Beta 0.88

Upgrade Notes

How to Upgrade (no restart required)

Features

• Roster screen now has tabs for the groups. (suggested by ZombieGenesis)

Fixes

• Fixed a game-wide lag related to the multiple plots per scene change. (reported by Clockwork)

Beta 87

Upgrade Notes

How to Upgrade (no restart required)

Features

• You can now mark individual notifications read and unread on the portal.
• Revamped the in-game scenes display to make it less spammy. (suggested by Roz and others)
• You can specify a sort order for any custom profile sections. (suggested by Ren)
• The idle sweep now has a ‘remove’ button.
• The ‘scene’ command by itself now shows just the metadata. It’s aliased to ‘scene/info’. (suggested by Stargazer)

Fixes

• Plot dates weren’t updating properly. (reported by Clockwork)
• Rolling two numbers like 3+4 was giving an error. (reported by Auspice)
• Using the ‘none’ idle action was still performing certain idle actions. (reported by KarmaBum and Lyanna) [This was hotfixed in 86 so most folks probably have it already]
• Editing scenes and a few other things with multi-select boxes was giving an error. (reported by Clockwork and Serenity) [This was hotfixed in 86 so most folks probably have it already]

Little Things

• The roster is now sorted by name within the groups.

Beta 86

Upgrade Notes

How to Upgrade (no restart required)

If you have custom code, please be sure to go down to the end for some important Developer Notes.

Features

• Roster management and idle sweeping are now available to staff on the web portal. Various admin things have been consolidated in the ‘admin’ tab of the profile and profile edit screen.
• You can now set your timezone from the web portal account screen. (suggested by KarmaBum)
• The account screen layout has been overhauled.
• You can set up multiple plots per scene. (suggested by Tat and Blu)
• New permission, can_idle, allows someone to bypass the idle AFK booter. Admins automatically have this permission, but you can give it to builder roles, app staff, etc.
• New command permissions that gives you a list of all available permissions.
• Admins can see and edit player roles on the new profile admin tab. (suggested by Serenity)
• There’s a new ‘roles’ page on the portal that shows roles and permissions. For admins, it also shows who has what roles (suggested by Clockwork). Note: If you want to add it to your menu, you’ll need to manually modify your website config to add a new entry for the ‘roles’ route. For new games, it will show up under ‘System’.
• combat/summary now shows additional info to help combat organizers, including modifiers. (suggested by Roadspike)
• Made a change to ember config that will hopefully prevent website deploys from getting ‘killed’ if memory is running lower than average.

Fixes

• The where command wasn’t showing nicknames for web portal folks in all cases. (reported by Altair)
• Wiki pages with no titles were showing up with blank headings. (reported by Clockwork)

Little Things

• The web chargen now has a little note about registering a player handle. (suggested by Otrere)
• Wording tweak to the combat rally and treat achievements, so it says “someone” instead of “a teammate.” Affects new games only. If you’re an existing game and you want this, just edit your fs3combat_misc config. (suggested by Roadspike)
• The examine command now lets you specify an attribute: examine Faraday/last_on.

Developer Notes

If you have custom code, read these notes. If not, they don't apply to you.

Ember Updates

This version contains a number of Ember addon updates which may require changes to any custom web code you have:

• PowerSelect dropdowns: change onchange to onChange. (same for onClose and onOpen, though these are uncommon.) Also, the search box is now disabled by default, so if you have long lists you should add @searchEnabled=true.
• Page titles: now use {{page-title ‘Some Title’}} instead of {{title ‘Some Title’}}.

Custom Fields

I added some better comments to the custom_char_fields.rb file. This may cause a merge conflict. See Resolving Conflicts for help, and don’t hesitate to ask if you get stuck.

Finally, the save_fields_from_profile_edit now lets you return a list of errors, same as the chargen save. Both are now a bit smarter about not crashing if you forget, but it’s still best to expressly return an array. You can return an empty array (return []) if there are no errors, or a list of error messages (return [ ‘You forgot to set the THING.’ ]).

Beta 85

Upgrade Notes

How to Upgrade this version requires a game restart

FYI - The website deploy will take longer than usual this time due to some NPM library updates. Don’t be alarmed if it takes 10 min or so before you see the ‘upgrade finished’.

Scene Pacing

You can now set a ‘pacing’ for your scene. If you wish to add extra detail about your scene's pacing, you can still use the scene notes field.

• Traditional: Live, synchronous RP with poses coming minutes apart. (Default Setting)
• Distracted: RP that is still synchronous, but with longer time between poses due to work or other distractions.
• Asynchronous: RP with poses coming in at various times, possibly in different timezones or schedules, or even over multiple days.

Features

• The ‘Players’ page now distinguishes between AresCentral registered handles and local player tags.
• The where command has been overhauled to better show who’s in what scenes (even if they’re offline) and where people are (on grid or in temp rooms).
• The wiki character list now only shows active PCs by default, with an option to show everyone. (suggested by Blu)
• Scene owners can delete scenes that have only system messages. (should make it easier to get rid of lingering scenes that never took off).
• Admins can no longer delete scenes, though they can still un-share them. This prevents accidental deletion through typos in scene/delete, or deletion of a scene somebody wanted to download and save.
• Scenes lists on a plot page are now sorted by IC date not OOC date. (suggested by a few folks)
• Unshared scene deletion warnings now come as notifications not mails. (suggested by Blu and Tat)
• scene/invite and addchar now accept lists of names. (suggested by MordenkainensMom)
• When using the traits plugin, you can now customize the instructions text in the web portal. Note: This requires you to update the plugin, which is separate from updating the game.

Fixes

• Achievement notices weren’t being marked read when you looked at your profile page. (reported by Altair)
• Games will no longer suffer extreme lag if the AresCentral server is completely down.
• Posing into a scene now correctly updates your edit privileges. (reported by Roadspike)
• Findsite for web portal people was showing the game’s host not the player’s host. (reported by Clockwork)
• Viewing the web profile of a character who’d never logged in as an admin was causing an error. (reported by KarmaBum)
• A blank tab would show up in the player gallery if someone had a blank faction/group set. (reported by Cobalt)
• Damage/modify wasn’t updating the IC date. (reported by Hexe)

Beta 84

Upgrade Notes

How to Upgrade

Features

• Improvements to the “Account” screen on the portal, including the ability to change your name (if you’re not already approved) and set your email.
• Admins can now see unapproved characters on the character directory.
• Admins can now access web chargen for another character, to edit skills, groups, etc. Go to their profile page and select ‘chargen’ from the action buttons at the bottom.
• Wiki folders now show the total size of all files. (suggested by Ren)
• New “site info” tab on the web character profile shows site info for admins.

Fixes

• Pose character and type weren’t being set when you first loaded the play screen. (reported by Raeras)
• Channel connect messages weren’t using custom channel colors. (reported by Ren)
• Scene temp rooms were showing up in the locations directory for an area. (reported by Grimdarque)

Little Things

• Moved background after abilities in the default chargen config, to match the way it is on the web portal. You’ll need to change this yourself in chargen.yml if you want it.
• A few style fixes in the FS3 chargen boxes. (suggested by Ren)

Beta 83

Upgrade Notes

How to Upgrade

Features

• The “Limited” scene notice has been made into a more generic “Notes” field. You can use this to indicate limited scene participation, pacing expectations, or any other notes.
• Admins can set up job categories on the portal. (under Admin -> Setup -> Manage Job Categories)
• Admins can set up forum categories on the portal. (under Admin -> Setup -> Manage Forum)
• Forum admins can move forum posts to a different category on the portal.
• Channel messages on web portal no longer trigger the active favicon.
• You can now give someone an initiative mod in combat. (suggested by Roadspike)
• Staff can edit backgrounds on the web portal.
• Custom profile fields show up for player bits. (suggested by Wonderkid)

Fixes

• Rolling two skills (e.g., Climbing+Athletics) was giving nonsense results. This type of roll is not supported by FS3, so that syntax no longer works. FS3 rolls are always one ability with an optional ruling attribute and/or modifier.
• You can no longer add a blank job comment. (reported by Tat)
• The specialty buttons weren’t showing up on the portal if your skill lowered below 3. (reported by Hexe)
• Tags with apostrophes weren’t showing up in the wiki page list groups. (reported by Lyanna)
• Pose character and pose type weren’t resetting when switching between scenes. (reported by Blu)
• Folders on the wiki files list weren’t sorted. (reported by Blu)
• Putting spaces into the relationship category order was making it not sort right. (reported by Altair)
• Scene update times weren’t showing on portal when you weren’t logged in.
• The idle character disconnect wasn’t working. You can also now set the disconnect time to ‘0’ to disable it.

These last three were hot-fixed into the last patch right after the release, so most of you should have them already. But just for the record:

• Reading the forum when not logged in was giving an error.
• Channel connect messages had the brackets formatted weirdly.
• Searching scenes with a summary was spinning endlessly.

Little Things

• The script to reset the headwiz password didn’t unlock them if they were locked out due to too many password attempts.
• The jobs created for luck and xp spending now start as ‘DONE’. You’ll still get an ‘unread’ notice on the job, but you won’t have to explicitly close them. (suggested by Tat)
• There’s now a config option to turn off the job when somebody spends a luck point.
• A few minor style updates. (suggested by Blu and Ren)
• The AresCentral games list now shows in-development games separate from open games.
• New graphs and explanations in the FS3 dice mechanics article, illustrating effects of versus rolls, multiple successes, and modifiers.
• New troubleshooting tips for discord issues in the README.
• New coding tutorial about using the markdown format helpers.

Beta 82

Upgrade Notes

How to Upgrade

Features

• The old search is back and new and improved to avoid lag. Google search is once again retired.
• scene/addpose has been repurposed as scene/emit to let you pose in multiple scenes from a client. Note you’ll have to manually check scene/log to see everyone else’s poses.
• You can now set a custom channel color with channel/color. (suggested by Ren) The admin command to set a channel’s default color has been renamed to channel/defaultcolor.
• The character welcome message can now include a link to their profile. To add this on your game, you’ll need to add %{profile_link} somewhere in your chargen/welcome_message config.
• Additional revamps to the active and unshared scenes lists and XP tab to improve usability. (feedback from numerous folks on the forum/discord as well as some CSS contributed by Ren)
• Made some tweaks to the in-game scene command to make summaries less spammy and show location for private scenes you’re in.
• There’s now a “Mark All Read” button for jobs on the portal. (suggested by Clockwork)
• Forum admins can now ‘pin’ a forum post so it shows up first. (suggested by Raeras)
• Forum posts on the portal are now sorted by activity rather than date posted. (suggested by Tat) Note: The in-game command still sorts by date posted to avoid having the bbread 2/3 numbers change every time there’s a new reply.

Fixes

• Vistas were not showing up in the portal scene descs. (reported by Yam)
• Job search by participant wasn’t searching who it was assigned to. (reported by Raears)
• Admins weren’t able to stop scenes they weren’t in. (reported by Clockwork)
• Birthdate/age couldn’t be changed after approval even if birthdate was listed as an editable demographic field. (reported by KarmaBum)

Dev Changes

• Commands and events will be dispatched to the custom plugin first, enabling you to override or add new switches to core commands more easily. See the commands tutorial for some important caveats.

Beta 81

Upgrade Notes

How to Upgrade

Features

• Improvements to the display of various screens on phone displays (including active scenes, unshared scenes, profile, and roster). (suggested by various folks, inspired by styling work by Ren)
• Admins can set someone else’s admin position. (suggested by Clockwork and Ren)
• There’s a new permission manage_theme that gives you access to a web portal menu to change styles and such.
• Idling someone out now signals AresCentral so they appear on the “past characters” list. If you want to correct any previously-idled-out chars, just contact me directly with a list.

Fixes

• The character gallery will now sort right if you have a freeform group field or the capitalization doesn’t match. If you changed your freeform group to a list to work around this, you can just change it back. (reported by Raeras and ZombieGenesis)
• Fixed error when editing forum posts/replies. (reported by Grimdarque and Raeras)
• Handles with no active characters should no longer show up in the players list.

Little Things

• The ‘scenes’ command in-game now grays out players based on activity rather than what room they’re in.
• Fix style of wiki create button. (suggested by Blu)

Beta 80

Upgrade Notes

How to Upgrade this version requires a game restart

Features

• Character gallery group blocks are now sorted by the order of the groups in your demographics config. (suggested by several folks)
• Redesigned the wiki file directory.
• Made some changes to hopefully guide google search to exclude certain useless pages. (suggested by Blu)
• New wiki markdown extension to make a button to create a page with a specific template and category. (suggested by Blu)
• Relationship boxes on profiles now show nicknames, if the game has them configured. (suggested by Blu)
• Admins can now award negative luck points to force people to spend them. (suggested by Roadspike)
• Multi-line channel poses are now converted to single line. (suggested by Clockwork and Ren)
• Visiting the portal will now update your last online time, but only once a day. (suggested by Raeras)

Fixes

• Markdown preview was spilling out of the box. (reported by Raeras)
• Fixed an error editing profiles if chargen was disabled (reported by MordenkainansMom)
• Fixed an error editing birthdates on profile. (reported by Altair)
• App staff weren’t able to edit bgs or do a few other chargen related commands after approval that admins could. (reported by Raeras)
• You could add a combatant with no name via the web portal. (reported by Blu)
• Fixed an error inflicting damage if the target wasn’t found. (reported by Roadspike)
• A player with an apostrophe in their name couldn’t edit or delete their profile files. (reported by Blu)
• Wiki pages weren’t defaulting the title/name correctly if you left one blank. (reported by Blu)
• Fixed an error viewing a location page on the portal without being logged in. (reported by KarmaBum)
• Specialties weren’t being counted in the ability point total on the portal. (reported by Hexe)

Little Things

• Player profile pages now show admin position.
• Forum/job/scene/page read trackers are now on a separate object, which will reduce spam when examining players. Also fixed a glitch where the same thing was being counted as read multiple times. (suggested by Tat)

Beta 79

Upgrade Notes

How to Upgrade (no restart required)

Search Changes

Google search seems to work better with javascript sites than it did a few years ago, so I’ve restored the option for adding a Google Custom Search engine. If you had one set up before, it should re-appear. Otherwise, instructions are here.

Full-text searches have been removed from scenes and posts because they were lagging the game. You can still use the Ares “Advanced Search” to search by other specific fields, as before. Various under-the-hood improvements have been made to the Ares search screens.

The jobs full-text search remains, since jobs are staff-only and not indexed by google. However, be advised that this may cause temporary lag if you have a ton of jobs.

Features

• New channel management screen for admins under Setup -> Plugin Setup -> Setup Channels.
• The play/scenes screens now have a preview option on their input box. (suggested by Ren)
• Combat setup screens show a list of available targets.

Fixes

• Fixed an issue with upload size limit calculations. (reported by Ren and debugging help by Ifrit)
• Made a tweak that may help Google Calendar recognize event updates. (reported by Tat)
• Idle cleanup was running more than once, causing significant lag. (reported by Tat) Note: This fix won’t take effect until the game is restarted, but you can do that at your leisure.

Little Things

• Changing the MOTD now makes a game channel announcement.

• Setup now warns you if one of your combatants has an invalid defense skill. (suggested by Augh)

• There was an error if you typed a number in the team box in combat setup.
• The unshared scenes screen wasn’t tagging private scenes correctly. (reported by Clockwork)
• The home screen was linking to the play page when it said web client. (reported by Raeras)
• Combat organizers can do an AI retarget from the web portal.