Jatopian
Level: Smitemaster
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Let me first apologize to everyone offended by this post. I am more frustrated than Beethro trying to sheath his sword. Moreso than Mattcrampy trying to escape the basement. Moreso than a goblin trying to speak English properly. Moreso than a roach queen force-fed the Pill. Moreso than... I'll stop now. The point is, I am angry and might not be polite.

Anyway, I paid $12 for a CaravelNet subscription. I bought it for the SS holds. But today I checked my holds and found that there is a definite lack of SS hold. It's called Halph Stories, correct? The new one, I mean. Well, it isn't there. I'm properly logged in, but no hold in the list.
I also didn't get the email Illumination, to which I supposedly am subscribed.

____________________________
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[Last edited by mrimer at 03-06-2006 03:46 PM : changed the thread name]

Swivel
Level: Master Delver

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Ah, but the holds aren't out yet! Otherwise, they would be released on the Holds board. It the holds actually aren't out yet. In fact, there is no hold called Halph's Stories, but two holds entitled Beethro and the Secret Society (by Jacob) and Halph Has a Bad Day by Eytan. So, if you're not playing the holds, don't fret! For no one else is playing them either.

By the way, the Illumination isn't released on the first day of the month unless Erik is feeling really really punctual. But he has things to do.

____________________________
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[Last edited by Swivel at 03-05-2006 02:34 AM]

Chaco
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On the minus side for me, I apparently have a trial CaravelNet subscription that I got with JtRH that I haven't heard anything at all about.

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ErikH2000
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We're just waiting to get some recorded Beethro dialogue from Sten Ryason and shortly after the game will be available on CaravelNet and shipping to subscribers--so you've got days, not weeks to wait, Jatopian. Technically speaking, at time of writing, we are 5 days late from the schedule set for ourselves, i.e. "Winter" was arbitrarily set earlier to include December, January, and February. "Spring" includes March, April, and May, and so on.

-Erik

____________________________
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zoombini
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ErikH2000 wrote:
We're just waiting to get some recorded Beethro dialogue from Sten Ryason and shortly after the game will be available on CaravelNet and shipping to subscribers--so you've got days, not weeks to wait, Jatopian. Technically speaking, at time of writing, we are 5 days late from the schedule set for ourselves, i.e. "Winter" was arbitrarily set earlier to include December, January, and February. "Spring" includes March, April, and May, and so on.

-Erik

Excellent! I was wondering when the new one would be out. Thanks Erik!

Blondbeard
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What is the time difference between the posting of the hold and the sending of the SS CDs?

Jatopian
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Oh, okay. Good to know that's all.
I'm glad I wasn't being gypped; I'm not sure my conscience would let me pirate TCB.

____________________________
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Mattcrampy
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ErikH2000 wrote:
"Winter" was arbitrarily set earlier to include December, January, and February. "Spring" includes March, April, and May, and so on.

That doesn't actually sound all that arbitrary.

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Mikko
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Yes, if "Winter" was set as February, March and July and "Spring" as June, September, 14-19 January and 11am-2pm on Sundays in April and May, that would be arbitrary.

ErikH2000
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Blondbeard wrote:
What is the time difference between the posting of the hold and the sending of the SS CDs?

I'll make an announcement about that in the Illumination, but basically there will be a small delay (maybe a week) between CaravelNet release and manufacturing. One reason for this is that I want to give people a fair warning that it will be difficult/impossible to order the Halph Stories CDs in the future. People will need to be signed up for a Smitemaster's Selection subscription before we ship Halph Stories to get the CD. I'll only end up with 5 or 10 extra copies after it ships, which won't be for sale, and reprintings are dubious.

-Erik

____________________________
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ErikH2000
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From Wikipedia, on the subject of "Summer":

Summer is a season, defined by convention in meteorology as the whole months of June, July, and August, in the Northern hemisphere, and the whole months of December, January, and February, in the Southern hemisphere. In some Western countries, the first day of summer (in the Northern hemisphere) falls either on, or around, June 21 or on June 1 (the former is the astronomical start; the latter, the meteorological).

...so I think my choosing June, July, and August to mean "summer" is at least slightly arbitrary, but the most obvious choice. Ditto for the other seasons. I also understand that off in Crampland, people do refer to the hottest time of year as "Winter", possibly to keep England happy so the Queen won't sack their Prime Minister.

-Erik

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KevG
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A few questions come to mind; I realise you might not be able to answer all of them yet.

Will Halph Stories be available for download until the end of May, until the next SS hold is released, or something different?

Let's suppose I'm a current Caravelnet member, but I didn't order the SS CD. If my harddrive gets fried in July, would I have any way of replacing Halph Stories? What about Perfection, the Choice, and KDD2?

Let's suppose my Caravelnet membership expires on June 1st. I should be entitled to the Spring SS, right? What if it gets delayed into June, would I be able to download a copy or would I be out of luck? Or to put it differently, what if delays in release means that there are only 3 SS selections released during someone's membership instead of the promised 4?

ErikH2000
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KevG wrote:
Will Halph Stories be available for download until the end of May, until the next SS hold is released, or something different?

Keep in mind that I have to avoid saying words like "forever" or "always", because I can't guarantee that our servers will be running fifty years from now. Or even a year or two from now, CaravelNet might get restructured into something different. But practically speaking, if you have a CaravelNet membership while *Halph Stories* is released, you will continue to have access to *Halph Stories* as long as you have CaravelNet. We will be keeping track, per-user, which holds were released when you had a membership. So each user will have a personal inventory of available official holds.

The system currently lets any CaravelNet member have access to all official holds. Sometime in the near future, but no sooner than April, we will only give access to holds that were released during your membership. Anyone signed up before that happens will keep access to all of the official holds released so far.

Let's suppose I'm a current Caravelnet member, but I didn't order the SS CD. If my harddrive gets fried in July, would I have any way of replacing Halph Stories? What about Perfection, the Choice, and KDD2?

If this happens, send me an e-mail and we'd work something out. But I encourage people to back up their data files. It's generally a great idea to back up all your data. So if you are doing that, then add DROD's "data" directory to your set of paths that are backed up.

Let's suppose my Caravelnet membership expires on June 1st. I should be entitled to the Spring SS, right? What if it gets delayed into June, would I be able to download a copy or would I be out of luck? Or to put it differently, what if delays in release means that there are only 3 SS selections released during someone's membership instead of the promised 4?

This is another thing that you can just e-mail me about, and I'd likely err on the side of giving you the extra SS hold. I do agree that a year of CaravelNet should include 4 selections. We may come up with a programmatic way to guarantee this in the future, but for now I can just handle any cases that come up by e-mail.

-Erik

____________________________
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dev journals | twitch stream | youtube archive (NSFW)

coppro
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So what you're saying is that instead of having an autosystem that gives you access to holds based on when your CaravelNet subscription was active, instead each person will only have access to individual holds, and will just have to have previous ones? What if I were to have CaravelNet, download SSes, then lose access and upgrade to the full version. Would I need to seperate versions?

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[Last edited by coppro at 03-05-2006 10:49 PM]

eytanz
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Coppro - I have no idea what you actually mean, but what Erik said was that once you have Caravelnet, you'll have access to all the holds released in that period, whether or not they remain available to people who got Caravelnet after you.

I'm not sure what you mean by upgrading to full version; you're asking about what happens if you get Caravelnet without getting JtRH first? You won't need to maintain seperate versions - as long as you move your character to the new install and keep the same caravelnet account associated with it, you'll be able to re-download all the SS holds you ever downloaded.

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coppro
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OK thanks.

NiroZ
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ErikH2000 wrote:
Let's suppose my Caravelnet membership expires on June 1st. I should be entitled to the Spring SS, right? What if it gets delayed into June, would I be able to download a copy or would I be out of luck? Or to put it differently, what if delays in release means that there are only 3 SS selections released during someone's membership instead of the promised 4?

This is another thing that you can just e-mail me about, and I'd likely err on the side of giving you the extra SS hold. I do agree that a year of CaravelNet should include 4 selections. We may come up with a programmatic way to guarantee this in the future, but for now I can just handle any cases that come up by e-mail.

-Erik

So you mean to say, if SmS hold X is released, and I subscribe a month later, I then don't get Hold X?

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[Last edited by NiroZ at 05-30-2007 04:47 AM]

eytanz
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NiroZ wrote:
so you mean to say, if ss hold X is realeased, and i subscribe a month later, i don't get Hold X?

I'm not sure, but I think the system will be -

If hold X is released, and you subscribe to Caravelnet, you'll get hold X, until the next hold (hold Y) is released. Then, hold X will no longer be available (for free through Caravelnet. I think it'll be possible to purchase it as a seperate product).

But I'm not sure, and you'll have to wait for Erik for an offical word.

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Alneyan
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eytanz wrote:
If hold X is released, and you subscribe to Caravelnet, you'll get hold X, until the next hold (hold Y) is released. Then, hold X will no longer be available (for free through Caravelnet. I think it'll be possible to purchase it as a seperate product).

Well, let's interpret the holy words of the Architect Cantos.

From Erik's post above: "But practically speaking, if you have a CaravelNet membership while *Halph Stories* is released, you will continue to have access to *Halph Stories* as long as you have CaravelNet."

This seems to indicate that access to SS holds is permanent, no matter what. Well, you still need a CaravelNet subscription, of course, and it won't work after a nuclear war. Barring that, if you were a subscriper when the hold was released, you can download the hold at any time through CaravelNet.

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[Last edited by Alneyan at 03-06-2006 08:30 AM]

Bombadil
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Just an idea... you could change the topic name because it's not significant at all about what's being discused here.

And in this topic there's a lot of interesting information.

KevG
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NiroZ wrote:so you mean to say, if ss hold X is realeased, and i subscribe a month later, i don't get Hold X?

Most likely that's the way things will work. Eric has consistently said that a Caravelnet subscription gets you 4 SS holds; if you got a hold that was released before you joined that would be 5 holds. Let's say you subscribe in April 2006: you would get Spring 2006, Summer 2006, Fall 2006, and Winter 2007. Since those are your four, you wouldn't get Halph Stories (Winter 2006).

Like Eytanz said though, it's pretty much up to Eric to give the official answer.

eytanz
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Alneyan wrote:

eytanz wrote:
If hold X is released, and you subscribe to Caravelnet, you'll get hold X, until the next hold (hold Y) is released. Then, hold X will no longer be available (for free through Caravelnet. I think it'll be possible to purchase it as a seperate product).

Well, let's interpret the holy words of the Architect Cantos.

From Erik's post above: "But practically speaking, if you have a CaravelNet membership while *Halph Stories* is released, you will continue to have access to *Halph Stories* as long as you have CaravelNet."

This seems to indicate that access to SS holds is permanent, no matter what. Well, you still need a CaravelNet subscription, of course, and it won't work after a nuclear war. Barring that, if you were a subscriper when the hold was released, you can download the hold at any time through CaravelNet.

Sigh. Ok, there are two issues here, and they are being confused.

- If you subscribe to Caravelnet and get an SS hold, you get lifetime (i.e. lifetime of your Caravelnet membership, not your own lifetime) access to it. That's one issue.

- BUT, new subscribers will *not* get access to all SS holds ever released, but only to those released during their membership, or, if I'm correct, immediately prior. That's the issue I'm addressing in the post you quote.

If you read my post, you should be able to see that from context. Similarly, you should be able to see I address the other issue (retention of holds) in another post above.

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[Last edited by eytanz at 03-06-2006 01:59 PM]

jamie
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Errrm, the easiest solution is to simply continue to renew your caravalnet subscription forever, then you get access to everything.

Problem solved.

(But does this mean that someone new to drod in 6 months time, who's fully willing to pay for it all, will not be able to get the original SS holds for any love or money ?)

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eytanz
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As I said above, there's no official word on that yet, but my guess is that old SS holds will be available for seperate purchase; they just won't come as part of a Caravelnet subscription anymore.

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Alneyan
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eytanz wrote:
Sigh. Ok, there are two issues here, and they are being confused.

Actually not, there's just someone who has trouble reading anything that is inside quotes. Said someone is myself, of course. My brain failed to register the *precise* query of the poster, which was plainly what your own answer was about.

So, point taken, and post withdrawn. I blame my misreading on the screen I used when I wrote that post above. It was a lovely shade of yellow and... don't call me yellow, m'okay?

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[Last edited by Alneyan at 03-06-2006 10:24 PM]

ErikH2000
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Eytan has done a perfect job of explaining everything that is known and not a word more. So everything he said above is accurate. When I saw his posts I was quite appreciative.

As for the question of what happens when you sign up for CaravelNet a little bit after an official hold is released. We haven't worked that out yet exactly. I would like there to be a little leniency--some small grace period. What exactly we do needs to be worked out carefully in a discussion with Schik, Mike, and I. You'll get more information about it later.

It is all bound to be confusing. That is one of the reasons why CaravelNet is sold so cheaply right now. I would rather have an easy time convincing people to just get on the bus and enjoy the ride than spend time justifying a high price. I understand and respect that some people have legitimate difficulties scraping up money and hassling with online orders. But a dollar a month is really peanuts for what we are offering right now, let alone for what we'll be offering later.

-Erik

____________________________
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Tscott
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What would make sense to me is if whatever was the last Smitemaster Selection released was considered the "current" release that a new subscriber would have access to the moment they subscribed. (I'd hate to be a new subscriber and have to wait a couple months before getting my first hold.) Then define a year subscription as having access to a maximum of 4 Smitemaster selections.

The only trouble I see is at the end of the year if their first smitemaster selection was, for example, Winter and the next year the Winter selection was released before their subscription was up, there would need to be a way to deny access to that (until they renew another year) while still allowing them access to demos, high scores and all the other good stuff they're entitled to.

____________________________
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coppro
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Easy. When a caravelnet account is purchased for one year, you get 4 SS holds, including the current one. Each one comes out, and then they decrement the variable, ensuring that 4 SSes go to that person.

Syntax
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Ok, this may seem obvious or maybe I've missed something (though I have searched). In any case, I predict more messages like this as Caravelnet starts to expire so here goes:

To make sure my caravelnet account doesn't expire (forgetful etc), I decided to renew it last night. I've been through the order page, and got an email from plimus saying they've received my payment (and usual invoice stuff).

And that's it...

Now what ? Is it just a case of being patient ? The caravel FAQ doesn't really explain the process. I haven't had to give my DROD username so don't see how the payment can be tied to my account.

Should I wait for a follow-up email from caravel (with some sort of unique link in it with which I can be identified) ? Or am I identified by my email address ? if so, should it be the same as the DROD registered one ? - it happens to be that way for me.

The other reason I ask, is that I'm also purchasing a subscription for another player, and don't want to cause panic by issuing what looks like a duplicate payment... Would this cause any issue ?

Thanks for any clarification...

(/me suspects lack of patience )

Syntax
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Ok cheers wallu.

Guess impatience strikes again!
Though I find it strange that the Caravel email has already taken more than 12 hours to arrive... maybe there's an issue with...

*ping*

Damn hotmail! Default junk filter filters out the registration email. Might be worth mentioning it in the FAQ to check the junk email folder for hotmail. Or maybe there's a way to fix the issue.

I swear, you know you've made it big when both Microsoft *and* Norton try and undermine the genius that is DROD...

Thanks for the replies!

[EDIT]

Ok, now then...

The current setup at home is 2 players within DROD (Syntax and VodkaAndCoke). Up til now, I was the only one with a caravelnet account.

This has been working fine, apart from when I update a hold, I would inherit VAC's high scores (this has already been highlighted as a bug elsewhere).

Anyways, now VodkAndCoke's just acquired a Caravelnet account.
The key has been sent, but isn't recognised by DROD. The "Request new key" within DROD is also greyed out (?), but requesting keys from the site still doesn't come up with a working solution.

I guess the question is... is it possible to have 2 player accounts on one instance of DROD, both with different Caravel accounts online... ?

I'm guessing this setup might be unique, but would muchly appreciate any feedback...

Cheers!

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[Last edited by Syntax at 03-09-2006 12:35 PM]