News InterNetwork 4

To gain a deeper understanding, we encourage you to take a few minutes to read Arch's whole thread & investigate the Evo Council Wiki - You'll find these links listed at the conclusion of this article.

Interview with Evo Council Member - Archkittens - Day 88

1. Who are the leaders of the Evo Council?

The council has no "leaders" so far, it's a group of equals, although I have been doing the majority of activities related to the council. For now, I guess I'm de-facto leader, which can change in the future if need be.

 2. Why was the Evo Council formed?

The council was formed as an attempt to protect the interests of the community. The logic here is that members of the community know what's best for it.

 3. Long-term plans for the Council? (Assuming Evo stays in operation)

Well.... a lot of changes need to be made to Evo & the structure of the game and it's development, as well as it's financial strategy. Item #1 is to create an environment that new players will want to play in, and that old players will want to keep playing in. After that, finding a better means to create a pool of money to support the game and potentially work on a next-generation Evo.

 4. Besides the sale of Evo, is the council working on anything else of importance to the overall Evolution community?

I'm developing a road map for the immediate future of Evo, in conjunction with a few others. Look for it to be published some time in the next week.

As always, it will be posted on the council Wiki and the public is invited to suggest changes on the talk page, and when consensus is reached, those changes will be made to the document itself.

 5.  Do all major alliances have a representative in the Council? If not, why not?

Not as of yet... They simply have not all stepped forward. For instance, I invited a leader from =A= to the council at request of another member, but he did chose not to participate.

The council will consider all candidates who present themselves. If an alliance wishes more representation, they simply need to send a candidate for consideration.

 6. What are your goals for the council over the next 2-3 months?

I hope our membership base will expand, as approved by the community & that all the members will continue to show up on a regular basis. I estimate the council should have an additional 3-8 people, so get your candidate applications in and let’s get the consensus rolling!

Hopefully Neon will finish considering the offers & a winner will be announced. The council will continue to provide an environment for discussion amongst community leaders as well as a place that folks interested in assistance, be it code, art, or anything, will step forward.

Evo Council Forum Thread

Evo Council Wiki Homepage

To learn more or to apply with for Council membership, please contact Archkittens of the LOL Alliance.

As those who check the Declaration Diagram thread in the Alliance forums will know, long-time player Poison Ivy of the Shadows has taken over the task of updating the diagram after being away from Evo for a while. As a forum moderator, Ivy can edit the original post each time she updates so the latest dec diagram is always easy to find. What some people might not know, however, is the Ivy was forum moderator for some time before she left Evo.

“I had forum powers before I left, just only Neon and Puffles knew about it,” Ivy says, referring to game creator NeonDragon and former forum moderator Hand of Blood, also known as Puffles. “It was shortly after the first shut down of the forums by Neon. I offered him my help and he asked if I would maintain the forums and edit/remove certain content with reference to the forum rules. I did so and kept this a secret from the community... until someone finally discovered it was me and blurted it out in the forums. I would have maintained the secrecy otherwise.”

But it would seem some forum posters were too much for Ivy, and she left “because some returnees of the game pissed me off and I was fed up of these people letting a game turn them into knobs.” Fortunately for us, however, CoS leader Maxy, who also happens to be Ivy’s mum, kept talking about Evo. That, and because Ivy “missed the community”, led Ivy to return.

Now publicly a forum moderator, Ivy spends some of her time online moderating the Evo forums. “Most of my time is occupied with removing profanities (damn all you 18+ community!) and generally replacing those words with 'orange',” she explains. “I also completely delete posts that break the major forum rules. Usually, I’ll add a warning to people’s posts in red highlighted text that should they continue to break the rules, they will be issued with a forum ban. I also delete people’s posts if they post off topic in the declarations thread.”

If Ivy had to read every single thread on the forums, however, she’d be here all day and half the night, however. That’s where a nice little bit of coding comes in: the report button. “I rely on people to report posts when they see any context that breaks forum rules,” Ivy says, and urges forumites to report any posts they see in the main forum that break the rules.

Alliance forums are a different matter, however. “Alliance forums are currently moderated by the alliances themselves. If anyone is unhappy with their current alliances moderations, and feels that the content is in major violation of forum rules (apart from the Evo Lounge alliance), they should get in contact with either myself, TMX or whoever the new game owner will be,” Ivy says.

That’s not all, of course. A short while ago Ivy took it upon herself to update the declaration diagram, after a string of Evo players attempted to do the same, each in a different way. Here we seem to have struck gold. Ivy updates the diagram frequently, and says she “decided to help with the dec diagrams because I find it fun.” She does so in a style distinct from previous attempts in its sheer simplicity. While other players used different shapes and sizes for each alliance, often with complex reasons behind the different sizes, Ivy decided to play it safe. As such all the boxes are the same size and shape, and only vary in colour. She says she did it this way because it “makes it easy to view, understand and also to edit.”

It’s not as easy as it looks, though, as Ivy explains: “Although, as I’m not technically playing the game, I’m finding it difficult to keep in the loop with the game politics so its important that people inform in the declarations thread when they are or are not at war.”

“Also, if any alliance wants a specific colour, they can message me,” Ivy adds.

It’s hard work being a forum moderator, so players can help Ivy out by keeping their posts clean and remembering to report posts that break the rules, such as if they contain swearing, spam or banned images. And don't forget to post declarations in the Alliance Declarations thread.

There are 556 officially recognized native American tribes.

The pelican was adopted as a Christian symbol early on because mother pelicans would pierce their own breasts to feed their brood with blood -- seen as a sacrifice not dissimilar to that of Jesus' by the Church leaders.

The targets in both skeet and trap shooting, commonly called clay pigeons, are actually made from tar and pitch.

Delaware is the only state with part of its border defined by the arc of a compass. (Except that other state next to Delaware with the same border.)

At some point in the early hours of this morning ticks became 1 minute long. Since then, hundreds, possibly thousands of attacks have taken place. With ticks at 1 minute long, there’s a rush to launch on time – and then again only 24 minutes later!

Gothmog was one of the targets of such an attack, made by OTHI against MYS, supposedly after being attacked themselves by other MYS members, though unconfirmed reports suggest this may be a fabrication. He lost over 320 metal land, and was hit repeatedly, making it impossible to rebuild. Gothmog stated that he was “disappointed in OTHI leadership right now”, and had thought better of them previously. He also stated “I hate this bloody unrestraint that’s going around,” as a result of the 1 minute ticks.

Rawlinz, who today left CoS to create an alliance of his own – 100% – with fellow CoSian Spyda. They and others have taken advantage of the quick fleet turnaround and huge resource income to create larger fleets with which to attack others. Rawlinz says, “Basically I was in Ventrilo earlier and  started launching some attacks along with Morgan Tony and Co. They decided to go Out/Sleep but I was still feeling hungry for land(s) so I decided to get hold of Jimmy (From Valheru) and Spyda (From 100%) and we started to do a few small land grabs on /0 and J4N, yes, they were successful. /0 tried to fight back but were overpowered by our fleets.”

Rawlinz goes on: “Now I've been getting more and more people to join in with out onslaught, our numbers are growing by the hour. We've crushed countless amounts of fleets and stolen thousands of land. I'd say this had been a very successful day for us. We will continue to battle though into the night and crush any one that stands in our way!”

As yet, NIN4 reporters have been unable to contact Admin or Neon, though it is suspected by many that this heralds the end of Evo. As to when this end may take place, there is no indication. Needless to say, the 1 minute ticks have left many without fleets and with land greatly depleted. The culmination of weeks of slow building and careful planning have been all but destroyed by this sudden unexpected change in gameplay, reshuffling the rankings and leading some to quit Evo.

I draw WORKED. A comic strip for the desk-job jockeys and cubicle dwellers that drag their coffee infused bodies to their charcoal-grey pods each day to earn a few more dollars.

I know that life. I live that life. Every day I experience the crazy antics, teasing and banter my co-workers and I use to help each other get through the long week. I plan to capture this silly and outrageous office behavior with this comic. Hopefully, WORKED will make us laugh and help get us through another day.

You can find WORKED at http://workedthecomic.com/ and at http://www.comicssherpa.com/site/feature?uc_comic=csnmr

So, of course, I did it.  I bought the most hyped game to be released this year.  It’s been in production since before Nintendo launched the Wii, since it was called the “revolution” and people thought the controller would look like something that came when an Atari joystick had a baby with a computer mouse.  I’m talking about Super Smash Bros. Brawl, the game released here in the US last Sunday.

            And, to be completely fair to the game, it didn’t live up to the hype.  Nothing could, really.  With all of the delays and the announcements and everything, people were expecting the cure for cancer, world peace, and Jesus Christ rolled up into one and stuffed on a game disc.

            It’s not that.  I’m sorry to disappoint any of you who haven’t played the game, but that’s not what it is.

            It is, however, safely the best video game I’ve ever played in my life.

            I’ve played a lot of them, so that’s saying something.

            The gameplay is, like that of its predecessors, an amazing mix of marvelously simple, intriguingly subtle, and undeniably fun.  Part of this is due to the control options.  There are four (Wiimote sideways, Wiimote and nunchuck, Classic Controller, and Gamecube controller), so you can pick whichever suits you best.  Personally, I’m a fan of the Gamecube controls, just because I’m used to them from Super Smash Bros. Melee.

            That said, there are some differences.  Some of the main features of combat in Brawl are vastly different from the combat in Melee.  The “wavedash” glitch is finally gone, and now air-dodging doesn’t cause you to lose your ability to act while in the air, which makes aerial combat very different.  All of the characters are slower and heavier, so the game isn’t quite as mind-bogglingly fast and KO’s are harder-won.  This also means that the characters don’t separate into such different “tiers,” and it’s hotly contested whether the slow characters or the fast ones have the advantage now in this new game.

            But this isn’t as important to the casual player as it is to the old tourney-players from Melee.  The thing that I’ve noticed about this game is that character unlocking is much easier.  In the first game, I remember how it was such a struggle for me while I awkwardly held the N64 controller to beat Normal mode with three lives using no continues to finally get a chance to unlock the elusive Ness.  Having to do it three times because I couldn’t beat Ness in the fight afterwards was even more difficult.  The second game was nice for me, because I wound up unlocking some of the hardest characters (Pichu, Falco, Mewtwo), not with their primary “do this” unlock condition but by racking up multiplayer “melee” matches where I desperately tried to handle level seven and eight computers (multiples, of course, because a single computer at any level was much too easy for mr. “still can’t beat the first level of hard-mode” here).  This game makes it even easier by adding a third unlock condition to every character: finding them in the single-player “Subspace Emissary Mode.”

            This mode is probably one of my favorite features of the game, which is weird, since most people seem to hate it.  It’s a not-too difficult variant of the old “adventure mode” from melee that has, shock among shocks, an actual plot: something entirely new to the Smashbros. Series.  The mode, like every mode, has multiple levels of difficulty (Easy, Normal, Hard, Very Hard, and Intense), and is therefore able to be played at any level you feel comfortable with.  Because I decided I’m a tough-guy now, I moved up to the second level, even though I knew that I would have to play characters that I was absolutely terrible with (I’m looking at you, Yoshi) and that any death would mean the loss of precious stickers, one of the many collectible items in this game.

            I think the thing that impressed me most was the plot.  There is only ever spoken dialogue in the plot once.  In fact, it’s not dialogue.  It’s two words completely iconic to this series.  “Falcon Punch.”  That’s it.  Everything else is conveyed with gestures, cartoony facial expressions, and occasionally in-jokes from the game (every sequence with Kirby or Snake in it was completely worthwhile just to see how unique their means of conveying emotions were).  The mode also manages to be faithful to every aspect of the characters, managing to capture Peach’s ditzy-but-somehow-loveable princess personality perfectly, a feat that the Mario team has been unable to pull off since Super Mario Sunshine (in which Peach makes the deer-in-the-headlights statement “Wait, I’m your mother?  I don’t remember having a baby,” with perfect seriousness.  More crack-whore than ditz, there, Nintendo) as well as capturing the friendship dynamic between Lucas and Ness and Snake’s goofier-version-of-James-Bond-that-actually-kills-his-enemies charm.

            The thing that impressed me most, though, was how they captured King Dedede.  Not since the first Kirby game have I ever been able to respect him as a character, but with this game they managed to show me that Dedede was, once again, not actually the bumbling, goofy villain that he’s made out to be.  The man has a plan, a circuitous crazy plan where he may not even recognize the goal, but he’s got one.

            The entire mode is, in fact, reminiscent of Kirby at its peak in the game Kirby Super Star.  The levels involve simple combat and platforming challenges paired with quests to “fully complete” them by finding all of the hidden goodies.  This is classic adventure gaming at its best, so I can understand why the current mainstream market with its “RPG, Fighter, or Shoot-em-up” attitudes towards games may not exactly be happy with its throwback gameplay, but I was very pleased.

            As I mentioned, unlocking characters in this mode is not difficult, since playing through the entire plot will unlock all but three of them, and those can be found by checking around levels that you haven’t fully completed looking for new doors.  Beating this mode isn’t difficult, but it is time-consuming.  It’s not like past games where you can play the whole mode in one sit-down.  You’ll have a save file and it could take you anywhere from a whole day of crunching to a relaxing week or two of idly smacking down baddies to get through the whole plot.

            So, with all of the characters this easy to unlock, what is there left to do?  Why, complete the collection quests, of course.  There are a multitude of songs, stages, game trials, trophies, and stickers to unlock either by luckily finding them or by going to the “challenges” section and looking to see what needs to be done to finally get your hands on the one stage your missing (or, should you find that clearing target practice level five in under twenty seconds just a bit beyond your difficulty, you can smash open the glass with your handy hammer to find your trophy or music reward).  The challenges are everything from the mind-numbingly easy and boring (play on stage X ten times for a song or something), to the “this’ll happen eventually” (move over 30,000 with all characters total) to those that actually deserve the name challenge (I have to beat which of these modes on intense without using continues?  And I’m not allowed to hammer this one open?). 

            There are also multiple post-unlocking-everybody in-game modes to complete.  All-Star mode can’t be played until you’ve unlocked every last character, and neither can some of the one-player event matches.

            Finally, the thing I’m sure all of you community gamers are wondering about, Brawl’s online abilities.

            I’ll be honest with you.  I’m a fan of just about everything Nintendo does.  The Wii and DS are innovative, not gimmicky.  Pokemon is fun and competitive, not just childish.  Mario, although nowhere near as cool as Sonic, is a sustainable gaming icon.  But I just can’t praise their online capabilities.  Just can’t do it.

            Brawl online isn’t that bad, if your connection works with Nintendo.  Unfortunately, mine doesn’t do so hot, so I wind up randomly being unable to connect or disconnected.  Most of the time it’s fine, but those times where it’s not are very frustrating and I know that I’m not the only one that has these problems.

            The game also lags a lot in online play, making fast characters hard to play.  When I used Sonic, I kept running off the stage because I’d be trying to move in the opposite direction after doing a nice, solid, dash attack in order to avoid going off the edge, and the few seconds of lag between command and response would be enough to send the wise-cracking blue pinball off of the stage.  I guess that with some adjustment the lag wouldn’t be much of an issue, but I just don’t see myself getting the opportunity to adjust given how finicky the connection is.

            It’s a good thing, then, that I didn’t get this for the wi-fi, and if any of you are planning on that I suggest you make sure you’ve got a good internet system for Nintendo gaming and that you try not to play during peak hours when lag will be the highest.

            After hearing this almost wishy-washy review so far, you may be left wondering why I find this game so amazing?  Well, the devil’s in the details.  There’s so much to do that it’s hard to decide what challenge I want to attempt next.  Everything has rewards in addition to just the fun of doing it, whether it’s more songs, more trophies, or more stickers.  You can find your own level of difficulty to suit your own playing abilities, and with all of the different single-player and multi-player modes there’s sure to be something that you find enjoyable in this game.  The customizability even extends to making your own stage, which carries rewards in the form of gaining more items to use to make more stages.

            The game has the right mix of collecting, competition, storytelling, and just general beauty (the graphics and music are just amazing) for a great gaming experience, and the little details from how fans cheer for each character when they’re doing well (“Snake!  Snake! Snaaaake!” For Snake is my favorite, with “We like Ike!” for Ike as my least favorite) to how each character moves differently when they air dodge just continues to amaze me.

            The game is a piece of craftsmanship.  It’s probably the best video-game I’ve ever played.  It’s not going to live up to all of the hype, but, then, I don’t think the cancer-curing, peace-bearing Jesus I mentioned earlier could even live up to the hype this game’s got.  Come to this game not expecting a miracle, but expecting an amazing game, and I guarantee you your expectations will be met or surpassed.

News update about top story "Game creator quits". I've had a reply from NeonDragon.

In reply to a question about the community reaction since the announcement was made, Neon said that "people have been more supportive in general than I expected. Before this, it was mainly only negative opinions that ever appeared."

He also stated that a reasonable offer for the purchase of Evo would be one which "someone is confident enough to actually follow my instruction to email admin@neondragon.net with the offer. Otherwise, they must not consider their own offer reasonable", adding that he does not particularly wish to sell Evo, but that he "left the option there so that if there is anyone with the desire to continue development and run the place, they have that option. It would be better for the game to be developed by people who are putting lots of effort into it -- although I am pleased with the efforts of the current administration, I have previously attempted to pass over development to 3 coders and none of them have rose to the challenge."

Neon also says that he does not expect his leaving to affect the development of the game much, since before he made the decision development was slow in any case. He expects to spend his time finishing his degree.

Neon states in the blog post that developing the game is no longer as enjoyable as it once was, adding that many of the players expect a lot from a free game and that he has experienced a growing “lack of respect and lack of general enthusiasm” from some players, adding that “Well, it was a fun project, but I'm afraid it's just not fun for me having to put up with this any longer. The best times I have spent on Evolution was the first year or two during the main bulk of the game's development.”

Former game helper and forum moderator Hand of Blood (also known as Puffles) suggests that the announcement could affect the Evo community in two ways: Positively – “It's no secret that a lot of people dislike Neon on Evo, mostly due to his rampant ego. Those people will get on better with the game.” or negatively – “There are still players who like Neon. But without Neon in charge of the game, it has less leadership in the admin department and to be honest, there is only one really decent admin in that team and he's not been that active in recent months.”

Other prominent players, such as Dragonfang, Evo's longest running continuously playing member, have a different view. “For years and year, neon has worked hard to keep evolution up and running. It isn't as easy as most would like to believe. My personal opinion is that Neon has done himself proud, however he looks at Evolution these days I’m sure the majority of it is viewed as a worth while experiment.”

Administration have confirmed that Evo will continue to exist. “As the game running itself has been carried out on a day to day basis by Ally, Araldia and TMX, there should be no perceptive differences to the running of the game. We have access to the code and will continue to try to improve Evolution,” they say in a statement, adding, “We aim to continue along the lines that are already in progress, Neon stated that the improvements he had started would be finished by him, so please bear with us regarding the rest, we are doing the best that we can in the circumstances.” They also state that an IRC chatroom has been set up at #evo.counselling for anyone who has been affected by Neondragon's departure.

In support of Neon's blog post regarding general attitude within the Evo community, Dragonfang had this to say:

“Recent events have shown that the game we all spend so much time playing and enjoy is anything but stable. 6years ago forum behaviour was ten times better than what it is today, children from local schools were acting more civilised than adults from across the word. If you are wondering why Neon has up'ed and left, even if you personally think that’s a good thing, you still cant ignore why he did. Evolution is nothing without it's community. Think next time before you post, before you steal that silent unallied’s last land and before you moan about some thing that doesn't work how you want it to. If you think Evo has problems, try reading up about how Aids effect the work. That’s a real problem.

I've been here along time, and seen a lot of change. The amount of features this game has now is vast compared to what it had back in rounds 1,2,3 and even 4. However, the game feels more constricted. As if there are less possibilities. People need to break the mould, start thinking outside the box. As a community we can make change, but it take more than just a handful of people. Don’t be one of those people that silently trudge along then complain when something isn't to your liking.”

He also expresses a hope that Admin will “get tough”.

In the blog post Neon also offered to sell the rights to Evo if a “reasonable offer” is made, though what a reasonable offer would be has not be officially stated. In response to this, Puffles has said “I don't think he'll attract much buyers. I have heard his price tag is £10,000 ($20,152 US). Not many people have that sort of money or are willing to pay that much. I am not surprised by his suggestion, but I think he will end up passing it on to the person he would trust most with it (either Araldia or TMX)”. The figure he states is unconfirmed by Neondragon.

NeonDragon was unavailable for further comment.

Tweety used to be a baby bird without feathers until the censors made him have feathers because he "looked naked."

Aerosmith's "Dude Looks Like a Lady" was written about Vince Neil of Motley Crue.

When opossums are playing opossum, they are not "playing." They actually pass out from sheer terror.

"t-n-t's a humorous look at all kinds of wackiness that you can encounter in life, both online and offline. Watch Trent the Blogger as he tries to make sense of a world where the Internet and Real Life are blurring into one gigantic mess... Updates daily, full color on Sunday!"

This week saw a big turnaround in the affairs of two alliances in particular. Valheru and Divided by Zero previously fought alongside each other against Red* after the larger alliance declared war on them both simultaneously.

A disagreement regarding strategy arose between Valheru and Divided by Zero regarding each others activities when they fought against Red*. Valheru had decided to wait for the completion of Demon Reanimation Labs before creating a fleet, while Div by Zero went for the quicker route of ordering less powerful creatures before top-level creatures became available to them.

But the main bone of contention appears to be not strategy against Red* but the way the end of the war was handled. Red* offered a NAP to both alliances. Valheru leader Ralan Bek states that “After preliminary talks with Red*, Valheru decided to discuss the decision internally before further discussing the situation with /0 as to when they'd like to finish the war. However, much to our surprise /0 declared a NAP publicly without first consulting us.” Bek adds that Valheru puts a lot of emphasis on honour between friends and that Div by Zero’s decision not to consult with Valheru showed a “blantant disregard for [Valheru’s] wellbeing.”

Divided by Zero leaders expressed disappointment at the lack of communication during the Red* war, claiming that they received very little information from Valheru and that, as Div by Zero leader Demon Crawler phrases it, Valheru were “not interested in joining the attacks we planned.” Demon Crawler continues, claiming that Div by Zero only received information of one attack made by Valheru in which only three members took part.

Valheru leader Nakor admits that Valheru members did not take part in many attacks, claiming they did not wish to waste resources on what he terms “inferior creatures”, adding that “Valheru was interested in participating in a joint attack with /0 but neither side could agree as to what time to launch and which target to hit.”

In statements from alliance leaders, both alliances have expressed disappointment in the situation. Div by Zero leader Bonzo states that they don’t bear a grudge against Valheru and are “happy to move on,” adding “If it is war, so be it, it's a war game. We like wars they make it interesting.”

As things stand now, declarations of war, peace and non-aggression can be posted in the Alliance Declarations thread in the Alliance forum, but are not displayed on an alliance’s overview screen, thus making it difficult to ascertain the web of treaties between the various alliances of Evolution. Currently the declarations found on the alliance overview page suggest that every alliance is simultaneously at peace and at war with BTA, NOD and EOS, the latter of which no longer exists.

But this state of affairs, it would appear, is soon to change.

The proposed alterations would make the existing system more official and structured and declarations easier to examine.

There will be a feature which enables declarations to have an attached item of news or reason for the declaration.

Neondragon posted the thread directly to the “In Progress” section without going through the usual process – in which an accepted suggestion is priced up by Neon according to the amount of time and effort coding it would require, and then paid for by donations from Evolution players.

When asked about this fast-track approach to the change, Neon stated “I posted it straight into In Progress as it's something I want to add to the game and don't need encouragement for,” adding that the lack of a price tag bears no relation to the time and effort the change will take.

Neondragon has confirmed that the update will be tested in Devo before being applied to the main game.

The change is not expected to affect gameplay on a fundamental level, but may make diplomacy easier for alliance leaders.

Many Japanese golfers carry "hole-in-one" insurance, because it is traditional in Japan to share one's good luck by sending gifts to all your friends when you get an "ace." The price for what the Japanese term an "albatross" can often reach $10,000.

At latitude 60 degrees south you can sail all the way around the world.

The correct response to the Irish greeting, "Top of the morning to you," is "and the rest of the day to yourself."

UFO Abduction

    Ingredients 

    1/2 oz midori

    1 oz Tequila

    1/2 oz Green Creme de minthe  

Float the Tequila on the midori in a shooter glass. Spoon Creme de menthe on top. As it falls it will form an image of the UFO. Drink and hopefully when you come to you won't have been probed.

red* Wallbanger

    Ingredients

        1 oz Vodka

        Wall
 

    Bang your head into wall. Shoot the vodka. Demand another.

CoSmopolitan

    Ingredients

        2 oz citron

        1 oz cointreau

        1 oz cranberry juice

        half a lime

Combine ingredients. Garnish with an appetizing rainbow of different colored fruits and serve with a sly smile. Slip quietly away.