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| New Weekly Update!! Sunday, November 29, 2009 2:29 am — Posted by Livio |
ShareThisI'm gonna try to revive the weekly update now, and I'm gonna try to do it without depending on the staff when I'm supposedly too busy. From now on, I'm gonna hold the weekly update on Sundays, because it's much easier to think of Mondays as being the start of a new week-- and also because I can do the weekly update on Saturday night, which is when the server (Interguild Time) is just going into Sunday.
This week, a recap of all the major stuff that happened in the last two months:
Competitions
We held 5 competitions since the last update. Two weeks ago, jell started a comp for the game SeppuKuties in an attempt to get people to see past its strange presentation and enjoy the game's interesting gameplay possibilities. I was the only one who entered a level into that comp (
), so it was extended by another week. But only Bmwsu has joined so far, and the comp ends by the end of today (Sunday).Then in a strange and unplanned move, Isa started a new all-game competition for DDA's, in which so far no one has joined.
The comp runs until the end of tomorrow (Monday), but it will most likely be canceled unless you guys have sudden bursts of inspiration to make DDAs.It has also been decided that subsequent competitions will run for two weeks, and will most likely be for the games that have demand at the moment (which in most cases, is HATPC).
Aeon
On October 23rd, I released a demo of the current very-early-in-production build of Aeon. The demo included a "debug menu" where tons of fine-tune options could be altered, such as max running speed, running acceleration, running deceleration, etc. The main purpose was so that players could decide the best default settings for the game and also to maybe boost activity.
Also, I've been fighting rhetorically hard to have some kind of Custom Object feature in Aeon, but today I was amazed at an amazing idea jell suggested. It's too early to say if anything is decided yet, but I am willing to give up the idea of Custom Tiles in Aeon because of it.
Changes in the Level Database
I've been working a lot on the level database lately. I've changed the "Related CaveList Results" into something that says "This cave may already be uploaded onto the following HATPC accounts:". After that, it shows you all of the names that it found in one single line. It only displays the name of the cave in the cavelist entry if the name is slightly different from the name of the cave. Also, it only shows you caves that are similar in dimension as the level in the database.
Another feature I added was the Quick Browsing buttons that lets you go to the "Next" and "Previous" levels. The order of levels can be changed by clicking on the options link, and these settings are automatically set for the most common searches, such as Top Rated and Hardest Levels.
And just today, I changed the way you use the Map Generator for HATPC levels. I moved the link that used to say "Generate Map" slightly above the level code box and renamed it to say "View Preview Map of Level". When you click on it, it loads the map right there on the same page.
And if the map stretches out the page, you can always click on the "Show/Hide Preview" link that comes out with the map. The only thing annoying about it is that if you click "Back" on your browser, it'll actually undo the loading of the map, so if you want to get out of that page, you'll have to click "Back" twice.Other Recent Stuff
Two weeks ago I added to the forums a feature called Header Posts, which is a post that appears at the top of every page of a topic. It is particularly useful in organizing some of the major discussions that we are holding throughout the site.
By the way, teo_pl recently showed up again today after disappearing for so long. He said that he would not be here as often as he once was, but he posted a new level and it's pretty good: Mystery Palace.
Future Stuff
The staff is currently working on holding a Best of 2009 Awards. You may remember from the old Interguild site that we held some ridiculously disorganized "Caving Elections" for the best HATPC caves of 2007. We did not have awards last year because of the major shift to the new site, as well as the lack of activity during some major parts of the year. Anyway, it is still unclear how exactly the event will be organized, but the basic setup is that the staff nominates the best levels made during the past year in various categories, and then we release the nominees, after which the public may vote on who should win.
I've been working on the revamp of the current Guides system. I originally said that I would try to this Thanksgiving weekend to try to finish it by Monday, but I'm not sure that's very likely. After this part of the site if fixed, next in line would be to revamp the hideous Video Archive.
I've also recruited Haily to help me with advertising and making the Interguild easier to gain new members, since he apparently knows a lot about that stuff, and I've seen him experiment with a ton of crazy advertising strategies for IceCaves.net.
Some notable levels that you should really try if you haven't yet
Somewhat Speed by Krotomo
Grand Scheme of Things by Dando
Networking by Harumbai
Snowflake of Doom Reborn by Quirvy
The Metal Movement by Isa
User Comments (14)
| Isa | ||
| No. I'm an octopus. Age: 31 Karma: 686 Posts: 7833 Gender: Male Location: Uppsala, Sweden - GMT +1 pm | email |
"From now on, I'm gonna hold the weekly update on Sundays, because it's much easier to think of Mondays as being the start of a new week" Guess what, it is here in Sweden. Also, tomorrow, week 49 starts. You got some work to do when it comes to your weeks... "I've also recruited Haily to help me with advertising and making the Interguild easier to gain new members, since he apparently knows a lot about that stuff, and I've seen him experiment with a ton of crazy advertising strategies for IceCaves.net." BEST. NEWS. EVER. (since Aeon beta was released) | |
| Livio | ||
Age: 31 Karma: 470 Posts: 9620 Gender: Male Location: Arizona, USA pm | email |
the deal was that I had to help him make stuff for his site. Like a while ago, I put put an image uploader into his staff pages (where I basically just copied-pasted in ours with some minor adjustments). He also wants me to do a bunch of mundane stuff that he doesn't want to do, such redesigning his ugly user profiles and adding some possible new statistics to them. btw, I think "beta" is a term used for the near-end-of-production build released for testing into a larger audience, which is after the alpha build has been tested by a smaller, more exclusive audience. | |
| Bmwsu | ||
Age: 28 Karma: 175 Posts: 2557 Gender: Male pm | email |
Speaking of advertising, Livio, what is the dimensions for a sideways ad? The biggest type.      | |
| Thomas | ||
| the clique shall prevail Karma: 111 Posts: 2503 Gender: Female Location: clique pm | email |
 What else are you adding to IceCaves Livio? | |
| Livio | ||
Age: 31 Karma: 470 Posts: 9620 Gender: Male Location: Arizona, USA pm | email |
'Bmwsu' said: Speaking of advertising, Livio, what is the dimensions for a sideways ad? The biggest type. 'Thomas' said: What else are you adding to IceCaves Livio? | |
| Bmwsu | ||
Age: 28 Karma: 175 Posts: 2557 Gender: Male pm | email |
Would you mind if I made a banner for the Interguild? | |
| Livio | ||
Age: 31 Karma: 470 Posts: 9620 Gender: Male Location: Arizona, USA pm | email |
a banner? you mean to advertise on other sites? you can make it but there's no guarantee that it'll ever be used  | |
| Bmwsu | ||
Age: 28 Karma: 175 Posts: 2557 Gender: Male pm | email |
Come on. You make around .25-.50 cents a month through ads on this site. You can afford to advertise. | |
| Livio | ||
Age: 31 Karma: 470 Posts: 9620 Gender: Male Location: Arizona, USA pm | email |
lol but what's this banner supposed to be for anyway? | |
| Bmwsu | ||
Age: 28 Karma: 175 Posts: 2557 Gender: Male pm | email |
Advertising. | |
| Livio | ||
Age: 31 Karma: 470 Posts: 9620 Gender: Male Location: Arizona, USA pm | email |
but where? lol are you gonna hand it to people and tell them to put it up on their user profiles on forums and stuff? I'm assuming that's why you wanted those dimensions, right? | |
| Bmwsu | ||
Age: 28 Karma: 175 Posts: 2557 Gender: Male pm | email |
Google Adwords. And, no. I wanted the dimensions for actually advertising banners. Like the ones at the bottom of this page. | |
| Livio | ||
Age: 31 Karma: 470 Posts: 9620 Gender: Male Location: Arizona, USA pm | email |
by "sideways ad", I thought you meant a vertical ad. And the largest horizontal size is 728x90. | |
| Bmwsu | ||
Age: 28 Karma: 175 Posts: 2557 Gender: Male pm | email |
Now to make it... | |
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