Posted by Kim on August 16, 2016, 12:30pm
Summer Art Trade closing tonight!
At midnight tonight, a flood of super cool character art is going to start rolling in to the Midsummer Art Trade topic. I love chances like this to see the amazing artistic talents in our community on display! Definitely keep your eyes on that topic -- you could even subscribe to it for notifications of when the art starts rolling in.
And of course, if you're participating in the Summer Art Trade, make sure you finish up your submissions today!
Recent fixes & updates
Forum Chat bug fixedOver the past couple of months, some of you may have encountered an annoying issue where the Forum Chat gradually stopped working for particular topics in group forums. You'd be able to open the chat, but when you tried to send a message, the message window would never unlock and the loading spinner would continue forever even though the message eventually appeared in chat. We hadn't been able to track down the source of this issue previously, until last week when it arrived on the shores of the Just Talkin' public chat topic, starting and stopping and then starting again.
This gave me a constant enough stream of samples to track down the root of the problem and fix it site-wide. If you've been avoiding chats due to this annoyance, please give them another try!
Easier registration and better new player orientationsIn the last two weeks, my development focus has been on improving the registration and new player tutorial experience. This is still an on-going project, but significant changes to new player orientation and even the email verification process have already arrived on site, with more coming soon. Being a newbie to a community is stressful enough even when you don't have a lot of new buttons and concepts to learn about, so I'm trying to provide all the help and resources I can.
If you are interested in helping new players join our community, consider offering new members a personal welcome on the Introduction forum. Players who get a personalized welcome are significantly more likely to stick around and become active community members themselves! On the shy side yourself and never sure what to say to new members? Here's some great ideas!
Speaking of updates, Furcadia just had a big oneSince such a huge portion of our population also has roots in Furcadia, I want to take a moment to congratulate Furcadia on the major Second Dreaming update they just launched. Some of you may know that I was once a Head of the Pixel Beekins for a brief moment in time, and saw some of the early roots that became parts of this update start to take form. It's a dream come true to see it all become a reality!
And hey, some of my art is even featured in this update. Especially the fancy animated translucent water.
As a programmer, I know what a tremendous amount of work it must have been to overhaul the entire client, the patch editor and the dream editor. As a pixel artist I know how much went into the graphical updates. And boy howdy, I'm tired thinking about it. Definitely check it out if you haven't seen this update yet!
RP prompt of the week
This is a new tradition I'd like to start: A weekly prompt or plot bunny to get RP started or spice up an already existing plot! Here's your first prompt to do with what you will:A scheduled delivery turns dangerous when black market contraband is discovered in its contents. Who will arrive to deal with it first, the law, or the criminals responsible? This prompt comes from Ben!
Do you have a suggestion for a RP prompt or plot bunny you'd like to see featured in the news? Send it to Kim -- if it's picked, you'll receive credit for the idea.
rat
August 18, 2016
7:01am