Lasuni

California :)

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 17:06:00 +0000

Hey,

First I wanted to apologise for my appalling failure with this weeks BIG auction. Though hopefully the new items will make the wait worth it :). But I've been really busy because tomorrow, I'm headed off to California!! So I'll be hanging out with the charming Jason experiencing all the joys of the beautiful Californian sunshine!

I haven't quite finished packing at all, haven't even bought insurance yet [oops!]. But I'm really excited and should be doing lots of exciting things, including hopefully fitting in some time for Lasuni :D. If you have any interest in our adventures you can subscribe to me on youtube or follow me on twitter where I'll be posting regular updates :). In regards to twitter if you ever have any questions to ask me [if you need help/support use helpme.lasuni.com] then feel free to @reply me :D!

Also, I have a desperate plea to visit Pixar! I'm sure it'll make no difference, but it's worth trying :P. If you could retweet this and watch/like/favourite/share this video it'd be super appreciated :).

So yeah, not a particularly Lasuni related post - so apologies for that. But I wanted to keep you in the loop with what's going on :). We have some exciting updates planned for the future. I'm really excited now that we can move onto some bigger [moar awesome] stuff. Can't wait to share it with you all.

Peace out home dawgs,

Hair Catalogue + Tanning

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 06:43:00 +0000

Hey Lasoons,

We're working diligently on the hair catalogue and tanning/skin chooser. As of this posting, the hair catalogue is complete! Not so much for the skin chooser. It's getting done, just slowly. I'd reckon it's about 30% complete overall.

Below are some of the new items :D

What do you think so far? Within the next few days, we'll be releasing this new update, as well as starting a new competition.

Talk to you in Lasuni~

Login Issues Resolved

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 08:14:00 +0000

Hey Lasoons,

If you've tried logging in recently, you may have noticed that you were instantly logged out. This problem was caused by a little mishap in our server configuration. We store logs of all visitors to the website via our web server software (Apache), and well.. the location of the logs were stored on a smaller partition of our hard drive and it sorta filled up on us! We didn't catch the issue until it was a bit too late, so luckily we were able to resolve the problem pretty easily.

If you ever notice that you're having problems, even if you may think it's your own computer, let us know! I'm sure we can help ;D

Anyways, the problem has been resolved, and relocated to a much larger hard drive.. so this issue shouldn't happen anymore.

As always, I hope to see you around in Lasuni!

Datacenter Outage (Updated)

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 18:27:00 +0000

Hey Lasoons,

Our datacenter seems to be having more issues, there's not much we can do until this is resolved.

We've found that the problem is due to a router overload. This is caused by internet traffic not being distributed properly, causing the router to run out of active memory. This is resulting in outages, packet loss, loss of peers, and traffic not being routed properly.

We'll keep you posted~

** Update: Services have been restored for now.. **

Downtime

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 05:06:00 +0000

Hey Lasoons,

We're experiencing a bit of downtime while our datacentre sorts out some network issues, there's no ETA when we'll be back as of yet but we'll keep you posted.

Update: Services have been restored.

Thanks!

Salon is complete!

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 05:29:00 +0000

We've successfully finished building the salon, moved in the furniture, and we're almost done dusting and polishing the floors.

With the new salon, comes an upgrade to the path-finding engine. It now supports multiple levels, as well as inclines / slopes.

Although the salon is complete, we can't release it quite yet - we still have a few things to finish. We're still working on creating the tanning system, so you can adjust your skin tones. We're also in the process of creating several hair styles. Last but not least, we still need to program the hair catalogue, which you'll use to purchase your new hair!

Since we're not able to release the salon as of yet, we'll at least give you another preview.

We hope you enjoy it!

See ya real soon!

Small Performance Updates

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 05:17:00 +0000

Hey Lasoons,

There's been talk of users being randomly disconnected after the server has been running for a while, and we've done a few small changes to the server to hopefully improve performance. A few things have been rewritten for better flow.

While working on it, we've also re-organized the catalogue slightly. You'll now notice that items are ordered by name, as well as gold and silver prices. Instead of finding everything just 'thrown' in there, they should be easier to find what you're looking for.

Hopefully this update will reduce most of the lag that everyone has been experiencing, if not, please let us know and we'll work on it a bit more.

Thanks!

Events, Games and more!

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 03:27:00 +0000

Lately, Ambear's been running quite a few events and keeping everyone active. If you've been on, I'm sure you've seen her around. She's been running trivia games, red light/green light, and even having a few auctions!

We wanted to know what kind of games you'd like to see. We're trying to create a more active community, but it's not easy. Leave some comments on what games you'd like to see more of, or if you have any new ideas for games. As for the water-balloon game, it's work in progress.

Normality!

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 06:58:00 +0000

Things are almost back to normal in Lasuni and we're getting ready to release some updates within the next week or so. We've just finished the new VIP item, which is now the first of it's kind! It's our first-ever animated (and wearable) item!

You've probably guessed what it is by now, if not, there's a hint on the home page. We've also started updating the website by adding in more graphical elements to make it not so boring. Hopefully you'll all enjoy the updates :D

On another note, we've started planning more of the private spaces and even drawn some drafts, so we're one step closer to releasing.

As always, we hope to see you around Lasuni! If you have any ideas, let us know!

MySQL Blues

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 22:57:00 +0000

I'm sure many of you know what MySQL is, and if you don't, it's basically a program that lets you store data and run special queries to retrieve said data - it's also the system used for all of Lasuni's data (excluding actual files).

Now, we recently ran into a bit of a problem and our data is now corrupted though we're working hard to restore the services, it'll take time to fully get back to where we were.

All VIP members will get a free extension on their VIP due to this outage as well, and we're sorry for the downtime.

Anyways, we're putting a fail-safe system in place to protect against this again and hopefully we'll see you all soon.

Summer time

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 01:21:00 +0000

Hey Lasoons,

It's that time of the year again (for most of you at least ;P) the birds are singing, the sun is shining, and we're all suffering from extreme heat. Well, not quite, but it's getting there!

To have a bit of fun during the summer, we've decided to implement a small mini-game into all outdoor rooms in Lasuni. Hopefully this will keep you all entertained while we work on other updates.

We're nearly done with the salon as said in a previous tweet, though we still have lots of hair styles to create and bug fixes to perform.

On another note, we're enjoying the stories that everyone is sending in for the "Where's Gary?" competition, but we hope to see a few more before the competition ends (this Sunday, June 20th) so be sure to send in your entries if you haven't already!

Thanks, and we hope to see you around!

Status Report

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 06:31:00 +0000

Hey Lasoons,

Just wanted to give everyone a heads up on the status of the Salon. We're nearly done designing it and have created an in-game demo to test out. Since this room contains some special elements (Slopes, Raised Levels, Tan [Skin Chooser], Hair Styling), it'll take a bit longer to fully develop. At the moment, Dasaii is working on the room design while I'm working on getting the slopes to work perfectly.

Once we're done with both of those, we'll focus solely on the Skin Chooser and Hair Styling. We really don't have any new styles of hair yet, so we'll also have to make some for you too. If you have any special requests for hair styles, post 'em in comments on here. Though we won't be able to put 'em all in the game, we'll try our best to pick out the most awesome ones that the majority of users would wear and/or like to have. It takes time to create and perfect each hair, so please bare with us :)

As always, we hope to see you around! Oh, by the way, if you happen to see Dasaii, don't forget to tell him Happy Birthday!

Lasuni API

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Mon, 24 May 2010 22:01:00 +0000

(Updated 05/25/2010)

Hey Lasoons,

You've all been asking for some sort of API, so we've created one for you. Though this API won't be permanent, it should last a while, at least until we have the time to create a much better one.

As of now, you can pull a bit of data from Lasuni, such as the top 10 richest players, top 10 selling items, and the number of online players. To do this, you'll need to know how JSON works, and a programming language that can utilize it.

To pull data, the url will be http://api.lasuni.com/data.php?p={data}

Where {data} is the specific data you want to pull. Below is the list of acceptable values:

best_selling
online
richest
userdata : &user={username}

If you enter either one of these values, it will return a JSON array of the data. For best_selling, it pulls the 10 best selling items, contained in the element "items", each one is a separate array containing the elements "title" and "icon". For the icon, be sure to include "http://images.lasuni.com/icons/" before the actual icon file for it to show up.

The item "online" returns one element, "count", which simply has the number of online users.

The "richest" element is an array named "users", each item is the user's name.

To pull user data, simply set "p=userdata" and then set "user={username}" replacing {username} with the name of the desired user. This will either return an error (stating the user does not exist), or another JSON array containing the userdata for this user.

The user data that's pulled is: Name, Mission, Gender, Level, Color, Online (true/false), and the creation date of the account.

For error checking, you'll notice there is always the element "error", and it should always be blank. If it is not blank, then there is an error, and the "error" element will contain the actual error message.

Please be aware that we may update the way the API works in the future, so the way it works now will not always be the way it works in the future. We are making no guarantee that it'll work the way you want, and we hold no responsibility or liability for any problems that may arise from the use of our API.

If you have any problems or questions pertaining to the API, please make a comment on this blog post, or open a help ticket. Though we cannot provide support on making applications for it, but we can try to help if you have any questions.

If you have any special feature requests for it as well, let us know!

Progress Report

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Sun, 23 May 2010 08:13:00 +0000

Hey Lasoons,

We're working hard on the update and I just wanted to tell you where we're at. As of right now, there aren't that many items left on the list of things to do. Mainly, we just need to get everything working together again. Redoing one system sort of broke a bunch of others, so it's been a pain having to go back through every script and find where the dependencies were.

While doing this, I decided I'd make everyone's life a bit easier by modifying each feature slightly to improve it. One of the things you'll notice that should help you a lot, is that we've added proper, draggable, scrollbars! Hopefully you'll enjoy them.. trust me, I've spent countless hours trying to figure out why they never worked (hence why they were never added to previous versions), eventually, I did find the problem - let's just say that float's don't work as they do in other programming languages.

On another note, we're also planning to add a few extra features to this release. I'm not going to say what it is, but you'll notice it when you first login after the update is launched ;)

As of this last sentence, there are 8 items on the list..

Salon De Hubble

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Thu, 20 May 2010 22:16:00 +0000

Hey Lasoons,

We're working diligently on the next update and we've decided to take a break on it for a bit to put some work in on the Salon. We're planning to release this around mid- June but since we've started, we have a preview for you!

Have any ideas for this room that you think every salon should have? Let us know by commenting on this article :D

What's with the lack of updates?

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Tue, 18 May 2010 06:09:00 +0000

So you're probably sitting there, wondering why we haven't updated the client lately. Well, we are actually in the process of finishing a pretty massive overhaul of the entire Lasuni client. We've basically rewritten the entire base for Lasuni such as how rooms are created, loaded, and executed. We've also rewritten the walking engine which is quite a bit of work. With this new update, there should be far fewer bugs than ever before as well.

I'll say this now, I can already tell that the instant we release this update, there will be someone who says "When is the next update?" as if we never released one. It's bound to happen.. *sigh*

On another note, with this new system comes faster load times for all rooms -- and when we say fast.. we mean fast. All rooms are now setup to preload the surrounding rooms near it. This means that while you're strolling around North Hubble, East Hubble will be loading in the background. When you're wanting to head on over to the Hubble Restaurant, you'll notice you're instantly over there (with a special animation as well).

This update won't be immediate, but we're trying to get it out before the 1st of the month. So bare with us, it's not easy to rewrite pretty much an entire game within a few weeks period.

If you have any suggestions, feel free to send 'em in. Though we reply with an auto message sometimes, we still note down your ideas for later use.

Importance of Multi-Threading

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Sun, 09 May 2010 04:43:00 +0000

Hey everyone,

Just wanted to make a quick post about the importance of multi-threading. Lately, you've all been complaining about getting disconnected after trading and some pretty bad lag.

I've recoded a vast majority of the server scripts that deal with updating users, loading data, and most of the major functions for trading. They are all now multi-threaded, so when you're trading, it shouldn't hold up the rest of the users. Hopefully you'll also notice a speed boost when doing other things, such as switching rooms.

Over the next few days, I'll be rewriting a bit more of the server scripts to make them scale a little better. Let us know if you notice an increase in speed or if something is going too slow.

We are aware of everyone getting an error after loading the client for the first time after an update, and this is mostly due to the current walking engine that we're using. For some odd reason, when you load the client, your cache is cleared to load the new version, but when the isometric engine is preloaded, it doesn't initialize correctly. Once you reload, the isometric engine is already in your cache, so it works perfectly. I've tried fixing this bug in a countless number of ways, but alas, it's still there.

Due to this, I've started coding a new server-side walking algorithm. Once it's complete I'll implement this into the game. What's this mean for you? Well the way I've decided to code it, it'll include a height map for all rooms so you'll notice a lot more steps and hill-type of terrain in future rooms. This also means that you won't have to worry about the error-on load again.

Another side note, if you're having problems accessing the client for any reason, please open a help ticket so we can resolve the issue. Some issues occur for you that don't occur for us, so it's hard for us to figure them out if we can't reproduce the error.

Anyways, I'd like to thank you all for your support, without you, I don't think we would have made it this far.

See you in Lasuni ~ Jason

Potato Fast Fansite Updates

Wed, 05 May 2010 22:38:00 +0000

Fansites
Long time no blog! Just wanted to have a little chat with you in regard to fansites. Many users have expressed interest in creating, or being part of a Lasuni fansite. Recently as you may have noticed we added some requirements to what fansites we display on our website, and gave them their own little page.

In our growing relationship with fansites we want to work together best to provide more things for the community to do, such as exclusive competitions and more! To achieve this we plan to offer them exclusive previews, updates and possibly even prizes!

To start this off we've issued all our current fansites with a preview of East Hubble to share with you now! So check out our fansites now to see the preview and hear the latest theories and speculation!

Updates
East Hubble is all finished, just need to make a few small adjustments and we should be ready to release this whole new area for you all! We're very excited to show you what we've been working on lately :).

Potato Fast
As you may have noticed the blog hasn't had too much love recently. To help fix this dilemma we will be blogging about relevant and interesting topics beyond just Lasuni!

So to start this new trend I'm here to introduce you to the wonders of Google Chrome. Both Jason and I use Chrome as our main browser and highly recommend it. Today Google released a new video on their Google Chrome Blog show how potato lighting fast their browser really is! Check it out below, it's pretty awesome!

We're back!

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 23:07:00 +0000

Just arrived back from my trip visiting Dasaii and all is well. Dasaii and myself have thousands of photos to go through, we'll try to pick out the best and upload them for everyone to see. This will hopefully happen within the next few days, probably the middle of next week sometime. Now that everything is returning to normal, we'll be getting back on track with many more updates.

The first major feature that we'll be including will be the ability to trade. I know everyone has been eager to try this long-awaited feature out, but we really haven't had much time to work on it during the trip. I'll be trying to complete it within the next few weeks, if not sooner.

On another note, we're planning on starting a new monthly (or weekly?) competition that will include Gertrude. She'll be touring some countries and she'll send you a post card every so often, then you'll have to guess where it's from. More news on that to come, hopefully this week.

Anyways, hope to see you around Lasuni!

DNS Problems

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 23:49:00 +0000

As you may know, we're having some DNS problems at the moment so you may be unable to access the site.

We're working hard to resolve the issue.

Update: Our DNS problems should be resolved now, if you still can't access the site, it just means that the DNS has not propagated to you yet :)

Upcoming trip

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 05:10:00 +0000

Hey you,

Just wanted to let everyone know that Dasaii and myself will be out contact with everyone for a few weeks, though we'll still be around to answer help tickets, just probably not on the actual client. Ambear will be here, so we're not abandoning you completely :)

Dasaii and myself are taking a little vacation, going to visit some theme parks in England (Alton Towers, Thorpe) and generally getting away from all the work and busyness we've been enduring these past few months. We've added some new items and hopefully that'll hold everyone over until we get back (well.. until I get back, it's Dasaii's homeland!)

I'll take lots of pictures for everyone and we'll post 'em on the blog for everyone to see. We could even have a competition when we get back ;D

Don't miss us too much, we'll be back before you know it! Hope to see you soon<3

Dasaii & Jason

Updates, Sneak Peaks, and More!

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 20:28:00 +0000

Here at Lasuni, we try to keep the development as open as possible but some times we tend to keep things secretive as well. It's tough running a game when you have so many players who want to meet you, or generally talk about upcoming features. We also try to make changes according to feedback that everyone sends in, though it's not possible to include everything.

We've been a bit busy with the latest update, I'm sure you're all aware of. When we first launched it, we were experimenting with frame rates to try to get a smoother game, but from what we've found is that it doesn't quite work out so well for older computers.

Anyways, since it's been a while since the last post, here are a few sketches to show our work as it was being created..

Above is the original and current loading screen, they were quite a bit different :) During the development of the mini-game we didn't really have time to save many of the sketches we created for it, but there are a few which are below.

Now for a sneak peak of East Hubble!

East Hubble will be the newest addition to Lasuni, it'll have several rooms, and will be more known as the town center. Pretty much the business side of Hubble. You'll be able to dine out in one of the restaurants or if you fancy a new hair cut, you could do that in the Hubble Salon pictured above. If you're feeling adventurous, you could always go for a walk in the forest, just be cautious :D

Anyways, that's a wrap for this post, hopefully you'll like our upcoming room and enjoy the current features we have.

Hubble Attire Stats

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 01:23:00 +0000

Today was a great day in Lasuni history. We've successfully launched Hubble Attire, Lasuni's newest shop located in North Hubble. I figured I should share some stats with everyone now since the last post was quite some time ago.

Here's the top 5 selling items:

Icon	Title	Price	Number Sold
	Red Shawl	100S	14
	Blue Trousers	150S	13
	Blue Shawl	100S	9
	Red Trousers	150S	9
	Blue Shoes	100S	8

On another note, we now have 2,464 total Players and 2,007 of them are unique. More stats to come, be sure to check the latest article for all the new features in this update.

So how do we create rooms anyways?

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 04:09:00 +0000

Creating rooms on Lasuni is a long and fun process. It takes a while to plan each room, composite sketches, plan what features will be in the room, decide if any NPC's (non-playable character) should be in the room, and if so, what they should be like. We also have to think about any specific moods we want to portray in the room, as well as any sounds that the room should have.

Step 1: Plan

When the time comes for a new room, the first step is to plan what the room will contain. If it's an outside space, or inside space, really depends on it's location as well. Once the room location is decided upon, we start brainstorming what will go into the room. If it's a shop, we would obviously put things in for people to purchase, posters to advertise items, etc. This also depends on what type of shop it is. We wouldn't want to have advertisements for clothing in a food store. Once we have the initial plan down, we decide upon a mood for the room, then inform our music artist of the plan for the room. Once they can get a feel of what the room will be like, they start on a tune for this room.

Step 2: Sketching the idea

Once the room idea is planned, we can now start sketches for what will actually be in the room. Not everything from the original plan ever makes it to the actual drawing board, some things are even

added after the original planning. The sketch is made to get an idea of where things will be positioned in the specific room. We wouldn't want something to block the users from being able to walk from one point to another. The sketch gives us an estimate of where things will go. We also have to ensure the room isn't too cluttered, as that would cause problems with a bunch of users in it at once.

Step 3: Finalizing the Drawings

During this step, we put the sketch together with by actually pixeling the entire room. This step takes quite some time as it's the most time consuming part of building a room. Depending on the complexity, it can take anywhere from a week to over a month. Although our sketch is a rough estimate of how the room will look, it rarely is the same as the final drawing.

For instance, our avatars looked quite different on the drawing board..

Step 4: Putting it together

After the final drawings are done, we start putting the room together by slicing up the drawings and layering them into the game. Each layer is then depth sorted so it appears either in front of, or behind another item depending on it's distance from the back of the room to the front. This creates the illusion of depth and allows users to walk behind something within an isometric plane. Once the room is fully sliced up, we do several tests on it, ensuring everything is working correctly. We also look closely over the room to ensure there are no pixel errors. After the room is sliced, we then use a tool to set certain tiles to blocked or unblocked. Which stops a user from walking on a tree, or into a wall.

Step 5: Finalization

During this step, the room is pretty much done. We put the final touches on the room, such as any animations that the room may have, as well as adding any sounds. Once that's completed, we start adding in speech message for NPC's to randomly blurt out, and also replies to specific questions that the user may ask. This helps the room feel more realistic and not just a 2D image.

This process can take a while, but it's quite fun. Any room we imagine can be turned into something that everyone can enjoy. Hope you enjoyed this post, there will be lots more in the future. If you have any ideas for rooms, or anything for Lasuni, feel free to share them with us by contacting us using our help tool.

Thanks!

Spot the Difference

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 00:02:00 +0000

Yes two blog posts in two days, I'm going blog crazy! But I thought these are too great not to share with you all before I forget to post them - haha.

The below spot the differences were created by Lochie, so if you see him make sure you say you liked them!

Spot the difference - Gertrude edition [10 changes]

Original

Edit

Spot the difference - Hubble edition [15 changes]

Original

Edit

Hope you enjoy them, thanks again to Lochie!