It may be a bit early, but I wanted to wish everyone in the Sylverant community a happy and safe holiday season. Both Iselia and Altimira have been running the holiday-themed event on the ships for a little bit now (since the beginning of the month), and Vega will be following suit soon, I think.
Anyway, I guess I can take this space to also make the monthly status update post. I haven’t had much time to work on things this past month, but I did get at least one new feature implemented in that time. Here’s what little has changed:
- Compress stored character data when saved with /save.
- Fix a silly mistake with the word select translation.
- Prioritize /qlang over the language code set in the character data. Also, fallback on English if a quest can’t be found in a desired language.
- Add support for automatic character data backups, for those that have logged in (with their Sylverant account) and opted-in with the appropriate commands.
That brings us up to r576 of the SVN repository.
Of all these updates, only the last one really needs any explanation… Basically, I figured it would be a nice feature if the server could back up your character data on a regular basis, in case anything were to happen and your file were to get corrupted. Basically think of it as the server doing /save on a regular basis for your character automatically (right before you join a game). If you opt-in to the automatic character backup, the server will store one backup copy of each of your characters (where a unique character is determined by the combination of a guildcard number and its name). This backup will be overwritten on the server each time you join a game. You can restore your backup by using the new /restorebk command.
In order to use the automatic character backup feature, you must have registered for an account on the server, and registered your guildcard with that account. If you are using PSO for PC or PSO for Gamecube, you already have to have registered (PSO for Dreamcast users don’t have to register to play, but if they want to use the character backup feature they do). Once you have an account and have linked your guildcard to it, log on in game, and type
“/login username password” filling in username and password with the username and password you registered for your account with. To opt-in to the automatic character backups feature, type “/enablebk” once you’re logged in. To opt-out at a later time, type “/disablebk”. Once you’ve done that, you don’t need to be logged in in order to have your data backed up or even to restore it (you only need to be logged in to enable or disable it).
Note that this feature is still in testing and shouldn’t be counted on as the sole way to protect your character data. Also note that just like /save, this will NOT backup your bank data. Let me know if you run into any issues with the new feature. Finally, PSO for Dreamcast users must have a unique serial number/access key in order to register for an account. You are not allowed to use a shared-serial in order to register for an account, and if you do try it is grounds for being banned from the server.