Ravalox' Dev Blog

Greetings!

This is the start of my Developer's Journal. I've been active both visibly and behind the scenes in a few areas, and I feel it's time for me to keep the playerbase up to date on what I'm up to. This may be boring, or it may be entertaining. At minimum, I hope my blathering on is educational.

Most of you know who I am as being an active part of the community since before persistence. But an introduction for the newer Avatars out there surely is warranted.

I learned to code in the late 70's when I was in 6th grade [Atari 400 and TRS80], and have been playing Ultima games since 1982 (starting with Ultima III on C64). I consider myself a gamer, though when I do play a game I see "The Matrix" not the game. I and two friends started a software company during high school and our first commercial software release was the "Role Playing Gamer's Aid" for C64 (was originally supposed to be Dungeon Master's Aid - But TSR wasn't too keen on that idea).

I was involved in Ultima Online from Beta and continued to explore Felucca and Trammel and got involved in the Sphere project which was the group that brought us "private shards".

Just prior to the announcement of Shroud, I got into the closed Alpha for Elder Scrolls Online, and continued playing and developing add-ons for it until fully shifting to Shroud. Ravalox' Quest Tracker is still one of the popular LUA add-on downloads for ESO.

I've been assisting SotA as much as I can for quite some time now. I used to come down to the office and help out with Telethons and other events, as well as lead the Sunday Hospitaller meetings after a while and work on SotAMap assisting Jakub White where possible. When the SotA community IRC server and the Bot went down for good I started SotAbot so the Port Devs would not have to set aside time to work on it.

I still have a "day job" which is actually an evening job, lol. I am a Tier 3 Disaster Recovery and Mitigation Engineer. I work on Communications and Networks that support Hospitals, Military, and Private entities. It's basically a firehouse for IT.

So here we are now. I started working with the team in October last year because I found myself with a ton of free time. Since then I have spun up on the internal structures including the DataCenter, Servers and the game administration and development tools. I still have loads to absorb and though I am thrilled that the team has welcomed me with open arms and has taken time to answer any questions I might have, I still make every effort to expand my abilities and knowledge without being a burden.

When Chris welcomed me to the team, he gave me one task and one goal. The task was to re-define the Streaming Program. This is now complete and handed off to Community Management. Once the "Mystery Bag" management Jira is completed, then the new program will be ready for testing. The goal was to start working on dungeon rooms. The goal of creating and fixing dungeon rooms has not yet been realized, mainly because I sidetracked myself to clean up the Bug Forums (Nov-Dec) and then along with Elgarion to clean up Customer Service (Jan-Feb).

During this period of time, @Lord British asked @Scottie and me to proofread and audit the new Shroud of the Avatar book for Lore accuracy. This task is nearing it's close.

I have been living in Austin (at Scottie's house) since May of last year due a pending divorce. I can't tell you how grateful I am for the friends I have in this community and especially for Scottie, @Chris and the team. Without Scottie, I'd have no place to live, with out the SotA project to keep me busy, I would have nothing but despair. I was AFK over the last six weeks mainly due to issues related to the divorce, but I am back in full swing now.

 

Here are some of the projects I am working on:
I'll update this post as items are updated, so folks don't have to dig through my ramblings to get a quick update.


* Responsibility for the Forums and Discord structure/maintenance

• I have been cleaning up the forum structure and will continue to work on improvements

* Jira Project Manager

• Created a Customer Service Ticketing system
• Performing Monthly Maintenance on Jira DB including Bug and Improvement tickets
• Ensure the resolved issue and improvement cases are highlighted in the PTE (QA) testing directives
• Player facing improvements for Bug and CS ticketing

* Transformation of the QA Server into the Player Test Environment:

• Up 24/7
• Database copied from Live at least twice a month
• Testing Directives (What do the Devs need the player to try to break)
  Includes new features and issues/improvements reported as fixed
• Developer Assisted Test Sessions
• Significant Increase in the XP, GP, and Crown logon bonus (pending a code change)

* Bug Forums (QA and Live)

• Taken responsibility for bug coordination
• Re-structuring to minimize the monthly maintenance while also preventing bugs from being archived before they are addressed
• Better triage of issues and direct resolution of issues that do not require an internal issue created
• Re-organization of the Bug Brigade and the Bug Rewards Program
• Re-writing "boiler plate" notices specific to bug or feedback/wish list forums

* SotAMaps (pending HW and SW changes)

• Manage SotAMaps and work with community to correct and improve the SotA web based mapping systems

* Creation of a player cemetery within the Brittany Graveyard

• Will be a separate fenced in area within the scene specifically for players of SotA who have passed on IRL
• More to come on this as I put it all together

* Dungeons (not yet started)

• Create new player dungeon rooms
• Work on bug fixes

* Hometown Restructure (long term project)

• Re-design of Hometown from ground up

* SotAbot

• Update PoR
• Re-write the Stream-Pop functionality
• Syslogging integration with Kibana
• Various (in PoR)

 

My schedule is odd. I should have been sleeping about 3 hours ago, but I wanted to get this thread started as I have been putting it off due to fire after fire. I usually get up around 2pm CT and am up until about 3 or 4am, so Chris and I have a bit of an overlap in our schedules, this is great for coverage. As time goes on I will get more involved in operations (I'm sure).

Last night I worked on the Bug forums. Did some triage and fixed a couple of things as well. (there should be a QA build later today - we are still working through all the issues experienced last week) . I am working towards getting the bug forums all cleaned up and then keep them that way.

I created a new channel in the SotA Discord server for Screen Shots/Images for forum posts. As most of you know, we do not host image attachments and this has made things a bit of a pain when trying to find someplace to host a picture you want/need to insert in a post. Discord keeps images forever (so far). I can confirm at least 2.5 years at least. The process is really simple just follow the instructions in the pinned channel message here.

I wanted to do this specifically for bug posts, but the channel can be used for any images that need a home when trying to post them on the SotA forums.

As part of the new Bug Forum (QA and Live) structure, a few things are changing (hopefully) for the better:

1. The forums will no longer have a Release # assigned to them:
   Bugs will remain in the category forums until they are resolved, fixed or otherwise completed. This will allow the playerbase to better see what issues are already known, and if they have gone through triage or not.
2. Both PTE (QA) and Live Bug forums will have a "parent" forum with sub-forums for bugs.
   In the parent forum there will be the Patch Notes, Testing Directives, Sanity tests, Tutorials and Guides for testing things, and announcements of upcoming Developer lead testing events. These posts will appear in the "What's New?" listings and will be "read only".
3. Bug Categories:
   Though there may be opinions on whether we should collapse the categories, expand them or something in the middle, there is a reason for them to be setup the way they are. Each of the Devs on the team are responsible for "primary areas" in development and they should be checking their sections regularly to make sure anything critical that they work on is taken in. In addition, a set of Bug Moderators will be policing and performing triage on the threads posted. Keeping in mind that the bug forums are not the place to discuss the issues, but to clearly report them so the facts can be absorbed and entered into the ticketing system. The bug forums and categories have a boiler plate "notice" at the top that outlines the rules for these special forums, be sure to read them so we can work together to improve the game!
4. Bug post Status:
   Each bug thread that has been through triage should have an indicator at the beginning of the title. Please do NOT set these yourself! Allow the Moderators and Devs to edit the title of the thread to accurately reflect the issue and status. I'll post a complete list of the status indicators in the parent Bug Forums as we get closer to the program being up and running. When a thread has been assessed and entered or otherwise processed, the thread will be locked so it does not get necro-ed or otherwise muddied with additional posts. Once a bug report has a status indicating it has been completed (usually [Fixed], [Resolved], or [No Response]), and has been in the forum for a period of time (specific # of days TBD), the thread will be archived.
5. The return of the Bug Brigade!
   I am working to develop a Player Testing Program that will encourage players to report bugs, test fixes, and try out new features in the Player Test Environment. The program will offer rewards and they will not be in the form of a raffle.
   This is still in progress, so please have patience. I hope to have this formulated by R77 and fully implemented by R78.
6. Better sanity testing internally:
   I am working to improve the Sanity tests we use prior to putting a build out on the servers. There is a lot to review, and the tests do work!
   My hope is to revise them to touch on more systems and add observational points for those executing the tests so when doing one action, a number of items are really being checked. A version of this test will be made available to the playerbase to use in the Player Test Environment.
7. Testing Directives:
   Not only will the patch notes be posted in the Bug forum, but so will a list of Bugs and Improvements that have been set to completed in the team's ticketing system (moved to QA). This will allow the players to see exactly what we are looking to confirm working correctly in the Player Test Environment BEFORE they are put on the Live Game Server.
8. Developer Assisted Testing Events:
   Yes, that spells DATE! When a Dev sets a DATE, a thread will be created in the Parent Bug Forum. Normally this will occur in the Player Test Environment Bug forum, but under certain circumstances, a DATE may be issued for the Live Server. Keep in mind that all posts made in the Parent Bug Forums will appear in the "Whats New?" posts listing, so no need to dig in looking for them.

With these changes, threads will not disappear or go un-acknowledged and the players will have better visibility into the teams workload and workflow.


Still lots to do here. I need to get to sleep lol ... Looking forward to sharing loads of boring stuff with you all!