About me

As many players have asked questions about me, I thought I'd dedicate an entire blog post to it. I hope you'll enjoy reading it!

My name is Marc, and I'm 22 years old (19-05-1988). I live in the Netherlands, and have a Bachelor's degree in Information and Communication Technology (BICT). I'm currently in university (Radboud University Nijmegen) doing a MSc in Information Science, which will probably take another 2 years. It is fair to say that I got my degree partially thanks to TMN and its creator DragonCurse.

How it started
Back in June 2004, DragonCurse asked me if I was interested in testing somehing. I ended up testing and later managing the game we now know as TMN. We grew from 0 players to 2200 players online at the same time within a year, and even though we had our share of corrupt moderators, it was a great time.

Development
With no knowledge of programming, databases or even webdesign, DragonCurse trusted me with administrator access to the server (this was early 2005). He explained the (very) basics of getting data from a database, and soon I was on the way learning T-SQL. About 2 years later (January 2007, I was in the first year of my ICT study), I started programming in ASP.NET. I e-mailed my first code updates to DC on January 12th 2007 (although I may have updated more before that).

Misjudging
Because we were still too young to handle a successful game, TMN kept shrinking... From 2200 players online we shrunk back to less than 500 online, so halfway through 2007 we thought it'd be good to launch a new version of TMN: tmnX. We launched the game in January 2008, but unfortunately we misjudged the TMN players, who really didn't want another game! After 8 months of tmnX we decided to pull the plug and update TMN to a version we could manage: TMN Classic was born. TMN Classic was a 90% recoded version of TMN that performed a lot better and was easier to manage.

More recent
In 2010 the game had shrunk to less than 12 players online at times, and since I was in the middle of graduating (February - June 2010), I didn't have much time on my hands. Eventually TMN went offline. Because I personally wasn't done with TMN (and realized the players weren't either), I stepped forward and started working again. The rest can be read in the previous few blog posts.

Future
We can't predict the future, but we won't expect any luck (like in 2004). For that reason we'll be carefully planning new features, advertising, updates and promotional events such as holiday weekends. From the credit purchases we don't need to worry about server fees, but we do need to make sure the game attracts new players and keeps its current players. We may continue to work with DragonCurse and his new game (TMN4).

Marc

Permissions, mod team, progress, internship

I had a nice chat with DC last night, and really made clear how happy everyone (including myself) has been with him. I explained to him why I haven't been to happy with him, and also (finally) got permission to do whatever I think is best for TMN, without verifying it with DC.

Staff
You all know, the way we chose mods isn't perfect. Last round people applied for a job, which was better, but still not perfect. So, how should we pick our mods? Share your thoughts!
Use the comment option (no need to login) to tell me what's best, what requirements we should stick to, and how to pick mods in general. I'll discuss the comments with DC.

Progress
I haven't seen any progress since yesterday, but I think DC will have some time on his hands. Next milestone: Converting about 100 pages to .NET 3.5, and we'd like to do that within 2 weeks.

Internship
I already told some people about this on IRC, and I also mentioned I'd post about it once or twice. So here it is.
On September 1st I started internship at Logica, researching, and eventually creating an SMS Service. It's very interesting, and I'll use languages, tools, and hardware I haven't worked with before.
Technical: I'll be using a C#.NET application to communicate with a Terminal using AT-commands, to get a service running, that can respond to SMS messages it receives.
Very interesting!

Future of TMN / tmnX

This is what happened:
All fuzzy, through a full-screen application, I noticed Outlook had come up with a balloon stating I had received an e-mail from DC. I quickly sent an e-mail asking him to get on msn, and, more surprising than the e-mail, he got on msn, and we started talking. We talked through microphones for a while, and chatted over msn some more after that.

A quick summary:

• TMN will return
• We'll change as little as possible to the look, feel and gameplay of it
• We won't merge tmnX into TMN
• We may use scripttests on login page, and use auto-logouts to prevent 24-7 scripting
• We will save money by using a cheaper server
• The server should be up today or tomorrow
• We will try and really work together this time
• We may publish PayPal donate records every 3 (or so) months*
  
• I will try and keep up this blog, to inform players, staff members, and total strangers
• DC will be more active for the next 8 months
• I will no longer wait for his permission, and just act when I feel it's needed
• We may re-launch tmnX later, when we changed the things we didn't like ourselves

*: Not daily, weekly or monthly, because it may influence the game. I proposed this because I'm a fair person, and think the players deserve to know at least some of it.

So... lets start!

I have to admit: I've never done this before, but I think keeping a staff blog will be fun and informative for both me, the other staff members, and the players of TMN and tmnX.

On this blog I will post my experiences on TMN/tmnX, as well as technical issues and (limited) information on my own life. For now this blog will not be official, but we may later use it to inform players of what's happening when (for example) things go wrong.

For those who don't understand any of this...
TMN stands for TheMafiaNetwork, which is a text-based "mafia" game, launched in August 2004. We started with nothing, grew to 2400 players online at the same time, and shrunk back to about 500 players online at the same time in 2007.
In January 2008, we launched the new version of TMN; tmnX. Unfortunately tmnX wasn't much of a success. We shrunk back to a sad 50-150 active players, because of many things, but I don't feel the need to mention those here.