This page generally only reports changes to the client, and not additions to the world. You'll have to explore to find the additions to the world. Latest What's New 12/29/99 We crashed on December 15th and twice on December 18th. Bah. 10 days without a crash. The record is 62 days. Fixed bug not allowing to reconnect if they were disconnected for being idle too long. Massive internal changes to make the server better faster stronger. Added access to new poses. Enjoy. 12/15/99 A Slayer slayed the server on December 4th and 5th. They can't do that anymore. 10 days without a crash. The record is 62 days. Fixed a problem occassionally showing grey screens when stepping into a crowded area. Improved the placement of speech bubbles. Changed the way idle players are handled. The cursor should no longer change to garbage. 12/1/99 We crashed twice on November 17th and 3 times on November 22. All crashes were due to the same bug. It has been fixed. 9 days without a crash. The record is 62 days. Ah to be back in beta testing again. ;-> In some cases the amount of network traffic has been reduced. We mean it this week. v103's incarnation was flawed. Demo characters are disconnected much faster now. 11/17/99 We crashed on October 27th and on November 5th. Both crashes were due to the same bug. It has been fixed. We also had a period of intolerable lag. This was due to a runaway script. These are supposed to be automagically caught and neutered. That feature had some trouble after last update's rewrite of the script engine. 12 days without a crash. The record is 62 days. Gaia has not yet decided where she wants the sun to be. Shadows may still look strange to you until she makes up her mind. In some cases the amount of network traffic has been reduced. Publicly added the Demo account. Any password accepted by the client will work. Fixed a few problems. Like being able to displace a character that is in use by another player. And allowing passwords to be changed. We changed the address of the server from ip numbers to a domain name. If you cannot join immediately it might be because the domain name server of your ISP is busy. Or your request turned left at Algernon. Try to join again. The Undo menu item has been enabled for typing in the input panel. 10/27/99 We crashed once on October 7th, and three times on October 8th. One of those crashes was due to a silly gm starting the server from the old and incorrect directory. Oops. The world gerbils were inadvertently getting caught in earth shakes. Things seem to be much better now. Actually, we were fearing things might be much worse. The entire script engine was replaced. The good news is that it is much better than the old script engine. 19 days without a crash. The record is 62 days. Fallen messages have changed. \Shares are now much more important. The altar has been repaired. The self healing ability has more or less been restored in its new modified form. Congratulations on completing that quest. Exiles now cast shadows. It seems that as a side effect of repairing the altar the perpetual overcast skies have cleared. 10/6/99 On Monday, September 20th approximately 5:30 pm pst the secure facility housing the Clan Lord Server was contaminated by phlogiston radiation. The techs donned their biohazard suits, entered the building, and surveyed the damage. The computers themselves were safe in their shielded cases. But the cables connecting them together were a complete loss. Service was restored Tuesday, September 21st approximately 10:00 am pst. Sorry for the inconvenience. Okay, so the real explanation as near as we can tell is that a known bug in Sun OS bit us. Something to do with lockd, NFS volumes, zombie processes, and high load conditions. We're hoping the system administrators can find and install the appropriate patch(es). 16 days without a crash. The record is 62 days. Macros have changed. Most likely you will need to update your macro files. Sorry for the inconvenience. The entire script engine has been rewritten. Expect the occassional unexpected restart for the next few days. Do I hear Orga war drums? What could they mean? What ill wind doth blow along Puddleby shore? 9/15/99 We crashed on 9/5. It was ugly. Diagnostics have been installed to try to find the cause. \action sighs wearily. 10 days without a crash. The record is 62 days. Fixed bug not creating folders and files. Fixed bug "playing" text files as if they were movies. Fixed bug possibly running out of memory and crashing after several hours. Fixed bug that caused the screen to flash grey if an unfriendly ISP delivered packets out of order. Many many changes to the world. Some few will be obvious. Most however will be very well hidden. Some you will never notice directly. 9/1/99 25 days without a crash. The record is 62 days. Major changes to the inventory window. Click and hold on an item and press a number key 0 to 9 to set the keyboard shortcut. The player list window has been improved. Player information is cached in a local file. Log files are created as a document of the type set by the application Internet Config. 8/15/99We crashed too many times since the last update. Diagnostics have been installed to help find the problem. It of course has not appeared since then. \action sighs. We crashed on 8/2/99 8:14a, 8/7/99 12:58a, 8/7/99 5:33a, and 8/7/99 11:33a. Each time we were down for less than 30 minutes. Two free days have been added to all of your accounts. Sorry for the inconvenience. Hopefully, the next time this bug lurking in the shadows makes an appearance it will leave a trail we can follow and we can squish it. Different status bars. Give us your opinion. Many new macro features. 7/28/99No new crashes to report. 20 days without a crash. The record is 62 days. Colors! New status bars. Sylvans can \pose. 7/16/99Fixed crashing bug on the server. Crashed on 7/7/99 9:31pm, 7/7/99 9:56pm, 7/8/99 6:23am, 7/8 12:40pm local times. The last was a controlled test. Previous crash was 6/27/99. 10 whole days without a crash. Our record is 62 days. We were down for less than 20 minutes each time. It appears the auto restart script seems is functioning, though I'd rather not be running so many impromptu tests. Sylvans are still unable to \pose. The sylvan artwork is still not quite ready. The requirements for passwords are now much more strict ie minimum of 8 characters and at least one must not be a letter. Some of your passwords were a little too easy to guess. One of you actually used the password "a". We're attempting to nip this problem in the bud. Sorry for the inconvenience. 7/7/99Fixed crashing bug on the server. Crashed on 6/27/99 at 0:08 local time. Previous crash was 6/19/99. 8 whole days without a crash. Our record is 62 days. We were down for 8 hours. As a result everyone has been credited with an extra day. The game server should now be able to restart itself after a crash. The long down times are unacceptable. If we should happen to be down for more than say 2 hours. First, be sure you can ping the server at the ip adress 204.162.250.112. Sometimes the internet itself breaks and you won't be able to see us and it will look like we crashed when we haven't. Then send email to joe@deltatao.com. Often times the people who can restart the server are not aware we have a problem. All races except Sylvans are now able to \pose. The sylvan artwork is not quite ready. \Share delay has been reduced to 3 seconds. The playground is open. Let the games begin. 6/25/99Fixed crashing bug on the server. Crashed on 6/19/99 at 15:03 local time. Previous crash was 4/18/99. 62 days without a crash. We were down for 5 1/2 hours. Please send email to joe@deltatao.com if this happens again. Make sure you can successfully ping the server first. Sometimes it looks like we're down but really the internet has broken between you and us. There's nothing we can do about that. The down time would have been shorter if the people who can restart the server knew we had a teensy problem. Fixed bug displaying speech bubbles with many spaces. You will now need to find trainers to learn languages, including your own racial language. Establishing and breaking a spirit link now takes some time. The mitey are no longer mighty with shiny daggers. The network code has been rewritten to make it easier to play from behind firewalls. That's the theory anyway. Let us know if this is truth or fantasy. The server now only sends tcp/udp packets from port 5010. It used to send udp packets from an arbitrary port number. The client still sends tcp/udp packets to arbitrary port numbers. 6/9/99 Fixed bug that might corrupt the prefs file. This may have caused items to not appear in the inventory window. Fixed bug checking account name instead of character name when joining. Peasants have names. Deadly beaches are less deadly. Doa Naar has taken over clan registration from the fugitive Doa Noog. 5/24/99 Fixed bug teleporting healers into the test area when without touching the door. Compiled with optimizations on. No noticable effect. Lost yell bubbles are now placed in the upper left hand corner instead of possibly from the wrong mobile. Observant players will notice that we skipped a few update numbers. We're still doing updates internally every week. And every week we update the version number. Some updates won't require you to download any new files. The current schedule is for a player download every 2 weeks. Soon though we'd like that to be once per month. Fixed bug with newly created characters departing to the adytum. 5/13/99 Commands now check partial names for uniqueness. Now the command "\thank john" will not give good karma to "John the Clown" when you meant to give it to "John the Mighty". Fixed bug in \pull that allowed you to stand on lava without getting burned. Beta characters no longer get karma. No more cursing from the Adytum. Due to the unethical actions of a small number of players, all beta characters have lost all of their coins. Fixed bug attaching beta characters while they are online. 5/5/99 Fixed bug ignoring the text entered into the Change Password dialog. Fixed npc's showing up in player window. Fixed bug allowing invalid character names. Added support for scalable scroll bar thumbs. Added custom drawing routines because on some computers Quickdraw was actually drawing very very slowly. Player instruments now respect the sound option. Update files are now of the format CL_Images.update.64to75 which is what you need to update from the CD which is version 64 to the latest which is version 75. 4/30/99 Fixed problem with scrolling in the text window after a large amount of text has been seen. Fixed problem not playing music from instruments. All debugging information has been removed from the client. We no longer recommend you have a debugger installed. Well, sorta. We recommend that you have a debugger installed if you run any products not made by us. ;-> Can now Leave the game or Quit if the connection to the game server cannot be made. Started and backed out of massive changes needed to make playing through firewalls easier. Currently the firewall must allow packets from our game server on any udp port number. Many sysops balk at this request. We're working on it. Till then you might have trouble playing from work. ;-> At shutdown the zombie moo sound was changed to the happy horn sound. Fixed bug ignoring the new password in the change password dialog. Oops! The one character per account restriction is now in effect. This does not apply to beta characters not yet attached to an account. 4/21/99 Signing up a beta character has been improved. See the *Read Me* files. Fixed server crashing bugs. \Info no longer shows items or descriptions if the person is too far away. Fixed bug with sounds sometimes not being played. Major improvements to the Text Window - including scrolling, redraw flicker, and when the time stamps option is unchecked. 4/14/99 You may try to Sign Up on the web pages now. We are in the process of getting a real web server. Please be patient with us until then. Moved Save Text Log to options menu. Removed Debug menu. Changed macro "un" to "unsh" so our french speaking friends don't \unshare accidentally. Can no longer join as a deleted character. Changed the message when you try. \Swear undoes \sleep. Added \speak. 4/7/99 We're not quite ready for you to Sign Up on the web pages yet. Please don't try it until we give the blessing. In theory we can run without QuicktimeLib installed. The music menu item will be disabled. Karma decays slower. Fixed bug playing \thinkto and \share sounds when the sender was "farther" from town than the receiver. Added Character Manager. This won't be very useful to you until you get your CD and can Sign Up. Removed Change Password and Create Character. You won't be able to change your password or create new characters this week. This functionality has been absorbed into the Character Manager and will be available when you can Sign Up. 3/31/99 White pants can no longer be sold. Can no longer swap inventory items when you have round time. Fixed missing last line in the info text panel. Fixed bug movies leaking memory and refusing to play. Can now spin in place without moving. Removed silly examples from the clmacros file. 3/25/99 Added multi-line macros and escapes \s and \P. See the macro file for usage and details. Removed directional control. Inventory window is now on a grid. Suppress options are now check boxes. \Thinkto's are now ignorable. \Ponder no longer ends \sleep. Removed the help messages in commands that can return so-and-so is not in the lands. This message should be easier to see now. Changed message for \use with no item and some unusable items. Attacking and healing should now end \sleep. \Info now uses his or her instead of their when a person has gender but no race. \Pull should no longer say you are still fatigued from your last \push and vice versa. CD's are in! Order yours from the Clan Lord web pages. Orders placed on Wednesday March 24th before midnight Pacific Time were accidentally and unfortunately corrupted. Orders placed on Thursday are fine. (So far!) Please place your order again. We'll do our darndest to avoid double shipping. If you're not sure feel free to call us at 408-730-9336. 3/17/99 Changed command keys for windows. Will probably change them again next week. To define a shortcut for selecting an inventory item: Click and hold on the item in the inventory window then press command and a number key. Please continue testing the new Clan Lord web pages and sending feedback. They should be functional again this week. CD's are in. Yay! That means shipping is imminent. Yay! Soon you will be able to place orders on the web pages. 3/10/99 Most commands now undo \sleep. Fixed bug with \\ in macros. Bounty payout has been changed and will change further. Save your \bug reports for next week. Please continue testing the new Clan Lord web pages and sending feedback. 3/3/99 Please continue testing the new Clan Lord web pages and sending feedback. 2/24/99 Changed some of the standard macros. Plugged all of the leaks about new monsters, areas, items, spells, etc. This wasn't easy because Joe's on vacation. Please continue testing the new Clan Lord web pages and sending feedback. 2/17/99 Fixed bug not restoring the standing pose after attacking. Added macro keys and short hand expansions. See the text file clmacros for details and examples. Changed the about box to the one submitted by Seeker. Might change it to someone else's next month. You never know. The player list window has been improved. There are now options to suppress the clanning messages and/or fallen messages. Please continue testing the new Clan Lord web pages and sending feedback. 2/10/99 \Actions are now red. Actions are still blue. Added type of speech to text window. The command "\actions 's face turns blue." now results in the bubble text "Gaia's face turns blue." The space between the name and the apostrophe is now suppressed. Removed the music menu. Please continue testing the new Clan Lord web pages and sending feedback. 2/3/99 Rewrote the way the client caches things. This should remove the bug changing from the small window to the large window and the bug where sounds don't always play. Added support for the forward delete key. Added support for shift arrow keys. There are some minor quirks. Fixed crashing bug with very long messages when the time stamp option is enabled. Fixed bug where the create character dialog would allow names to be more than 15 characters. Long names were unexpectedly truncated. Please continue testing the new Clan Lord web pages and sending feedback. 1/27/99 \Who no longer counts online game masters. Fixed bug being healed after changing items. Fixed bug being healed after logging off. Please continue testing the new Clan Lord web pages and sending feedback. Fixed bugs writing to nil. 1/20/99 Images with multiple frames are now drawn correctly when in either hand. Fixed game masters showing up in \who. Added programmer art for the about box. No laughing. Contributions welcome. Fixed bug changing balance when changing items. NPC's and monsters should no longer lose track of you when you change pants. The new Clan Lord web pages are now connected to the game server. This web site is hosted on Timmer's computer at home. It will not be available all the time. Please don't enter real credit card information yet. Feel free to try creating characters. We know it is slow. Feedback is encouraged. You should no longer be able to \pull people out of jail. 1/13/99 Fixed item names. Fixed bug not modifying skills when changing items. Remove account information menu items. In the near future these will be handled on by web pages. Images with multiple frames are now drawn correctly when in the hand. 1/6/99 Fixed bug dragging items on scroll bars. Fixed bug changing items by clicking on the right hand when the left hand is empty. \Who no longer starts with ",". Players with no gender may automatically be sent to the start of the newbie walk after a restart. Fixed a crashing bug when making "hot" changes to the server.