Lanzer's Work Diary

[Lanzer]

• 01/15/2024 A mod asked for a feature to enable trading pass for perk and angel subscribers.  It was a simple enough feature so I slipped in the feature quickly on Friday night, but "quick fix" and subscription system absolutely don't mix.  I omitted one line when copying my test code to the subscription system, and it made all subscription requests fail for the past 2 days.  Trying to save half an hour ended up causing 8 hours of recovery. 
  
• 01/16/2024 Updated the subscription backend once again so my stupid mistakes won't cause large errors, and added more logging so that we can recover subscriptions if things fail.
  
• 01/17/2024 Big overhaul of the Angel Subscription backend.  We've had a lot of complaints about how hard it is to change subscription plans, and also the lack of information for current plans on the subscription page.  Users are also able to subscribe to another plan as soon as an existing plan is cancelled, while the lag in subscription status is also fixed.
  
• 01/18/2024 UI changes had been made, and the backend also works more smoothly now with the confusing flows removed. Though I discovered that we haven't updated the payment gateway API for many years, and the version that we used had its support discontinued 5 months ago.  Which means it's time for a big overhaul to update the API for both Angel Sub and Perks
  
• 01/19/2024 Everything broke when we upgraded the payment gateway API. :O  Of course, it's only in the test environment so that's okay.  We needed to change all the API calls because they changed the formatting, and I also need to figure out how to setup the sandbox correctly one more time.  Updating libraries is never fun, it's just implementing the same feature over again but with terrible documentation most of the time.  Every time I see an error there's never a page that tells you what you need to do, but it just describe the error message with more words. *sigh*
  

[Lanzer]

• 01/22/2024 As a last step I've decided to revamp the payment page for Angel Subscription to match the one for perks subscription.  Tried to implement seamless subscription plan swapping, but learned that we can't really do it for angel sub as we grant GC the moment a user join the subscription, and if we do this half way through a subscription, the subscription start and renewal dates doesn't change. 
  
• 01/23/2024 Angel sub and perk sub testing.  Going through test plan and making sure all scenarios are covered and we don't run into issues tomorrow.  Hopefully we don't need to touch the subscription backend for the next 3 years.  Though the next update shouldn't take this long as their API implementation doesn't suck now and wouldn't require major chages. *knock on wood*
  
• 01/24/2024 Extended event grant lock and added unique ID to prevent duplicate grant errors.  Can finally get back to working on the gold grant limit auto adjuster that had been delayed for weeks.
  
• 01/25/2024 Fixed blank favorite entries on searching results.  It's the end of month that means it's time to work on migrating more logging databases to the new database server.
  
• 01/26/2024 Runway update: profile page formatting change, progress info on achievements, do not show contest results until prizes are granted and invalid votes are removed.
  

[Lanzer]

• 01/29/2024 More database migration work.  Getting applications to deal with both new and old database servers at the same time is a bit tricky
  
• 01/30/2024 Fixed avatar highlight not closing on Runway.  Backend fixes for Runway.
  
• 01/31/2024 Last day to get the database changes in.  Still a lot more work to do and more migration down the road.
  
• 02/01/2024 Helped fix problem with moderator tool for removing all posts/threads.  Looks like the problem isn't an easy fix.  I got to dodge Alita's proejctile vomit today.  I think I earned another dad point.
  
• 02/02/2024 I'm starting to catch whatever Alita caught.  Stomach hurts like hell.  I thought I got myself too cold while working at night but it looks like I'm starting to catch a fever or cold.
  

[Lanzer]

• 02/05/2024 A small feature request turned into a big overhaul of the post history system.  Old system only stores 500 posts which was too short.  We now keep around 4000 messages in history list, as well as added a search index to find posts form any year.  "Delete all posts" function now actually delete all posts instead of the recent 500 posts, and We can have a better post history page in the future where you can find all post history as old as 2009.  Indexing posts older than 2009 will take more work.
  
• 02/06/2024 Fixed perk and angel sub renewal script after the big update. The code was updated last month but didn't get a chance to upload and test things until now.  Small bugfix for moderator tools.  Taking one hopefully final stab at the store inventory issue where items don't seem to be removed from stores when time is up.
  
• 02/08/2024 small fix for the blank carousel bulletin on front page. added bottom navigation bar for runway museum menus.
  

We've decided to pursue two new projects this year.  They both involve using new javascript framework, so it's time to go through a crash course learning Next.js, Amplify, DynamoDB, and working under a new IDE.  A lot of my time in the past two weeks had been done learning and writing new code.  We will have more to share once more details are hashed out.  

• 02/13/2024 Collections main page now displays the correct avatar if the most recent entry in the collection is a Runway avatar.  Added achievement info when clicking on achievement icons in Runway profile page.
  
• 02/14/2024 Small fix to change username wrapping limit into a config so we can better adjust the UI moving forward.  Changed header to display event header even for guest user.
  

• 02/20/2024 Fixed some mod tools and added new moderator assistant level for new trainees.
  
• 02/21/2024 More adjustments to runway admin system to better cache bust when entries are disqualified.  Performing more tests on the voting display system to address claims for repeat entries
  

[Lanzer]

Just got back from my trip to Japan.  Apologies for the lack of update as things got very busy between projects and trip planning, at the end I didn't get to post an update before leaving for the trip.  The life size Gundam attraction at Yokohama is ending at the end of March this year, so I booked a trip to catch it as a lifelong Gundam fan.  (Here's a clip of the Gundam in action)

Work on the new projects were still under way, and as you had seen, we've received many applicants with TRPG experience to help test the new product, and we'll see if what we're building is something interesting and worth pursuing.

Some of you might had heard of talks about a new 3D Rally from a Gaia user named HelloKittyGitHub.  He is a very talented individual who is working on his own MMORPG and had posted his Gaia themed Unity projects on the forums before.  We've since been in contact and he had graciously offered to work on a Unity based Gaia Rally for fun.  He had made tremendous progress on his first few weeks and I've been spending time on backend and integration support.  Though this 3D chat is very basic in functionality, its performance is tremendous, with my 11 year old laptop being able to run at 50 frames per second.  A public beta should be available very soon.

Also worked on the Astra item preview code so Ruffle devs can help fix some Astra items.  There's also item preview code for Astra items inside dress-up which broke when flash support ended.  Once it's working right, we can have all the old Astra items working on the site again.  However having both Astra items and Prisma items working together is still an outstanding issue.

Our months long database upgrade is starting the important phase of migrating data to updated servers.  Once that is done, data can then be migrated to the cloud based database services.  There should be no interruption of services during the coming weeks as we finish on these tasks.

Fixes and changes:

• Fixed new user aquarium error when starting new tank
  
• Fixed error message and handling for sign up when
  
• Fixed JWT token login for API calls
  
• Added more wedding titles
  
• Added support for saving outfit avatar through API calls
  
• Re-enabled support for Aquarium signatures, clicking on aquarium will be fixed soon by Ruffle team
  
• Fixed invisible avatar on walking sequence for some item combinations
  
• Added better error messaging when guild members don't have access to crew only forums.
  
• Putting avatar backgrounds back to filmstrip for zOMG and Rally
  
• Fixed bug where avatar save date is updated during lapsed login
  

PS - Both Alita and Laine caught a nasty flu half way through our trip, and looks like Laine got a flu plus COVID combo so I'll be spending more time being caretaker this week.

[Lanzer]

Laine is still sick so we didn't even get to fix Alita's jet lag.  She just had her "afternoon nap" at 6:30AM this morning.  sweatdrop

• 03/25/2024 Finally learned how to compile the old Flash games such as Towns and Pinball, so emotes in Towns and the bumper issue with Ruffle player should be fixed.  Also learned how to compile the zOMG UI stuff such as chat windows so now the font is finally larger for the higher DPI monitors that we use today.  Just need to figure out another group of SWFs to compile, and we might be able to get zOMG to run on Ruffle.  That could also lead to a Ruffle based application in the future that will run faster than the web counterpart.
  
• 03/26/2024 Database sweep to fix issues such as login where bad database definitions caused things to crash that didn't happen in the old databaser server.  Tons of definitions and existing databases to adjust.
  
• 03/27/2024 Huge database snafu day.  We were upgrading database from one version to another, first by upgrading the "master" server then upgrading the "slave" server, etc.  But somehow somewhere along the way the two database didn't have their data synced up correctly, and we lost one full day of data across many features within that database.  Had to spend 10 hours dealing with the fallout.
  
• 03/28/2024 Helped fix some towns bug.  Tried fixing pinball but the compiled game completely broke.  Will try again later. Fell into this rabbit hole and found that certain subscriptions had been failing during registration, and support needed to handle those cases manually.  Now working on a better reporting tool as well as an automatic recovery tool.
  
• 03/29/2024 Easter came early this year, so it was time to help with the Easter event.  Re-enabling the Easter egg hunt and setting up the item grants and what not.  There was a "bug" where we didn't verify the egg claiming API call so people used to be able to collect eggs just by adjusting the egg collection URL. :O 
  

[Lanzer]

• 04/01/2024 For a month Hello Kitty had been working hard on a 3D Gaia Rally running on Unity. He was super fast as he had a ton of experience building his own MMO and lucky for us we already have the Rally map ready to go.  The feature isn't ready for public testing yet, but he made a fun little April fools by adding the Backrooms theme to the map and adding some visual filters on top.  We figured that this would make a fun April fools so slapped on a header icon and let people flow in.  The result was very positive overall, and it was great to see so many people in Rally once again.  There's still a lot more work to be done for this project, but we're off to a great start, and we'll be sharing the link to this project very soon.
  
• 04/02/2024 Fixed reporting on Rallytest, adding some reporting tools to check what GPUs are being used by everyone.
  
• 04/03/2024 Last week's database issues caused a huge backend problem.  The migration issue caused some data to lag behind, and the system ended up granting new items with serial numbers that already exist in the system.  This issue doesn't display errors until one user tries to sell or trade an item to another user whose database has an item with the same serial number already, causing the transfer to fail.  Spent both Wed and Thurs fixing the issue.  Can't wait for the migration to finish so we never have to deal with these issues again.
  
• 04/05/2024 Starting our road trip to Missouri for the eclipse!
  

[Lanzer]

Roadtrip on Route 66

After having experienced the solar eclipse in 2017, we were excited to see it again 7 years later... how time had flied!  We planned to see the eclipse near Dallas and reserved a hotel last year and was all set to go, but reports of bad weather got us worried, so we cancelled all our reservations and decided to just drive up to Missouri where the sky would be clear that day.

The drive would take us through Route 66, past Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, and finally, Missouri.


We reserved our camp site, packed all our camping gear and headed out Friday morning.   Our biggest concern was how Alita would handle being in the car all day.  Luckily the tablet provided enough entertainment for her that she was able to get by with the occasional breaks for her to run around.



What we didn't expect was a snow storm in Arizona!  Before we reached our hotel at Flagstaff, it was below freezing temperature with snow piling on the freeway!  We inched forward for the last hour of our drive and finally arrived at the hotel 2 hours later than expected.




We snuck in 6 hours of sleep and soldiered on.  We couldn't afford to take our time as we wanted to reach the camp site before sunset on Sunday so that we can set up camp.

Luckily the rest of the drive went smoothly, and we arrived at exactly 7:30pm at our campsite.  Sunset happened to be at 7:30, so we had minutes to setup camp before everything got dark.


At the camp site were around 20 other groups, many had experienced the last solar eclipse.  Including a professional astro photographer who took some wonderful photos of the eclipse.  (Check out his Instagram here)

Luck was on our side, and the sky was clear during the eclipse.  We waited eagerly as the moon slowly covered up the sun.


When the moment finally hit us, the moment was as magical as the first time.  The image of the "diamond ring" was spectacular and seared in my mind.

Here's what the diamond ring looks like:


The eclipse last much longer than the one in 2017, at four minutes.  Though that still passed faster than anyone of us wanted to.  During the eclipse, you can clearly see many stars in the sky, including Jupiter shining bright.  It even showed up in my photo.


And as soon as the magical moment ended, it was time to route a course home.  We took our time on the return route, and with a few hours to spare each day on our 3 day drive, we dropped by the Very Large Array radio telescope in New Mexico.


And on the next day we visited the meteor crater site.



Overall the entire 7 day journey felt like a dream as almost all of it consisted of me driving endlessly past 6 states.  Still find it hard to believe that we committed 6 days for a 4 minute event. smile   We really enjoyed the road trip and look forward to taking Alita to more places as she gets older.

[Lanzer]

• 04/13/2024 Fixed friendslist limit error happening in Towns/Rally.  Fixed un-openable gift boxes from the March 27 database issue.
  
• 04/15/2024 Took my birthday off because I needed to finish doing my taxes.  The Japan trip and eclipse road trip made me procrastinate till the last minute this year. smile
  
• 04/16/2024 Soul bound items cannot be added to offers, flairs no longer show up inside paw tab in the inventory. Fixed pagination div spacing for Marketplace user store.  Notification system changed so ignored users cannot send any notification to user. Avatar builder equip detail window size will not exceed browser window size. Added confirm window option for equipping outfit in avatar closet.
  
• 04/17/2024 Aquarium owner was getting too much plat payout than the players when it's supposed to be the other way around, needed to fix the bug where it wasn't using the new gold granting system.
  
• 04/18/2024 Spent some time hunting down issues with outdated subdomains for the old Flash games and fixed the settings.  That should help fix some of the avatar not showing up in flash games.  Though the avatar still isn't showing up in Towns 1.
  
• 04/19/2024 Worked on a tool for users to be able to remove all their posts from Gaia.  Extending our admin tool but with a lot more confirmation steps.
  

[Lanzer]

• 04/22/2024 Tried to fix the incorrect avatar domain issue on the sushi server and ended up breaking FIshing.  Need to do some more research to fix the issue properly.  Also fixed the bug I introduced when removing flair items from the equip tab for paw avatar base.  After the remove all tools, extending functionality to select and delete multiple posts on the user's own post history page.
  
• 04/23/2024 Today is sushi day.  Spent time on the old Sushi game server to adjust its config so I can make it work with Towns1 again and debug why it's not working with Ruffle running Towns1.  Unfortunately the current issue is on the protocol level.  It's not something I can easily fix and probably exist in Ruffle's websocket implementation or in the proxy.  Hard to spend more time on it as Towns1 really exist for nostalgia sake and we have better hangout options.
  
• 04/24/2024 Fishing day.  Revising the fishing winner verification system for full automation so that fishing trophies can be handed out automatically from now on.  Turns out to be a lot of work as the old system was written for an admin panel.
  
• 04/25/2024 Had a pet project that can search for avatar favorites based on any particular item.  Working on the backend and hope to integrate it into marketplace soon.  Work will likely extend to Friday.
  

[Lanzer]

Apologies for the lack of updates.  Alita got sick once again and she quickly got all of us sick at home.  After that I was largely focused on the bigger projects and didn't have much bug fixes to report.  Here's a list of the smaller issues tackled since last update:

• Overhaul some of our HTML input system for better security.
  
• Fixed invite system emails.
  
• Delete own comment on Profile.
  
• Fixed achievement named Noob Wrangler's status counter
  
• Remove marketplace notifications related to ignored users.
  
• Fixed Runway bug where removed users still shows up in voting
  
• Fixed angel rod upgrade routine.
  

Our item search system was not very efficient because Gaia only had 50 thousand items, and loading all item info into memory for cross matching wasn't an issue.  Fast forward to today, certain search terms can return tens, if not hundreds of thousands of items to be cross referenced with your own inventory, and we quickly ran into memory limitations.  We rewrote the item search routines last week, and the system now has better caching with pagination support so that you can get all possible results and not cause any memory issues.

[Lanzer]

Last week I dedicated more time in reading the ancient code base for zOMG, once I'm able to recompile all the library files I should be able to stop zOMG from using a certain library that Ruffle has trouble with.  There's also a chnace that I could get the internal chat server working agian, but one thing at a time.

Other work includes:

• Support moderation tools for account recovery. 
  
• Fixed inventory search while trading.  
  
• Added security fixes for landing pages and a few other features.
  

[Lanzer]

Spent another few days on zOMG, and finally understood the code base and was able to compile all the SWF files for the game.  Typical flash minigame has just one flash file that you compile and run, but zOMG has about 10 because it's so complex.  Unfortunately the compiled game didn't run due to some unknown error, now the next step is to debug.

• Marketplace update will show item quantity when displaying item info
  
• Runway avatar highlight setting fixed, winner profile link fixed for 2nd place winner in museum
  

Also spent some time looking to bring back Frontier Skies.  The code base had some changes that could be reverted, but the bigger issue was that the developer removed the database info when the game was brought offline.  I re-initiated the database structure but still need some time to populate the core data.  Should have it done next week.

[Lanzer]

Took a bit of effort but we found all the server code to restore the  Electric Love Faktori game.  Unfortunately not so for Frontier Skies.  Our old developer removed its database entries so it's been difficult to restore the data.  I dedicate a day for this project but looks like I'll need to find more time for it.  So Frontier Skies will be on hold unless there's a strong demand for the game.

Didn't get to spend as much time on zOMG this week.  Trying to isolate the various SWF to see which one was causing the issue.

Other issues worked on last week:

• [marketplace] The "you own this item" label now show quantity without needing to mouse over
  
• [Marketplace] Item detail page will show if item is wishlisted by friend
  
• [runway] Setting avatar highlight default back to "off"
  
• [marketplace] show if item has listings and offers on the information page when selling that specific item
  
• [inventory] show friends that has this item on wishlist when viewing item detail
  
• [marketplace] show item origin now include info for Flair items, limited quantity items will show countdown info
  

Driving up to visit family from the 10th to the 19 this month, so not as much bugs will be fixed.

[Lanzer]

Spent last 2 weeks with family up in Vancouver, Canada.  Both Alita and her 4 year old cousin are both growing up quick so we try to let them see each other as often as we can.

After the 36hr road trip last time, we're now much more inclined to drive around.  The drive to Vancouver is about 16 hours, so we're splitting up the drive into 2 days.  Plenty of stops for rests and for Alita to eat snacks.


Last time we visited family Alita could barely interact with anyone, but this time she can join in with her cousin playing with toy cars and other games. 



Vancouver has a ton of Chinese people so there are also many stores to visit and stock up on snacks.  We have a problem of buying more snacks than we can eat, but now there's Alita to help.  What an excuse.



Vancouver finally has its own Bass Pro Shop, and not surprisingly its tank is filled with salmon instead of bass.  Fishery is a big part of BC's economy and during highschool I was part of the salmon hatchery club.




Alita got to taste spicy food for the first time in this trip.  She found a red pepper and played with it thinking it was a fruit.   I snatched one hand and started wiping it as she put her other hand in her mouth.  I'm just glad we caught the moment on camera.  After making a funny face she started crying, and we gave her ice cream for trauma recovery.



One nice thing about road trip is being able to stop by destinations along the way.  We were planning to drop by Crater Lake in Oregon but most of the roads were closed due to heavy snowfall.  Instead we dropped by a wildlife safari in Oregon.  Alita loves animals and can name all the animals there, so that was probably a better choice than to have Altia look at water.  She was dancing when she saw the birds up close.