Site Updates / Bugfixes

Hey Lasoons,

Just here to update you all with what we've been working on since the last blog post. We released a small bug fix, made a couple changes to the website, and were able to launch a quest with the help of a few Lasoons.

A few days ago we discovered a bug that users were exploiting which allowed them to gain extra silver by throwing snowballs/waterballoons onto a tile with multiple players. We've since released a patch for this bug and were able to push the update out to stop it from being exploited.

As for a change to the website, we're introducing a way to block players on the website - which means you'll no longer have to see posts or comments from players that you don't like. While this feature is still a work in progress, you can access the block function on the Manage Friends, on the Block List tab. Simply add a player to the block list to block them, if you accidently blocked someone, or have made amends to them, you can unblock them by checking their username and clicking unblock at the bottom.

On a side note, we've also updated our Terms of Use, so be sure to read over them. Particularly, it includes a new clause about flame wars on feed posts, comments, and chatting in-game.

Last week we also launched a quest which was our first ever to involve help from the community. We had a great time planning out the quest, helping to dress the NPC's, and coming up with the story line for the quest. We'd like to thank the players who were able to help with the quest and we hope you all enjoyed it.

If you're not sure which quest we're talking about, check out this page though the quest has just ended.

So you're probably wondering what's to come in terms of events for the next month. The player Estria just informed us about Carnival, a festive season in Brazil which starts next month, so we're gonna plan an event and perhaps an item to go along with the event, so keep your eyes peeled for it.

In other news, Valentines Day is nearing as well in about 3 weeks, so we'll also be running some specials in Hubble Attire for Valentines Day items, so be sure to check out Hubble Attire to get your hands on some seasonal rares!

As promised, Q&A:

Razzer:  I hope that spaces get released soon, And I don't mean like next year.
Answer: Spaces will be here this year, just no definite date as of yet.

Thanks for reading our blog!

Outside Spaces + Q&A

We've been asked a lot lately about how outside spaces will work.. and we'd like to share a little bit of insight.

The main difference between outside spaces and inside spaces, is that inside spaces will have pre-defined tiles that you can place items on. Though you'll choose the tiles that you'd like to have as your home's "foot print". Outsides spaces, being just the opposite. Outside spaces will expand from the farthest tile left, to the farthest tile right, top or bottom! Just like the current public rooms in Lasuni, you'll be able to use every tile as a place to put furniture, friends, or anything you like. We'll have a few pre-set room sizes for outside space that you can choose from, but regardless of the size you choose, you'll be able to utilize all tile space, just as if you owned a public room.

One of the key differences with inside and outside space is also that you'll be able to place house-like furniture pieces, which will link an outside space to an inside space. Just like when you walk from North Hubble into Gertrude's home. Though these specific items will only be able to be placed in outside spaces. You wouldn't want a house inside your house now would you? Well, maybe you might, but we sure don't.
Some of you were also wondering what happens if your room is bigger than the window, or smaller than the window (by window, we mean the browser window). Well, first off, the browser window is resizable. So you can have it as large (fullscreen if you prefer), or as small as you want (minimum is 760x600). If the game is smaller than the window, it'll simply be centered. If it's larger than the window, you'll be able to drag the game screen around to see whatever part you'd like.

A few Q&A:


Lawrence: Will you be able to choose weather in outside spaces?
Answer: There'll be themes to choose from for outside, but not automatic weather.

Attention: Is there a search tab on the navigator?
Answer: Yes, under the private spaces tab.

Colin: Are there teleportation devices?
Answer: Not at the moment, but we do have plans to make them.

Attention: Are there bookmarked/favorite rooms?
Answer: Yes, you can bookmark/favorite a room. The navigator has a button to view all favorited rooms.

That about wraps it up for this blog post. Have any questions you'd like answered? Post them in the comments and we'll try to answer them in the next blog post~

Progress Report

Hey Lasoons,

Another year is upon us and we'd like to share our current progress state with you. At this time we're still pretty heavy into the development of the new client. As you know, switching to flash has been a huge undertaking and we're striving to create the perfect product, but doing so does force us to have to recode an entire game and server.

Some of you may be wondering why we're redoing the server as well, and the reason behind that is that we're trying to resolve several issues that we've had with the current server. One of the major issues is the packet format which is not compatible with flash. Putting that aside, another major issue is lag. While we've tried recoding several parts of the server, andwe've come to realize that we should have implemented it a different way which is exactly what we're doing. While we can't promise no-lag, we're trying our hardest to get to the point where there is none at all.

In terms of the game client, we've finished the new friends window [client side, serverside is partially done], chatting is fully functional (with smilies!) and they do look really nice if I do say so myself. (See below for a preview)

Users joining a room / multiuser (basically the ability to see other users join rooms) is done, though we're trying to work out a few kinks with the pathfinding engine. It is a bit buggy in the current version, but we're working on optimizing and improving it. This alone is one of the major sources of lag which we're trying to improve upon. We've essentially recoded the whole room system to work with spaces. This includes the server's ability to store a server-side 'image' of the room, so the server can tell if two users are walking to the tile and prevent them from standing on the same tile, or walking through each other. This will be a huge benefit to Lasuni as it will allow queues in rooms and racing style games.

We've revamped the loading screens [as seen in prior blog posts], we cut back on the graphics and made them look a bit nicer too. This will also decrease the overall file size that's loaded so that means a faster loading time to be in-game.

As for what's left to do, the list goes: Inventory, Equipment, OMG Help, Room Creation Window, Settings Window, Spaces [partially done], Furniture Engine [partially done], Avatars [partially done], Website Updates [partially done]

Now a lot of you are probably wondering about a deadline and such, but we're sorry to say that we can't make any promises as of yet. When we get a bit closer to releasing, we'll definitely inform everyone about a proper release date / party.

Anyways, the new year is nearly here, so we'll see what it brings.

Until next time~

The Future of Lasuni

Hey all,

Just wanted to give you an update on the development of Lasuni. First lets look back in time to March, when we first announced we were working on a new interface / UI. We started building spaces and working on a large, but mostly iterative update to Lasuni that would include spaces and a slightly different UI [as seen here]. As many of you are aware Lasuni is currently built on the shockwave platform that is quite simply out of date and not supported on many platforms [no Linux support, limited Mac support]. So midway through the development of Spaces we decided to switch Lasuni to flash!

There are many benefits for us in regards to using flash, but the main and most important feature is that the barrier of entry will be much lower for new users [and existing ones!]. From the offset we decided that we wanted to get this big update [which is essentially re-writing the entire client, and a large proportion of the server] out quickly, to surprise the Lasuni community with a much larger update than you might have been expecting. However, it’s been taking us longer than we would have hoped to complete the update.

There are significant improvements that we’ve been baking right into the core of Lasuni, such as it’s no longer confined to a set size window. You can re-size Lasuni to be as large as you like, or even play full screen! This enables us to have much larger rooms that don’t need to load in additional rooms - as such North and East Hubble are no more, replaced by one much larger room, Hubble! The new Hubble is equivalent in size to 4 current rooms, rather than just the 2 rooms Hubble consists of today.

Also, we haven’t been entirely truthful [sorry] on the blog in regards to the new UI. Whilst many of the features of the new UI we’ve been talking about are true, such as the search bar in the inventory window [seen here], the windows all have an entirely new style and look. Every window has been redone to make them easier to use and more consistent with the new look of the Lasuni client!

We haven’t only been focusing on the Lasuni client though, part of this update we really want to start pushing Lasuni up to an experience that will be much more enjoyable for new users. Currently we feel the experience is pretty confusing and a number of users don’t even access the client after registering. We are working on numerous other additions that will hopefully improve Lasuni for new users. But I’ll save some of those updates for a later blog post.

So that’s all for now, I’ve included an image of how Lasuni will look in the same area as North Hubble with the updated UI and windows. Hopefully you’ll like it, we’ve been working pretty hard on it!

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TL;DR? To summarise, Lasuni is moving to flash. It’s taking longer than we hoped - sorry, but it should be worth it!

Click to see full size!

A nibble of what's to come!

So very sorry it's taken us so long to write a blog post but it's very hard for me (Ambear) to write about development when I can't exactly tell you what's going on!

Anyways, above you can see a redesign of the forest in East Hubble! You will notice that a lot more is going on in the image above!

Firstly the forest is a lot bigger then it is currently. There is ACTUAL GRASS on the ground. The trees are full sized and not cut off from the map.

Notice any animals in the picture as well? :)

Development is going very well from what I have seen! Jason has been working very hard alongside Calibrate and I expect things to be done before you know it!

Till next time...

More North Hubble

As promised...

Thank you for everyone that attended the birthday event! We all had a blast!

Happy Birthday to us!!!

(Click the image to view larger)

This week's blog post won't have anything to do with the development of the new Lasuni client. SORRY! (It's looking amazing though) Just saying. If you'd really like to know how things are going follow @sermos on twitter for his lovely updates.

Above is your invitation to the 2nd Lasuni Birthday party! If you aren't subscribed to our email updates this is probably your first time seeing this image. If you are subscribed <3 (we love you) you've seen it! We're so looking forward to Fridays events! (Saturday if you're in Australia) If you are unsure what time the party is check the news article on the Lasuni website or just click here to find out!

Till next week!

Podcast - Episode 6!

YES WE STILL PODCAST!!!

It's been a long time since we've last podcasted, but as promised here is your October podcast! We talk about a lot of interesting subjects, mainly answering your questions that were asked on the feed post. We mention how we miss Jason... We do a segment called WTFeed post, and we talked about what's going to be happening for the Lasuni 2nd Birthday, along with announcing two new birthday items! If you'd like to know what they are you should definitely listen to find out! Thanks for listening!

Download (~19mb)

Subscribe to the Lasuni podcast on iTunes!

Progress has been made!

Hello friends!

It's a rainy Monday here in midwestern America, but it's been a pretty exciting weekend as I have been told that the Navigator is now 100% complete!! The Navigator is the Lasuni world looking icon located on the toolbar.

The navigator has many different features and options which include... searching for any private space, moving your character to a favorite room, the option create your very own space, and lists all your created rooms! It will also allow you to get to each public space quickly by using the public section of it. (Hubble Attire, Salon, Gertrude's House, etc) We hope this will be useful for those who need to get somewhere in a hurry (or are too lazy to walk) :) ! Don't worry though; you will still be able to get from public space to space the old fashioned way by walking on the arrows!

Another neat feature of the navigator is you will be able to view a list of popular rooms. It will show the room name with an colored icon to the left of it with the number of people currently in the room.

There are so many things you are able to do in the navigator! Lots of progress has been made since the last blog post and we are super excited to be getting closer to completion!

Sorry for the lack of images in this post! I'll be sure to overload you with them in next weeks blog post. What do you think of the navigator? Our progress? When do you think we're releasing? Do you like cake or pizza more? Leave us comments we love to hear your opinions!

"So far I have managed to contribute over 14,500 lines of code towards the client, we makin' srs progress." - Calibrate

Be sure to check out our newest official fansite www.lasunilove.com

Till next week...

Good Bye, Tchau, Adios, Arrivederci, Au Revior <3

Don't you just love toolbars?

Long time no post.. *looks around* How is everyone doing this week? We're doing lovely over here at YahRly. We're getting closer and closer to our spaces release, not saying any dates or anything. If you take a look at the picture below you will see part of the beautiful new navigator. Featuring a NEW black gradient, the icons appear on top. The icons in order from left to right Navigator, Friends, Me, Inventory, Quests, VIP, and Settings.

The Navigator will feature both private and public rooms in two separate tabs. You will be able to add spaces to your favorites as well as search for spaces. You are also able to create your own space.

The Friends list will display your friends online and offline, along with a tab with your messages or conversations.

The Me tab will open all your characters information such as level, experience, achievements, and also allows you to equip your clothing items.

The Inventory icon will have three tabs containing clothing, items, and misc (collecting items, quest items, etc.) Look back into the blog for a more detailed explanation and picture!

The Quest icon will not be available right away in the upcoming release, but will be coming at a later date.

The VIP icon has been added to the toolbar to make purchasing and renewing your VIP even easier.

The Settings icon will feature your area to edit your mission, turn trading on/off, friend requests on/off, music on/off, and volume settings. You will also be able to manage your blocked list of users you have blocked! >:D

If you haven't noticed when you hover over an icon the image will move up, and the name of the icon will appear below it!

So I hope this somewhat descriptive post about the new toolbar has got you excited! We are really looking forward to the upcoming months! Till next week...