THE ULTRA-CLASSIFIED QONQR BLOG

[qonqr]

QONQR 4.0

Greetings Players

It has been a very long time since my last formal update. I’ve been struggling with some tough decisions regarding QONQR over the past few years. The TL;DR; is that I’m working on QONQR again. I’m making efforts to keep it alive. The details follow. Warning: it is a lot of doom and gloom, but there is positivity at the end.

Some background and history

Version 2 and 3 of QONQR were written using a coding technology called Xamarin. It allowed us to write code once and run it on iPhone, Android and previously Windows Phone.  For a small company like ours, it wasn’t feasible to write the application 3 times for 3 different platforms. Xamarin was written on top of Microsoft’s technology, and Microsoft purchased Xamarin several years ago to make it the core of its cross-platform developer solution.

Several years ago, QONQR simply couldn’t pay my salary anymore. I started a new application with another entrepreneur and that project was also a cross-platform application, written in Xamarin, this time for PC and Mac. I’ll refer to this app as “NOTQONQR”.  For the past 10 years, I have worked in Xamarin on Android, iOS, MacOs, and Windows (and Windows Phone). Building cross platform software has become one of the most frustrating and unfulfilling career decisions I’ve made. I realized it wasn’t phone apps or gaming that was making me miserable. It was everything cross-platform and the dependency on multiple companies to make a good product so that I could in turn make a good product.

While things started out “OK”, building software in Xamarin over the past decade has destroyed my passion for building software. I, along with the developers I have worked with, had the attitude for years that the issues were the result of being on the cutting edge and early days of cross platform development. I lost that opinion years ago.  To this day, the outstanding bug list for Xamarin is thousands deep. Many of these bugs have been on the list for years, and now they will never be fixed.

While this sounds like a Xamarin issue, it is an industry issue. Look around at other cross platform solutions, and you’ll be hard pressed to find one that doesn’t have many hundreds or thousands of outstanding bugs on their public bug trackers. Building apps is a nightmare, it has been from the start. I have spent most of my development time on both projects the past 5 years fixing issues caused by big companies or governments. I can’t count how many times I spent my days fixing something that worked just fine 6 months ago, but now is broken because Apple, Google or Microsoft decided to do the exact same thing a different way, and now a rewrite is needed.  Governments around the world have passed laws making it harder for developers to build apps. Privacy laws have made it nearly impossible to keep predators, would-be hackers and toxic people out of an app. Governments and consumer advocacy groups are suing and fining Apple and Google at every opportunity. As a result, Apple and Google are making changes that satisfy the mob, but hurt developers like me. No smart developer would build a game like QONQR today. The things we did before to ensure the GPS coordinates were legitimate, people were actual people, and gameplay was fair have nearly all been removed from my toolkit, making it very hard to protect my good players from bad people.

To further the opinion that this is an industry problem, a friend of mine who is a well-known Android podcaster, author of several android developer books, and speaker and many large developer conferences recently made a blog post about the state of app development. He mentioned that he is seeing burn out in both Android and iOS camps. Developers are tired of fighting the issues and are leaving to become web developers or leaving all together. He even admitted that he thinks his days as a mobile developer are numbered, despite being an internationally known and industry respected mobile dev. Too many developers are exhausted from the continual churn of fixing things that shouldn’t need to be fixed.

My mental status the last few years

I frequently receive support emails berating me for allowing cheaters to cheat, including two emails last week from a long-time player demanding I either “fix my shitty app or shut it down.” Sadly, most of the perceived cheating isn't actually happening, and the small number issues that we are blocked from addressing are the result of Apple and Google, and many of them are in direct response to new laws and regulations that protect everyone, including criminals and predators, but not developers.

In the first 5 years of QONQR, I would regularly work from 7am to 2am multiple days a week. However, for the last 5 years I have been in a developer depression of sorts. I didn’t want to get out of bed. I would sit at my computer for hours, sometimes an entire day and struggle to write 10 lines of code. I’d find any excuse not to code. Everything I looked at was broken. Internet searches showed me never ending bug reports in Xamarin, Android and iOS, that went unfixed, and workarounds that must have worked at some point, but no longer work today. I hated the profession I had chosen, the technology stack I had invested my career in, and felt trapped by being tied to two applications that I had ownership of, and from which I couldn’t just quit and find a new job. My wife would ask me frequently to consider finding a career I thought I would enjoy and just give up software all together. Unfortunately, I simply didn’t have passion for anything outside of my volunteering as a high school robotics coach. That is a retirement, not a career move.

The technology situation today

Xamarin was declared “dead” by Microsoft a couple years ago. It was replaced by a technology called MAUI. In nearly all respect, MAUI is identical to Xamarin, but of course different enough. My fellow developer and I started migrating NOTQONQR from Xamarin to MAUI about 3 months ago. Early indications are that MAUI will have better performance and stability than Xamarin had. It seems to be slightly or moderately better in most cases.

For the developers reading this, I’ll get into some technical details in this paragraph, skip to the next if you aren’t a developer. We built the UI for both apps using code. XAML markup wasn’t even an option for years when QONQR staring using Xamarin. You needed to build your pages one element at a time using code. No markup, no layout tools. Many/most developers who have been using Xamarin for more than 5 years, probably built their UI using code, rather than markup, even after XAML became an option. For the NOTQONQR app, I spent a week in June and completely converted the code from the Xamarin framework to the MAUI framework. It was pretty easy to get to a point everything would compile. I was able to get tens of thousands of lines of UI code to compile in the new framework in a few days. When the app would run, we found lots of minor issues with layout. Things didn’t align quite right or wouldn’t become visible when they should have been shown. We came to the realization that we needed to completely rewire the UI in XAML, and could no longer draw our pages using code. The rendering engine was built for pre-compiling your page layout and it was clear Microsoft had not put much emphasis or testing on generating UI on the fly. It makes sense. Given the timelines the Microsoft developers were under, it was the right choice. Unfortunately, it took a few weeks migration and made it into a few months for those of us who started with Xamarin a decade ago. The effort to get to MAUI even though it is basically the same as Xamarin is a huge lift due to the age of our code.

I attempted to migrate QONQR to MAUI two years ago when Xamarin was declared “dead” and MAUI the new successor. At the time, MAUI could not play sounds, did not have notifications, and could not make an in-app purchase. The product was “ready for production” and completely unusable. I was stuck. There was no way I could migrate QONQR to MAUI and given my mental state, I just couldn’t force myself to push through the issues like I had in the past. That was a stopping point for me and QONQR. I’m sure all the players noticed nothing new was happening.

Fast forward two years, NOTQONQR must migrate. I wasn’t the only owner of the app and my partner company needed to make it work. We were looking at a complete rewrite of the app in a new language, or push through a MAUI migration.  So we revisited MAUI. Things are much better two years later.

When I started working in MAUI for the NOTQONQR app, it felt like home. I spent years working in XAML markup before Xamarin. MAUI made sense and seemed to work well. Yes there are still thousands of bugs on the backlog. This is frustrating but not new.

My attitude got better. I have spent several days in the past month working past midnight in MAUI. I’ve spent my weekends writing code. It has been a significant change from being unable to force myself to write code, to looking forward to it again. I can’t say that I love writing code again, but I do feel productive.

The future for QONQR

I’m up against a big deadline. Apps written in Xamarin have an end of the year deadline to be migrated to something else or stop working. I am getting notices that maps will stop working in the next version of iOS if I don’t update my controls, and an update isn’t possible in Xamarin. It is very possible the current version of QONQR will not work on the new iPhone or when everyone updates iOS.

I had planned to try and work on QONQR over the summer, but having a summer intern at NOTQONQR I needed to manage and that MAUI migration taking months more than planned took all my time away. Now that intern has returned to college, and the NOTQONQR migration can be wrapped up by the other developer on that team, I have told the owner of the NOTQONQR company I’m taking a month off work. I’ll be avoiding my other job to focus on QONQR.

Sadly, the first two weeks of the QONQR migration have been painful and slow. After two weeks of long days and weekends, I have the Welcome page, login and map working including the Android Anti-hacker security checks. That’s it. Some of the simple pages may work as is, with the basic migration, but all of the complicated pages (which is a lot of the app) will need a fresh start. For example, the launch page draws everything in the middle of the screen stacked on top of each other. Very little can be salvaged, I need to start over and build the screen from scratch. I think many of our pages may be this way.

Admittedly, I spent much of my time the past two weeks just trying to get the core of the app to work. A lot of the system stuff like local storage, notifications, sounds, colors, fonts, images, etc all had to be setup differently. I had to start with a completely new map. Animations never really worked well in Xamarin and they aren’t any better in MAUI. I’m taking them out everywhere I can since they have always been the source of most crashes. Today I have a running app in MAUI, but it doesn’t do much yet. The past two weeks have shown me this looks possible to complete before the end of the year.

Beta release of QONQR 4.0.

Distribution: If/when I get to that point, the beta would be available through Google Play and Apple App Store and you would need to opt-in to the beta program. I previously had been using Microsoft’s App Center for pre-release versions of the app for player testing. That has been shut down. The only good option available is to release through the stores, which requires official (and long) app reviews on Apple, even for a test release. You won’t be able to run the beta side by side with QONQR 3.X

Barebones: Registration may have to be done online in the early releases. Upgrades and ordnances may also have to be purchased one the web portal. Probably no notifications.

No Chat: Right now, I am planning to remove chat from the app. The US Senate passed a bill in July that would make me responsible for anything posted in my app by a user. While this bill is unlikely to become law, it is a sign of further punishing app developers, but not giving us the tools to keep bad people out of our apps. I will replace chat with a link to the “Unofficial Community Discord”.  It is unclear how this potential law may impact the forums should something similar become law in the future.

Launch: I’m going to do my best to get something like the old launch screen working, but it may be just the simple launch screen to start. Whatever I come up with, I hope it will be temporary. A big challenge with QONQR is hackers attempting to automate launching. While I have some ways of stopping that after a few hours the current “are you human”, takes hours to have an impact. I’d like to redo this screen so that it requires more than just tapping in the same spot over and over to launch. No one likes change, but I hope you like cheaters less. I’ll do my best to come up with something players will tolerate but is harder to automate.

Messaging: Player to Player messaging may eliminate the use of the custom emoji packs we have sold. This will simplify the complexity of this screen and message passing. If you purchased one of these emoji packs, you will receive a bundle of cubes as compensation. I won’t know for sure if we are removing the packs until I get in there and attempt to migrate.

Sync Lock Mini Game: This unfortunately needs to stay as our only reasonable way to combat multi-scoping. I am well aware this still hurts families, but I don’t have an alternative giving the privacy laws the EU and US have enacted that prevent me from taking better measures. This is a very complex UI and I’m concerned about the effort it will take to migrate.

No music: I don’t think I’m going to migrate the background music. I think it is time to let this go. Background audio is hard and inconsistent.

Skins: This seems unlikely. The library I used in Xamarin to tint images doesn’t work on Maui. I don’t have plans to work on a replacement until everything else is working.

New features: None are planned yet, but the largest roadblock to new features in the past 3 years was the knowledge that anything we built was being built on a dead coding platform. If the migration succeeds, that roadblock will be gone.

Can developers help?

Many have asked me if they can help or if I can make QONQR open source. Sadly, I don’t think this is a viable path forward. Exposing all of the code would make it a trivial matter for a hacker to bypass all the protections in the app and automate and manipulate everything except buying cubes. Even if I went to the effort to pull out the secret code that stops hacking the app, any developer who worked on the code would be perceived a cheater. There are too many instances in the past where a player I asked for advice or tips, claimed to be a QONQR developer and claimed to have a special build and/or free cubes. This has never been true, but if people think their opponent is cheating they stop playing or stop spending money that is needed to keep the servers alive. The past has shown that letting anyone have even a little access never ends well.

Even today, with as hard as it is to stop hackers and cheaters the impact is much smaller than most people believe. Yes, some players are probably cheating their location, but they are put into overheat penalty on their scope when they do. They can deploy in two locations, but deploy fewer bots than if they stayed in one spot. I get many emails with “proof” that someone is cheating. Most of the claims don’t hold up when investigated. There are certainly limits on what I can do, but the perception of people cheating is much much higher than actual instances we have uncovered. Every day, I receive dozens of automated notices where QONQR code blocked devices that had a hacked version of the game, attempts to steel cubes, GPS spoofing penalized, too many failed launch verification, and players switching devices too frequently. There are many many cheater detections in place and they are working. For the most part, the biggest problem with cheating isn’t that it is happening, but that players think it is happening much more often than it really is. Giving anyone access to even part of the code would only make this problem worse.

In Reflection

Next week, it will be 14 years since the name “QONQR” came out of Justin’s mouth at a Starup Weekend competition. So much has happened in that time. There was a time when I felt like it was going to be time to turn off the servers because profits had gone negative. Then Gmenman goes and gets a huge damned Legion tattoo. There was no way it could be shut down in the months after that. A while later, profits got a little better and the servers were safe again. A few years ago, I posted a fairly negative blog post about how things were going, hinting that things may finally be coming to an end. The next day I received a heartfelt thank you message from a player who had shared that she struggled in her real life and QONQR was the first place where people accepted her as the person she was, and didn’t judge her as they did in the real world. She thanked me for making a safe place for her to be her true self. There was no way I was going to take that away from her, so I kept the servers up. TotallyGomer and YellerCukes both shared with me their appreciation for QONQR as a way to stay in touch with their friends and the outside world before their passings. This will forever be something I’m proud to have provided. Together we have grieved the untimely losses of several players, and the memorials show how much they are missed. Players have been through so many challenges in their lives, with QONQR friends supporting them along the way.

The necessity to either rewrite QONQR or shut it down has been looming over me for months. It doesn’t make financial sense for me to stop working at my other job and spend months rewriting the QONQR app to keep this going. The smart thing would be to shut it down and move on. Focus on something new and leave behind all the issues of mobile gaming, government regulations, and abusive mobile marketplaces.  But…  the smart decision has been the wrong decision too many times before.

QONQR is too much of who I am, who you are, who we are. I’m going to try. QONQR may be always full of issues. It may have fewer features than in the past, but I’m going to try and keep the heart of what QONQR has always been in the new version. I can’t promise it will be done soon and can’t even tell you it will keep working on your current or new device in the coming months. However, I’m here today to tell you, QONQR is too important to let go, and I’m working on keeping it going until I find it just isn’t possible. I now believe I can make it work. I ask for your understanding and patience as the 4.0 beta moves forward.

For those that continue to buy cubes, thanks for keeping the servers alive.

-Scott (aka Silver)

[qonqr]

Notifications, Privacy, Company Changes and MAUI

Greetings QONQR Players

I’ll start with what is new in the latest update.  Version 3.12

I introduced notifications in the update last year. After the introduction, I moved on to add broadcasts for all users for things like Atlantis. I quickly hit the issue that players in Germany would prefer those notifications in German, same for our Spanish, Portuguese, Italian users. This takes some extra work for broadcast notifications that are not targeting to single users. Some of that work was started, but it was shelved as other non-QONQR priorities consumed most of my year. I came back to this work and wrapped it up for this release.

Abusive players have ruined much of my development time the past few months. In the last few months I’ve banned well over 100 accounts who attempted to play on accounts using emulators or rooted devices. QONQR previously allowed players to attempt to use rooted devices and emulators for a few hours or a day. Then a device check would run and report the un-trusted device. “It’s a trap!” Using this method, we identified long time legitimate accounts who had attempted to cheat with extra accounts on emulators, then ban all their accounts. Unfortunately, the internet is the internet and people on it often behave badly. Some people started creating new accounts on emulators, played them to level 5 or 6, then started a new account. Then did it again dozens of times. It was a griefing tactic we hadn’t seen before. Now accounts are blocked from launching even once on an emulator. In the new release, those accounts cannot even be created. Devices are now checked on login as well. It makes the login slower, but it is the cost of bad users acting badly.

Google has done what they often do. They took something that has been working fine for many years and shut it down. We used a device check feature in Google Play to determine if a user’s device was unsafe or untrusted, such as a rooted device or emulator. They are shutting down this service and replacing it with a new one that does THE EXACT SAME THING!  This means many hours of development and testing for me. That work is in the latest release. For now, both the new and old device checks are in the app until I know for sure the new device check is working correctly.  Speaking of working correctly, in the past two months, the old device check started occasionally reporting bad results. Google started experiencing a random error that incorrectly reported devices were unsafe. This has affected about a dozen users and I think at this point all those bans have been reversed. 

I’m well aware that there could be other tactics people are using to play multiple accounts or fake their GPS. Unfortunately, Google and Apple continue to protect hackers and punish app developers. I continue to look for new ways to identify who plays the game in ways not encouraged. Perhaps this latest Twitter disaster of fake identities and impresonation will encourage states and federal governments to fix their privacy laws that forbid companies like mine from identifying, banning and even prosecuting people who steal from developers, post content that violates US Law, or otherwise violate our terms of use. Hopefully we will see a tipping point where we continue to protect consumer privacy, but also create avenues for developers like me to take legitimate actions against those that hurt our business and damage your user experience.

You may notice something new with who owns QONQR. Last year, all the original founders of QONQR sold me their shares of the company. It has been many years since any of them were engaged in the company dealings and revenue had dropped to “self-sustaining” levels. The extra effort of taxes for everyone made it the right time to have everyone exit. Since I am now the sole owner of QONQR, I’ve decided to merge QONQR with my other business I have used for almost 20 years for side projects and consulting. You will now see “Scott Davis Industries, LLC” as the publisher in both App Stores and your PayPal receipts will reflect the new company name as well.  Nothing else has really changed. It is still me, QONQR is still the same. I now only need to do accounting and taxes for one company instead of two. As a result of this change the Privacy Policy and Terms of Service have been updated. In addition to the change of company, I clarified a few things to reflect the current app.

Going back to the topic of revenue, it has gone up. I’ve mentioned more than once that the company lost money for two consecutive months at the end of 2019. I spent most of 2020 restructuring most of QONQR’s server code to massively reduce our hosting costs. Today QONQR costs about 25% of what it cost in 2019 to keep the servers running. During 2020, QONQR started making a small profit for me again, mostly because of the savings I created.  In 2021, there has been an up-tick in spending among players. We have seen many long time players return to the game after being gone for several years. This return of veteran players and your willingness to keep supporting the game has made a big impact on me. Financially, I had to spend much of 2021 and 2022 consulting to make a salary for myself. However, the increased revenue this years has allowed me to spend the past couple months focusing on QONQR to get this new release out. With the low server costs and what I’ve learned about MAUI (below) there is no reason to think QONQR won’t continue for many years to come.

What follows is a deep dive into technical details – my apologies for getting too deep into the geek weeds.

Its been a year since you’ve seen any updates. This probably isn’t a surprise for some. Microsoft announced the end of Xamarin was coming a couple years ago. Xamarin is the code framework I use to build QONQR. It allows me to write 95% of our code once, and run it on Android and iPhone (and previously Windows Phone), rather than build 2 (previously 3) separate apps.  In theory, it takes less time compared to building 2/3 separate apps. In practice however, using Xamarin definitely did not cut the time by 1/3 for building 3 apps, and probably not even close to 1/2. It did save some time, but pain and frustration was high. Much of this wasn’t Microsoft’s fault. They have a major challenge in attempting to take the terrible platforms of Android and iOS, which are full of bugs and issues and create a reliable cross-platform solution. It is difficult to build something great on top of architectures that are unreliable and abusive towards developers.

Xamarin is being replaced by a new technology called MAUI. The goal of MAUI is to create a single cross platform to make it easier to build applications for Android, iOS, Windows, Mac and Linux. When it was announced that Xamarin was “dead”, developers like me were stuck. Do we keep investing new features into a dead platform, or do we wait for the new stuff to avoid rebuilding something we just built a few months earlier. Unfortunately, MAUI was delayed a year, and was finally “launched” this month.

Over the summer I spent some time to try the preview release of MAUI and attempt to migrate QONQR to MAUI. If it worked, QONQR could move forward. If not, QONQR would likely be “dead” as well because a complete re-write would simply be too costly to undertake.

Good news, bad news. MAUI is really just Xamarin under the covers. This means that migration of all the pages and displays in the app migrate without too much work. Unfortunately, this also means all the pain of Xamarin is still there, but now we introduce the pain of all the new top-level architecture. In my opinion, this means more pain, for no (or very little) gain.

To drive this point home, Xamarin Forms (“Forms” draws all the UI) is 8 years old, and there are over 1,000 bugs still open. I personally have opened a few bugs. One bug was immediately confirmed by Microsoft after I spent a full day building a sample project that 100% reproduced the issue on Android. It took nearly 2 years for Microsoft to close the bug. Building MAUI on top of Xamarin which is already full of bugs is troubling.

In the past few years, I’ve shared with people in general that as a mobile developer I spend most of my time fixing things that worked just fine 6 months ago, but now is broken because Google, Apple, or Microsoft decided something needed to be changed. It is a demoralizing experience to spend all your time fixing things someone else broke. My hope that things will improve with MAUI has mostly slipped away. 

There is one possible note of positivity with MAUI. Never before has there been a single way to build desktop/mobile applications on the Microsoft tech stack. There were always competing Microsoft technologies. This has been true since the 1990’s. Now for the first time MAUI is “the way”. If this remains true, it is likely all the developers at Microsoft who focus on installed apps will be pushed to the MAUI team, and we will finally see some of these quality issues addressed.

My migration attempt to MAUI this summer worked for all the user interfaces, but failed miserably for the platform specific implementations such as maps, notifications, in-app-purchasing, etc. Some features were just missing, others were completely undocumented and the only way to find them was to post in the Microsoft support forums. Despite being officially released now, I don’t plan a migration attempt again for a few months or more. However, I’m anticipating there may be a couple months of effort to once again take something that worked just fine before and make it work again with the new stuff.

Now that I know, MAUI is really just Xamarin, I don’t need to wait on new features. I’ll be evaluating possible features for future releases.

  Once again, thanks for the continued support of QONQR. It has been nice to dig back into the code lately. I look forward to more frequent updates next year.

 -Scott (aka Silver)

[qonqr]

Scope, Sync Lock, Ads, Notifications

The update that was mentioned in my last blog post hit the stores (and server) today.

 Notifications:

Most people are reporting this is working well. Some things that need to be addressed.

“Bases full” isn’t implemented yet.

Clicking a notification for being mentioned in a chat room, doesn’t open that chat room yet

Some people do not see a “Notifications” button under settings

If notifications are not beeping and vibrating your phone, check the settings for each notification type to verify they are not marked as silent. QONQR has limited ability to control how notifications “beep” your phone. The phones system settings override the settings we suggest.

 Ads:

They are gone. Apple destroyed the revenue model for in-app advertising. Google changed their advertising implementation. There was a bug reported in Microsoft’s port of the new Google library in February. It is still broken. The bug made it impossible to get a new release out with ads, plus advertising no longer makes any money on iPhone. So, I had no real option other than to remove them completely. To get secondary missions, making any purchase will unlock the secondary missions for the next 31 days. Subscribers still get secondary missions. If you are still running the old app, you can watch all the ads you want, it won’t unlock a mission for you. Sorry. This may change in the future, but it was a stop-gap solution to get the release out the door. Also, this now means that QONQR no longer shares any user activity data with any other company. This should make the privacy sensitive people very happy (if you believe Google’s claims that the Google Maps SDK does not collect user data).

 Scope:

Bot and Energy regeneration has a new formula. The old formula didn’t allow for accurate prediction of when the tank would be full. The new formula does. Initial testing showed that the new formula would result in 1 or 2 more launches per hour. A few users have already pointed out that they have found a launch combination that can stretch that to 30 launches, when they have the “Bot Regen Upgrade”.  This was my mistake and way more than I had intended. My mistake is your benefit. I think I will leave this bad (more accurately - way too good) formula in the game through Atlantis. Enjoy the rapid launching for the next week. Also, I failed to rename the “Bot Regen Accelerator” to a new name that better reflect what it does. The scope upgrade that costs $0.99 for 3 months will ensure you are never in maximum overheat. The new name for the upgrade will be in the next release.

  Sync Lock and Sync Lock Protection:

This one is a big one and could be a great improvement or a huge mess on my part. Sync Lock will now last 30 days. The system now keeps track of how many times you have been sync locked and how many times you have gained sync lock protection. For legitimate family members and co-workers, you can now earn sync lock protection for up to 7 days. If you gain Sync Lock Protection, then earn it again the next day before you are locked again, then once again the day after that, you are “banking” your legitimate game play each day you gain protection. We look at the number of times you have gain protection subtract the number of times you have been Sync Locked and that is the number of days your protection will last, up to 7 days. While this may seem complicated, just remember to get Sync Lock Protection before your protection expires, over time you will see your protection time increase.

Why does sync lock protection last so long? Privacy changes made by Apple and Google make it harder for me to stop some pervious multi-scoping blocks. Those who have found the loophole, will now find it very hard to get unlocked. We will see how this new system works. It was just as hard to get unlocked before, but now with Sync Lock lasting so long, the penalty becomes more difficult to work around. If it works well, especially for legitimate players, we may see the penalties for multi-scoping may get stricter.

Finally, one of the unfortunate parts of Sync Lock is that families often feel penalized when they are not. For example, the scope would say you are infected, and it would psychologically make you feel handicapped when you were not. Sync Lock only impacts you for launches in the last hour, from the same zones. If your kids or spouse hasn’t played in the past hour, or your co-workers went home and are now in a different zone, their activity has no impact on your gameplay. It never has. Sync Lock impact is now only shown the launch results screen, and only when the impact is real.

 Localization:

Under the covers, QONQR is now running a new framework for supporting other languages (other than English).  This is going to make it much easier for us to add new translations and update the ones we already have. If you are interested in helping with translations, please email [email protected].

 Windows Phone:

I received word today that Windows Phone no longer works for one of our players. Honestly, I didn’t know it still worked. We announced over a year ago that we would no longer support windows phone. We decreed that should a server update break windows phone, we would not fix the server. It appears that time has come.

 Android In-App purchases:

This was the biggest thing forcing the release today. Android removed support for the old purchasing code I was using. It was going to be impossible to buy stuff in the App on Nov 1, without a new update. This change by Google forced the app update, a little earlier than I had planned. As a result, we have a few things incomplete and a few bugs, but I’ll get them fixed as soon as I can.

 I hope you are energized by this release.  It feels so good to get something new out the door. Even if it is broken, it is progress. I’ll do my best to get the issues we have identified fixed in the following week or two.

 -Scott (aka Silver)

[qonqr]

I’m Still Here

Many of you may have been asking yourself where did Silver go? Is anyone still working on QONQR?  I admit I’ve been very quiet the past year and from the outside, it looks like not much is going on.

 Before I give my QONQR update I want to share a major accomplishment for me. I’m a little less of a hoarder than I was a month ago. As the 11th year anniversary approached, I decided I had too much old QONQR merchandise I needed to get in the hands of my players. However, I hate shipping. I should be the spokesperson for one of those shipping providers that make shipping easy because I hate doing it so much. Many of you know that the player Rayndel has an Etsy store where she sells QONQR merchandise with my permission. I sent her a 65lb (30kg) box of QONQR stuff. Coffee cups, T-shirts, dog tags and stickers. She is liquidating all of it for me. You can find it all right here.

https://www.etsy.com/shop/DragonHoardCrafts?section_id=19648949

 2020 and 2021 have been challenging for most people, and I’m no exception.  Both our kids are off to college. We are getting older and so are our extended families. Medical issues become more frequent for us and them. The stress of the pandemic doesn’t help. There are days when I can sit at my computer all day, and never write a line of code. Things are hard, they impact our ability to work as hard as we once did.

 A little over two weeks ago, QONQR hit its 11th birthday. The milestone passed quietly. I always spend time reflecting on how QONQR has changed my life and the stories you’ve shared about how it has changed yours. We’ve built something great together. Together we keep it going.

 Despite outward appearances. Things are happening at QONQR. I am working, albeit at an admittedly slow pace. I’ve let go of the stress of pushing QONQR as fast as I can, and instead I’m working on QONQR at a pace that is comfortable. It is important to me and my family that I end my day without being drained of all my energy by the awful decisions and quality that Apple and Google hand me every day.

 The next release of QONQR will include the following features. Many of these are mostly done, so I’m happy to share them, with the caveat that I have no idea when these will actually hit the store. Tons of testing is still needed.

 New Sync Lock Rules

 Sync lock will now last much longer, perhaps a week or even a month before it automatically expires. Along with that Sync Lock Protection will also last longer. The more times you gain sync lock protection, the longer it will last. We want to protect legitimate family members from daily locks, but also want to avoid situations where multi-scoper can get infrequent help to unlock an army of devices and accounts. In addition to longer locks, Sync lock may also hurt resource collection with your bases depending on how play testing goes.

 As with everything pertaining to multi-scoping, it is a blurry line between stopping those who play unfair, and those that are punished for inviting family and friends to play.

 Notifications

I have wanted push notifications for most of the past 10 years. In fact, we were very close to having them implemented about 5-7 years ago, but Google changed their push notification system. We used a unified messaging system created by Microsoft to push to both Google and Apple simultaneously. There were incompatibilities between the new and the old Google system for a long time. We gave up on trying to finish that implementation back then, waiting for Google and Microsoft to get their stuff fixed, and it was years before it became a priority again.

 I spent most of the past 3-4 months working on notification. This area is quite possibly one of the worst technical implementations I’ve had to work with in all my time working in software. For example, if you kill an iPhone application, you also remove the ability to get push notifications until the next time you start the app. It appears to be almost random when Android will decide to beep your phone when receiving a notification, and when it will be silently added to the notification center. For both Apple and Google, the documentation is frustratingly inaccurate or out of date. There are multiple different ways a notification can be processed depending on whether the application was terminated by the user, suspended by the operating system, in the background or in the foreground. Was the notification scheduled locally or sent from a remote server?  Honestly, as a developer, it would be difficult to purposely design a worse system.

 The good news is that I believe I have it working as good as it can possibly work. In the next release you will be able to enable or disable notifications as a whole, or selectively choose which notification you want to receive. Notifications will include: Atlantis, New Wire messages, Mentions in Chat and Forums, Bots and Bases Full.

 A Major Overhaul to the Scope

The changes to Sync Lock mandated that overheat have additional logic to control bots and energy regeneration. More significantly, if we want to have a notification that your scope is full, so I needed to know exactly when the scope would be full.  Currently your regeneration rate is based on the number of launches in the past hour. Launching a few seconds before or after an old launch rolls off that 1 hour mark can mess up the prediction of when you will be full again. To make that prediction accurately, without checking every minute to see, “Are my bots full now”, we changed the formula for when bots will be full, and scheduled a notification based on that time.

 The new regeneration is very similar to the old, but we predict you may get 1 or 2 more launches per hour. I’m hedging the formula towards more not fewer launches to make sure this is seen as a positive change.

 As long as we are messing with the scope, let’s talk about the Bot Regen Accelerator.  Hard core players have pointed out that players who launch on a timer, always hitting the “optimal” launch interval, don’t gain any advantage when purchasing this $0.99 upgrade. In the new release this upgrade will reduce your overheat level by 1 level and you will never be in maximum overheat due to deploying bots. The impact of the upgrade will be noticeable by everyone with this change. The name of this upgrade will probably change to “Scope Coolant” or “Heat Diffuser”. Send me your name ideas.

  Subscriptions, Ads and Elite Players

This is a change that probably won’t be in the next release, but it is something I’m thinking about before the end of the year. Apple has had a bug in their subscription logic for years. If you purchase a subscription on an iPhone, then get a new iPhone, you need to cancel the subscription in the App Store, then renew from your new phone. Apple keeps charging you, but the new device can’t see the subscription, so QONQR doesn’t know you are a subscriber. Why wouldn’t Apple fix this? Well Apple only takes half the percentage of a subscription after the first year. By making you start a new subscription, they can double their cut of the money you pay QONQR for the subscription. Another problem with subscriptions is that they result in many support requests because they honestly aren’t 100% reliable in either Apple or Google’s implementation.

 Many people know that earlier in the year, Apple introduced a change to advertising that blocks tracking. This is great in theory, and I get it as a consumer that I don’t like to be tracked, but this tracker blocking also blocks my ability to make any revenue on advertising. Why would I continue to give away free advertising?

 Elite players are those that have spent over $100 in QONQR over the life of their gaming experience. Over the years the benefits of being “Elite” have dwindled. Features have changed, and incentives have ended. I’d like to invest more time and energy to build features for players that continue to support QONQR but I think it makes more sense to lower the bar and make the benefits for “active” spenders.

 With these three things in mind, there is a chance that QONQR will move to a monthly “pass” option rather than a subscription. There seems to be a trend with games, where players buy a monthly pass that offers benefits, rather than using subscriptions. Subscriptions are buggy and in the case of Apple, a shady business practice.

 The same benefits available to subscribers would remain under the “pass”, but you would have to explicitly purchase the pass each month.  Secondary missions may move to the “pass” model with non-pass players getting only a handful of secondary missions per month. Ads would be completely removed from the app in this scenario since they no longer generate much revenue.

  What’s in the Plans for 2022?

 If you have read my blog over the years, you know that Apple and Google make it harder and harder to stop cheating (primarily multi-scoping).  It is being reported that Windows 11 will have the ability to run Android apps. I don’t know yet how that will impact QONQR, but I’m guessing it won’t be good. At best it will have no impact because I’ll be able to stop QONQR from running on Windows, at worst it could be a nightmare.

 March 2022 will mark the 10 year anniversary QONQR hit the Apple App Store. I can say with a high level of confidence that QONQR is now the longest running location-based, multi-platform, mobile game.

 Personally, I think 2022 needs to be a transformational year for QONQR. I’m not sure we can survive if the game doesn’t change. Apple, Google, and Microsoft have never cared about supporting mobile developers. Outrageous fees and abusive rules (recently acknowledged by the US Congress) have been part of the ecosystem from the start. There are dozens of apps that you can download from the official Google Play store that make it a simple tap to attempt to hack and manipulate an Android app, so players can do something the developer is attempting to prohibit. Once again Microsoft broke the tools I use to help secure the app from hackers, causing weeks of work to find a solution that would maintain the same level of security.  Apple and Google both purposely hide information from developers that would help them ensure real people are using their apps instead of bots. They do this under the façade of privacy, but ignore simple solutions that could maintain privacy, while helping developers ensure the integrity of how their apps are used.

 I’ve said for years, the only way to stop hackers and cheaters in QONQR is to make it irrelevant. That requires a major shift in gameplay. Together, you the players and me the developer, we need to decide if we want QONQR to have such a major shift. I don’t know what that shift would look like, but 2022 might be the year we figure it out.

 2020 was a year of making sure QONQR can survive. Through tons of work that year, massive software rewrites and updates, I was able to cut the cost of hosting QONQR. Today the cost of hosting QONQR all year, matches what we spent in three months during 2019. So far 2021 has been a year of slow work toward significant improvements to the game, but without major strategic impact to your daily playing. I’ve taken my time to avoid burn out. I’m enjoying the pace of my current work week. It has been good for my family and me.

 I’m not sure what 2022 will look like for QONQR yet, but I’m excited to try something new. Maybe we’ll break things, maybe we will create something ten times better than what we have had for the last decade. Time will tell. We’ll figure it out together.

 Thanks for keeping the lights on.

-Scott (aka Silver)

[qonqr]

10 Years of Thanks

In September, I wrote a blog post to commemorate our 10 year anniversary. I decided not to publish it because the tone of the post was too negative.

At the time, Microsoft had made an update to their Android packaging tool to implement Google recommendations for smaller download sizes. The change broke my ability to apply the security features we use to discourage and catch people who attempt to hack QONQR. On the date of our anniversary, it had been two months since I had been able to release a new Android update and I had already wasted over 100 hours trying to find a solution. As you can expect it set a fairly negative tone for the blog post I wrote, but decided not to post.

Over the years, Apple and Google have been more and more abusive towards developers, making it more difficult to stop bad users from using our software in malicious ways. Around this time, Apple had also turned up their authoritarianism by not just revoking a game that violated their App Store rules, but also rejecting all Apple developer licenses for a sister company of the offending game.

September was a bleak month for me. Not only is it a challenging time to be a mobile software developer in the industry, but I was once again spending hundreds of hours to “fix” issues created by Apple, Google and Microsoft. It seems like a never ending fight that has buried QONQR in busy work for years, continually pushing off new features, in a cycle of constantly fixing or replacing things broken by the “Big 3”. I felt like Sisyphus, continually pushing that boulder up the hill, just to have it roll back down every day.

But……  there is plenty to celebrate in 10 years, and reasons to be optimistic about what the future will bring.

I finally gave up on trying to “fix” the issue that Microsoft created.  I completely reorganized our Android code so I could get around their issue. The details of what I had to do are too technical for this post, and would probably make most software developers cringe with disgust of how the code is now organized.  However, not only is a new Android version in the store, but the code is even more secure than it was before. It took 3 months, but the issue is resolved for now. I’ve moved on to new features and changes to Atlantis and Tunneling will be released soon.

I recently found our business plan from 8 years ago, back when we were trying to find an investor. There were 15 massively multiplayer location-based mobile games listed as games in the same space. None of those games exist today. I believe we are now the longest running massively-multiplayer location-based game to have ever existed. Together, we have done something that no other game has done.

QONQR has always found a way to survive despite sometimes bleak forecasts. To understand just how amazing our survival has been, you must first understand what it took to get here. In the first year of QONQR, I took on $45,000 of personal debt to work on QONQR full time. In year two, QONQR paid off that debt. In year three, I took on another $25,000 of debt to hire more employees. Again, QONQR gave me the income I needed to pay it off the following year.  While it has often seemed like the outside forces are conspiring to shut us down, the QONQR players have made the difference every time.

Many of you know I’m the only person who works for QONQR today, and I typically only work 25-35 hours a week on QONQR, compared to the 70-100 hours a week I had worked the first 7-8 years. QONQR is amazingly stable these days. We get fewer than 10 support emails a week and QONQR now has so much security and anti-hacking code 9 out of 10 players that are banned from the game are done so automatically by code to automatically detect hacking attempts. While it may sound like bad news that the QONQR staff is so minimal, it is actually a fantastic testament to where we have come.

Five years ago, I didn’t go anywhere without my laptop. I avoided vacations and travel.  QONQR needed constant babysitting and often needed server reboots on a weekly basis. Today, things are stable and self-managing. It has given me tremendous freedom to add non-QONQR stuff to my life. There have been a handful of weekends this year where I didn’t work at all. I’ve had a couple companies approach me offering lucrative job offers, but settling for my willingness to give them 1 day a week consulting to help them with their software issues or oversee their product development. This has given me some supplemental income, and has been a nice break to learn new things and work side-by-side with other developers again. This would not have been possible without all the great advancements we have made in QONQR.

Last January, QONQR lost money. It cost more money to host QONQR servers than what we made. Revenue is usually low for January and our hosting costs were the highest they had ever been. I rewrote and replaced much of the QONQR cloud architecture this year.  The changes will save more than $10,000 a year in cloud hosting.  The players picked up their spending in early summer. This combined with my 1-day-a-week consulting has not only kept QONQR alive, but still allowed me to maintain the same moderate salary I had in 2019. In the times of COVID, I’m tremendously grateful for the support you have given me through QONQR. Together, we took an ominous start to the year, and turned it around. Once again QONQR pulled through.

You are the reason I do what I do. The passion you have for the game is why we are here after 10 years and helps to keep me going. At times, the future of QONQR may seem uncertain, but this isn’t new territory for us. Few expected we would be here 10 years later. Honestly, we probably didn’t either. There is a set of data in our database that controls cubes to credits exchange rate. I think it was set up in 2013. That data runs out on January 1, 2021. I’m sure the idea was, “that should be long enough”.

10 years ago, my life was changed in a way I would have never predicted. QONQR went from idea to a working game prototype in roughly 48 hours, the first nanobots were deployed into the world, and I was set on a path of spending much of life for the following decade doing what I do today.

Over the past decade you have made lifelong friends. Some of you got married and had kids because of QONQR. Some of you found a way to reconnect with your family or old friends. Some of you gained close friends you talk to everyday for years, but whom you have never met in person and do not even know their real names. Some of us have tragically lost those same friends to accidents and diseases. QONQR has made a life-changing impact on many people.

Thank you for giving me a story I will tell the rest of my life, and I’m sure a story many of you will tell as well. Together we have built something great. Only time will tell where we go from here. Keep pushing that big rock. I’ll be pushing with you.

-Scott (aka Silver)

[qonqr]

Skins, Testing, and More

I hope this update finds you and your family safe and doing well.  2020 has been challenging for everyone in so many ways.

I share your fears for loved ones who are at high risk. I share your financial concerns. I feel your stress of being home all the time, and worrying kids returning to school (or not).

As many of you know, I took the entire month of April and much of May off work to lead the high school robotics team in creating several thousand face shields. It was 60-80 hours a week for me through the entire month of April.  If you are interested to see the amazing work our students did, please watch this video we prepared.

Things slowed down some in May, but the stress never really left. Many days it was a struggle to try and focus on writing code. It is still a challenge some days to maintain that mental focus needed to string together a few hours of uninterrupted productivity.

Skins

In June, I decide I needed something low stress and low priority to work on. AgentConDier made a forum post that inspired me to expand the skin feature. It has been over 3 years since the first skin “Cheese Pirates” was released on April Fools day, and I’m still amazed to see screen shots with people using that skin.

In the next release (version 3.7), Elite players will be able to create a personalized skin. They can change all of the colors in the app, and be able to tint any image to a different color. I've taken AgentConDier's concept of removing the color and applied that to all 475 images in the app. Now you can choose a base image set for your skin that is only black and white, and apply a color tint to the images.

It is also possible to completely change the map colors by creating a google maps theme. This site has many pre-made map themes that you can just copy and use. https://snazzymaps.com/

There isn't currently the ability to substitute a custom image, as is done with the Cheese Pirate skin, but the features exists. It is currently a manual process I need to do.

For now, only elite players can make a personalized skin, but they can opt to share that skin with other elite players and subscribers. I opted to make this an elite feature because it was recently pointed out there wasn't much special about being elite. This may change in the future.

If you are interested in creating a public skin, for all players, including image substitution, please email support. I've laid the groundwork for the community to create some very interesting themes. We will see what is created.

A notice about Elite status: Currently elite status is given to anyone who has spend $100 over the lifetime of the game. This may change in 2021. Elite status may become anyone who has spent $100 in the previous year, or maybe $50 in the previous 6 months. This will only change if I build more features that are exclusive to Elite players, but I wanted to give significant warning that a change could be coming. If you know my track record, no changes to Elite are likely to occur before 2022. The skin update forced me to revisit some of the mapping code. There is a new feature in the settings that allows you to change the size of the map pin. Early tester feedback indicates this a very welcome feature for many people.

[UPDATE: Apple has rejected the iOS submission with the reason, “Your app uses location data for features that are not relevant to a user's location”. It may be several days before the new version is available for iOS users.]

Testers Wanted

I need more players interested in assisting with early app testing. If you are an active player, have been playing for at least 6 months, and are willing to help me test the app, please email support.

Breaking the Stalemate

I have spent much of the past few years dealing with major code migrations, and optimizations to our server environments. As a result I have cut our server costs nearly in half. What has suffered during that time is a lack of new features that impact game play.

Yesterday I performed some data analysis on the activity in the game. I found a statistic that was shocking in both a good and bad way. On Sunday, 70% of the players who were active in the game, created their account between March 2012 and December 2016. Four of those players joined on the first weekend the game was released. This is amazing that we have so many players who have stuck with QONQR for so many years. However, this is bad in that we are failing to capture many new users the past few years.

In the coming months, I will be looking for ways to break up the heavily entrenched zones on the map.  This may include spontaneous tunnels, faster bot decay, higher offensive power in larger zones, and/or different “Active” requirements. These are a few of the player suggestions that have been given so far.

I would like to create a situation where any new player joining QONQR will find at least 1 zone for every 10 he/she can reach with Zone Assault being controlled by his/her own faction. That is a tricky challenge. I welcome all feedback. Please post your suggestions and comments in the forums. https://portal.qonqr.com/forums/game

Thanks for your ongoing support.

-Scott (aka Silver)

[qonqr]

Google Maps & COVID-19

I know there are many frustrated players on Android right now. Sadly, there is very little I can do to solve your problems. 

Last week, Google broke their map service that impacted all apps on iOS and Android that use Google Maps, except for the Google Maps on Android app.  Even Google Maps apps on iOS crashed every time.  Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, etc all crashed on every app launch.

Google is working on a fix, but unfortunately, they have so badly corrupted the temporary storage for maps tiles (cache), recovery is a manual process. I will try to get an update released as soon as I can, but unfortunately we are waiting on Google to release the new libraries that can fix/avoid the cache corruption, then we need to wait for Microsoft to port them to my development platform.

In the mean time, the work-arounds that are being shared are to

uninstall and reinstall the application

clear the application data for QONQR

disconnect your device from using cloud backup (so the corrupted cloud cache is not copied back to your device)

after installing try starting the app while having cellular data and Wi-Fi turned off, then reconnect to the internet once the app has started.

One or more of these things in combination will probably get you back up and running. It is also possible that uninstalling before you go to bed, then reinstalling the morning, might give your Android time to clean up the cache in its overnight maintenance routines.

Unfortunately, these crazy gymnastics are a common “turn it off and back on again” process developers often try.  It is worth noting, that the app still shows the black and blue maps when you first install it, then switches to Google maps on your next restart. In a previous blog post, I shared the cost of these styled maps increased by a factor of 4, and caused the company to lose money for two months as a result of the very high map cost.  In a weird coincidence, it is possible the first time start might actually help us. It gives you the user more time to try all the work around in the app, before the next app restart.  Hopefully you can find a way to get the app running again while we wait for an official fix from Google.

If you want to get a taste for the developer rage this is creating, search for “google map sdk crash” with a result filter of the last week to see what developers like me are dealing with.

COVID-19

This time last month, I was working on some big changes in the QONQR code, to address some major server storage constraints that have plagued our system for years. It wasn’t anything that users would notice, but it would remove a major roadblock to possible future features.  Then the pandemic shut down the country.

I started 3D printing face shield visors at home on April 1, and two days later I asked the principal at the middle school if I could pull out the seven 3D printers they have, move them to QONQR, and begin printing visors with all these printers. Many of you know I am a coach for the local high school robotics team, but last year, I was also a coach for the middle school team.

The principal agreed, and two days later called me and said, “What if we pulled all the 3D printers from every school in the district and put them in one location. Would KnightKrawler (the high school team) be willing to run a lab to make visors?”  

After verifying with the district officials, this would be allowed, and establishing safety protocols, we had moved 24 printers from 3 middle schools and 1 high school to a single location. Since April 3rd, the team has 3D printed over 4,000 face shield visors. I have been at the school 60 hours a week for the past 3 weeks. We run the printers 10 hours a day, Monday-Saturday. 3M has donated 3 rolls of face shield plastic and our students have created 12,000 clears face shields using those rolls. Another company (anonymous) donated 2 more rolls that will make 6,000 more face shields. Other robotics teams, companies and schools have donated over 1,500 3D printed visors, which we have put shields on and distributed. On Friday, an injection molding company send us 5,000 visors, which we are putting clear shield plastic on for distribution.

So far, our team has received requests for over 10,000 face shield visors through our website. We had already filled half those orders, and now can fill the rest by Tuesday. The team has also shared over 3,000 clear shield plastic parts with other teams and organizations who are 3D printing visors.

Tomorrow we will send 500 shield plastic parts to a robotics team in Arizona. The Navajo Nation is one of the hardest hit populations in our country. They saw what we are doing and asked us for 500 face shields on Friday. We found another robotics team in Flagstaff, Arizona who have offered to 3D print the visors if we can send them the other parts needed. The collaboration among robotics teams across the country is amazing. Together our two teams are going to deliver the needed face shields. It is heartwarming to be able to create a connection between the Navajo Nation and a local robotics team.

If you want to follow our progress, please check our the team on social media, we have been posting multiple updates per day all month.

https://facebook.com/team2052

https://twitter.com/team2052

 The 60 hour weeks at the school, then returning home to answer the overwhelming social media comments and emails at night is taking its toll on my personally.  I apologize for the slow support response to your requests. I had anticipated our efforts with the robotics team would be a 1-month stop-gap, to help fill the early demand for PPE while the industry retools. While we see the industry retooling, the supply chain is still lacking. Our group of high school kids has been putting thousands of needed supplies in people’s hands. Unfortunately, my work on QONQR features is on hold for as long as I am able to help these students make such a large impact.

I am thankful QONQR gives me the flexibility the other volunteer coaches do not have wit their jobs. Thanks for your understanding and support.

 -Scott (aka Silver)

[qonqr]

COVID-19, April Fools, & Atlantis

I started this blog post a dozen times before just settling on this beginning. We are in trouble. The whole world is in trouble. There really isn’t a better way to say it.  I hope everyone who is reading this blog understands at this point that our current world crisis isn’t a hoax and isn’t going to miraculously disappear soon.

I worry about my parents, my aunts and uncles, my grandma, my friends and my players. For most of us, we understand the virus could take our friends and family away from us. I’ve been coping with this reality by doing what I can without leaving the house. I’ve managed to only leave 3 times in the past 2 weeks, and one of those was today. Today my son, wife and I donated blood. My wife is sewing masks for nurses and my 3D printer has been going non-stop for the past 4 days, printing face shields. I delivered my first batch of shields to a friend of ours who is a nurse on Sunday. I was introduced to an ICU nurse via Facebook who will be getting the second batch tomorrow. On Monday I hope to ship a box to a friend’s cousin, who is an ICU nurse in Chicago. Yesterday, through the robotics team that I coach, I borrowed 7 more 3D printers from the middle school, set them up in my office and am trying to get them going to increase the production of these face shields. Staying home, staying busy, and staying productive has helped to keep me positive.

My wife and I are fortunate to have jobs we can do from home. We are lucky our high school and college age children are with us and can keep up with their studies online.  I’m lucky we have the tools to help people in need.

You can help too, and I’m sure many of your already are, but here is something everyone can do. Depression is increasing and substance abuse is on the rise. These are things that our QONQR community can help with. People are lonely, people are scared. Reach out to the people in the game. Join the chats, send game messages, and use the new forums. I have heard many stories over the years of how the QONQR friends of players got them through a divorce, a death in the family, losing their job, or dealing treatments for a disease. You may think it is silly, but I guarantee right now, there is someone playing QONQR who could use someone to talk to. You can be that someone. Let’s use this amazing community we have built to keep each other company, to keep each other safe at home. You can make a difference in someone’s day, with a simple message or chat. Say hello in the chat, message a player you haven’t met before, start a topic in the forums.

 April Fools

Every year for April Fools, we randomly change players profile pictures. While it is important to still find a reason to laugh in these difficult times, I didn’t’ feel right about creating funny profile pictures this year. Instead we are going to celebrate a handful of scientists and doctors that have had a major impact on fighting viruses that have impacted humankind. Please visit the photo album on our Facebook page to learn more about these amazing people and their contribution to keeping the world safe. I wish I could have created a list of hundreds of doctors and scientists, but time just wasn’t on my side to pull together this collection in the last week, including a short description of their accomplishments. Nonetheless, I hope you take some time to read through their profiles and be inspired by their work.

 Atlantis

Finally, don’t forget about the win bonus for this Atlantis.  There are some big bonuses on the line for all 3 factions. If you did not read last months blog post, go back and look for all the details on the new bonus structure for winning Atlantis. I shorted the typical 6-day tournament down to 5 days, with only a single stacking day. Therefore, Atlantis will end on the weekend and hopefully give you something exciting to do if you are stuck inside.

Stay safe and keep everyone else safe by staying home when you can.  Keep each other company. Now is a great time to make new friends online and help those who are so alone right now.

 Take care.

-Scott (aka Silver)

[qonqr]

Atlantis, Maps, and Forums

Hello QONQRers.

TLDR;

Atlantis awards change

Blue maps are being removed, maybe forever

New Forums

 Atlantis

We are in a win-streak for the Legion winning Atlantis. We have had many such streaks over the years. Swarm dominated in the early days, now Legion and Faceless seem to go back and forth for long streaks.  In an effort to encourage shorter winning streaks, we are going to try a new award structure for the next 6 months, and hopefully beyond.

Winners will receive a bonus for maintaining a streak, and a bigger bonus for breaking a streak.  If your team wins again, you will earn a 10% bonus for every consecutive win after the first win. If you break a team’s streak (or stop one from starting) your team will be awarded 20% bonus for every month that has passed since your last victory, minus 1 month. There will be a 200% cap on the bonus.

Why minus one month? We know people will game the system. We don’t want Legion and Faceless trading off victories every other month to trade the 20% bonus. In this model, if Legion has a 2 month streak, since the last Faceless win, both teams have a 20% bonus incentive to win the next Atlantis. Beyond 3 wins the bonuses are large enough that I think this makes an agreement to trade wins unlikely.

 For the next Atlantis:

If Legion wins, they will earn a 50% bonus for their 6-game winning streak (1st win to stop a faceless streak, plus 5 wins that followed (5 X 10%).

If Faceless wins they will earn an 80% bonus. The faceless last won in September.  Another team won Atlantis in the 5 months between (Oct, Nov, Dec, Jan, Feb). That is a multiplier of 4 (5-1).

If Swarm wins, they will earn a 200% bonus. 11 Atlantis victories have gone to other teams since their last victory.

Should there be a cap? Maybe not, but I’m unsure what will happen when 10 million plus a bonus 20 million qredits flood into the game for one faction.  I think a cap is good for now.

Since this is a “try it for 6 months and see” feature, all qredits will be awarded manually by me.  Please give me up to 3 days to manually award the qredits before emailing support.

 Maps

Blue Maps are going away. The map provider we have been using since QONQR Blue was release increased their pricing. It is now almost four times more expensive for maps than it was in December. The price is so expensive, we pay almost as much for blue maps as we pay to host all the other databases and servers to run QONQR.  The cost was so high, we actually lost money the past two months. QONQR hasn’t made enough money to cover even half my paycheck the past year, but this is the first time we’ve lost money two months in a row. Don’t worry about me. I’m working about 12-20 hours a week helping two clients with their software development. I’ll keep QONQR going as long as we can stop losing money. Shutting off the blue maps will fix the problem we had in January and February. I’ll evaluate new map options at some future date.

Forums

If you read the blog last fall, you know I’ve been on a personal quest to find a way to enjoy working on QONQR again. 2018 and 2019 were full of software development frustrating for me, which I won’t cover again here. Many discussions over the past 6 months both inside and outside of the game have all seemed to come back to the thing that has always made QONQR great: the people who play it.

In December I started to investigate creating forums that are part of the game.  By January I had determined it was going to be possible and spent the last two months working on them.

The new forums will be tied directly to your game account and will be part of the web portal. You will not be able to post or comment in the forums if you have not launched in the previous 24 hours. Reputation you gain in the forums may lead to game features being unlocked for your account in the future.

Every post and comment will have voting.  This voting will create a “Community Builder Score.” You can vote for something as being spam, trolling, vulgar, bad manners, disagree, agree, funny, or helpful.  The first four hurt the post/comment score the last four help it.  One note, the “disagree” vote is not bad. Debate that is done in a respectful way is good for a community.  If someone posts an idea you don’t like, you can disagree with it, but it won’t hurt the score of the post.  Healthy debate helps to build strong community. Bad comments, only affect the score of the comment, not the score of the parent post.

Google and Bing have “Safe Search” options. Our forums will have a similar setting, filtering out all posts and comments with a poor Community Builder Score. Users can opt to change this filter from Moderate to High, to see only posts that have the best score for positive content. Additionally, users may disable the filter to see everything. Disabling the filter will reset on the next login.

Toxic people on the forums often have reasonable complaints or ideas. The largest issue is that they often don’t moderate their language well. That unfortunately generates toxic responses, and it snowballs.  I have seen many times where someone had a legitimate complaint but expressed themselves in a super aggressive or abusive way.

I have a theory that no one will spend 20 minutes or more writing a long complaint about a feature or another player if no one will see it because it is immediately filtered out. Instead, I believe players will take more time to soften their language, ask questions rather than make accusations, and offer ideas for solutions rather than just complaints. All of these things can accomplish the same goal, but in a positive and constructive manner. This is what makes great community. This is my goal.

In previous forums, Moderators struggled on whether a post that had turned toxic should be deleted. The new forums will solve that problem.  If a post goes toxic, the bad comments will be hidden, while the post is still visible. Everyone can see the toxic posts and toxic comments by turning off the filter. The debate can continue and the scores may come back up.  The toxic stuff is hidden by default, but all content will always be available for those that want to see it. 

I firmly believe our community is what makes QONQR amazing. I always have. The old forums we had were a great place when they could be moderated closely. Once moderation took too much time, we lost control of the forums, which became filled with spam and vile arguments.  I have built this new system to allow the community to filter toxic content.  Because I built the forums from the ground up, we can make adjustments to the system and add more and more features to improve the value of the interaction.  The forums were a huge part of how QONQR developed such a strong community. We are bringing that back. Consider the forums a beta, or even a super baby beta. I know there are things that don’t work correctly yet. However I’m tired of being “almost ready.”  You can help me find the remaining bugs.  You will see a link on the portal menu for the forums once it is released.

 Oh, I suppose I should have mentioned this, since I started off the discussion of the forums this way. I’ve enjoyed the past 2 months. It is nice to be building new things again. It is nice to have passion for what is important to QONQR. The past two months have helped me enjoy what I do again.

See you on the forums.

-Scott (aka Silver)

[qonqr]

Small Updates

The level cap has been raised to 300.  That is all this blog post really needed to say. If you have read my blog, you know I’d never post anything that short, so filler content is below.

The XP leveling curve was modified a few years ago when the cap was raised to level 200.  With that change an exponential curve was introduced to really slow down the level sprint.  Rather than continue that curve, which may have resulted in over a year of play to get from level 210 to 211, we decided to go back to a linear curve.  The end goal was to end level 300 on a multiple of 5 million, with most levels above 200 ending on a nice big round number. With two small XP shifts in the linear line we achieved that goal. Level 240 hits 55 Million XP. Level 300 is at 115 Million XP.  It will probably take our most aggressive players 4-8 weeks to reach a new level going forward, through to level 300.

There are currently 154 players who have hit level 200.  All but 20 of them have played in the past 30 days.  There are no awards or benefits to leveling beyond 200, other than the warm feeling you will have from earning XP again. We will see you in the year 2030 when we plan to raise the level cap again.

In other QONQR related news. The past month saw two major updates for me, which resulted in probably nothing of notice for you.  I invested weeks of time in adding analytics everywhere in the server code.  I can now see exactly how much time every database call, API call, Google/Apple receipt verification, etc takes. In the future, should a new server update result in bad performance or the cloud suddenly start behaving badly, we should be able to quickly identify where the slow down is occurring.  This will be tremendously helpful if I need to contact Microsoft support if one of our databases is having an issue.  It also identified a few places where the server was doing extra work, that wasn’t really necessary for some API calls. These small optimizations makes the game play faster and saves us money.

 The second major update was updating of all our framework components for the iOS and Android apps.  The apps now contain 100% up-to-date support libraries for iOS and Android. Doing these updates is always a scary proposition. Often these updates are necessary to fix bugs that have been uncovered in the Apple or Google code, but with the updates often come new issues that need to be addressed.  The update took several days to complete and was an extremely frustrating process to work through all the conflicts that were introduced.  Hopefully the update will make your phone upgrade to Android 10 and iOS 13 go more smoothly.

We did force players to upgrade to version 3.3 earlier this month.  Following this update, we saw a significant drop in complaints of poor app performance. Download update 3.4 to make sure you are running the newest version of the app with all the additional new libraries.

For the next month, I plan to focus on additional stability changes. Our crash logs indicate that most issues with the 3.3 release were crashes that occurred deep in the Android and iOS system.  We hope that the new libraries in 3.4 address some of those bugs.  We will be watching the crash logs for the next month to see how Android 10 and iOS13 impact the app stability, as well as keep working to clean up any lingering issues before moving on to new feature development.

-Scott (aka Silver)

[qonqr]

When a Game becomes Family

Today, like any normal day, I sit alone in my home office. Being a solo indie game developer means that my colleagues are my players. They are the people I work with, the people in my brainstorm circle, those with whom I share successes, and the audience of my rants about the daily frustrations of building software.

Today I am feeling the emptiness of one less person in my virtual office.  Over the weekend, we lost TXMotley to the injuries he suffered in a motorcycle accident last week. 

This isn’t the first time we have lost a well-known QONQR player. Our little community has suffered the loss of others over the years. Through those times we grieved together and supported each other in various ways.  However, this was the first time the loss has touched me so closely.  For the past two years, I chatted with TXMotley nearly every day.  When I shared that I had gotten a task complete, he was often the first to like my post.   He was eager to test beta builds.  He gave direct and often brutal feedback on aspects of the game and new features. His input was passionate, and it was obvious how much he loved QONQR and the people who played it.  His willingness to invest his time and money in QONQR was as much about supporting something he enjoyed, as it was about investing in me, and my dream to build a business. TXMotley was interested in me as a person, how things were going and how I was doing.  He made a difference in my life.

I never met TXMotley.  If I had passed him on the street, I would have never known. However, it is obvious to me, that doesn’t matter in a community such as QONQR.  TXMotley was my friend. We talked about being self-employed, farming, football, construction, and our passion for power tools. How can you know so much about someone you have never met?

But… that is what QONQR is for many of us.  QONQR is our “other family.”  We share our struggles and triumphs with the people we have grown to know over the years. People whose reputation of us is based on what we’ve said and shared in the chats, and nothing more. QONQR is often a safe place for people to share their worries to a pseudo-anonymous group of friends. I’ve often been told, QONQR is the place some people can discuss things they can’t share with friends and family. Sometimes it’s the silly things only QONQR people “get”. Other times, the topic is more serious, and we need advice before sharing with our friends and family face to face.

There are so many things I feel are insufficient with QONQR. The list of game features I want to change or add is a mile long. To me, despite all the complexity, the game often feels incomplete and light. There is always so much more I want to do. I suppose that isn’t uncommon. We are all our own worst critics. We always want the stuff we do to be better.  I often look at the things in QONQR that frustrate both you and me, and think I should change the description in the App Store to, “You won’t like this game. We know it could be better.”

For you, the people reading this blog, you probably don’t like QONQR, you love it.  Very few people are in the middle ground.  However, the reason you love it is probably not just the game itself, but more about the people who play it.

It is an interesting phenomenon that communities gather around ideas or experiences, and while the idea or experience can be important, it is the personal relationships that become the most valuable part of being a member.  The community is the glue. The community keeps us coming back, holds us up, and keeps us going.

In my last blog post I talked about my desire to spend more time on our community. I struggle weekly with the knowledge that there are so many things I’d like to do with the game mechanics, while understanding it is the connection between our players that provides the most value in the experience. Most of the new players who quit QONQR, never made a connection to the community. We need to change that.  It is on the very long list of things to make QONQR better. Hopefully someday, we’ll be able to expose the real value of QONQR to new players sooner.

Years ago, after the loss of another well known player, we designed an in-game memorial.  We put in the time and effort to define what it would mean to create a memorial. How to create something meaningful, but not disruptive or confusing to people who never met the deceased, or had joined the game long after their death. It was a topic of discussion for weeks among my staff. 

Last weekend, going through the old forums, I found that one of our most active threads in the forums was one where people were passing on their condolences and sharing stories for MrBizzy, the first high profile QONQR player who unexpectedly passed away many years ago. It reminded me that we had created memorial plans. I decided this might be a smallish project I could take on while wrapping up the “idle time” during our server migration. Two days later, I heard about TXMotley’s accident. There was little doubt this was what I should be working on.  It may be the first time I worked so hard on a feature I hoped I wouldn’t need.

In the next app update (v3.2), you will be able to launch a salute as a tribute under the profile of deceased players. Your bots will not enter a zone, but will be memorialized on a special page for that player, on the web portal.  In the past, players have asked for a memorial zone, or a forced ceasefire. I think this feature is a good compromise. It is not a zone, and won’t confuse new players with an unusual zone that need explanation in the game. It gives players an outlet to launch their scope, in a meaningful way. In effect, the “lost launches” create a ceasefire for those that expend their bots in the memorial, rather than attacking on the map.

Memorials for players we have already lost or may lose in the future will be created by me, manually.  It is sad to think about it, but to reduce the risk of abuse, the management of memorials will be tight. Unfortunately, we had an incident in the past where a player faked their death in the game for monetary gain. It is frustrating that we must watch for such behavior, but we will. Email support if you have more questions.

TXMotley was a registered organ donor. His death will be a lifesaving gift for several people. Please consider being an organ donor.  Please donate blood. Signup to be a bone marrow donor at BeTheMatch.com. My marrow donation was easy and pain-free.  Let TXMotley set the example of how we can save the life of another. Register, volunteer, and donate today.

I wish comfort and peace for the friends and family that TXMotley left behind. Through teary eyes I smile to think that he is looking down on me right now with a smirk saying, “I finally got Silver to build a new feature.”

-Scott (aka Silver)

[qonqr]

Fall Clean Up

Today I woke up an hour earlier than usual, and I awoke thinking about new code.  I honestly can’t tell you the last time I felt like getting up to write code, instead of going back to bed. It must be at least a year or more.

For most of the past month, I purposely avoided writing much code for QONQR.  Partly this was out of necessity. With the newly migrated server code, it is important not to add too much new code while waiting to see what was broken in the migration.  Surprisingly, less broke than I expected. There was a multi-day scramble to fix some android subscription and PayPal receipt confirmation issues, but most of the other things were minor and took only a few hours to track down.  The migration was far more stable than I anticipated.  It is rare that 8 months of work is released all at once with so few issues. 

Another very positive outcome (so far): the old mission server stopped counting launches, but the new one kept going. Hopefully we have seen the last of missions that get stuck.

The other reason for writing so little code was I needed a break from QONQR, as I alluded to in my previous blog post.  However, I promptly overfilled that time with way too much other work.  I coach a high school robotics team. Last week I took six students from the team on a 4-hour road trip to one of the largest tech conferences in the Midwest. There we put on an all-day camp where kids built small Raspberry Pi robots, using 3D printed and laser cut parts I designed. I spent much of my last month learning CAD, creating assemblies, writing robot code, and testing the parts and code our students would use to teach kids how to make robots. Like many entrepreneurs, taking a break doesn’t mean sitting around, but rather working on someone else’s problem.  Working with the students to create a robotics camp was a chance to learn some new skills and accomplish new goals. The team is already planning our next camp this fall.

So today, the second day back from the conference, I woke with new energy. Energy for our community. I’m going to do my best to keep that forward momentum and try to spend at least part of every week working on community stuff.  I firmly believe that the QONQR community is why this game has survived so long.  More on that in a bit.

But first a word from our anti-hacker department (also me). If you use an app cloner, auto-clicker, root cloak, GPS spoofer, hit our API from your own software, or any other attempt to cheat or manipulate the information about your device, you will be banned. Stop emailing support asking for the account you used for 4 years be unbanned because you didn’t realize it was against the rules to clone the app so you can try to multi-scope. When you attempt to clone QONQR, you are decompiling our app and modifying it. Regardless if you think this is cheating our not because “Android makes it possible without rooting your phone”. You, the human behind the device, violated our terms of service and copyright. All your accounts are banned, not just the accounts on the hacked software.

As part of my “fall cleanup” tasks, I am finally moving our DNS.  This process began yesterday and will take a week. Once complete, the old servers will be shut down, and everyone will be using the new servers. Please review my previous blog post for how that will impact the mobile clients. Here is the short list.

QONQR classic no longer supported

Android 4.4 no longer supported

Windows Phone, might break completely and won’t be fixed

Chat and sync lock mini-game definitely broken on Windows Phone

Another clean-up task that is long overdue is to take down the forums. If you didn’t know there were forums, don’t worry, very little good content has been posted in them for years.  The monthly cost of the forums wasn’t painful enough for me to take action on them before and there was some good content in the forums that I was reluctant to lose. It wasn’t until I had to avoid QONQR code, that I could invest time in the old forums.

Over the weekend I was able to get a dump of the forums database. With several hours of database querying, I was able to identify nearly 24,000 spam posts, which was about 1/3 of the total content.  This was the problem with the forums. It was impossible to create a good integration between the 3rd party forums and our player database. We tried once, it was expensive and broke with the very next forums upgrade. The forums were impossible to manage because we didn’t have good control of the users. In the end the forums failed because it was overrun by bad people. By the way, the creators of the forum software promote their “spam filtering” plugin, which I did have enabled.

Part of my invigoration this morning is that as I was going through the database, I saw the names of our very first players, with whom I spent hours chatting with on the forums. I saw suggestions for game features and advice given to fellow players who were struggling. I saw tutorials, art, stories, and invitations to meetup in person. I saw a connection to the broader community that I haven’t had in a long time.

I want to have a new forums site. One that we fully control. Forums where you can only post if you have launched today. Forums with abuse systems that allow the community to self-manage poor content, and consequences for behaving badly. I dream of players gaining reputation for having a positive effect on the community, and points for helping fellow players find solutions to their problems. I want those who give substantial positive impact in the forums to have recognition for that in the game.

This is a huge effort, one which I am reluctant to undertake with the other goals I had hoped to accomplish this year.  However, the prospect has me excited and I want to capitalize on that energy, which I haven’t had in a very long time. Will we have new forums this year? I doubt it. Maybe we will never have the forums I want.  However, I’ve been reminded that our community is key to QONQR’s success and will try to spend a little time each week on community initiatives. 

If there is anything you want off the old forums, grab it this week.  I have an archive of the forums and will be saving the fan art, fan fiction, and other stuff worth keeping. Not sure what I will do with it yet.  Don’t post anything new in the forums, I won’t be pulling a new snapshot.

Sometimes you need to go back to the beginning to find your way forward. Thanks for being part of QONQR. Thanks for making an impact.

-Scott (aka Silver)

[qonqr]

The Migration from Hell

TLDR:

A new update will be out today

This upgrade/migration was very difficult

Expect some small issues over the next few weeks

Some older phones won’t work anymore, after the migration is complete

Greetings QONQR players. It has been several months since my last blog update. I hope my absence hasn’t created too much concern.

In early winter I began undergoing a massive migration effort on our servers. This followed a 4-month effort to accomplish a similar upgrade of our iPhone and Android clients to move to the new platform recommended for cross platform mobile development.

The server migration was excruciating to say the least.  For the technical folks in the crowd, we moved to the modern Web Application hosting model in Microsoft Azure, from the Classic Cloud Services model. This included a migration from ASP MVC 4 to ASP.Net Core.

For the non-technical folks, image that you built a custom car five years ago following the instructions published by a big electric car company, using mostly that company’s parts. Now said car company says that if you want to keep getting replacement batteries, you need to make some changes to your car. BUT don’t worry, you can re-use almost all of the parts.  Then you find out, that bolts are no longer allowed to connect the parts, and some new fasteners are needed. Some parts need to be moved from the front to the back of the car. You need to change out the engine start button on the dash to a thumb print reader on the gear shift. Also, the car must be re-assembled from the top down, which requires scaffolding to hold the car up as you build it. Now imagine that some of the new instructions are missing a few critical steps and you need to email support, which takes several days, to get to a solution. Also imagine that other instructions are complete, but the example diagrams are only samples of how to put things together, but you would never do it that way if your goal was to ever drive the car over 30 mph (and it doesn’t note that important detail).

This effectively describes my last 6 months.  Almost none of the logic on the server changed, the code parts were for the most part the same, yet it took months to connect my software to Microsoft’s new services and restructure the code to fit the new runtime requirements. All the while, avoiding the many mistakes in Microsoft’s documentation or avoiding the bad architecture advice that hurts the security and scalability we had in the old model.

I’ve talked to a few game developers over the years who had built a profitable game, but let it “die” or removed it from the store while many people were still playing it. In almost every case, the developer(s) reason for ending the game was because they couldn’t afford to do the upgrade that would be needed to keep the game going. Like with version 2 (QONQR Blue), I was too damned stubborn to abandon the game, and forced my way through the upgrade.

It was awful, and I can see how others have been smart enough not to try it. Software developers want to be creating new stuff, being innovative, overcoming challenges and solving problems they created themselves. Working to upgrade a large system has almost no innovation, requires reworking old stuff, and deals almost entirely with solving problems someone else (Microsoft, Apple, Google) created.  In many companies, a sure way to lose your best software developers is to make them spend months doing exactly this.

I’ve been very honest with my friends the past few months, and I’ve always done my best to be candid with my QONQR players.  The past year of migrations and upgrades, dealing with Apple, Google, and Microsoft’s terrible documentation and awful mobile platforms have destroyed my love of writing software. The industry has been flooded with “best practices” that make the easy things easier, and the hard things much, much harder. Ironically many of these “best ways to do things” hurt security on the mobile devices and reduce performance on the servers. It has been very difficult to fit within the “new way” of doing things, but keep our app secure, fast, and scalable.

What’s next for the app?

The new server hosting should save us money in our hosting costs and should support more users.  Some new features I hope to add in the future, were not supported in the old architecture.

The new servers are running now and a new QONQR app is in the stores for Android and iOS, version 3.1. I have decided to benchmark this as a major update, despite most the changes being on the server.

The new and old servers will run in parallel for a few weeks or months. Old apps will continue to connect to the old servers for now.  The new app has an option in settings that will allow you to connect to the old server if we find a bug impacts some users on the new server.

Android 4.4 and below will not be supported with the new app.  The security issues with 4.4 are too significant and the operating system is now 5 versions and 6 years behind the current Android version.

iPhone 5 and up will be supported for now, but that may change to iPhone 5S and up before the end of the year.

We think most features in Windows Phone will continue to work with the new servers once the old servers are shut down.  We are not testing WP anymore. Two things we know will not work are chat and the SyncLock protection mini-game.  It is unclear how much longer we will allow Window Phone clients to connect to the servers. Microsoft is officially discontinuing support for Windows Phone in 6 months. If the new server migration breaks the ability to launch and harvest on Windows Phone, that will be the end of our support for WP.

Chat and the SyncLock mini-game will not work between the new and old clients.  The new services for “live” connections are very different and I have not found a way to support old connections with the new services.  This will be a pain point we simply need to deal with during the migration.

Many new Android phones are flagged as tablets in the version 2.X version of the app.  This restriction is be removed in the 3.1 version.

What is next for Silver?

I need to find a way to enjoy this again. What makes QONQR great is the people who contribute positively to the community.  Perhaps I need to spend more time in the chat rooms just hanging out and chatting.  Maybe I need to work on something completely tangential to QONQR, such as finally shutting down the old forums that are plagued with Russian spam and moving to a new system. Maybe I should work on making it easier to crowdsource updates to the several languages QONQR support. Perhaps I need to spend some time cleaning up duplicate zones. Maybe I need to go fishing once a week.  I am looking for ways I can enjoy writing code again.

I hope this new server migration goes smoothly.  The sooner I can stop working on old problems, the sooner we can all get on to new and more exciting features.  Please bear with me as we work through the final migration issues.

Thanks for supporting QONQR.

-Scott (aka Silver)

[qonqr]

Retiring QONQR Classic and Old Devices

Greetings players,

The first Atlantis with an alternate start time revealed a few minor bugs with the switch, but we fixed those for next month.  Last month, we posted a survey that asked if players felt we should alternate Atlantis Tournaments between noon and midnight UTC; or noon, midnight, 6 am and 6 pm UTC.  The vote was almost perfectly split on these two options.  As a result, we may choose an alternative: noon, 6 pm, and midnight UTC.  90% of the current player-base live in the US and Europe, with 45% being in the US.  These three times will give us the best rotation of times for most of our players, and the odd number of rotations will allow us to alternate Traditional vs Duel Atlantis tournaments, giving each start time a different Atlantis type each month.

The QONQR app update last month included a major update to our code platform.  Some players (depending on your phone) may have noticed a significant improvement in speed.  Now it is time to make a similar change on the server.  Our server code last underwent a major architectural update in 2014.  Being significantly behind on many of the latest updates, we are missing out on some cost savings, as well as the ability to easily add some new services.  We are beginning that major update now, and how to have it complete by the end of November or early December

With this new update comes two major changes.  We are ending support for QONQR Classic.  QONQR Classic uses an entirely separate API to talk to the server.  We are not planning to migrate this API to the new server platform.  Also, the public API currently used by a dozen developers to support the list of available partner websites is being replaced.  We have already implemented a replacement for the public API. A daily dump file in CSV is available for players to download.  The developers currently using the public API are already working with the new files.

What does this mean?

QONQR Classic won’t work anymore. This also means many old devices will no longer be supported. Windows Phone 7 users will need to upgrade their device soon, if they wish to continue playing QONQR.  iPhone 4 users will face the same need for a new phone.  Finally, even though QONQR classic isn’t available on Android, Android users with a device running Android 4.4 will be disconnected from the service.  Android 4.4 (and below) is full of security holes.  Several months ago, we stopped releasing new “QONQR: World in Play” updates for phones running Android 4.4 because it was not supported by some of our new code.  As a result, players with Android 4.4 are stuck on a version of QONQR that is many months old.  It is becoming a problem to have players on such an old version with no ability to update the app.  We will end access for that old version soon.  Therefore, Android 4.4 users will also need to find a new device.

We realize these changes may leave some legitimate players behind until they can upgrade their devices, but we believe the change will eliminate a significant number of multi-scope accounts.

There is another positive side effect that may not be obvious to all players.  The public API can no longer be used to notify players that their zone has been attacked within minutes.  Public data will only be available once every 24 hours.  This will give new players more time to experience the game before being clobbered by veterans.  It will also give well-coordinated groups a large window to create a big push into an enemy zone.  The daily file currently runs a few minutes after midnight UTC.  Plan your coordinated attacks with this in mind.

We hope these new changes for the API are done in November, but realistically, the changes could push into December.  Hopefully, this notice gives any new players who need a new phone the time they need to find a new device.

We know many players have stayed on QONQR Classic because of the faster map, bases list, and more convenient access to the wire.  We addressed the faster map in the last client update and will work to address the other items in the client after the server update.

While it is frustrating for players to see few new features occurring during these months of major platform updates, hopefully it gives you confidence about the investments we are making in the future.  Many games have simply shutdown when faced with the need to do a major platform upgrade.  We are betting the investment will be worth it.

Thanks for your continued support.

-Scott (aka Silver)

[qonqr]

Old Bots and New Atlantis Start

In our previous blog post, we shared our desire to open up the map and make it easier for new players to join the game. Currently, the game suffers in many parts of the world by areas that are 100% locked down by a single faction.

As our first step towards that goal, we have increased the shield decay from a maximum of 50% to a max of 60%. Shields will continue to decrease by 1% for every day a player has been gone, after their initial 30-day grace period. At the end of 90 days, a player’s shields will be decreased by the maximum of 60%. Additionally, all players who have been gone from the game more than 90 days will be moved to the top of the batting order, ahead of active players. Their bots will be hit first by enemy attacks. Seekers are the only exception. Seekers will always be hit first by incoming attacks.

NOTE: With most server updates, QONQR seamlessly deploys new code with no downtime. Occasionally we deploy new code, roll back to old code temporarily to address an issue, then deploy again. Users rarely notice when an update has occurred because of our seamless process. However those players that begin hitting old zones with retired players will definitely notice. If you are hitting a retired player, but then suddenly go back to active players, don’t worry. We are probably just working to address an issue and the old bots will bubble to the top as soon as we do another update.

Another change that is coming in the next server update is a change to the Atlantis start time. For years, our players in Europe and Asia have suffered through very late nights to search for Atlantis and defend it to the last minute. This new update will allow us to start Atlantis at noon UTC. We are planning to start October’s Atlantis at noon UTC. This is 8:00 AM in Eastern Daylight Time in the US, 5:00 AM Pacific Daylight Time in the US, and 10 PM in Sydney, Australia.  

In a week or two, a new client update for iPhone and Android will show you the Atlantis start time on the Atlantis page. Windows Phone and QONQR classic players will not receive this update. Check the web portal or ask a friend to confirm the Atlantis start times going forward. The old clients are hard coded to assume Atlantis starts at midnight.

Also, in the next client update for iPhone and Android, the map speed has been improved. The ability to quickly scan zones has always been one feature that has kept many of our veteran iPhone players on QONQR classic. The new “World in Play” app has the same map performance as QONQR Classic in the new update.

Over the summer, we completed a significant upgrade effort to our iPhone and Android code. This upgrade was held back for much of the past year because Windows Phone 8 was not supported in the newest version of the software we use. Once Microsoft announced the end of Windows Phone, we were able to stop building new features for Windows Phone, and then move forward with the needed updates. The new apps for iOS and Android should see some additional speed improvements on most phones. Our early testers are reporting that the apps do seem more “snappy.” With all upgrades come new bugs. We are working to close those out in the next week so we can get the new apps in your hands soon.

These upgrades are also necessary to prepare for iOS 12. In our history, iOS 6, 7, 9, and 11 all broke our app in some way, usually in a significant way. Apple has a terrible reputation for breaking apps and failing to maintain backwards compatibility. If you have been an iPhone user long enough, you have likely experienced many of your apps have issues after an iOS update. Running on the latest upgrades gives us the best chance to avoid major issues.

Finally, as part of our major update, we were forced to change the way we handle localization of the apps into other languages. This was a significant effort because it affects every piece of text in the app. Currently “QONQR: World in Play” is in seven languages. In recent weeks, we have received emails from players in 3 new countries volunteering to help us translate the app into new languages. The international player base has grown at a fast pace over the previous year. Our rewrite of the localization management should make it possible to improve our translation process, so language updates can happen more quickly and new languages are simpler to add.

As always, thanks for your continued support of QONQR.

-Scott (aka Silver)

[qonqr]

Subscriptions and Secondary Missions

**UPDATE: Android version 2.17.1615.3142 has working subscriptions. iOS will show the subscription option on the bank page, once Apple approves the subscription.  Subscription approval it taking longer than the app approval.

Last summer, a group of players approached me to request a game update.  In addition to the usual requests of doing more about mutli-scopers, they asked for a way to level the playing field so that a group of small spenders could put up a decent fight against a single big spender.

The development of the Mini-game and changes to Sync-Lock were moved to the top of the feature list following that discussion.  When the mini-game was released earlier this year, we started on the second part.

In the app update today, players will have the option to purchase a monthly subscription.  Buying a monthly subscription for $4.99 will give players 1 cube every day they login and deploy bots.  The cube is awarded on the first launch after midnight UTC.  If you play every day, that is only $0.17 per cube.  In addition, all subscribers will receive bonus cubes on every purchase between the 1 cube and 100 cube purchase points.

Players who purchase the 500 cube pack get their cubes for $0.20 each.  Subscribers will not pay more than $0.25 per cube, no matter what price point they purchase.  We will add enough extra cubes to their purchase to ensure they receive this better price per cube.  For example: The $4.99 cube pack will give subscribers 20 cubes instead of 10 for non-subscribers.

Players willing to spend $100 at a time to buy cubes will still see the best price point for a cube pack. We believe there should always be an incentive for those willing to spend big.  However we have taken steps to significantly reduce the gap between several small spenders and one big spender.  We hope this addresses some of the concerns we heard last year.

Subscribers will also unlock another mission slot.  In the Mission Center, a new Secondary Mission slot is available.  Players may start up to 2 Primary and 2 Secondary missions per day.  

For non-subscribers on Android and iPhone, a new option will exist to watch a video ad to unlock the Secondary Mission slot.  This Ad model is a new concept for us.  Please be patient as we figure out the systems and tune the experience.  This may be especially true for countries outside the United States.  We aren’t sure what to expect with the availability of video ads outside the US.

For subscribers who don’t want to use iTunes or Google Play subscription (or can’t because you are on a Windows Phone), you can do a one-time (non-renewing) subscription purchase for $49.99 on the web portal.  This will cover your subscription for 12 months.

Windows Phone

Unfortunately there wasn’t a good video ad option available for Windows Phone, but the sad news doesn’t end there.  Microsoft has officially ended developer support for Windows Phone 8.1 apps.  As you may know from several previous blog posts. We kept QONQR on 8.1 because many phones did not receive the WP10 update.  Now, we are forced to either expend tremendous resources to migrate the app to WP10, or sunset it.  Since Microsoft has announced that WP10 is the end of the line for the platform, we have decided at this time not to upgrade, but rather sunset.  It is possible this may be the last update for Windows Phone, but we have no plans to turn off the platform.  Your Windows Phone will continue to do everything it does today.

Next Focuses

Mini-Game Improvements

In our next release, we hope to address some issues in the Mini-game. We need to make the distance checks more reliable, give players more explanation of GPS issues, improve server performance, and extend player protection for players that consistently prove they are not multi-scopers.

Unlocking the Stagnation

Additionally, we are spending more time contemplating cities and large areas that are “locked down”.  Areas that are nearly 100% dominated by a single faction for dozens or hundreds of miles are no fun.  We would like to see “territorial domination” look more like 80%, rather than 100%.  To accomplish  that goal, we will be looking at ways to open up the stagnation in some areas.  We anticipate there will be players that may still be able to maintain 100% control, but we want them to aggressively and actively fight to do so, rather than lightly babysitting their massive zones.

Summer Vacation

I’m actually going to be taking some time off this summer for the first time in nearly 6 years.  We have a few short trips planned for college visits, as our first will be off to college in a year.  And I’m very excited about a late summer class.  A family member wants to build a timber framed home with timbers and wooden pegs (no nails or screws in the big frames).  Many years ago, I was a licensed home builder, so construction is a passion.  I’m excited to spend a week helping him and learn how to build a building the way my great-grandfather built the barn on my family farm.

Needless to say, features may slow down over the summer, but we’ll do what we can.

As always, thanks for your continued support.

-Scott (aka Silver)

[qonqr]

New Atlantis, iPads, and Naughty Profile Pictures

In case you missed it, we posted a survey about what players liked and disliked  about the April Fools Atlantis.  Based on the survey results, we found that most people enjoyed the variety, thought the new rules used in April were mostly good, and most players wanted to see Atlantis rotate among a variety of tournament styles.

So, we went in to the code and made some changes.  We have implemented the ability to create multiple tournament layouts, launch rules, and a delayed start time.  This month, May, will be a tournament similar to the April Fools rules.  Most notably, the bottom three zones for each faction allow a pair of launches in each zone, one offense and one defense. A player suggested we call this tournament a “dual duel,” but we decided to just name it “Duel”.  This is the first style of tournament to join the long standing rules, which we are calling a “Traditional” Atlantis.

After all three factions find Atlantis, you will now find a “Rules” tab above the map on the web portal. https://portal.qonqr.com/Atlantis

The rules for launching into each zone will be defined there.  For this month, the Duel Tournament will have the same rules as the April Fools Atlantis, except the top zone for each faction will not be restricted to only Elite players.

We will attempt to add another Atlantis tournament style or two by the end of the year.  We will also work on client updates for Atlantis to show more information about the tournament type and zones rules on your phones.

Additionally, we have changed the server code so that Atlantis can start at a time other than midnight UTC.  This has been a long time request of our players in Europe and Asia.  Look for an Atlantis that will start at noon (12:00 pm) UTC in the coming months.

iPads

iPads have long been a trouble device for QONQR.  The problem with iPads is that they are a huge source of multi-scoping.  Some people have access to many iPads, whether in a classroom, a testing lab or retail checkout counters.  In such scenarios, a single individual can play with dozens of accounts during a major battle. We attempted to disallow iPads from playing QONQR two years ago, and Apple rejected our app stating that every iPhone application must run on an iPad.  We dealt with this issue by putting players in overheat if they played from an iPad using QONQR 2.0.

Today we released code that only allows an iPad to work if players have launched from a phone using the same account in the previous 24 hours.  We think this is the best of both worlds.  Many of our players spend their evenings on their iPads and don’t want to find their phone to keep playing QONQR.  Several of our players suffer from poor eyesight and need the larger display an iPad offers.  One launch a day from your phone, and your iPad is activated for 24 hours.  We think this change will remove a number of multiscopers.

We are looking into ways to enable Android tablets in a similar fashion. But this will take longer to figure out since there are so many more devices and Android Oreo introduced many bugs where devices are now reporting the wrong screen size.

Profile Pictures

Last week, we added our first bit of Artificial Intelligence to QONQR by leveraging some machine learning to analyze your profile pictures when you upload them.  Microsoft has been working on image detection for a number of years. Some of you have seen their web site that guesses how old you are, or maybe even the “Deal With It” bot.

We have implemented this same machine learning technology to look for pornographic and racy photos.  In the past, this was a manual process that required human judgement and often a player to voice a complaint.  Going forward, we will now have preemptive alerting when someone uploads a penis, vagina, or boobs (and a few other inappropriate categories) as their profile picture.  Our policy remains the same; adult content will be removed and your ability to change your photo permanently blocked. Racy or crude photos will be removed with a friendly request from support to choose a less offensive photo.

I will close out this post with a picture of a map, because who doesn’t like maps?   We are exploring some new map analysis software to help us understand saturation issues and areas where it is nearly impossible for new players to gain any traction when they join the game.

This map shows all 1x1 latitude and longitude boxes. The color shows the faction who holds the most zones in the box. They may control only 1 more zone than the next closest faction, or may control all zones.  This particular map doesn’t show a level of dominance in the box, just who has the lead by zone count. We hope you enjoy it.

-Scott (aka Silver)