Reset Announcement

We just finished the longest round of TMN since it’s in my hands, and although the end was more boring than any round before, the rest of the round seemed alright. When I got home on August 15th, it took more than “just a few days” to get used to being back in the Netherlands – spending 4 weeks in Africa really changes you! The next week I continued implementing feature improvements that were on my list. I am now confident that TMN can be back after (the semi-announced) 2 weeks, so it is time to make the actual announcement!

Here are the important dates: 

- TMN will go offline on September 7th at 18:00 TMN time (GMT+2*), 17:00 in the UK (GMT+1*)

- The new round will start on September 8th at 18:00 TMN time (GMT+2*), 17:00 in the UK (GMT+1*)

- There will be no pre-registration; when the countdown reaches 00:00 you can create your account

- Properties will be dropped on September 10th or 11th (when the economy reaches 400mil and the game houses 25 hitmen+)

- Property pickup fees will be like last round; 35mil for a BF, 15mil for a BJ, 5mil for other casinos (these may be changed later in the round)

- Minimum and maximum bullet prices will be like last round, and may be changed during the round as well

- A percentage of purchased credits will be returned on September 22nd or 23rd, more info on that will be provided later on

Some changes: 

- Rankup Requirements; no more scripting to legend using crimes or GTAs or jail, but OCs, DTMs, Killing, Traveling are also required!

- A new kind of scripttest; easier to complete than (re)captchas, harder to bypass using a script - wait and see!

- Cheaper credits in the credits store; roughly 35% more credits for the same amount of money!

- No more 10% bullets loss in the Artillery Bunker!

Of course there will be some more changes, but you’ll have to find these yourself during the round. We hope to see you then!

Marc

*: Note that we are currently in Daylight Saving Time.

Looking back at the round...

It's been nearly four months since I last posted a blog post, and although that could be considered a bad thing, I actually believe this game round has been going well! We still have 100'ish players online most of the time, and 200'ish players take the time to login every day! So what's been going on this round? Here's my view on things.

Changes from last round

We made a few changes this round, and I have to say they had a positive influence on the game. Here's a summary of those changes and the effects I noticed:
- Fewer cities decreased the amount of (useless) properties, which worked well.
- Artillery Bunker still lacks documentation but is being used - especially after certain players got banned for duping while holding loads of bullets.
- International Prison with minimum jailimes worked well, and increased traveling.
- Fixed bullet minimum and maximum prices worked well, tuning these allowed us to control the economy somewhat - which is also good.
- Easier killing is mainly noticed by the players, not by me.
- Script tests failed; scripts were tuned to stop or logout whenever one was sent out.
- First-to-post activity in the shoutbox and game forum added some activity, which was nice.
- Adding scums to GMW was fun to watch, and also added some activity.

Problems

Of course this round has seen problems as well, mainly the amount of cheating is a problem. Scripters shared their scripts, some even read the TOS to avoid getting caught, and others just created 50 accounts to rank them all up slowly while avoiding bans. Another related problem is that the auto-logouts became useless to certain scripts, and there was no real way for us to stop it.

We hope to (partially) tackle these problems next round by a set of changes that will not be published before that round. The main goal of these changes is to make the game more fair and make ranking more of an achievement rather than a logical consequence of scripting. Because most of this also depends on the players, I will once more repeat that creating 50 dupes is stupid and doesn't add any fun for anyone playing TMN. It's a game, and should not be played like that.

Long round

Possibly the best thing about this round, is its length; this round has been going for nearly 4 months, and will continue for at least another month and a half. I believe this knowledge causes players to not end the round by killing all players, but also motivates people to stick around - which is good in general. Players seem positive about it as well, and activity is still alright most of the time.

The reason for this round to last until at least mid-August, is the fact that I will be out of the country for a month. For TMN this meant that no round could be started between May and July, because there's always work for me during the first period in a round. Going out of the country "near the end" of a round is less of a problem, and was therefore preferred. 

So, when's the reset? 

I will be away starting July 17th. After my return on August 15th we will decide what happens to the round. Here we have a few possibilities:
1) Throwing TMN offline instantly (not preferred; announced resets are always better);
2) Throwing TMN offline 1-2 weeks later (possibly the best option);
3) Keeping TMN online for another month (if the round is still active);

After TMN goes offline, I need roughly 2 weeks to prepare the new round. After that I am sure we will have another nice round.

Marc

TMN Launch

Some players requested additional information regarding the launch, and although it's not so easy to plan ahead at this moment (I'll be away on Saturday and part of Sunday), I'll do my best to update you guys.

The full launch date and time time will be 11-03-2012 at 18:00 in the GMT+1 timezone (which is 17:00, 5PM in the UK). Before that (a couple of hours earlier) the pages you currently see will be replaced by the 'regular' pages (including login and registration page) displaying a countdown.

There will be no pre-registration, simply because there's too little time for that. From 18:00 on you will be able to register your new account.

As for properties: Properties will be dropped when we believe the economy holds enough money, and enough players meet the requirements. We believe having 25 hitmen in a game economy with close to 400mil, the properties will fall in good hands. Before that, System will hold them with reasonable maxbets, but no bullet production.

Marc

TMN Reset Announcement

Rumors have been around since week 3 of this round, but logically we never took those seriously. Even in early January we didn’t take them seriously, but when the economy dropped from more killings (and more after that), we had to get thinking and planning. As mentioned before; those two activities aren’t easy on me (), and consume most time. My personal planning is not so straightforward either; I have to plan around exams, projects, visits to cool countries and other occasions of extreme workload. For that reason we only had one option for the reset, but as players last year really hated me for announcing the reset early, I decided to wait with the announcement. Now is the time to post it though!

So, what’s the date? Here’s a draft of the planning I have in mind:

• On February 14th I leave the country for a warmer place
• On February 25th I return home, and pull the plug on this round of TMN :’(
• On Saturday, March 10th Sunday, March 11th we launch the next round, with improvements based on suggestions made (more on that later)

Below you’ll find a list of accepted suggestions and our own ideas:

• Fewer cities and networks
• Artillery Bunkers: keeping some bullets after you die (credits store option)
• International Prison (possibly with minimum jail-times before someone can break you out)
• Losing health on numerous occasions (OC, jailbreak, GTA) to limit scripting a little
• Easier killing of people wearing protection (this seems to have been a bit extreme this round)
• A TOS update on “duping”; we’ll be more strict
• A TOS update on “scripting”; manual script tests may return

Marc

Due to another meeting on March 10th, the launch had to be postponed by one day, and will be on March 11th.

Pre-registration, more updates

Like last year, you will be able to register your account prior to the launch. This time, pre-registration will open on Tuesday, November 1st somewhere in the afternoon (TMN time, GMT+1). From then on, the communication platform will only be accessible from http://platform.tmn2010.net.

And as promised, some more updates:
- If you use a mobile device, or a (relatively) low screen resolution, you will now be able to switch to a more mobile-friendly layout.
- The TOS has been updated: Doing an OC with another player (1!) on your IP is no longer a problem, and interacting with others on your (mobile 3g?) IP is not a problem as long as amounts are reasonable.
- Profiles are a lot more customizable now, you can choose to show or hide avatar and phone, the amount of kills on your name, all kills (including name and rank) and other statistics.
- Bankrupting a casino now makes you the owner of the casino.
- The minimum casino bet has been raised to $1000, to keep casinos at least playable when the owners are away.

Marc

TMN Launch Date!

Ouch, has it been this long?! Yes, it’s been like half a year since TMN was replaced by a boring communication platform. I am however glad I made the decision to create this with top priority, as it’s a lot better than an empty page!

It is time to end the communication platform phase though: as of November 3rd 2011 18:00 (GMT+1 timezone) , the communication platform will be replaced by the good old (yet new) TMN again!

The final weeks before the launch will be spent on the new features as well as testing features we didn’t give testers access to (for security reasons). Like last year, pre-registration will be enabled a couple of days before the launch*, allowing you to reserve your name. From then on, the communication platform will no longer be accessible from the main website, but from another link instead*

*: Information regarding pre-registration and the new link for the communication platform will be provided later.

Marc

ps. If you applied for a staff position and were rejected before, please check your e-mail inbox again. We just invited a few more players to help us during the final phase of testing.

Updates and changes

Staff applications have been flowing in, and Devious is already working on the selection. Unfortunately university courses have already started for me, so part of my time will be spent on that (and traveling). I've made quite a bit of progress during the last couple of weeks though, so a launch isn't that far off. Keep watching twitter / facebook / TMN / blog for more info!

In the rest of this blog post I will describe some of the changes made, and some of the features added. Of course a lot more was changed, but to keep it (at least a little) short, here's a summary:

Layout changes
You may have read somewhere that the layout will change a lot since last round, this is correct, but not entirely… Although everything was re-created, the layout appears very similar to what it used to be (check out the screenshots). On a technical level, however, everything changed. The changes made allow for a better experience from any device (cell phones and tablets included), and will also enable us to provide you with a choice of layouts and some additional feedback during the gameplay. Although we will most probably kick off with one or two layouts, we may in the future launch a safe-for-work version, or a version specifically meant for mobile devices.

Page changes
All pages have been re-created, and many pages have also been merged. This allows for quick navigation between the pages, and will also result in a smaller menu. Besides that, instead of the ±110 pages we used to have, we now have roughly 35 doing the exact same thing! To share some details:

• Everything a player can own (except for casinos and Bullet Factories) can now be managed from one page. This includes money, credits, bullets, businesses, cars, weapons, explosives and protections.
• Phones and phone plans now break and expire. This way the phone provider owners will earn a little more money. Additionally, you can repair your current phone or extend your current phone plan with a discount.
• Everything network-related can now be found on one page with 4 sub-pages that can be opened on request. It will be easier to find certain options (“network information” and “network manage” were way to generic!).
• An addition to ‘regular’ killing has been made: You can now prepare your kills; select whether or not you wish to reset your shooting timer (with credits), select the amount and type of bullets, select your gun, and when ready, all you have to do is pull the trigger!

The feature that will have even more impact on the game, will be the Name Buyback option. This (credits-only) option allows you to keep your old name after getting killed. If you don't care about players knowing who you are, and like your name, this is the option for you! Also the process of registering a new account after your death is a lot faster than before.

Some more features and changes will be revealed during the beta-test, and I am sure you’ll find some more changes after the launch. I hope to see you then!

Marc

We need your help!

I’m back from a short vacation and have been hitting the pages hard! Updates and changes have been made to all pages, but I’m still working on a couple of new features and final touches. Altogether we’re getting closer and closer to a launch…

So, what has been done?
I have been spending a lot of time going over the coding (parts had never been touched since 2005!) to eliminate excess coding, fix known bugs and to optimize pages for a better TMN experience.

And what’s next?
The next step is to finish the last new features we want to add before the launch, and (also while doing that) get to testing these pages. Although a lot of testing will be done by myself, I definitely need some help from the players: all features must be tried at least once before the launch. Are you interested in helping me? Please read the instructions at this page.

Marc

TMN offline, communication online

It was tempting to write a long long story about the subject, but because of exams and other important work, it was delayed - and can now contain some positive news too!

Offline
TMN went offline after some players decided to break it by using an exploit. Sad, but true. After a couple of days -and many supporting e-mails- we decided that TMN will definitely be back, but it will require some more changes than "small tweaks". This would be the time to make the changes we wanted to make a year ago!

Communication platform
For the meantime, we decided it would be nice to open up a communication platform for players to communicate with us as well as the other players. This system was created partially during my exams, and partially in the following days, but now it is ready! You can access it from the TMN home page at http://www.tmn2010.net

Future
As stated, TMN will definitely be back, but it may take quite some time. I personally think the end of May should be possible, but all that depends on how busy I am at uni, and how fast development goes in general. We will make changes that will stimulate game activity, allow faster game rounds (and ranking), and make playing a more fun experience in general. More information on that can be found on the Game Forum that's currently online.

Marc

Killfest, Gambling and Reset

On the game forum as well as the in-game news page you'll find an announcement regarding the killfest, gambling day, and reset. It was quite difficult to schedule it, and I really had only two options; do it in January, or late March. I chose the first option.

The game will go offline on January 21st
There will be a killfest on January 22nd
There will be a gambling day on January 23rd
The next round will start on January 24th at 19:00 (GMT+1)

For more information, read the Game Forum or in-game News Page.

Marc

Update #1: Added launch time, which is 19:00.

Christmas and Snowballs!

On December 14th we announced our holiday schedule, which included the following items:
- Dec. 14 – All I Want for Christmas Poll
- Dec. 14-25 – Christmas Gift Giveaway
- Dec. 18-19 – Jail Break Parties 2PM, 6PM, Midnight
- Dec. 20 – Drug Transportation Unveiling
- Dec. 22-25 – Snowball Fights
- Christmas Eve (Dec. 24) – Lcuk’s Christmas Riddles
- Christmas Day (Dec. 25) – Peace On Earth, 24 hour ceasefire

The Drugs Transportation Missions launch went quite well, although some players at first didn't realize it's an extra way to rank, and only drugs will be removed from the Drugs & Booze page. Just before the launch the kill records page was renamed to Personal Stats, which includes counters and timers for DTMs, OCs, Crimes, GTA. This page may in the future be used for other statistics as well.

At this moment the Snowball Fights are active, and proved to be quite a lot of fun! Using a special page (link is on the game forum) players can throw virtual snowballs at other players, who will receive a notification, and (in most cases) a small gift (some money, a credit, a car). At the same time, the Shoutbox is updated with a similar notification, visible to all other players.

In addition to the snowball throws in the shoutbox, we figured it would be nice to disable these messages too. Today (24-12-2010) I made the change; two buttons to toggle visibility of jailbreaks or snowball messages were added. While doing this, I also updated the shoutbox in general, allowing possible new features such as network chat and/or personal messages to players. These possible updates haven't been scheduled for creation yet.

Finally, I would like to wish all TMN players (and other readers) a merry Christmas and a great 2011!

Marc

Polls, new possible feature

On October 8th a poll system was introduced to the TMN players. This system allows the TMN staff to attach a poll (with unlimited amount of answers) to a topic, so all players can vote (once). As a first test, we asked players how old they are. The result of this poll (after 3 days) is shown on the image below.

This poll was only the start though! On 11-10-2010 another poll was added to a forum topic. In this topic a new feature is explained, and player opinions are requested through replies and the poll. The idea s the result of a brainstorm session the TMN staff had, and may be a fun addition to the game. I won't explain the feature in this blog post, but it is related to Drugs, and it will function as a middle-type crime that gets more XP than GTAs and Crimes, but less than an OC.

Marc

TMN Launch

I hope many people have been expecting this post, but unfortunately I've been more busy than expected. Here it is anyway!

Next Friday, August 27th, you can pre-register your TMN account for next round. That way you can reserve your name even if you aren't available at the launch day. This pre-registration opens at 16:00 in the GMT+1 timezone (10:00 AM in EST).
The pre-registration process works as shown on screenshots a few blog posts back, but the username + password combination won't log you in just yet.

Next Monday, August 30th, TMN 2010 will launch, and you will be able to use the login information from the e-mail to login to TMN. This will happen at 16:00 in the GMT+1 timezone (10:00 AM in EST).

I also announced that I picked two moderators already, their names are Devious and Mercer. Both have proven to me in the past that they are loyal members who are always willing to help. Devious during her time as a moderator (2007), and Mercer during his time as forum mod (2009). I wish them a lot of fun on TMN, and I hope the players will appreciate my decision!

Besides these two mods, the team of testers consisted of the following members: mama1971, PDX, InfernoRain, Stev, Stipe, Kazirem and RBG. I would like to take this opportunity to thank them all for the useful input as well as testing results they have provided me with. At the launch a few forum moderators will be selected from the testers team, I will ask them before I post their names.

I look forward to seeing all of you on TMN!

Marc

update, testing, IRC

Update
- Registration is now fully functional (although disabled for players)
- Double Up needs some more work
- I think TMN will launch before september 1st
- I set up a page where you can chat to others (including me, at times) using IRC
- I was unable to setup paypal at this moment, will have to do that later

Testing
Today I invited 7 (former) players to help me test TMN. As practically all pages have been updated, there's a lot of work to do.
I also asked 2 of them how they'd feel about becoming moderator (I will publish the name when they say yes). The others will probably become forum moderator at first (they may be promoted to mod later).

IRC
Rage and Silentbob host an IRC server that can be used for TMN. You can use the pjirc script I set up, or use your own IRC client (server: irc.g33kd3n.net, channel: #jail) to start chatting.

Marc

Ps. Keep advertising the TMN website, blog, twitter, facebook group. The more players we get, the more fun it'll be for everyone!

Help needed!

Since details related to weapons, explosives and protections were lost, I request the following:
If you have screenshots of the inventory page from last round (2009-2010) or the round before (2008-2009) please send those to my e-mail address or upload them and post a link in the comments.

Thanks in advance!

Quick update:
I opened up a twitter account for TMN, it's called TMNOfficial. I am not a fan of twitter, and don't personally use it, but for "spreading the word" and providing more updates than large blog posts, I think it's good to have one for TMN. On the right side of the blog you'll see the latest few tweets.

In the past few days I fixed about 14 pages and tested most of them too. Two important pages have't been tested yet, as they rely on data requested above (weapon, explosive, protection): Organized Crime and Killing.
I'm still having trouble getting registration to work, it seems like there's abug in reCaptcha (it was reported too), but I can't seem to fix it. I'm looking into alternative registration possibilities now.

Marc

Game and features

I announced that I'd provide a full update. Unfortunately the decisions I wanted to post about haven't been made yet, so I haven't posted that update yet either.

The most important thing is that I will be the one to host and run the game. For the rest there are a few things I don't know for sure yet:
- The name of thegame might change (by adding a prefix or suffix);
- The original domains (tmnx.net, themafianetwork.net) may be used (I'd prefer this, but DC is the owner of those domains, and you can guess they are worth a lot of money);

As for features, I heard many of you want Double Up back as casino game. No problem, except for the fact that I can't remember why we ever took it out! Could anyone answer that question? I still have the source code, so with about 5 hours of work I could get it back in action.

Are there any more (old) features you'd want to see back? Post them in the comments!

Marc

Ps. Thanks for the support guys, it's really appreciated!

tmn2010.net

Good news: I have registered tmn2010.net

Since I didn't receive any reply from DC, I decided to simply continue where I left off. The next logical step was to register a domain, order a hosting package (no more dedicated server, I hope it'll work out), and get something online.

http://www.tmn2010.net already hosts the "portal" used during the last round of TMN. Soon it'll be expanded with the rest of TMN, although there's still some work to do.

I don't have much more to tell you guys, just the fact that I repaired phones, phone plans and phone providers today.

Marc

Update: (28-07-2010)
For DC's side of the story, view the original domain.

Update #2: (28-07-2010)
DragonCurse replied to another e-mail, things are looking promising, and he'll be online somewhere today I hope.
TMN now runs on TMN2010.net but is not accessible to players yet, I still need to do a lot of repairing, but at least I got it working on the new host. I hope DC and I can come to an agreement so we can run TMN on all existing domains, and provide a fun game + community again.

Update #3: (28-07-2010)
I will post a full update tomorrow, but from the chat I had with DC, there's one easy conclusion to draw: The TMN2010 project (still need a cooler codename) will continue.

Offline.....

Wow, and this had to be the title of the next post!

I assume everyone who reads this already knows TMN is off-line, but the bad news is that I don't know why and for how long (though I could guess, I won't). After numerous e-mails and text messages, and even some messages on facebook, I still haven't heard from DC.

So, what's next? That's my question really... If DC's had enough of TMN, I'll buy the domains and cut him a deal as I'm sure players are willing to help and revive the TMN community. I'll be busy as always (although the 55-hour weeks of graduation are over), but with some help from people who actually communicate it might work.

For now all we can do is wait, sadly.

If you would like to stay updated, you could either join the Facebook group ("TheMafiaNetwork") or keep watching the TMN domains (themafianetwork.net, tmnx.net) and this blog.

Marc

Ps. The message below was posted on Facebook earlier this week:

Since TMN has been offline, I've been trying to contact DC to figure out why... I assume he just 'let it die'. Especially since he has ignored text messages as well as e-mails on all e-mail addresses I know, I'm afraid I'm right.

Anyway, if he responds, we'll see what we can do. The least we could do is get a website o...nline to explain things. As for now: the future is unknown.

Back from holiday

Only a few days back I returned home from 8 days of fun in Rimini (Italy). I spent my nights in multiple clubs including Baia Imperiale, Club Life, Shooters Bar, Copa Cabana, Altromondo Studios and Blow-Up. This holiday was a (well-deserved) opportunity to relax.

Back home I replied to all e-mails and PMs (not too many, lucky me!), to continue with development. Today I started off slow* by implementing Youtube videos for player profiles, which works quite nicely now.

Marc

*: Italians do everything slowly, I apparently got used to that!

Empty!

The game forum counts max 3 pages. Topics stay on for days. Online players 'list' is just a few lines of names, less than 60 usually. I get less than 10 messages a day.
All sad signs of one thing: The reset

People say we should reset sooner, but we assumed people would be pissed if we'd announce it later. It seems like this wasn't such a great step to take after all!

Should we change the announcement? I think that decision requires some insight in donation records (which I don't have myself). I should have a chat with Huy within a few days that could help us. We could possibly do the killfests earlier and bring TMN back up earlier as well.

For now, I've set up another server (besides the regular test server) to test TMN with about 10 players. The forums there will be used for discussing new and improved features for next round, and to test these features as well. I hope that'll save the trouble we had with tmnX, and I hope that will make next round a little more exciting.

Marc