Back To Captions!!

Our last caption contest was in February, and I feel like our community really got the hang of creating really awesome captions!

I don't want to lose any momentum - so the special raffle for April is.... ANOTHER CAPTION CONTEST!!

What are captions? Captions can be a description of an image. Either going to accuracy, or even being funny (but relevant).

Caption rules: https://communities.alphacoders.com/topics/view/6765

Over $60 in raffles!!

Scoring page: https://alphacoders.com/contest/score/75

If you aren't sure about what decent captions look like, always feel free to visit the recent captions on Wallpaper Abyss ( https://wall.alphacoders.com/captions.php ), or ask one of the mod team.

I wish everyone the best!

Kids being off of school has mesed up my schedule. So I'm still slowboating things 😀 Next update should be Space Abyss 0.1, which will be a nice milestone. My big goal for that one is baddies in space.
 

Space Abyss!!! : https://space.alphacoders.com

From https://space.alphacoders.com/CHANGELOG.md

## [0.0.12] - 2020-03-29

### Fixed
- Bug with deleting spawned events. A bit of bad copy/pasta.
- Rock wall was still using the old image location. It has been updated.
- Multi tile ships can successfully launch from planets if they are designed to do so.
- Bug that caused a clean clearing of a previous level/display to fail when multiple players were nearby
- Damage occurring on a different level than the client won't show up anymore
- Bug that made a different player switching to their ship view cause your client to think you needed 
to generate an airlock display as well, which made your 'View Ship' option disappear.
- Bug with new object info not being sent to the room if it was also being sent to the socket
- The admin function to set a planet type wasn't working - it is now.


### Added
- Visual response to the client when converting things into energy
- Crystal Bee, Crystal Golem, AI Forge, and Corrupted Scientist - @UnfuneralOD https://twitter.com/UnfuneralOD
- Failure message when there is a failed mining complexity check
- Allow admin users to bypass the ticking of assemblies. Things still have to tick once, but for testing purposes 
it was a pain to reduce the tick amount, test, and then increase the tick amount again. I can always test the feel 
with actual tick amounts on a non-admin character.
- Players can now attack planets.

Hey everyone!

It's been a while since the last Space Abyss update. One week of that was a vacation. Another couple weeks of that was just a ton of time spent messing with advertisements on Alpha Coders. Annoying stuff😃

Space Abyss!!! : https://space.alphacoders.com

From https://space.alphacoders.com/CHANGELOG.md

## [0.0.11] - 2020-03-05

### Added
- Re-vamped the object and monster spawning system. Monsters can now spawn harvestable items. A current example of 
this in game right now is Milk Slerms spawning Slerm Milk, which you can harvest from them.
- Monsters have a new attribute, attack_chance_on_harvest . Now we can have stronger monsters with harvestable 
things, and some risk involved. Higher farming level decreases the risk of the monster attacking.
- OUR FIRST LOGO! Courtesy of @UnfuneralOD https://twitter.com/UnfuneralOD
- New movement style - static. Now sprites can be set to either a simple flip, having up/down/left/right, or just 
move along with their single animation. This is for large things like Space Stations that look odd if they flip around
really fast.
- Failure messages and an immediate bounce back if a large, dockable ship is trying to land on a planet, or dock with 
 another large ship, (they can't do either)

### Fixed
- Movement speed for MLM body
- I believe I have fixed an issue with new players switching back out of their ship

### Changed
- New ship interior sprites from @UnfuneralOD ( https://twitter.com/UnfuneralOD ). Floor, wall, 
airlock, ion engines
- Complexity for Defense Drones (they were the default of 1)
- The assembly requirements and complexity for Corrupted Battery Packs
- Hull welder uses heat skill
- Previously events could only spawn one object type when they de-spawned or were otherwise deleted/killed. I've 
moved that to the drop linker table, and its associated with the individual event linkers. This way, the 
drops of an event are basically the same as a drop from a monster. This will let me have random and rare drops 
when something like a dust storm ends (it's 'uncovering' treasure or something)
- Removed the option to assemble 'all' and '10' when assembling from a shipyard, since the shipyard gets used up at the
end of the assembly.

Hey everyone!

The special raffle for the month of March is an Author Contest!

To enter, all you need to do is add author information to the content you submit, or to content already on the sites!

Responsible discovery and sharing is an important goal of Alpha Coders. We like to reward user activities that make both our site and the rest of the internet a better place - and we greatly appreciate everyone who joins in!

The scoring url: https://alphacoders.com/contest/author-score

Let me know if you have any questions!

Hey everyone!

I have updated the caption rules. Non English is ok ONLY if you are the author naming your own creation.

An update!

I always forget how difficult captions can be 😬

I have significantly lowered the threshold for the tiers in captions. The top tier has been cut by 1/3.

I hope this means that more people will be able to achieve higher tiers!

Captions are an amazing way of helping people find exactly what they are looking for at Alpha Coders. For the month of February, we are having a community Caption Contest! Caption more things, get in a raffle pool for a larger prize!

What are captions? Captions can be a description of an image. Either going to accuracy, or even being funny (but relevant).

Caption rules: https://communities.alphacoders.com/topics/view/6765

Over $60 in raffles!!

Scoring page: https://alphacoders.com/contest/score/70

If you aren't sure about what decent captions look like, always feel free to visit the recent captions on Wallpaper Abyss ( https://wall.alphacoders.com/captions.php ), or ask one of the mod team.

I wish everyone the best!

A smaller one this time. Fixed cases where coordinates would not show up. Monsters should be drawn a lot faster in most cases now. Added pathfinding to monsters.

Space Abyss!!! : https://space.alphacoders.com

From https://space.alphacoders.com/CHANGELOG.md

## [0.0.10] - 2020-01-27

### Fixed
- The floor of planet coords that were brought in during monster movement will now be drawn
- Added a couple of conditions in which monsters are drawn, so in general monster sprites should be drawn quicker

### Added
- Electric effect for an electric damage type
- Pathfinding for monsters that take up a single tile of space

Hello everyone!

We have added emoji support across the sites - comments, captions, names, even account names (more on that below)

Previously, when users tried to add in emojis, which happens more and more frequently as people use their phones, our sites wouldn't show anything.

Which isn't a great result if you really wanted to post 👾

After a lot of back end changes, both for the sites and the database stuff running everything, we now fully support emojis!

Hooray!

😺🌼✨

More and more people browse from their phones, and we support tons of the emojis that you find when you use that feature on your phone.

We support emojis and other special characters in usernames!

We have always had a pretty restrictive set of characters that you could use for a username. No more!

Question: What is the difference between a smiley and an emoji?

Normally smileys are really just small images. Emojis are, effectively, more like an additional character in the alphabet. Your phone or other device will understand that U+1F47E is 👾, and that little alien dude will have his own look depending on whether you are on an Apple, Microsoft, or Google device. 

Let me know if you have questions!

 AI behavior fixes, salvaging fixes, object placement fixes. Starting to try and balance the ships a little more. Support for ships with multiple levels.

Space Abyss!!! : https://space.alphacoders.com

From https://space.alphacoders.com/CHANGELOG.md

## [0.0.9] - 2020-01-22
### Fixed
- When objects are placed on a planet or ship, set a planet_id/ship_id for that object (this is used for AIs associating
 AI Batteries/AI Cores with themselves)
- Remove names and tints of objects when the player changes levels or views
- AIs won't protect players they are attacking
- Spaceport merchant spots are now protected
- Various bugs related to when salvaging finishes
- Bug when a ship or other object with associated things was loaded in from an event. Nothing, like ship coords,
were being grabbed from the database and attached. Should have that all fixed but just calling getObjectIndex 
from the init function
- Dead bodies of players could overwrite the location of static stairs. I've fixed this, and put in an extra 
check in the placeObject function that will throw a warning and prevent it if something like this is happening 
somewhere else.


### Changed
- Made the cargo ship larger
- Decreased the cost of the shuttle significantly, since it's smaller than the cargo ship and the mining ship
- The salvaging opportunities of the forge (added nano bonder)
- Food replicator can now be salvaged for 1/2 resources back.
- Research Station can now be salvaged for 1/2 resources back.
- Sprite changes: Spacelane beacon. Machine walls. Rock Walls. Territe. Syntite. Some floors. 
@UnfuneralOD https://twitter.com/UnfuneralOD

### Added
- A failure message when trying to replace a floor or 'build' something, but the ruling AI doesn't allow it
- Started more of the structure for factions. Joining, creating, leaving, viewing. Still have a long way to go, but 
will push this and then continue down the path with factions.
- An admin interface to make the designing of ships easier. This isn't directly part of the client/server, but part
of the Space Abyss website. I think I need to eventually include that in this repository too.
- Support for ships with multiple levels (still need to test this a bunch)
- The ability to use batteries to add power to AI Batteries
- An asteroid ship. The first multi level ship. Currently in testing. Uses a new type of ship engine, a Thiol Drive.
- Admins can now spawn events in the galaxy and ship
- Support for events to spawn in a ship or a galaxy. Crazy how big and far this change ended up reaching.

 Main focus here was testing support for multi-tile ships, the basics of a doctor npc job, adding support for augments, and various bug fixes.

Space Abyss!!! : https://space.alphacoders.com

From https://space.alphacoders.com/CHANGELOG.md

## [0.0.8] - 2020-01-13
### Fixed
- Assemblies using the old assembly tick count, instead of the new one which is based on the object we're 
using for the assembly.
- Placing multi-tile ships on the galaxy
- When a player's HP changes, we now redraw the hp bar
- A few different bugs when players die that interrupted the dying process
- Player surgery level was not being calculated


### Changed
- When going up stairs, or down a hole, the server will try to place you in tiles surrounding the hole/stairs 
if the main tile is blocked by something.
- Moved and resized the 'Trash' button on inventory items so it's not the first thing you mouseoever
- Optimized when checking to see if an NPC can build a structure. Stops searching subsequent coords if one has 
already failed
- New Robot Janitor and Crystal Spider Baby sprites from @RunninBlood ( https://twitter.com/RunninBlood )
- Put Crystal Spider Babies on the surface level of Mountain planet types, and made Crystal Spiders stronger, and 
spawning them starting at -1 instead.
- Changed the drops of Crystal Spiders and Crystal Guards to include dropping Crystals

### Added
- Support for augments. Augments are neural enhancements that always require an auto doc to equip. I king of wanted 
them to completely burn a body on failure, but for now I am going to keep it consistent with other equip spots. 
Failure will just burn the spot, and take away some HP. For now I think the consistency, and the game's general 
ability to communicate disaster make burning an entire body too detrimental. It's still possible to fail until you 
have 0 HP and the body dies.
- The basics of a doctor NPC. Once an NPC with the dream of becoming a doctor obtains 100 credits, they are able 
to build a clinic with a pair of auto docs. 
- The ability for a user to use an auto doc from a doctor npc. This uses the NPC's surgery skill, rather than the 
player's surgery skill. This should open up the pathway for players to offer surgery stuff down the road as well. 
- A doctor npc's surgery skill will slowly increase as they tinker with.... bodies.

Hey everyone!

We are always trying to improve categorization at Alpha Coders. Towards this end, we are making a change regarding categorization of some anime content.

The way it works now
Anime Tv Shows go in the Anime category
Anime Movies go in the Movie category

The new way it is going to work:
Anime Tv Shows go in the Anime Category
Anime Movies go in the Anime Category

We hope that this makes it easier for users to correctly categorize anime content, and simultaneously for people to find anime content.

Live action movies or shows will still go in their respective tv show/movie categories.

Let me know if you have any questions or comments!

The focus of this update has been adding in Spacelane Beacons - areas of space that are protected and safe to fly around in, as well as adding in solutions for a player if they build a more advanced spaceshp, and happen to run out of fuel.

Space Abyss!!! : https://space.alphacoders.com

From https://space.alphacoders.com/CHANGELOG.md

## [0.0.7] - 2020-01-04
### Fixed
- Bug setting new coords to belong to planets switching planet types
- Defense drone assembly location
- Critical bug that could switch sockets when logging in
- Damage types being sent when objects attack other objects
- I had broken ship refueling with some typos.
- Animations showing from previous levels after you switch levels

### Changed
- Re-worked how we go through planet coords for the map update. The old way actually didn't scale well at all - 
running getPlanetCoordIndex for each coord. Instead we just iterate through all the planet coords once, 
adding in what we need, and running getPlanetCoordIndex on the not found ones against our index. Old way could 
easily get to 100ms per player (super unsustainable). New way is ~2-5ms per player.
- Did a similar re-coding for a ship coords update. Difference is even more drastic here. 300ms -> .2 to 1ms
- Trying less frequent total map updates for players ( 5 -> 20 seconds ). In theory the goal is to not have this 
on setIncrement at all.
- Airlocks can now have rules 
- Can no longer walk on Ion Drives

### Added
- watched_by_object_id column to the object_types table - setting up for protected Spacelanes
- Spacelane beacon object, and all the logic behind supporting it
- More messages about fuel for non-default ships. The game doesn't communicate that there are fuel 
requirements very well
- Ability to jump out the airlock with an emergency pod if you are truly stuck on your ship

Another decent sized update has hit. I'm attempting to be pretty thourough with the changelog, so I'm mostly going to just copy/pasta changelog stuff to these forum posts

New Corporation Planet:

From https://space.alphacoders.com/CHANGELOG.md

## [0.0.6] - 2019-12-28
### Fixed
- Auto doc required message appearing as a success instead of failure.
- Mini drones not moving when attacking
- Game file index for acid floors
- Hull welders can now be picked up, Chitin legs can now be picked up
- Bug when placing an object type on that same object type
- Failed login redirecting to 404 pages on the website


### Changed
- Updated the complexity of Chitin Body ( armor ) to 6 to match the rest of the set
- AI Fragment complexity increased from 14 to 18
- Updated the assembly requirements for laser guns and laser rifles
- Made Monitors weak to hacking attacks
- Re-coded the game.tickObjectSpawners function
- Thiol extractors can only be placed on thiol deposits
- The large 'Play Space Abyss' button on the website now is disabled if the above steps aren't met. You still don't
need to login to the website to play the game, but this should be more clear for new players.
- New sprites for slaver planet, corporation planet, and dirt walls from @UnfuneralOD

### Added
- Exodium armor set. Using placeholder sprites for now
- Thiol Extractors now spawn thiol canisters
- Added a planet_type_impact_linkers table, which we will be able to use to increase or decrease planet HP based 
on object types being produced/generated from the planet ( current goal is Thiol extraction from acid planets 
reducing hp)
- Added a drop_requires_object_type_id property to object types to support needing to drop a Thiol Extractor on 
a Thiol Deposit
- Thiol Deposists now spawn on Acid planets as an event.
- Placeholder images for thiol deposit, thiol extractor, and thiol cannister
- Added a navbar to the Space Abyss website
- A bypass for the new disabled 'Play Space Abyss' button
- Added in game assets psd files. I use Photopea to open/edit these.

Hey everyone!

Today we are implementing a new rule regarding watermarks.

It's long been stated in our submission rules: https://initiate.alphacoders.com/upload/rules that " It is a goal of Wallpaper Abyss to always show the end user the best version of an image. "

Most of us should be pretty used to that idea.

Thinking about it... there is something that, 99.9% of the time, is NOT the best version of an image. Any guesses? An image with the watermark of a wallpaper/image hosting site on it.

Due to this:

Images with watermarks from wallpaper sites/image hosting sites are no longer allowed on Wallpaper Abyss, and should be submitted to Image Abyss.

There's a repeated dynamic where someone will submit a version of an image with the watermark of another wallpaper/image hosting site on it, and literally all anyone has to do to get that moved as a duplicate, is find any version without it. It's a dance as old as time around here, and we want to find some new moves.

We also want to fully support responsible sharing. Finding sources that don't mark up other's content are also more likely to have actual author information.

Let me know if you have any questions or comments!