Dragon-Wings Devo

As much as I love phpbb3, its customization tools are whack.

There’s a ‘styles’ tab in the admin CP that allows one to modify the template, theme, and imageset directly, which is enormously helpful because phpbb3 uses about 15 different style sheets for 15 different things and unless you know exactly what you’re doing, it’s easy to get confused. Unfortunately there’s no way to make these changes permanent. There’s an option to ‘refresh’ the style which cleanses the cached version, but this basically means that it loads directly from the style sheet files stored in the directory, ignoring any changes you’ve ever made through the acp – overriding them, in fact. This wouldn’t be such a gigantic, whopping problem if phpbb3 allowed you to actually save your changes, because god forbid you need to, oh I don’t know, install a mod that works directly from the style sheets stored to the directory.

Even if you know enough to move your changes from the acp over to the directory, it’s a trek wading through those stylesheets to figure out where you want to actually save the changes you’ve made.

I’m bitter about this because I installed the UserBlog and FAQ mods this weekend, forgot I had done about three hours worth of styling in the acp, and lost all of it. As much as I don’t mind learning these things, a simple “do you wish to save these changes (note: doing so will override the directory style sheets)?” option is 100% better than a “refreshing these styles will override all of your acp changes” option. Imo.

Anyhoo.

The UserBlog and FAQ mods have both been installed. Additionally, individual character profiles are now linked directly from topics.

This week is dedicated to getting some offspring done and working on the final touches for the grand re-opening event. Hooray!

This weekend has been busy so admittedly I didn’t get much done.

What was completed was some more monster growths; I’d like to have full stages for as many of the critters as possible before we start rolling out the new stuff.

The Anathema and Wotcher have adult stages; the Kraden has an adolescent and an adult stage; the Stoneling has an adult stage in progress; the Groyte has an adult stage sketched out (I don’t know if I’m going to keep it or not at the moment); there’s a concept sketch for the Deesling adolescent and the Tryx, Skyraptor and Shrak adolescent/adult stages floating around that just need to be solidified. I’ve got an unscanned sketch of the Cocytus adolescent. With most of the other critters I have a solid idea of where I’m going to go, but I have to admit I’m totally stumped with the Szeret. I love their baby stage and I sort of know what I want the adults to look like, but nothing solid yet and I certainly have no idea what the transitioning stage would be.

I’ve also been testing the waters with some of my staff/museists for an alternative to the Keep system. One thing that’s popped up is the potential to use a phpbb3 Blog mod instead of a Keep, which would allow people better organization of their critters. Also, others can comment on it (if the user allows it; there are setting for who can and cannot comment on individual blog posts), which I think is kinda cool, especially if you have a ton of customs/offspring that you really just like to show off. =) Another alternative has been to explore the possibility of allowing users to post comments on their pet pages directly – like neopets, subeta, etc – which has gotten some approval as well.

Keeps are a bit dated in their use, what with the whole point of switching over to a php-based system being that now peoples’ monsters are linked directly to their accounts, and no one can really ‘steal’ them anymore. So registering monsters in a Keep is obsolete, at this point. But a lot of people like having a place to dump all of their monster images at once and keep tabs on their friendships, etc, so… I don’t know.

I’ve been doing a (very) little bit of research on how to integrate phpbb3 account creation/login/etc with Oekaki, because it’d be nice if our users didn’t have to sign up for the Freeholds AND the Oekaki – but I don’t know if it’s even worth exploring, since the Oekaki will also service Coterie and the main site as well. Maybe I’ll just make a sub-section of the Oekaki for the Freeholds (because it’d be awesome to hold Design-a-Monster contests on that sucker) and make that connect up with all of our phpbb3 accounts… I don’t know. I don’t know how feasible that is or if it’s within my ability… Oh well. It’s nice to try figuring out in the meantime.

Also, one of my goals this summer is to get back in to doing some personal creating for myself. Since I haven’t had the time to churn out hours-long masterpieces in years (beyond that which I do for DWF), I made myself sit down and spit out some quick, 15 minute sketches the other day. Styx’s Renegade came on while I was working, so of course my first sketch was a headshot of Dean Winchester from Supernatural – which is as it should be. =) I also did a hand (cus they’re hard) and a heart (without picking my pen up off the tablet). And then I spat out a quick sketch that I absolutely love, and made in to a full desktop background.

So now that I actually have stuff worth showing again, I’m gonna try to put up the actual www.dragon-wings.com, instead of just the crap page that’s up there now.

PHEW.

But for now – I gotta go study for the GRE.

The artist upload is functioning at 99%. The only thing it doesn’t do is figure out if they need a Gold Scale or not. I have to figure out how to do this without crediting them multiple times for submissions they’ve already completed.

I finished all of the charts yesterday, complete with the auto-changing feature. Not all of them have new charts to auto-change to, yet, but that’s in progress as well. =)

Tonight I’ll finish up some more growth stages and get some sketches done for a few of the other creatures. I’ve gotta start transferring over Custom Species as well. Then I have some new monsters entirely to design. =)

Also would be nice to have:

- Staff page

- NPC page

The DWF Cash Shop is as complete as it possibly can be at this point. It’s lacking an auto-roll stats feature for breedings and a random genome. The former is missing because I need to figure out how it’s going to work exactly (and it’s not key, just nice to have), and the latter is missing because random genetics hasn’t been implemented at all yet.

The next thing I need to do is allow artists to upload their work and get credit for what they’ve done. I think it’s going to work like this:

1. An artist signs up for a project. (Implemented)

2. From the order_det.php page, an artist uploads their completed image.

3. The image goes in to a folder on the server with their username in it; simultaneously, the file name, order number, date, and credit number are recorded in a table in the database.

4. At each submission, the script checks the existing credit number against the credit needed for a Gold Scale (the lowest conversion rate). If the credit number is sufficient, a Gold Scale is automatically dropped into the artist’s inventory, and the number of credits is deducted from the total. A note is made in the table that a scale was given.

I haven’t decided what the conversion rate for credits to scales will be yet. Or even if that’s the best way of doing things, since Scales are an inventory item and they can be sold/given/traded to other users, and I don’t want a ton of them floating around the site…

Well, we’ll see.

Tonight is dedicated to getting the rest of the Charts done, and then working on images for the re-opening event. =)

I’m finally getting around to organizing the DWF folder on the computer. It’s getting split in to a current and an ‘Archive’ folder, I think, wherein the Archive gets stored on the external until I decide I need to use it again. It’s taking up quiiite a lot of space, and it’s sorely in need of some TLC.

Khe and I are working on a grand re-opening event for the DWF forums, which will include all of the following:

• Monster Growths
• New Egg Releases
• Raffles/Give-Aways
• New Plot
• New Race?

So that’s cool. =)

In other news, Coterie got some attention yesterday. It’s still not ready to open, but it’s getting there. I touched-up the FAQ and got the blog mod working (didn’t take much); all it needs now is an updated header, the UCP/Shop MODs installed (not at all difficult to do), and the makings of an opening event.

Hooray summer!

I’ve been working on the Breedings section of the Cash Shop. It’s not complicated – actually it’s quite fun – but it’s more work than I originally thought it was going to be, primarily because the laundry list of data that needs to be generated for a breeding is pretty lengthy. Not only do we have to collect the name/id of the Dame/Sire and their respective owner(s), but we also have to generate the number of offspring being produced based on their fertility rating (in the Monsterpedia), the stats of each of the offspring (a combination of the base stats from mom and dad, with maybe a few random modifiers, just for kicks), the gender of each of the offspring (weighted, of course, since we want most of the monsters in the Freehold to be either male or female), and – eventually – the complete genotypes of the offspring.

The number of offspring generated per breeding and their genders are easy enough to do, but the stats are a little harder. It’s simple to pull the base stats out for all domestic, unique, and wild breeds, but in the case of a breeding where one of the parents is an offspring, it’s hard to find their base stats. Not to mention I haven’t entirely decided how these new stats will be calculated. The easiest method, I think, would be to randomly pull a stat from either mom or dad and then randomly add or subtract stats until they all add up to 20 (as do the base stats of all monsters). This gives us basic inheritance with a dash of randomness, which is as it should be.

Issues start to arise when we have offspring as parents with increased stats, since we don’t store their base stats anywhere in our system. I suppose what I could do is check to see if any individual stat is over, say, 20, and subtract a chunk from there, and then again add or subtract stats randomly until we get base stats that equal 20… I don’t know though. I’ll have to think about it.

Anyway, the breedings section of the cash shop is almost completely done. After that is just retired and unique creatures, and those won’t be hard at all (saving the easiest for last, since it’ll probably take me about 10 minutes to do them, and that’ll be a relief).

I go back to work today, but I have Thursdays off – so tomorrow (after Sears comes to install the washer/dryer =) ) I’ll finish up the Cash Shop.

Ugh, sanitizing data is a pain in the butt.

Apparently I’ve been meticulously abusing my laptop over the course of the last 8 months or so, so my fiancé has finally wrangled it from my grasp in an attempt to save it before I do it any more harm. The fan is clogged (no doubt with dog and rabbit fur), which would explain why it reaches scalding temperatures in record time. Normally I’m good about keeping care of my computers, but I know HPs have a tendency to run hot so I haven’t done anything about it. We checked the internal temperature yesterday; after a mere 10 minutes of on-time, the core temp was about 5 degrees F away from boiling. Oops!

So with the laptop in his care I have no access to photoshop, and while it shouldn’t take him long to unclog the fan (ewwies), I won’t be able to do size charts until then.

In other news, I’m adding the finishing details to the first two huge segments of Cash Shop stuff; again, once the Custom Monster Species and the Custom Monster options are out of the way, really the only other big thing is Breeding. Unique and Retired monster options are pie and shouldn’t take too long at all.

While most users will never see the backend of this shiny new code, our Cash Shop works like this:

1. User decides to buy a custom monster.

2. User fills out a form – monster type, the stats it will have, its gender, its name, its base stats, etc. They select how they will be paying (Paypal, Scales {ooh? What are THOSE? }, Other).

3. When they submit their form, the total is calculated and they can review what they’ve posted to see if it makes sense. They then confirm their order.

4a. When their order is confirmed, the user is given an order number. If they are paying via Paypal, check, or cash, they include this order number in a commentbox.

4b. Users can check the status of their order at any time – all orders begin as ‘Pending payment.’

5. Once payment has been received, the status of the order is updated to ‘In Progress’

6. Artists and colorists can ‘sign-on’ to any ‘In-Progress’ projects, as long as there is room; there is a special alert that shows up if a particular colorist or artist has been requested.

7. Artists and colorists complete the work, and upload it to the system. The status is set to ‘Filled.’

8. Trained administrators take the uploaded work and throw it in the database.

9. The completed work is delivered to the user who made the order, and the artists/colorists receive their compensation; the status is set to ‘Delivered.’

Ta-da! So far sections 1-6 work 100% for Custom Monster Species and Custom Monsters. The rest can be done via e-mail so I’m not focusing on it right now, at least not until I’ve got Breedings done (because that’s gonna take some fancier footwork, to adjust for all of the offspring and whatnot).

It’s a good system and it’ll help keep things rolling. Since most of the current bottlenecking in the whole ‘getting orders done and out’ comes from me, this helps alleviate all of that.

Once it’s up and running 100% I’m gonna start plugging in all of the orders I’ve had sitting around for a year and a half, so people can start to see their stuff actually getting done. Hooray!

So I’ve examined our existing inventory system and I’m confident I can get it to do what I want it to – it’s just matter of working with some of phpbb3′s limitations. And the beauty of having an integrated website is that if there’s something I want it to do and the forum won’t allow me, I can just move the process on-site (and off the forums) and do it there, then update the forum databases. No biggie. =)

One of the chief issues I’ve run in to is that Bugs should be usable with their changes being instantaneous. This way, if one were to feed a Basic Immuto a Water Bug – boom, it grows immediately. This becomes a problem when the Basic Immuto itself is an offspring or is oddly-colored, although I suppose we should just cover all of our bases right off the bat and just do all of the possible second-stages for an Immuto when the offspring is designed. That way they’re there, they’re in the system, and if they don’t get used it’s really no skin off of my nose – and the artists still get credit for them, so I’m sure they won’t mind, either.

The ‘Quest’ mod I referred to earlier does not have a working counterpart for DWF’s version of phpbb3. But that’s okay. =)

Yesterday I was sidetracked while I was working on the Size Charts (no surprise there, I’m sure). Since I’m trying to get them completely done now, it requires me to go through some of the sketches I have for growth stages and start making them in to workable templates. Yesterday was dedicated to the Kraden, for example, who now has an adolescent and an adult stage template completed - both of which are stunning (if I do say so myself ). Of course, as much as I like designing the creatures themselves, coloring the individual breeds is probably the most fun for me. Some of them end up with odd coloring (such as the Rust Kraden’s white spots on its tentacles) simply because I like to see how those play out in offspring colorations. (This white coloration on the Rust is far more prevalent on a secondary feature they acquire as they grow – so white spots on tentacles aren’t really a great example of this, but you’ll see what I mean. )

Today’s To-Do List, then:

• Size Charts 12-19
• Chart auto-change feature
• Cash Shop – Custom Species

I think once the Custom Species section of the Cash Shop is done, the rest will be easier.

Also, I’m 99% sure there’s going to be something on the forums that allows people to use the Cash Shop without having to spend real money. It’s what the Staff will be paid in, and it can be used as a prize in various events on the Forums. But I haven’t worked out the details yet, so we’ll have to see.

So after having a minor breakdown regarding just how much programming there’s still left to be done on the Freeholds (which you may have picked up on in the last paragraph of the last post), I’ve made a revelation.

DWF already has an Inventory system.

Our Ultimate Points mod – the thing that allows for our forum currency – comes with an Inventory system. I’m pretty sure I can piggyback on that structure – surely it’s easier than starting from scratch.

Also, I’ve heard rumours of a ‘Quest’ modification for phpbb, which may fit nicely with my plan for unlocking certain character races. I mean – what?

So, since the vast majority of today has already been spent running errands for my mom’s theatre company and studying for my GRE’s (boo), I figure I’ll stick with a pretty simple to-do list today:

• Examine potential for integrating an on-site and forum inventory system
• Track down this ‘quest’ mod…
• Implement chart auto-change feature
• Chart #s 12-19

That’s easy enough. I should be able to get it all done by tonight.

Sidenote: the iPod is working again! Hooray!

As I’m sitting here writing this I have my laptop cracked open in front of me with my tablet all plugged in, so ready to hash out some new Offspring growths and some growth templates for existing monsters over at the Freehold. Meanwhile I’ve got this nice, huge 36″ screen running a crisp new Windows 7 on which my fiancé has lovingly created a new account for Yours Truly, and I really don’t want to leave it alone. It’s so PRETTY!

On Friday I took down the entire breedables.dragon-wings subdomain – not a single thing of that remains, not even the test forums. In its place I’ve started Coterie, which is the exact same thing only with a name and a fresh phpbb3 install, with all but one of the mods that are necessary to get the place running. I figure once I have the FAQ written in its entirety, an example shop so people can understand what it is I’m trying to get at, the objects needed for a Grand Opening event, and some staff hired on I’ll be good to go. (It’s a simple project.) UNlike everything I do for the Freehold, I’m holding off on releasing that link to the public (sn: it’s probably not hard to guess it) so that once it actually goes public, it’s a fully playable game. (See! The monkey does learn!)

Which brings me back to the topic of the Freehold. I’ve probably done absolutely everything wrong logistically, which means that I find myself repeatedly starting over from square 1 as far as active staff/members are concerned. But I’m almost ready. Transfers are not complete but after the offspring fiasco I’ve decided I’m just going to lump everything in an Unclaimed account and let it sit until people decide they want to move over, because – it turns out – I’m not okay handing out unclaimed monsters to other people. It wasn’t something that should have ever crossed my mind to begin with.

The battle system is almost ready. Regardless, monster Tricks and Skills have been implemented, and are being added-to often. Character Skills are next. Once those are done, I want to update the Monsterpedia so that it has the size charts of all of the monsters (the first handful were added the other day, although I drew no attention to them), and I’m going to plug them into the same auto-grow code as the monsters themselves, so that once the monsters grow the size charts automatically update as well. That takes care of some problems for me, and will help keep the players happy.

I worked on Cash Shop backend code for almost 7 hours last Wednesday, and I’m sick of looking at it and I don’t want to touch it right now, but I started with the most complicated sub-section (custom monster species), so the rest should really fly by without too much trouble. I just hate spending that much time in one place, even if it’s for something I love to do.

The next big chunk of code to attack is the Random Genetics system I’ve wanted to implement. I was going to say I think that might be the last big chunk of coding that needs to be done, but that’s not true; we still have the entire inventory system to do. And monster trades.

This is entirely too big a coding project for one person to do on their own, especially when that person has zip free-time as it is, but this truly is something I love to do, and I lack the resources to bring on any outside help. Besides, I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel, and it’s a comfort knowing that everything I’m doing now is to help ensure that the site can run without me paying constant attention to it.

So! My current to-do list, in order of importance:

• Cash Shop
• Random Genetics
• Size Charts
• Full Monsterpedia info
• Updated templates for artists
• Monster trades
• Inventory system

But enough of that!

In the real world – the townhouse is almost done with its renovations (we’ve got the A/C man coming in today to let us know how much it’s gonna cost to get our piece-of-crap unit replaced), we’re basically just looking to get the living room painted/carpeted. There’s still the extension that needs some care, but I’m hoping the boys will leave that alone until our bank accounts have had a chance to rest.

Till next time!