Even though many of us were busy with trips, celebrations, and family visits during this short week, we kept plugging away to finish up our goals for sprint 18 and squash any lingering bugs.
We found one of those bugs when San was placing an order on mobile. While the “continue to checkout” button would display, it didn’t do anything when you clicked it. Since that is a pretty important part of the checkout process, (one might argue the most important part), The web team dug into the problem and we’re addressing the issue. We discussed the need for better logging to help find and fix problems like this, and the terrible feeling you get when something broken works fine on an emulator.
The art team remains busy sectioning up the map, adding detail to buildings, and completing any remaining texture and lighting work. The shots below show how good the scenery looks, even in low light.
Jesse finished generating all the remaining images for the products in our store, including the can art for Manimal. Soon “ultra extreme athletes and mathletes, mammals in a hurry, the nocturnal, the diurnal and fans of tasty energy in liquid form,” will be able to hold their very own can. We took another look at packages as well, and decided we need something between “Princess Bernice” and “Makaha”. More on that soon. We talked about sending more notifications to players navigating around the web page and making purchases, and how to improve the email we already send.
You might remember that he needed to hire a contractor to take out a window just to get it into his house, but San has made good use of the giant new rack, and has most of the servers moved over now. We talked about our current hosting abilities and where we need to eventually grow to handle heavy traffic. Chris spent some time with Terry updating Ubuntu over ssh, which was riveting, exquisite suspense.
Finally the last of the minor bugs with the programmatic building system and item spawning system are being squashed. For all intents and purposes both are done, but we need a few animations to smooth things out yet. We continued work on a player compass, with a HUD version already completed to help you navigate through the wilds of Lahaina. We circled back to earlier discussions about security cameras for Houses. We talked more about the logistics of the system, and the necessity of keeping the cameras rolling when people aren’t logged in to please the paranoid, and the small percentage of wildlife voyeurs in our player base.
That’s all for now. We’ll be back with more updates at the start of the new year.
