PreLoading Ads

[weasel]

We've ad-ded (ho ho) some pre-loading ads to the game - we finally found an ad provider that pays a decent amount (thanks to inXile), so now instead of ads making us some paltry sum they actually make us a big chunk of change. It should keep our servers afloat forevermore!

As usual, those who have paid their won't see the ads and can enjoy the game without the distraction.

E: The remove-ads-for-paying-users code appears to not be working correctly - and occasionally breaks design/levelIDs from loading. Should be fixed soon!

E: Reverted to the old code while we work on it.

E: OK, code is fixed, should work now! Logout and back in and refresh the page if you are a paid user.

[Mr.Lemons]

How Soon?1?!?!?

[big but]

how!!!!!!!!!!! damn sooon

[weasel]

Soon(tm)

[Mr.Lemons]

How much did it cost to trademark the word "soon?"


The Redirect adds a "#" to the end of the Id...

[Faqop]

Yeah I'm a paying member and I see them.... And they won't load....

This after the crash earlier.... makes me think you guys should be running a development server to test before going live.

[GaminKWB]

<?php
print "<meta http-equiv=\"REFRESH\" content=\"0;url=http://fantasticcontraption.com" . $_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"] . "\">";
?>

the 0 can be replaced with the number of seconds.

Edit: I'm not trying to impose or tell anyone how to do anything, just trying to help resolve an issue.

[weasel]

Yep our guy is working on the code right now, should be fixed shortly. I'm thinking within the next 30 mins, but it might be a few hours or more if we hit other speed bumps.

We experience a once-per-week crash or so that seems to be a result of the database tables becoming fragmented over time. We're not quite sure how to resolve this other than to occasionally run defrag and restart MySQL, which seems to do the trick. We're looking into ways to stop this from occuring.

The other crash we had last night - we have no idea how that happened. There was a piece of software installed on the server, and when we checked it out this morning it has simply disappeared. The software was gone, no deletion logs, and nobody is owning up to removing it. After reinstall of the software everything started working again. I swear we have gremlins in our server tank.

We do have a development server - and we do use it to test things out. For some reason the ad-removal-code works fine on the dev server and not the main server. I guess our gremlins work there too.

The game not loading after the ad - that's odd. We haven't been able to recreate it, but once we get the ad-removal working we'll turn our attention to it.

[chris4a4]

I just think, jeez, they are making all these great new advances in addness, but not giving us things like a new rating system.

[weasel]

We've just reverted the ad code back to what it was a few hours ago so you guys can play in peace while we further test. Re-deployment as soon as we figure it out.

[Afronanny]

Hopefully the ads won't pop up on my front page anymore....
Maybe if I can find the pop-up blocker I disabled for this website.

[rabid squirrel]

The game does load after the ad (for me anyway)

But it's impossible to view other designs (links) - when you click on a link it takes you to the game, with the ad loading screen, and then once it finishes the design does not show up - it goes back to the main menu. This happens both if you wait for the ad to finish, AND if you click the redirect link to go to the game.

Try it:
http://fantasticcontraption.com/?designId=6376691

Very frustrating >.>

EDIT: never mind - it works again now, but make sure to fix this issue in your tests... *goes back to updating thread*

[Mr.Lemons]

Yay Weasel!

Rabble Rabble Rabble...

[weasel]

I just think, jeez, they are making all these great new advances in addness, but not giving us things like a new rating system.

All the new features and upgrades will be in the next revision and/or sequel.. I honestly don't think you will see any enhancements or changes to the current version. That could change of course, but we have such a long feature request list now it really will be a new game once we get them all out.

We are learning a lot while we go, too. When we first looked at ads, we were looking at the lowest possible tier ads for low-volume sites. Now that we are popular (for better or worse!) and we have inXile helping us out on the business side of things, the ads suddenly became profitable and worth way, WAY more. I didn't even know it was possible to pay out so much! The original version of the game had ads on it, but we took them out simply because they paid so little (vs. the extreme graphical annoyance).

We also learned a lot of other things on our long journey - things like a well written web based level interface works way better than an in-game interface. Our next ideas only implemented the gameplay in flash and the rest is external.

We are a long way from finished with FC.

[weasel]

But it's impossible to view other designs (links) - when you click on a link it takes you to the game, with the ad loading screen, and then once it finishes the design does not show up - it goes back to the main menu. This happens both if you wait for the ad to finish, AND if you click the redirect link to go to the game.

Thanks a lot for explaining the problem, I wasn't quite sure what the bug was. That does indeed break on my end every time, so now we have something to test against

Everyone give Rabid Squirrel a cookie for being a good beta tester.

[rabid squirrel]

yay I can haz cookie

"That does indeed not work every time for me"? It never worked for me at all, did it work for you "sometimes"?

And I'm glad that you are "a long way from finished" :D

[Afronanny]

I just noticed....the icon isn't there at the top of the tab anymore. Is that related in any way?

[compscure]

I'm for almost anything* that guarantees the long-term viability of the game. The bugs will get worked out in time. Though it'd be cool if you could get sq89's improvements could just be built in.

And for what it's worth, I had the problem of not being able to get to the designs thru Chrome, but not on Firefox.

* (I do hope you guys never figure out I'd probably pay 5 bucks a month for it)

[Mr.Lemons]

I really hope the New FC doesnt add all the things requeted, because some of them, such as 3d and Timer Balls and Other similar things would kill the simplicity of the game. IMO the only thing you should add are simple physics objects... Maybe water, or sand.

[chris4a4]

I really hope the New FC doesnt add all the things requeted, because some of them, such as 3d and Timer Balls and Other similar things would kill the simplicity of the game. IMO the only thing you should add are simple physics objects... Maybe water, or sand.

Meh, I just want a fastforward/slowdown button.