It has been nearly 8 months since I've last updated people as to what I've been working on around here. In the last few months, my studies at the university have managed to gain the most of my attention and thwart my attempts to get anything productive done here at BatMUD with the exception of a few bugfixes every now and then. I suppose I'll take a few minutes to talk about what I am working on and what I've got planned for the future:

Facebook/Twitter


Early in 2012 I worked to secure the pages and rights to urls in order for BatMUD establish itself within the world of Social Networking. To date, the BatMUD Facebook page has amassed 277 "Likes" with a potential reach of over 62,000 people (friends of fans) and an average reach of 2,000 people a week. Twitter, which seems to have less of a foothold in our userbase than Facebook, has 48 followers, though it has been largely unused.

On the horizon, I plan to integrate some in-game accomplishments and publish them automatically to Twitter and Facebook, such as informs, the death of large monsters, certain events, wizlocks, and other things. Also, I'm investigating the possibility of integrating the Batclient into a Facebook application so that it can be run and promoted as such. Users would then be able to save their settings to Bat servers so that they could play through an applet or as the actual application.

Bugfixing



Be sure to check out BatMUD's web-based bug management tool at:
http://batzilla.bat.org

It's no secret that I enjoy fixing bugs. Well, fixing bugs isn't quite the correct term to what I do. It is more properly defined as "Issue Resolution." Numerically, I have closed just under 3000 reports (Bugs, Typos, and Ideas) submitted by players over the years. Even though the number is high and considerably more than other wizards, I don't see it as much of an accomplishment. A lot of them are merely trivial fixes (as are most bugs), and with more experiences in fixing them as well as access to the game code, they become swifter and easier to resolve. Not only that, but as I go through them, a lot have already been fixed, but wizards never bothered to look for or close bug reports relating to issues reported to them (generally by tell). At the end of the year here, we are at just roughly 78% resolution rate on all submitted issues, gaining on an eventual resolution of all reports. We have also seen a distinguishable decrease in the amount of reports submitted in recent years. This can be attributed to 1) the removal of the 'idea' command, 2) the decrease in the size of the average user base, and 3) the resolution of reports reducing the need for duplicate reports. The following graph illustrates this decline:



If it is any consolation to those who have wondered why their bug has not been fixed or responded to in quite some time, since somewhere between 2004-2005 when the current system was implemented, there have been over 21,000 bug/typo/idea submissions to developers, around 17,000 of which have been solved.

Las Islas de Tormentas
(Paint-drawn rendition by yours truly)

Las Islas de Tormentas is a continental expansion as well as a thematic area package. Primarily inhabited by pirates, Las Islas will be home to a number of areas and is a larger long-term project that has included many wizards and whose originality pre-dates even my immortality. This release will include the last headquarters of the sailor factions (Pirates), the last planned/coded expansion to the ship combat system, and several hundred new rooms of content coded by 6-7 different developers. Its release is planned for sometime within the next 2-3 weeks, depending on wizards' abilities to conform to the set schedule.

Daerwyn's Keep

The City of Daerwon, more commonly referred to as the "Laenor Ferry," has much bigger thematic relevance and had been intended to be much larger. It is being expanded to seat the Daerwyn's Keep Naval Outpost as well as a large selection of shops, somewhere in size at about 50% of what Lorenchia is. I expect to release this somewhere around March, given its current progress and required work to complete.

Arelium Stronghold

As people call it, the "Millenium Falcon" of Arelium, this Stronghold is supposed to thematically serve as the castle of the Capital City of the Kingdom of Agathoria. Home of King Julius Agathon, this may serve as a new governmental headquarters for the region as well as serve certain military...functions. With its current progress and discussion, I'm expecting its release somewhere in the late Summer or early Fall of 2013.

The Bearers of True Rot - Nergal

Nergal is to be the last installment of the new Lords of Chaos Series. A project now between myself and another wizard, this guild will be based on disease, death, rotting, and decay. For all intensive purposes, it is on a '2 weeks' timeline until some other projects have been completed.