Website updates implemented

I hope you have all had a peaceful and restful few days as we build up to the close of 2022.

I'd love to say that it's been a relaxing few days off for me but it really just hasn't!

We were pushing really hard to get some fairly substantial changes implemented on the website before the Christmas weekend.
That came with mixed success as usual...

As we fixed one issue another arose, culminating in my main portable SSD drive developing a critical issue which rendered it inaccessible.
The website issues and the hardware failure weren't directly related, but probably just another example of how hard I push my equipment...
Fortunately I had last backed everything up on the 22nd December so, with the time off for family commitments, I only really lost about a days worth of work.

Anybody who has experienced hardware failures will know how time consuming resolving things can be.
The process of attempting file recovery on a piece of failed hardware takes several hours. Once it becomes apparent that that won't work, the task of working out exactly how much has been lost and how much can be saved is also time hungry and very stressful.

Fortunately, I have become well disiplined in my back up protocols and also invested in a NAS drive a few months ago with mirrored hard drives for bullet proof file cloning.
It was all very draining and frustrating though.
This project has really pushed my geek switch if nothing else.

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Over the past couple of days we have been simultaneously breaking and fixing the website with shocking regularity too. Apologies if this has happened while you have been online.
However, we did have a major breakthrough with a persistent game save issue that has been dragging on for months.
My developer did explain something about parsing out strings, json arrays and concatenation.
After I established he wasn't just making words up to confuse my already partially fried brain, we did make some long overdue progress.
Pinning down the exact cause of an issue often takes far longer than it takes to actually fix it. And only about six lines of code in this case.

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So what does this mean to you...?

If you now visit the website you might notice a few subtle changes that have been implemented.

1) Saved games in your profile should make a bit more sense in the way they are displayed.
2) Your in game name should now display correctly! No more 'null' or blank space.
3) Saving games should work properly.
4) Loading saved games should work properly.
5) All achievements should display correctly when you complete a playthrough.
6) Every page in every chapter has a 'Refresh' button. This is particularly useful if your internet connection is slow and you miss, for example, a full animated sequence.
7) All the bonus scenes include a free 'Replay' option at or near the end of the scene.

If these changes don't appear to be visible to you then I urge you to clear your browser cache and reload the website as usual.
For reference, I generally test the game and play it in a regular (not private) Firefox browser.
Firefox deletes cookies when you close it down, but that's no problem if you complete a chapter then save your game.

By far the most important fix in my opinion will be the save game problems that were killing the database.
Saving games doesn't occasionally generate thousands of lines of seemingly random code anymore.
The load in process brings back only the cookies and variables required to show your achievements and pass the relevant ones forward into the next chapter.
Each game save should now be nicely pared down to the minimum and more importantly; fast!

Unfortunately the updates mean that some of you may experience issues with older saved games that weren't correctly saved at the time of play. They may no longer appear in your profile or may appear in the 'wrong' chapter.
This shouldn't be an issue for most players.

If in doubt, you can contact me to query it and I can take a look on the database.
You can delete any saves that you can see are inaccurate yourselves too.

Finally...

I will be making a couple more announcements shortly.
One will be about bonus credits and the other will be about the Chapter Seven release...