Timewaster's Guide Archive

Yesterday Skar brought up TWG having it's own webcomic(s) again, now for those of you familiar this isn't the first time we've discussed this or even had a comic.  EUOL did a comic for us back when TWG first started up and there's been off and on discussion about this.

Skar came up with something intresting though this time which is a comic that's written via the forum or forum posts by the members so people who want to participate can.  Also there was discussions about trading off via various artists so the same person isn't always making it (so as to no overwhelm/load the person doing it).

So lets get this ball rolling and see where it lands.

http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.ars/2006/12/27/6408

Being done by Margaret Weis Productions (same people that did serenity)

During our yearly admin chat, ya we should probably do that more often, the topic of restarting RPG content like adventures, monsters, character stats for the RPG section came up as a way of revitalizing this part of the site.  I for one liked the TWGventures and the Scrolls of Unending side-quests that various members were kind enough to write (looking at you Eagle Prince and JP) but the time needed to do layout was something that I just don't have..well..the time to do.  Maybe if I knew InDesign better I could do something quicker but I usually spent several hours just on a 3 page adventure, but there is a way using PHP to generate PDFs from HTML code meaning I could make a template where all you had to do was fill out a form much like submitting an article to get a final product and this is something I can do (or let others do once I create the template). 

There are, of course, a few things site wise that would need to be changed to allow for this, like a better way to find these items via the department page.

We wouldn't start this until next year, I could get a system working by January, but before I even start messing around with this I wanted to find out if there was still interest in bringing back original RPG content to TWG (meaning people besides me would be writing said content) and what various content would you be interested in?  Some other things to consider: What to call things, how we lay things out, or any other suggestions for making this work better.  Of course this isn't limited to D20 either, nor adventure material either, so chime up and let us know.

You loved the TV show, you loved the Movie now you can be bored to death by the MMO!

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061210-8391.html

Not much is known but chances are it will make you kill lots of Rabbits, Rats or other small vermin repeatedly until you wish Firefly was never created.

My roommate bought this when it first came out then let it to me since non of his PCs can run it shortly after and I finally decided to install it this weekend to test it out.

Some general impressions.

The game runs badly, I've got a AMD 64 chip (about a 2 gig processor), 1.5 gigs of RAM and a Gforce 6600 (256megs of ram) and the game barely runs and yet it looks like a PS2 game, and not even a good one for that.  The music skips all the time, the cutscenes skip, heck the intro movie which is pre-rendered skips and barely plays.  However actual combat and exploring isn't bad, doesn't tend to slow down.  This is on the lowest settings for the game too, which is sad since I can run Oblivion at almost max on everything (just have to turn of one of the shadow types and lower the amount of grass, this game won't even display shadows for me) so it's fairly obvious that Obsidian never got around to optimizing their code, which is sad.  Also Camera controls suck unless you've got a 3rd button on your mouse (I've got a clickwheel that you can push in for a 3rd button but it doesn't work despite the game saying it should) and so you have to use the arrow keys or move the mouse off screen to rotate.

So far just about everything else, except character creation which this series is still about 10 years behind on, is an improvement over NWN 1, though the Voice Acting is still kind of cheese/bad.  But I just can't get over those system requirements and how badly it runs on anything but a $4,000 PC.  I'll probably do a full review of it later on, but so far I like it more then NWN 1 story wise.

Seeing if this works

This is the only thread for award comments/suggestions and ideas any others will be locked.

Welcome to the new Official Time-Waster’s Guide Forums!  It’s been quite a while since we started talking about upgrading the forum and we finally got around to it.  But it’s not just the backend that’s been changed but the look of the forum as well which I guess you could say is a “preview” of the new front page look of the site.

So why did it take so long?  Well there were lots of features we wanted to make sure carried over, such as the leveling system, as well as features we wanted to implement and that took some time to code since many of the new features are custom made just for TWG.  There is lots of new stuff we’ve added for everyone, some where things that people have requested (though lots of those features were things innate to SMF) and some stuff we’ve wanted to do.

These new Features are:
   Finished class titles for all classes (ya not really new but hey, we got it done finally)
   A Staff Bio for those that are staff members-If you see a bio section in your profile then you know you’re a staff member.
   Award and trophy system- You may notice this things next to my avatar, I’ll explain them below.
   Fell Point System


So Since I’m sure there are lots of questions I’ll post what I’m sure are to be most of them in a FAQ type question and answer so you can pick out what you want to read.  And feel free to post new questions in this thread only about the new forum.

Why did we transfer?  The old forum was running off of a pearl forum that used text files to save all the information and we wanted to switch to a PHP based forum so it could be easier integrated into TWG as a whole and we needed a Database forum since, as you’ve probably noticed, the old forums have been running really slow for quite a while.

So all my user info transferred? Yep, well…everything but your class.  The importer we used didn’t transfer that info and I didn’t want to hack that just in case something went wrong.  But don’t worry, you can go to your profile and choose whatever class you want, think of it as a one time free respect.

What about all the user attributes and the fighting system?   Sorry, well ok not really, to say it’s gone.  It wasn’t something we wanted to transfer over in it’s current version.

So there’s going to be a new one to replace it?  Maybe, but don’t get your hopes up.  We’ve got some ideas on what we’d do but it’s a lot of work and not very high on the totem pole.

So what’s up with the staff bio stuff?   Well first off lets talk about what are staff members, which is if you’re an admin, section editor, moderator or staff then you have a bio.  The last classification “staff” there is very general but it’s more or less something we give those that write enough articles or support the site in other ways.  If you have a bio visible in your profile then your bio will appear on the staff page and it’s also used to display a bio at the end of your articles. 

What if I write a bio as a staff member then have that designation removed?   It’s possible to un-become a staff member, but your bio at the time of your “un-staffing” will still be displayed at the end of your articles but it wont show up in the staff page or your profile.

So I have one or two articles submitted could I add a bio even if I’m not a staff member?  Dono, I might be able to swing something for you.  PM me.

What’s the difference between Moderator, Editor and Staff?  Staff have no special privileges outside of the staff bio and being able to see the staff board on the forum.  Editors are over a specific section of the forum that corresponds with a section on the front page.  So if you’re a Video Game Editor you can moderate the VG board and edit VG articles.  Moderators can moderate any forum board and any section on the front page but don’t have any admin rights (so they can’t ban users, edit user info or change any forum setting info).

Can I be an (insert staff group here)?   We haven't finalized Staff grouping yet outside our normal Admins but we should have things done sometime after Turkeyday. 

But it say's I'm a (insert staff group here)!  That's just a bug from the forum transfer, as soon as you post it'll go away.