Walking the Edge of Reality

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Walking the Edge of Reality

A look behind the curtain to my world...

META - Insert Brains Through Slot In Door
Monday, March 30, 2009 3:37 AM

Today wasn't a good day, at least from my point of view.

First off, like I mentioned earlier I think, the two firewalls that were theoretically "unlocked" weren't supposed to be, or at least the mechanism wasn't supposed to let you. But there was a bug in my code that allowed it. And, for the record, I get an email every time someone does and succeeds; I have an Inbox with 107 "Firewall XXX unlocked!" emails in it.

Today I released a puzzle I had designed for a few days, ever since the firewalls started getting unlocked. The result was themed around the respective firewall's name; logically, after the first step of "unlocking" came "entry"; once the firewall is unlocked the login becomes available, so that has to come from somewhere.

The problem? The firewall that I chose for the first "entry" puzzle was never unlocked by the players. Hey, at least it started with an "A"... I was CLOSE!

So I was forced to magically unlock it.

That was "Oops #1" for the day.

"Oops #2" is that, after making modifications so that the firewalls can only be unlocked when I'm ready, I inadvertently introduced another bug at the opposite end of the spectrum, so now *NO* firewall could be unlocked.

So I was forced to magically unlock those, too.

This is not going well.

-=O=-

And, arguably, I can lay some blame on my hosting solution: GoDaddy.

1) They do not allow external access to their databases. So I cannot develop the website locally, connecting across the 'net to the live database. So I have to test with a local database, which is all well and good unless you have to move data back and forth. And the only way to get the database from GoDaddy is to do a full database backup/restore, which will replace my entire local database.

And, for the record, almost everything hosted on the BrainClouds server (all "in game" sites) share the same database.

2) Almost at the same time that the puzzle was solved, GoDaddy Authentication Services crapped out. So I see the bug, make an effort to connect to the database to correct it, and... I... CAN'T! None of my logins worked.

Anyway, I think things are in order for now, at least until I screw it up again.

-=O=-

All this is my Achilles' Heel: my creations focus heavily on technology, and as such are inherently more complex and more susceptible to even the smallest of problems. And it is VERY difficult to test this sort of thing, especially on a live system while a game is in progress.

And I myself have a hard time asking for testers. Why? If you're a tester... you can't play the game. Picture me going to the UnFiction forums and posting a message saying "anyone wanna TEST my game?" I'd get a hundred people offering to help, in the same manner as I've gotten help requests from web designers to ranked officers in the US Military.

But as soon as you help, you're behind the curtain; no game for you. It might not bother the person helping, or me for that matter, but one more person helping me is one less person in my audience. And, for now, my audience is pretty small as it is (at least for this game).

So if you offer help and I decline it, understand that for the most part it's because I WANT you to play the game! My purpose in doing all of this is to entertain you, and I will take every opportunity to do so.

Posted by David "Nighthawk" Flor on Monday, March 30, 2009 3:37 AM

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