Switching engines

January 22, 2010 – 05:13

The new Adobe Flash Client has arrived on the live server! Over the past few weeks we have been testing and refining it based on your great feedback.

New features include:

  • Fully animated battles
  • A new powerful full screen mode utilizing all your screen estate
  • Click and drag to traverse large maps

We have moved many of the game’s calculations to the client and reduced the number of calls it has to make to the server. The reduced load will make for a much better experience for everybody.

The new system also addresses many of the Internet Explorer specific slow downs and freezes you may have experienced.

We are very excited about this update. It is key to many of our future plans for Weewar. Let us know what you think and how we can improve it further!

By alex | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (36)

Updating

January 22, 2010 – 01:20

We are going to roll out a new release on January 21st, at 6.15 pm PST (see it in your time zone). We expect the process to take about an hour total.

By alex | Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

Help us test the latest

December 19, 2009 – 02:45

Ever wondered what it would look like if your DFA rains death on some poor enemy units? Check out the new battle animations on the test server and see for yourself!

We have created a flash version of Weewar and have reached a stage where we would very much like you to test the first playable version. To participate in this test simply sign up for a free pro(!) account on test.weewar.com (note the test in the url). Your test account is completely independent from the live system at Weewar.com so your regular account won’t be affected in any way. We will keep the test system open through January 12th, 2010, so finish off your opponents before then as any remaining games will be lost.

Please focus your testing on the new in-game interface. Start games, move units, attack (basically do what you usually do :) and let us know how the changed behavior works for you. Most of the in game dialogs and menus have been updated, especially the build dialog! We are really curious to find out how helpful it is when purchasing units and how to make it even better.

There are also a few known issues we are working on:

  • Capturing units are not represented in the battle animations
  • The flash client occasionally falls out of sync with the server which requires a re-load (it will tell you with a dialogue).

Especially for the latter is is important to narrow down when exactly that is occurring. Other than that, please watch out for bugs and any erratic or unexpected behavior.

We will incorporate your feedback and roll our some further refinements early next year – so please sign up, play and make sure to share your findings and impressions via our contact page.

Happy Holidays!

ps> You can finally repair your aircraft on all airfields your team controls and not just your own. This works both on test and on the live system.

By Bert | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (30)

More server tweaks

December 16, 2009 – 19:17

[Update: All done.]

A few weeks ago Weewar went offline for several hours. Since then we have implemented various steps to prevent this from happening again. Today we will roll out another update to further harden our back end. We expect this to take about an hour during which Weewar.com will be unavailable. We’ll begin the process at 10.30 PST (see it in your time zone).

By alex | Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

Aftermath

November 23, 2009 – 01:49

One of our Amazon server instances was shut down early on Sunday morning. We do not yet know what caused it but we have since rebuilt the instance and Weewar.com is up and running again (It might take a while for the domain name servers to update before everybody can access it again).

While we were able to resurrect all games, maps, chats, forums and user accounts this unfortunate event also revealed a gap in our back up strategy: We could not retrieve the avatars and have to ask you to upload new ones. We are truly sorry about this loss and about the inconvenience this causes on top of the downtime.

We are also re-creating all 13000+ map images from the database which will take several hours to complete. So if you come across a missing map – be assured it will be back soon!

Right now we are fixing our back up scheme to include the dynamically generated map images and the user avatars. We have also changed our back end to significantly shorten the recovery time after an event like this and most importantly we are investigating the cause so we can effectively guard against it in the future.

We are very sorry about this downtime and about the lost avatars.

P.S: We will extend all pro accounts by at least 3 days at some point next week.

By alex | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (3)

Unforeseen outage

November 22, 2009 – 22:43

[Update: The site is back online but it might take a little while before the domain resolves for all. Bear with us. More details soon...]

Apologies for the prolonged silence from our side – we are busy getting things back up and running but communicating it timely fell short in the wee hours on this Sunday! We do not yet know what exactly has caused this but apparently our servers have experienced some kind of failure. There is no ETA yet, but we will update you as soon as we know more! Of course any pro subscribers will received ample extra time once we have sorted this out. We are very sorry for inconvenience!

By alex | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (4)

New servers

November 17, 2009 – 04:30

[Update: We are back!]

We are going to add additional servers to Weewar on November 17th. We’ll start at 11 am PST (see it in your time zone) and expect  the entire process to take about an hour in total. We may include a few minor updates while we are at it, but this is mostly about improving our infrastructure.

By alex | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (10)

An Update!

November 11, 2009 – 03:54

Lot of updates actually: Facebook Connect, Re-Match Feature and Full Screen Mode.

Facebook Connect

We wanted to make logging in and playing Weewar even easier, so we added Facebook Connect! As an existing player you can simply log in with your username and password as before and then click the Facebook button at the top of the page to connect your Weewar account to your Facebook account. On future visits to Weewar.com, you will then be able to sign in with a single click on the Facebook button. New users can sign up on their first visit by clicking the Facebook button. Linking your Weewar account to Facebook is, of course, entirely optional.

Now, you can invite friends to your Weewar game from Facebook! If you are logged in via Facebook, you can choose to let your Facebook friends know when you create an open game so they can join you.  Weewar game notifications are, of course, entirely optional. This is Weewar, not Spamwar.

Win or lose, now you can rematch with a single click! Do you ever wonder what would have happened if you’d made a different move in a Weewar game?  We do. But setting up a new game and inviting all the same players used to be tedious. No more! With the new re-match feature you can do it all in one click. You do not even have to wait for the game to end, just start another – and if there was a player that slowed everyone down, drop them and replace them with someone else.  It is available to all pro players from the in-game options menu in every game and at any time!

Full size mode! Netbook players rejoice.  Look for the yellow icon at the top right corner of your games to try out the new and improved full size mode.

Need air support?  You can now repair your aircraft on any team controlled airport. Spoke to soon! This will be part of the next release.

Rules, rules, rules!  It is not all happy news.  We have been advised that the referral system in its current form does not comply with US laws. Since most of you are based in the US, we have decided to remove the feature for the time being. You will of course retain any pro time you have received in the past for referrals. And we are working on new ways to reward you!

Coming Soon! We have a lot of new features and updates coming soon.  So, stay tuned!  And as always: Let us know what you think. We need and want your feedback on these updates so please share them via the contact form!

By alex | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (9)

Updating

November 11, 2009 – 02:47

We are going to roll out a number of features to Weewar.com at around 5.45 pm PST on November 10th (see it in your time zone). We expect the process to take some 45 minutes in total… Stay tuned for an update on what is new!

By alex | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off

Moving servers

August 12, 2009 – 14:28

UPDATE2:  Depending on your DNS it might take a while till weewar.com resolves to the correct servers. Until then you will be redirected to www2.weewar.com

UPDATE: You can already access your games at www2.weewar.com – automatic redirects from weewar.com will follow shortly.

Our hosting provider requires us to move Weewar over to new servers. All data will be preserved of course, however the system will be offline for some  2 hours. We will start the transition at 15.30 CET (in your time zone). Sorry for the inconvenience.

By alex | Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment