News: Z-Net I Status and Other Stuff

Tuesday, May 07, 2013

It's been almost 2 months since I've updated this blog. I'm still active on my hobby projects, mainly Z-Net I. Normally I'd have posted progress updates for it here. But I decided that I'd post them on the Z-Net I forums instead to help draw traffic and discussion. Well, that didn't really work out to well, but oh well, I tried.

Since my last news update, it seems I dived more into Z-Net I than I planned. Instead of just adding small things and tweaks, I've gone and changed a whole lot! Z-Net I v1.2 is going to be a big upgrade over v1.1 and zbattle!

I'm not finished with it yet, but I'm not likely to add anything more other than tweaks and fixes. I've begone personally beta testing it more recently and hope to ramp that up as much as I can to iron out as many issues as I can. It's become a release rivaling the scope of the first release, and is now needing about the same quality of testing or more. There's just to damn many changes!

I'm not going to list everything, but here are some of the bigger changes:

Much more modern GUI, consisting of a toolbar, cleaner look, etc.
New window for managing the feature previously named the "Black and White Lists".
Much faster speeds for the Download feature. (Testing shows at least up to 8x faster so far.)
Chat Lobby window. (When turned on by a Moderator.)
Region column and setting.
In client moderation tools. (Means moderation is less of a pain, so more moderators are likely to stick with the job, and actually do it at all.)
In GUI option for toggling UDP/TCP.
Info bubbles for guiding new users through the setup and basic use of Z-Net I.
Chat improvements, like colors, timestamps, logging, copy/pasting, URL hotlinks, etc.
Option presets for game room titles. (For when 1 game isn't enough.)

There's much more in this update, mostly consisting of fixes/tweaks. It should prove to be a much liked improvement over zbattle that people have been waiting years for, or that new users will find much more comfortable. I've gone to great length to keep the project as close to as simple as possible to use as zbattle was. And possibly make it even simpler when I can.

In other news. I'm posting today because its my bday, and normally I'd like to release something, in some form or another. But I just don't have anything ready. Every time I think I'm done with the next ZNI update, I take a break for a few days, then come up with tons more I feel I need to add. ZN3 has been shelved since work resumed on ZNI. The website issues have kept me from getting interested in improving them. I have at least worked hard on improving hits to the Z-Net site and its ranking in search engines. The Z-Net site has almost caught up to this blog now in total hits!

I've recently begone learning 3D modeling again. So far I'm learning better then before, and its actually getting fun. So I hope I can do something with that soon that's worth releasing in some form. Like desktop backgrounds, character or armor models for some game like Skyrim, attractive graphics for these website, or something else entirety.

What else....

I'm moving my main to a different server on WoW next week. Big deal to me. Wow has gotten pretty boring lately. I want to raid, but my server is dead. Recruitment is a pain in the ass, and when you actually do get people in your raid, they usually suck. I'm moving from Baelgun to Hyjal. Hyjal is the #2 PvE Horde dominated server. The number 1 was a different time zone and is overpopulated to the point were it can get server ques. The auction house has cheaper and more stable prices, and trade/general chat is MUCH more active. I'm moving with my guild, and we hope to do recruiting once there.

Thats all for now!