HeavenGames Tech Blog

This story’s too good not to share.

I took my laptop to the Apple Store to fix a stuck latch button (which is attached to the part responsible for keeping the laptop lid closed). I arrived early, so while I was waiting for my appointment I decided to do my rounds around HG’s forums there, to keep an eye on the avatar threads, as well as checking out what some of the April Fool festivities were. I did this on a 24” iMac at the Apple Store, which was crowded at the time. (In the US most apple stores also duplicate as free internet cafes, so you can surf while you’re there as other shoppers look at computers, ipods, etc. around you)

Near the end of the rounds I came upon SWGBH. I was to regret that decision. Their April Fool’s prank was to set their forums in bright EGA colors, enough to traumatize any visitors, accompanied by seizure-inducing flashing animated GIFs for the logos and background.

I was browsing full screen.

On a 24” iMac.

Before I had time to react, the soundtrack came on.

Oh dear god. The iMac apparently had its volume set on max, so it blasted through its speakers for what seemed like an eternity.

By then everyone around me was staring at me.

So, thank you, SWGBH. You guys got me. There will be the mother of all paybacks come next April Fools Day – I have a year to think about my revenge :)

Oh, here’s another April fool’s joke – an amusing, but less humiliating one, was perpetrated by Botolf and his deft writing skills. ES even got into the act =D

Thanks to everybody who provided feedback on the avatars, and who helped us iron out bugs in the gravatar implementation. Special thanks to Stormraider and Meteora, both of whom solved the problems of gravatars not appearing at all for some people, even after hours of waiting.

If you were one of the users who had set up a gravatar account early in the day and had not seen your avatar appear on HG, it should appear now. This was the bug where if your email address wasn’t public, your gravatar didn’t show. Since admins and moderators have access to your email address, by default, they could see your avatar just fine, creating many moments of confusion and frustration in the forums. So, thanks again to Meteora for finding the cause of the problem.

The other bug was that if the HG account’s email address had capitals letter in it, the gravatar didn’t show. This was luckily fixed early in the day after Stormraider pointed it out to me.

Lastly, based on feedback, we’ve raised the size of the avatars to 40 pixels from 30. It is unlikely it will get any larger soon. If you want your avatar to look great though, the folks at Gravatar suggested uploading a picture that’s around 512×512 pixels in size. As with many things in life, keep your avatar simple so it’s easier to see what it is, especially when it’s shrink down to 40 pixels.

If you don’t like avatars at all, you can always turn it off in your user preferences page.

Hope you’ve enjoyed this update, and we hope to have many more in the future.

-Zen

Not a big change, but a lot of people will be a little² bit happier today

• Location field is re-enabled across all forums
• Skype icon is re-enabled across all forums
• Posts / Page setting re-enabled. Tentatively, the new default is 50; new limit is 25–100 (old limit was 10–50) ¹
• Topics / Page setting re-enabled. Tentatively, thenew default is 50; new limit is 25–100 (old limit was 10–75) ¹
• Added support for Gravatars ³
• Fixed stubborn bug in the preferences pane where saved settings weren’t being reflected

¹ Subject to change in the next couple of months based on conditions. Also, you may need to log out and log back in for the new limits to take effect, or if one of your settings were perpetually stuck at 50.

² I would be much happier if this announcement was to launch a private messaging module.

³ You can hide all avatars in your user preferences. Only PG and G avatars will be shown.

[I had an hour to work on HG stuff today. It was either waste it on an April Fool’s joke or do something more constructive, now that we have pretty much nailed down what was causing all the server slowdowns. Also, there’s an announcement on HG today that is not an April Fool’s joke. I’ll leave it up to you to figure what that is; and no, the announcement didn’t come from the tech team. -Zen]

A small maintenance update to fix a couple bugs and to accommodate a couple requests that couldn’t wait until Cloud Nine. Here are the notable changes:

Non-Staff Moderators

The software supports non-staff moderators (e.g., Core Group) in forums. They act like forum moderators, but can’t ban/unban users, move threads, view private data on user profiles, view contents of hidden/deleted threads, and view hidden users on the list of online users. Just as they can on staff moderators, Seraphs have the option to set the invisible bit on them, which hides them from the list of moderators for the forum.

Rate Throttle Updated

After hearing repeated complaints from members that the rate throttle is too strict, we’ve examined the throttle rates and are experimenting with new values. For now, users with higher post counts (in the thousands and above) should see a more relaxed rate. The changes are experimental so they are likely to change as we try to balance things out again.

View Source option now available only to members

The View Source feature is now available only to members to help cut down on the # of pages search bots access on the forums.

The software now auto-hides all posts made by members who are banned. Forum administrators and moderators will still be able to view them (via the view source feature), and they are unhidden once the member is unbanned. This measure was taken to give a ban more gravitas, as well as save our moderators the trouble of having to track down every post the user made if the post contained materials that are in violation of the Code of Conduct, such as disturbing/graphic images and spam.

From the registration logs:

Scrotums Smurf (ballsackforever@**********.***)

In case if you were wondering, that user has two other smurfs in the system.