Minousoft Software » plugin

Rating system broken, new game screenshot, and three new songs

oakwhiz — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 01:18:54 +0000

After trying to upgrade the rating system, I noticed that it broke the layout of the site and does not record some ratings correctly. The rating system has been taken offline until further notice. Sorry folks, but it looks like you have to comment on the articles if you want to tell us what you think of them.

I have been developing a new game, mostly to test some interesting game design ideas. The game revolves around the player being as stealthy as possible – one of the key elements is to leave no evidence that you were sneaking around corridors. (Screenshot after the jump!) Another element is the fact that you are unable to see what lies ahead if it is too far away to hear or see. If you do not have line-of-sight to an object, it becomes much less visible on the screen. This has the interesting side effect of enabling the game to completely ignore unneeded objects that are far away from the player. I’m currently trying to add a dynamic artificial intelligence system to the game – because of the complex network of rooms, doors, and hallways, it is difficult to get an AI to properly navigate the game. I’ve decided to go with a node-based approach rather than an A* algorithm approach, as nodes allow the AI to act more intelligent. Nodes are placed at every possible place the AI can walk, and the AI can only move to a node that it has direct line-of-sight to. This allows diagonal movement. The AI decides what its long-term movement goal is based on what it is doing, i.e. if the AI is supposed to be patrolling an area, it will select the nodes of the rooms it wants to go to, and use the nodes in between to go there. If the AI encounters evidence that the player is nearby, it will deviate from its instructions and try to go to the node closest to where it thinks the player is.

Lastly, three new remixes have been added to the Media Player by request:

Geisha Dreams (Ringtone)
Moonlight Sonata
Fullmetal Alchemist – Melissa

Enjoy, and make sure to follow us on Twitter!

Maintenance

oakwhiz — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 17:35:48 +0000

The main site will be down for maintenance this morning at 11:00am PST. The forums will still be operational during maintenance. You may experience delays when accessing some portions of the site. The upgrades shouldn’t take more than half an hour.

What is being changed: Some scripts which involve database operations will be upgraded to improve page loading time. Additionally, the download system will be upgraded (which may also improve loading time.)

Feature Requests

oakwhiz — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 18:17:35 +0000

Hello, everyone. I’ve decided that it’s a good time to ask the user community about feature requests. If there is something that you think we should have, let us know about it! Whether it is a feature, plugin, or even a whole new section, we want to know what you (the loyal fans) want to add to the site. Make a forum topic about your idea and we will discuss it with you. Or, if you would like to contact us directly, simply use the contact form.

Downloads section added

oakwhiz — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 07:23:12 +0000

Progress at Minousoft has been a bit slow recently. There have been many interruptions, including security holes, major software updates, and one of my PC’s hard drives dying. I’m hoping that we will be able to get back on track soon and finish up some projects. We are in the process of integrating Mike Jolley’s WordPress Download Monitor Plugin into the main site. You will need to log in to download some files in the future; this is to help mitigate some bandwidth leeching that has been occurring.

Some less important news:

The 404 error page has been tweaked a bit. May the old “OMG 404 NOT FOUND!!” page rest in peace.
The General Chat section at the forums has now been set to auto-prune 60-day old posts.
Some of the software has been updated and double-checked to make sure everything is in working order. We’ve deleted some unused portions of the site.
The advertisements have been updated again.
hxhl95 has released an interesting email program – check it out here.

As always, if you notice a bug, please let us know. Kudos to the fellow who pointed out a plugin error, we have fixed that problem.