Welcome to Tim's World - a Worldcrafting, Writing, and Experimentation Blog!

The End

Thursday, January 21st, 2010

I made a decision last night to cancel my WoW Account. It was not an easy decision, but it was the right one. Since finally achieving the Loremaster achievement, and even a little while before that, I just haven’t had much fun with the game. I still love the game, but I think I’ve done all I really want to do with my characters – at least for now. I realized that I had not even logged into the game – except maybe once to check my banker’s mail – in almost a month.

Still looking forward to Cataclysm, and I’ll probably renew my account when it comes out, but for now, I feel it’s best to focus on other things, such as Tile Isle, Combat Cast, and other things.

That being said, it should come as no surprise to anyone that I’m discontinuing development on my WoW Armory WP Plugin. Considering Blizzard’s new armory features that let you place your character model and history log on your site, the only thing I’m really offering anymore is the gear list, which isn’t that amazing…

I’m planning to restructure the site a little bit and make it more about general game design (as was it’s original intention), and start moving WoW Armory and related articles to an archive of some kind.

I went ahead and put the source up on Google Code so that anyone who wants to see or use the code for themselves can do so. You can find the project here: http://code.google.com/p/wow-armory-wp-plugin/

I am a little saddened by the need to let it go, but I think it’s for the best. I’ve kept it very close to my chest so I could retain creative control, but I haven’t been able to give it the attention I would like lately, and I haven’t been able to give the users with questions or bugs the help they require.

Well, I think that’s all I have to say for now. Thanks for taking the time to read this. From here on, the posts on this site will focus more on game design, creation, and development.

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The Future of the wow-armory WP Plugin

Monday, November 2nd, 2009

First, let me address an issue that has been popping up since I added the Image Cache: it seems the Cache directory is not always being created in a mode that’s writable by Wordpress when you update the plugin – if you get any errors after you update the plugin, make sure the wp-content/plugins/wow-armory/includes/cache folder is set to 0777 (or something writable) and then clear your cache. If you still have problems, please let me know.

As always, please direct any questions or comments to the wow-guild Plugin Page. Thanks!

Click here to lend your support to: wow-armory WP Plugin and make a donation at www.pledgie.com !

[plugin name]: Download [plugin version] package_go – Last Updated [plugin updated_ago]
Rated [plugin rating]/5 – Wordpress Plugin Info: [plugin link]

I love my wow-armory Wordpress plugin. I’ve really enjoyed shaping it from just a simple idea (“I wonder if I can easily show my character’s names and levels from the armory…”) to what it has become (the 3D model is so awesome!). But I’m starting to feel like I can’t give it all the attention it deserves… There’s so much I want to be able to do with it, but I just don’t seem to ever have the time to pull it off. ‘Minor’ changes or interesting features all seem to turn into a massive project – as can be seen with the recent Image cache change. I’m worried that I’m either going to burn out on the project and abandon it, or get to a point where something breaks it completely that I can’t fix… I’m not really sure how to avoid either of these fates.

So, I’ve been looking into the possibility of making the code for the plugin more public and open. Maybe something like GitHub? Although I don’t know much about it… To be honest, I’m not sure how to go about setting it up in a way that still gives me (or a small group of trusted people) more of an ‘admin’ role to oversee how changes are made…

I guess I’m still looking for opinions and advice – does anyone think that I should move in this direction and/or have any advice on how to proceed? Or should I suck it up and try to keep it like it’s been?

Maybe I could recruit a few volunteers to just lend a hand with some of the maintenance and code… Ginchen has been an overwhelmingly awesome source of code repairs, suggestions, etc. But I wonder if I’m not doing my part at getting the word out about the plugin… maybe not enough people know about it?

Meh, I think that’s enough rambling for me… lol I’m probably over-thinking these things…

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Uh-oh…this is how these things get started…

Thursday, October 15th, 2009

I’ve been listening (and re-listening) to the Penny Arcade, PvP, Wil Wheaton D&D 4E podcasts. Yeah, again :P They’re so much fun just to listen to. Plus, Gabe has been talking about his Campaign (with pictures!), which has been nothing short of awe-inspiring, and inspiring in general.

So I started thinking about D&D again, and thinking about how awesome it was to play, when I actually had a group to play with…

Uh-oh.
(more…)

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Statuses

Thursday, May 28th, 2009

I’ve been working on a few things lately, but nothing that’s finished yet.

  • Working on several work-related projects, which have been keeping me busy.
  • Working on the wow-armory plugin a little, getting it ready for a new release.
  • Trying to work on a new version of the wow-guild plugin, but I haven’t had much time to look at it.
  • Trying to work on a variety of writing projects, but these always seem to fall by the wayside.
  • Working on a board game concept which will hopefully become a reality some time in the future.

So, things have been pretty crazy… I want to finish up the D&D Adventure special and get it all the way posted, so I’ll try to post another installment tomorrow. I also want to get back to posting Monday Monsters, but I haven’t come up with any good ones lately…

Finally, the contest is still going on, but I only have one entry so far… please comment by June 8th for your chance to win one of the (small) prizes…

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Upcoming Changes

Wednesday, March 18th, 2009

site_preview

Even though I said I was going to give up on any site design changing shenanigans, I have been secretly working on a new Theme :P
I don’t know when it will be ready, possibly within 2-3 weeks of intermittent development.

As soon as it’s ready, I’ll activate it here, and we’ll see how it works.

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Updates + the future

Saturday, March 14th, 2009

First, as much as I would like to revamp my whole site, it is more and more evident that it’s not going to be possible to do so right now – I simply do not have the time or energy to pull it off, and there are many other things I would like to do that take less time to implement. That being said, I have updated to the latest version of iNove, and have made a few changes to customize things… unfortunately, some of the JavaScript in the theme has stopped working, but I’m working on a solution.

I’ve received a few different suggestions and requests for changes to the wow-guild plugin. I’m working on a major version update to the plugin, and I will be taking these suggestions into account. If you have anything you would like to see added to either plugin, please let me know. I plan to add an option to filter out characters below a certain rank, and, if possible, grab more info about each individual character.

As always, I keep thinking of ideas of things that I would like to work on… (more…)

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More Working…

Thursday, March 12th, 2009

So I think I’m going to keep this theme. The only issues are that I’m going to have to make lots more modifications to get it 100% the way I want it, so there might be some buggy stuff going on until I’m done…

Notably, I need to get the menu bar at the top working with 2 levels of pages – currently it’s acting kind of crazy. I also need to modify the Comments section to show Tweetbacks, and to have options such as “reply” and “quote”.

I’m sure there are other changes to be made, so please bear with me until I have it finalized.

EDIT: On second thought, after finding some issues that I don’t think I want to attempt to work around, I have decided to resume my search for a better theme…

EDIT 2: I’ve switched back to the old theme until I can find time to take care of certain other issues… :(

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