Weekly update #04 ~ Glimmer of light.

Alright folks, lots of fun things to share so I'm gonna hop right into site stuff first x) Just keep in mind that we're still getting things set up. So while I don't anticipate we'll need to remove or drastically adjust the features that I'm sharing (I'm only grabbing things that are more or less currently functioning), it's impossible to say for sure until we actually launch the site.. them bugs do like to sneak up and ruin your day x_x. 

Patreon linking.

This one was a big one for me. As we all know I'm... just not cut out for keeping on top of anything that requires any sort of organizational skills. I have none OTL. We're testing out an automated SC distribution system and so far it seems to be working. There was a little bit of weirdness in the setup (Patreon is very finicky it turns out) so I don't want to say it's %100 ready to go even though it appears to be atm xD But one nice thing apart from the SC automation is that you'll now be able to see your own lifetime pledge amount, which will make tracking lifetime rewards more feasible (it's been a struggle for me to do the noble reward upgrades dfkljgh). We're hoping we can have the system notify you when you've hit reward thresholds so you can claim the rewards yourself without waiting for me to catch up with processing TvT. If that all works out how we're hoping it will then I'll be able to add more lifetime rewards without worrying about tracking them all manually ovo! MUCH EXCITEMENT. (We're also looking into badges/achievements and I'd love to do an evolving lifetime badge, but those are a future thing, there are a lot more pressing features to roll out first of course xD) 

A couple other noteworthy things about the ability to link accounts~ 

One is that I'll be able to give little perks for active patrons. Probably just a small icon next to your username for now but I am definitely definitely hoping to explore more ideas for this later on ohoho. 

And lastly this was something that came up occasionally that was sort of difficult for me to do anything about just because of how Patreon is set up. But I know there has been some discomfort about the display names that show up on the SC bank. With the new system I won't have to maintain everything publicly because everyone will be able to see their own amounts from their profiles after the accounts are linked. So if your Patreon username isn't something you like being visible it'll no longer be necessary. Prior to the new system I couldn't feasibly list SC bank entries by dA aliases because Patreon doesn't let me sort by nicknames (which I can only add in a notes section) for benefits, which made SC rewards harder to get through quickly having to look people up each time. AHH I'M SO READY.

Moving on~

Family.

Previously we were only able to track abbreviated family info on masterlist entries because of the extra formatting of manually linking each individual nin (we tried it a couple times and it just, took so so long OTL). Even just linking litters became trickier as an elnin had more children because dA's description section only allowed for, I think, 5 or 6 thumbnails before giving up (thumbnails being taken up by the elnin's original art uploads and parents meant that you might only have enough space in your description for one or two litter images before we just couldn't display them any more). 

Now you'll be able to see your elnin's parents, with links to their profiles as well as all of the profiles of your elnin's siblings from the same litter. You will also have links to each individual offspring instead of being limited to only linking the combined litter image (which made it difficult to track your offspring down in the masterlist).

Currently it's set up for immediate family only (parents/original littermates/direct offspring). If we're able to expand on family trees in more depth in the future I think that'd be awesome but for now it's not being worked on/I haven't asked cy about it since it's a lower priority sort of feature atm.

Bookmarks

Something else I think is really nifty is the bookmarking. You can enable notifications for a couple things, but being able to see when a dreamie is marked as open for trade directly in your notifications seems so neat to me x3 Also if you experience anxiety over favoriting other people's nin, or having people publicly favorite your own nins, fear not! The bookmarks are private <3

Card Frames

Oh boy this one's good too. No more waiting for a mod to update your frames or having to pay EC to cover the admin work. We can now store the current transparent version of an elnin within the site (with a little bit of setup to adjust where it'll be cropped for the frame) and have it so that you can now switch between your elnin's unlocked frames on your own. We should also have it so that you can purchase frames from a site store yourself without needing to submit stuff for mod processing. There's also an option that you can see in the screenshot as an admin feature to add frames directly to a nin so we still have that just in case. This does mean all the excess admin work of handling frame updates/sales/etc is GREATLY reduced, and I'll be free to do a bunch of fun new frames without worrying about mod overhead. *framing intensifies*

Time frames.

OK! So the good news is a lot of stuff is already done. Cy's been working hard on the Lorekeeper framework for a while so a lot of the features we needed were either more or less ready or else available to tweak to our own purposes when we started active development for the elnins site +u+ Best best case scenario, I think, assuming we don't hit any weird site breaking glitches, cy's able to finish the last pending development projects, and the mods are able to back fill missing database stuff, we could start letting patrons into the site in as soon as a couple weeks. The way I plan to do registration is full mod team first to muck about and test things, then patrons, then public, so that we're able to stagger it a little bit just in case.

Of course best case scenario is never a sure thing, so while I'm optimistic I'm forever hesitant to promise an exact date. It's impossible to know how long the code side of things will take until it's already finished I feel like, and I don't want to put any undue pressure on cy who is basically like some kind of coding goddess to me at this point, just unhumanly amazing xD. It could be that it'll be another month or two before we're ready for user accounts to be added if a particularly nasty bug pops up or a feature misbehaves and decides to plague us *knock on wood*. But I will keep you guys in the loop if we run into any major delays. I'm on the edge of my seat, I'm so ready you guys have no idea T_T

I know there's been some worry about the state of Eclipse and functionality with adopts groups, so I think the timing on this is as close to perfect as we could have hoped to be. With any luck the last time we'll need prompt submissions done on dA will be June *fingers crossed*. Can I also say that I absolutely hate the way the masterlist looks now OTL dA you wound me so. All that careful formatting just. euuughh..

It also seems like the group reopening is just going to align with the site release as things stand, which works out anyway since the tools that mods will have on the new site will make approval queues so much easier to manage for both members and mods alike holy jeez. 

Faenin slots

Alrighty! Getting this update ready took a whole chunk of time xD But I'll be shifting to getting into contacting people who are waiting on invoices/payment plans/catching up with mod questions posed to me after a short break (mah back, she hurts). So for the rest of the evening that'll be my focus ovob With any luck I'll be able to get through the contact pending list, though it does take a bit longer for the more complicated questions. If you're waiting for contact, having your information handy would be a huge help for me when I reach out! Even better if you read this and you know you're expecting a message from me, it'd be super handy if you could give me a poke on discord so I have an easy starting point. (Especially helpful in cases where your discord name is different from your dA/Patreon names so I don't need to do any detective work x3) I think I'm technically supposed to be reaching out on dA for record keeping (gomen Nai!) but it's just easier for me to work these out quickly on Discord TuT.

Phew.. I think.. that's everything I wanted to talk about for now. I.. think? Heck I'm probably forgetting something Dx But I'll have to catch it another time. For right now, quick break, then I'll be back into my DMs. \o/