Procyon Games

Website transfer fixed

2011-05-19T19:27:00.000-07:00

There was a bug in the transfer code; it wasn't working if the person you were transferring to wasn't already a customer. It now works even if the avatar you're transferring to has never bought anything at Procyon; however, they still have to be in the Procyon database (which means they have to have played at least one complete game of anything).

Website Transfer

2011-05-15T16:03:00.001-07:00

You can now transfer your Procyon game licenses yourself, on the web.

I've always claimed that my licensing system gives you "the best of copy-ok and transfer-ok." It's not possible with the current permission system to sell an item that is actually copy- and transfer-ok, because people would just make their own copies and sell them. But it's nice to have a copy-ok object, just in case it ever breaks or doesn't rez properly. And it's also nice to have a transfer-ok object, so you can give it to someone else. Second Life merchants generally have to choose which way to go.

But with licensing, you can have both. You can redeliver your game to yourself at any time, and keep multiple copies in your inventory, so you don't have to worry about rez errors, like a copy-ok object. And you can transfer your license to an alt, or give it as a gift, like a transfer-ok object. So you get the best of both worlds.

Except, in order to transfer your license, you had to send me a message and ask me to do it. I have to register the change in the Procyon Games database. People don't transfer their licenses very often, so it wasn't a huge deal.

But I've now implemented self-service transfers. Any Procyon game owner can visit the Customer section of the web site, click the Transfer link, and send their license to anyone else. You don't have to wait for me; it happens instantly. It will even deliver a new copy of the game to the recipient.

Be careful! Transferring your license is permanent. The other person becomes the new owner of the game. Your own games will stop working, and if you regret your transfer the only way to get it back is if the new owner decides to transfer it back to you.

If you own multiple licenses, you can transfer some or all of them to the new owner.

Give it a try, let me know what you think.

Names are back online

2011-05-13T19:22:00.000-07:00

Some people may have noticed blank spaces where the names usually go on the scoreboards.

If you don't know, I have a texture-based system for name display. Everyone who plays gets their own texture. It's automatically generated on my website and uploaded to Second Life. The benefits of this are, it uses fewer prims (just one prim for a name!) and it looks a lot nicer, too.

The downside is, I have to pay for every new texture I upload. So I took the system down a couple days ago and reconfigured it. It is now a little more selective in who it generates names for. If you just play one game and never return, it won't make a name for you.

For anyone else who wants to see their name, just keep playing. It may take a day or two for your name to get through the system.

If you've been playing for a couple days and you still don't see your name on the scoreboard, send me a message and I'll look into it.

Website Redelivery

2010-10-31T14:47:00.001-07:00

I've added a redelivery option to the Procyon Games website. If you are a Procyon game owner, you can get a new copy of the game redelivered to you any time from the website. You don't even have to be logged in to Second Life.

All the previous methods of redelivery are still there. You can get a new copy of the game by touching any vendor in-world, or by using the remote control that came with your game ("/8 deliver game"). The website function is just another convenience.

To access it, go to the main Customer page. In your License section you should see Redeliver links for each game license you own. If you don't see the links, hover your mouse over the game you want to redeliver.

Display Names and You

2010-10-27T19:31:00.001-07:00

Linden Lab is rolling out its Display Names feature, which, if you haven't heard by now, allows anyone to change the name that appears in their tag and chat.

The scoreboards I use for my games display players' names as textures, and it's too expensive to change them to match people's Display Names. Plus, it would make tracking high scores difficult. So here is how it's going to work.

The scoreboards will track your Full Name, not your Display Name. For existing players ("oldbies"), your Full Name is the same Avatar name you're used to. For new accounts, their Full Name is their account name, plus "Resident." However, the scoreboards won't show the "Resident" surname, so they will effectively show the Account Name.

So, if you are an existing player, nothing will change. Your name as it is displayed on scoreboards will not change.

If you are a new resident, then the scoreboards will show your Account name.

For all avatars, if you change your Display Name, it will have no effect on the name that is displayed on the scoreboards. That might be a little confusing, if your name shows as one thing in chat and another on the score display. So a little heads-up for everyone.

See who's playing your games

2010-10-22T19:32:00.000-07:00

Game owners can now view a list of recent (past 2 weeks) games played on the games they have rezzed in-world. Click on the "Local Games" link in the Customer section of the web site.

Take it Easy Head-to-Head v2.14

2010-10-18T19:26:00.000-07:00

I've posted an update to the Take it Easy Head-to-Head edition.

Tile textures are pre-loaded, so you won't have to wait for textures to rez in the middle of a game.
The selection ring which marked the current tile is gone. Instead, the current tile will blink and pulse.
The game is mod-ok

To upgrade, visit my store and touch the Take it Easy vendor. It will give you a new copy of the game.

Team Captains Listing

2010-10-02T13:20:00.000-07:00

The Team Captain names are now listed in the team rankings for En Garde and Can't Stop.

Remember, if you are a team Captain and you don't want your name listed, you can set yourself anonymous in the customer Account Settings page.

Customers can now set Anonymous

2010-09-28T20:48:00.000-07:00

In preparation for the Team Leader display, I have added an Anonymous setting for Procyon game owner accounts. If you own a game, you can go to the Customer section and tick the check box for "Anonymous Leader". If you don't do that, then your name will appear as Team Captain in the Team Ranking listings.

Nobody's name is appearing yet. I haven't enabled the Team Captain display. I'll give everyone a few days to set themselves anonymous if they want before doing so.

Team Captains and Privacy

2010-09-25T11:27:00.000-07:00

There have been some requests to add the Team Captain names on the Team Rank display page. Next to each team, you would see the name of the person who owns that team, the team captain.

Obviously, some people would not want their names displayed there. So I'll need to add another privacy option, one that would let you remain anonymous.

The question is, should the name display be opt-out or opt-in?

If it's opt-out, then all team captains' names would be displayed by default. You would have to check the box in your account options to enable privacy.

If it's opt-in, then nobody's name would show up by default. You would have to uncheck the "anonymous" option in your account settings.

What do you think should be the default? Post a comment to this blog entry to let me know (or email me).

Personally, I would prefer to make it opt-out. I'm afraid if it's opt-in then most people won't enable it. There's a lot of owners who don't even know this website exists. So the names would all be blank, and it wouldn't be much different from not having the name display at all.

Linden Dollar Strengthening

2010-09-11T12:40:00.000-07:00

For the first time in over three months, the Linden Dollar showed signs of strength, as the current offer price for sell orders ticked down one notch, from 266 to 265. This is the first real good news I've seen on the Second Life economy.

Ram Linden has posted an "Economic Spotlight" on June's Lindex meltdown. The official explanation is that when they merged people's XStreet and Second Life accounts, the extra Linden Dollars swamped the economy. Nobody seems to be especially convinced by that. I have my own suspicions, which I hope to be able to write up soon.

One other thing I'd like to comment on. In his blog post, Ram writes: "...we are committed to allowing the economy to fluctuate based on its own market forces." I'm sorry, but that's an outright lie. For almost four years, Linden Lab kept the price of the Linden Dollar artificially low, by selling massive quantities of their own currency on the Lindex through the Supply Linden account. The value never increased beyond L$259/US$. If the economy had truly been allowed to "fluctuate based on its own market forces," the L$ would be worth much more today, and content creators would have been compensated much more for their efforts. Instead, by artificially clamping down on the Second Life economy, Linden Lab was able to pad their income by millions of dollars a month.

License Info

2010-09-08T20:07:00.001-07:00

The Customer Support page now lists all the licenses you own.

Every Premiere Line game is licensed to your avatar. This allows you to redeliver new copies any time you want, and makes upgrades easier. Occasionally people forget how many licenses they have. If you click on a vendor, it will tell you, but now you can also see all your licenses in one place.

Customer section rearranged

2010-09-07T21:10:00.001-07:00

I've moved a couple items on the website. The Team Roster and Local Scores pages which used to be in the Players section, have been moved to the Customers section.

Privacy mode

2010-08-29T09:51:00.000-07:00

One of the features of Procyon Games is the Recent Games listing. Every Premiere Line game like En Garde and Can't Stop shows a list of recent games on its web page. This is a great feature for new players, who often don't know anyone else who plays the game, and lets them find other players. It's also good for people like club owners, who use the games as a source of traffic. It can direct people straight to their land.

But some people don't want their location advertised and have asked for a privacy mode. So now I've added that. There is a new Customer section on the Procyon web site, which can be accessed if you own a Premier Line game. In that section you can enable Privacy Mode, which will hide your games from the Recent Games list. This hides games played on your set. Any game played on any game you own won't appear in the Recent Games. But if you play a game on someone else's set, that will show up (as long as they aren't set private too).

Lindex Statistics are back online

2010-08-28T20:52:00.001-07:00

It's taken me two months, but I've finally got the Lindex Statistics back online. What happened? Linden Lab doesn't publish the Sell Offer volume numbers, at least not in an easy-to-download format like they do for some of the other economic statistics. The only way to get it is to scrape it off the website. A couple months ago they changed the way their website login works, and it took me a while to figure out how to deal with it. But it seems to be working now, so the graphs should all be up to date.

In the meantime, the Lindex dollar managed to stabilize itself. The sell orders that had piled up between the old value of 259 and the new 266 gradually filled, as people repositioned them at the new level. The total volume of orders shrank from an unsustainable 200M to a more manageable 100M. And that's where we are today.

It's still worth watching the total volume. If it starts to creep up again, that's a sign that we're in for more trouble.

I do have another post half-written, on some theories on what's driving the Linden dollar up and down, that I hope to get out at some point.

Name Textures are back

2010-07-31T16:35:00.000-07:00

Thanks to some wonderful help from the amazingly patient Latif Khalifa, I was able to get the texture bot working again. If you are a new player and you haven't seen your name appear on the score boards, it should appear if you play another game.

I want to hold off on HTML-on-a-prim, because I think most people can't see it, and it seems overkill for what I need, which is just HTTP textures. Linden Lab says those should come soon, but then again, they've been saying that for literally years.

Name textures are down

2010-07-29T21:03:00.001-07:00

Linden Lab has done something in their latest server release, and it's broken the bot I use to upload name textures. This means that new players will not see their names on game scoreboards.

I don't know how long this is going to take to fix, or even if I can fix it.

One alternative would be to use the new HTML-on-a-prim capability. I had been holding off on that, since it requires Viewer 2 in order to see. Anyone not running Viewer 2 would see a static texture, not their name.

Do people care about this one way or the other?

Lindex Continues to Fall

2010-06-23T20:24:00.000-07:00

The Lindex has stabilized enough that my graph is working again. But the picture that it paints is not very pretty.

The graph shows the total number of L$ for sale, within 10 Lindens of the best price. There's two key features to note. First, the total number of Lindens for sale has remained fairly constant—around 210 million. Second, there are visible bands sloping slowly downward.

What this means is that the people who have posted L$ for sale at 261-265 have gotten impatient, cancelled their sell orders, and reposted them at the higher (devalued) rate, 267L$/USD. There's still far too many L$ for sale. At the current size of the Second Life economy (and it's been this size for some time), the Lindex can only maintain a balance of half that size, around 100M L$ in outstanding sell orders. If it gets much more than that, it takes too long for a sell order to be filled, and people start to move their orders to cheaper prices so they can convert their L$ to USD.

So how long will the L$ continue to fall? In the best-case scenario, it will eventually reach an equilibrium where it becomes cheap enough that it entices more buyers to enter the market. If and when that happens, we will start to see the total volume of outstanding sell orders begin to drop. So far, though, I don't see any sign of that happening.

The Secret Plan to Stabilize the Lindex

2010-06-19T14:00:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about what options Linden Lab has to stabilize the Lindex. It doesn't seem like they have a lot of options. In the past, when the Second Life economy was stronger, they could stabilize the LLD simply by selling through Supply Linden. But they don't have that option any more.

And then I thought of a plan so diabolical, so secretive, that it seemed perfect for Linden Lab's style of management.

To review, Linden Lab needs to balance the Lindex, either by increasing the number of buyers, or decreasing the number of sellers. How might that be achieved?

Buy LDD on the Lindex

Linden Lab could use Supply Linden to buy LDD, just as he has been selling before. Most people agree this is a non-starter. Linden Lab has been losing money, as evidenced by the recent layoffs. They can't afford to spend large sums shoring up the Lindex.

Increase LDD Sinks

If they can add more ways to vaporize LDD, it would mean less of them for people to sell. It's clear that they've started along this road, with offerings such as the Voice Morpher. But any sinks created in this way will be pitifully small compared to the number of LDD they need to soak up. This can be a component of a stabilization plan, but not the primary means.

Let landowners pay tier in LDD

This has been mentioned in the past as a possibility. But it's a huge and unwieldy hammer. Most of the LDD for sale on the Lindex are there because of landowners trying to buy USD to pay for their tier. Letting everyone pay for their tier in LDD could possibly unbalance the Lindex the other way.

Also, Linden Lab would lose out on the 3.5% fee they charge people to sell LDD. Again, not something they can afford.

But... what if Linden Lab allowed a select few landowners to pay their tier in LDD? If they controlled who paid in LDD and who paid in USD, then they could manage more exactly how many LDD were on the market to sell. They couldn't make this public, of course, because they can't afford to have everyone pay their tier in LDD. They would have to contact the few landowners they wanted to privilege with this gift.

Linden Lab already has a semi-secret program in place to allow a select few landowners to purchase land at a discount price. They could simply expand this program to include LDD tier-selling capability. It would be a perfect way for Linden Lab to stabilize the Lindex in a controlled fashion, without causing any panic or and more lurid Lindex news stories.

Lindex Meltdown

2010-06-17T19:10:00.001-07:00

On Wednesday, the Lindex collapsed, with the value of the Linden dollar plunging from 260/US$, at one point going as low as 300/US$, before stabilizing around 275/US$. It fell so fast that it broke my Lindex statistics graph, shown above.

It's not too hard to figure out what happened. In my previous post, I noticed with concern the glut of sell orders on the Lindex, and wondered what Linden Labs would do about it. T Linden, in his quarterly report, stated that the drop in sales from Supply Linden was a result of more people signing up for premium accounts -- in other words, they couldn't sell Linden dollars because they were giving them away. But the numbers don't add up. The number of Linden dollars given to premium accounts, per month, is far less than what Supply Linden was selling.

The real explanation is that the value of the Linden dollar is the strongest indicator of the strength of the Second Life economy in general. If the Second Life economy is strong, people want to buy Linden dollars, and the Linden dollar gains value. If the Second Life economy is weak, there are fewer buyers, and the Linden dollar falls in value. No matter how many press releases Linden Lab puts out saying that the economy is great, they can't deny that the Linden dollar is falling.

By the way, T Linden no longer works for Linden Lab.

The Second Life economy has been in decline for many months. At first, this meant that Supply Linden could no longer sell Linden dollars. That cut out a big chunk of Linden Lab's income. Perhaps that wasn't the only reason for the recent layoffs, but it had to be a part of it.

Next, sell orders started stacking up on the Lindex. The usual balance of 50-100M L$ in sell orders ballooned to 200-250M.

This meant that it too longer for sell orders to execute. with only 50M in sell orders, if you placed your order it would be executed in a couple days. But if you put your order in a line of 250M, it could be a week or longer before your order was filled.

That's too long for some people. So the situation moved to the next stage, where people started placing orders at higher levels. The ask price moved from 259 to 260 to 261. And then we hit the final stage of the crisis.

When the Second Life economy was strong, Linden Lab could stabilize the Lindex using only sell orders. But now they've lost that tool. So the Lindex market is vulnerable to manipulation by speculators and griefers. People realized that once again they could move the market by placing orders at ridiculous prices. So we saw orders jumping to 270, 280, and eventually 300. The market was broken.

What will happen next? Linden Lab has few options. One remedy that has been mentioned in the past would be to allow land owners to pay their tier in Linden Dollars. That would relieve the market of the huge sell pressure from land owners selling Linden Dollars to pay their tier in US$. Land owners are predictably salivating over this possibility, because it would be a huge boon for them. It would also be a huge loss for Linden Lab, because they would lose the 3.5% fee they charge people who sell Linden dollars (the fee that land owners would no longer have to pay).

Or, Linden Lab can simply cross their fingers, wait, and hope that the Lindex stabilizes at a new level. It's not certain that that will happen, though. They key point is that it has to stabilize without the sell orders stacking up again. If it finds a new price level, but the sell orders start to pile up, then people will once again become impatient and move the value lower, and the whole cycle will rerun. They point is, for the size of the Second Life economy where it is now, the Lindex can only process about 70M of Linden dollar sales/day. If the sell orders start to exceed that level, then the market can't stabilize.

Play Frootcake, win L$100,000

2010-05-11T20:08:00.000-07:00

For the next few weeks, you have a chance to win L$100,000, just by playing one game of Frootcake!

Here's how it works. Right now, Linden Lab is running a contest to promote the Destination Guide, aka "Showcase." It's a list of nice places to visit in Second Life. The Frootcake Diner is one of those locations. You can visit it here, in the Sports/Games section.

Between now and June 2, one person who visits a Destination Guide location will win L$50,000 from Linden Lab. But if that person has played a game of Frootcake at the Frootcake Diner in the past month, Procyon Games will double your prize, for a total of L$100,000!

Here are the complete rules from Linden Lab. To play Frootcake, go to the Sports & Games section of the Destination Guide, and click "Visit This Location" next to the description of the Frootcake Diner. Play at least one game there (on any table), and it will be logged. If the Lindens pick you as their winner, you'll get double the prize!

Is the Second Life economy faltering?

2010-04-14T06:46:00.001-07:00

Merchants have been complaining about slow sales in Second Life ever since... well, ever since there have been sales. But I think for the first time we are seeing visible effects in the economic statistics.

Check out Tyche Shepherd's graph of Linden$ sales on the Lindex. This shows that Supply Linden has had a harder time selling L$ to people in Second Life who want to buy things.

The overall economy of Second Life is one of the money pumps Linden Lab uses to make money. In general, it works like this:

Merchants sell items → L$ accumulate in merchant accounts → Merchants and Supply Linden sell L$ on Lindex (with Linden Lab taking 3.5%) → Customers buy L$ on Lindex → Customers use L$ to buy items from merchants → Merchants sell items

As the L$ cycle through this loop, Linden Lab skims 3.5% off the top each time. Not that there's anything wrong with that; it's a perfectly legitimate way to make money off a virtual world.

Also note that's it's not a perfectly closed loop. Linden$ can leak out, when people spend them on things like classified ads and group fees, and also when people stop playing Second Life and leave with money still in their account. These sinks are balanced by Supply Linden, who manufactures Linden$ out of thin air and sells them on the Lindex, just like merchants do (except Supply Linden doesn't have to pay the 3.5% fee).

If any one part of this economic cycle breaks down, the whole loop falls apart. And then we get a situation like this.

This is from the Lindex Statistics on the Procyon Games site. It shows the amount of Linden$ that people are trying to sell. In a normally functioning market, the numbers of buyers and sellers are roughly equal. But recently, the sellers have swamped the buyers. Here we have over 200 million Linden$ asking to be sold at 250 L$/US$ or above. That's huge. It's normally between 50-70 million. It's never been this high, and it's been like this for days.

Supply Linden can only sell Linden$ if there are people willing to buy them. Without a steady stream of customers, that magical profit stream of Linden Lab just dries up.

It's possible there could be some other explanation for this glut of Linden$, and Supply Linden's withdrawal from the market. A couple years ago some big land baron left Second Life, and sold all their Linden$ on the market at once, creating a temporary glut. Supply Linden's sales dipped then, but they quickly recovered. This looks to be a sustained drop, so if there's another explanation I'd be happy to hear it. I hope T Linden's upcoming economic report sheds some light on this issue.

Can't Stop v1.05

2010-04-11T07:32:00.000-07:00

I've released version 1.05 of Can't Stop. This is a free upgrade to all registered owners. You can use your remote to deliver a copy of the new version to yourself ("/8 deliver game"), but this update also includes a new scoreboard and team signup prim, so I recommend you visit my shop and touch the Can't Stop vendor there to get a complete package.

What's new in this version:

NEW Mod-ok scoreboard. You can resize and retexture it.
NEW Team signup prim. Rez this near your game, and players can touch it to join your team. Team rankings are shown on the Procyon Games website.
NEW The Start, Settings, Help buttons hilite briefly when players sit down to play.
FIXED A security issue was fixed.
FIXED The game adjusts its position when you rez it. For some reason it liked to rez off the ground. It now moves down a smidge after it rezzes, which should set it flush with the ground.
FIXED It was really easy for the dice to get lost, since they're a separate piece. The game now rezzes the dice each time you play, and deletes them when the game is done. So if you move or take your table you don't have to worry about picking up the invisible dice any more.
FIXED To help players who have trouble distinguishing the different colors of the playing pieces, little symbols have been added (squares, circles, etc)
FIXED Often if you tried to rotate or adjust the game after you rezzed it, it would get confused and the board wouldn't line up properly. It now should adjust itself better, so you can rotate your game after you rez it if you want.
NEW You can enable an optional game rule (under "Settings"), called "No stacks" or "Can't Stop Can't Stop." When the rule is in play, players are not allowed to end their turn if any of their pieces are on top of someone else's. If you do move temporarily on top of someone, you must continue to roll until you move off (or zonk). This changes the game a bit, and some players prefer this rule.

Can't Stop Team Rankings

2010-04-04T20:04:00.000-07:00

I've added a Team Ranking page to the Can't Stop section of the Procyon Games web site: Can't Stop Team Rankings. Since the in-world boards don't have a Team Ranking setting, this is the only way to see how your team is doing, as far as Can't Stop goes. Note that players can only be on one team -- so, if you're in a particular team for En Garde, you're on the same team for Can't Stop, and your Can't Stop ranking is applied automatically. And vice-versa.

Maitenance and upgrades, part 3

2010-03-13T20:21:00.001-08:00

The Procyon Games website is now down for the final part of its overhaul. I hope to bring it back up in an hour or so.

UPDATE 10:15PM: That was rather harrowing, but I think I got it working. Procyon Games is now up and running on a brand-new database. All the previous data was migrated over.

There's probably going to be a few glitches, so if you spot anything unusual don't hesitate to point it out to me.

En Garde Team Rankings

2010-03-11T22:16:00.001-08:00

Someone asked for team rankings on the website, and I figured, "what the heck"

These should be identical to the rankings displayed on the in-world scoreboards, except you can see the rankings of all the teams of Second Life, while the in-world scoreboards are limited to the top eight teams.

En Garde Team Rankings

Scheduled Maintenance Part 2

2010-03-05T19:44:00.000-08:00

The Procyon Games website will be down on Saturday for about an hour, starting at 9PM SLT. This is part 2 of 3 for the upgrades I have planned. These upgrades are to allow the site to handle the new traffic load, which has been steadily climbing over the months.

This second upgrade is the "medium strength" one. The final upgrade, tentatively scheduled for the following wekend (March 13-14), is the "big" upgrade which could take a while.

UPDATE: This round of the upgrade/maintenance is now complete. It involved a somewhat large change to the back-end of the website, and so it's possible there could be some errors or new things that are not working. If you notice anything please send me an email.

Can't Stop Tournament @ Heart of Dragons

2010-03-05T19:39:00.000-08:00

Aries Oh is continuing her Can't Stop tournament. Here's the info:

Greetings!

Can't Stop tournament at Heart of Dragons this Sunday. Tournament board will open for sign-ups on Friday - pay the black board L$100 to participate in the THIRD round - Sunday 1 PM SLT. [SLURL]

The tournaments is held on Sundays, 1 PM SLT, every third week.

The tournament is open for all.

This notecard contains details about how we will run the tournaments.

Sign-up:

----------

Each tournament will have maximum 16 players.

Entry fee is L$100, of which all goes to winner.

The sign-up board will be placed here: [SLURL]

Tournament:

Each tournament will have 3 initial rounds, where you play different players, according to a random draw. (Unless there are too few players, you will only play another player once.) The sum of scores from these three games will be used to rank the players.

The four best players will meet in a final game, to determine the tournament winner. Winner will receive entire prize pot and a trophy.

Season schedule:

Sundays, 1 PM SLT:

March 7th

March 28th

April 18th

May 9th

May 30th

June 27th

(Date for Season Final will be determined later.)

Season final:

The eight best players of the season will be invited to play a super final.

The finalists are selected based on all participants' scores from the 3 initial rounds in each of the 8 tournaments in the season. (I.e. final rounds will not count.) A player's score from each tournament will be summed up. If a player has played more than 4 tournaments, only the best four will count.

These 8 players will play a tournament similar to the normal tournaments - 3 initial rounds with random draw - and the 4 best will meet in a final game to determine season champion.

Venue:

All games will be played at Heart of Dragons, at these tables:

MAIN VENUE - Draw and final game will be played here. [SLURL]

(Upstairs) [SLURL]

(2 corner rooms upstairs)

Please share this information with other Can't Stop players.

If you have any questions, please contact Aries Oh.

Hope to see you there!

~ Aries Oh ~

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More info about the game Can't Stop

Video tutorial

Would you tweet your wins?

2010-03-03T06:38:00.000-08:00

So, Linden Lab is trying to get all social with everything. Their latest effort is a scripting bridge between Twitter and Second Life. And I wonder, is this something that people would use?

I mean, really, I don't know. Would people find this useful?

What I could do is link your Twitter account to, say, En Garde. With the magic of OAuth, you wouldn't have to give me your Twitter password. You can simply authorize Procyon Games to post tweets to your account. And then, every time you won a game of En Garde, it would post a tweet to your account, saying who you beat, and your score, and a SLURL.

Would anybody find that useful?

I should point out that the Recent Games section of the Procyon web site already lists every game played in-world, so if you're looking for someone to fence with you can always go there and see who's been playing.

Scheduled Maintenance

2010-03-02T20:16:00.000-08:00

The Procyon Games web site will be down for scheduled maintenance later tonight. I need to make several upgrades to the system, and so there will be three periods of downtime. There's the little upgrade (tonight), then the bigger upgrade (this weekend), and then the real big upgrade (sometime next week).

During the maintenance the website will be inaccessible. Also, any games you play will not be recorded, and will not affect rating scores.

The downtime tonight will start at 10PM SLT and should not last more than an hour.

UPDATE: Tonight's maintenance is complete.

Congratulations to the Rally Winners

2010-03-01T20:49:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to the En Garde Rally winners! Over ten days they searched out new locations, new partners, and won games in more places than anyone else. The winners are:

First Place, Capt Blinker (L$5000)
Second Place, Dusty Merlin (L$2000)
Third Place, Leonard Posthorn (L$1000)
Fourth Place, Sidney Fredriksson (L$1000)
Fifth Place, Fonsi Lecker (L$1000)

I'd like to thank all the players, who made this Rally a great success. Let's see if we can reach one million games!

I'd like everyone's comments on what they thought of the rally. Would you like to do it again? What did you like and not like about the format? Add a comment to this post, or email me or drop a notecard on me in-world. The more responses I get, the more likely I'll try something like this again.

Pictured are Fonsi Lecker, Leonard Posthorn, and Capt Blinker (not shown: Sidney Fredriksson and Dusty Merlin)

En Garde statistics

2010-02-21T06:35:00.000-08:00

I've added a chart in the Statistics section of the web site that shows the total number of games of En Garde that are played in Second Life, each day for the past 30 days.

The Rally is ON!

2010-02-19T18:54:00.000-08:00

The En Garde Rally is ON!

From now until March 1st, it's a race to see who can win the most games against the most people at locations across the grid.

L$10,000 in prizes will be awarded!

100,000 Games of En Garde

2010-02-14T07:32:00.000-08:00

Congratulations go to Jessie Kalinakov! At 8:02PM on February 13th, she won the 100,000th game of En Garde in Second Life.

En Garde has been in Second Life for about two and a half years. So 100,000 games in 2½ years is on average...

3,348 games/month
781 games/week
111 games/day
or, one game every 12.9 minutes

When I showed up to congratulate Jessie, she didn't know who I was! Such is fame in Second Life. But once I explained her special place in En Garde history, she seems suitably impressed.

For being the lucky 100,000th winner, Jessie won 1000L$, and her choice of any Procyon Games product. She chose a copy of Take it Easy (Head-to-Head edition).

Don't forget the other half of the 100,000 Games of En Garde celebration — The En Garde Rally, which starts Friday Feb 19th. If you own a copy of En Garde, please register for the Rally! It's very simple. You don't need to coordinate with anyone, or even make a landmark. All you have to do is have your En Garde piste rezzed (and register at the kiosk).

En Garde Rally!

2010-02-09T22:35:00.000-08:00

En Garde Owners! Register now for the En Garde Rally!

In celebration of 100,000 games of En Garde, Procyon Games is holding a special Rally Event! All En Garde owners are invited to participate. All you have to do is pay the registration fee (L$50) and rez your En Garde piste in a publicly-accessible location.

The registration kiosk is at the front of the Procyon Games store [SLURL]

Rally Dates: Friday Feb 19th - Monday March 1st

How it works

The Rally will be open to all En Garde players. While the Rally is on, everyone will be trying to win a game of En Garde at every registered location. The locations will be secret, initially, but every time you win you will be given a clue (teleport location) to another Rally Location. Points will be awarded for every location where a player wins a game. The top players in terms of rally points will be awarded prizes. Over L$10,000 in prizes will be awarded!

It's kind of like a shopping hunt, except instead of buying things at a bunch of stores, the players will be playing games of En Garde. Whoever can win the most games, in as many different places as possible, against different opponents, will win the Rally.

Participation Benefits

Every owner who participates will see a steady stream of new players coming to their location.

It's a great way to meet new En Garde players.
Show off your themed play area.
Get new players to join your team.
Every owner will be able to review a list of everyone who plays on their piste during the rally.

Other questions? IM Rifkin Habsburg or email me.

Fencing and Fashion

2010-02-03T07:18:00.001-08:00

Here's an article on real-life fashion designers whose designs are influenced by fencing. Some of those designs are really amazing—I wonder if there are any SL clothing designers who could implement those designs in Second Life?

Remember, if you make any En Garde-related items, including fencing-related clothing, you can get a free vendor in my En Garde arena.

Ordinal's Suicide

2010-01-31T10:20:00.000-08:00

Ordinal Malaprop has left Second Life, derezzing her entire presence on the grid.

For those who don't know her, she was known for Ordinal Enterprises, a purveyor of whimsical steampunk-ish scripted items. Ordinal was one of the first creators whose products had a definite style—a personal mode of execution such that when you looked at it you knew, "Oh, this is something Ordinal would make." She called it a narrative. Unlike the thousands of cookie-cutter clothing and skin shops, Ordinal was unique.

It was for that reason that I asked for her help when I created En Garde. Ordinal made the very first custom for-sale En Garde weapon, the Galvanic Swordstick. There's a vendor for it at the En Garde Arena [SLURL]. With the rest of Ordinal's shops gone, it might be the last place on the grid where you can buy an Ordinal Enterprises product.

Why did she leave? The proverbial straw seems to have been a permissions problem. I've been there. Managing permissions of products for sale is a nightmare for anyone trying to sell something in Second Life. Especially for a complex item like a game (Danger Zone, for example) which rezzes an object (the game platform you stand on), which in turn rezzes another item (the explosives), which contains several scripts. Now if you need to edit the script, you have to take the entire thing apart, make your change, then put the script back in the bomb back into the platform back into the game. There's no other way to do it. And if you get the permissions wrong on any of those items, your whole object becomes un-sellable.

Linden Lab did install a new feature in their viewer, a "bulk permission change" function, but it quickly broke; it was discovered that someone using it could easily and accidentally sell full-perm versions of their stuff. So now the official recommendation is to use the bulk changer if you want, but be sure to check everything before you put it up for sale. In other words, you still have to unpack and repack everything.

And this is just one example. Permissions problems are just one of the hassles SL creators have to deal with. Linden Lab gets a lot of flak for having designed a viewer with a UI so awful that only 1% of the people who try it stay more than 10 minutes. But, however bad the viewer is for users, it's even worse for creators. Second Life is the worst environment for development I've ever experienced. Trying to build and sell items in SL is like repeatedly jamming meat thermometers in your ears. It's just so painful.

Here's a comment from Cubey Terra: "I have many times felt [similar feelings] myself and have come within moments of wiping everything and walking away." I've felt those feelings myself. I'm sure every SL creator has, as well.

Suicide is a form of violence. Instead of killing someone else, you kill yourself. Violence is born of anger and frustration. As Shakespeare put it,

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?

The slings and arrows of Second Life have claimed another victim. Ordinal was not the first SL suicide, and she won't be the last. She will be missed.

En Garde World Open

2010-01-08T19:56:00.000-08:00

Nonsmokergirl Tulip and Fruitcake Altstatter are hosting the En Garde World Open tournament. Here is the tournament info:

Tournament Begins January 13th 6 AM

Tournament Ends January 27th 6 AM

Prizes (guaranteed minimums):

1st Place 1500
2nd Place 1000
3rd Place 500
4th place 250

The entry fee is 100 L. Pay the entry board here [SLURL]

Rules

You can play any player in SL...regardless of whether they have entered the tournament or not. All your games count!
You can play ANY player ANY number of times. All your games count!
You can play on ANY En Garde Platform ANYWHERE in SL! All your games count!
To Win prizes, you must have entered the tournament. Non-entrants will appear on the scoreboard, of course...but they won't win any lindens! Also, they will be considered decidedly uncool.
The Tournament Ranking system will be The SL world ranking system. If you want to check your ranking quickly, just hop on any En Garde Platform., and you will see your up-to-date rank.
To Win, you must enter the tournament. The highest ranked tournament entrants will win 1st , 2nd , 3rd place and 4th place.
In the event of SL weirdness (such as rolling restarts, or system-wide problems) the organizers will improvise to do their best to ensure accomodate En Garde Players

Can't Stop Player History

2010-01-06T22:15:00.000-08:00

I've added player histories for Can't Stop to the web site.

It works similarly to the En Garde player history. Go to the player section of the Procyon web site (you are registered, right?), and select Can't Stop from the list on the left. It will show you every Can't Stop game you've played in the past two weeks.

There's also a space for you to enter the name of another player. Doing so will give you a list of every Can't Stop game where the two of you played, so you can see your record in games against that person.

While I was doing this I found a more efficient way of generating the player histories, and patched it in to the En Garde history. It should give you the same results as before, it's just less stressful on my server. If you notice anything different let me know.

Can't Stop Tournament at HoD

2010-01-05T14:06:00.000-08:00

Starting January 24th, there will be a Can't Stop tournament at Heart of Dragons every third Sunday.

Sign Up

Each tournament will have maximum 16 players.

Registration will start 1 week before each tournament.

Entry fee is L$100, of which all goes back to winner.

The sign-up board will be placed here: [SLURL]

Tournament

The tournament will have 3 initial rounds, where you play different players, according to a random draw. (Unless there are too few players, you will only play another player once.) The sum of scores from these three games will be used to rank the players.

The four best players will meet in a final game, to determine the tournament winner. Winner will receive entire prize pot and a trophy.

Season Final

The eight best players of the season will be invited to play a super final.

These 8 players will play a tournament similar to the normal tournaments - 3 initial rounds with random draw - and the 4 best will meet in a final game to determine season champion.

The accumulated scores will be published on a webpage.

Venue

Games will be played at these locations:

Complete Local Rankings

2010-01-03T17:48:00.000-08:00

Game owners can now see a complete list of the local rankings for their games on the Procyon web site. You have to have your avatar registered with the site like the other owner-access-only areas.

The numbers are the same as displayed on the scoreboards in-world, if you have them set to Local mode. The only difference is you get a complete ranking, as opposed to the top eight or so that the in-world scoreboards show.

How should we celebrate...?

2010-01-02T14:01:00.000-08:00

I keep track of every game of En Garde played, in a database on the Procyon server. It's used mainly to compute the rankings, but I can also scan the records to check trends and statistics. And of course, I have a count of every game played.

I believe sometime in the next few months, someone will play the 100,000th game of En Garde in Second Life. That's quite an accomplishment! So I've been thinking, how should we celebrate the event?

I'm taking suggestions from the En Garde community at large. How do you think I should mark the occasion? If you have a suggestion, post a comment here in this thread.

"Last Man Standing" En Garde Tournament at HoD

2009-12-24T07:25:00.000-08:00

How long can you stay undefeated on an En Garde track? This is your chance to show your strength!

Heart of Dragons [SLURL] will have 3 tracks set up for competition from December 26th. And you have more than a week to attempt to get the most wins in a row. The 3 best players - with the longest winning streaks - by January 3rd, are awarded.

Please don't scrape me

2009-12-19T22:27:00.000-08:00

I spent some time today going through my server logs, trying to figure out why my CPU usage has gone up 200% this week. I found that someone has been running a script to grab the En Garde ranking scores every two minutes. I'm not sure why anyone would want to do such a thing, except maybe to redisplay them somewhere else.

Please don't scrape data from this site like that. If you do need statistics please contact me first; maybe we can work something out.

Whoever was doing the scraping has been banned from the site. So if you're seeing a bunch of "Access Denied" when you try to get to playprocyon.com, send me an email or IM.

Instant Message Chaos

2009-12-09T08:05:00.000-08:00

Second Life has started sending or resending old IM's. It's not clear if these are repeats of messages that were previously sent several months ago, or if they never got sent in the first place and are only now getting through, or even if they were originally sent to me in the first place.

With the large volume of customer requests I get, it makes it impossible to sort out which are the real ones and which are "ghosts." So, if you've sent me a question or request via IM in the past 48 hours and haven't heard back from me, please send it again, but use my email address this time. I can be reached at rifkin (at) playprocyon.com. That's the safest way to contact me.

New En Garde v1.14

2009-11-28T14:12:00.000-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

I've released a new version 1.14 of En Garde! This version does not have any new features. The only change is a patch to close an exploit. Several months back I was informed that someone had found a way to cheat. Fixing the game to close that exploit turned out to be harder than I thought, but it's finally done.

This update is free to all current owners. You can update either by using your remote to derez and deliver new copies of the game, or you can visit my store and touch the En Garde vendor there. It will give you a whole new setup.

The new board comes with a new version of the HUD as well, and you must use the new HUD to play.

Edit your Team Roster

2009-11-23T21:12:00.000-08:00

Now that you can see everyone on your team, some people are surprised by some of the names on the lists. It's easy to join a team but there's no way to leave a team (besides joining another team —an avatar can only be on one team at a time). So there's probably some people on your team who haven't been online in months, or have left Second Life altogether.

To clean up your team roster, you can now remove people. Check the box next to their name and click the Remove button. Warning, once you remove someone there's no way to get them back (they will have to join up again, same as they did before).

Team Rosters available

2009-11-22T19:04:00.001-08:00

One feature that's at the top of the request list is for team rosters. I'm happy to say that this is now available on the website.

Anyone who owns a Premiere Line game (eg. En Garde, Can't Stop) has the right to create a team. Teams can compete against each other for spots on the Team Ranking boards. All players can join teams, and a team's score consists of the sum of all the world ranking scores of its players.

Team owners can use their remote control to get a roster of their team members, but due to a limitation in LSL (web pages are cut off at 2048 characters), if your team is too big you won't see all the members.

So now you can go to the website to see your complete roster. Note, this feature is only available for avatars who have a team (customers who have purchased a game).

Link: View your team roster

New Follow Me v2.1

2009-11-21T21:30:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Kas Kwietz who found a long-standing bug in Follow Me which would sometimes cause your followers to teleport in at a slightly lower elevation. This wasn't a problem if you were teleporting at ground level but if you teleported in to the upper floor of a building your follower could miss the floor and fall to the level below.

Anyone who owns a Follow Me HUD should get an auto-upgrade notice. I had a small glitch earlier today when I put this version into the vendor but didn't upgrade the server. It all should be good to go now.

New Follow Me Update v2.0

2009-11-20T21:03:00.000-08:00

A new version 2.0 of Follow Me is available!

This version is much more efficient than the previous version. Although version 1.9 was not horrible, it did use an avatar scanner to detect when people teleported. This could potentially add some lag to the sim, so it only checked once every few seconds to try and be nice.

This new version uses the new llHTTPRequest call, and communicates directly with the Procyon server, so no scanners are needed and it can get updates much faster. In fact, if you're following someone and they teleport several times in succession, you'll see their position update in the map window in real time!

The update is free to all Follow Me owners. Simply visit the Procyon Games store and touch the Follow Me vendor card there. [SLURL]

Can't Stop Tournament

2009-11-14T16:24:00.000-08:00

There is a Can't Stop tournament at DreamVision [SLURL]. The entry fee is L$100 (pay the board in the center of the game hall). It works using the Local Champion scoring: you can play as many times as you want; each game gives you points (but you get more points the better you do). The tournament continues until 6PM SLT Sunday.

Contact OctRose Fouroux for any questions.

Ranking Glitch Today

2009-11-06T19:22:00.000-08:00

There was a small glitch with the Global Ranking script today, and as a result people's scores weren't being updated. All the games played were recorded properly, though, and once I fixed the problem everything got counted as it should; nothing was lost. You might have noticed a big jump in your score just now as all the games you played today were calculated all at once.

LindeX Statistics are Back

2009-11-01T12:37:00.001-08:00

There's a page of LindeX statistics on the Procyon website. It gives some historical data for the exchange rate of Linden dollars. Two months ago when Linden Lab changed their website, my LindeX stat page broke. That's because Linden Lab doesn't provide any easy way to access those statistics. In order to gather them, my web site has to fake a login to secondlife.com and scrape the data off the LindeX page. When they changed the login process, my script couldn't handle the new login procedure.

I finally figured out how to handle the new login page, so the statistics are back up. It's not of great use to a lot of people, but it is kind of pretty and I like having it.

If there's some other sorts of statistics you people might be interested in, post it in the comments here.

Games Triathlon at Events Inc

2009-10-26T20:51:00.000-07:00

Events Inc is hosting a Procyon Games triathlon event this week. The best players in Frootcake, Can't Stop, and En Garde will win prizes.

First, you have to sign up at their sign-up board: http://slurl.com/secondlife/North%20Norway/184/34/22

Then, just play the games. Your score is determined by adding together your World Ranking in each of the three games. Lowest score at the end of the tournament wins. The scores will be tallied on November 10th 6AM SLT.

It costs L$100 to enter, and the prizes range from L$1500 for first to L$250 for 4th place.

Stroker sues Linden Lab

2009-09-16T21:18:00.001-07:00

Stroker Serpentine, best known for creating the SexGen line of erotic furniture in Second Life, is suing Linden Lab. I'm concerned.

Perspective

Certainly, I have a lot of sympathy for Mr. Serpentine. He has to deal with rampant piracy. People across the Grid make illicit copies of his products, and sell them, even under the same trademarked name. That's wrong. Linden Lab, demonstrating its usual level of customer service, really doesn't do anything about it. Complaining to them is a waste of time. The one time they did try to remove an infringing item, they accidentally destroyed every working copy of his bed in existence. If that happened to me, I'd explode.

Except—it did happen to me. Literally the day after I released En Garde, Linden Lab made a change in the LSL scripting language that broke the game.

I accepted it as part of doing business in Second Life. Second Life is a horrible, buggy, unstable platform, and it's been that way for years. It will never get better. The best you can hope for is to find some way around all the ugliness. So when Linden Lab broke my game, I started coding a way to fix it.

Fortunately, Linden Lab fixed it before it could release my patch. And En Garde has gone on to become very successful. I didn't stress out about it too much, and my blood pressure didn't go up.

If I were really the creator of SexGen, I don't think I would get too upset over copyright violations. By most accounts, Mr Serpentine has made over a million dollars selling beds in Second Life. A million dollars. If I felt I was getting irked over people copying my stuff, and I had a million dollars, I'd just book a week's vacation in the Caribbean.

The Class

One thing puzzles me, and I haven't seen anyone talk about it. This lawsuit is being filed as a class action. Class action lawsuits are meant to consolidate plaintiffs when you have thousands of people who have been wronged. It streamlines the legal process and makes it possible for people who wouldn't otherwise be able to sue to gain redress.

But if you read the complaint, the class of people who are allowed to participate are creators who have registered Trademarks and Copyrights.

How many people in Second Life are selling goods with registered trademarks and copyrights? Registering a trademark costs a good bit of money. Copyrights are cheaper, but you still have to file the paperwork. I'd bet there's less than a dozen people, not counting corporations like Coke and Adidas, who actually own registered trademarks on items they sell in Second Life. So who's going to join this lawsuit?

I see a lot of people cheering for Mr. Serpentine. But I think a lot of that enthusiasm is borne of the frustration people have felt when dealing with the brick wall that is Linden Customer Support. Would people be so encouraging if this becomes a battle of Linden Lab versus the Fortune 500?

The Remedy

Policing IP infringement is hard. It's hard even when you have a simple website. That's why almost any website, when given notice of a DMCA violation, will immediately take down the indicated content. It's easiest to punish first and ask questions later. Determining if something really is infringing takes work. A human has to investigate the claim, see if the person filing the complaint truly has the rights to the IP, determine if the claimed work infringes (maybe it's Fair Use?)... nobody wants to do all that. So they just take it down, hopefully inform the other party, and let them sort it out in court.

The situation is even worse for Linden Lab. To investigate a claim they'd have to walk around in a virtual mall. Maybe the infringing item is one vendor among one hundred on a wall of vendors. When I'm shopping and I know the item I'm looking for, it can take me ten minutes browsing through the store to find it. I don't think they can simply ban the account either. If someone is selling one infringing item in an otherwise legal store, does that justify banning them? I don't think so. There's too many people complaining about Linden Lab banning them, and being unable to reinstate their account, already. It would be too easy to frame someone for infringement.

There is one solution that Linden Lab could take to resolve this situation. It would actually reduce their enforcement costs. But it's a solution I fear, because it is so simple and obvious -- and wrong. Linden Lab could remove all ability for people to sell items in-world. All purchases would have to be done through XStreet.

If everything was sold through XStreet, then Linden Lab could enforce DMCA takedown requests exactly like everyone else. If someone is selling an infringing item and they get a complaint, then they take down the page. Simple and easy, and nobody could fault them for negligence, because it's exactly what every other website is doing.

Linden Lab takes 5% of every sale on XStreet. So if that became the sole place to purchase items, then every content creator takes a 5% hit. Or they pass that on to buyers.

I sell items both in-world and on XStreet. When XStreet was independent, I accepted the 5% fee as a part of doing business, and a reasonable surcharge for the additional exposure they gave me. When Linden Lab took over XStreet, I grumbled a bit but didn't do anything. If XStreet becomes the exclusive marketplace, though, I will have to raise my prices to compensate.

Frootcake Tournament at Events Inc

2009-09-13T14:36:00.000-07:00

NonsmokerGirl Tulip is running a Frootcake tournament at Events Inc (SLurl: http://slurl.com/secondlife/North%20Norway/217/27/22). The event runs from Sep 16th to Sep 23rd (one week, Wednesday to Wednesday Noon SLT). The scoring is standard Frootcake tournament style: players are ranked based on the Local Customers for games played on the Event Inc tables. Prizes will be awarded as follows:

First Place, 1250
Second Place, 1000
Third Place, 750
Fourth Place, 500

Can't Stop Tournament at Confessions

2009-06-07T14:17:00.001-07:00

Confessions is running a Can't Stop tournament through June 18th. The Can't Stop table is just around the corner from the teleport landing (SLURL). It's a standard Local Champions tournament—the standings on the local board determine the winners at the end. I just visited and there's only a couple names up, so anyone can steal first place with just a few games right now. Each game costs $40 to play; the winners will be awarded prizes at 5PM SLT June 18.

Prizes are as follows:

First Place $2000
Second Place $1000
Third Place $500

New Tournaments for Can't Stop and En Garde

2009-05-27T21:28:00.000-07:00

Tyr Akina and Aries Oh are running a Can't Stop Tournament on Saturday May 30th.

Sign up at the Game Parlor in Dragon Nest. There is a $50 sign-up fee to join, but the more people who enter, the bigger the prizes. Right now the winner will receive $1250. There are also prizes for Second Place ($750), Third Prize ($500), and Fourth Prize ($250).

All games played on Saturday are scored in standard Local Scoring format. At midnight Saturday/Sunday, the top 4 scores qualify for a final three games to be played on Sunday.

Nonsmokergirl Tulip and Fruitcake Altstatter are running an En Garde tournament for two weeks, from June 3rd through June 17th.

Sign up by paying $100 to the Yellow sign-up board at Paradiso Mall. This tournament runs on the World Ranking system, so you can play games on any En Garde set anywhere, as long as you've registered for the tournament. Guaranteed minimum prizes are $1500 for First, $1000 Second, $500 Third and $250 Fourth. Your tournament placing is determine by your World Ranking as of the end of the tournament.

Server Migration

2009-05-23T22:14:00.001-07:00

The server glitches that brought things down for three hours on Wednesday have been continuing, with short interruptions on Friday and today. So my hosting provider Linode is migrating my server to new hardware. This will hopefully take less than an hour, and then the server will be back up and more stable. I'll update this post when the migration is complete. In the meantime, be aware that any games you play will not be tracked, so they won't count towards your ranking points.

UPDATE: That went considerably faster than expected. Everything should be back up now, and hopefully more stable.

Will the Lindens shut down En Garde?

2009-05-22T19:36:00.000-07:00

The latest pronouncement from Linden Labs is that they are going after camping chairs. People who try to artificially inflate their traffic stats by using camping chairs will be warned that they are in violation of the Terms of Service.

This is a continuation of their previous policy banning traffic bots. Traffic bots are almost universally despised as a drain on the server resources, providing no benefit to the population at large. So that move was largely applauded by the residents. Camping chairs, however, have a larger base of supporters. And this move leaves some people wondering—if camping chairs are banned today, will games like En Garde be next?

I don't deny that En Garde can be used as a traffic draw. In fact, I promote it as a key feature. I added features such as Local Scoring and Teams to give people more reasons to visit a particular site. Rez a copy of En Garde on your land, and people will have reason to stick around.

But I don't think anyone has any reason to fear that En Garde will become illegal. And that's because: It's All About Appearances. Linden Lab is concerned with the image of Second Life, above all else.

Consider, for example, the Linden Lab policy on gambling. Many people are confused by the Lindens' confusing and contradictory pronouncements on gambling in Second Life. Casinos across the grid were shut down, and games like poker and slot machines vanished. Yet other games where people can wager and win money, like Zingo, are still thriving, even though winning at Zingo takes arguably less skill than poker.

The policy becomes clear, though, when you think about appearances. How does it look to someone else—someone visiting Second Life for the first time? Everybody knows what a casino looks like. Everybody knows how a slot machine works. You can see poker games twenty-four hours a day on ESPN. "Everybody" knows that's gambling. It looks like gambling. Zingo, on the other hand, isn't well known outside Second Life. If a newbie wanders into a Zingo game, they might be puzzled over it, but nobody is going to be offended.

Now consider camping chairs, and the appearance they give to Second Life. Imagine you're a newbie. Hey, there's a space with lots of green dots! There must be a lot going on there! You teleport, and indeed there's a crowd of people. Some of them are dancing, or sweeping up the place. You greet them, "Hello! Does anyone want to chat?" but they ignore you. Nobody, in fact, seems to be talking at all. After a few more frustrated attempts, you try another crowded place, with the same results. Second Life seems to be full of avatars doing nothing, affording no chance of interacting with another person. Camping chairs make Second Life seem dull and lifeless.

En Garde, to the contrary, is a fantastic spectator sport. I often enjoy just watching people play. And of course, in order to play the game, you have to actually be at your computer. So if some new player is curious about the game, all they have to do is ask. I've had some people tell me that En Garde is the only reason that they still play Second Life. En Garde makes Second Life fun.

So, don't worry about having an En Garde game rezzed on your land. The Lindens aren't going to ban it.

Server is back up

2009-05-20T23:48:00.001-07:00

The Procyon server got rebooted, and for some reason didn't come back up in a good state. So everything was down for about 3 hours. I've got everything back up and running now.

Play Around the World

2009-04-20T09:11:00.000-07:00

One of the great things about Second Life is its international community. Linden Lab hasn't published user metrics in quite a while, but here is a visualization from the end of 2007 that shows USA-based players are only 37% of the user base. I'm sure that number has only decreased. Through my store I've met and made friends with people from countries all over the world.

Playing games is a great way to get to know someone. You might not have anything in common with a dentist from Brazil, and not having any language in common might make communication seem impossible. But once you face off in a match of En Garde, the only point you need to make is at the end of your epeé. Euro-style games, in particular, force you to get inside the head of your opponent. And that works even if you can't talk to him.

I try to keep the language-specific components of my games to a minimum, so once you know how to play you're not hampered by an unintelligible interface. But that "once you know how to play" can be a barrier. So I've started to add translations of the game rules to the website. So far I have Frootcake in French, and En Garde in Italian. These were both contributed by bi-lingual players (thanks to Jyzabelle Andel for the French rules!). If you or someone you know can help translate rules into another language, you can either email it to me or drop a notecard on me in-world. A Spanish or Portuguese translation of En Garde would be great -- I know there's a fair number of players who would be helped by that. There's also quite a few Tinies who like to play Frootcake, but I suppose I could just make a copy of the rules in a really small font.

Do you have a story about meeting/playing against someone from another country? Post it in the comments here!

En Garde review at New World Notes

2009-04-08T13:35:00.000-07:00

Kanomi Pikajuna is the new games reviewer at Wagner James Au's New World Notes blog, and for her first review she has chosen En Garde! It's a nice write-up and should hopefully bring a lot of new players to the game. I'd encourage people to post comments there -- especially if you're running tournaments and want to bring in some fresh blood.

Kanomi Plays: En Garde

En Garde Tournament

2009-04-06T22:05:00.001-07:00

NSG Tulip is running an interesting En Garde tournament. Instead of doing it with an elimination bracket like most other tournaments, she's using the World Ranking system to determine the best player. Here is the info:

The En Garde World Open
You can enter the tournament here by paying the Yellow Tournament Board 100 L.
UPDATE: This SLURL will take you directly to the board if you couldn't find it before (it's hidden in a corner of the mall)

Tournament Begins April 8th 12 noon
Tournament Ends April 22nd 12 noon

Thousands in Prizes!!!

1st Place 1500
2nd Place 1000
3rd Place 500
(prizes are guaranteed minimums)

The Details:

You can play any player in SL...regardless of whether they have entered the tournament or not. All your games count!
You can play ANY player ANY number of times. All your games count!
You can play on ANY En Garde Platform ANYWHERE in SL! All your games count!
To Win prizes, you must have entered the tournament. Non-entrants will appear on the scoreboard, of course...but they won't win any lindens! Also, they will be considered decidedly uncool.
To enter the Tournament, please click on the Landmark Below, and pay the Yellow Tournament Board 100 L.

How to Enter the SL World Open

Rules:
Standard En Garde Rules apply.

The Tournament Ranking system will be The SL world ranking system. If you want to check your ranking quickly, just hop on any En Garde Platform., and you will see your up-to-date rank. Or, check your rank at the Procyon Games web site.

To Win, you must enter the tournament. The highest ranked tournament entrants will win 1st , 2nd , and 3rd place.

Server Upgrades

2009-03-30T19:26:00.000-07:00

I'm upgrading the Procyon Games web server to the latest Debian release 5.0 ("lenny"). We'll keep our fingers crossed and hope that after a short reboot everything will be ok. I'll update this post after the upgrade is complete.

UPDATE: Everything is back up and running, and seems to be going smoothly. I'll keep a close eye on it for the next few hours. If anyone notices something that seems off, please tell me!

Can't Stop Tournament

2009-03-11T07:17:00.000-07:00

NonSmokerGirl is running another Can't Stop tournament, starting today and running for one week. This is her second Can't Stop tournament — the first one didn't work so well because she discovered several bugs in the game's payment system. So I've fixed all the bugs and let's cross our fingers and hope it works this time, ok?

This is a pay-to-play tournament, so you pay money for each game, but if you win then you win the game pot. Like all Procyon games, the Local Champion scoreboard gives you points for each game you play. The better you play, the more points you score. At the end of the tournament, the top three players win prizes: $1000L for First Place, $750L for Second, and $500L for Third.

There's two tables -- no waiting! (It doesn't matter which table you play on; the scores are added for both tables)

Teleport now to North Norway Mall and start playing!

En Garde Player Matchup

2009-03-08T10:06:00.000-07:00

Here's a new feature on the Procyon website for En Garde players. (I'll be adding a similar feature for the other games). First, go to the registered players section. If you haven't registered your avatar with the web site, it's very easy. All you have to do is touch the registration board at Procyon Games and follow the link it gives you.

Once you're registered, click on the En Garde link to see the games you've played recently. Below that list is a space where you can type in any avatar name. The field will auto-complete for you, so you can just type in part of the name and then select the full name from the list. Once you click go, it will show you your complete play history against that person. It calculates your overall win percentage, total score, and shows you every game you've ever played.

So if you really want to know who is the better player, now you can look up the stats to prove it.

See how much Frootcake you've been eating

2009-03-01T17:46:00.001-08:00

I've added Frootcake to the Registered Players section of the Procyon Games website. If you've registered your avatar (all you have to do is click the Registration Kiosk at the Procyon Games Workshop), then you can see all the Frootcake games you've played over the past two weeks.
Recent Frootcake games

New Can't Stop version 1.04

2009-02-27T19:50:00.000-08:00

I've released Can't Stop v1.04 which has several bug fixes and a few new features.

NEW Reset functionality

Only the owner of the game can Reset it
Hold down for a second (won't reset with just a click)
Stronger reset, can fix broken scripts
Aborts game in progress and ejects players

FIXED Sometimes players who had just played a game couldn't pay into the pot in the next game (Commercial Edition only)
NEW More robust player re-join:

A player can leave the game and return later
If the current player leaves, his turn ends
Missing players' turns are skipped

NEW Chat levels. In the Settings menu, you can change the chat volume from Normal, Whisper, and Silent
FIXED A bug where the pot total could carry over from one game to the next has been fixed.
NEW The game will now refuse to set up if you don't grant it Link Permissions
FIXED Some cases where the game would not reset properly have been fixed
FIXED The game logo now always displays when the game was idle.

This is a free update to all Can't Stop owners. You can get your updated copy of the game with your game remote (wear it and say "/8 deliver game") or by touching the Can't Stop vendor at Procyon Games.

Time to Drop the Linden Dollar?

2009-02-14T20:30:00.000-08:00

Is the time of the Linden Dollar coming to an end?

There have been some developments recently which have me thinking about moving away from the Linden Dollar.

First, Amazon recently rolled out their Simple Pay system. This gives merchants an alternative to offer their customers. I could set up the Procyon Games website to allow Amazon payments. If you have an account with amazon.com, you could buy a Procyon game with your Amazon account, and never have to spend Linden dollars.

Second, Linden Lab acquired XStreet. There's two problems with this. First, Linden could use their monopoly power to force people to buy everything through the XStreet interface. It costs more to buy a game through XStreet; they charge an extra 5% commission. That means I either have to raise my prices (and accept lower sales), or accept less money.

The other problem with the XStreet acquisition is that it opens Linden Lab up to additional liability issues. PayPal has been notoriously draconian in their enforcement against the sale of pornographic items. There's plenty of objectionable items on XStreet, if you object to that sort of thing. XStreet kind of segregates things to their "uncensored" server, but the enforcement is lax and in any case, simply segregating the content might not be good enough for PayPal. If you sell items of a sexual nature, PayPal won't let you cash out your money.

So there's a not insignificant chance that anyone who sells items in Second Life might find their PayPal account blocked, because Second Life is XStreet and XStreet sells pornographic items.

If I enabled Amazon accounts through my website, I'd just have to add another big yellow button, next to the two you see now that say "Buy Procyon Games in Second Life" and "XStreet SL". You could buy any game right on my website, and it would be delivered to you in Second Life.

What would be the advantages of Amazon Payments?

It would be cheaper. Right now Linden Lab charges 3.5% to cash out Linden Dollars. Plus there's an additional 5% "tax" if someone purchases through XStreet. Amazon only charges 2.9% for items over $10 (currently about L$2600). Most of my games are at least that expensive. So I could lower my prices a bit. Or offer people a discount if they purchased through Amazon.
I wouldn't have to worry about PayPal freezing my account, because I wouldn't be dealing with PayPal at all. Amazon would be handling the whole transaction.
Customers wouldn't have to buy Linden Dollars to buy things. I wonder how many times I lose a sale when a customer wants to buy something, but finds they don't have enough Linden Dollars in their account. You never have to "add money" to your Amazon account; they simply bill you at the end of the month.

But then there are some disadvantages as well

A customer would have to have an Amazon account. It's not hard to sign up with Amazon. And they are the biggest retailer on the net, so I imagine many if not most people already have an account there. But it is a hurdle.
You have to have your web browser open. I know some people have computers that can't handle the stress of running Second Life and a web browser at the same time.
It's new. Nobody else is doing this that I know of. Some people would be scared off simply because it's different.

I'm putting up a poll asking how you feel about buying items through Amazon. Vote!

En Garde Price Increase

2009-02-02T20:48:00.000-08:00

En Garde continues to gain in popularity. The number of games played, the number of active players, and the number of games sold each week keeps going up.

That's all great, I'm happy to see the game do so well. But En Garde is more than just a game, it's a whole system. The name textures on the scoreboard, the world rankings, and the website all work together. I've designed everything to scale as much as possible, but the one thing that can't scale is my time.

So I need to raise the price of the game. If you currently own En Garde, this will not affect you at all. All existing owners will still have free upgrades for the life of the product. However, if you were planning on buying En Garde, or you own it and you were thinking of purchasing additional licenses, you might want to do so sooner rather than later.

I haven't yet decided on a new price. If you have an opinion on the matter, please comment on it here.

System downtime Saturday Jan 31

2009-01-27T21:01:00.001-08:00

I need to take the Procyon Games website down this Saturday for some back-end maintenance. If all goes well it should only be down for 15-30 minutes, starting at 8AM PST. During that time, no game plays will be recorded. That means that any game you play while the site is down will not count for World Ranking or any local tournaments you are playing in. I will update this posting right before I take the site down, and again when it's back up.

[UPDATE 7:15AM] I'm starting a little early. The server is now down. All games should continue to function normally, except scores during this downtime will not be recorded.

[UPDATE 8:00AM] And we're back! Everything seemed to go smoothy. There may be a couple hiccoughs today but I don't think you'll notice.

Personalized Play History

2009-01-25T10:49:00.000-08:00

This is something that a lot of folks have been asking for.

You can now link your Second Life avatar with the Play Procyon web site. What that means is that you can go to the Registered Players section of the web site and see your personal play history. Right now, to start, the first thing I added was En Garde games. So you can see every game you've played in the past two weeks, who you played, where you played them, and what your scores were.

In the future I'll be adding more games, and maybe more options too, like a versus feature that shows you how you're doing against specific players. Game owners, too, will have their own section that will let them manage their teams and see how their game units are being used.

Registration is very simple. All you have to do is visit the Registration Kiosk at Procyon Games and click it. Then follow the link to the Procyon Games website. It sets a cookie in your browser -- you don't have to sign up, give me an email address, or even think up a password.

Seven Days of Frootcake

2009-01-22T00:08:00.000-08:00

Nonsmokergirl Tulip is running another Frootcake tournament. If you think you're good enough to win money at the game, here is the place. The tournament runs for seven days until Wednesday the 29th. You have to play at the table in North Norway, but every game adds to your score and the top three scores at the end of the week win prizes (in addition to what you win for each game) — First place is 1000 L$, second place is 750, and third place is 500. Remember you can check the Frootcake main page to see who has been playing lately, and you can also join the Frootcake Players group to look for players.

In-world issues

2009-01-18T15:53:00.001-08:00

Second Life has been up and down, pretty much all day today. It's frustrating for me, it's frustrating for my customers, and pretty much everyone who wants to use Second Life.

I remember when Philip Linden, back when he was CEO, made a big deal out of his promise to bring stability to the grid. And when Mark Kingdon came on, he made the same vow. I don't think they've made any progress, stability-wise, in the past year at all. I mean, look at the log. It's ridiculous. They keep taking the system up and down, up and down. It makes me believe that they don't really know why the system is so unstable. If they knew, they wouldn't keep bringing it back up, would they?

Linden Lab points to the increase in concurrency as a rebuttal. I say that's beside the point. So what if more people can connect to the grid, if it still provides the same inferior service to all of them? "Yeah," they seem to be saying, "we're flinging crap at everyone, but these days we can cover ten times as many people in crap as we could before!"

As a content creator, I find these continuing outages especially distressing. Imagine if you ran a store in a mall (a real-life mall), and the mall operator randomly shut off the electricity several times a day. Not only that, but also locked the doors so none of your customers couldn't get in to your store. Now imagine that the mall operator does all that, but not just at random, but instead watches your store to see when it's busiest, and then shuts you down. Because that's what's happening. Second Life shuts down during its peak hours. The times where there's the most customers in the grid, the most people willing to spend money and by my products. The worst time for them not to be able to see and play and buy my games.

Frustrating.

Some new tweaks on the web site

2009-01-17T21:25:00.001-08:00

I've done some minor tweaking on the web site. The main change is I've added a list of recent blog entries in the sidebar, so you can see all the latest news from every page of the site. And I made some spiffy "Buy my games" buttons. I think I've got all the bugs worked out, but if you get any errors or broken links please let me know.

Frootcake Recent Games

2009-01-13T21:13:00.001-08:00

And now we have the recent games listing added to the Frootcake page. I'm on a roll!

En Garde Recent Games

2009-01-11T09:39:00.001-08:00

I've added a recent games display to the En Garde page at Procyon Games. My hope is that if you're looking for someone to play, or just interested to see who's been winning lately, you can use it to meet new players and find out more about the En Garde community.

You can see it here: En Garde

New Frootcake v1.15

2009-01-10T21:56:00.000-08:00

Have you noticed how vicious those tinies can be?

You know who I'm talking about. They're those little tiny avatars, no more than a couple feet tall. Oh sure, they look cute and all, but take it from me, you don't ever want to get on their bad side!

The Tinies have gotten into Frootcake, but there's a small (heh) problem. When they try to sit at the game, it positions them below the table. This is a common problem for tinies. Most sit animations are made for regular-sized avatars, and so when tinies try to use chairs and such it doesn't work so well for them.

This didn't interfere with them playing the game, mind you. It just looked a little weird.

So I got some requests that I add a feature to Frootcake to accomodate the tinies. And I added it to my to-do list, planning to get to it eventually.

Then I got some more requests, and more, and more. Those tinies really pile it on! And they never give up.

Faced with their unrelenting attacks, I was forced to cencede. So I've released a new version of Frootcake. When you sit down, you can toggle "tiny mode" on and off by hitting the up arrow key. If you're a Tiny, then tiny mode will seat you properly. If you're not a tiny, it will scrunch you up and make you look weird. Toggle it off.

I've also recompiled all the scripts into Mono for greater speed.

Merrily Lightfoot wins the Golden Frootcake

2009-01-10T21:40:00.001-08:00

Congratulations to Merrily Lightfoot, who is the Golden Frootcake Champion of 2008!

Merrily found the game during Winterfest, but she took to it with a passion. I had to remind her to take breaks to eat and sleep in between games—and I wasn't kidding! Merrily was the top qualifier for the Final Round, and she got there by playing nonstop for two weeks.

The final battle was played in three games, with the Golden Frootcake to be awarded to the player with the highest total score at the end. It was a close match, with less than 100 points separating the top three players. But Merrily pulled it off in the end.

You can see the Global Frootcake Rankings on the Procyon Games website. In addition to the Golden Frootcake trophy, Merrily will have her name displayed there for all to see. Once again, congratulations, Merrily!

Golden Frootcake Finals this Saturday

2009-01-06T18:37:00.000-08:00

The quest for the Golden Frootcake ends this weekend. Come to the Frootcake Diner Saturday 2PM Pacific to witness five people pass cakes until they pass out! Okay, it won't last that long. Just three games. The winner will earn a Golden Frootcake trophy, and a spot on the Procyon Games website.

Come cheer on your favorites! Plus, I'll be spinning tunes live on the air! It's Frootcake fun for the whole family.

Congratulations to the Golden Frootcake Finalists!

2009-01-05T20:46:00.000-08:00

Winter Faire is over, and the Golden Frootcake qualifying round is complete. Congratualtions to the five finalists who played hour after hour of Frootcake to get their names to the top of the chart:

Merrily Lightfoot
Chellee Yue
Vaj Vultee
Gai Thor
Sidney Fredriksson

and the five alternates (who will compete if one of the finalists can't make it):

Talesain Caerndow
Skyy Jayaram
Isis Sinatra
Annabelle Edgeworth
Mairead Montgomery

The final event, where the Golden Frootcake will be awarded, will be held sometime next week (I need to coordinate a time for all the finalists to make it). I'll post again when the details are complete.

Roll them bones!

2009-01-04T19:42:00.001-08:00

Do you need a little more randomness in your life? How about a pair of dice?

These red lovelies are my freebie for January. They're based on the dice from my latest release Can't Stop (actually, the Can't Stop dice were based off of these. It was the first part of the game that I made).

Rez them, click them, watch them tumble. Guaranteed to give you a pseudo-random result between 2 and 12.

You can pick up your own copy at the Freebies table at Procyon Games.

Can't Stop v1.03 Update

2008-12-30T13:51:00.000-08:00

I've released version 1.03 of Can't Stop. It's free to all registered owners. Here are the release notes:

FIXED If the current player leaves the game for any reason, the game will skip to the next player (so the game doesn't hang).
NEW There is a Help Card included in the box, which has some simplified rules to get new players started. You won't get the help card if you upgrade your game. If you want the new card you'll have to get a whole new box, by touching the Can't Stop vendor.
NEW There is a new audio and visual indicator on your HUD when it's your turn.
FIXED The yellow and orange playing pieces are easier to tell apart
NEW All scripts have been recompiled into Mono
FIXED The camera view when you sit down has been pulled back a bit
NEW There is a Get HUD button directly on the table, so you don't have to go through the Help menu to get a new HUD
FIXED The game would malfunction if you rotated it after rezzing.
NEW The game tells you your world ranking when you sit down.

Game owners can upgrade by ordering a new copy through their remote control ("/8 deliver game") or by visiting Procyon Games and touching the Can't Stop vendor there.

New Take it Easy Solo Challenge v2.14

2008-12-20T21:39:00.000-08:00

Someone found an exploit in the Take it Easy Solo Challenge.

For those of you not familiar with the game, Take it Easy comes in three flavors. All versions of the game have the players placing tiles on a hex game board, trying to align colors along three separate axes. The Solo Challenge version features a progressive jackpot. You get the same tiles each time you play, but every play costs you $50. The money all goes to a networked jackpot, and the person who first finds the best arrangement of tiles wins the jackpot.

Anyone can pick up a Solo version at my store for $10. Rez it on your land and let people play. If someone wins the jackpot while using your machine, you get a cut.

If you had a Solo Challenge rezzed on your land, you may notice that it has disappeared. Because of the exploit I've had to do an emergency update. Please come to my store to pick up a new, updated version (or just ask me and I'll give you one).

Golden Frootcake Competition

2008-12-20T07:25:00.000-08:00

Do you think you're the best Frootcake player in the world?

The Frootcake Diner has been accepted into the Winterfest celebration. And we're having a contest to compete for the Golden Frootcake award. The contest is simple. It works like an ordinary Frootcake tournament. All during Winterfest, you can play as many games as you want at the Frootcake Diner. Every game you play will add points to your tournament score. The top scorers are displayed on the leader board at the diner. After Winterfest is over, the top 5 players will compete in one more game for the Golden Frootcake!

Frootcake v1.14 Update

2008-12-14T19:28:00.001-08:00

Special thanks to Valentine Janus who found a critical bug in Frootcake that affected everyone except me, and NonSmokerGirl Tulip who helped test the fix. Frootcake 1.13 had a very serious bug that would cause the game to stop spitting out cakes in the middle of a game, and generate script errors for every game after that. All owners should upgrade to 1.14, via the usual methods (you can get a new game with your remote or through a vendor).

Free Holiday Gift

2008-12-07T10:50:00.000-08:00

For a limited time, Procyon Games is offering this Puzzle Box as a free gift for the holidays.

Simply touch the rods to make them raise and lower. The object is to get all the rods to their top position.

It starts out simple, but gets progressively harder. There are seven levels of difficulty. Can you work through them all?

The box is available on the Freebies table at Procyon Games. While you're there, be sure to check out the new expansion I've done to the workshop. There's now a Gift Certificate vendor, and a video theater where you can watch all the Procyon Games videos.

Frootcake v1.13 Update

2008-12-06T09:54:00.000-08:00

It's that time of year again... time for family gatherings, gifts -- and Frootcake! I've released version 1.13 of the game which fixes some bugs and adds a couple new features:

[Commercial License Only] The payment system has been updated to work more like the other Procyon games. You can toggle Free Play mode off and on, independently of what you have your Min Bet set to. The game will rez in Free Play mode, and will not ask you for Debit Permission until you turn off Free Play. The option to toggle free play is in the menu that pops down when you touch the game.
[Commercial License Only] When the game is in Free Play mode it is impossible to pay money into it.
The HUD does not spam new players with the release notes when they wear it
There is a new darker background on the HUD display to help you read the numbers there. (Players will have to get a new HUD from the game of course)
I've made a new Help Texture which emphasizes the HUDs and combines the 3 old screens into one. You can rez the included prim, or apply the texture to any of your own items.
Touching the jukebox doesn't pop down the menu any more.
The cakes now glow to indicate when they will stack.
The scoreboard has been redone to drastically reduce the number of prims (now 23 prims instead of 63)

I recommend all existing owners upgrade by getting a complete new box. You can pick up your new Frootcake by touching the vendor at Procyon Games.

Give the gift of fun

2008-11-29T15:13:00.001-08:00

Are you wondering what to give that special someone in Second Life? Why not give the gift of fun? A game from Procyon will provide hours of entertainment, as well as give you more reasons to spend time together.

Do you know someone who grumps, "There's nothing to do in Second Life anymore"? Are your friends' inventories full of clothes they never wear? Imagine their surprise when they receive a complex, fully scripted game that will be fun to play with for years to come.

All Procyon games are now available as Gift Certificates. The Gift Certificate is transferable; simply give it to your recipient, and when they rez it it will register their license as well as send them a complete package. So which will it be? The award-winning Danger Zone? The ever-popular En Garde? Or our latest creation Can't Stop?

Visit the new Gift Certificate vendor at Procyon Games

En Garde v1.13 Update

2008-11-23T09:38:00.000-08:00

En Garde v1.13 is now available!

This version contains many fixes in many different parts of the game and support items. I recommend that you get a whole new box. Come to Procyon Games and touch the En Garde vendor there. It will give you a complete new setup. Derez your existing game and delete any En Garde items you have in your inventory, then rez your new copies.

New in this release:

MONO. All scripts have been recompiled in the new Mono runtime. This should not change how anything works, and I have done some testing and it all seems ok. But it is a big change "under the hood", and if you notice any new bugs please report them.
The Mono recompilation should make everything faster, and it should eliminate the problem where the game and/or HUD would run out of memory (giving "Stack/ Heap collision error")

CARDS TEMPLATE. A texture is included in the box to help you make your own custom HUD display for the player cards.

The status display in the HUD has a darker background for easier visibility

To set your team name, you need to use your remote (the button has been moved off the game itself)

The remote control properly handles upper-case commands

Debit permission requests have changed. If you have a Commercial License, the game will now only ask you for Debit Permission when you take the game out of Free Play mode. You can turn Free Play on and off with a button on the game menu itself.

The Team Signup script now uses the team name in the dialog (it asks, "Do you want to join Rifkin's Rapiers" instead of "Do you want to join Rifkin Habsburg's team")

In certain rare circumstances, a round would continue even after the deck had run out of cards. This has been fixed.

Charge for Traffic

2008-11-22T20:57:00.000-08:00

There's a lot of talk these days about what to do with the bot problem. Estimates for how much of Second Life's population is made up of robot accounts range from 10-50%.

Broadly speaking, bots can be classified into two main groups. There's the "traffic bots," which are robots placed in a parcel by the parcel owner as a means to boost the traffic score for that parcel. A sub-variant of the traffic bots are the camping bots, which seek out camping chairs that have been placed to attract traffic by paying out miniscule amounts of money.

The other kind of bot is "everything else." These include models used for demonstrating clothing for sale, group bots that automate the group joining process, and scanners and such that enable data collection for people looking to monitor trends across the entire grid.

It's really only the traffic bots that upset people. Because the traffic bots are good for only one thing -- boosting traffic -- and the more of them you have, the better they are. Bots that actually perform some useful service, tend to stay out of your way while they go about their business. So when people say, "let's get rid of the bots," what they really mean is, they want to get rid of the traffic bots. If the traffic bots all went away, and the "other" bots stayed, I don't think anyone would be complaining. It's the traffic bots that consume resources, warp traffic figures, and confuse people when they make worthless spaces seem popular.

People have proposed many solutions for getting rid of bots. These include: forcing bots to identify themselves to the Linden Lab server, eliminating the free accounts bots use, and eliminating the concept of traffic altogether.

I have another solution. I think Linden Lab should charge for traffic.

Traffic is a measure of how many resources you, the land owner, are consuming. If I run a website, I'm generally charged for the bandwidth I consume. If I have a popular website that gets a lot of hits, it pulls more bandwidth and my provider charges me more, accordingly. So I think Linden Lab should charge people for traffic. It seems fair.

Of course, they'll have to lower tier to compensate. Let's say they cut everyone's tier in half, and then charge additional fees for traffic to compensate. For a small homeowner who doesn't get any traffic to his home parcel, his overall fees to Linden Lab would drop. In fact, I suspect most people's fees would drop.

The exception would be large clubs, and busy, successful stores. They would likely pay more per month than they are paying now. But supposedly those venues are making money, and can support higher fees.

There would be some uncertainty involved. The amount you pay Linden Lab would change each month depending on how busy you were. I don't think that's a huge obstacle. Most people keep a large enough cushion of money in their account.

The big losers would be bot farms. Anyone who is placing 40 bots over their parcel would see their traffic payments skyrocket. It would be like saying, "Here, Lindens, take my money." I think this would kill traffic bots faster than any other suggestion.

Congratulations to Can't Stop Winners

2008-11-15T19:46:00.000-08:00

The Can't Stop Premiere Event was a great success. We had four tables running simultaneously, for two hours. And, it was my first time DJ'ing! Thanks to everyone who said I have a great voice. Everything ran pretty smoothly. The only real glitch was when I forgot to reset all the scoreboards at the same time, so only one board was showing the correct results. But that just gave me more chances to announce the running scores to everyone.
It was a very close event, with the lead changing off several times over the course of the event. In the end, our final winners were Aries Oh, Eoland Elvehjem, Ingeborg Apfelbaum, Samantha Poindexter, and Seth Troell. They each won their own Personal copy of the new game. Congratulations!

Can't Stop Goes On Sale This Saturday Nov 15

2008-11-09T13:38:00.000-08:00

Procyon Games is pleased to announce the arrival of its latest game: Can't Stop. Can't Stop is one of the most popular games designed by the great American game designer Sid Sackson. It works for 2-4 players and is loads of fun. Just try it once and soon you won't be able to stop! (ok, I couldn't resist one bad pun).

I've made a tutorial that explains the game and how to play it in Second Life.

So watch the video, learn to play, and come to the party! For an Opening Day Special you can purchase the game at half off! Normally L$1999 for a Personal Edition, on Grand Opening Day you can buy it for just $999 (Commercial Edition $1499).

There will be a tournament as well. The game uses a ranking system similar to my other games. The top five players of the day will each win their own free copy of the game!

Once again, the party starts Saturday November 15, 1PM SLT
Procyon Games

Network problems

2008-10-24T17:50:00.000-07:00

There seems to be something very wrong with Linden Lab's network right now. Around 3:00PM PST today, calls from scripted objects via llHTTPRequest started silently failing some of the time. This means that En Garde scoreboards won't update, games won't get recorded, and in general things are a mess.

I've called support and filed a ticket and they say they have an engineer looking at it right now. The problem is easily reproducible. I'll file an update when I know more.

[UPDATE 7pm]: We have narrowed the problem down to DNS, which seems to be broken at Linden Lab. They are looking into it.

[UPDATE 7am Saturday]: Linden Lab claimed they fixed the problem, but it's still there.

[UPDATE 1:30pm Saturday]: Still no further response from the Lindens. This bug is responsible for games not registering, score boards not updating, and remote controls not functioning. It also causes some of my vendors not to deliver products.

I've added a Jira issue for this. If you own one of my products and are affected by this bug, please go to JIRA SVC-3318 and vote for the issue. (You will have to log in using your Second Life name and password; then a Vote link will appear in the left column)

[UPDATE 3PM Sunday]: I have no new word from the Lindens, but my tests seem to show that the problem has gone away. If you are still seeing this problem please let me know

Name troubles

2008-10-01T17:41:00.000-07:00

Linden Lab has done something today that killed the bot I use to upload name textures. So all my pretty scoreboards that show players' names in nice fonts in just one prim won't show any new player names. If you're already "in the system" your name will still be there ok. New players, however, will just show up blank until I can figure out how to fix this.

There is also a problem with Local Scores -- if a new player is on there, it kills the whole display (since they don't have a texture to show). I can maybe fix that so they're just blank and it doesn't kill the whole score display. Not sure how long that will take either.

[Update 10:58] I've fixed the bug so that blank names won't kill your Local Scores. No new players will show up in any scoreboard, though. Still working on that.

[Update Oct 3] It seems Linden Lab re-enabled bots, so I've turned the name upload back on. There are some new players who didn't get a name during this period. If your name isn't showing up, IM me and I can reset you.

[Update Oct 4] I spoke too soon. I'll work on this some more this weekend and see if I can get it going again. Hey Linden Lab, when can we get HTML on a Prim, hmm?

[Update Oct 5] Okay, giving this another try. Let me know if it's working... or not.

En Garde scoring adjustment

2008-09-14T07:55:00.001-07:00

I'm experimenting with an adjustment to the En Garde world ranking algorithm, so you may see more fluctuation in the World Champion scores today.

The problem I'm trying to fix is this. Your ranking is determined by an algorithm based on Google's PageRank. You get points for having winning records against other players. Or, to look at it from the other side, everyone else gets points for having a winning record against you. But what if nobody has a winning record against you? In the Google search ranking, this is equivalent to a web page that has no links to any other page. It's treated as a special case. It gives its points equally to every other page on the web.

So that's what I did in my ranking algorithm. The problem is, it can make a big difference when you go from "only one person is beating me" to "I have no losing records." If someone you know is getting points from you, then the chances are those points are circulating around a circle of friends you play with, and you get most of them back. But when you switch to "no losing records," your points get scattered across everyone, and that had the deleterious effect that winning a game could decrease your score.

The change I have made is to track partial game scores. So even if you have no losing records, you will still give points to people who have scored touches on you. They will then give most of those points back to you (for the touches you scored on them), so the next point flow should be the same. The difference is, the only way for a player to switch to "no losing point" mode is if nobody has ever scored a single touch on them. That's really rare, so it should be less of a problem.

For those of you who have been affected by this (you've noticed that winning a game could drop your score, or vice-versa), let me know if this change improves things.

25,000 Games of En Garde

2008-09-08T20:37:00.001-07:00

I keep a log of every game of En Garde played. It's mostly used for calculating the player rankings, but I can also use it to run statistics and keep track of the data. One thing I've been monitoring is a total count of every game played. And today, we crossed a pretty big number.

Twenty-five thousand! That's how many games of En Garde have been played in Second Life, ever since I released the game, just about a year ago. That works out to about 71 games per day, or a game every 21 minutes on average!

The 25,000th game was won by David Tapioca, who defeated Richard Brink 5 to 3.

New Take it Easy v2.14

2008-09-06T22:53:00.000-07:00

Take it Easy Multiplayer v2.14

A new version of Take it Easy (Multiplayer) is available.

This version fixes a bug that corrupted the display of some of the player names in some circumstances. It also adds in some logging information so I can track games, which is the first step to adding a player ranking system like the other Procyon Games.

The update is available for free to all current game owners. You can deliver it straight to your inventory with your remote.

New Follow Me v1.9

2008-07-29T21:32:00.000-07:00

A new version 1.9 of Follow Me is available!

New Features:

Fixed the on/off button. When you click the green ball, it will toggle off, and when it's off nobody can follow you (and you won't get TP notices)
Fixed the Summon button. It would only work if your follower was in a crowd. Now it's much more responsive.
Added Map on/off. If you don't want your map to popup every time someone teleports, you can change it to only give you a TP link in your chat history.

To upgrade, just visit Procyon Games and click on the Follow Me vendor.