HGG Community Forums

Hi folks, just wanted to give everyone a general update about what is going on behind the scenes right now.

Who works on what normally?
First for some context here is what each of us do on the game.
-I do all the member-facing interactions, advertising, interface coding, and database updates, and am the executive officer. I make sure everyone's workload is doled out, help with planning all our updates, and make sure member feedback is listened to and figure out how to use it to improve the game. I tend to take care of the constant stream of small issues that need taken care of.
-Haystack does the business paperwork, is a sysadmin who makes sure our servers are running correctly, and does the deep project work. That means most large long-term projects are handled by Haystack,
- Jenx is our full-time artist. He is making new breed art and is slowly overhauling all of our tack assets in the back. He also makes art for special events.

Who's working on what right now?
-I have some bugs with BCs I am working on and am in the early stages of building the new breeding lab. (Small fires keep popping up that I have to deal with.) I am also doing a fair number of invisible to-members updates to improve admin functions in the game.
-Haystack is building the updated shopping cart system, and making it so we can take far more payment options.
-Jenx has finished up the PRE art (I think it's his best one yet!) and will be starting the special Halloween horse next.

Work shut down this week
As much as we want to keep working on these next projects we are having to take some time off this week. We are moving to Europe next spring and have a bunch of fixes around the house that must be done before then. Also, we are having electrical work done on the entire upstairs of the house this week which is going to cause significant work disruptions anyway so we are trying to fit it all into this week.

What's the ETA?

New shopping cart check out: From the sounds of it Haystack doesn't have too many work days left on this. The work delay means this will get pushed back a bit though. Early October probably for this one.

Subscription Price Changes: Don't forget our sub prices are going up! Also early October for this one. (got a bit delayed with urgent house maintenance)

New breeding lab: A bit early to tell on this one. Haystack and I need to do some server updates to get this working and it's a very new type of project for me. I would guess we have about a month on this, but I like to put updates out in parts, a few updates have even gone out already, so you should hopefully start seeing bits sooner rather than later. Expect this in October.

Image Gen Updates: I have been keeping a list of all the little image gen oddities I need to fix for the new BCs (and boy is it getting long) I will probably work on these and breeding lab updates around the same time period. Those bad white leg markings are my highest priority. Expect the fixes to start coming soon but they will be doled out a few at a time between other work. It's a two-person job to get these out which has slowed down the work on it.

Breed Characteristics: The art for PREs is done, though the finalization still needs doing. We expect this to be out right at the beginning of October with the Halloween special horse coming out later in the month. Work on the Irish Cob will also be starting next month. After that, I will sit down and plan with Jenx what else we want to try and get done for the rest of the year.

Tack Editor Updates: We want rotating of tack items for you, and a proper layering system and we want it bad. Also getting rid of the old editor system which only causes problems. Haystack will be back at this project as soon as shopping cart updates are done. I have no good ETA for you on this because we need to do some major planning on it first. I am hoping to see lots of nice updates to this over the winter.

Advertising We stopped advertising for a bit there to help us ride out the economic downturn. We are starting to wind it up again. Right now we are directing new traffic towards Forest server. So if you see an uptick there that is why.




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