Warscale 65 - Website (and morale) is up!

Hi everybody reading this series!

Lots and lots of things this last two weeks. Maybe the most important is that the Warscale website is up! If anyone would like to take a look, you can find it on:
http://www.warscaleonline.com (also Warscale.com or warscale.net)

Forums located at:
http://www.warscaleonline.com/forums

In order to access the forums you need to create a Warscale account using the registration page. Creating a Warscale account will get you ready for the Beta release expected soon.


So the details.

Website
Last week I mentioned that I analyzed a lot of hosting providers and two of them came to the top ov my list. FatCow and inMotionHosting. Basically the same service but as FatCow had a really good offer so I decided to go with them... and boy... what a nightmare...

To make the history short, after more than two days the account was still on hold and I was asked to wait for another 24 hours. That made it for me and I requested them to cancel the order (they were reluctant to do so but thats another history). Suffice to say I'm still not sure if the FatCow chat support even used real people or chat bots... I think it was the later.

So I decided to go for inMotionHosting... what a difference! I registered then called to their offices in the US, answered a couple of questions (will you host porn?) and 5 minutes later my account was up and accessible and 20 minutes later the domain was registered on my name. It was the same domain that I requested on FatCow so I really don't know what they were doing at all. Also I requested them to setup a SSL certificate which I got from GoDaddy, they were always so helpful. Really good!

So after a couple of days of learning phpBB I had my forums up and a couple weeks later working with the content and integration everything is up and going. This means that, from now on, I will double post this series here and in the Warscale forums and in time I will stop using this site. At least regarding Warscale, I still have other projects in mind and will post them here on GarageGames.


By the way, if anyone has a good swear word list that I can use in my forum I would be grateful. My cursing vocabulary in english is quite limited.


phpBB/Warscale integration
One of the problems in this website was coordinating phpBB and Warscale. You know, phpBB uses a database which resides in the host but Warscale uses its own database which resides in the game server. So in order to coordinate the two databases I had to build my own registration, password recovery and password change pages so that I create the account and a process in the warscale website reads the actions performed and applies the changes to the Warscale DB (creates new accounts etc). The transfer is done through SSL so it should be at least reasonably secure.

Joomla and Jumi
Joomla proved to be an invaluable tool for the Website creation. Allowed me to easilly create the different pages (Articles for Joomla) and Jumi allows to integrate php scripts. Calling the pages is quite simple once you understand the Joomla URL syntax and with some additional parameters you are even able to run a PHP script which returns a page totally stripped out of any HTML code (just what you want to print out) which is anvaluable to just create an XML output for instance.

Intellectual Property
Last week I commented that somebody registered the warscale domains. We managed to get in contact and he agreed to transfer me the domains. I'm very grateful for that and thats the reson I can also use the warscale.com domain.

But the point is not this one. I was deeply troubled on this issue but not on the domain level. I always thought I was going to change the name of the game later for a definitive one but I have grown quite fond of it. So what may happen if sudenly you find someone registers a trademark with your logos? Basically you are done. Go and get new names and logos... not a funny thing.

To be honest I never gave it a thought but it is a thought I really don't like. So I inmediatly started searching for the patent office in Australia and registered my Spritekin and Warscale logos. I don't know if I can register the game rules or game manual here. I guess if someone gets another similar game and tries to register and sue me then I can claim prior art or something like that.

What world would be without lawyers... well... for inmediate things I wouldn't have a brother in law...

Fixes
Fixed a lot of entries on the manual. Included more people in the Manual creadits.
I added tooltips to the spell cards which allows to display more information on the damage and type of damage the creature deals, the armor and type of armor and the movement and type of movement for the unit.
Fixed a bug in some avatar views, when switching screens and back sometimes I got a strange view.
Added the /bug and /request chat commands. Players can send a bug or request just by typing a command in the global chat like "/bug when I click on this button it does nothing" or maybe "/request I would like a undead vampire treant of the ancient woods please?". All bugs and requests are stored in an XML file.
I also added a default welcome message which will display when you enter a shard. I also added a periodic warning message to prevent from giving your password or personal details to ANYONE!

The plan for this week
Create the BETA installer and get my server ready for action!!!!

Luck with your projects!
Guimo