Fri, 22 Dec 2006
Year End Roundup
Howdy pardners! The end of the year is fast approachin' and we here at the Triple-O Ranch are gettin' ready to take a short breather fer the holidays. Before we head off, I wanted to give y'all a quick update on the state of development and let ya know what you can look forward to in the New Year.

We done got the game launched a few weeks back and we're durn happy about that. Since then we've been ironing out a few wrinkles that poked their head up after beta and we've been workin' on a bunch of excitin' new features.

Upcoming New Features

I want to talk about Gangs which have been mentioned around these parts once er twice before. I reckon I can give you a few details on what that's going to invole at least to start.

• Once a player has been playin' the game fer a while (exact criterion will be explained later), they'll be able to form their own Gang.
• Other players can join an existing Gang whenever they like, and indeed the whole idea to have a bunch of people in a Gang, so lots of little Gangs won't be as much fun as fewer larger Gangs.
• Players in a Gang can hang out and chat in their Gang's Hideout. There they'll be able to browse their Gang's info, see who's in their Gang, if they're online and where, when they last logged on, that sort of thing.
• In the Hideout, Gang members will be able to check out their Gang's private Top Ranked lists. So they can see who's the best in their Gang in each of the different gameplay scenarios and overall.
• In the Hideout they'll also be able to play Gang Matches. In a Gang Match, players from different Gangs battle it out and the winner of the game earns Gang Points for their Gang. Gang Points can later be spent by the Gang Leaders to buy cool stuff for the Gang.
• Based on the accumulation of Gang Points during Gang Matches, Gangs will also be ranked on a Gang Leaderboard so that you can see how your Gang stacks up against the rest.
• Players in a Gang will also be able to pool their resources to buy fancy Gang Outfits. There may even be special duds that are only available to high ranking Gangs.

In addition to Gangs, we've been doing some work on Tournaments and an exciting new feature we're calling Bounties. You'll just have to wait until after the holidays to hear more details about those 'cause old Sheriff Mike is only good for details on one major new feature at a time and I just done finished tellin' ya about Gangs.

Patch Notes

We also shipped a little patch today to fix a few bugs and tidy up some other bits. Here are the details on that:

• We added a "Waiting for players to connect" window during the very beginning of a game where before ya sometimes had to stare at a black screen.
• We fixed some problems with picking up and dropping nuggets.
• We added a few new badges (play more games to figger out how to get 'em).
• We fixed the matchmaking code: it should now properly compare rankings and not put you in a game with a player that's ranked much higher or lower than you if you have "Near my rank" selected.
• If you are logged off due to being idle, or because your connection to our server failed, or because the server rebooted, we now pop up a little window telling you want happened and allowing you to easily restart the game and log back on.
• We fixed a problem where Pardners could sneak into locked Back Parlors by watchin' games and then clickin' Back to Parlor.
• We fixed some problems with Trains and the Engineer card. We also made the Trains move a random number of spaces between 1 and 4 every tick instead of just one. Watch out if yer standin' on them tracks!
• We now inform the players if tie breaker points were awarded at the end of a game. Ties are normally broken by checking to see who did more damage during the game, but if that's a tie too, we randomly assign an extra point to determine the winner.
• We tweaked the Bonus point handling a bit. If you drop a Bonus to pick up another one, you don't get any more points. We also lowerwed the points for the Bonus Star to 25 from 50 because we reckoned 50 was too dang much. Ya also don't get any points fer picking up a bonus that grants an influence to yer unit (like Lucky Horseshoe) if yer unit already has an influence.
• We added the ability to register a complaint about another player if they're being a dang pest. You can click on a player's avatar picture during chat and select "Register complaint..." from the menu.
• There are no doubt various other bug fixes and tweaks that I'm fergettin' so if there was somethin' buggin' ya before this release, give it another shot and see if we ain't done fixed it.

Some of ya may have also noticed that we started doin' some advertisin' on Penny Arcade. If yer a Penny Arcade reader, then a fine Howdy to ya. We'll be doin' more advertisin' in the New Year and hopefully you'll start seein' a heck of a lot more cowpokes turnin' up in town.

That's about all I got to say to ya fer now pardners. It's late and even the Sheriff has to sleep from time to time. Y'all be sure to enjoy yerselves durin' the holidays and we'll do the same. Expect to see us back refreshed and excited come the New Year.

Merry solstice to you and yours,

- Sheriff Mike