Procyon Games

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

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.

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:

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

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.

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

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.

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!

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.

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:

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

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).

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:

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

I made a slight change in the global ranking algorithm.

Previously, a player gained points by defeating other players with points. The way it was calculated, it went through each player, found the players that person "owed" points to (because that other person had beaten them), and gave them some points.

The problem I found was, if a player was undefeated, then the points that they got just evaporated. That made for lower, flatter scores overall. I didn't think that would be much of a problem, but it turns out there's a lot of undefeated players (mostly people who have played one or two games and haven't lost). So a lot of points were getting lost

So now, undefeated players keep all their points, instead of them evaporating.

This change affects all the games with global player rankings: En Garde, Frootcake, and Danger Zone.

The folks at Sinful Sinners are running another Frootcake tournament and it's bigger than ever! There's $8500 in prizes that will be awarded:

• $5000 First Place
• $2000 Second Place
• $1000 Third Place
• $500 Fourth Place

I've been working on the world ranking scoring these past couple days. I'm not changing in any way the math behind how the rankings are calculated -- I'm pretty happy with that. I'm just trying to optimize a few things, and make it less stressful on my server to calculate rankings on all those games you people have been playing.

You may have seen a few glitches as scores go up and down, but rest assured that nothing is permanently lost. I can always recalculate the rankings from scratch (and I've done that several times these past two days). The scores look correct right now, but I will continue to watch them as I debug the system.

I've released a bugfix for Frootcake, now at version 1.12. This fixes a money problem where the game would pay people even when in Free Play mode. Sorry about that. This doesn't affect you if you have the Personal, free-play-only license. If you have the Commercial license but you set the game to Free Play, you will want to get this update.

The last Frootcake tournament was a blast, so the people at Sinful Sinners are doing it again, bigger and better this time!

Sinful Sinners is hosting a Frootcake tournament that will run for two days starting 6PM Monday March 10th.
The tournament will be run using the "Local Franchise" method on the scoreboard. At the start, the high score totals will be reset. Then, over the next 48 hours, anyone can play at any time on the Sinful Sinners Frootcake table, and each game will add to your score. You get points based on how well you play in each game. The more games you play (and win), the more points you get. At the end of the event, the top three players as listed on the board will win prizes.

• First Place $1000
• Second Place $500
• Third Place $250