News
ThinkTanks for Intel Macs and OS 10.4.x just released!
GarageGames has just released an update for ThinkTanks that now includes Universal Binary support and fixes for the sound problems on OS 10.4.x. See this thread for more details.
Trophies have been awarded!
PTTs Skinners can now be more easily identified on PTT as they have a little tank trophy under their avatar.
A list, with links to the skinsets done by that member can now also be found on their profile page.
-Z-
We apologize for the downtime yesterday; our host encountered some technical difficulties that they were able to resolve. If you can read this message PTT should be up and running again.
Well, thanks to 56k whose done a bit of jiggery pokery with some of the master-server checking code, the 'Current Games' section is back up again. Hopefully the obscenely annoying non-alphanumeric characters people insist on using in player names and server names won't screw it up again. If it does I'll just have to remove it again for a while until some better solution can be found.
Oh and yeah.. I have finally managed to get myself a computer and net connection out here at home in China, so I can now access this site and the game itself again! However due to timezone differences and having a full time regular hours game development job here I probably won't see most of you that often in the game itself. Still.. You may see me from time to time at weekends on during your obscure hours.
-Z-
Some small changes and hopeful improvements
I've spent the last couple of days looking at the code of the site, and trying to figure out what can be done from here. A few small changes have already been implemented (one of which required me to clear the unread posts table which is why all the comments will now appear as read for you) and some 700 dead accounts have been deleted.
If you don't log in for longer than 14 days, new posts after that time will not be flagged as unread. This is to help keep the site running as smoothly as possible.. Especially given the number of alias accounts that exist.
A few little changes and additional powers bestowed upon those who have been keeping this place running so well.
The mods now have the ability to 'silence' people, preventing them from posting but still allowing them to read the forums. Hopefully this will help stop the occasional crazy spam attacks.
Also note and be warned that, if your comment has been edited by a moderator, you are now unable to edit it again yourself - or even delete it. Think before you post something you may later regret.
Sadly, my access and ability to do things to the site are somewhat limited, so please don't expect huge changes in the immediate future, but I will be trying to do what I can.
-Z-
Improvements are on the way
Just in case you've been living under a stone and haven't herd the news, I'm happy to announce that -z- has returned in a limited capacity. After getting stranded in a foreign land away from computers he has managed to crawl his way back onto the internet. Inspired by his return I have been doing some things to help the forums run better. On top of that 56k and -z- have been collaborating on some features for the site and improvements to help speed up the forums. In order to start fresh with some of the optimizations I've once again wiped the "unreadposts" table and as far as I can tell the forums are zipping along.
Recent Downtime
I apologize for the recent downtime. Somehow a LOT of processes were running on the server and eating up all it's memory. I'm investigating the issue now.
I've cleared the unread posts table in the database so the forums should be fast until it fills up again.
PTT is Back in Action!
I apologize for the recent downtime. The bank I was using took 10 days to make a deposit and because of that I was not able to cover the monthly server fees ($250), Hypernia the host has a new accounting team that are a little more vigilant then the old ones and they will stop service if payment is not received. Anyway, the bank issues have been resolved and we are back in action.
If you visit the Forums Page you will see the latest edition to the PTT forums. A section devoted to Armies . Use that area for all your army related discussions, recruitment and army challenges.
Some army related threads that are currently in the leagues forum will be moved into the new Armies forums in the near future. So if your army thread disappears from Leagues , look for it in the new Army forum .
Server Upgrade
The PTT servers have had their bandwidth upgraded once again. This upgrade should result in lower pings and more consistent up-time, enjoy!
New PTT Server
In addition to the server upgrade last week, PlanetThinkTanks has now grown to two dedicated servers! What this means for players is that they can expect lag free "PTT Survivor" and "PTT Capture the Flag" games running around the clock. A big thanks goes out to all those who helped make this possible...
Ge0rge, Blind Cide, Reagent X, NUTS!, MajorPain, Bolo, bigiron, OM, StevenSwift, LilAlienD (FU), MJ, MAX-CR, Master TMO, Cat...
... And many more. Many of you have given huge donations and many of you have donated multiple times to help keep this site going. I just grabbed a few of the recent donaters for the list above. To all of you who have donated recently and in the past, I appreciate your support emensly. This site could not continue to exist without you.
Server Upgrade
The PTT site was down yesterday for maintenance and upgrades. We now have a beefy CPU on the server that hosts this site and the ThinkTanks Survivor and CTF servers. I dropped into PTT Survivor and from what I could tell there was almost no lag. Sometime later this month there will be a second PTT server set up that is dedicated to hosting Survivor and CTF games. Thanks to all those who donated to help make this happen.
I just wanted to join everyone in the ThinkTanks community in wishing -z- a happy 32nd birthday! Thanks for all the hard work and your dedication to the ThinkTanks community.
The Killer Fleas proved they had what it takes to be champions of Psychoscrum as they held their first place lead in the final match of the league. Closely pursued by the Black Sheep and CereBros Locos (a team to watch in September when the next league is due to start) the Fleas cunningly held their ground despite the presence of slight lag.
Big 'thank you's to Tally Ho for all the organisation, and all those who took part and made it possibly the best season yet.
Roll on September!
Skins Library
The skins library has now been added to PlanetThinkTanks. All the original skins have been added in to the library for those that have lost them or saved over them, and they also serve as an example to how the system works.
All skin items (eg a Light Tank skin) belong to a user created skin set. The Skin set can contain any number of skins for different items, but only one of each item. For instance, in one skin set, you could include the light tank skin, along with skins for the brain jar, tank treads, and so on. You might then create another skin set for Spooky terrain, or you may want to just add that in to the existing set.
Any problems with it, let me know on the forums or by email.
-Z-
Database changeover
Well it's taken almost an eternity to get all the existing site switched over to MySQL, developing it on a different server and trying to keep the old site up and running as wellas adding in the extra features people have requested, but its finally done. Everything should now run a hell of a lot smoother and quicker, and I can get back to developing new sections of the site instead of rewriting all the exisiting stuff. Though after busting my balls for the last few weeks on it, I shall probably take a bit of a breather.
All those who were using Nickname protection for PTT servers will however have to turn it on again on their profile pages.
As usual.. Any bugs, just report them on the forums or drop me an email.
-Z-
Nickname protection on PTT Servers.
I have just been adding in nickname protection for PTT servers so that you and you alone can get in to any PTT server using your registered playername. This is done by IP address.
If you are on Dial-up and therefore have a different IP every time you connect, you may not wish to use this feature as you will always need to visit your profile and 'update' your IP in the 'nickname protection' section to enable the PTT servers to recognise you with your usual name. If your IP rarely changes, then you will probably find this a useful feature.
As usual, any problems with it, just let me know.
-Z-
Ok first off there have been a lot of problems with registration here, and a lot of the automated emails were not being delivered or were being blocked by some spam filter.
The registration process has been changed and un-used accounts have been deleted so that people can re-register with the account name they were trying to get in the first place. If you were having problems before and have not yet managed to successfully register, please try again.
I do have a lot of other changes in progress and planned, but I have had to take on a load of contract work to bring some money in. I make no money in developing this site and the features for it, donations (which are gratefully received) go towards hosting it and the game servers. I hope to have some free time shortly to get back to all the planned features of the site, but until then, please be patient.
-Z-
New section to the web site: Recent Results
This section shows the game results and player scores of recent matches played on PTT servers. The real-time stats and so on will be completed shortly.
-Z-
ModWizard 1.3 now released for mac hopefully without the previous problem fixed.
Many thanks to Slugthog for his testing various experiments in order to fix it.
ModWizard 1.3 is available from the Files: Utilities section of this site as well as full instructions. There is also a thread on the forums for it and any issues relating to it, which can be found here .
-Z-
Woot, 56k Lag Man's ignore script is finished and works on PC and Mac. Although a planned inclusion for the ThinkTanks 1.2 release, recent events have pushed this feature forwards and it can be added in to the existing version.
TT1.2 will have it already built in but until that is finished and released, I urge everyone to download and install the ignore script. If everyone (or at least the vast majority) of people use the script to put the trolls and blatently offensive players on ignore, then they should hopefully disappear. If the attention starved idiots lose their audience, then there is little else left for them other than to crawl back under the garbage pile from which they crept out in the first place.
For further details on the script and links to extra instructions and the downloads, see the Files: Utilities section of this site. There is also a thread for discussion and bug reports of the script which can be found here
-Z-
Well I suppose the migration from the GarageGames forums is now official and has been expedited by the trolls and quantity of useless threads. This site is still being added to and small bugs on various browsers are being eliminated. Being able to moderate these forums will be a huge advantage over the GarageGames ones, and there are several individuals to do just this. They are: Dan MacDonald , PokeMalo (Joe from Bravetree), Shark (Clark from Bravetree), 56k Lag Man , Hugobrain and myself .
One of the next priorities on my list is to get the leagues and armies sections completed, along with private forums for teams involved in leagues and so on. Until this is complete, I will be setting up a general 'Leagues' forum for all league associated posts. However, once the leagues and armies section is completed and fully functional, I will probably lock down / delete the temporary Leagues forum.
I am also adding a 'Tech Support ' forum. This is for problems with the actual game itself. Nine times out of ten, problems with a game are due to out of date drivers (particularly video card drivers) so please make sure you are using the latest ones and if not, then install them and see if this cures the problem. If not, feel free to post here and Bravetree will endeavour to help out. It is also recommended to look through existing posts in this forum in case your problem has already been identified and remedied before.
Anyway, there is still much to be done in order to complete all the planned functionality for the site and hopefully you should all see new sections springing up and occasional formatting changes.
As a final word, I would also like to mention the IRC chat room for those who are unaware of it. The details of which (and various links to IRC software) can be found in this thread .
-Z-
Merry Christmas one and all.
As a present to all TTers I have just finished a new game-type: "Survivor".
Everyone (except Predator [Bot]) starts on the Blue team where kills are worth 2points. If killed by a green team member, or you kill one of your own team, you will become part of the evil green empire (The hunters) and kills will only count for 1pt for greens.
If you are the last surviving blue team member, you also get a survival bonus of 5points.
The round is over and all players are switched back to the blue team again. (The hunted)
Enjoy.
-Z-
Well, finally the stats have been processed and the next step is to create the pages where they can be viewed. The statistics so far only apply to the CTF servers run from this server, but hopefully also from HomeLan and maybe even the ShockWave servers at some point in the near future. :)
The stats took much longer to process than originally planned, 9405 games were processed with a total of about 98,000 rows of individual stats. Each time I ran my code to work through them it took several hours for all the calculations to be performed, and this process took many attempts to get right. However, there are a few small falicies in the stats at the moment, which, over time will be balanced out with more accurate data. Stats like scrum-steals and passes were not included in this initial set although the framework for logging these is now in place within the game. The same applies to things like recording cliff-dives.
The CTF servers won't currently be logging stats until I have finished the framework on the web to automatically process and add them to the site as they come in. Everything is currently geared towards logging them to a file for later analysis. Live stats should be in effect within a week or so.
-Z-
Though I'm still making changes to the database, the first steps of its integration are now in place. Member registration and login etc are now functional. Next on the list: Profile page and then the forums.
-Z-
With the designs translated to code, most of the basic site is now functional. In the days to come, the community section will slowly start to come online and the final switch over from Think Tanks Mania will take place.
-Z-
The birth of PlanetThinkTanks.com
Think Tanks Mania (-z-'s old fan site) will now become PlanetThinkTanks (though the old domain name still points to the same place). The new look is re-designed and implementation begins although the back-end databased areas will take slightly longer to integrate.
PlanetThinkTanks (which was registered by BraveTree) is to become the main community site for ThinkTanks, especially since the community has grown somewhat and has somewhat taken over the GarageGames forums, which are mostly intended for developers. The new site will feature its own forums, buddie system, leagues and tournaments, online automatic stat-tracking and much more.
It will also host extra features, skins and modded maps as well as a directory of all ThinkTanks fan sites.
-Z-
The return of team Capture The Flag
I'm happy to announce that we were able to get -z-'s original Capture the Flag mod running on the fast server, it should be up 24/7 under the name "PTT CTF Server" look for it when playing online.