#too broke to pay for good quality. blurry it is I guess T~T

[polarmary]

Chosen victim to play with animation…I don’t know where i was going with this-

[qonqr]

I’m Still Here

Many of you may have been asking yourself where did Silver go? Is anyone still working on QONQR?  I admit I’ve been very quiet the past year and from the outside, it looks like not much is going on.

 Before I give my QONQR update I want to share a major accomplishment for me. I’m a little less of a hoarder than I was a month ago. As the 11th year anniversary approached, I decided I had too much old QONQR merchandise I needed to get in the hands of my players. However, I hate shipping. I should be the spokesperson for one of those shipping providers that make shipping easy because I hate doing it so much. Many of you know that the player Rayndel has an Etsy store where she sells QONQR merchandise with my permission. I sent her a 65lb (30kg) box of QONQR stuff. Coffee cups, T-shirts, dog tags and stickers. She is liquidating all of it for me. You can find it all right here.

https://www.etsy.com/shop/DragonHoardCrafts?section_id=19648949

 2020 and 2021 have been challenging for most people, and I’m no exception.  Both our kids are off to college. We are getting older and so are our extended families. Medical issues become more frequent for us and them. The stress of the pandemic doesn’t help. There are days when I can sit at my computer all day, and never write a line of code. Things are hard, they impact our ability to work as hard as we once did.

 A little over two weeks ago, QONQR hit its 11th birthday. The milestone passed quietly. I always spend time reflecting on how QONQR has changed my life and the stories you’ve shared about how it has changed yours. We’ve built something great together. Together we keep it going.

 Despite outward appearances. Things are happening at QONQR. I am working, albeit at an admittedly slow pace. I’ve let go of the stress of pushing QONQR as fast as I can, and instead I’m working on QONQR at a pace that is comfortable. It is important to me and my family that I end my day without being drained of all my energy by the awful decisions and quality that Apple and Google hand me every day.

 The next release of QONQR will include the following features. Many of these are mostly done, so I’m happy to share them, with the caveat that I have no idea when these will actually hit the store. Tons of testing is still needed.

 New Sync Lock Rules

 Sync lock will now last much longer, perhaps a week or even a month before it automatically expires. Along with that Sync Lock Protection will also last longer. The more times you gain sync lock protection, the longer it will last. We want to protect legitimate family members from daily locks, but also want to avoid situations where multi-scoper can get infrequent help to unlock an army of devices and accounts. In addition to longer locks, Sync lock may also hurt resource collection with your bases depending on how play testing goes.

 As with everything pertaining to multi-scoping, it is a blurry line between stopping those who play unfair, and those that are punished for inviting family and friends to play.

 Notifications

I have wanted push notifications for most of the past 10 years. In fact, we were very close to having them implemented about 5-7 years ago, but Google changed their push notification system. We used a unified messaging system created by Microsoft to push to both Google and Apple simultaneously. There were incompatibilities between the new and the old Google system for a long time. We gave up on trying to finish that implementation back then, waiting for Google and Microsoft to get their stuff fixed, and it was years before it became a priority again.

 I spent most of the past 3-4 months working on notification. This area is quite possibly one of the worst technical implementations I’ve had to work with in all my time working in software. For example, if you kill an iPhone application, you also remove the ability to get push notifications until the next time you start the app. It appears to be almost random when Android will decide to beep your phone when receiving a notification, and when it will be silently added to the notification center. For both Apple and Google, the documentation is frustratingly inaccurate or out of date. There are multiple different ways a notification can be processed depending on whether the application was terminated by the user, suspended by the operating system, in the background or in the foreground. Was the notification scheduled locally or sent from a remote server?  Honestly, as a developer, it would be difficult to purposely design a worse system.

 The good news is that I believe I have it working as good as it can possibly work. In the next release you will be able to enable or disable notifications as a whole, or selectively choose which notification you want to receive. Notifications will include: Atlantis, New Wire messages, Mentions in Chat and Forums, Bots and Bases Full.

 A Major Overhaul to the Scope

The changes to Sync Lock mandated that overheat have additional logic to control bots and energy regeneration. More significantly, if we want to have a notification that your scope is full, so I needed to know exactly when the scope would be full.  Currently your regeneration rate is based on the number of launches in the past hour. Launching a few seconds before or after an old launch rolls off that 1 hour mark can mess up the prediction of when you will be full again. To make that prediction accurately, without checking every minute to see, “Are my bots full now”, we changed the formula for when bots will be full, and scheduled a notification based on that time.

 The new regeneration is very similar to the old, but we predict you may get 1 or 2 more launches per hour. I’m hedging the formula towards more not fewer launches to make sure this is seen as a positive change.

 As long as we are messing with the scope, let’s talk about the Bot Regen Accelerator.  Hard core players have pointed out that players who launch on a timer, always hitting the “optimal” launch interval, don’t gain any advantage when purchasing this $0.99 upgrade. In the new release this upgrade will reduce your overheat level by 1 level and you will never be in maximum overheat due to deploying bots. The impact of the upgrade will be noticeable by everyone with this change. The name of this upgrade will probably change to “Scope Coolant” or “Heat Diffuser”. Send me your name ideas.

  Subscriptions, Ads and Elite Players

This is a change that probably won’t be in the next release, but it is something I’m thinking about before the end of the year. Apple has had a bug in their subscription logic for years. If you purchase a subscription on an iPhone, then get a new iPhone, you need to cancel the subscription in the App Store, then renew from your new phone. Apple keeps charging you, but the new device can’t see the subscription, so QONQR doesn’t know you are a subscriber. Why wouldn’t Apple fix this? Well Apple only takes half the percentage of a subscription after the first year. By making you start a new subscription, they can double their cut of the money you pay QONQR for the subscription. Another problem with subscriptions is that they result in many support requests because they honestly aren’t 100% reliable in either Apple or Google’s implementation.

 Many people know that earlier in the year, Apple introduced a change to advertising that blocks tracking. This is great in theory, and I get it as a consumer that I don’t like to be tracked, but this tracker blocking also blocks my ability to make any revenue on advertising. Why would I continue to give away free advertising?

 Elite players are those that have spent over $100 in QONQR over the life of their gaming experience. Over the years the benefits of being “Elite” have dwindled. Features have changed, and incentives have ended. I’d like to invest more time and energy to build features for players that continue to support QONQR but I think it makes more sense to lower the bar and make the benefits for “active” spenders.

 With these three things in mind, there is a chance that QONQR will move to a monthly “pass” option rather than a subscription. There seems to be a trend with games, where players buy a monthly pass that offers benefits, rather than using subscriptions. Subscriptions are buggy and in the case of Apple, a shady business practice.

 The same benefits available to subscribers would remain under the “pass”, but you would have to explicitly purchase the pass each month.  Secondary missions may move to the “pass” model with non-pass players getting only a handful of secondary missions per month. Ads would be completely removed from the app in this scenario since they no longer generate much revenue.

  What’s in the Plans for 2022?

 If you have read my blog over the years, you know that Apple and Google make it harder and harder to stop cheating (primarily multi-scoping).  It is being reported that Windows 11 will have the ability to run Android apps. I don’t know yet how that will impact QONQR, but I’m guessing it won’t be good. At best it will have no impact because I’ll be able to stop QONQR from running on Windows, at worst it could be a nightmare.

 March 2022 will mark the 10 year anniversary QONQR hit the Apple App Store. I can say with a high level of confidence that QONQR is now the longest running location-based, multi-platform, mobile game.

 Personally, I think 2022 needs to be a transformational year for QONQR. I’m not sure we can survive if the game doesn’t change. Apple, Google, and Microsoft have never cared about supporting mobile developers. Outrageous fees and abusive rules (recently acknowledged by the US Congress) have been part of the ecosystem from the start. There are dozens of apps that you can download from the official Google Play store that make it a simple tap to attempt to hack and manipulate an Android app, so players can do something the developer is attempting to prohibit. Once again Microsoft broke the tools I use to help secure the app from hackers, causing weeks of work to find a solution that would maintain the same level of security.  Apple and Google both purposely hide information from developers that would help them ensure real people are using their apps instead of bots. They do this under the façade of privacy, but ignore simple solutions that could maintain privacy, while helping developers ensure the integrity of how their apps are used.

 I’ve said for years, the only way to stop hackers and cheaters in QONQR is to make it irrelevant. That requires a major shift in gameplay. Together, you the players and me the developer, we need to decide if we want QONQR to have such a major shift. I don’t know what that shift would look like, but 2022 might be the year we figure it out.

 2020 was a year of making sure QONQR can survive. Through tons of work that year, massive software rewrites and updates, I was able to cut the cost of hosting QONQR. Today the cost of hosting QONQR all year, matches what we spent in three months during 2019. So far 2021 has been a year of slow work toward significant improvements to the game, but without major strategic impact to your daily playing. I’ve taken my time to avoid burn out. I’m enjoying the pace of my current work week. It has been good for my family and me.

 I’m not sure what 2022 will look like for QONQR yet, but I’m excited to try something new. Maybe we’ll break things, maybe we will create something ten times better than what we have had for the last decade. Time will tell. We’ll figure it out together.

 Thanks for keeping the lights on.

-Scott (aka Silver)

[aures-rose]

Disclaimer: Very much and very little have happened since my last update. I broke my ankle last month and that’s kept me from really roleplaying and writing like I might normally in frequency, quality, and duration. Despite this, I have a lot to write since a lot of this happened before my incident. Anyways! To the entry!

Dear Diary,

So much has happened since my last entry! Where do I even start? I had my first practical potions lesson this year! Deputy Headmistress is teaching it, and she had a cauldron of a love potion called Amortentia. It smelled like firewood and the ocean and flowers, wisteria I think. Maybe lavender. Someone, I think it was Eve, said it smells like whatever you find the most attractive. So I guess I like campfires by the sea. Which makes sense actually, we always had that campfire under the pergola where Mother’s wisteria grew. Anyways, Eve and I brewed the Antidote to Common Poisons which seems like a useful thing to be able to brew. I didn’t even know I could brew, but I didn’t mess up!

After class, Eve and I went down to the campsite near Dumbledore’s grave and we hung out for a while. She told me how she and Marigold had talked about doing a group Halloween costume for the bash this year as plants that can be found in the forest. Eve really likes herbology you see and she got a book from her mum about different plants, I think she said they may have been Victorian plants, I can’t remember. She was talking about going as some kind of mushroom and I had the idea of being a rose, with a paper mache rose head on or something.

Later on I ran into Margo again. She was heading back to the common room and since I knew a shortcut through Lady Prudence, I showed it to Margo. I told her it really pays off to talk to the portraits in school and she said she’d have to talk to more of them. She invited me into the first year dorm where she was supposed to meet Venus- another first year. Venus was going to tell Margo a secret. Margo took me to their dorm and introduced me to Venus who seems really nice and likes plants. Her mum plays music too, piano I think she said. I promised to show her where the music room is sometime, a lot of first years seem to not know about it, I guess because we have no music professor this year. Venus and Margo both showed me their beds, Margo likes plants and Venus also likes stars! Then Venus told us she’d overheard a friend talking to a boy and she’d learned of a secret room through one of the portraits. She was supposed to show us the next day but I ended up being really busy. I’ll have to ask Margo to show me sometime. Also, I think I really like the name Venus. I know it’s a planet and a Roman Goddess, but I like it because how romantic it sounds.

Anyways, I had Herbology with Eve next. I really do hate Herbology. I mean, I like looking at flowers and plants but I just don’t get it. But in class we were collecting mushrooms from the edge of the forest. Venus asked me to partner with her but I’d already partnered with Eve so I had to tell her no. Eve and I talked about herbology for a while and mostly she picked all the mushrooms with these really nice scissors she had. After class, we sat in the courtyard and talked. We decided instead of going by the dock, we were going to sneak brooms and fly to a secret place on the castle which will become our secret place. We’ll bring supplies like blankets and stuff and we’ll hide out there for our sleepover.

We also talked about Ghoul Studies because it was going to be our next class. We talked about Professor Esper and how romantically he talks and also how he wears… a flower on his suit which Eve says represents mourning, or it did in Victorian times. I wonder if Professor Esper is mourning a long dead sweetheart from his days as a student. Wouldn’t that be romantic? In class the Head Boy, Elliott sat near us and we both told him we’d bet money on him with Nora for the TriWizard Cup. Professor Esper also had asked Eve to cast a spell and levitate all the homework to his desk but she couldn’t do it. She asked me for help and I was actually able to do it!

Then came DADA. Not the good DADA though. No. DADA with stupid Professor Vikander. Can you believe he took TWENTY POINTS from Gryffindor just because some boy’s spell backfired? That made me so mad! My blood actually started to boil, I swear! Actually, my hands did get really hot and so did my face and the edges of my eyes got real blurry like… I couldn’t help it and I ended up yelling at Professor Vikander. I… said some not nice things about how he didn’t care about his students and I wished I was a Hufflepuff because Professor Priaulx is better and actually cares. I can’t believe he let me get away with everything I said, really. Tom and Eve were trying really hard to calm me down and I think that’s the only reason I really left the class. It’s so embarrassing getting angry like that. I need to remember to take my calming drought always. Anyways, we were making our way down the tower and there was a crowd at the bottom. And in that crowd was the boy who’d lost us all those points. I couldn’t help myself! I tried to petrify him… from there it all went crazy. Everything happened so fast but Eve tackled me and my spell hit Talula I think. Elliott came down and pulled Eve off me and she explained she wasn’t attacking me, she was trying to stop me and then everything got even crazier!! I don’t remember everything that happened because Eve surprised me so bad and I started to feel really embarrassed and ended up crying. Eventually Professor Vikander came down and everything was still crazy but Talula gave me a calming drought bc the one in my backpack got shattered. Then Professor Vikander sent Eve and I to the Hospital Wing. I apologised to her there and she told me I had nothing to be sorry for and…. That Lex… Lex Ashworth had said something very cruel. He’d been talking to Aloy but he called her a fire flinging freak and… I mean… sure, he was mad at Aloy but… if that’s what Lex thinks of her… what about Talula? Or me? My family? I come from a line of fire flinging freaks even if I’ve never managed it myself…

After that, I kind of laid low for a while, avoiding everyone. Especially since… after that, my eye got even worse. I don’t know why but instead of two pupils, now there’s three. Am I doomed to just keep getting more and more? Will my other eye become freaky next? I don’t know what to do about it but I can’t keep ignoring it so I’ve been trying to do research on curses and what kind might have caused this. I plan on speaking to Professor Macauley about it as soon as possible and if he doesn’t have answers I’ll go to Professor Blightly and then O'Keeffe if she doesn’t. I have to figure this out and how to go back to normal or at least how to stop it.

Then it was announced there was going to be a fashion show. I don’t know anything about fashion and I don’t really care but Gwyn, my mentor, was running the meeting so I decided to go to support her. Somehow I ended up being chosen to represent our house in the casual category. I ended up wearing my red jumper dress with a white t-shirt, a red flower crown of flowers I don’t know what they’re called but they remind me of the Christmas flowers, red flags, my red backpack, and of course, my violin case. I also put stars on my face, because I like decorating myself. The fashion show was really scary honestly but Talula put some lipgloss on me and everyone was really supportive. It was scary walking on stage on front of everyone and I was afraid I’d like or fall off stage but I did it! And I never want to do it again! I’d watch it again though!

Talula also ran a club called Spark Club this month. Spark Club is where you can meet new friends or dates. I only wanted friends so I put that when I signed up. Somehow Talula pairs you with three people, I don’t know how, and you spend a few minutes talking and getting to know each other with the talk starter Tal gives you. My first pair was Bailey but I think he was late getting there so Margo and her match, Dana, who is a first year in our house talked to me for a little bit. Margo said I could be a model because of how tall I am but I definitely don’t want that. Eventually Bailey showed up and we talked about getting into trouble a little bit. My next pair was named Gage but he never showed up so I sat around and watched everyone else for a bit. Lastly, I was paired with Eve! Talula said we were too cute not to pair up and I told Eve it was destiny! She was talking to an older student named Romi Clementine. Romi is a fourth year I think and she’s really pretty, like a doll. She was even dressed like a doll in this frilly red dress. She said she liked charms and Homemaking Magic and that the Spark Club was a little too noisy for her which I totally get.

Oh, Eve also gave me a book at Spark Club. It’s called Coraline and she said she wanted us to choose characters from the book for our Halloween costumes instead. I’m going to start reading it tonight, just as soon as I finish writing in you. She said it was one of her favourite books and I think it’s nice to see what your friends like if you want to get close to them. She also said she’d like it if we all started a book club. So I’m going to read some of this and then maybe we can sit around and have a talk about it!

Oh! The Triwizard Tournament is closing in, I don’t remember if I told you but Hogwarts is hosting it this year. Saturday the other schools arrived. It was amazing. The Beauxbatons students are so elegant and graceful! They arrived in a blue flying carriage pulled by winged horses that were all golden! When their Headmistress stepped out she looked like an ice princess with all these feathers on her dress. Then the students came out with all this beautiful water magic and there were golden sparks and it was all amazing. The Durmstrang students were intimidating! It’s crazy to me to think that if Grandmother Banon had remained in Bulgaria, I could have been a Durmstrang student too. I couldn’t imagine that! They’re so serious and like… They arrived in a ship that came out of the lake, bursting through the ice alongside all these patronuses! The students came marching off the ship with these torches held over their heads and then the flames leapt from their torches and made this arc and the Deputy Headmistress came marching off. I don’t think anyone’s seen the Headmaster yet, apparently he wasn’t feeling well. 

There was also a HUGE feast where Headmistress O’Keeffe explained all the rules of the tournament, apparently you can only participate if you’re 17. Then she revealed the Goblet of Fire! It’s got these blue flames and it was super cool to watch. There’s also these blue flames around the Goblet which apparently keeps anyone under 17 from trying to put their name in. I wonder who will be chosen from each school… I can’t imagine being chosen for Hogwarts… I hope though… I hope one day I can be in the Triwizard Tournament. Could you imagine? Aures Truegarden, Triwizard Tournament Champion. I’ve heard some students talk about trying to sneak their names into the Goblet but I’m not ready and I know that. I’m still just a kid. But one day!

That’s almost everything, I think. The only thing left is to tell you I’ve found a new project! I’m going to try to learn a musical piece called The Devil’s Trill. It’s by Tartini. I was reading a music book and I found a story about it and really wanted to learn it after that. This composer, Giuseppe Tartini was having a hard time making money as a violinist. He decided he wanted to die- that’s sad isn’t it?- but before he did, he wanted the chance to dream for one last night. That night he dreamed of the devil! Or is it, a devil? Anyways, he told his friend,some French astronomer that he dreamed the devil came and asked him to be his teacher. At the end of their lesson, Tartini gave the devil his violin and asked him to play, to see how good the Devil was. The devil played so amazingly that it took Tartini’s breath away. How I wish I could play that well. Anyways, Tartini woke up with a jolly and jumped out of bed, immediately writing down the sonata and trying to catch what he’d heard in his dream. The Sonata became super successful! Everyone said that you could hear bells and chimes during the performance and that it felt like the room was getting smaller and smaller but Tartini said it was nowhere near as perfect as what he heard in his dream. I want to learn to play The Devil’s Trill and make people feel something. Anyways, I should start this book but… goodnight diary! Thanks for always listening!</p>