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We hope to (partially) tackle these problems next round by a set of changes that will not be published before that round.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

Back home, TMN offline

Last Saturday morning I arrived back in the Netherlands after a fun (yet busy) trip to Brazil, where myself and 15 others were doing research in the field of IT. The trip involved many visits to research institutes, companies and university departments, as well as some places important to the local culture and history (and beaches are part of that as well, logically).

After some rest, I pulled the plug on TMN in the evening, and replaced the game by a static page providing everyone with some information. Because of a slight jetlag (and being tired in general) nothing much was done on Saturday or Sunday.

Right now I am preparing a test environment, so we (Devious and myself, for now) can test the updated features, so the next round will have a smooth(er) start (than last round).

Some questions that were sent to my inbox have not yet been answered, so I will address those here:
* The percentage of credits that will be returned has not yet been decided;
* Properties will not be dropped before some players are ranked hitman+ and own more than 10mil;
* Property pickup fees will be there at the start of the round, but may be lowered/raised/removed later on, depending on the state of the game economy;

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.

Status update

University is really consuming a lot of my time... It's all about logic and mathematics at the moment, and both aren't the easiest subjects around! At least 4 days a week are reserved for uni, and the "couple of hours" left are spent wisely on relaxing and TMN.

Luckily, TMN is taking shape too. Although slower than expected, my print-out with the list of pages that need work is starting to turn orange from marking the jobs that were finished. There's still a lot to do though! Pages already finished (but not thoroughly tested) include crimes, GTA, OC classifieds, messages, profile and notepad, booze cartel, jail, underground stores, OC, DTM and blackjack. That leaves about 30 pages that still need work, and testing.

So, when will TMN be back? Many players have e-mailed me asking this question. Sadly, I can't answer it just yet. The first estimate was "the end of May", but at this moment "the end of June" even seems too optimistic. So, July? August? Maybe. I hope so!

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

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

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

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

Upgrade 1, 2, 3!

Moving the database
Yesterday we transfered the database to the VPS, which (long story short) caused a rollback of roughly two hours, and about 4 hours of downtime. Since I was in uni, I couldn't do much to sort it out any faster. When I got TMN back online it lagged a lot, so I was forced to disable jail. We decided to move the files and the domain (tmn2010.net) to the VPS on Friday morning, and hoped that would solve the lag...

From hosting package to VPS
Unfortunately this VPS was not powerful enough, causing even more lag! CPU usage was at 100% constantly, and every single file update by me would cause 5 minutes of even more lag! Even for me it was too slow to handle, so I kept jail closed and ordered another upgrade.

This upgrade really seemed a lot better (doubled the memory, and opened up another CPU core), and it was quite responsive at first. Unfortunately this only lasted until (you guessed it) jail was reopened! This was simply too much, so jail was once again disabled, and the 3rd upgrade was ordered. This upgrade will have again double the memory, and another CPU core opened. We're now waiting for it to become active (the hosting provider needs to read his e-mail first ;))

Marc

Too busy to write a blog post...

Wow, it's been 22 days since I last wrote a blog post, you can guess the reason for that: I've been busy!

On the player side things seem to work out nicely, I've seen players from 2005-2006 return, and the online players list is steady at more or less 300 players (max was 421 players). People are reporting possible improvements on a daily basis, and I've already updated over 25% of all pages since September 1st (and over 50% of all pages since I gained control).

As for my side of things, I've been seeing a lot of good numbers, I'll list a few:
- Direct traffic to TMN has gone up to 81%, where linking websites take roughly 14% of the traffic, and search engines the remaining 5%;
- Google Adsense reports that 15 million ads have been displayed on TMN (an average of 555,000 a day!);
- Most TMN players are from the UK, USA, Iceland, Netherlands, Norway, Canada, Finland;
- We're still consuming roughly 11GB of bandwidth each day;
- We have had roughly 6400 unique visitors since September 1st;

Bullet Factories
Yesterday was the big day for anyone wanting a Bullet Factory; everyone ranked hitman+ had a fair chance at winning one. Although my alarm didn't go off at 10AM, and I wasn't awake yet at noon, I did manage to complete the entire process before 12:40.
The next few hours were very interesting; anyone who held a BF seemed to have a cross-hair on their heads, and most of them died. It was a very interesting day (for anyone who didn't get shot).

Two players haven't claimed their BF yet, they have one more day to collect it (or the 8th and 9th winners of the lottery will get it). The 4th winner violated the TOS (just a small violation, but still) so he didn't get his BF.

Marc

We're back!

We're back! And to understand why I think this day was successful, you'll have to know my targets... Here they are:
- I was hoping to hit 150 registered accounts on Friday 27th of August (we did not get that amount until Saturday).
- I was hoping to hit 450 registered accounts on the day of the launch (we got roughly 500 accounts).
- I was hoping to get 10 credit purchases on the first day (we hit that about 2.5 hours after the launch).

Not everything went so great... I forgot to create a phone and plan for the first few hours (while only System has a phone provider), and found a bug creating them too. There were also a few smaller problems, and complaints about the logouts (that occured mostly because I was fixing these issues). A few hours after the launch it started to look like it was going alright.

At this moment, there are roughly 200 users online, including 2 mods, 2 forum mods (including DragonCurse, who offered his help too) and one admin (myself). OCs are starting to pop up, the forum is quite active, and more than once a player told me this is what he/she had been waiting for: TMN. TMN is back.

Altogether, it seems like this round will be interesting!

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!

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.

Up and running

As you may know, TMN is back up and running. It doesn't look bad at all from my perspective; between 150 and 300 players online usually, forums are quite active as well, and overall TMN seems alive again.

Before we re-launched we already made a lot of changes, and it seems like we're not stopping yet! Unfortunately we didn't have much time to test the new layout, also because we're more focusing on this game round and its features. I think we'll eventually find a nice way to implement the new layout though! I can't share any screenshots yet.

As for me, I'm currently doing 5 courses at another university, and though I have to spend a lot more time on studying and traveling now, it's a nice set of interesting courses so I'm not complaining.

Marc

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!

TMN Beta Testing

The TMN Beta Test is going very well. Most players I e-mailed about it were happy to help me test TMN on a 100% voluntary basis.

So far I've spent most time on a few improvements:
- Properties on Trading Center had a few bugs in it, those were fixed
- Business Names are now scanned for illegal characters (on creation)
- Replaced one crime with a pick pocket function, that will pick another player's pockets (you can type in the name yourself!)
- Added a Sell All Damaged Cars button to garage

Other improvements we have been discussing on the forums include:
- Sorting of garage
- Car Bombing
- Allowing players to update a topic they created
- Network invitation messages and slogans
- Drive-By Organized Crime
- MTAs
- Explosives Lab (entirely different than the way it used to be!)
- Bullet Factories

The above things are still being considered, but I'm hoping to improve TMN as much as possible.

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