Thursday, February 18, 2010

ShadowTeq, EverHarvest, Expansions and Operating Systems

First: ShadowTeq is up and running! Paypal integration has been finished for a couple weeks now, and purchases have been coming in. Thanks you guys by the way - you've all been extremely patient!

There was some initial confusion over the changed subscription and licensing scheme. I noticed a couple people have purchased licenses, but not subscriptions, and therefore ended up using the trial. I have since then reworked the purchasing system to prevent you from buying a license unless you have an active subscription.

Meanwhile, a new EQ2 expansion has been released - "Sentinel's Fate". I haven't had much of a chance to check it out yet. A very friendly user has donated an expansion key, however, so I'll be in there seeing the new stuff with the rest of you soon. That expansion release made some changes to the client code - particularly the code I hook to find the current target name - so this update took me a couple days. Everything's up and running now though so that's the good news.

Speaking of good news - while I was at it, I finished off the last of the reflection code that was preventing me from using the new obfuscation software that works with Windows 7. I was using reflection in several places in EverHarvest - the main UI, the save files, and a few other places - and obfuscating code with reflection in it requires some pretty advanced features. The obfuscator I was using belonged to Michael, and wasn't compatible with Windows 7, so I needed to change. With the old reflection code replaced, I fired up the new obfuscator and lo! it worked! Windows 7 is now officially supported, in all its versions, in both 32- and 64-bit!

Very soon I'll be starting development on a new ShadowTeq harvester. Details on a beta test will come within a month, I'm sure. =) I'm going to experiment with a limited beta test - very small numbers to start with, to grow over time. More details on this to come. =)

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Nearly done setting up ShadowTeq!

Good news everybody! ShadowTeq is nearly done being set up - which means, I'll be monetizing EverHarvest again. The past several months have been interesting - free working EverHarvest for all - but soon I'll be resetting the trials and setting them back to 5 day expirations. After that, you'll have to buy a license (unless you already have one) and subscribe to the site in order to use it.

On my mind is the subject of what exactly EverHarvest is. Most people call it a harvest bot - but I don't personally like that terminology. I prefer harvesting automation software' to harvest bot', but I recognize that there isn't much I can do to change perception. The reason 'harvest bot' is the wrong word for EverHarvest is that it calls to mind unprofessional script-like software, written poorly, unsupported, and requires arcane tricks to get working. That's the same reason we don't call EverHarvest a harvest macro, harvest script, or similar. It's more professional than that - more user-friendly.

Ah well. Just ranting. Take a look at ShadowTeq and let me know what you think. =)