Game Database Upgrade – January (Milestone 4)

July 4, 2016January 10, 2015 by NewSheriffInTown

Risk Game Database Upgrade

We are planning another very important Risk game database upgrade. To avoid the risk of gameplay breakdowns this time, all the fixes will be happening behind the scenes and will not be noticed by players, except in the address bar after the game database upgrade.

Most improvements will revolve around redistributing the daily tasks so that the server processes don’t all work at the same time. The rest of the update involves the URL structure of the website. There should not be any noticeable difference in gameplay, but it does clean up the code considerably and allows us to integrate better in the future.

One significant difference you may notice is a change in our URL structure after the game database upgrade.

Previously the Games and Tournaments URLs looked like this:

www.majorcommand.com/Games/Game.php?gameid=1234
www.majorcommand.com/Tournaments/Tournament.php?tournamentid=1234

This will now be cleaned up to look like:

https://www.majorcommand.com/games/
https://www.majorcommand.com/tournaments/

We have also removed our subdomains, in exchange for a more canonical URLs.

www.blog.majorcommand.com,

it will now be looking like this:

https://blog.majorcommand.com/

This may cause some dead links in our forum and elsewhere in the site, but we will spend the next little while cleaning it all up.

Adding New Medals To Risk Game

As always, we are adding some more fun stuff. This time, it will be Medal for Fivers and Sixers. And they WILL be awarded retroactively!

Thank you!

Sheriff.

Medals To Risk Players – October, 2014 Upgrade (Milestone 3)

July 4, 2016October 15, 2014 by NewSheriffInTown

More Medals To Risk Players

Nukes Medals To Risk Players

Risk players get more medals for a win. The medals can be won by playing the classic Risk game against a single or multiplayer computer opponents. This October’s update will resolve the long issue of the medals not being attributed to all Risk players. This fix was described in our previous Blog post: We are getting medals back, where you can find descriptions of all gameplay medals and how to earn them. The October’s upgrade will also resolve a number of other issues. Some of these issues are listed below:

Website Upgrades and Improvements

MAJ-63 Upgrade WordPress
MAJ-92 Create medals for the “The Forgotten Kingdom” map
MAJ-93 Add the missing map medals (Conflict: Africa, Australia, Middle East, Philippines, Duck and Cover, Sea of Japan and Balkan Peninsula)
MAJ-97 Upgrade the wiki
MAJ-98 Scoreboard changes
MAJ-101 Track the highest score for each user

Server and Performance improvements

MAJ-00 Install Nginx resource load balancer Executed
MAJ-00 Install Munin system monitoring tools Executed

Bug Fixes and Infrastructure improvements

MAJ-60 The medals are not being attributed
MAJ-87 Integrate performance monitoring tools

As you can see, we now have over 100 issues that have been resolved (or soon to be resolved) and we are adding new ones every day. Some of these improvements will not be noticed by the user, but will help create a solid foundation for a better site in the future. There’s a lot more to come!

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Sheriff

Game Scoreboard Poll

July 4, 2016October 13, 2014 by NewSheriffInTown

How The Game Scoreboard Works

Game Scoreboard! When you play Risk at Major Command you get scored for your gameplay. The game scoreboard is updated every hour. To improve your score and move up in our game scoreboard, you should win more games. Because of the large interest shown by Risk players in how the Scoreboard works, we thought we would open a poll questions to get some feedback.

Major Command Game Scoreboard

Please note, we have TWO types of scoreboards. One is the “All-Time” highest, and the other is for “Current” highest. “All-Time” obviously means “All-Time”, so there is no need to define that. Visit our scoreboard page: https://www.majorcommand.com/scoreboard/

However, “Current” can mean different things. So the questions below are only to help us define what we want the “Current” boards to represent.

Please check one answer for free members, and one answer for paid members. You can not change your answer once you’ve clicked “VOTE”. So please make sure you are happy with your choice. Thank you!

Update: The poll software was misbehaving and, therefore, had to be removed. Sorry for the inconvenience, and thank you for those who did vote. You can still post your opinion in comments below:

Scoreboard Improvement And Changes

July 4, 2016October 10, 2014 by NewSheriffInTown

Scoreboard Improvement Note

This is just a short scoreboard improvement note to inform all power Risk players and website visitors, that we have made minor changes to the way how the scoring system works. If you are a GRUNT, then you must have played a turn in the last 45 days. If you are a Strategist or Commander, then you must have played a turn in the last 180 days.

Play Risk Scoreboard Improvement

You should win more games to be able to see a scoreboard improvement for your username. Raise your score and move up in our Scoreboard. Take the opportunity and the challenge to win more Risk game medals. Strive for Medals in games and community activities to be recognized as a Medal Leader. The scoring system should indicate the skill level of a player.

How do the points work?

Points are awarded and taken according to the following formula: (Defeated’s score/Winner’s score)*30.

So if you are a cadet (1225) and are defeated by a Major (3000) then it looks like, (1225/3000)*30 or 12. So 12 points is taken from you and given to the winner. If you defeat that major it’s reversed. (3000/1225)*30 = 73. So you would get 73 points from the Major. You get more points by defeating players higher ranked than yourself. In Standard or Assassin games, you get points from all players after you win. In Mercenary games, you get points only from those players that you eliminate. To find out more about different game types click this Game Options.

Please note that Points are calculated using the player’s score when the game ends, not their score when the game starts. For scoreboard improvement, you need to win more battles.

That’s all. 🙂

Thank you,
Risk Sheriff badge Scoreboard Improvement

Sheriff.

P.S. On a similar note, we will start to keep track of players “highest score ever achieved”, but that feature won’t be implemented until the next update, sorry! 🙂

We Are Getting Medals Back!

September 23, 2016October 1, 2014 by NewSheriffInTown

Getting Medals Back

Major Command Risk Getting Medals Back

Marcos, the programmer who does the coding to our Risk games has identified the reason why Medals have not been awarded to winners. A major fix will be implemented during our next update! The best part of this news is that the medals will be awarded retroactively! So no need to go back and replay all those Duck and Cover games. Remember that, Risk players get more medals for a win. The medals can be won by playing the classic Risk games against a single or multiplayer computer opponents. The upcoming update will resolve the long issue of the medals not being attributed to all Risk players.

There are currently 3166 medals ready to be awarded to players, and that number should grow by the time we implement the fix.

2999 of those are Map Explorer Medals
and the remaining 167 are 50 Consecutive Turns Taken Medals

We will also be adding Medals for the new Forgotten Kingdom map. So start playing and get ready to check your Profile page for the new medals!

Remember, though, this fix will take place during our next update. So as usual, there will be a warning posted, as well as a countdown clock, followed by the site going off-line, a lot of complaints about missed turns, and some words of encouragement. Then when we’re back up, we will have Medals! (fingers crossed)

As an added bonus, I asked if we could have the specific name of the Achievement Medal mentioned in the RECON tab when a medal gets awarded. It has always bothered me that a generic message “You have been awarded the achievement medal” shows up, but you do not know which medal it was. Well, Marcos discovered that this was not the original intention either. That double space before the word “achievement” was meant to be filled by a medal name. Again, for some reason, this was not working. It turns out the table describing the medal and it’s name was blank. So we are filling in the missing fields with the correct information and soon the RECON tab will tell you exactly which medal was just awarded to you.

And for those who are technically minded, the reason for the Medals not working was because -> “The cron job is crashing while trying to allocate more than 256MB of RAM, which is set as the limit on the server.”

For those who aren’t technically minded -> “It was broken, now it’s fixed” 🙂

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Sheriff.