In other news, I wrote a tutorial on streaming movies on the SHOUTcast. It's a fairly involved process and requires a lot of ripping, encoding and transcoding, so I figured a general tutorial will help people get most of the way there. It would be nice if it were easier, but this is as easy as it will ever get.
FUCK YEAH OBAMA
I have some actual news today, what are the odds? The first, and happy news, is that Earthflame has completed the latest version of ArtifIce: The Game of Machine Intelligence, wherein the players are AIs of various sorts - from rogue code on the net that gains sentience to spaceship pilots to maintenance robots run amok. The newest version, v2, is available here.
In sadder news, Earthflame today announced that he's going to be taking a break entirely from roleplaying games and the gaming community as a whole for a while for health reasons. This means, unfortunately, that his work on Mosaic and Eurid are at a standstill, and he won't be attending or DMing any games he had scheduled. He didn't provide any particular instructions to his players or contributors, though I'm sure he'd appreciate anyone that was working on them (e.g. playtesting) to continue doing so in his absence.
Please get well soon, Earthflame, we all miss you already. <3
In other news, Halloween is tomorrow! We'll be playing horror movies on the SHOUTcast pretty much all day, and hopefully we'll get some horror-themed games going as well. It should be a lot of fun. I don't know what movies we have scheduled yet, but we've got a collection of them, and I plan to have them going pretty much nonstop. If you want to DM a horror-heavy Dark Heresy, All Flesh Must Be Eaten, Call of Cthulhu, Unknown Armies or similar game, now's definitely the time. (For those of you that hate the current color scheme, that will be going away November 1 as well.)
I don't really have anything important to say, I just wanted to post this.
Also I added the ability to view all by a particular author on the articles but most of you probably don't care yet. I've also added a "captcha" after some spammers posted a couple completely gibberish things and fully disabled all HTML on comments. (Spoilers, leave the CAPTCHA blank or it will fail.)
I'll clean out moar threads soonish. I've been playing too much Dead Space. Hopefully my free time will return when I'm not up until 5am playing that every day.
It's that time again! And man, is it ever overdue. The archive is up to an incredible 1,047 total threads, of which 178 are below -5, and 81 are under -8 (the point at which they generally stop appearing on the normal list). It's time for some delicious purging.
Much like previous rounds, any threads under -5 are up for deletion. They're not deleted immediately; they're moved to a graveyard for a period (I say "a week" but then forget after "a few minutes" and they're up for much longer). You'll find the list of deleted threads below, along with commentary on why it deserved purging outside of its score. (I do try to check threads that appear to at least have been contested before removing them.) This time around, the links to the deleted threads will be included in the list so you can see for yourself why they were so shitty. As usual, you can make your case for a given thread in the IRC or by email.
And now, on to the list:
(Cut for length)This list will increase as I go through them and delete more, so you may want to refresh if you're reading this shortly after it's been posted. If you're reading this days, weeks or months down the road, HELLO TO THE WORLD OF TOMORROW!
ps. why does everyone hate Dr. Skittles Bosch?
The very first post on sup/tg/ wasn't properly dated, so the exact date may be off in either direction by a couple days, but I'm fairly certain October 20th(ish) was the one-year anniversary of sup/tg/. (It's now October 21, but shhh.) This site has gone from a single webpage I put up to organize Timevan games, to, well, everything it is today: ~70 daily users on the IRC, over a thousand archived threads (which needs to be purged badly at this point), three character generators, and over 103,000 visitors and 792GB served so far this year alone. Quite an accomplishment given its origins and its nature as a simple companion site. If you're curious, you can view the first sup/tg/ post here (click Go Newer to scroll to newer posts).
I've been asked a couple times today in passing about where I'd like to see sup/tg/ go in the next three months or year. Honestly, I have no real plans right now; I'm quite pleased with the pace of its growth and where it is right now. I don't feel a need to expand the site into anything it won't become by itself; this entire project has come to life in a very organic fashion, which is part of the point. "If you build it, they will come" has always been the driving force behind this site, and it's going to continue that way for the foreseeable future.
As for upcoming features, I think I'm going to revisit some of the existing features and improve them anywhere I can. I have a tendency to wander from project to project almost at random, so a little more focus can only be a good thing. I've also learned in the professional world that you shouldn't put out new stuff until your existing material is in top shape, so things like the games and players listings, site organization, and archives need a once-over to clean out the crap and fix up the way they operate for the best utility.
To this end, I think the first step right now will be to set all the "relist weekly" games in the Games Listing to "no" and see which games get updated once they've completed. I also got a request from a "random fa/tg/uy" to make games accepting new players stand out in some way, so I'll do that as well. I'll repeat it a little bolder: Attention DMs: Games in the Games Listing are having "weekly" relisting turned off. Please update your games accordingly.
I feel like I should be saying something sappy, but it's a bit too much schmaltz I think. Still, I would like to thank everyone for making sup/tg/ the success it is today. Ruler, especially, has done such a wonderful, dedicated job keeping the site and community healthy; I know I can leave the site alone for any length of time and know he'll be keeping things together. So everyone thank him for helping to keep me from burning out, and make sure he goes to bed on time so he doesn't burn out.
Edity: I kinda fucked up the archive script a bit, threads were being archived but their info wasn't being added to the database. I've fixed the thread and will repopulate the list with the missing threads.
Man, today's been a busy day. We've already had four new articles added to the brand-new Articles section, including Schrödinger's review of an overhyped energy drink, CAPSLOCKGUY's announcement of his upcoming Let's Play: Dwarf Fortress, Purple's ramblings about game design, and MxSavior's tale of Razamon, Barbarian of the North. I haven't even had time to think about writing something myself yet, with all the articles I'm posting for people.
Some of my busy schedule included adding a new feature to the archive which likely few people will use or care about: the ability to sort archived threads by average score. This means a thread with a score of +10 out of 10 votes will appear higher on the list than a thread with +20 out of 40 votes. This required more work than it should have, but it was my own fault for coding it stupid in the first place, and it's another way to present data in a meaningful fashion so I'm happy.
Last but not least... uh. I forgot. We're going to try to watch Phantoms and Mind Warp this weekend, which should be fun. As always, you can submit articles to myself or Ruler or Purple or Jean or ... I don't think I gave Mx an email address yet but him too. One last note about the articles section is that I've added some legal licenses regarding copyright, so authors can feel safe that I'm not going to take their sweat, tears, blood and feces and use them for nefarious purposes. It's especially relevant (and the permissions especially strict) for articles regarding Game Design, so people can feel free to talk about their awesome projects without fear.
Oh, one last thing! I did end up moving Purple and Jean's articles on Exalted, Lacuna and Planescape into the actual Articles section, so if you're looking for them on the frontpage, they've been transferred over.
Huzzah, it's finally finished! The Articles section of sup/tg/ is now done. Once again, it took a few-hour up-until-5:40 day to do it, but it's done! The navigation is a bit shit at the moment, but whatever. People can start submitting articles for each of the categories, either by stopping in the IRC or shooting me an email. Ruler and Jean and Purple, too, and MxSavior soon!
I don't know how any of this is going to work yet, at least in terms of how new articles are announced; I might put a thin top banner at the top of the frontpage with the last couple posted articles visible, as well as any planned events or other notable things. I also don't have a particular posting schedule in mind, either; multiple simultaneous submissions will likely get posted one by one (preferably one a day), and I'll figure out how and when they'll get posted on a weekly basis.
Last and certainly not least, remember, this is for the benefit of /tg/ as a whole; you don't need to be a sup/tg/ regular to have an article posted. Hell, you could be visiting for the very first time today, and if you send something awesome our way it'll get posted. As long as the article's decent, we'll post anything related to any /tg/ topic, from your favorite DF stories to game design ideas or new homebrew systems to general (eloquent!) rants about why something sucks or rocks. So go ahead and submit your articles!
Yeah, so, just as T1000 finally made a visit to sup/tg/, and, literally, as he asked me if I wanted to play Timevan again, Comcast shit the bed. I have no fucking idea what's going on; the modem seems to think it's still got a connection, but the "cable internet" light is blinking at erratic intervals and the phone was silence, and now giving me a goddamned busy signal. I've never seen this happen before; they must be fixing something or changing a system somewhere and it's causing oddities that most normal people wouldn't notice at just before midnight-thirty, but it's rather disconcerting. The fact that their "lol voip" means I've got no 911 service when they fuck up my phone is actually, legitimately dangerous.
Oh man. It's threads like these that make me glad I started the archive. Slol Sluxslol indeed. I do believe I've found a new icon.
For those of you that haven't noticed yet, both the front page and archives now actually use those tags you've likely been ignoring for months. Both do partial tag matching, so a search for d'aw will likely come up with all the varying amounts of w, and a search for fag will bring up both drawfaggotry and writefaggotry. (You can edit the URL if you want to search for a specific tag, I'll add a real search function later.)
I haven't started the articles section yet, though Purple has gotten us off to a pretty good start with his post about Planescape, below. He says he's going to make more of them, so I'd better create the articles section before Purple floods us all with his verbosity. I suppose now's a good a time as any to tell you all that you can start emailing submissions if you're interested in having something put up on the site. This goes for game designers as well as reviews as well as, well, anything you want really. If you want to see your name in print and are too stupid to operate a Geocities account now is the time.
Edity: the poster above me is a faggot
It took me a bit longer than I had expected - 75% was futzing with the layout, the actual coding was cake - but I've added a comment system to the frontpage. Every post will automatically have comments available for your derogatory pleasure. (Also, I see nobody has topped my Angus Scrimm yet. I don't blame you. He's pretty awesome.)
The next step after this is, potentially, a polling system, although that's mostly just for fun; really, I want to add the articles section. Ralewyn had an idea for a kind of persistent world game experiment thing, and it reminded me how awesome it will be to have that sort of thing in an article format where people can post about it and discuss it. I also had a related idea, and would like to talk about it without filling up the homepage with it. I'd also like to start putting up story chapters from stuff on /tg/, so it has a home without being spread out over sagebombed crappy threads.
Nothing else of note to report yet, though this weekend looks like it's going to have a couple good movies (both in theaters and on sup/tg/ TV). Time flies so fast; it's already October 10 and I haven't watched nearly as many horror movies as I've wanted! I need to ship shit back to Netflix so I can get my annual favorites on DVD instead of the horrible VHS copies I own. Sad, yes, I might as well inscribe the plots in fucking cuneiform on tablets.
Edity: And just now I've added the ability to see and search tagged posts. Go me!
Edity the Second: And now the archive does it too, after all this time. Of course, given the hodgepodge of crazy tags, who knows how useful it'll be, but it's available now. (It also does partial matching on the tags so that should help a bit.)
Well, I still don't think anything can top Ruler's Goatse Headcrab, but I see your Alien and raise you Angus motherfuckin' Scrimm:
BOOOOOOOOOOOY
Presidential Debates in :30. I doubt it'll be as entertaining as Biden/Palin but it should provide some fun anyway. I'll be watching it from work on Hulu, and we'll be discussing it in #debates on the IRC. JOIN US!
So, the first sup/tg/ Horror Movie Night went off quite splendidly; we watched the original The Haunting from 1963 last night, and it was just as good as I remembered it. Our next movie night is scheduled for this evening. I'm not sure exactly what we're going to watch. I'd prefer older, public domain movies, partly because they're awesome and partly to avoid thorny legal issues; the exact same principles of watching a movie with friends in your own home and watching a movie with friends over the internet should apply, but given how copyright law has gone apeshit wild all over individuals' rights in this country there's potential for trouble. (While writing this post, I looked up "public domain" and "fair use" on Wikipedia, and it seems that everything ever forever is permanently covered depending on when it was created, if and when it was published, etc. etc. etc. ...)
If anyone knows a lawyer (real or internet) I'd be interested to know what the legal reasoning is behind allowing people in your home to watch a movie if they haven't paid for it, and how or why that wouldn't apply to internet viewing. Is all home viewing technically illegal? If I put a movie on at a party, is that legal? If someone peers in my window while I watch a movie, are they infringing copyright or am I? These questions and more, TONIGHT. Or not.
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