This is a list of updates made during the month of May 2024. I'll edit this post later as more updates become available.
General Developer updates
Written May 14, 2024
Burnout
I have a confession to make. My progress on PaperDemon was quite slow in April and part of May. After we had that major outage that happened around April 5th I hit a burn out and hit very low levels of productivity.
Over the past couple of years since my son was born, I hadn't let myself take time to play video games, watch much tv or movies, etc. The last four years I've been very productive, despite having a baby in 2022 and not having child care for the first 8 months of my sons life. So I think after working so hard for so long, it probably wasn't a surprise that I would hit a burn out period at some point. As many of us creatives know, we can't just be outputting all the time. We also need a healthy amount of input to help inspire and motivate ourselves.
In April, the game Horizon Forbidden West came out for PC and I was all over that and it derailed my productivity. I am a big fan of the first game of the series and was very much anticipating this game. I let myself indulge in playing it and I got very into the fandom surrounding it. I got hyperfixated on it and it was difficult to break away.
I'm still a little burnt out and hyperfixated but am now much more functional. I'm trying to focus on the biggest priority stuff for PaperDemon as well as doing some housekeeping that can help relieve some of the stress and pressure that has accumulated over time.
In particular, the bug reports were piling up much faster than I was fixing them and that was causing some stress. I consider a bug urgent if it is game-breaking in some way or breaks the general functionality of the site in such a way that there are no work arounds. Those I tend to fix within a week of discovering them if not sooner.
But a lot of other bugs tend to accumulate over time that are still annoying enough that they should be fixed but often don't get fixed for a while. The reports just accumulate because there are other competing priorities. And when that list keeps growing, it can feel like a big weight pressing down on me. So I went through our public bug tracker and fixed the higher priority bugs and also cleared out a bunch that were already fixed in the past or were no longer relevant. The bug tracker is looking much cleaner now and feels less overwhelming to me.
We've also had a lot of new players join the game this year and have had a lot of questions or pointed out issues with the guides or mechanics that need some corrections. That list also piled up and caused me some stress. But I'm trying my best to work through it and plug through them.
I'm taking it day by day at this point and trying not to take on anything too large or overwhelming.
Upcoming PDARPG events
We've got a series of really cool PDARPG events planned for the summer that our team is ramping up production on. A lot of the time I have been able to work over the past month has been spent preparing for this event series. We can't wait to share it all with you! We'll try to give you some teasers in late May/early June!
PDARPG mechanics update
In our last sale, we promised we'd add Martus assist and Apothecary class to the PDARPG. I am planning to get the Martus assist launched by early summer. Apothecary will be out by end of the year but I'll try to get it out as soon as I can. We have a lot of mechanics planned for the Apothecary class which will require several updates to our rollers so it will take longer to implement. Thank you for your patience.
Thanks for your patience! If you have any questions or concerns let me know and I'll try to address them.
-BogusRed
Here's the list of website releases this month...
May 3, 2024
Welcome to the v71.1.3 release. This release just includes some updates to our ARPG directory.
May 11, 2024
Welcome to the v71.2.0 release. This release includes a bunch of bug fixes.
The fourth character from quadcast attacks are now properly tagged in your queue request for points and reward redemption
Submissions from banned members are no longer visible except to mods.
Photo uploads from smart phones are now properly rotated/oriented
See the full change log below for full list of fixes.
Changelog
c72c383e 🐛 fix (submissions) long links/words break layout
44b083cb 🐛 fix (images) phone photo orientation
5605475a 🐛 fix (notifications) blog subscription notification url
35161c15 👗 ui (profile) revise mod tools
5af5bcc9 ⭐ feat (submissions) hide submissions from banned members
3d07ca11 🐛 fix (submissions) allow deletion of corrupted submissions
d9f8790a 🐛 fix (rollers) tag fourth character in battle queue request
Welcome to the v71.2.1 hotfix release.
The issue from the v71.2.0 release with uploading PNGs has been fixed.
Changelog
2ab8c355 🐛 fix (images) PNGs not uploading
May 14, 2024
Welcome to the v71.2.2 release. This release contains a fix for a major bug with character sheets. (the one mentioned a few messages above)
Change log
35b9b7ba 🐛 fix (art) type fixes description
3d46819f 🐛 fix (game-characters) broken UI on character sheets
fd52977c 🍱 assets (directory) update guest main nav game list