the
beta site. This will let you check that your game will get upgraded without error.
General feedback can be posted within this thread, however please keep any bugs or indepth discussions on the beta site, namely in the
bugs, features & suggestions, oh my! forum.
The current changes/additions are as follows (which may also give you an idea of what needs to be tested).
Major:
- Added game systems!
- Converted the (per game) player database to a single mySQL database.
- Converted the (per game) character database to a single mySQL database.
- Rewrote "gameinfo" in PHP.
Minor:
- Increased the map size by a factor of ten to one megabyte (i.e. 1,024 kilobytes or 1,048,576 bytes) as the current 40MB worth of images seems nothing when compared to the 9.5GB of messages.
- Added one additional game map per group per game, secured so only a user with a character in the appropriate group can see the image. One megabyte limit per image.
- Fixed places where the dice roller wouldn't record when "unique die" was selected.
- Added Feng Shui system to the dice roller.
- Added The Riddle of Steel system to the dice roller.
- Added Ricochet system to the dice roller.
- Added HackMaster Basic/Advanced Penetration and Backstab systems to the dice roller.
- The dice roller now checks that the drop/keep amount entered is a digit (to indicate the number of dice to drop/keep).
- Game systems and complicated manual dice rolls (with more than one set of die) can now always have fudged rolls (rather than randomly returning an error that the fudged amount is invalid).
- The dice roller now maxes the fudged (fixed) roll to the maximum possible if the amount is higher than the die size (it does continue to try and warn if the fudged amount is too high or low).
- The dice roller can now skew rolls as well as fixing them to a number. Enter ±integer to artificially raise or lower the rolls by that (e.g. 1d20 skewed +1 will result in a roll between 2 and 20 (inclusive), all weighted evenly).
- Fudged rolls can now have a roll in the middle of the sequence completely random (i.e. not rigged). Done by putting in a "?" in the sequence (e.g. "20 ? 6"). Skewing a result by +0 or -0 in the sequence will have the same effect.
- Fixed a dice roller bug that wouldn't insert a comma after the first roll result (if it was zero).
- Fixed a dice roller bug that would continue to subtract dice rolls from the modifier.
- Fixed a dice roller bug that prevented it from saving the default configuration for manual rolls.
- Fixed several WoD dice roller mechanics and tweaked some feedback provided in the logs.
- Fixed incorrect tally showing on the RPoL Miscellaneous Information page.
- Fixed auto-linking of help pages with plusses in them.
- Improved the "Info" link (available from character posts).
- Changed the HTTP Headers to try and stop browsers presenting stale (old) pages upon the use of the back button.
- Fixed Ad Filtering in "Wanted - Players" returning duplicate genres for each matching game.
- Improved the error handling for game advertisements in "Wanted - Players".
- Added filtering for mature, adult and sole ownership to "Wanted - Players" and main menu search.
- Advertisements in "Wanted - Players" now show the mature, adult and sole ownership icons in the thread list.
- Tweaked the feeds script to avoid some readers detecting an update to a game as a new entry.
- Added last modified support for RDF and RSS feeds (Atom feeds already had it).
- Fixed RSS (only) feeds having incorrect maximum cache value (was 60 times higher than it should have been).
- Added game/forum category to the feeds to allow grouping by that attribute (for readers that support it).
- Fixed a problem in the [reply] link where it would sometimes truncate the subject.
- Stopped "typed" from being added after the user's name in quote boxes.
- Fixed private note prefix text not being completely case insensitive.
- Improved the genre searching.
- Added "first", "last" and "new" (which is a guess) to the thread links.
- Fixed the first table row entry (sometimes) being skipped for user tables in messages.
- Game editors (previously called "game moderators") can no longer see private lines when editing messages.
- Fixed some (more) game/site statistics.
- Added more thread information (topic, poster, etc) to the browser's window/tab title.
- GM posts using the "Other Name" entry will now not only use a matching NPC/character's details (bio etc), but will update the relevant post count and last post entry.
- Added colspan, rowspan and (percentage) width keywords for table cells (th and td). Tightened the security on the table parameters and sped up the parsing while I was at it.
- Fixed a bug in the polls that would stop the title of a single poll (i.e. one with no sub-polls) from being displayed.
- Added "m.rpol.net" and tweaked (improved?) detection of mobile browsers that don't report they are mobile browsers. Fixed header/footer is turned off when any of these are used or found.
- Added support for [dice=...] in character sheets and messages. Allows links to be automatically generated to go to the dice roller and setup the options ready for a roll. More information is available in the help (under Games \ RuBB Code).
- Increased portrait selection/browse screen from 6x3 to 8x4 (32 portraits a page rather than 18).
- Added formatting toolbar to character sheet, character description, and game introduction composition screens.
- Added reminder/option to turn off the Players Wanted flag when a GM is adding a player or character.
- Tried to standardised more of the GM management screens to have the text inside solid coloured boxes (rather than sitting on what could potentially be the background image).
- Added automatic URL shortening for really long links.
- PM'ing from and to the same character is now only checked (and stopped) for new threads, not for replies.
- Enabling email notifications now requires an activation link to be sent to your email account - far too many users had incorrect addresses or did not allow RPoL to email them, resulting in a large portion of failure reports flooding the admin mailbox.
- Removed rMail and PM links from own character posts.
- Stopped email addresses in rMail subjects being hyperlinks to the email address (you think I'd have learnt from last time).
- Added Private/Language Groups. Groups with hidden members that can be used for private communication inside game messages.
- The main menu now shows your GMT offset as well as the time (current as of when the page is loaded).
- Added more text styling colours.
- Changed the way the 'pre' button displays to avoid the undo buffer being cleared in Internet Explorer.
- Changed portraits to default to on for new accounts.
- Added the ability to locate and re-add any games you play (or lurk) in back to your sticky list.
- Fixed colours not flowing to sub-elements (e.g. a table enclosed in <red>..</red> would not have red text).
- Tables and colours within a spoiler will now be hidden.
- "Return to this thread" (displayed in the summary when posting/editing a message) will now jump to the bottom of the thread or the edited message (providing it is on the last page).
- The game post count on the main menu will jump to the private or public thread list if there are new posts for either.
Accounts are periodically copied from here to the beta site, overwriting all existing beta accounts. Feel free to change your account details over on the beta site, but beware that anything you change may be overwritten without warning (password, email address etc). Duplicate accounts are also allowed on the beta site (and only that site) for testing purposes, but again they might be overwritten (and replaced with a completely different account).
Please visit
http://beta.rpol.net if you are interested in testing, and thanks if you do!
This message was last edited by the user at 09:59, Thu 08 Sept 2011.
