June Update

I know it’s a little late for a June status report.  I have a number of small updates to give and it’s easier to just put them all together on one post.  On my agenda for today is the resurgence of COVID-19, a site upgrade, the planned re-opening of the baseball season, and the Steam Summer Sale.

Let’s start with the recent changes to this site.  If you were already a follower before today, you have noticed the domain change.  For five years this site was the Pause Lobby for the Worlds of Nations game, meant as a place for us to hang out while others were taking their turns.  The catchphrase “a place to hang out while waiting for the game to resume” was the topic of this site for over five years straight.  However, since 2017 this site has taken a different direction.  This blog has become a permanent fixture of this domain and operates as more of a true blog than a game lobby.  Thus, I have promoted this site it to its new home – The Worlds of Nations Journal.

I’ve done the best I can to trace back old links and update them.  However, there are probably some old references that I am forgetting.  I assume some people will be lost so anyone who accesses the root domain of the old site will be redirected here.  I’ll be monitoring traffic to the old links and making adjustments accordingly.  The biggest code changes were entirely back-end related, mainly to help make the site more versatile and allow for easier editing.  There was also a change to the mailing lists which will come from a new domain going forward.

Next, I want to give a quick mention of the re-opening of real baseball.  I already made a post about my feelings on this, so I won’t bore you with another long lecture.  But as far as gaming is concerned, this is going to pose some major challenges to any die-hard players.  I’m already seeing it through multiple rule change requests in the GBF.  One positive change has been reviews of OOTP and noticing the statistical relevance of the game’s depth and how it is predicting the outcome of this shortened season.  If it turns out to be accurate, I think the landscape of sports simulators will enter a new era.

Let’s talk about the Steam Summer Sale.  I normally keep my gaming preferences to myself, but I’m toying with the idea of producing a post about it this year.  A lot of my old favorites are already in my collection from previous sales so I find it difficult to make recommendations for new games.  Most games don’t have enough run time to make good reviews, and EGS has changed the rules by offering some for free/reduced prices that take competition away from Steam.  Still, there are some good ones this year I may want to suggest but I plan to wait and see if they go on sale before I say anything.

As for real life, this update comes amidst discussions of another lockdown.  My area of the world is seeing a second wave of COVID-19 much like we saw back in March.  If I end up on another lock down or in a closed datacenter somewhere, this site will likely go dark again.  However, I and the colleagues I work with are better prepared this time and it should be easier to manage.

I’ll close this off with a final update on EDIBLE.  Thanks to dandan for locating an issue with the mapscript.  I have already prepared a fix and I will be making an update very soon.  I wanted to get the site changes done before I made updates that may lead to more site changes since EDIBLE is now integrated with the journal as well.  I also plan to make my first post to the non-ED Builder’s Library which I merged with EDI a decade ago.  The last update to EDI was in 2008 and that was for OTTD which I haven’t updated since then.