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Anybody who is experiencing "white screen" issues where the screen turns white when typing a name into a textbox should upgrade from Internet Explorer 7 to Internet Explorer 8 (or an alternative like Firefox or Chrome).
Internet Explorer 8 in Compatability mode also has the white screen issue. If the problem occurs to you, please turn compatability mode off.
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Around 24 hours from now (~05:00 Y10 D335) we're going to be down for about 5 hours. The downtime will allow us to perform some resource intensive DB maintenance operations that will help us reduce the load on the server (always a good thing!) and narrow down the cause of the periodic outages.
Thanks for your patience.
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With this sync, we have released a much awaited feature: for a large panel of basic and advanced game features, you will get a one-time XP bonus. This XP bonus is also available for existing players and not only new players. Enjoy.
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You've probably all noticed that we've been having server issues lately, resulting in periodic game crashes. We're still working on fixing these issues, investigating potential issues in third-party components and working to optimise our code as much as possible to reduce overall strain on the server. We're hoping that some of our recent changes will make it more stable, reduce the downtime when it does go down and we are grateful for your patience. Anyway, to business...
Bug Fixes & Tweaks
- Fixed a bug that was breaking production actions. (BugIDs 3468, 3467, 3384 & 2931) Existing ships and vehicles that were broken and had zero stats have been fixed. However, if anyone had a ship finish production way ahead of schedule please report it to assistants@swcombine.com.
- Fixed the old forums bug where the number of pages displayed in a thread would differ from the number shown in the forum indexes. Posts by characters that no longer existed in another part of the database where to blame. Said posts will now show up in threads but the character image will be 404 and all other information (i.e. post counts, signatures) will be empty.
- Fixed an issue with sending mining silo reports when there was only one silo.
- Fixed post-upgrade issues that prevented the release or execution of prisoners. (Bug 3474)
- Fixed a bug that would cause wreck splitting actions to break for some characters.
- Fixed a post-upgrade bug in hailing ships, vehicles, etc. (Bug 2503)
- Fixed a number of post-upgrade issues with Parties.
- Fixed a bug where members of a government faction with protection privs could toggle protection on protected entities. (Bug 3488)
- Fixed a bug where custom item descriptions weren't being applied. (Bug 3462)
- Fix rent-a-vehicle NPC. (Bug 3441)
- Fixed account page (changing emails, password, birthday...). (Bug 3341)
- Improved error message when trying to leave a room while prospecting. (Bug 3506)
- Fixed problem of custom pictures submissions for items. (Bug 3509)
- Fixed problem of ship inheritance. (Bug 3492)
- Re-added missing stations cargo button in cockpit. (Bug 3513)
- Restarted all paused NPC Transports. (Bug 3505 and similar emails)
- Cleaned old NPC transports still remaining at destination.
- Fixed exploit allowing to complete wrecking instantaneously by aborting.
Maintenance & QA
- Optimised the 'Join Faction' page to use far fewer queries.
- Fixed an error that appeared on the Position page for characters that had yet to be created.
- Fixed an error that would occur in the Facility Income Transaction sheet when looking at a particular facility that had no transactions yet.
- Fixed an error that was being thrown when picking up items owned by the server.
- Tweaks to the Error Handler to produce more accurate and reliable output.
- Drastically reduced the number of queries run by the Darkness Messaging interface for people with lots of messages.
- When choosing the pay all NPC wages at once the event will now display how many were paid, not just 'All'. (Bug 3203)
- Fixed dozens of minor warnings and PHP_Notice.
- Fixed various admin tools.
- Fixed forum administration tools.
- Fixed MySQL error preventing to protect/unprotect faction stocks.
- Fixed MySQL error when talking to NPCs that have no speech.
- Various fixes in wrecking/splitting.
- Optimised several back-end methods that were resulting in slow performance.
-Ported Tessek's force code onto staging and committed it to SVN
--Started to debug for PHP5 and write backend functions so it actually works
--working on finishing it up
-Fixed table documenter tool
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Angela Liu has been changed to Angela LaSalle.
The End.
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After the jarring Sim News a few days ago concerning Gitane Z Demone's rapid departure from the position of Art Team Director, the team as well as the combine art department in general has been somewhat insane.
No Longer.
I have now replaced Gitane as the Art Director. As the penguin in charge, I will uphold the artistic standards set by my predecessors. I shall continue to create new images for the Combine and its members. If you have need of me, feel free to contact me through Darkness or email. Otherwise, let the art flow.
P.S. We are still working on a few minor details, so please be patient while everything is being sorted out.
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Every so often, I actually attempt to do some work around here, whether it be fixing bugs, or helping out lost and unfortunate souls. And every so often, I need to make a request of players, in order to do my job. So imagine how annoying it can be, when for example, if I ask if I can join a faction and be given some privileges to assess something related to the running of the game, that I am told "No, we don't see why we should let you in", or perhaps "Why do you need to join? We don't want to give you access to our sekrits!"...
This happens more often than not folks, and it doesn't make me want to help you when you're not making an effort to help me.
So in future, if an Admin asks you something, you Don't Ask Why, you Just Comply. If you're not sure if the person is an admin, you are free to ask, but keep it at that.
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Xabia Dimentos has been banned for two counts of player harassment thanks to his vulgar outbursts in both messages to players and on IRC.
These two 30 day offences will be served consecutively (aka 60 days). The loss of 10% assets or CPs will also occur for each count of harassment, as stated in rules violation guide.
I also encourage Xabia to simply put up with this outcome and not have admin harassment added please. Due to privacy and nature of the content, it will not be released publicly, and it will not be discussed with outside parties.
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Bug Fixes & Tweaks
- Fixed "Contact Owner" form.
- All factories have now their missing tractor beam. (Bug 3077)
- Fixed incorrect display of weapons frame when an entity had no weapons. (Bug 3129)
- Fixed custom item submission and approval tools and improved reporting (who/what).
- Fixed room events not showing. (Bug 3387)
- Fixed destruction of entities. (Bug 3189)
- Fixed force features (training, testing, setting master/apprentice) and improved the code. Bug (3349)
- Fixed locks breaking and password changing. (Bug 3386, Bug 3402)
- Fixed change faction leader features and improved related transaction events. (Bug 3383)
- Fixed faction creation.
- Prevented the NPC Transport system to select wrecked destination airport. (Bug 3364)
- Fixed issuing warrants. (Bug 3432)
- Fixed pre-filled handles for DM when clicking on faction memberslist. (Bug 3372)
- Fixed a bug where the starfield background wasn't displaying in deep-space. (Bug 3420)
- Fixed several issues in kick passengers. (BugIDs 3391 & 3397)
- Fixed bugs in the Classifieds Admin tools. (Bug 3406)
- Fixed bugs in the tools used for editing entity descriptions. (BugID 3382 & 3398)
- Fixed a bug that blocked approving and declining GNS posts. (Bug 3355)
- Fixed bugs in the forum search tools. (Bug 3394)
- Fixed bugs in the Public OOC Profiles page. (Bug 3375)
- Fixed bugs in several of the Admin tools. (BugIDs 3427)
- Fixed a bug in talking to NPCs. (Bug 3358)
- Fixed a couple of bugs in production and its interface. (BugIDs 3419 & 3384)
- NPCs hired on behalf of a faction will now be assigned to that faction automatically. (Bug 3403)
- Fixed a bug that prevented players from walking on terrain. (Bug 3430)
- Fixed a bug in viewing faction capital from the faction credits page. (Bug 3320)
-Fixed a bunch of PHP Warnings on the force pages
-Fixed the bug with adding droids to mining (Bug 3373)
-Added an admin script to set someone as force sensitive. (staging/dev ONLY)
-Fixed force change master page.
-Worked on force revision code (siraloth folder), fixed a bunch of PHP bugs.
-Removed a MAJOR exploit in revision force tools where someone could query the DB directly.
-Added checks to revision force code so they can only be used on staging/dev.
- Fixed under-arrest check of construction NPC. (MySQL Error)
- Fixed NPC Shuttle to orbit service. (MySQL Error)
- Fixed custom item approval tool. ( (MySQL Error) (Jevon, I fixed this after you left)
Features
- Space stations can now be used as capital during faction creation.
Maintenance & QA
- Removed calls to deprecated createItem() function.
- Fixed dozens of PHP_Notice errors.
- Fixed action monitoring tool & dissolve faction Admin tools.
- Fixed manage multi-accounts tool. (Bug 3416)
- Added several constants regarding factions.
- Fixing up older scripts and Admins tools to be PHP 5.3 compliant.
Rules
- Clarified government reversal rules regarding capital limit recalculation. (Bug 3318)
- Added missing information regarding fee when changing a faction leader.
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Due to certain people whom wont allow a certain problem be resolved, I am stepping down from the art team. Any art related DMs will be ignored.
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We've just done a sync to bring across all the bug fixes we've been doing throughout the week. Some of these (the more serious ones) were already synced manually during the week. We haven't kept track in our usual fashio of the bug closures since we had so many reports this week, so below is just a sample of what has been fixed. Hopefully this will fix a lot of the issues you've all been having and, once again, we do thank you for your patience this past week.
To make managing the remaining bugs that bit easier for us I've gone and mass closed all the remaining bugs that were opened this week (Roughly 20 out of the original ~110). I'd ask that if I have closed a bug that you've reported please try and reproduce the bug again before reopening it.
Bug Fixes & Tweaks
- Fixed a bug that prevented inventory filters from working. (Bug 3291)
- Fixed a range of bugs within the inventories. Including: Broken sort dialog, filters not working beyond the first page, filters not stacking, selecting by tags not working, selecting "All X in Inventory" not working, and a few others. (Bug 3289)
- Fixed bugs in stocks transfer. (Bug 3328)
- Fixed a bug in entering entities on the ground and in walking on the ground. (Bug 3332)
- Fixed a bug in unloading all raw materials. (BudID 3278)
- Fixed error linked to wrecking.
- Fixed lots of PHP5.3 bugs (CPs screen, materials loading, DM screen)
- Fixed a bug where the communication history won't show up (Bug 3223)
- Fixed a bug where the link to the voting sites won't work (Bug 3224)
- Fixed a bug where the cockpit view would crash when in open space (Bug 3228)
- Fixed a bug where preventing unloading of single mat piles (Bug 3268)
- Fixed a bug where the all permissions links would point to city permissions (BugID 3279, BugID 3327)
- Fixed PHP warnings in the admin create entity script
- Fixed PHP warnings on the owned facilities page
- Fixed PHP warnings in the buildings class file
- Fixed register globals and various notices throughout the CP pages.
- Fixed a bug where the CP exchange to ships won't work (Bug 3298)
- Fixed a bug where cities stats won't show up (Bug 3304)
- Fixed a bug where your private capital would show up instead of your faction's capital (Bug 3320)
- Fixed a bug where planet and city location won't show in the facilities inventory (Bug 3221)
- Fixed Force Meter showing improperly.
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I'll be on vacatino starting tomorrow, Oct. 9, to Oct. 25. I will most likely have internet access inbetween and can respond in emergencies.
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Just a quick FYI. We've turned off automatic faction dissolution for the time being due to the somewhat unstable nature of the server this week. We'll turn it back on once we've sorted out the problems we've been having.
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Due to the up and down nature of SWC over the past couple of days and some potential issues regarding the timestamping/countdown for faction dissolutions, faction dissolutions occuring today and tomorrow may be a result of people being unable to access SWC while their dissolution timer continued to tick. If you have purchased anything from the Galactic Market today, please DO NOT on-sell the items. Keep them with you and await further instructions from the Administration. Ensure you keep handy records of what you bought and for how much to save me some potential time if it is confirmed to be an issue that needs to be reversed.
Your cooperation is greatly appreciated.
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Due to violating the handle rules, Myn Donos has been renamed to Myn Kuat.
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PHP 5.3 Upgrade
As previously mentioned, we've spent the past few weeks upgrading to PHP 5.3. While we were going to be breaking some things with this upgrade we decided to break a lot of things but turning off some of the features of PHP that we've been using up until now, but that will be turned off in PHP 6.
With the help of our Testers we've attempted to go through every feature and page in the game to ensure that everything is still working but, inevitably, we'll have missed a few things. We would ask that you be patient with the inevitable bugs you'll find over the next few weeks and bare with us as we work to fix them.
Bug Fixes & Tweaks
- Added NPC wage reporting to the weekly scripts. As a result you will now receive weekly reports of any outstanding wages owed to any of your NPCs.
- Improved tag filtering in inventory. Users with large inventories using tag filters should notice a better load time now. This also addresses what we believe to have been the cause of the periodic outages we've been experiencing lately.
- Worked around the problem of factories aborting production failing to abort completely. (Bug 3083)
- Fixed a bug where characters under arrest had their members menus distorted by the overly large Under Arrest image sitting over their character images. The smaller unskinned image will now be used. (Bug 2124)
- Fixed a bug where characters or factions with no tags created got a blank screen when trying to view their items inventory. (BugID 3102, et al.)
- Fixed a bug where DM inboxes would throw an error when a character who had sent a DM had died and respawned. (Bug 3140)
- Fixed a bug where mines weren't automatically transferring materials to silos. (Bug 3164)
- Fixed a display issue on the Inventory Overview page. (Bug 3155)
- Fixed a bug where members with the 'View Stocks' priv couldn't priv the Status Reports of factions owned by their faction. (Bug 3105)
- Fixed a bug in the item access checks that could have prevented people from picking up items owned by their faction. (Bug 3096)
- Fixed a bug where a Mine converting to a wreck would break the facility inventory. (Bug 3199)
- Fixed a bug where ships being removed from production would send duplicate DMs.
- Fixed a bug where a construction project having more than 10 workers would throw an error when trying to add more. (Bug 3188)
- Fixed error related to terrain types on rules page.
- Fixed default value for events page.
- Escape pods, gravity wells now show on the cockpit & inventory stats pages correctly
- Modified the way vertical menus (cockpit actions, position actions) are generated
- Modified the way room maps are generated, room maps now fit to floor, not fit to entire ship, this should make it easier to navigate large entities
Maintenance & QA
- BugIDs referenced in Sim News posts will now link to the Bug Base automatically.
- Updated the forums so that thread titles and forum names will now appear in the page titles to aid navigation.
- Patched link handling to ensure that nothing can mass delete a link of a certain type without other conditions included (this was what caused the missing inventory tags the other week).
- Improved error reporting for query count violations and all other types of error.
- Replaced all hard-coded calls to images.swcombine.com to the related constant and updated all DB links to point to img.swcombine.com instead.
- Deleted lots of old legacy files (from www, root mostly)
- Moved admin tools from www/tools/ to usual location
- Move admin tool fixed
- Deleted jpgraph install
- Deleted old webservices archived files
-Updated Force code to use constants rather than fixed values.
Artwork
Two repaired large rules images
Consular-class Cruiser 100x100 and 400x300
Vokoff-Strood Plug-8G 927 100x100 and 400x300
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As some of you noticed, we had a delay of a couple of days in the normal running of the taxes, facility income, and other monthly features. We've now gone and run these manually but, rather unfortunately, there was a problem that stopped the Facility Income run part way through that required the script to be run again. Overall this has had a couple of effects:
1/ You won't have received ANY 'Your total income was ...' events this month.
2/ Some of your will have received your income in two separate transactions. One with the message 'Facility Income', the other 'Facility Income (manual run)'. The manual run sent the income to the owner of the facility, not the manager as per normal. So please account for that when adding up your totals.
We would appreciate it if you refrained from reporting bugs about missing income, just for this month. We've done what we can to get all the income out to people and any manual process of shuffling income around would be far too time consuming.
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Exploiting the system is a bannable offense, encouraging others to exploit the system, strangely enough, is also a bannable offense.
Therefore, Oceliane Aylina has been banned for 7 days for indicating and encouraging players to utilize a loop hole in the custom images system.
If the individual has any questions, or would like to fight their case, please talk to an Asim. |
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Due to the handle rules, Vincent Corleone has been changed to Stefan Corleone.
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Well, you all know the drill: Multi, badness, annoying, poor gameplay, dead kittens.
- Minel Saor
- Chrsitian Mght
The owner may contact the administration in 30 days to have one of the accounts unbanned. Any further illegal multi activity will result in a permanent ban.
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