News

Overall progress for the Loradon 3.0 Preview has reached 86%!
www.ifthensoftware.net/loradon_online/progress/

The IfThen Software Forums were upgraded last week, introducing new features such as a new skin and the ability to rate individual posts. Be sure to check it out!

Version 1.2.3 of Stick Adventures Online has been released! This new version includes the following:

• Security has been enhanced.
• Double-clicking the login button will no longer kick you out of the game.
• Typing a symbol into your username on the login screen will no longer disconnect you.
• The grammar used in a death message has been fixed.

From the Programmer
Written by Invisible

This week I have mostly been doing design work for Loradon 3.0 and fixing glitches in SAO. However, there are a few things that I can talk about which might be interesting.

I have looked into SEH (Structured Exception Handling) which would allow me to create better error catching code. From what I understand, I would be able to create a version of the "Send/Don't Send" window that you see sometimes on Windows, and have it report the error to us instead of to Microsoft (who obviously wouldn't be able to do anything about it).

Currently you need to create an account for each of our online products in order to play them. You also need a separate account to talk on the forums, and IRC (can be accessed at the top of the forum index) has it's own account system. To make things easier for our customers, I am starting plans to allow the creation of a central account that you can use throughout our community. Luckily, our forum's software has the ability to plug into different login systems, so that part will be somewhat simple. I have not yet found out if a similar system is available in our IRC software, but I will continue to search. When this new system is put in place, you will be required to create a new account with it. Don't worry about losing your previous accounts though. You will be allowed to associate a Loradon Online account, a forum account, and some number of SAO accounts to your new global account. If this system is released after the Loradon 3.0 Preview, you will also be able to associate your Loradon 3.0 account.

It appears as though send() was not completely causing the random disconnect glitch in SAO. After fixing send() to continue trying if there is a non-fatal failure, players are still being disconnected. The only way I am going to fix this bug is by getting a client-side log of packets sent to and received from the server. Unfortunately, very few players would likely bother emailing me the log. To remedy this, the client will automatically send the debug logs to a special server when it disconnects. I will most likely also use this "special server" to receive error reports when I implement SEH.


Community Spotlight
Written by pifreak and Invisible

This week was very exciting for Stick Adventures Online players. IfThen Software has been updating the game by fixing glitches, increasing security, and re-ordering the GUI. Some unused parts have been removed as to not confuse new players. The game is almost glitch free now, and there were as many as 14 players online at once.

Over in the Loradon Online community, things have been staying active. Perhaps the new forum design has encouraged new posts and activity. There is still discussion about who is to be included in Loradon Legends.