Ragnarok: Hack Kongregate

Ragnarok has been causing issues for a lot of people it seems. I’m back from my job hunt and can contribute a couple hours a day to get Ragnarok tip-top. Also, we will be moving Ragnarok to open source soon.

Our FORUMS are now open for submission of Bug Reports and Suggestions. Please use that to post bug reports instead of comments on the blog.

FORUMS HERE

Alright so the next update could either be a minor one, or a major one. I have a bit of experimentation to do.

However, one thing is for certain: we’re going to be moving the Badge Encyclopedia online. When I first designed the encyclopedia, I didn’t have a spare web server with a database - now I do. So now, when Ragnarok opens, it will retrieve the encyclopedia from the database. If the server’s down, it’ll just use the one on your hard drive. But that’s not too interesting. What is interesting, is that now I won’t have to prepare an encyclopedia and have people download it. What’s interesting, is this: HackOnline moderation.

In the next update, I will be contacting users who have contributed to HackOnline and ask them to become moderators. They will be able to approve submitted posts to HackOnline, and they’ll go right into the encyclopedia. They’ll also be able to remove submissions. If you haven’t contributed, but want to be a moderator anyway, that’s OK too. Just wait until the next release comes out, and start rating every submission. I’ll have a script that will tell me who is rating things sensibly, and if you are, you will be contacted as well.

I will be contacting you through the e-mail address you used to sign up for Ragnarok. This is the ONLY REASON that e-mail address will ever be used.

Also updated in the next release: you will be able to change your rating on a submission. Right now if you click the wrong button, you’re stuck with it. That’ll be changed in the next update.

Now, onto the “experimentation” bit. The biggest problem with Ragnarok is that it can’t change variables in ActionScript 3 games. I’m going to try and see if I can find a way around this by using a custom “loader” flash file, that loads in the game, and has hooks so you can tell the loader to change variables. I have no idea if this will work. I know flash, but not well enough to make any promises as of yet. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

Oh, and next build will be built as a 32-bit application only. Little known fact: Flash Player is only 32-bit compatible, so it won’t work if you try to put a flash player (like ragnarok uses) in a 64-bit application. So people on 64-bit systems have been shut out from a lot of features. (more info: Adobe Link )

Hey everyone,

Since I upgraded my 110mb account to give me MySQL databases, I figured I’d take advantage of it. So i installed a real blog. Hope everyone likes it - I’m gonna be putting in a forum and a bugtracker soon as well.