News

Obsidian Portal joins the OpenID Revolution

August 11, 2008 03:32

It’s been in the back of our minds for a long time, and we’ve finally set aside the time to make it happen. Starting today, you can register and log in on Obsidian Portal using your very own OpenID!

For those who are scratching their heads right now, OpenID is a wonderfully convenient way of logging into thousands of your favorite websites without the hassle of remembering dozens of usernames and passwords. With an OpenID, you just remember one set of credentials and can get in anywhere you see the OpenID logo ( ).

Best of all, many of you already have OpenIDs and don’t even know it. If you have a MySpace, AOL/AIM, Yahoo, LiveJournal, or Flickr account (among many others) then you’re in the club. To find the right provider for you, check out the OpenID provider listing.

If you’re already an Obsidian Portal member, you can add your OpenID on your account edit screen. For our brand new visitors, just use your OpenID to log in and you’ll be up and running in no time!

Always room for more maps!

August 04, 2008 03:06

Many people have been having problems uploading maps, so we put in a long weekend and made several updates to the map processing. Uploads should be much faster, and (fingers-crossed) things should be smoother overall.

If you do happen to get an error on upload, we’ve updated the error reporting so that in many cases you’ll get better feedback. If it makes no sense, copy and paste the error message into an email and send it to us at support@obsidianportal.com We’re determined to stamp out these map upload bugs!

On a complete tangent, when you get a chance, head on over to the ENnies voting booth and vote for our good friend Yax from Dungeon Mastering!

Server Problems

August 01, 2008 19:23

Over the past 24 hours you may have noticed the down for maintenance page on Obsidian Portal. Unfortunately we’ve been experience both web server issues and had a database crash as well…

The bad news is that we had to restore our database from a backup that was last taken on July 31 at 11:00 PM Eastern Time. That means we have data loss period or approximately 12 hours from between July 31 at 11:00 PM Eastern through Aug 1 at 11:00 AM Eastern Time.

The good news is that we’re back up and running now and should be solid and that we’re actively working to restore as much missing information in that 12 hour window as possible. If we do successfully retrieve this information, we will be contacting each person individually. We are also looking into steps to prevent such a large window between backups in the future.

As always, thanks for using the site and feel free to contact us or discuss in the forums :)

Cheaper Subscriptions and The Big Map

July 29, 2008 01:57

Update Note: For all the new people, you can sign up and use the site for free. If you want some extra features (more maps, no ads, etc.), you can upgrade to a paying subscription. The site is perfectly usable without paying, although we sure do appreciate our paying subscribers!

First of all, we’ve reduced our subscription prices for long term subscribers. Some have complained that our prices were too high, so we’ve added some extra subscription options to help save money. Simply sign up for a longer term and save a chunk of change, up to $20 at the yearly level. To subscribe (or upgrade your current subscription) just login, go to your profile page, and click on the Account tab. Choose whichever option you want and you’re set!

Next up, there are a lot of lonely players looking for a campaign to join. To help out with this, we have added The Big Map! This map shows the location of all the campaigns on Obsidian Portal that have supplied address info. Zoom in on your city to find ones in your area. Plus, check the “looking for players” box at the bottom and you can specifically limit your search to only campaigns that have open spots. Find one near you and send a private message to the GM. In no time you’ll be rolling the dice.

On the other hand, if you’re a GM and need some players, be sure to check the “looking for players” box on the campaign edit screen and add an address for your game.

The full URL to the map is: http://www.obsidianportal.com/map Pass it along to anyone who is looking for a game to join.

We’ve got a lot of irons in the fire right now, and we’re hoping to deliver some pretty cool features in the coming weeks and months. I don’t want to jinx it by saying too much too soon, but it’s an exciting time! Keep checking back to see what’s new.

A word from our sponsors (we have some now!)

June 30, 2008 02:40

Wow, it’s been a long weekend of writing code! We’ve deployed several features recently, including quick link-lookups for NPCs and wiki pages when you’re editing a wiki page. This makes it much, much easier to link to your NPCs and other pages. Rather than hunting for the right text, just select the NPC or page you want and paste the text that appears.

Next, we’ve added tags to wiki pages and adventure log posts. The idea is to make it easier for GMs to organize their wikis into logical units. You’re free to create your own tags and organize your wiki as you choose. Hopefully, some best practices will emerge and we can single out some of the better ways to organize things.

After that, we’ve worked on some incremental improvements to searching. We’re making it faster and better, plus there are plans to consolidate everything (characters, campaigns, you-name-it) under a single master search interface. We’re not there yet, but we’re making progress.

Finally, and most excitingly, we have secured sponsorship for the featured campaigns! Now, instead of simply getting a pat on the back, you’ll get a pat on the back plus some schwag! We got our first shipment of books in the mail last week, and we’re eager to send them right back out to all of you. We’ll be announcing the first winner within a day or two, so keep watching the featured campaign block! Think yours deserves the top spot? Then let us know!

We're still here

May 27, 2008 01:41

This is just a quick update to let everyone that we’re still here. Ryan and I have been sucked into our real jobs and haven’t had much time to work on the site. Still, we’re here and listening, so keep posting.

In the meantime, we’ve made a few updates, like fixing a bug with comments and a bug with the NPC tags. These were reported in the forums, which is the best way to alert us to problems or new features you’d like to see.

Also, we’re bringing back the Featured Campaign! It’s been a long time since we’ve updated, and there are a lot of great campaigns out there, so we’re promising to work harder to make sure that everyone gets their time in the limelight.

Like we said last time, make sure you join our facebook group and friend us on myspace!

Updates galore

April 18, 2008 04:06

There have been numerous updates over the past two weeks, we just never got around to mentioning them in the news until now.

First and foremost are the “Latest Updates” displays you’ll see everywhere. We now track and display much of the activity going on for the site. We’re still tweaking to find the right mixture of updates. Most of the updates have associated RSS feeds, and eventually they all will. Now, it’s very easy to keep track of what’s going on with your friends and your favorite campaigns.

Second, we’ve added a WYSIWYG editor to many of the fields (like wiki and adventure log entries) that has nice formatting controls (buttons and such) to help you make everything look clean and neat. Edit your profile and select the WYSIWYG editor box. WARNING!! This should be a campaign-wide decision since it works terribly if some of your players use it and some don’t. Read more in the forums.

Third, we’ve added campaign-wide comments. Often, you want to discuss the campaign as a whole, rather than a particular adventure log entry. Now, simply click on the comments tab, and speak your mind. We’re looking for a better way to integrate this, but we wanted to get it rolled out ASAP.

Fourth, we’ve added a special tag you can insert into your Adventure Log posts to make them automatically shrink to a teaser for the main blog view, with a link to the full post. Learn how to do it from the forum post.

Fifth, we’ve updated the search engine so hopefully the search will run much faster and have better search results.

Sixth, we’ve updated the layout for your friends page to be a little cleaner (profile layout updates coming soon).

Finally, for all the techies, we have started supporting microformats, specifically hCard and XFN. For the non-techies, don’t worry about it too much. At this stage, it’s mostly just a neat toy to play with.

Also, in an effort to keep the Obsidian Portal community connected even more we’ve created both a Facebook Group as well as a MySpace Profile. They’re pretty basic right now, but will be getting major updates of the next couple of weeks.

There are a lot of great campaigns out there, so keep the updates coming. Oh,and don’t forget to link to your campaign from your other sites (and forum sigs)!

What a gorgeous avatar you have

March 24, 2008 02:39

Obsidian Portal has teamed up with AvatarArt to provide custom artwork for your campaign. It’s a win-win-win situation: you get great imagery (and a discount), AvatarArt gets more customers, and Obsidian Portal gets a commission to help us keep the site running.

If you’re interested (and you will be once you see the quality), check out the AvatarArt details page. The sooner you act, the sooner your character steps out of the shadows of your imagination and appears in full color for all to see.

Update 2008-03-26: We’ve had reports that some of the contact e-mails are being blocked by spam filters. So, if you request to be contacted, make sure to keep an eye on your spam folder.

Whoa, what happened?

March 15, 2008 12:08

As you can no doubt tell, we’ve had some big changes recently. We’ve opened up the layout a bit to allow more space, added some new design elements, and even managed to stick in subscriptions. Heck, we even brought back the search feature, just to add to the mix.

Since we’re trying to do like 10 things at once (which, I’ll admit, is usually a bad idea), there are bound to be a few hiccups. Please be patient and let us know when and how things go wrong.

Also, the site might experience some slowness now that search is back. We’ve tried to reconfigure the search service to be less of a hog, but we have yet to see if it works in live mode. We will be watching it closely and tweaking it to be nicer as we go along.

Updates Postponed

March 15, 2008 05:53

We tried to roll out some new features last night, but found a few crippling bugs that didn’t show up until we moved the code to the live server. We’ve pulled the new changes out until we can figure out what the problems are. It shouldn’t be more than a couple days until we’re ready. Thanks for being patient!

Big changes to the wikis! README!

March 15, 2008 05:53

We’ve just rolled out a really giant change to the wikis. Instead of having separates wikis for the GM and players, we have merged both wikis into one. Each page has two sections, public and GM-only. The public section is viewable by anyone and can be edited by any campaign member. By contrast, the GM-only section can only be seen or edited by the GM. In addition, the GM can set an entire page as GM-only and that will make it completely invisible to the rest of the world.

As part of the process, all of the data from each GM wiki page has been moved to the party wiki. In most cases, each page is transferred directly by creating a new, GM-only page in the party wiki. However, in the case where a page already exists with the same name (such as the Main Page), then the GM wiki page data is copied into the GM-only section on the corresponding page in the player wiki. All your wiki links will still work like you expect.

If you have any questions or comments about the change, please comment on the thread in the forums. If you experience any problems, report them immediately!

Comments...finally!

March 15, 2008 05:53

We finally got around to adding comments to the adventure log posts. It’s a crucial feedback feature to let you, the author, know what people think about your stuff. Of course, the most important feedback any of us gets is the response from the others in our actual gaming group, but it’s good to hear from the RPG community as a whole, too.

GM’s and players have the final say over all comments and can freely delete any comments left on their posts. So, be civil, or don’t be surprised if your comments just mysteriously disappear.

On a side note, we also tidied up the wiki page list view to separate Adventure Log posts from simple wiki pages. This was suggested by AvatarArt in the forums. As always, the squeaky wheel gets the grease, so keep the suggestions coming!

A little more speed

March 15, 2008 05:53

We just made some more changes that will hopefully speed things up. There were a few hiccups while getting it running, so I apologize to anyone that got caught in the middle of the update. It worked great on our test machine, but went crazy on the live machine.

Everything is working now, and it should be much faster than before.

A thousand gamers can't all be wrong

March 15, 2008 05:53

This past week we signed up our 1000th user. It’s been almost a year since we first started accepting signups, and things are really humming along. We’ve managed to slowly but steadily add new features, all the while trying to improve and enhance the features we already offer.

We’d like to thank all of you for giving us the benefit of the doubt. The site would be an empty shell without all the great campaigns and material people are putting up. So, if you all keep updating your campaigns, we’ll keep working on the site!

P.S. We also just added “next” and “previous” links on the adventure logs. As usual, the idea came straight from the forums.