CLOK BBS

Someone suggested I set up a CLOK Patreon for donations on our last voicechat because some people dislike or can't use PayPal, and someone reminded me of it again today, so I set one up. It's right here:

https://www.patreon.com/clok

I didn't do a funny video or an in-depth writeup or anything. I did set up some reward and goal thingies, to see if anyone likes that type of thing, and remind people that they -can- get nifty cosmetic alterations in way of thanks for donating. Check the Patreon page for details.

Did the outfit command just get bumped ahead of generalization?

Question: If we donate $10 a month and get custom messaging for stuff, does that mean we can get custom messaging for our main character, or is it for any/all characters we have active? And do we get the benefits from the other donation amounts as well?

Elystole wrote:Did the outfit command just get bumped ahead of generalization?

Yep. I think it's something people will really enjoy and appreciate, and it won't take much time at all if I just sit down and get it done. Finally you can put all those different outfits to use without all the painful fiddling of manually removing, putting away, retrieving, and putting back on, and wondering which container it was that you put this or that garment into (as long as they're in the same room). I'm pretty excited about this one, which is weird, because I don't normally get very excited about things like this. I guess I'm excited to see people start using it and seeing more variety in peoples' outfits, and allowing people to thusly get more out of all the great clothes that so many GMs (mostly excluding myself, admittedly) put a lot of love and effort into.

And seeing armor wearers maybe change out of all that armor on occasion. (Yes I know, some do it already - kudos to youdos.)

Fayne wrote:Question: If we donate $10 a month and get custom messaging for stuff, does that mean we can get custom messaging for our main character, or is it for any/all characters we have active? And do we get the benefits from the other donation amounts as well?

One custom message for any single character you play, per month. So if you have Bob, Gary, and Sarah, you could get a custom pyromancy prep message for Bob one month, then get custom sorcery prep messaging for Gary the second month, then get a custom sword flourish for Sarah the third month.

You get one customization from each lesser amount as well, if you donate for one of the "higher tier" amounts. Hopefully it doesn't become overwhelming to keep up with. It's honestly kind of experimental at the moment; I set it up on the fly.

So.. is Rias continuing this, or are we going back to paypal?

And did last month's get tracked?

We're still working that out, if I don't hear anything closer to the end of the month, I'll let y'all know.

Last month's donations did indeed get processed. If you're eligible for any rewards from Patreon that you haven't received yet and would like feel free to email us at our clok@contrarium.net address and we'll work it out.

The Patreon page has been updated with new milestones and new (and clarified) rewards.

All donations now go directly towards the server costs.

For the people who have requested magical cantrips, you may cast cantrip to activate them. At the moment they don't actually require an active channel, though that may change in the future. It's actually my first time working with the magic/spell system, so if you notice anything wonky about them, please feel free to BUG them.

Quite a few people have decided to withdraw their pledges for various reasons over the past few weeks, which has resulted us in dropping below or goal of 100% server cost funding.

This is fine, but it does leave us in a bit of a bind regarding how we're actually going to handle the things we said we'd do when we reached those goals. Particularly the yearly festival. We've already put some work into this, and it wouldn't really be fair to say "Well, we lost the goal, so no more festival." So, just to clear up any confusion, we WILL be having the festival this year, regardless of the amount donated. (And we're definitely getting that gambling house, it just needs the games...).

It just won't be a recurring festival unless we can maintain that goal, but it'll definitely happen this year regardless of the goal.

Just wanted to clear that up. Thank you everyone for your continued support.

just bumping this topic because a lot of people didn't know about it.

Aw, thanks man. I appreciate it. I never like pushing this myself.

Just so everyone knows, I sent out a message to the current Patreon contributors after this months' payments were finished processing that contained a 5 month report (It's been five months since we started using Patreon, yay!) Player contributions have paid for exactly 75% of the server costs (I know, odd that it was such an exact number). Which is to say, since May 2015 I've paid $850 towards the server and received $618 in donations (After Patreon's cut and Paypal transfer fees).

It REALLY means a lot to me. Thank you everyone who has contributed, either currently or in the past. I've got no intention to ever be "making money" from CLOK, and I'm never going to attempt to turn it into some sort of money-making thing. The Patreon stuff is just for the server, and I'm actually kind of glad that it's not something crazy like 200% funded, because then I'd feel kinda guilty taking all y'alls money.

Heads up, though, I am considering upgrading our 3-year-old server from it's current 2.53Ghz quad-core Xeon Processor and 1TB HDD to a new 3.7Ghz quad-core Xeon processor, a 256GB SSD, and 2 1 TB HDDs in a raid configuration for redundancy. This, however will increase my monthly costs from $170/month to $230/month without any sort of promotional pricing. I haven't reached out to HostDime's sales associates yet to ask if they can offer any sort of upgrade deals for an existing customer.

Note that CLOK is not designed for multi-process support. It runs on a single core, out of the 8 logical cores the server provides, the single core that the CLOK process is allocated to constantly runs anywhere from 80 to 100%. I hope going from 2.5 to 3.7 would greatly increase this, plus the SSD would allow quicker file access times for the constant file operations that the server has to perform.

Right now the upgrade is still a dream. Just saying, if we ever did get the the $200 range in Patreon, it would probably happen sooner or later.

Is there a way to donate just as a one time thing. What if we can't do it monthly? I don't see another option but monthly here.

You can set your account up to donate monthly, then just unsubscribe after it takes the money out. I don't think it takes it out right away, rather waits until the next cycle which is the first of the month I think. Not too sure on that actually. There's no fee that I know of for doing this.

Just a reminder that this is here, if you've not already set up a donation and you have the means to do so, please consider it. The J and the rest of the GM team work hard for us, and they do it because they love CLOK. So why not give a little something back if you can.

Just a little bump to remind people: If you are donating to our Patreon, please don't forget to email us about which perks you would like. If you're not, that's fine, we love all our players just the same, donor or not. Feel free to donate if you like, but it is by no means necessary.

CLOK is a hobby, and like all hobbies, it costs money. I am invoiced $170 per month on the first of the month for the server that runs CLOK. That's $2040 a year. I've been running CLOK on this server since late November 2012. We'll just call it December 2012 to make things easy. That means the cost I've incurred for CLOK has been $7140. Of course, I use this server for other purposes, mostly just to host a very small personal website/forum, and a voice chat server for my friends. That, and every computer geek needs a linux box to remote into and fool around with.

Of the $7140 server costs, you all have graciously donated $1503 through Patreon (After credit card processing fees), and I just want you to know I greatly appreciate it.

Any word on the gambling house?

Awesome to see it finally in! Even if it needs some touches in the systems department, very cool to see the progress!

I really just wanted to take a moment to give a big thank you for everyone who pledged, past and present. Things have been a little less lately, but every little bit helps. As I logged into Patreon just now to withdraw my funds so that I can pay next month's server lease, it just really made me think of how much I appreciate all this.

So, thanks again everyone who is pledging or has pledged.

As a reminder, email support@clokmud.com if you want to redeem any "Donor Perks". I actually haven't received any requests for donor perks in months, but I am totally willing to fulfill them, even if it was a donation you made sometime last year and never got anything for, just let me know what email address you pledged under and what month your pledge was processed.

And if there is anyone knew reading this, just a little background: The CLOK server costs me $170 a month. It's a little beefy, dedicated server with an 8 core Xeon processor, 8GB memory, a 2TB hard drive, and unmetered bandwidth connected directly to a very sturdy and fast backbone. I pay out of pocket for this monthly, but the donations help cover that cost.

Since some people asked for it, here's a direct (Paypal) donation link that doesn't go through any of the hassle of Patreon and monthly pledges and stuff.

Note (Because Paypal is strict about this): Anything donated through this link will be viewed as a PERSONAL donation to support my hobby of running a MUD server. You are not paying for goods or services. CLOK is not a commercial entity.

Note that the donation on the PayPal site will be addressed to "Andrew Baird" in "Chester, VA". That's me.

http://paypal.me/clokmud

So, I've been talking myself into donating for several days now (this isn't an attempt to toot my own horn, but rather place my curiosity in context) and after reviewing the donation rewards, I have to ask... what's a cantrip? I googled it and it said "a magic trick", but I'm wondering what it is in CLOK.

Would this be, say, if you were a pyromancer you could get a cantrip that would output like:
Bob the Pyromancer summons up a miniature man made of flame and makes him march around in thin air for a few moments before he disperses into mere smoke.

Or something else?

Pretty much exactly like that, yes.

It'd have to be within the boundaries of magical lore, though. For example, I don't think there would be a puff of smoke.

Jirato wrote:Pretty much exactly like that, yes.

It'd have to be within the boundaries of magical lore, though. For example, I don't think there would be a puff of smoke.

Ha! Okay, awesome. I was just trying to wrap my head around it :)

Bump. Someone just asked about donating on question channel earlier, so, pushing this to the forefront.

just bumping this, because I know we all love CLOK, and if you can, I know the staff appreciate the help covering their costs.