Merry Christmas and a Happy Newyear!

Published Date 2020-12-24T15:20:05

erry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all of you!

Things seem to be working out fine. During the year, we've moved to the Cloud and enabled Websockets and removed the old admin pages.

I'm hoping the year 2021 will also be an eventful year (in a good way).

By Karn.

Release notes - version 2.0.7

Published Date 2020-12-03T22:29:44

owdie, people of Karchan

This is the 2.0.7 release of Karchan. Sorry to disappoint you, but it's just a bugfix release..

I'll put releasenotes here when I have time, but it's late.

Highlights:

chatlog

when you start to play the game, the chatlog is empty. "Reset" button will retrieve your entire chatlog from the server. Typing "clear" will delete (hopefully) your chatlog on the server. "Clear" button will clear your chatlog on the client.

websockets

websockets should work fine now, but for those who are having trouble, there are two new buttons. "Ping" will send a ping to the server. If the connection is live, the server will send back a "Pong" (Visible on the right upper corner). When there's not a connection, simple press the button "Reconnect".

big talk

should work more according peoples expectations. It means it doesn't matter a lot where you type what.

images

it is now possible to delete your images, should you choose.

Bear in mind the following: images are aggressively cached, which means even though the image has been removed from the database, your browser (and other browsers) will still have a copy (for some time).

Also means that you should NOT "reuse" image names!

Release Notes

• removed some stray Vaadin stuff.
• Fixes #137. chatlog is now empty when entering the game, but can be retrieved from the server if you want to.
• Fixes #125. Logging off readout fixed, when someone in the same room logs out.
• Fixes #123. Having a deputy mail "everbody" was broken. Works now.
• Fixes #138. Upon creation of a character, the OOC channel is now on by default.
• karchandocs now also uses the version number, so all documentation of different releases is available.
• added a type to the websocket logmessages. It allows for Reconnects and Ping/Pong.
• removed jmockit from karchanentities, it's not necessary
• removed WebsiteServletTest, it's broken.
• changed mocking framework from JMockit to Mockito (had to change all tests) but now works in Java 11.
• Fixes #128 and #127. Big talk issues.
• Fixes #121. Admin can search for characters by owner, ip and roomnr.
• Fixes #124. Page no longer refreshed when clicking Hopefuls/Ranks or members in the guild tab.
• Fixes #120. Admin can't alter characters. Fixed.
• Fixes #117. Searching by name possible in the character admin page.
• Fixes #115. Searching by methodname possible in the methods admin page. For example "vic" will show all methods with "vic" in the methodname.
• Fixes #116. Deleting images is possible.
• Fixes #114. Searching and sorting among items in admin pages.
• The website is now accessible via non-SSL, but will automatically redirect to the https version.

By Karn.

So, about this cloud thing...

Published Date 2020-09-18T07:01:14

o, we've been running in the cloud now for a while, and after some initial problems, things seem to be calming down.

I'm still investigating issues of instability when the server is running for a long time. I'll keep you posted.

For your information, I'm running on a PaaS (Platform as a Service) framework called Jelastic (https://jelastic.com/).

Evaluation

Old setup (VPS)	New setup (Cloud)	Comments
flexibility, I was free to do as I pleased	inflexible, node setup is done for you
high maintenance	low maintenance	Related to previous point.
slow	fast	Most users are Americans, and the game is now housed in a Data Center in Atlanta of all places.
simple support, no statistics	extensive support, detailed statistics
steady predictable cost	only pay for resources you use
inefficient software, but who cares?	inefficient software is costly!	Related to previous point.
payment via bank account	attached to my PayPal	That's right! If you donate to my PayPal it goes straight to the server.
my server, mine, no touchy!	collaboration is possible/ownership is transferable	Nice to know if something were to happen to me.

To be fair, my old setup did have several options, I just didn't know about them. At the time of starting my contract period, at least, they were not available.

Screwups

Installing/replacing a node changes the IP address, which means I have to change the DNS records of karchan, which means people have to wait for the DNS change to trickle down to them.

I accidentally installed an old version of the application server. That needed to be corrected. My mistake.

I installed NGINX to be able to redirect HTTP traffic to HTTPS, which seemed fine, however, it also caused the Websocket to be closed after 1 minute of inactivity. So for now, I removed the NGINX again.

The domain used in the application server is not suited for production use, and needed to be changed. It might have been the cause for the server to stop responding. I increased the EJB Bean pool to 128 (up from 32), the http thread pool to 50 (up from 5) and turned off the http listener for now (until I can get the redirect fixed). Transaction timeout set from 0 (disabled) to 300 seconds just in case.

I plan on changing some more things about the settings in the application server, but these were the important ones.

Things done

Fixed the pictures of the rooms, a lot of them were prefixed with http://www.karchan.org and http://karchan.org and they should not be. As a friendly reminder, if, for instance, you need to reference the picture well.gif on the server itself, a relative url "/images/gif/well.gif" would be perfectly fine.

Removed a lot of old user methods containing the old xml way of working. They don't work and caused exceptions in my log.

The whole thing is running on java 11 instead of java 8 now.

High regards,

By Karn.

An October Event - The Isle of Coldridge

Published Date 2020-09-11T18:21:03

reetings Folx!

I have set up an event for October that anyone can be a part of. It has a full plot and requires teamwork, and it will be moderated by myself. I plan on keeping things fair as far as the event goes, and will even be utilizing the /roll 10 command to ensure things remain balanced.

If you're interested in participating in the event, please sign up here:

Sign Up Sheet

I look forward to hanging out when the event rolls around!

By Victoria.

Moving to the Cloud completed!!

Published Date 2020-08-28T07:16:14

By Karn.