July Waypoints

I like constructive criticism from smart people.

                                                                  -Prince

Recently I asked some of those smart folks to take a look at what we're doing here, and I'm pleased to report that we got high marks. The term "cadence" was mentioned more than once, but not in a bad way. We have the daily and weekly videos, and even though I didn't plan on it, these News posts also seem to have evolved into a monthly thing. Since all of these occur at a predictable cadence, you know what to expect when you visit the Darq Side which apparently is a good thing.

Anything else, like a new feature or an update, tends to happen scattershot during the month. And I guess that's just the nature of the beast: a member will suggest a new idea or improvement, and my response is to immediately drop everything and dive in head-first to see if I can make it work. Depending on how complex the solution is, it could take a couple of days (e.g. Auto-Inventory) or literally weeks (e.g. Mercenary Favorites) from concept to completion. So the suggestion to publish feature updates on a schedule seems... improbable. I'm always too impatient to show off your ideas ASAP for that to work.

Utility

We had a whole bucket of improvements this month (Broker Pricing, Stat Monitor, Dressing Room, a new 2K/4K group and poll in addition to the two features mentioned above.) But you haven't seen the promised Housing shortcuts on the Transport window. That's because we don't yet have a player-friendly way to determine the unique ID of your houses which is needed to make the feature work. The utility's Inventory page is already hitting Census when it lists your houses. So even though I wasn't planning on publishing another utility until later in the summer, we'll probably see a version bump sometime during July that makes the new housing feature easier to use.

Security

While we're there, a couple of other utility improvements are already getting addressed, one of which is another security enhancement. You already know I'm somewhat of a privacy buff, and over the years the security footprint for DarqUI has been steadily fortified. This spring I had a new idea for adding one more layer of cloaking that has the side-effect of making updates slightly nicer to deal with on your end. So the utility and the notifier app will both get a new bit of custom tech as well.

Inventory

Recently a player pointed out that certain pieces of gear aren't showing up when you display an inventory in the utility without using Census. At some point the developers threw us a curve-ball by changing the way certain item links are logged. It required literally a two-byte change in the utility's sorting algorithm, which has already been tested and approved by the reporting player.  So that's three good reasons to load up Visual Studio this month.

Thank You

Even though DarqUI is a pet project, it's still your patronage that makes it possible for us to do more here at the Darq Side. I sincerely hope you're enjoying all the extra new features and conveniences that come with your membership. As always there's plenty here to keep me busy. But please keep those great ideas rolling in, mention us to your fellow gamers, and stay cool as the summer heats up!