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Today, we release the latest version of the ALFA Core Rules. This update includes the medley of updates and fixes we typically include in a rollout, and headlines significant improvements to our ability to have servers communicate with each other and for players to communicate across server and medium boundaries.

The ALFA IRC Bot (which maintains a presence in #alfa-players) now responds to a !page command, which allows one-way messages to be sent to players in game-- just in case you need to get a hold of someone who typically plays in full screen. It's limited to 256 characters, and not meant to hold any significant information, but can get a person's attention. The Bot now also responds to !seen, and will respond with the last time that a given player was logged in, and which server the player was on.

In addition, it is now possible to send tells to players on other ALFA servers. Players will notice a revised chat select GUI window, which now divides itself into two panes (one for DMs and one for players), which can expand to four panes (local players, local DMs, remote players, remote DMs) on demand. The expected interaction is the same as before: clicking on the person you wish to send a tell to will stage your chat entry box with the needed text, or you can type #t "Character Name" at the beginning of a message to send a tell to that character.

Thanks and accolades go to Basilica for building the structure that these systems use, and for getting our new ALFA IRC Bot more than up to snuff-- bringing in functionality that we've simply never seen before.

One with eyes on the horizon would note the coming implementation of automated pen-and-paper style consumable crafting, currently expected to be in ACR v1.86.

Recently, we’ve seen more activity and larger numbers on our servers, enough so that it has been the cause of speculation as to why, how, or how severe it all is. Fortunately, ALFA has always kept solid data on its activity, though it has until recently been relatively disorganized in its appearance. Roughly a year ago, Hialmar produced scripts that would read our database to determine overall player and DM activity, track application numbers, and try to keep up with ALFA’s overall health.

Most recently, those scripts have been bent toward looking at ALFA’s history, to see how active we’ve been in the past, and how things in our history have affected our progress and growth, and it has produced some interesting statistics: namely, ALFA today is more active than ALFA has ever been. There are simply more people logged on more often than before: even in those first bustling days of ALFA2.

And so I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who contributes effort and creativity to our shared project and makes it a more appealing place to play.

It’s super effective. 

We always appreciate those who take the time to report the oddities they see in game, but there seems to be some variety in the detail and avenues that people use to get that information to those in a position to fix it. So in the interest of helping organize these reports, and to get the problems with our games fix, there are some suggestions for those who wish to see a problem with the game set right:

1) Never report a bug in chat.
The tech team idles rather regularly, and the chances of your report being lost because Windows decided to restart itself, a chat client crashed, a window auto-closed because the client thought it was a good idea, or just bad timing combined with bad connections is very high. If a bug report is lost, then we have a known issue that will never get fixed (and that's bad).

If you believe a bug to be exploitable (that is, unexpected behavior gives mechanical or financial advantage), feel free to PM anyone on the tech staff or the HDM of the server you're on; none of the people on those lists are the sort of chumps who'd just bury a bug, and you can be reasonably sure that it will get forwarded around until someone knows what's going on. If it's not exploitable, the next question to ask is if it's server specific. This isn't always clear-cut, but I've taken up the mantle of Tech's documentation point, so I sniff through the server bug threads too if something gets misposted. But! To save post shuffling:
-- If it's a quest, it's probably a server bug, and should be posted in the server's bug thread.
-- If it's a problem getting around in an area, it's probably a server bug, and should be posted in the server's bug thread.
-- If it's an NPC doing something strange, it's probably a server bug, and should be posted in the server's bug thread.
-- If it has to do with death, it's probably an ACR bug, and should go in the ACR bug thread.
-- If it's a feat, it's probably a Obsidian bug, but its only hope for a fix will be through the ACR, so it should go in the ACR bug thread.
-- If it's a spell, it's probably an Obsidian bug, but its only hope for a fix will be through the ACR, so it should go in the ACR bug thread.
-- If it happens as part of logging in, it's probably an ACR bug, and should go in the ACR bug thread.
-- If it happens as part of logging out, it's probably an ACR bug, and should go in the ACR bug thread.
-- If it's part of the user interface (i.e. DMFI tools, PC tools, etc), it's probably an ACR bug, and should go in the ACR bug thread.

You can find the server bug threads here:
TSM: http://www.alandfaraway.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=190&t=45786

BG: http://www.alandfaraway.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=242&t=45532

Moonshaes: http://www.alandfaraway.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=193&t=42440

And you can find the ACR bug thread here:
http://www.alandfaraway.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=168&t=45559&start=45

2) Always include as much detail as possible when reporting a bug.
I get a lot of reports that amount to "[x] doesn't work" or "[x] is bugged." -- and while this does point me toward something that doesn't work the way you expect it, that doesn't really tell me what I'm looking for. If an orc spawn is "bugged," that could be anywhere from a failure to spawn to orcs spawning in pretty pink dresses (when you said spiked shields and battleaxes... or vice versa. If you tell them to wear pretty pink dresses and they don't, that's something to say.) And this creates a problem-- a lot of bugs get fixed because the people who can fix them have no idea what you're talking about. After all, we test these things when we put them in, and we either genuinely believe that they work fine or we're confident that we've told you all of the ways that they don't.

3) Try to reproduce the bug.
While it's possible to fix something based on it misbehaving once, because there was something that made the computer think that it was a good idea to do what it did, bugs a usually more complex than one click producing a catastrophic failure, and people are prone (both to their benefit and detriment) to assume that they've done everything exactly the way they thought they have and that feedback was identical until something happens to prevent their progress. Often, this is not the case, and the initial assumption (typically that the action immediately before the bug is observed caused the bug exclusively) can be quite misleading. But! This can often be narrowed down by just trying to make it happen again; and you have the benefit of going through the steps more slowly and thoughtfully and being more likely to record what's going on while you go along.

I know it all sounds like a lot of stuff to do, but I promise that the ends of doing so are that the bugs reported with more and better information in better places are more likely to get fixed-- and the more bugs we fix, the less time you spend bouncing your head off of the keyboard and the more time you get to spend playing the game; think of it as an investment now that pays tiny dividends of reduced frustration for the rest of the time you play here.

And thankyou to all who take the time to report the oddities we see. I promise that the good work of those who diligently gather information for us makes the lives of builders and scripters much easier.