2011 Q1 News Archive

I'm about to switch some stuff around under the hood, and will be breaking numerous features in the process. I will update this post once everything is supposed to be working properly again...

UPDATE - maintenance is complete and everything seems to be going ok. If you encounter any errors or strange behavior, please email me.

It is with great pride that today I am able to bestow the first two Tour of Duty ribbons in the history of Panzer Grenadier Headquarters...

Step forward, campsawyer. On November 28th, 2010 you became the first PG-HQ member in history to complete the Airborne: Introductory Edition tour of duty. In recognition and commemoration of your accomplishment, you are hereby awarded this ribbon:

Step forward, GeneSteeler. On February 28th, 2011 you became the first PG-HQ member in history to complete the Blue Division tour of duty. In recognition and commemoration of your accomplishment, you are hereby awarded this ribbon:

Your feats of bravery, endurance, and dedication shall serve as inspiration to us all!

Until I say otherwise, there is a major site update in progress. Some features of the site will not function or will be missing during this time.

Behind-the-scenes work on the new play and AAR system continues apace. Essentially, I am replicating the functionality in a parallel process using a better design. So, as I work through the original byzantine code, I'm making subtle improvements wherever possible.

One such improvement, which I've decided to release early, is to remove the old Min-Mode-Max Maps personal statistic and replace it with Min-Avg-Max-Total Footprint. Our database knows the exact dimensions of every scenario's map footprint down to the square centimeter, and we then convert those to GMUs - Geomorphic Map Units. One GMU is 1,204 square centimeters. For comparison, one map from Desert Rats is equivalent to about 4 GMUs.

Long story short, your My PG-HQ home tab now lists your min-avg-max-total footprint as well as your site rank for average and total footprint. Furthermore, the Statistics & Rankings page now includes Top 10s for footprint. It also now loads a little more slowly, taking it from glacial to super glacial. Heh.

Update - I've hated that S&R page for months now, so long did it take to load. I attacked that bastard this morning and it's running a lot faster now!

As some of you have already noticed, the PG-HQ Library now includes Heroes of the Soviet Union and Tank Battles.

These were not included from the start because they come from the first generation PG product list, and in fact both have been absorbed/upgraded/replaced by a combination of Eastern Front and Red Warriors.

...but people still own and play them. So, after some delay, they have been added!

Matt W returns with another Panzer Grenadier article for your reading pleasure: Quædam iura non scripta.

While looking for the Want to Play Bug, I uncovered 3 more dealing with our Errors? Omissions? reporting system. Yes, you read that right - we had an error in our error reporter.

*sigh*

Yah gotta give me credit, though. I fix 'em as fast as yall find 'em!

Want to Play is back online, though you may need to force refresh the scenario page (Ctrl + F5) to update the code and get it working.

It is also now possible to submit errors for units!

Wonder what the next bug will be...

The status switch on each scenario's page letting you select between unplayed/want to play/in progress/completed is broken.

I will repair it as soon as possible. In the meantime, please refrain from using it.

This post will be updated once the issue is resolved.

You might be surprised to know that we do not, in fact, have 318 members. The real number is closer to 310. Why the discrepancy? Because a handful of people at one point or another forgot their PG-HQ password, and finding no recourse, decided to create new accounts.

No longer! PG-HQ now has a password reset tool! You can access it by visiting the log-in page where you'll find a new bit of text and a link leading you into the process.

Note that resetting your password requires a legit email address be linked to your account. If you've removed your email from your profile or changed it to something fake, you might want to reconsider that choice.

Lastly, just a reminder. PG-HQ does not, has not, and will not store your passwords in plain text. We process each password with secure one-way encryption. I cannot tell you what your password is, I can only help you reset it after verifying that you are you.

It seems that AP is now actively recruiting scenario designers. If you've ever thought about doing that sort of thing before, and perhaps even getting a few coins in your pocket as a result, you might consider dropping them a line.

We promise we won't rate your scenarios too harshly! ;-)

Some leftover messiness from the recent login system upgrade rendered the Annotated Rules inaccessible for a large swath of our members. That bug has been squashed.

Sorry for the inconvenience!

Nearly six weeks after launching our new bounty hunting system, I've finally found time to finish up the accompanying article. If you've been wondering about the details behind PG-HQ's Most Wanted, head on over and read through A Hunting We Will Go...

We're having problems with the Muster & Medals and Search pages that are tied to the recent update. I've put up temporary maintenance notices for those pages, but they'll be up and down for awhile as I test various fixes. I'd appreciate it if you refrained from using them until I give the all-clear.

Sorry for the trouble, and thank you for your patience!

UPDATE - the errors appear to be fixed. We'll see how it goes...

Greetings everyone. PG-HQ's registration and login systems have been upgraded considerably. As part of that change, your login will expire every 7 days.

I've tried to eliminate all the bugs this introduced, but you may still run across the occasional error message. Over the next few days I'll finish up the behind-the-scenes work.

If you run into any snags, please drop me a line.

Next change on deck is a password reset feature...

On the morning of Saturday, January 29th Beijing-time (Friday night for Norte Americanos), PG-HQ will be unavailable for about 30 minutes while I upgrade our registration and login security system.

A recent security audit uncovered a lot of holes, and it's better that I take the site down for 30 minutes to load the new system than to try updating on-the-fly and risk corrupting data for anyone who might be using PG-HQ at that time.

When PG-HQ goes offline for maintenance, a splashpage will be put up informing you as such. I'm announcing this now to give our regular visitors time to get the message.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me.

Quiet month, eh? End of the year is always extremely busy for people like me. What sort of people am I? The kind that live in China. Lunar New Year kicks off in just over a week, and all companies are right in the thick of the customary rush to get as much done as possible at the last minute...

...which has left me considerably less time to work on Panzer Grenadier Headquarters than I'd like, but such is life! My current focus is on the repercussions of this:

Specifically, our play-tracking system is not well-built and is starting to crack. It does not discriminate between solo and shared plays, and it gets confused when trying to calculate win-draw-win percentages for the scenario pages. So imma gonna fix it.

New record system features:

• solo OR shared plays
• personal win-draw-loss tracking
• select the winning country, not the side number
• much improved interface

That's what I've been working on lately. It's a complete rewrite to a big part of PG-HQ's inner workings, so we've got a fair bit of development and testing left to do before it goes live, but I wanted to let you know what's what.

Hope all is well with you and yours!

For no particular reason other than because it will be a lot of fun, I'm organizing a Kokoda Trail PBEM campaign game. The goal is to have 1 leader = 1 human. Including myself, I've got 5 people committed so far. With 3 leaders to a side, I need one more.

As Aaliyah once asked: are you that somebody?

A few quick details for the curious:

• We'll follow the Kokoda Trail campaign as far as we can go
• You will be on a team, either Japanese or Australian, and will control one officer
• You will be required to produce some sort of team AAR after each scenario, which I will edit together and post as a PG-HQ article
• Sense of humor is required, we're in it to have fun and enjoy the roleplay
• You should be able to do at least one activation per week, preferably an activation every 48 hours or so
• Bookkeeping will start as soon as we have 6 (drawing sides, rolling up leaders, etc.) and the campaign is scheduled to kickoff in early February

Like I said, we need one more body. If you're interested please drop me a line for more details. The first firm committal gets the slot!

Panzer Grenadier Headquarters proudly welcomes its first guest columnist, one of our most decorated members, Matt W!

Today he brings you his thoughts about that oft-contested notion of balance in wargames, and especially how Panzer Grenadier games fit into the discussion.