New Release 06/18/08

Ahoy, all and sundry!

As you've no doubt been hearing, a new release is coming to all oceans, as posted by Bungleton (whose forum avatar still makes me snort every time that I see it) here.  Whee!

With this release comes hopefully the fatal crunch of these annoying bugs' exoskeletons:

• Fixed monsters getting overly aggressive and double-ramming in Atlantis

Atlantis navers rejoice! As an oceanmaster, I get a fair number of complaints about problems with the monsters in Atlantis, from them spawning in unlikely and impossible areas to their movement tokens being unreasonably high.  Thankfully, with each patch we've put out to modify creature behavior in Atlantis, I've been seeing fewer and fewer.

• Fixed treasure haul refusing to give out more chests after a gem was swapped next to a chest.

Finally! We'd been getting intermittent reports of chests not showing up in the duty reports and at first were looking into client/server timing issues.  Somewhat incidentally while Cephalopod was bug testing something else, he experienced the bug and, since he'd been testing something under rather unusual circumstances, managed to track down why it was happening.  Here's to more treasure!

• Fixed a timing issue that would allow clients to walk on water.

Actually, I'm going to miss the 'Jesus' petitions and forum threads.

From the Release Notes:

• Beta version of Puzzle Pirates Adventures available for intrepid pirates to explore.

While keeping in mind that this is just the beta and first set of beginning adventures, I really love the potential of Puzzle Pirates Adventures.  It still amazes me how the developers got the game to run in a browser, in an applet, and how slim they tried to keep download times for slower connections.  It's a complex carefully-timed back-and-forth with your computer only grabbing the code and graphics necessary when they need to be used.  *Because* the way it's set up is complex, there are also quite a few bugs to get working because people use a wide variety of systems with varying connection speeds.  Trying to wrap my head around making something work nearly the same across so many sets of circumstances makes my head pound. :)
  When the bugs are worked out, the possibilities of future adventures to take friends on, or player-designed storylines and puzzles is so exciting. Does anybody else remember The Secret Island of Dr. Quandary?

• New "Puzzles" tab on the notice board to show pirates the path to puzzling greatness.

This actually grew out of a suggestion from our partners in Japan, GungHo. They felt that Puzzle Pirates could use a feeling of progression, and a place to look for what to do next.  It took a lot of artwork, but it looks fantastic.  I can't believe we didn't have one before.

• New furniture: Wall map, ship's wheel and dart board. New paints and enamels: rose, mint, lavender, magenta and light green. New clothing: female sleeping hat. New permanent shoppe portrait backgrounds: Distillery by ickessler, Iron Monger by Nordenx and Shipwright by Albini.

Can't say anything new or witty, the items to buy in this release are gorgeous. I never have any money on my player account after releases. :(

• Display icons on a pirate's page for the houses they own or are roommates in.

No more petitions from new players who've lost their shacks for the win!

• Award mugs from chests in Atlantis.

I've heard folks saying this will kill the mugs business, but I hope this is not the case. Records show that very few mugs in general are purchased, and hopefully this will bump up their use, like bludgeons and swords were intended to do

That's it from me kids, go and patch!