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Ohhh. Had not read my emails. Thanks!

SpecialK wrote:

Staged Venexiana Dark at 6PM, rest at 9PM EDT

Mea Culpa, apologies and relaunch plans

Last night was a disaster, we had problems with PayPal, WePay, S&H problems, incorrect campaign setups and router issues on the Internet last night, software vendors had left for the night.

WePay: fixed, routers on the Internet ("BGP errors") fixed, S&H issues fixed, certain issues have to be resolved by the vendor. They are in Salt Lake City, it's only 7:30AM there.

We are moving the launch to 6PM NYC/Eastern, if everything works as it should everything else launches at 9PM. I know that's not optimal, but frankly there is no optimal solution. We have to do this with the vendor in the office. WePay was sporadic all day yesterday, that's fixed. PayPal issues with routing caused processing to fail. Routers are all 100% so that should be working as well.

We honestly tested every single aspect of this for more than 6 weeks, but the comedy of errors caused us to fall on our sword.

See you at 6PM to launch Venexiana Dark, 9PM for the rest.

I'd be a little annoyed if I were the other creators...little thunder stealing. But I think most of the hype was for Venexiana anyways.

Haha to be fair, we are using Lotrek's campaign as more of a guinea pig actually.

To bad I'm fully committed tonight from 6 to 9... I really wanted to watch round two of the CL launch thingie.

We honestly tested every single aspect of this for more than 6 weeks, but the comedy of errors caused us to fall on our sword.

To paraphrase Alan Moore (who borrowed it from earlier sources)... "who tested the testers?"

So just thinking out loud here. But would having an extra card or gaff card with the original concept for the dark version of Venexiana be something that could work? As a "what could have been" kind of easter egg?



I dunno, just thought it'd be cool. I'm not a magician so I don't know if it would be useful or if Lotrek even wishes to revisit that concept. But y'know.

Eoghann wrote:

Thanks for posting that, E!
Given the reminder, I have to say I much prefer that card back to those shown on CL...
The old back design would tie the series together much better, and you could have a beautiful poker pairing with original (first) deck too.

Plus, the currently planned backs don't work well with white faces, unless Lotrek plans to put a border around them...

I prefer the newer backs, especially without the borders and I'm usually not fond of black decks, but this is Venexiana Dark. The black back seems fitting. Just means that magicians won't be as fond of the deck.

I'm pretty fond of the full bleed versions myself. I'm pretty certain that if we bend Lotrek's arm, they will end up being different designs as well. I haven't looked, but I'm pretty certain it's already a stretch goal. Might as well, the faces are already different. You'll see shortly if you haven't already.

Hi Guys.
I don't know what is going on but I can not back the projet
It keeps getting the same error:

Can please someone Help me?
By the way. Loooooooooooove the decki !

renanfkt wrote:Hi Guys.
I don't know what is going on but I can not back the projet
It keeps getting the same error:
...
Can please someone Help me?
By the way. Loooooooooooove the decki !

So glad to see someone from Brazil on the board, and pledging for decks, too! I analyzed 30 projects this year and only found 2 pledges in South America.

We're working on it, and I hope to have a permanent resolution soon. Right now it's purposefully stopped so we can reset the payment connector, and WePay is having sporadic problems. Not much we can do because their tech support (which is better than PayPal by far - they actually give out a phone #) is swamped.

Nobody is more frustrated than I am, it should be so simple, but the two fixes I have found so far (our of three big problems) have absolutely no real reason to affect anything, and so I have to conclude that there is a bad line of code somewhere overwriting something else. It will take a little while to sort it all out, and the best I can say is to keep trying. Over 100 people have pledged for Venexiana Dark already (and the total pledges aren't correct on the website either, I just downloaded the spreadsheet to see if there is any pattern).

Not going to pop into the other thread are you Mike?

Mike Hi !
Since I am new to the forums let me introduce myself: My name is Renan Almeida, I am a chemist and live in Brazil.
I am a big fan of playing cards and I decided to start collecting it back in '07
Venexiana was my first project that I backed through KS. It is a little hard to buy playing cards from the big stores like T11/ EL or even the De'vo store because they overcharge on the shipping rates, sometimes it can be over 25 USD.
On KS things are a bit different, the shipping rate for places outside Brazil is way cheaper.
Another problem that I have is the time that takes for the cards to arrive in my home, sometimes can be up to 3 or even 4 months and the taxes here are overcharged. The import tax for several goods can be around 60% when the purchase total is over 50 USD and that's why it is difficult for me to back bricks and more than 2 or 3 decks.

I am very happy with the Cardlauncher initative and hope it can be as successful as KS someday. Congratz on the intiative.

snsdmonkey wrote:Not going to pop into the other thread are you Mike?

I've been working with tech support from CrowdEngine (our software vendor) and WePay for the past three or four hours. Some of the problems we are seeing right now just don't show up during beta testing, no matter how thorough you are, because - just an example - we're not going any D$D stuff like marking pledges "anonymous". That feature is obviously not available when you're testing, because during that time you wouldn't even think about letting pledges be anonymous, just makes no sense.

There's a nexus of problems on our side, WePay's side and the general network slowness and BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) errors that started around 3PM NYC time yesterday contributing to the problems. Those error message keep indicating there is "No route" to certain IP addresses, and frankly, if the Internet is working properly, that's just impossible: that's what it was designed for - to be a self-healing redundant way of transporting information in case of war or other natural disasters, for instance.

What did I miss other than my share of sniping that I'm already catching anyway because I've had to put my phone back on the table four or five times because I finally cut the ringer off and the vibrate function is making it walk off the table??

Mike Ratledge wrote:
What did I miss other than my share of sniping that I'm already catching anyway because I've had to put my phone back on the table four or five times because I finally cut the ringer off and the vibrate function is making it walk off the table??

What did you miss?
REALLY
You can't see what you are missing

The chance to handle this professionally.

The show that you can handle and receive as much mud as you yourself have slung.

The ability to calm those that are genuinely worried about their money and want to take part in this.

And most of all the chance to not let Card launcher go down the toilet.

I'd just like to participate frankly. Would really like the Venexiana Dark deck...but doesn't look like it's happening tonight at least. And even more frustrating that because of bugs, because of glitches, I missed out on early birds (like many others) and just sit there in frustration.

That's what you're missing Mike. A lot of us that gave constructive criticism. A lot of us that were excited. And now, a lot of us very disenfranchised. No biggie I guess.

UtterFool wrote:

Mike Ratledge wrote:
What did I miss other than my share of sniping that I'm already catching anyway because I've had to put my phone back on the table four or five times because I finally cut the ringer off and the vibrate function is making it walk off the table??

What did you miss?
REALLY
You can't see what you are missing

The chance to handle this professionally.

The show that you can handle and receive as much mud as you yourself have slung.

The ability to calm those that are genuinely worried about their money and want to take part in this.

And most of all the chance to not let Card launcher go down the toilet.

Oh, sorry - I have things to do to get things back working, like getting the software vendor back in the office even if it is almost 11PM Friday night.

I have no intention of doing anything like D$D did, which is one of the points I made to get them back in there. They are, as of about 15 minutes ago.

I am handling it as professionally as possible because I have sunk more than a half year of every spare waking moment of my life into it. As I've already noted, nobody is more disappointed than I am, and for sure - it's part on the vendor's side, part on the WePay/PayPal side and part on the fact that the network BGP is messed up which it has been since about 3PM NYC time yesterday. That makes certain routes unavailable and we know it's BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) problems because it's simply not possible to get "No Route" errors on a properly configured and working network.

I've eaten enough pooh already, but I can certainly handle a whole lot more. I have already called out the president of the company that wrote the CrowdEngine software because we took our sweet time and even delayed this two weeks to insure that they didn't leave any bugs in the software, and as of tonight we have identified at least 1/2 dozen that have nothing to do with WePay/PayPal or sluggish/no route network.

I can assure you that we didn't put over $25,000 into this effort just to see it waste away, and believe me, I've already pulled out the stops to insure that the things that ARE on our side are fixed - and soon. There are some truly dumb things in the code that just shouldn't happen - ever. Part of it is admitedly because we rewrote the crowdfunding paradigm from the ground up, as anyone that has used CL when it works correctly can tell you. It lets you pick multiple rewards, computes precise shipping and handling depending on point of delivery, and in all cases walks circles around any other CF website that exists.

I just reset all the payment connectors and everything is up and running - for now. I have to keep resetting projects because the network connectivity issues keep taking down the connectors. I just backed the "Good and Evil" twins myself, just to insure it's all going.

I'll be perfectly honest and say it's bound to happen again, no way it won't happen - but - I haven't really slept for two days anyway, so I'll keep soldering on, and once we do have everything working 100% we're going to spread out some more "Early Bird" pledge tiers all around and announce a time for people to try again. We have to be live to fix this mess. There are certain things you can only do when the projects are live.

SpecialK - that project is accepting pledges right now, as are all the other ones. Like I said, nobody could possibly be more disappointed than I am - this should have been a 'turn-key' launch.

Mike Ratledge wrote: SpecialK - that project is accepting pledges right now, as are all the other ones. Like I said, nobody could possibly be more disappointed than I am - this should have been a 'turn-key' launch.

Thanks Mike. Wish the project was accepting pledges for me.

Checkout with a credit card or bank account
Please review the problems below:

Your pledge couldn't be processed, please retry or email us at noreply@cardlauncher.com.

Pledge Amount
$22
Edit
Shipping Cost
$6
Pledge Total
$28 Edit
Reward 1
$16
Number of Decks: 2
2 Limited Edition decks
Liquid error: can't modify frozen hash Liquid error: can't modify frozen hash

I'll randomly try. Good luck getting it running.

New technology is hard. It's just in its nature. Don't fret. You don't put all this kind of work into a project this large for a quick buck. This is a long term project that requires several rounds of feedback loops early on to fine tune. This is literally a small business. It's absolutely mandatory to have these kinds of learning curves. Remember to stay passionate and persevere. Best of luck!

My 2 deck EB pledge had the wrong total and was experimenting in trying to change my pledge amount which I could not do because it said the pledge level was sold out. I tried choosing another pledge with the hopes I could go back to the EB pledge but mysteriously it blew me out and now I show no pledge at all. But the EB still shows sold out... Probably some code issues again

I'm looking forward to venexiana dark but I have a bad feeling these mistakes and let downs will ultimately turn CL into D$D, no longer in use.

Insult to injury - let's give prizes anyways! Heh.

Mike Ratledge wrote:Nobody is more frustrated than I am, it should be so simple, but the two fixes I have found so far (our of three big problems) have absolutely no real reason to affect anything, and so I have to conclude that there is a bad line of code somewhere overwriting something else. It will take a little while to sort it all out, and the best I can say is to keep trying.

Are you serious?!? The best you can say is keep trying? Shut the damn thing down until you know you can get it running correctly and stop stringing us along!

Mike Ratledge wrote:

snsdmonkey wrote:Not going to pop into the other thread are you Mike?

What did I miss other than my share of sniping that I'm already catching anyway

That statement is unbelievable and cowardly.

Mike Ratledge wrote:I am handling it as professionally as possible ...I've eaten enough pooh already, but I can certainly handle a whole lot more...Like I said, nobody could possibly be more disappointed than I am - this should have been a 'turn-key' launch.

No, you have not handled this professionally at all. You're hiding out, how is that professional? No one gives a rat(ledge)'s ass about your disappointment because your disappointment is limited to one person - you. How about you be really professional and go to the SWTWC CardLauncher thread to address the concerns and disappointments of many people in the appropriate thread. The longer you avoid doing this, the lower your credibility falls in our eyes.

You know those decks we said we'd give away, we know most of you couldn't pledge or still can't, but hey, we're giving them away anyhow!!


And as for our wonderful BETA testers that didn't catch shit, WE'RE GIVING 5 OF THEM BOTH DECKS AND A FEW Anything Is Possible Bottles. Forget that our system is so muffed up that It makes Windows ME look as reliable as a Swiss watch. But please, we know you can't pledge but keep trying.

How about we all continue posting this here instead of using this thread for venexiana dark. Copy and paste what Mike has said here into the cardlauncher thread.

@Lotrek you work is really superior and I would love to add this to my collection not least because it would complete my set.

Unfortunately cardlauncher.com is not working for me and simply will not take my money or it has but is not showing it has taken my money, either way the last 24 hours have eroded my confidence in backing through this channel for your project even though I REALLY want to give you my money and also support any alternative to kickstarter.

I have tried persevering as suggested in Mike Ratledges last e-mail and have two payment authorisation confirmation emails from wepay but still show as not backing anything. Clicking on the project it switches between; 'manage your pledge' and; 'Your pledge couldn't be processed, please retry or email us at support@cardlauncher.com.'

Good luck with the project, awesome designs!

@Lotrek would love to back your project your decks are amazing, but can't sadly.

@Mike
CL needs to be taken offline completely sorted out and then relaunched.

Shit happens, but letting a ship on its maiden voyage limp out of the harbour and on till it sinks which is what will happen if this is allowed to continue on, as people will get more and more frustrated with it while it doesn't work, so when it does finally work no one will trust it to do so.

Best off shut it down and relaunch when it is fully sorted out, send an email out to everyone apologising for the issues that you are still learning as you go, mistakes have been made, you are going to sort them out and relaunch once it is ready. People tend to be reasonable, but what is happening currently will sink your project before it can even start.

Ive been trying to support this all day and keep getting errors as well

While I got extremely frustrated the last few days, with a messed up sleep pattern, I can report that I'm still alive. I was in favour of closing down the project until everything works. Mike has now explained that the site needs to be live in order to eradicate the bugs! I'll hold off trying again, as asked, then hopefully I can get stuck into the pledges. I've got "closed candy store" syndrome!

I'm really confused guys, I want to thank all of you who express your support despite the problems!
But I also want to tell to those who are disappointed -or angry- that I understand your feelings. It's not the best news for me -obviously- but judging from myself I can understand that someone can easily get tired trying over and over again with something which -for whatever reason- is not working.
I'm with those who believe that the site should be shut down until it's 1000% working but I hear that it should be working to fix things. I don't know, my knowledge on this field is almost zero, so I'm -like everyone- just watching...

I KNOW that CL is designed to solve problems and to have the flexibility that KS lacks. It's sad sad to see that this cannot be proved yet.

As far as I understand, when he shuts down the site and tests it..everything works fine. The issues start happening once it's actually live. I guess if that's the only way to really work out the kinks then I suppose I'm ok with being useful as a guinea pig to keep running against the wall until we get through.

Hey Mike: is it possible to use Venexiana as a guinea pig so we can work out the kinks then after everything is sorted Lotrek can cancel and relaunch the project to make sure the pledges are safe? I dunno if that could be any help.