Our next beta release, code named Falchion, will launch on Monday, December 6, 2010.
The standard times apply, and are all in Pacific Standard Time, which is where Los Angeles, California is. To convert it, you can visit this time zone site.
At 9am, I'll be marking all NEW beta registrations to receive their invite codes later in the day. Any beta registrations that come in after 9am will have to wait for our next release on December 20th.
We'll be doing lots of internal testing before we roll out any code to the live beta site, and as usual, I will post our progress on my twitter feed.
In the afternoon, when we feel the code base is tested enough, we'll send our next beta newsletter to ALL beta users. This newsletter will explain more about what we've been working on, what's in the new release, that sort of thing.
The newsletter Email you'll receive with your invite code will explain what we need from you as beta testers.
Once that newsletter is sent, I'll send out any invite codes for new beta signups up to 9am that morning.
It's important to note up front that several things will seem "missing" from the site, such as the forums, etc. This is to be expected, because we're rolling out the beta in phases where we add new features every two weeks.
The full details of what's going in the beta release, and what major pieces of the site are still missing will be detailed in the newsletter.
7. Overheard at the office: Larry: "Oh, *yeah*, we're gonna let users change their username to whatever they want so long as the name isn't already taken..."
I'm not sure if that was sarcastic or not ._.
But all those features sound great, we'll be sure to report bugs, glitches, etc.
I hope so too. Sounds good. I want to see the activity stream in action. I haven't done much testing recently. By the time school's over in eight days I'll finally have time.
If we are in the beta can we switch back to the old AG2?
Yeah, we do that all the time. However, keep in mind that if you update your status in AG2, it will migrate to AG3, so anything you put in AG3 will be wiped clean from the AG2 update.
Actually, the only things I use for AG2 right now are the forums and my About page. I can play the games there.
Larry's comment was not sarcastic, he truly wants to have the ability to let users change their names on the site. We're not sure yet how that will affect linking to your profile like it would here on this site (http://armorgames.com/user/cormyn) in terms of redirecting to a new page if you change your name. Or if we'll keep your old name reserved for a while so we don't get people mixed up, or what.
The activity stream is gonna be pretty slick. Larry's been working on the architecture for it for almost a month now. And James and his code-fu are working some magic on the front end and how the site looks and responds.
Me, I'm just plugging away on the database stuff. This week I'm working on a way for us to manage our entire game catalog on AG3 and have that data pushed to AG2 so we can administer the games over there instead (the admin page looks sooooo much cooler over there).
I'm also helping James with the whole friends/followers stuff. We'll be sync'ing over your current friends list from this site to become people you "follow" over at AG3. If two users are currently friends on this site, AG3 will let you know in case you want to "upgrade" your mutual following into the 'friend' relationship category. Users will hopefully get a glimpse of the new privacy settings in action, with what can be made available or filtered out for friends vs. followers.
... from a Moderator point of view, is what I meant there. For example, if Freak and I decided to swap our usernames, and he started causing trouble, it could get confusing as to who the real person is behind the name.
At the same time, we don't really want cryptic profile URLs like "/user/a1b2c3d4e5f6" or anything... so we'll need to work out those details before we can let users change their names.
For example, if Freak and I decided to swap our usernames, and he started causing trouble, it could get confusing as to who the real person is behind the name.
Though one person would have Green font And it's not like I don't do that already :O
I'm most interested in the Activity Stream. So much praise, yet so little information. But I'll be patient--It sounds great!
