Posted by Kim on September 21, 2015, 9:40am
We had a number of great questions this month. Here are the answers for those of you who couldn't make it to office hours, but may still be curious about the haps of the RPR! Of course, at the time, all these answers were given in pirate lingo. I've translated them here to more modern English for your reading ease.About the RP Finder: how long does it take before an ad disappears?
Looking For RP posts get a bit harder to spot about roughly a week of no activity; by two, they vanish completely. Of course, you can remove your RP topic from Finder search results entirely by adding "(closed)" to the topic title, minus the quotation marks of course.
So does that mean our own posts will bump the topic back into activity, even if we aren't the OP?
Yes, but that is a very temporary situation. At the moment I'm caching data that will make it easier for the site to know when the last time the OP responded to their own post, and once that's done I'll be switching over to a system where only the OP's responses can bump a topic back into Find RP search results.
May I ask if we're ever going to see the RPG battle sim from Epic Week make a return?
It's very likely! It was actually so popular I've been considering expanding on it and setting it up as its own game somewhere, with its own plot and progressions. Please let me know in the comment section if this is something that would interest you!
Failing that, I'm sure some version of it will re-occur in future epic week celebrations as well.
Am I the only one whose chat window stapler noise stopped working and hasn't worked despite countless reboots?
There turned out to be two people in the chat that had this problem, each with a different cause.
If this has happened to you, the first thing to do is open your chat options menu (the little blue gear icon on the top right of the text input area). Make sure that the chat volume is turned up!
If you're sure the chat volume is on and you still can't hear anything, this usually indicates a problem with your flash player. Some devices, especially apple devices, do not have flash installed by default. However, if it used to work and doesn't now, you can try turning your browser's flash plugin on and off again, then refresh the chat. Still no dice? You may need to update or reinstall your flash.
Will there be a way to format columns in future? Like being able to center them?
Maybe. It's somewhat well known that I originally didn't include any help documentation for columns because they weren't something I wanted to support - there's just far too much that can go wrong with them, and ways they can be abused (or accidentally misused). This problem only deepens as full support for mobile devices gets closer. However, people found the column commands anyway without my help, so now I seem to be somewhat on the hook for helping with them! The trials and tribulations of being an admin.
I am currently considering adding a way to control the size of individual columns.
In the meanwhile, if you're an epic member you may be able to get some control of your column displays via CSS.
Is there any chance we could get some feature where there is an optional music bar, either on top or bottom of your character sheet, where you can insert your own music from your files, youtube, etc? I have seen tumblr with it before and I think it is great! There is even an autoplay feature if someone wanted.
We will not be offering music uploads directly to the RPR at any point -- it eats up a huge amount of storage, and opens up some fairly rough copyright concerns. However, many people add their own music players to their sites by using youtube video embeds! Some even like to resize their youtube videos so that only the play buttons are showing, allowing them to simulate it being just being a jukebox rather than a full video. See http://www.rprepository.com/help/bbcode#72 for help with getting that set up.
Regarding autoplay: We have permanently disabled all autoplay for music and videos on the RPR, and we consider this a feature!
Music is one of those things that people feel very strongly about, and when they love it, they really love it and want to share it -- so much so that they forget that not everyone shares their tastes, or that many people already have media playing on their computer and don't want a second song to suddenly start as well, or that someone might be at work, in school, on the bus, or sitting next to a sleeping baby, and autoplay music could cause problems for them. So as a matter of netiquette, we don't autoplay music! Instead, give people the option to hear it when they are ready for it.
Thank you to everyone who joined me for office hours this weekend! It is always a pleasure chatting with you all. And boy, some of you are great at talking like a pirate! Arrrr!
Comments
I would love to play more games like we did during Epic Week! It was awesome how everyone worked together to fight the goblins, and how the community got together to care for the many headed dragon. (How are they doing anyway?) I foresee only greatness if the game receives its own site. 
If the sim were to come back outside of epic week, it'd be its own site entirely.
I haven't been here for an epic week, but I think that adding a Sim thingy-ma-bob might be pretty cool, especially if you could go in depth with the character design. I don't really know what it is, but it could be, Like, an epic member thing where you can upload a fancy character skin or whatever.
ZoeAlexJ
September 22, 2015
3:03am