Shareplay Newsletter #5 July 20th, 1998 (Issue #4 was Skipped)

 SharePlay Newsletter
No. 5, July 20th, 1998, Monday

Dear SharePlay Newsletter readers,

In this issue you can read about:

1. Panumbra 2.1 is released but has problems
2. Space Merchant beta will open beginning of August 3.
The Magellan Conflict status
4. SharePlay staff changes
5. Webboard updates

1. Panumbra 2.1 is released but has problems

Panumbra 2.1 was released on Tuesday, July 14th. The release took a long time, because the player database had to be converted to the new version. During the conversion, it was necessary to delete old characters, which - were used less than 30 minutes total AND were not used in the last two weeks (these are the "trial" characters) - were used less than 2 hours total AND were not used in the last month.

The new version has several new problems. A lot of them are deeply technical. The worst of those is the mysterious crashing of world areas. Another nasty error has to do with equipping and de-equipping items, which changes existing skill levels for the better or the worse. Other technical problems are that saving a character sometimes fails due to database timeout, and that movement is slow.

We are working on those problems, and we hope to soon have a more stable version. Since the errors don't happen in the test environment, we may have to debug the server on-line, which may result in further stops on the server and frequent restarts. Restart right now takes about an hour, so bear with us. Thank you for your support.

We have updated the Players' Guide on the Panumbra web site. It includes a new user manual now. Check the text messaging section for all text commands available in the new version! We will also update the Tips and Hints soon.

2. Space Merchant will go into open beta in August

More than 1600 people have signed up for Space Merchant. Thank you for your interest! The closed beta currently runs with 600 players. We will open up the beta test for everybody at the beginning of August.

The game is shaping up. We have fixed bugs and added new features based on player feedback. The new features include: overall maps of the galaxies, a chat window, updated help and a lot of game balancing. We are working on enhanced new player protection and computer controlled players.

3. The Magellan Conflict status

The Magellan Conflict is expected to start closed beta at the end of August.

4. SharePlay Staff changes

Two of our staff members are leaving at the end of August. Dave wrote Panumbra server version 2.0, and Space Merchant. Dave goes to work for Microsoft (can't blame him :)). Matt (also known as Althor) is responsible for marketing, and answering our bug reports and organizing the beta tests. He goes back to England to continue his studies. We are glad we had them and we will miss them both. We wish both Dave and Matt good luck in their careers.

5. Webboard updates

We will update the web board soon to the new version, 3.0. We will open new webboards for the new games. The old webboard will become read only. This change will take place in the next 2-3 days.

Thank you for reading our newsletter.

Regards,

Marta Gabnai and the SharePlay development team