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Post news Report RSS It's bugfixing time again

This blogposts, I explain the bugs I'm currently fixing

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Hi all, it's that time of year again: bugfixing time! If you've been following development of Olvand for a while, you probably know how I work: I spend several weeks implementing all kinds of new features, and then clean the mess I made before I do a new release. This development period is always highly satisfying, as the huge to-do list of small tasks that has usually emerged at this point quickly vanishes, but it's less exciting to read about: it's basically me, trying out some weird corner cases that I thought of while cycling home, discovering that the game indeed does not behave as intended, and then doing some changes so it will. On top of that, I always have some minor bugs reported by players that still need to be fixed, and some minor functionality that I forgot to implement... again, as I said, highly satisfying for me, but less exciting than large new features. Therefore, as I've done before, I will be quiet here again for a few weeks, but not before I give you some idea of what kind of smaller things I'm fixing. Here we go!

Revealing more info about your fellow players
You may remember that I'm currently on a [quest to make the game more addictive], and that one of the ways I'm trying to do this is by making the hunt for achievements a bit more competitive. This in turn I'm trying to achieve by making everyone's 'level' openly available on the website, so everyone can see how 'good' you are at the game, and you can see how many achievements you still need to be better than your friend.

In the mean time, I've come up with and implemented two more small additions to encourage competitivity. First of all, the level is shown directly next to your name on your profile page:


Furthermore, there are now search boxes on several places, so you can actually look up your friends:


The names below pop up as you type, using some good old AJAX technology :).

Limits on carts
Like any of the existing 'inventories' (empty hand, knapsack, bag), there is a limit to how much space and weight you can carry in a cart: when you put in more than you can hold, you get an error message. However, when you're not pulling the cart, but interacting with it as an object on the ground, so far you could put in an unlimited amount of stuff. This could lead to the unpleasant surprise that the cart you've just been putting stuff in for the last five minutes is too heavy, and that you're going to have to revert the process. This is of course terribly annoying, so I've put in some visual help:


The next step is to actually block people from putting stuff in that doesn't fit, which I expect to be quite a challenge. We'll see!

Fixing the darkness
And finally, when I was creating the nights in the overworld, I completely broke the darkness underground. I've been rebuilding it step by step, and it's now back again. And while I was busy with that, I discovered by accident that it was possibly to build lampposts underground, while it was impossible to campfires. That should of course be the other way around:


Next up is making sure the campfires are also saved underground, which for some mysterious reason is not the case yet.

All right, bugfix-man to the rescue, see you in a few weeks!

If you want more development, see [twitter] or [facebook]. If you want to be a tester, you can subscribe on [olvand.com].

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Twillypop
Twillypop

Oh wow, achievements actually have reason now XD

Good update Wosesel. Kill those Buggs!!!! ;]
( BTW, ur blog posts are always good to see ;] )

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Woseseltops Author
Woseseltops

Thanks a lot, Twilly :)

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