HGG Community Forums

Hey there gang. Can you believe we are in the homestretch, with 2017 coming to a close in just a few weeks? That's nuts! What's even more nuts is 2017 is already our best year EVER.

It's no secret that over the years I have had a lot of health issues. I've had pinched nerves that caused my hand to shake uncontrollably if I worked. I've had extreme fatigue from an untreated autoimmune disorder. I had a really hard pregnancy with a 6 week stay in the hospital. In the 11 years I have run this business you guys have really been there for me. I am so happy to report that this year has also been my best health year EVER! My autoimmune disorder is very well manged these days. I'm at my lowest weight I can remember (less than in 6th grade! Can you believe that?) Our tiny NICU baby who struggled to even breath, is now a rambunctious and opinionated toddler, who loves to steal my scarves and high heeled shoes already! (Shoe was even her very first word.)

This year has not been without struggles. We started the year fighting server instability and random database lock ups and crashes. You guys stuck through that with us. We converted our entire database over to a new and more modern style of database. That allowed us to now have triple secure backups to run every single night and stopped the random lockup crashes. The new database style however drastically slowed down the server. It has been a long process getting it back up to speed, and I feel like we are FINALLY getting there, but oh man has there been awkward issues along the way. You guys stuck through that with us. Thank you so much for your patience and understanding. It has been really frustrating for us and I know very frustrating for you too. Despite that you guys have weathered it with grace and understanding that is unheard of for an online community. You even continued to financially support the game while it was happening.

Not only have you all gone above and beyond to support us, you have gone above and beyond to support each other. I in particular want to call out the members I have been seeing helping new players get started with advice and horses. I have seen you guys buy upgrades and barns for each other. I have seen you work together to rescue accidentally misplaced horses. Once again our members are coming together to run secret santa. Something you guys do out of love for one another with zero input from me. This community is amazing and I am so honored to have provided the place for you all to come together.

So what is in store for 2018? You may have noticed that I have been taking the month of November a little easy. That's because rather than adding new features I have been monitoring the database logs looking for problem spots. With speeding up the server it's not a mater of just finding a slow page, because pages can be deathly slow or super fast completely depending out the amount of server memory available. Finding these problem areas is a slow pealing away of onion layers figuring out who is a memory hog. It's a lot better than it was, and I have learned a ton about what sort of things make the server slow and what works well.

I have been stabilizing the server and building the knowledge for what is coming in 2018. A total code rewrite. Just recently I rewrote the show entry system and I am sure those with upgrades can attest to how much faster the new code is. HAJ is an 11 year old site. Not only has web programing advanced a lot in that time, I have learned a lot in that time. The whole site is being modernized, both in the back-end (with better database systems) and in the front end with modern HTML5 JavaScript driven pages. The end result will be a much faster, more powerful and more "stable" site. I'm really looking forward to this project.

Other 2018 projects (like that wasn't enough :D) include hardware updates. We are looking to migrate HJ2 onto it's own physical box. Right now both game servers "really instances" run on the same physical computer at a data center in Texas. We will be getting a second computer that will run HJ2 exclusively. Once they are different computers, if one server goes down the other will still be up. Once HJ2 is moved off the server we are on now (future home of just HJ1) will be getting some major hardware updates of it's own. Between the new more powerful computers/servers running the site and the full code overhaul we should be humming in 2018 and ready to face the next decade of HuntAndJump!

::Thanksgiving Sales!::
It would not be American Thanksgiving without crazy sales right?! Here is what you can look forward too:

1. Royal Rainbow Gene Sale
   
2. Herd Helpers including BLACKOUT event on Friday.
   
3. Everything will run till midnight on Monday night.
   
4. Cards for GMT's post!
   
5. Post for these things will be coming as soon as they are up!