2009

2008 was the year of tmnX, which wasn't as good as everyone (including me) had expected. Unfortunately it took 8 months of 2008. The last 3 months were a lot better; TMN grew to about 400 active players again.

2009 will be the 5th year of TMN, and the 5th year I'm working on TMN as well. Which brings me to the future of TMN as it's in my head...
I hope TMN will hit 1,000 active players again in 2009. I also hope Huy will notice what has been going wrong, so we can work on these things.

Besides TMN, there's also my personal life. 2009 will be the year I have my final 2 semesters before graduation, and the year I turn 21 as well. Besides that, I'm looking at lots of learning, working, and having fun.

One more thing:
I wish everyone a merry Christmas, and a great 2009!

Activity of DC

I think we all agree that DC isn't active enough. No news, right?

So, why am I posting this? Because I have a chart to show you guys how active DC is, and -most important- when he is active.

The chart below shows when he updated pages, or files in general. You'll see that I set it all up, and DC started using it most (when he had a few weeks off) when he created TMNClassic. He worked hard for about 4 weeks, and then it all slowed down. My line, the green one, stays visible, where DC's disappears for a few weeks, until he fixed the cred retrieve from tmnX.

Chart is generated by TortoiseSVN.

Poll

A problem TMN has always had, is ISPs. Some seem to think it's best to throw all users through one proxy server, resulting in many players having the same IP address. Why is this important to us? Because players having the same IP Address, look like duplicate accounts to us. And if these accounts have interaction, it becomes a violation of the TOS.

"so, why don't we publish a list of users on my IP", is a question I often get. The reason is quite simple. Our TOS simply states we will never provide 'private information' to any third party. This third party can be a company or person, including a player.

Now, I would like to know what you find more important; Being safe, or having the TOS changed so your username and ISP details can be published to others.

Please let other players know they can vote here, I really am interested in your opinions. You can also comment to this post, if you want to add something. Thanks in advance.

Update #1
Option 1: You will get a page where you can see everyone who has accessed your IP. You will appear on lists of other users, who have logged in at your house/school/internet cafe as well.

Option 2: When you're about to send someone who has been on your IP anything, you'll get a warning. Something like "this user has used your IP, if you continue, you will be in violation of the TOS".

Option 3: You will get a page where you can see if other (active) accounts are on your IP.

Option 4: You are responsible, read the TOS and watch out!

Option 5: Place your own opinion in a comment to the related blog post.

Bad websites etc

I think it was last Thursday I heard about all these hackings, but... As always: I was too busy to do something about it. On Friday I started internship at 8:30 AM, and got home at about 3:00 AM, as I had a Christmas party.

This weekend I was finally able to produce a possible fix, but I couldn't test it because I wasn't sure how these hackers did it. I did talk to DC about it, but he didn't have a clue on how it was done either.

Today, I heard of more hackings, and decided to ask around about it. I got a working hack-site, and had a quick look. I implemented last weekend's fix, and it worked! I tested it a few times, but it kept working.

After updating it on TMN, I decided to update a few other thigns:
- Global Most Wanted page not giving out rewards
- Killing scums using 150,000 FMJ bullets threw me an error
- Adding a fix to stop certain scripters on crimes and gta pages
- Adding a nice warning image to possible bad links on game forums etc

Then it was time to handle 15 days of inbox... busy busy busy!