News

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The Cloudflare changes initially helped quite a bit, but the bots eventually learned how to bypass those protections, so I've been working on some changes to prevent them from being able to do so. You may notice the site stop working for a few seconds here and there as I apply different changes. Thanks for your patience!

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Happy 22nd Birthday! Today is Furry Paws' 22nd birthday! Click Here to receive a special birthday gift to celebrate!

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Trick or Treat? The Trick or Treat event has begun! To participate, look over at the column on the right and click "Turn On" next to "Lights OFF"! Then, visit kennels of other players, choose a dog, and ring their doorbell. If your doorbell gets rung, you get the chance to trick or treat your visitor! Tricks will do weird things to dogs. And you never know what someone might give you as a treat, maybe it will be something really awesome!

Duration The event begins today, will last until end of day on November 7th, and you will be able to cash in rewards until November 14th!

Earn Rewards! Check out the Trick or Treat Rewards page to collect rewards for your trick or treating adventures!

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AHHH POODLES The Miniature Poodle has been added to Furry Paws! This is a long time suggestion with over 400 supporters. Miniature Poodles are part of the Versatile dog group and have access to the all breed sports.


New Wolf Critter A new wolf critter, the Fierce Dark Wolf, is available in the FPP Shop for 5 FPP until the end of October. Will you chance befriending this fierce creature?

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I am moving forward with a FP rewrite, basically option #1 from the previous news post. The focus will be:

• Keep the overall look the same, but give myself flexibility to change components within the layout to speed up development time and add some more modern options


• Modify the main layout to be fluid so that it displays well no matter what screen you are on (mobile, tablet, or browser)


• Maintain accessibility for screen reader users as much as possible


• Maintain as much backwards browser compatibility as possible without sacrificing the ability to bring the tech up to date for the next decade or so


• Keep the site light weight and quick to navigate and load


• Update the entire tech stack so that the core game will be functional for (hopefully) another decade or so

I am very excited for this! Programming is one of my favorite hobbies, and I'm looking forward to jumping back in and learning some new tech!

Thank you for all of the thoughtful replies to my previous news post. Reading everyone's feedback was very helpful and encouraging! Hearing of the dedication so many of you have for the game has made me feel like my time and efforts to update FP won't be wasted. I feel the way forward is much clearer than before.

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The current version of Furry Paws was released in 2012. In the 13 years since, technology has moved on, and pretty much the entire tech stack that FP is built on is very outdated and out of support. We are doing ok, and the site isn't under any risk of collapsing any time soon, but I have been aware for some time now that the "technical debt" that is stacking up in the background will need to be paid at some point if FP is to continue into its third decade.

This technical debt has made it difficult for me to want to add any new features to the game, because I know that anything I add now will have to be re-written in the near future.

In some ways it seems absurd to me that a little game like this would be talking about trying to make it to its third decade! FP is nothing fancy. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles of the newer modern games on your PCs, phones, and tablets. By any logic it shouldn't still be here! But the community here is incredible, and the community response to the recent struggles with the server and DDOS attacks have emphasized that to me in a major way.

That said, I want to be thoughtful and considerate as I work on planning FP's future and take into consideration your thoughts and opinions.

To help FP continue, the first steps for me are simple, but labor intensive. I need to update all the code in the game to be compatible with newer versions of our tech stack (PHP and CodeIgniter being the major two that will be intensive). With me combing over the code anyway, there's also the opportunity to completely update the front end, which is the interface you interact with. So here are some options I'd love your feedback on:


OPTION 1 I could keep everything looking (mostly) the same, but update the underlying CSS/Javascript to be more future proof technically. With this option, there would be some changes, but it would mostly still look and function the same as it does now.

OPTION 2 I could completely update the look and feel of the game, modernizing the look and feel of it to be more in line with today's standards. This option would be the best segway into creating a *true* mobile friendly interface for FP, with a look which is more in line with what all of us are used to seeing on our phones when we go to a modern website.

OPTION 3 I could leave the front-end as is. I'm not as worried about the front end breaking or becoming so out of date that it doesn't work. It should be *mostly* fine. The main benefit of this is it would reduce my work load to bring FP up to date in the back end by half. It would also help patch up some security vulnerabilities from out of support tech libraries and provide better protection from various kinds of attacks, including the one we just experienced. The other options would do this as well but choosing this option would help that be done sooner.


To be clear, what we are talking about here is not about changing any gameplay. It's only talking about changing how the game looks, and maybe some of how you interact with the game.

Regardless, this is going to be a lot of work for me, so whatever I do I want to make sure it's for the benefit of FP, and not something that will alienate a bunch of people in our community (as much as is possible, anyway!)

Also to set expectations, my life right now is pretty busy with family and kids, so the rewrite will be done in stolen hours of early mornings and late nights. So we could be talking about changes that take a year or more to implement.

Thanks in advance for your feedback!

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As far as I can tell FP has been running well today! As a result, I've re-enabled the dog and litter nightly scripts, so dogs and litters will age tonight as normal.

In addition, I've added 7 days to any current elite account upgrades to help make up for the game time lost from FP's issues lately.

If anyone is missing FPP from purchases made while we were under attack please open a modbox ticket and include your transaction ID and the mods will escalate it to me so I can take a look and make sure you get what you purchased.

Thank you for playing and supporting FP!
-Kah

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We got hit with another DDOS attack today. Unfortunately, just tweaking the server variables wasn't enough to mitigate the attack so I went ahead and added Cloudflare's protection to FP. It took it a little while to kick in properly but it does seem like it was successful in limiting/stopping the attack. However, as the site was down for a lot of the day dogs and litters will again not age tonight.

I'll continue to use Cloudflare for FP for the time being so that the game remains accessible despite future attacks, but my goal is to get it configured to where it is as unobtrusive as possible. So please let me know via this post if it is negatively impacting your experience on FP in a major way.

Sorry for not updating sooner but I had some other commitments today that made it difficult for me to access my computer for more than a few minutes here and there! Thank you for your patience as I work on dealing with these issues! I really appreciate the support from all of you and your kind words, and I do often read the comments you leave on the news posts! It makes a stressful situation much easier to deal with when I have your support and understanding. So thank you!

-Kah

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Furry Paws was hit with a DoS attack for the majority of the day today. I've been working on adjusting some server settings to try to help mitigate the attack, but unfortunately wasn't able to prevent the site from being down for most of the day. As a result, I've disabled the dog and litter portion of the nightly script, which means that dogs/litters won't age tonight. Sorry for the inconvenience and thanks for your patience!

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Due to some of the recent server issues that have occasionally made the site unreachable for extended periods of time for some people, I've decided to extend the Phoenix Fire event. The event will now end on August 27th!

I received some reports about the site timing out for some people and have tweaked a few things server-side, but will continue to monitor.

It's normal for the site to lag at midnight and 3AM-ish FP Time because of the nightly scripts/backups that run. But please post on the Bug Board if you have trouble with the site loading for an extended period of time (ie, it doesn't go back to normal after 10 or 15 minutes) at any other time of the day.

Thanks!

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Kennel Property Limit The number of additional kennel properties (purchased through the FPP Shop) you can have on one account is now limited to 12. It appears that at least some of the site slowness is due to some active accounts having many thousands of dogs, which was allowed due to the number of additional kennel properties being unlimited. Unfortunately this is just too much strain on the server, and a limit had to be added.

If you have more than 12 additional kennel properties, your existing kennel properties are grandfathered in and you can keep them, you just won't be able to buy any more.

I've already worked with the largest kennels to reduce the number of dogs on an individual account. And, if I notice any other accounts negatively impacting the server health, I'll contact them directly and work with them to split up the dogs between side accounts.

While I think this should help server performance from now on, I'm going to continue to monitor the server to make sure it's running as it should.

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I've been made aware of issues with the site being sporadically slow over the past few days and am in the process of working on a solution. Sorry for the inconvenience, I know it's a pain especially with the event going on. Thanks for your patience as I work on sorting out this issue!

-Kah

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Return of the Phoenix Summer has officially begun, bringing with it the return of the phoenix to the Meadow! Take up to 20 of your worthiest age 12 dogs to the Phoenix and ask for her blessing on them. The blessing will cause the dogs to gain double experience, but also age twice as fast! Then every day, check in with the phoenix to brag about how well your dogs are doing, and she will give you firestones based on how well they are really doing. These firestones can be used for some pretty great rewards!

And of course, there are new items to introduce this year! Hope you enjoy!



There is also a special Rankings leader board where you can view the frontrunners of the event!

This event will end on August 20, and you will have a week to finish purchasing rewards with your firestones.

Good luck and may the best dogs win!




BY DURAPLUSH! What animal can withstand the heat of summer and keep cool with a drink always in hoof? You guessed it -- the camel! A brand new Camel Duraplush is available in the FPP Shop until the end of July!

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Happy Easter Furry Paws! For the next two weeks, eggs will be hidden around the site. Collect as many as you can to gather eggs which can be exchanged for exclusive rewards! There are multiple lovely new items to collect, including these adorable angora bunnies, a stunning Field of Iris background, a Petals foreground, and a Marshmallow Bunny booster!



Click Here for more event details and the rewards page.

I hope you enjoy hunting for eggs and celebrating the onset of spring with us here on Furry Paws!




One more thing... The Playful Wolf Pup can be found in the FPP Shop for 5 FPP from now until the end of the month!

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The Advent Calendar is now open! Check back every day to receive that day's prize and uncover the mystery image. Happy Howlidays to all!


Pony Loves You! The Dashing Winter Pony is available from now until the end of the year in the FPP Shop for 5 FPP! Don't forget, pony loves you!

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Happy 21st Birthday! As of yesterday, Furry Paws is 21 years old! Click Here to receive a special birthday gift to celebrate!

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Trick or Treat? The Trick or Treat event has begun! To participate, look over at the column on the right and click "Turn On" next to "Lights OFF"! Then, visit kennels of other players, choose a dog, and ring their doorbell. If your doorbell gets rung, you get the chance to trick or treat your visitor! Tricks will do weird things to dogs. And you never know what someone might give you as a treat, maybe it will be something really awesome!

Duration The event begins today, will last until end of day on November 7th, and you will be able to cash in rewards until November 14th!

Earn Rewards! Check out the Trick or Treat Rewards page to collect rewards for your trick or treating adventures!

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Attic Functionality Several of our most prestigious item collectors had been running into issues when their collections got too diverse and large, preventing them from being able to remove items from the attic. To fix this issue, the Attic has been modified so that the items are now paginated (max 50 items per page). The filters at the top are now server side instead of javascript, and should actually work now if javascript is disabled.

Happy Collecting!

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FIRESTONE PROMO CODE Head to the Promo Code page and enter the code SUMMERHEAT to receive 500 free firestones! Normally I do these firestone code promotions to help reach the extra reward tiers for the event, but this year you all unlocked all the tiers without any of my help. Well done! But regardless, enjoy some free firestones on me!

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Return of the Phoenix Summer has officially begun, bringing with it the return of the phoenix to the Meadow! Take up to 20 of your worthiest age 12 dogs to the Phoenix and ask for her blessing on them. The blessing will cause the dogs to gain double experience, but also age twice as fast! Then every day, check in with the phoenix to brag about how well your dogs are doing, and she will give you firestones based on how well they are really doing. These firestones can be used for some pretty great rewards!

We also have a nice lineup of brand new items this year. They are largely cosmetic, but I'm pretty happy with the number of boosters already available through this event so hopefully it's not too disappointing! Here's a sneak peak!



There is also a special Rankings leader board where you can view the frontrunners of the event!

This event will end on August 20, and you will have a week to finish purchasing rewards with your firestones.

Good luck and may the best dogs win!


Critter Pool Fixes There was a bug where land critters could be moved into a pool, even if they were unsuited for it, and vice versa. This has been fixed. In addition, some critters can now do well in both land and pool (sea dragons, penguins) instead of being landlocked!

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