View source for Creating Adventure - June 2024

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== Words of Wyrom ==

[[File:Wyrom.png|thumb|left|90px|<center>The Wyrom</center>]]Greetings, friendos.  With Creating Adventure finally taking shape with a specific schedule alongside State of Elanthia, I feel like this announcement entry finally has a better purpose.  I know I've been doing this for awhile now, but I've always struggled with where to take it.  Do I do them quarterly?  Do I do them as a Year-in-Review?  Silly stuff to worry about, but it always weighed down on my thoughts.  Creating Adventure is now our roadmap announcement list with just what we're working on currently or soon.  We get into a bad grind of overpromising and underdelivering just due to the passage of time screwing with everything.  But the plan is to make sure what you see is being actively worked on with backup plans when things take an unexpected turn.

== The Path Unseen ==

My time this year has been dedicated to building better infrastructure, which means I've not been very visible.  There is a lot of background work that needs to get done, and it gets neglected a whole lot due to it not being very fun or in the spotlight.  Most of the stuff is with longevity in mind, so the initial impact isn't even something you might see for awhile.  We've been working on better tools to be able to see subscription status from within the game so we can offer better rewards.  Some of this is ''to be announced at a later time'' but it's exciting stuff to be able to offer.  It just came with a lot of work to get to this point.

With that said, there have been a lot of behind the scenes work going on that I'd like to share.  Some of this was announced over in DragonRealms already, but it's still not all ready, hence me waiting for our June release.

=== 64-Bit Upgrade ===

Our games (GemStone IV, DragonRealms, and our older IFE titles Modus Operandi and Alliance of Heroes) have all been on a 32-bit system, with signed integers ranging from -2,147,483,648 to 2,147,483,647.  When the games were created, that was amazing, but numbers have gotten really big, and we have had to limit development in a lot of areas due to it.  We're been running up against this wall quite a bit lately and there really isn't a way forward without changing everything.  The plan was to introduced unsigned limited to double up in areas where we don't need to go negatively, like with time, but that just kicks the can down the road.

This has been a project for one of our onsite engineers who returned to Simutronics late last year as a contractor and resumed full time work in 2024.  Our plan is to have the first phase on the Test server this summer.  This is likely going to be a long testing period before this is ready to be in the live games and we will need quite a bit of testing from both players and staff when the time comes.  

Once this makes it to the live games, it will take some time to update systems to make use of it, so it won't be an instant on thing for a good chunk of our scripts.  We will prioritize areas once we're in the clear though.

=== New Biller ===

If you've been here awhile, you likely know a lot of our website has been kneecapped due to our billing system.  When Simutronics moved to the web back in Jurassic era, there were no out of the box solutions to how to bill customers.  Simutronics did everything in house, and they were very proud of what they managed.  Unfortunately, time marched on and we didn't.  This has limited aspects of the website to how it worked with account verifications, such as the forums or even the front page news.  On top of that, PCI compliance soaks up a ton of onsite's time to make sure everything is following all the rules and regulations. 
But soon we will be working with a third-party to handle all this.  They are currently working to migrate everything we have over.  This will free up a lot of time and it will hopefully make things easier for you with account management.  ETA on this I believe is October, but it will definitely be before the end of the year.  The sooner we can cross this off the list the better, because...

=== Website and Logo ===

Once we get there, our dinosaur (notice a theme?) of a website will get a much needed facelift.  Mostly with how it looks, but in time we plan to add even more features and do a better job on how we announce everything.  This is getting a bit ahead, because it does require the billing migration first and then we will see what all is needed to finally break away from everything that was connected to the old way.  Might be something we just set on fire.

Our logo will also be getting a redesign too.  Nothing I can share right now, but once we have a direction, I'll be sure to show it off on Discord.

=== New GameMaster Training ===

[[File:Unknown_creature.jpg|thumb|right|150px|<center>GameMasters</center>]]We had a pretty big class get hired.  We started with 13 new GameMasters.  We're currently at 11, but we also had 2 former GameMasters return to us.  The GameMaster list is current.

With this hire, I introduced a fast track for GSL (our programming language) to get everyone who wanted to try this new way out.  We had a lot of success with it and as you may see, quite a few of the new GMs have released some updates.  It's not quite polished and it probably needs some more structure, but it was great to get new coders up and running so quickly.  GSL can be a bit of a slog, and we usually don't see meaningful projects for 6 months to over a year.  It was a lot of work, I had the insane idea to start this during Duskruin in February, but we got to add a lot of talent to the teams.  This class just passed their 6 month anniversary.  

=== Bug Closeouts ===

Part of this new GSL training was we focused on bug reports a bit more than we usually do.  Part of GSL is finding a bug to tackle.  But this class knocked out hundreds, a good bunch being duplicates, but they still need to be investigated and such.  We still have a few in training that are going to continue to knock out more bugs!  Keep an eye on the announcements and endnotes on Discord as we continue to work through the backlogs here.

== Looking Forward ==

With the BTS talked about, let's dive into what's to come that are more in the spotlight of the live games.  The road ahead is always a challenge to make sure we have a healthy balance of projects you might know about with old projects that you wanted finished that never happened.  I think we have some pretty great stuff planned for 2024.

=== Combat and Magic Systems ===

We are concentrating on some of our old projects that have been talked about.  I know some stuff might not be known that is being worked on, but we've been plugging away and have the following project list in the works.

* '''Battle Standard (1620)''': Designed, coded, currently in testing on the Test server, and in QC. Once it clears QC, it'll be released.
* '''Covert Arts (Rogue service)''': Designed and mostly coded. Hoping to have it on the Test server this summer.
* '''Gemstones''': Base system is designed and coded. Individual gemstone properties are being designed and coded now. We'll likely start with an initial batch of gemstones, then add more over time. As such, we hope to have it available for testing soon too.
* '''Bloodstone Jewelry (1135)''': Designed and coding is starting up.
* '''Sorcerer Review''': Currently a work in progress, but it requires creating a lot of new logic/systems to utilize the design we lined out. However, it's also our goal to release the updated spells as they completed instead of waiting for everything to be completed and released at the same time.

=== Feeder Overhaul ===

I may have spilled the beans about a treasure review being a multi-phased release.  The feeders have been a bit lackluster overall, and we were missing a lot of modern approaches to distributing loot that meets expectations.  The feeder overhaul represents about four of those phases we want to complete.  This is actually a bigger change that needs a lot more details, so be on the look out for that '''REAL SOON NOW'''!

=== High Touch Engagement ===

[[File:Adventurers.jpg|thumb|right|150px|<center>Adventurers</center>]]It should come at no surprise that we have been working hard at keeping the world very active and alive with lore and storytelling.  We don't plan to slow down, but I wanted to share some of the data with everyone.  

Our Daily Average Users (DAU) have gone up roughly 150 accounts since November 2023.  Our Monthly Active Users (MAU) have gone up over 300 since the same timeframe.  Average session times, excluding those with session times that are for login rewards or short with little to no gameplay or the never log off type, are up from less than 2 hours to nearly 3 and a half hours.  Total session times across all users last month was 361,000 hours (this does include everything outside staff hours).

These numbers are all up, though our highest numbers in the last 10 years still come from the lockdowns.  We are up over 50% still since before March 2020.  Retention on our last promo was also some of the highest we've seen, percentage wise.  The plan after a lot of the stuff mentioned about the billing systems, website, etc is to have a more improved promotion system that allows for much more flexibility.  

=== Wisdom of the Ages ===

Remember that whole checking subscription status from within game?  One of our first plans is to give something for sticking with us! And that is a new perk called [[Wisdom of the Ages]]. This will be beyond Premium and Platinum Points, this will be with our paid subscriptions of any tier. It will be something that if you keep your account in good standing and '''continuously''' active, you'll keep gaining a whole new...experience.

== Year in Review ==

We may have missed a few announcements in our [[:Category:Changelog|Changelog]], but check out (most of) our updates in [[2023_Changelog | 2023]] and [[2024_Changelog | 2024]]!
{{#section:2023 Changelog|table}} 
{{#section:2024 Changelog|table}}


[[Category:Creating Adventure]]