Lightning Jamie's Blog

About Me

I first started playing YoVille in September 2009. I am a programmer by trade, and I have been applying my skills to YoVille in one way or another ever since I started playing.

I am always looking for angles, or little ways to beat the system. My favorite thing is finding new, original ideas for doing things better or faster or easier.

At first I wrote some programs to help create whiteboard artwork. These programs still work, but I have for the most part lost interest in the art business, largely because of the hassle of holding sales. Art sales in particular are a hassle because some idiots insist on falsely accusing all art dealers of being scammers.

When the bakery was introduced, I wrote a little GreaseMonkey timer for Firefox that would insert itself into the web page and provide reminder within the YoVille page.

I began hosting maxing events instead of sales, with samples of my artwork displayed in the maxing room. This is what got me started in maxing, but I began to work on a program for maxing as well. Initially it only did a few mouse clicks, triggered by keystrokes instead of clicking manually. Over time, this program grew more capable and now runs almost completely automatically.

When the photo feature was added, I would go to crowded events to get “perfect” pictures and points and coins, and I tried to figure out some clever thing to do for the photos. Eventually I came up with the idea for the photo tour, which ended up being quite popular. Unlike most of my endeavors, this required no programming.

Around Christmas time I started thinking about the problem of trading. I have always hated sales because they are time consuming and disorganized. Being disorganized is not a problem per se, but I find myself wasting a lot of time. In NeoPets, a game I played years ago, the game itself manages a marketplace, and individuals can post items for sale and purchase items with minimal hassle.

After much head-scratching, I came up with a concept which in theory should be very effective. It’s something like Craigslist for YoVille, where the external website serves to connect users with each other, but the trade itself occurs in YoVille. I wrote all the code for an implementation at yo-ex.com (supposed to be short for YoVille Exchange) but we have yet to see how successful it will be.

Lightning Jamie | February 2, 2010 6:44 pm

9 Comments

By Sean, February 4, 2010 @ 10:51 am

Thanks for all your help in yoville jamie – you are the best!
By Doj, February 4, 2010 @ 8:21 pm

looking forward to hearing more about the yoville exchange
By Goldie, February 4, 2010 @ 8:52 pm

You certainly are on the right track. It’s a game to play and some want to make it all work and no play (like the Sweet Factory and Cafe World) and “punish” you for missing a scheduled food product removal.

So glad to get rid of Sweet Factory and get the Widget factory back. You are making the game fun again instead of problematic by reducing the frustration of wasted time! Thanks for sharing your talents with us.
By Kat, April 14, 2010 @ 8:06 pm

Can’t wait for the new maxer. I know alot of ppl are going to want it. I for one, can’t wait for it. I have talked to plenty who do want it as the old maxing system doesn’t work on the new yoville. Hope it comees into play soon.
By eduardo, June 24, 2010 @ 9:55 am

is there any other images then elvis
By MarkTheShark, June 24, 2010 @ 5:02 pm

hi MarkTheShark is my yoville name

i have downloaded and installed the program but cant seem to get it to work… am running windows XP with google chrome IE8 and firefox… progrom wont work useing any of the 3 browsers… any suggestions would be nice plz thank you
By Lightning Jamie, June 25, 2010 @ 6:37 pm

Elvis is the only free one. You can upload your own but it is not free.
By Lightning Jamie, June 25, 2010 @ 6:39 pm

Apparently something happened just today that is causing it to not work. I’m looking into it right now.
By DarkByte, July 27, 2010 @ 8:45 am

hi jamie

this program that u’ve created is super awesome …!!!…i really love it

love ur blog and u should add new stuff to it

-randy