Server Crash
A manager server crash on Sunday caused a total collapse of the server grid. Unfortunately, this happened while I was out of town.

Yesterday was spent getting things running again. I was in the middle of changes on Friday that had to be finished before I could restart the servers so they were down most of the day. I added two days to all active accounts to make up for the down time.

Avatar Inventory Crash
The personal inventory of one person's avatar is broken and causing a server crash.

That avatar has no inventory of any items atm. I sent him a private message.

The broken inventory data is safely preserved. I plan to examine it this morning to see if it can be saved. I am sure that some of it can be saved, just not sure about all of it.

My biggest concern is finding out what happened. It may have been caused by a crate storing a gen4 avatar head, but that is just a guess at this moment.

Primeval World
Indigenous people in primeval world are now fully clothed and they will not mate with the player. A clever person could trade them something for their clothing but that nakedness would not enable mating.

Body Pose Bugs
Some bugs related to body poses were fixed.

Animal Poses
Posing of the bodies of the new animals is nearly complete. It took longer than expected. This can only be seen in primeval world, at the moment.

A few small items remain before players can start using gen4 animals as avatars. That would likely be ready by this time next week.

17+ Warning
Some may have noticed a new 17+ warning. The animals of SoH are completely computer generated, not at all derived from real 3D models of humans, no more detailed than a puppet or a raunchy cartoon. However, those who question why the 17+ warning is necessary may want to view the following link.

17+ Warning. Pornographic. Do not open this link if you do not want to see it.
http://hazeron.com/Playlists/Scenes%20of...rgazer.mp4

After you finish deciding that Haxus has lost his blinking mind, consider the possibilities. Instead of catering to a potentially child audience, story lines in SoH can take on dramatically adult themes. Don't worry, I have no intention of making porn with SoH. It is just one of the many situations that can develop in the Hazeron universe.

This is a defining moment for SoH, at least in terms of who the audience is expected to be. Now I can stop cringing when my grandson wants to play. Instead, I can hold up the 17+ warning as a shield.

Asteroid Warning
Stations and cities with sensors will now report asteroids in the event log, if they are detected within sensor range. Observatories now report asteroids in the event log, starting at extreme range in the solar system. Asteroids known to be on a collision course with a world will cause an event log alert, which makes the icon look different in the city report tree.

Bugs were fixed. Lots of little details related to posing and animating gen4 bodies were finished. I'm late for a meeting and I can't really think of anything else right now. I'll update this post if I think of anything.

Animals
After a marathon of code writing, gen4 animals are now fully integrated throughout the SoH code, with one exception. Biosphere data at worlds continues to use gen3 animals because gen4 animals are not complete enough to replace them.

Avatars in primeval world now use gen4 bodies. This can provide an illustration of variations within a species. The villagers are all created using the same species, not the exact same DNA. By contrast, in gen3 creatures, each DNA combination is a species so every villager and town person is exactly alike.

Body poses are not finished; that is the topic of the week. Gen4 bodies in the update today will only pose standing, walking or running. Any other pose will not work, including dead/dying and head only poses. Those should be done in the next update, possibly later this week.

From here onwards, work on the new animals will be focused on the animals themselves. As soon as a few more pieces are finished, they will be ready to make avatars, at least within the capability currently available. That capability will expand as I finish various aspects of these new animals.

Stargazer
The indigenous village now has a new member, the Stargazer. All new avatars created after this update are strongly advised to speak to the Stargazer, to learn a bit of information critical to your survival. The Stargazer will be found at the outskirts of the village.

I was reading some ooold threads and fell over an old bug report that gave me an idea.
See: (Old bug report) Rocket-dive failure leaves new players confused

In short, if your spacecraft is in danger, either from very strong gravity or a corrosive atmosphere, there is no alert or warning signs. This confuses new players a lot.

If your spacecraft is being affected by very strong gravity the spacecraft should play an alert sound, and maybe a crewman should give a report about it.
For example if your spacecraft has rocket-drive engines it is vital to let the player know that the bright supergiant sun can't be escaped. This might also be necessary for space rocket vehicles.

Should do the same kind of alert when entering a corrosive atmosphere with a spacecraft that has a weak hull. This could also be useful for EV suits, at the very least an indicator with a warning symbol in the helmet HUD.

If we want to go really advanced, collision warnings for spacecraft and vehicles would be nice too.
See: (Idea thread) Submarine Sonar and Proximity Alert

Hello Haxus,

Long story short, the player base that is part of the discord channel was having a serious discussion this morning about moderation for the board, venting about the spammers and such.  I made the comment that if the player base was willing to show unity on an ideal you would probably be more inclined to listen to us in unison than several small jabs here and there concerning the subject.

Well after a while, I think we've all (read: mostly) have come to an agreement that DeanTwo would be a perfect fit as a board moderator, if only to cull the spammers, and keep things in order for the community board.  We've discussed a few subjects and expressed concerns individually about it, and the consensus seems to be Dean could handle this without any real bias that would effect game play, or even discussion on the board.  I'm hoping many of the players that were talking about this in chat will pop in and agree with me on the subject.

That is all, Thanks.

When setting up factories with many production lines I often find myself going back to set production quality after adding all lines.

I suggest adding two fields to the Add Production Line window, one for number of workshops, and one for Production Quality.

The forum software was updated today to the latest version.

Bugs in the dark Lunorian theme got worse after the update so I removed it. Still getting used to the new/original/default layout.

Account registration now has a reCAPTCHA button instead of a silly question that any bot can answer. You just have to click a check box that says 'I Am Not A Bot'. Fingers crossed that this will reduce the spammers.

Now to go after deleting/purging the spam and see how things evolve from now on.

Duchess Moo Moo left us today. She was a great dog, unusually thick soft fur for a Pem, fantastically cheerful personality.

Raise a toast or say a prayer, for she deserves a fine send off.

Bye Moo Moo.

The update today enables new generation 4 avatars to be created for testing. This feature is not available to players yet. Some work is still required before it is ready.

An improvement was made to the avatar selection page. When logging in to the game, the selection page now shows the current clothing and visor state of the avatar. Previously, it showed the last known clothing and visor state.

That sometimes led to inconsistencies, like your avatar appearing naked at the entry screen but appearing fully clothed in the game.

This update does not add anything useful. I needed to post it so I could resume logging in to the public servers. Some login communications changed significantly.

Animalia
For the past few months, I have been working on a complete redesign of the creature generator in the game. Most of the work was done in a small development project for efficiency. This took me away from the day-to-day game universe. I missed it.

With this update, work on the new creatures moves into the game universe. There is a lot to be done to finish stitching them in. This update does not add any functionality that is useful to players yet. This update enables animals using the new DNA to barely exist in the game universe. This will solidify in future updates.

The current generation three creatures are built using models made by a 3D artist. They are old and they have problems I cannot easily fix so they are getting phased out. The gen3 creatures will remain in the game universe for a while longer, until they can be completely replaced using generation four creatures. When they are gone, I intend to retain enough of their model data to generate their heads, for the many head collections out there, mine included.

The new creatures are the fourth generation of creatures in Shores of Hazeron. Improvements include visual distinction between genders, hair that can be styled, movable jaws, and generated clothing. I adopted a cartoon style, rather than trying to generate realistic human faces. A small audience here gave them a thumbs up. My characters Haxus and Geniv are new style creatures. I am glad to demonstrate them in the game, if you are curious.

Here is a list of changes you might notice in this update.

Haircut and Shave
The Bio (F5) window Biology page now has controls to select your current hair style and shave. These of course depend on your body having head and facial hair. These controls have no effect on the gen3 creatures.

Clothing Names Changed
The names of some clothing changed. Fabric Clothing became Jeans and Shirt, to better describe the appearance on gen4 creatures. This does not change the appearance of gen3 creatures. Environment Suit became EV Suit. Metal Power Armor became Metal EV Suit, likewise for magmium and vulcium EV suits. Woven Body Armor and Woven Helmet became Flak Vest and Flak Helmet.

Clothing Added
Clothing was added that may not be visible at all on gen3 creatures: Capris and Halter, BDUs in three colors, ParcX Uniform, Red Uniform, Gold Uniform, Blue Uniform, and 9 other colors.

All existing helmets and body armor are visible on gen4 creatures, each with a distinctive look.