Guild of Writers

I've switched the DNS over. When the change propagates (might take 24 hours depending on your location), you'll see http://seltani.net/ and http://www.seltani.net/ switch from the static journal to the game server. http://dev.seltani.net/ will continue to work.

Once that settles, I'll change dev.seltani.net to a redirect. (It will still work, but it will drop the "dev." in your browser's URL bar so that people stop bookmarking it.)

Looking good!

I notice that issue #129 is the last open issue for the "Non-Dev Publicity" milestone. :D

And we're in beta! Congratulations, everyone! (but mostly Belford)

More an admission than an advancement... you people haven't managed to crash the server once, or even force a "vault reset". I can't very well call it alpha, can I? :)

Well, it hasn't been stress-tested, has it?

Stress-testing is the secret part of my gamejam plan. :)

A schedule!

- Sunday, Nov 10, 1 pm Eastern time: Opening ceremony in the Seltani district plaza. At that point I will announce the theme.

(The theme is just for inspiration. The ceremony is optional, too -- I'll add the theme to this post once I announce it.)

- Nov 10-23: Work on your Age! (Or Ages; multiple entries is cool.) When it's ready, add it to the bookshelf in the Seltani plaza. Or if you want to go for the dramatic reveal, wait and add it on...

- Sunday, Nov 24, 1 pm Eastern time: Wrap-up. Meet back in the plaza, start visiting Ages. We can have group tours over the course of the afternoon, and then hang out and discuss what we've seen.

(I know that the meeting time is not ideal for everybody in every time zone. I have schedule restrictions too, so I just picked a time. If you can't be at either ceremony or both, I apologize -- follow along on the blog or the forums.)

I will be around these on-line areas (including Seltani itself) to answer questions during the two-week period. Hope to see you there.

EDIT-ADD: Jam theme: "Remaining Light". (Interpret that however you want.)

It would be super nice if there could be some sort of alert or notification when something happens while I'm in another tab/window. A sound playing, the window title changing, something like that. Currently if I want to lurk/idle somewhere public I have to remember to keep checking back in frequently, which (1) uses up a lot of attention and (2) has a high latency – minutes rather than seconds – between someone talking and me noticing.

In other words, Seltani is currently not very friendly to multitasking. I can have other things in the background while playing Seltani, but I can't have Seltani in the background while doing other things. (Compare IRC, IM, facebook, etc.)

I think this would be a big boost for adoption, since it would make it much easier to encounter other people in the game, creating more reason to log in, and so forth. Population in a multiplayer game is a positive feedback loop, and idling-with-alerts can make the difference between lively and deserted.

Good point -- I've added an issue for this.

I second Pavitra's post.