3.0.1.22

New Features

You can always find the changelog here https://github.com/kellyelton/OCTGN/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md, but here are some things that we’ve added:

• Fixed problem with people with bad connections logging in – http://www.octgn.info/help/index.php?p=/discussion/comment/79
• Fixed twitter feed causing errors – http://www.octgn.info/help/index.php?p=/discussion/comment/82#Comment_82
• Fixed settings not sticking and always reinstalling games on start – http://www.octgn.info/help/index.php?p=/discussion/comment/80#Comment_80
• Fixed a hosting but that would cause some games to disconnect players
• Removed the XML Protocol from OCTGN

I don’t have too much else to say, still pluggin away at the new version. Stay tuned.

Some Links
Github Page: https://github.com/kellyelton/OCTGN
OCTGN Site: http://www.octgn.info
Get Help: http://www.octgn.info/help
IRC: irc.freenode.net:6667/#octgn
Mailing List: http://groups.google.com/group/octgn-dev
Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/octgn_official

Helloooooooo

Hello again,
It’s time again for a little chat. There are a few new things to cover, and some current stuff that’s in the pipeline, plus some new resources.

New Features

You can always find the changelog here https://github.com/kellyelton/OCTGN/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md, but here are some things that we’ve added:

• Added a HELP FORUM http://www.octgn.info/help – USE THIS FOR HELP IF YOU AREN’T PATIENT ENOUGH TO WAIT FOR A RESPONSE IN IRC, and also to check if your question has already been answered!
• *We tuned down the sanbox for python scripts.
• There’s a new box that will allow you to close any background OCTGN’s you have running
• If you log in, and you’re logged in somewhere else, it boots the other user properly
• Unborked offline games
• Added auto-updating
• Moved the install directory to My Documents/Octgn
• Added ‘Help’ to the file menu
• Game list autorefreshes
• Chat users are now sorted alphabetically(took long enough, eh?)
• Adding friends and chatting works again
• Added game isolation(Games are unaware of each other, for the most part)

*Python Sandbox
Alright, so the deal here is that we’ve tuned down the restrictions on the python sandbox. There are a few reasons we decided to do this. First off, we updated to the newest version of IronPython, and that blew up games with the current permission scheme. Truthfully I think though, the nice thing about tuning down the python sandbox, is it gives the game developers much more control over there games(For those interested, here’s one post http://www.voidspace.org.uk/ironpython/winforms/index.shtml).

Incoming – New version on its way.

We have a new version coming out soon. We’ve been spending quite a bit of time redesigning the UI to give a fresh look. We’re also concentrating on making things as streamlined as possible(no more popup boxes that cock block your games). Here are some features it will have

Master integrated window
With this next version there will be no more Login window and then a Online window. These windows will be consolidated into one window. One of the main reasons for this is because we didn’t want to keep users from being able to access features if they don’t log in. For example, it is currently not possible to install a game if you are not logged in.

Clean new look
We figured while we’re at it, we might as well reskin this sucker. Many windows are being redesigned from the ground up to look and work better. The current theme was spawned from OCTGN 2 and a mutated RibbonControl having a child. Every single window is going to look different(even the gameboard).

The main thing(other than the new skin) is we will be tossing the RibbonControl out on its butt. To be honest, it’s been tough to maintain, deploy, and we just can’t make it look good. Besides that it’s quite bulky and doesn’t fit the current ‘view’ we have for the next version.

Matchmaking
This one I think is going to be pretty cool. The idea is you click ‘Matchmaking’, pick a game you have installed, choose any game subtypes you’d be interested in playing, and just click ‘Find a Game’. OCTGN will handle everything else. No more joining a room while the admin is off in the backyard beheading chickens. Every user will have a certain amount of time to ‘Ready Up’, and if they don’t, the game disbans and you end up back in queue.

Please note that this feature may change by the time it goes live. We are open to suggestions.

Prove It
Just so you know that I’m not just making things up, here are some images of the new OCTGN

Image link(cause wordpress breaks the image) –> http://i45.tinypic.com/345iseb.png

Image link(cause wordpress breaks the image) –> http://i45.tinypic.com/4fz502.png

Alright, so what else?

Well nothing really? Just have fun, and stay tuned!

Some Links
Github Page: https://github.com/kellyelton/OCTGN
OCTGN Site: http://www.octgn.info
Get Help: http://www.octgn.info/help
IRC: irc.freenode.net:6667/#octgn
Mailing List: http://groups.google.com/group/octgn-dev
Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/octgn_official

It’s nothing serious, no seriously.

Hey guys,
Just realized it’d been awhile since anything’s been posted on here so I wanted to jump on and let you all know what’s going on.

New Server

We got a new server setup that’s been running beautifully for us. Last time it went down it had been running for over a month.

The reason things were so shaky there for awhile is the server was being attacked, and the software we were using wasn’t able to deal with it. Now that we have the new software though, things have been great.

New Features

You can always find the changelog here https://github.com/kellyelton/OCTGN/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md, but here are some things that we’ve added:

• Lobby users are now in alphabetical order(finally)
• Lobby is now opt-in(that is, when you log on, you don’t auto login to the lobby chat)
• You can now uninstall games
• Added some lobby sounds(with options to disable I believe)
• New database(sqlite)
• Autoinstall from directory on startup
• Python game error catching(as opposed to crashes)
• Python game install syntax checks(so you don’t install a game that’s broken)
• Added Game Rules window to play
• No longer uses Google to authenticate
• GlobalVariables for game devs.
• Headlines on login page
• Offline messages
• Added About window and links on login page
• Can set custom data directory for octgn
• Can now filter game list by game name

Direction

We are currently in development of the next version of OCTGN, 4.0. This release will be cross platform(in every sense of the word), and include some pretty awesome things. Here’s a brief list.

• Install games/install updates via URL’s(no more madness)
• Cross Platform
• Offline play
• Better support for other games besides card games

The End of the Post

For those who stuck around through the server issues, thank you and we’re sorry. We hope you think it was worth the pain. For those that bailed when things got a bit rough, come back and check it out.

We are also still looking for help whenever possible.We have lots of people who just join up, fix a few bugs, and then leave which is totally fine. Any help you can offer will be greatly appreciated.

All in all we have some pretty exciting new features, and many exciting new features to come, and it’s been great developing working on this software for you guys.

GG,
Kelly Elton

Some Links
Github Page: https://github.com/kellyelton/OCTGN
OCTGN Site: http://www.octgn.info
IRC: irc.freenode.net:6667/#octgn
Mailing List: http://groups.google.com/group/octgn-dev
Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/octgn_official

DUN DUN DUN

Under New Command 

First off I’d like to say hi, my name’s Kelly. I’m here to let you know that a new team has taken over development of OCTGN(scary, right?).

We’ve tried our best to make the project as open ,playable, bug free, and awesome as possible. We’ve fixed hundreds of bugs, moved the source code to GitHub, and added many new features that are sure to keep your drooling for days.

That being said I would like to formally invite you to join us. Try out the new client, join us on freenode.net room #octgn, and check out the GitHub repo .

So since I’m not one to talk forever, and I think we’ll do a later post to introduce the new main development team later, I’d like to say, have a nice day!

Oh and p.s.

Follow this link for the new website(we’ll get octgn.net up to date soon)
http://www.octgn.info

Maintainer(s) wanted

During my holidays I realized something. O2 releases have been further and further apart, while not getting bigger at all (quite the opposite in fact).

It’s been hard for me to accept it, but I am not really taking O2 anywhere soon. Not that I lack ideas! I have a long list of awesome and cool things that you’d surely love to see inside OCTGN.

But I simply don’t spend enough time coding. I could even say that I don’t spend time on O2 at all anymore.

I am trying to do too many things at the same time. I love to practice sport, play music, spend time with my friends, have a few other projects and many other things. Uh yeah, and I have to go to work, too.

The fact is, I’m trying to do too many things and as a consequence I don’t achieve as much as I’d like to in several domains. OCTGN and music in particular.

So it was hard but I decided that I should focus on what matters most for me. And OCTGN got the cut… The fact that I can’t even play that much anymore didn’t help .

I’m not killing OCTGN but I think that I should be honest with you. I am unable to continue to push OCTGN forward and I’m going to stop trying. I’m sad for two reasons. First because there are lots of things I would love to do for O2, but I simply can’t. And second because I know there are many people playing with O2 and they’re going to be disappointed. So am I. 😦

So what is next? As I said I’m not going to kill anything. The current release is always there for you to play with. The forums are staying – at least at the moment – and the source code is available in the SVN repository (it has always been).

But if O2 wants a future some people in the community have to stand up and work for it. I would love if someone could continue my work and maintain O2. I would gladly help anyone serious to do so. If nobody volunteers I suppose it’s slowly going to die.

I’m going to miss you all… Or maybe I’ll finally have more time to play with you, who knows!

Kind regards,

–jods

PS: I hate those legal matters, but I figure I ought to write it somewhere. The current source code is mine but I grant anyone the right to take it and modify it as long as it remains free. This is what I always did, nothing changes. I forbid you to make money out of OCTGN, you should contact me if you want to do that.

It’s holiday time!

Hi everyone! I hope you enjoy the summertime… I sure do and I’m going to visit New York for 10 days so don’t worry if I don’t answer your messages the next 2 weeks.

BTW if you have suggestions on things that I positively have to do while in NY, let me know

Spammers

I think spammers have created bots that can figure out the captcha automatically. I received registrations like crazy and had more than 600 users to approve today… out of which I only approved 5!

The bottom line is that if you or someone you know has registered and wasn’t approved, you were rejected. This wasn’t done on purpose so just try to register again.

Best way to get approved for sure is to register and drop me an e-mail.

Built-in chat

Today I publish OCTGN 0.10. It contains a few fixes plus a new built-in chat client, so that it is easier for people to connect to #octgn and find players to play with.

This client is in fact an IRC client and still uses the same #octgn channel as we do today. So you don’t have to use it in order to see players in the channel.

This new IRC client is a bit experimental, which means:
1. hopefully there won’t be too many bugs;
2. it is not as full-featured as a “real” IRC client.

Point 2. is important. The built-in IRC client basically has only 2 features today: channel chat and private chat. It’s key advantage is ease of use for people who are not used to IRC and easy access from OCTGN.

This means that if you are a moderator of #octgn you’ll probably don’t want to use it. If you already have a good client like mIRC, you probably won’t either. On the other hand I expect people who use mibbit from the website (or worse: who use nothing!) to switch to this new option.

In the future I’d like to build a simpler way to invite people for games on top of that client and maybe other features (like filtering people by the game they have installed, or sharing files maybe).

Comments are welcome.

Closing tickets and fighting spammers…

I haven’t worked on OCTGN for a long time now. I felt a bit bad about it, so I figured I’d look at the ton of tickets people opened recently.

The result is the 0.9.4 release, which closes 13 tickets in the tracker. There’s a fair number of bug fixes and a few new features exposed in Python (for a complete list please have a look at the tracker activity).

– players is a global array containing all players
– shared is the “global” player for games that have one
– whisper() writes to the local player chat only
– card.targetedBy checks if a card is targeted (and by whom)
– table.create() now returns the newly created cards

(API details are in the wiki and usually the corresponding tickets.)

Also, this release is slightly leaner because I totally removed the XML scripts. If your game still uses them, it will NOT work in OCTGN 0.9.4.

In other news, since the beginning of 2011 spammers have started to try to register on our forum massively. I have to filter out hundreds of registrations.

The consequence is that I may easily have dropped a few legitimate users. If you are (or know) one, don’t hesitate to contact me. I am not willingly rejecting players.

0.9.3.2

Nothing worth noticing but I fixed two regressions in 0.9.3 and added one small “feature”:
– Fix: Click on Quit in the ribbon when the ribbon is minimized results in a hang;
– Fix: Player “indicators” was not displayed in the tab header anymore;
– New: one can remove packs from the limited dialog box.