A History of Game Changes

University of the East Pacific Bachtendekuppen Memorial Library
,
1

A Complete History of Game Changes
Taken from http://www.nationstates.net/HISTORY. Coding by Max Barry, Gregory Rubin, Geoff Wong, and Mark Tiefenbruck

v0.1 beta (07-Aug-02)

  • Original version

v0.2 beta (21-Aug-02)

  • Nation descriptions are now fully dynamic. (Previously most of the
    description was fixed no matter what sort of country you had.)
  • No more incongruous issues (e.g. you won’t have gambling problems
    if you’ve outlawed gambling).
  • Nation logins carry over to the forum. That is, if you log in a nation,
    then visit the forum, your posts will come from your nation.
  • Autologin: when you return to the site, you’re automatically logged in
    (assuming you’ve created a nation). You can turn this off in “Settings.”
  • Added FAQ.
  • Added “About” page.
  • You choose your own password.
  • You can select how many issues you get per day.
  • Nations have a national flag. You can also design your own flag and
    upload it.
  • Daily updates happen automatically (at 1AM Los Angeles time, and at 1PM if
    you request two updates per day).

v0.2.1 beta (29-Sep-02)

  • Removed frame borders and coloured background of sidebar blue.

v0.2.2 beta (02-Oct-02)

  • Replaced sidebar background with cityscape picture.

v0.9 beta (04-Nov-02)

  • Added graphics! The site no longer looks butt-ugly.
  • Added United Nations. The UN will hopefully provide some player
    interactivity, which a few people commented seemed to be missing.
    Nations can join the UN, jockey for the position of Regional Delegate,
    and vote on UN Resolutions that affect all member nations. You can
    also endorse other nations, which is just kinda nice even if you don’t
    use it for anything special.
  • Added lots of new issues (there are now 30).
  • You can now receive daily nation updates via e-mail.
  • Many bugfixes and minor improvements.

v1.0 (13-Nov-02)

Site goes live!

  • Emails are now multipart (kinda)
  • Fixed major effect bug that wasn’t implementing decisions properly
  • Added dryrun and nomail options to daily update for admin
  • new Home page
  • Verbose error messages
  • No more dilemma repeats until you’ve cycled through the lot
  • Added ability to email people who forget their password
  • Added “Most Recent Government Activity” thingo
  • Added “< 1 2 3 >” thingy for UN lists
  • NOFRAMES page is nicer to avoid scaring off search engines
  • Added links to break out of frameless pages, for people who enter the
    site via weird means.
  • Some fixes for stupid Netscape 4

v1.1 (20-Nov-02)

Nations created since opening: 280.

  • The game now attempts to detect bogus UN members and reports them
    to admin
  • Auto-login doesn’t try to log in deleted nations
  • The ‘world’ page shows who’s online (or was recently)
  • Imposed 10-telegram limit
  • Inactive nations will be purged after 21 days, not 30. Inactive nations
    in vacation mode will be purged in 60 days, not 90.
  • Bug fix: leaving the UN now removes your votes from the resolution
  • Bug fix: losing UN Delegate status removes your approvals from proposals
  • Added handy admin tools to track, review, and delete naughty nations >:->
  • Obvious profanity is now blocked from mottos
  • Regions have their own little message boards
  • Improved timestamp format
  • Telegrams now have timestamps
  • Fixed “frame within frame” problem generated by inactivity
  • Decreased UN resolution voting time to 5 days (from 7)
  • Imposed 1-endorsement minimum on UN Delegates
  • Added “unsubscribe” link in emails to nations
  • Added “None” as an option in issue frequency
  • Separated mailing functions from update script, to improve speed
  • Recorded failed resolutions
  • Nations get telegrams to confirm passed UN resolutions that affect
    them
  • Various other minor bug fixes & changes

v1.2 (27-Nov-02)

Nations created since opening: 3,200.
Many mostly internal changes to decrease server load, to prevent it
from killing us all under the weight of exponential playerbase growth:

  • No more e-mailed daily nation updates! :frowning:
  • Endorsements are now “verified” rather than dynamic. Previously,
    the game had to verify your endorsements every time someone checked
    the UN page, to make sure they were all still there. Now they are
    checked by the UN twice per day, and that’s how many votes you have
    for the next 12 hours.
  • The “< 1 2 3 …” thingy doesn’t list page numbers for all four
    hundred pages any more
  • Added FAQ question dealing with how to make a hyperlink to your nation
  • Optimized standard flag graphics
  • 6KB limit on custom flags (down from 12KB)
  • No more listing of “who’s online”
  • Slightly improved session management; more work to be done (file locking)
  • Inactive nations purged after 14 days of no-login

v1.3 (10-Dec-02)

Nations created since opening: 7,500.

  • Moved to dedicated server
  • Converted code to run under mod_perl with Apache::Registry
    for speed increase
  • Session management is now a persistent process
  • So is the UN
  • Better error messages for login & flag upload failure

v1.4 (29-Apr-03)

Nations created since opening: 285,000.
Many changes implemented over the last few months:

  • Regional Control! Now spammers, grief players and other undesirables
    can be dealt with by UN Delegates and region Founders.
  • Better, automated cheatscan to handle UN violations
  • Improved password security (previously used crypt() algorithm)
  • Added anti-hack security, to defeat brute-force type password
    cracking attempts
  • Added search ability to UN proposals
  • Nations now need 2 endorsements before submitting a UN proposal
  • Added three new UN proposal types: Moral Decency, Political Stability,
    and Gun Control
  • Fixed major forum/MySQL problem that was choking the site (hooray)
  • Added “NationStates 2” and “International Incidents” forums
  • Forum now has moderators
  • Added “News” page
  • Added “Known Problems” page
  • Added XML nation data feed (/cgi-bin/nationdata.cgi)
  • Back to 21 days before inactive nations are purged
  • Fixed notorious “0” e-mail bug in “Settings”
  • Fixed notorious “Bad Request” HTML bug
  • Many other minor bug fixes & improvements
  • There are now several default Pacific regions for new players

v1.5 (11-Jun-03)

Nations created since opening: 335,000.
Changes implemented over several weeks:

  • Replaced ‘pin=12345678’ session management system with cookies,
    due to the large number of players who post URLS publicly
    (which allowed others to hijack their nations).
  • Moderator functions! We have in-game moderators, at last.
  • Added “Getting Help” page for players to report naughty
    behaviour to mods.
  • Implemented ForumMgr persistent server to prevent so many database
    queries about latest forum topics
  • Added anti-hacking code to prevent sad gits from brute-forcing
    regional passwords
  • Added ‘regiondata.cgi’ XML data feed
  • Enhanced ‘nationdata.cgi’ XML data feed
  • Switched to Apache::DBI module, for what it’s worth
  • Bug fix: some nations previously couldn’t log in to the forum
  • Bug fix: "Erroneous characters "
  • Many minor bug fixes

v1.6 (15-Jul-03)

Nations created since opening: 367,907

  • Added facility for players to submit Daily Issues
  • Blocked potential exploits of nation type and motto
  • Everyone can now see a nation’s endorsements (not just other
    UN nations)
  • Fixed bug that prevented Netscape Navigator users from creating
    new regions
  • Fixed bug that prevented Netscape Navigator users from enabling
    password protection in Regional Control
  • Fixed silent failure of overly long UN proposals
  • Replaced “enormous” descriptor with “huge” to correct grammatical
    issue
  • Replaced talk of “dollars” in a dilemma with @@CURRENCY@@.
  • Fixed run-on hyperlink in UN invitation e-mail.
  • Moved several slightly-dynamic pages into /pages dir to remove
    unnecessary server load (faq, about, welcome, banner).
  • Added “[Back to Telegrams]” link after sending message.
  • Upgraded forum to MySQL v4.0 (from v3.23).
  • Several minor bug fixes

v1.7 (9-Dec-03)

Nations created since opening: 519,027
Changes implemented over many weeks.

  • Added Ignore List for telegrams
  • Added a checkbox to toggle all telegrams as selected/unselected
  • Nation pages show where they’re ranked in that day’s UN report
  • Prohibited region names with “sneaky” spaces (used to impersonate
    legitimate regions)
  • Added RSS news feed for news aggregators
  • Fixed bug that left regions unmanageable if the Founder died
    and left the Delegate unable to access Regional Control
  • Added Issue Editor for moderators
  • Error message for posting excessively large messages now explains
    itself better
  • Better error messages if the NS server isn’t running
  • Flood control to restrict spamming
  • Security checks to prevent malicious HTML redirects
  • School classes can now register nations so that their members
    do not interact with nations outside their own region, and are not
    caught by UN cheat checks
  • Fixed bug that caused some nations to display a blank major industry
  • Nations with 500 million popuations can specify their own nation type
  • Fixed bug that caused many nations to not be affected by some passed
    UN resolutions
  • Fixed bug that allowed nations to receive issues in Vacation mode
  • Prevented censored words from showing up in “Latest Topics” sidebar;
    also prevented macro use in same
  • Tweaked HTML to better display in non-IE browsers
  • Many minor content tweaks (typos, bugettes)

v1.8 (28-Jun-04)

Nations created since opening: 804,903
Changes implemented over many weeks

  • Many changes (esp. forum-related) for move to Jolt hosting
  • Cosmetic overhaul
  • Added ability for school classes to auto-register
  • Added documentation for educators
  • Regional Factbook entries can now use BBcode! [SalusaSecondus]
  • Mods can search the ejection log
  • Mods can search the admin log
  • Mods can auto-send UN warnings
  • Better tracking of mod activity
  • Warzones! Ban lists are auto-cleared twice daily (idea by
    Reploid Productions)
  • UN Delegate tenure is recorded.
  • Longest-serving Delegate is recorded (but only displayed in Warzones)
  • Regional posts containing extremely long words are blocked to prevent
    window-breaking spam.
  • Fixed bug in “Check Name” javascript (affected Mozilla browsers)

v1.8.1 (16-Jan-06)

Nations created since opening: 1,553,079
Changes implemented over the past 1.5 years

  • Spell Check added to game
  • Ability to repeal UN resolutions
  • Lots of security upgrades
  • Automatic disk-space monitoring
  • Shortened URLs
  • Ability for players to search regions and nations
  • Various minor interface changes

v1.9 (11-Apr-06)

Nations created since opening: 1,658,073

  • Added Regional Influence
  • Added Featured Regions

v1.10 (01-Apr-07)

April Fools edition: “Regional Moderators”

v1.11 (18-Mar-08)

Nations created since opening: 2,272,683

  • No more frames!
  • Added “National Happenings”
  • Added “Reports”
  • Added panel highlighting of unread telegrams
  • Added panel highlighting of unaddressed issues
  • Added RSS feeds
  • Players can restore old deleted nations
  • HTML tidy, cosmetic improvements
  • Memcached support
  • Converted destructive functions from GET to POST to prevent
    web accelerator-related mayhem
  • Named custom flags appopriately so browsers notice when they change

v1.12 (08-Jun-09)

Nations created since opening: 2,510,902