Sanctum Redux - game updates

Players donated enough to support the site and keep it running for a number of years. Thanks. Currently there are 217 donating players.

Updates:

1/17/2019 - I never did update everyone on the "Help pay the A&T artists" push from awhile ago - here's an update

5/4/2018 - A little flurry of activity on the mailing list with Commissar wondering who's still around... Working on getting the SSL cert updated for the store although you can go there without SSL.

10/21/2015 - Just a status update to let everyone know the game's still going. After the A&T release there really aren't any other developments that are going to happen to this version of the game, we'll just keep it running, as is, as long as some users are still showing up and the server money holds out. There are some background tasks to do with the servers and moving the database around, but nothing that should change the user experience particularly.

Allies & Traitors is Live!! Download A&T.

2/17/2014 - We finally went live with Allies & Traitors. After contacting the artists we could find, they all graciously gave us permission to use their artwork, even though they hadn't been paid fully or at all in some cases. I'm hoping to get them some money after this release, so if you feel like supporting the artists and sponsoring some artwork from the Allies & Traitors set, please sponsor a card.

1/21/2014 - We're now in the actual push to get a newly built A&T client into everyone's hands, hopefully fix a few bugs, release the A&T card set, start handing out Dracha prizes to reward activity on the site, and then send out a note to all the players that have found us over the last two years, but may have drifted off before seeing all the changes. See the Facebook group for current status and progress and to help.

8/5/2013 - We've had some success getting the source and building the game client, so are optimistic we can work on getting a stable version of the Allies and Traitors card set out sometime this fall when we have more dev time. Once we've got that we'll send email out to all the players who have found us to try and get them back and engaged. Many of them didn't stick around long enough to see various of the new changes - gold, free cards, the card store, etc. The plan would also be to have a few Dracha and A&T card prize tournys to get people interested, plus various freebie giveaways for players logging in and playing regularly, maybe track weekly experience point leaders, weekly ratings, etc. and hand out prizes for those. Discussion happening primarily on the Facebook group.

8/5/2013 - Deleted the forum at playsanctum.forumotion.com since it doesn't get traffic. Facebook and mailing list is more than enough for communication.

11/26/2012 - We're starting to work on trying to release the last Allies & Traitors card set Nioga was working on. We have Nioga's last beta client currently available to players for testing and are looking at whether and how to release it into general play. To test, download the A&T beta, drag and drop the contents (the one folder ATclient) to the top level of your current Sanctum install (same place bin,Cache dirs are), double-click the ATclient\Sanctum-CardSets.reg file to get the right Registry key installed, then run the ATclient\bin\Sanctum-1749c.exe to log in. Once logged in issue the "#allies" chat command in the chat window, log out and log back in with a suffix of "--R" on your user name and you have all the Allies&Traitors cards.

6/15/2012 - We've changed the card buying options in the store to make it much cheaper and easier to get the missing cards you need. There is now a "Smart Booster" that only has cards you don't have 4 of already, plus you can purchase all the cards in an entire House. All players that bought Drachas and spent them before these options got their Drachas credited back to them so they can take advantage of the new options, plus they got to keep all the cards they purchased as a thank you for being early supporters of the site.

5/26/2012 - At players' request, ratings have been reset back to 1500 for all ranked players, so rankings can now reflect the current player base.

5/23/2012 - The pre-relaunch "--A" option is now an unranked mode and paid option. All donating users of $5 or more will have access.

5/16/2012 - The pre-relaunch "--A" option will become an unranked and paid option only on 5/22. All donating users will have access. We will also be doing a rating reset, all players back to 1500, soon thereafter.

4/27/2012 - Paypal integration is live, you can now Donate to keep the server running, and also get new cards. Just server costs are about $25/mo. and as long as the players are willing to make that money show up I'm happy to keep the server going.

4/12/2012 - NIOGA has graciously given us the rights to Sanctum!! We can now press ahead with whatever plans seem best to keep the game alive indefinitely. We can now add limited card sales, donations and item sales to the site for players to help support it, stay tuned.

3/22/2012 - Sealed deck mode, using --S, now works for everyone. Everyone receives their own set of packs and cards to make their decks out of, and the set of packs being used will be changed weekly or so. All Sealed games with ranked players will be ranked in their own rating category.

3/18/2012 - New unranked accounts can now use the --A --C --S and --T modes as well as Ranked accounts. For ranked players, C and S modes are ALWAYS ranked games, counted in their own separate rating categories. Playing C or S against an unranked player will be an unranked game.

3/12/2012 - New Forum set up at http://playsanctum.forumotion.com/

3/12/2012 - 12 players for MNF, Ironfist-J over Mongolian in the final, Fencig and Hawkeye 3rd. Next MNF 3/26, sealed deck format.

3/1/2012 - We've been sending out email invitations to players that were active before the Nioga shutdown and haven't found us yet. So far we've been getting about 1 player in 10 emails back, so we've had a nice boost in player accounts the last week or so.

2/26/2012 - New players can now use their Gold earned by playing to unlock new cards and houses. Players earn Gold pieces by playing games and they can use those to unlock more houses and their preconstructed decks and the cards that go with them. Just by playing games new players can earn most of the cards in the Classic and Bloodlines sets of cards.

2/22/2012 - Added a "Challenge" mode - if you log in with the suffix "--C" you will be using the Daily Challenge random collection of cards to play against other players using "--C". This is usually a collection of cards similar to a Sealed Deck tournament, a selection of starters and boosters, that you will need to figure out how to use against other players using the same set of cards. All challenge games are ranked in a separate Challenge rating ladder, which you can see on the Status page.

2/20/2012 - All accounts are now restricted to only play Classic+Bloodlines decks against any new account. Also new accounts all have their avatars fixed to until they unlock all houses, at which point they can pick an avatar and become ranked. Ranked players can log in with the suffix "--B" to force the Classic+Bloodlines restrictions as well.

2/17/2012 - Accounts are now earning Gold and experience points for play. We're working on using Gold to unlock cards and new houses for new players.

2/12/2012 - New accounts now get the preconstructed decks as their starters. We'll be using Gold earned from playing games to unlock further houses and cards.

2/10/2012 - #invite was added as a lobby command - if you do #invite NICK MSG you can send a note to a previous player letting them know the new server is up.

1/31/2012 - The Nioga version of the server is now up and available for everyone, with original accounts and collections. We will be moving all users to that one over the next week or so.

12/28/2011 - We've restored all the card releases for everyone. Log in with your username and a suffix of "--A" (capitalized is important) and you will get all the cards in the deckbuilder, plus be able to play games with those decks. We're still working on restoring individual accounts and collections.

12/20/2011 - Nioga generously handed us a copy of their database! That means we should be able to restore all the card releases, player accounts and player collections to our server. Stay tuned.

12/4/2011 - Made the test server generally accessible to old and new players.

11/23/2011 - Made a test server available to old players on a site based on the original Digital Addiction code and player database from 1998.

10/28/2011 - Jeff found old Digital Addiction server backups and a development code tree for the servers and started looking into making them work on present day OS and software versions.

10/18/2011 - Jeff heard Sanctum was down and people were thinking about how to get a server back up and started looking through his old code archives to see what he could find from his Digital Addiction work.