There's been a lot going on in the Foundry recently. With the holidays fast approaching, your Foundry staff has started to feel a bit festive, and we've all decided to dress up in the run up to Christmas. A couple of maps are in the process of being redressed over the past couple of months, and there are some other changes in the Foundry pipeline too. This winter seems to be one of change, but whether you call it redressing, refurbishing or revamping, let's raise our glasses and give three cheers for a future glory:
- Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer...
Christmas Avatar Contest
Congratulations to everybody who took part in this silly little contest, and helped to bring some Christmas (or other winter-themed-holiday) Cheer to the Foundry! To see all of the entries and submissions, feel free to wander over to the competition thread: viewtopic.php?f=467&t=102570
The boys in blue have each chosen their individual favourites, and will be sporting them to the end of the year, and possibly beyond. In the spirit of generosity, we have decided to spread some good cheer and award an Official CC Contest Medal to everybody who took part; but a special mention should be made of the person whose contribution to the contest was recognised as "Best-in-class"; so please raise your glasses, and give three cheers for porkenbeans!
Hip Hip Hooray!
Operation Z
After a number of complaints about gameplay imbalance, formal salvage operations began on the Pearl Harbor map earlier this year. Since the map was decommissioned, cairnswk has been working hard to make things ship-shape; He has patched holes, cleared debris, and pumped water; and the map is now ready to be refloated. To see the revised map, and to get an idea of why things changed, look over here: viewtopic.php?f=358&t=19025&start=780#p2295756
It would be amiss of me to mention the relaunch of the map, without drawing attention to the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. I urge you to raise your glasses in memoriam of all those who have fallen during real-life conflicts, past and present:
- They went with songs to the battle, they were young.
Straight of limb, true of eyes, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.
Classic Revamp Forging Ahead
On the subject of map revisions, the time has finally come for Classic Shapes to be reinvigorated and be given the facelift it so strongly deserves and needs - and the Revamped Classic has just been advanced to the Final Forge for the final spit and polish. Check it out over here: viewtopic.php?f=468&t=97975&view=unread#unread
Recharge your glasses, and give three cheers for the New Classic!
Hip Hip Hooray!
Foundry Refurbishment
Over recent weeks there has been some interesting debate about foundry processes; prior to and during this discussion, the Foundry Team has been planning some changes to the way we operate things. The Boys in Blue will be carrying out some refurbishment over the Christmas holidays, and the Foundry Forums (with the exception of Final Forge/Foundry Discussions) will close over the weekend of Dec 12/13th, and will remain closed for business until the end of the year. The map development forums (except the Final Forge) will be hidden from public view during this time: While mapmakers will be able to continue working on their maps behind the scenes, there will be no development thread to edit or update. The vacation period should encourage people to look at maps with 'fresh eyes', as well as giving the opportunity for the CAs to get everything restructured with minimal disruption.
Please raise your glasses, and give three cheers for a New and Improved Foundry!
Hip Hip Hooray!
Revamp Competition
While the Foundry is having some down-time, it seems like a good time to be running a Revamp Competition!
The subject of the map in question has been a bit of "Heiße Kartoffel". Since the current Germany Revamp went live, legitimate concerns about visibility and legibility of some areas have been raised. Despite a lot of backlash from the CC community, the foundry gave its full support to the revamp on the assumption that amendments would be forthcoming. While there has been some discussion about the required adjustments, pepperonibread has gone into hiding, without submitting any further updates. Ordinarily, a crack commando unit of cartographers would be scrambled to make necessary changes, but without access to the source files there are too many amendments to adjust the map behind the scenes with ease.
With this in mind, the Foundry Team is proposing an open Graphics-only revamp of the existing Germany Map, in order to get it released from Beta as soon as possible.
Competition Rules:
- It is the mapmaker's responsibility to understand and comply with Foundry standards regarding image size, use of copyright-free images, leaving required space for army counts, etc. Maps not meeting Foundry standards and/or raising any copyright concerns may be withheld/removed from the competition.
- The competition is for a graphical revamp only: territory names and border connections must be unchanged from the current live version of the Germany Map.
- The general layout should be as close to the current map as possible; the idea is to make the transition between maps as easy as possible this time around, and in an ideal world we would want to keep the XML (technical description of the map) unchanged - although some flexibility will be allowed where necessary.
- In order to maintain anonymity, please refrain from posting your map publicly. Obtaining feedback and opinions on your entry is not forbidden, but patterns of irregular voting (ie block-clan votes) will be investigated.
- Collaborations are not forbidden, although only one person can be responsible for copyright ownership, and only one mapmaking medal will be awarded to the winning entry (pepperonibread will also be awarded a medal for revamping the territory/region configuration).
- Host your map file (one entry per contestant please) using Photobucket or some other file sharing program, and a link must be provided to MrBenn by 11:59pm GMT on December 27th, 2009. Late submissions will not be considered for entry.
- Submissions should be Final Forge standard, and will be shortlisted by the CAs if necessary, before a one-week voting period to determine the winner.
- Once the winner has been chosen, there will be a short period of polishing/checking before the winning submission will replace the Germany Map in Beta.
Hip Hip Hooray!
- Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer...
--MrBenn, thenobodies80, iancanton and RedBaron0
thats my specialty. nice work Benn and staff.. It's been fun poking around here the past few days!
