Panumbra Newsletter #4 December 17th 1997

No. 4, December 17, 1997, Wednesday Dear Panumbra Newsletter Readers, Thanks to all of you who participated in the preview. This was the first time people from outside were connecting to the server. Of course we discovered quite a few problems. Here is a summary of the preview: We had to reboot the server 4 times. This was due to some thread crashing and suddenly starting to consume 100% processor time, which locked up everyone else. (Of course that did not happen before when we tested it with lots of characters.) We will redesign some of the server to be less multi-threaded, which will reduce the possibility of lock-ups. Some people could not get in, we suspect that it has to do with which browser they used. We got reports that Netscape 4.04 could not connect, and Internet Explorer did not work for several people either. Only Netscape 3.x seemed to be problem-free for everyone, except that is the slowest possible browser, which caused some lag. We are on that problem - it is possible that we have to have different versions of the client for different browsers. When we were in, we had smaller problems with getting around (and mainly lost) and seeing well, and we discovered that text messaging is a little confusing to use. We will change that. And we will add a compass. Apart from that, when the server was up, we, the developers, had fun. The game is really only fun when you team up with others, and try to bang upon monsters. We had a period for about an hour when that happened and it was a lot of fun. Those of you who tried the preview, we would like to know your oppinion. Please send me an e-mail to mcc@manton.com. Please include in your e-mail: - what browser you used - problems to connect (if any) - how was your lag - what was good, why - what was bad, why - any suggestions about the interface - overall, what is your oppinion: is this a good start or not? Thank you. We are counting on your feedback. Other news: We will be going on Christmas vacation. Even our computers will be gone for a while - they need to be cleaned from the smoke damage from the fire. We will be back in operation the 29th of December, and get on with the bugs. On the 26th and 27th of December, the web board will be down due to power-outage in our building. They are replacing the transformer which blew up in the fire. The web board maybe down due to cleaning of the web-board server, but that will not be for more than an hour sometimes next week. We wish everyone wonderful holidays and a merry Christmas! The Panumbra development team