Automation, automation & more automation
Posted: Wed Mar 19, 2014 11:16 pm
I must admit I have not yet worked much on the pets and pet quest recently. The main reason for this, is because of the lack of time I have for programming these days.
I do have some spare time at work, where I can work on PkHonor. However, programming both pets and the quest requires me to do research and testing in the game - and I can't very well open a PkHonor client and game while at work.
During evenings, I usually spend most of my time answering e-mails and posts in regards to various things, such as donation problems, donation chargebacks, donation refunds and some in-game cases the staff cannot handle, along with bug reports etc. Which leaves little time for actual in-game development.
Plus, I already need to work 8 hours a day, so I'd rather not spend the whole evening on PkHonor as well. Still, I do what I can.
In order to save time in the long run, and enable myself to focus more on in-game content, I've been busy writing an automation tool that will automatically handle all chargeback cases, while at the same time allowing me to perform a full refund in less than 10 seconds. The tool will check if the player has enough items and automatically take the correct items from someone's account.
The upside of this system is that I was able to write it mostly while at work, since I didn't need to be in-game to work on it. I did however have to perform some testing which happened during the evenings. So the little time I still had for programming in the evenings, was spent on testing this system.
The good news: 2000 lines of code later, it's almost as good as finished! Now I simply need to integrate it yet with PayPal's API (which automatically notifies us about chargebacks) and with my personal control panel to very quickly and easily take care of refunds. I will even be able to perform all refund cases at work since I won't need to log in to the game.
I'm hoping the system will be up and running tomorrow, definitely no later than Saturday.
As of then, I will have much more time on my hands for in-game development, and I will focus entirely on dem pets
I'm still going for a release before the end of March!
On a side note: Rapsey has recently been working on another automated system that will allow me to deploy server updates much more easily. With just a few clicks, I'll be able to release the latest server and I won't even need to be in-game to restart it.
I do have some spare time at work, where I can work on PkHonor. However, programming both pets and the quest requires me to do research and testing in the game - and I can't very well open a PkHonor client and game while at work.
During evenings, I usually spend most of my time answering e-mails and posts in regards to various things, such as donation problems, donation chargebacks, donation refunds and some in-game cases the staff cannot handle, along with bug reports etc. Which leaves little time for actual in-game development.
Plus, I already need to work 8 hours a day, so I'd rather not spend the whole evening on PkHonor as well. Still, I do what I can.
In order to save time in the long run, and enable myself to focus more on in-game content, I've been busy writing an automation tool that will automatically handle all chargeback cases, while at the same time allowing me to perform a full refund in less than 10 seconds. The tool will check if the player has enough items and automatically take the correct items from someone's account.
The upside of this system is that I was able to write it mostly while at work, since I didn't need to be in-game to work on it. I did however have to perform some testing which happened during the evenings. So the little time I still had for programming in the evenings, was spent on testing this system.
The good news: 2000 lines of code later, it's almost as good as finished! Now I simply need to integrate it yet with PayPal's API (which automatically notifies us about chargebacks) and with my personal control panel to very quickly and easily take care of refunds. I will even be able to perform all refund cases at work since I won't need to log in to the game.
I'm hoping the system will be up and running tomorrow, definitely no later than Saturday.
As of then, I will have much more time on my hands for in-game development, and I will focus entirely on dem pets
I'm still going for a release before the end of March!On a side note: Rapsey has recently been working on another automated system that will allow me to deploy server updates much more easily. With just a few clicks, I'll be able to release the latest server and I won't even need to be in-game to restart it.
