Ha ha ha, I only suggested that title as a joke. I didn't realise it was going to get used! Anyway, for the first time in many years, Max Barry is going to be answering player questions in #nationstates, the official NS IRC channel. The official announcement can be read here: http://forum.nationstates.net/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=9894
Very exciting! The event has been tentatively proposed to occur on the 19th or 20th of September, though that may change.
We have a new feature for telegrams: nations may now select telegrams that are dear to them to be spared should their inbox overflow and old telegrams get purged.
A possible new feature, annexing, is still being discussed. It got a bit forgotten, so I dredged it up again by posting my take on it.
[violet]'s later post on the thread is most intriguing. It casually mentions ANOTHER possible new feature: regional embassies. I wonder that's all about?
Reploid Productions has updated the latest chapter in her Bastard NS Mod from Hell saga. Check it out.
I'm going to be visiting my family for the first week or so of August so I won't be around much during that time. Just a heads-up.
30 July 2009
26 July 2009
250 Issues
I'm a bit late in reporting it, but I'm very happy to say that NationStates has reached a new milestone! There are now a grand total of 250 issues in circulation. I'd like to thank everyone who's submitted an issue, doubly thank everyone that submitted a good issue, and wish the best of luck to future writers of issues.
In other news, Belgium has been liberated prematurely by various defender regions who somehow learned what the password the raiders were using was. This has put the liberation debate into a different light, since the original intent of the resolution is now moot. Congratulations to the defenders, anyway, and hard luck to the raiders. I'm sure they'd have been able to put up a better fight if they hadn't been ambushed. There's still a chance though! If the liberation resolution passes they can rally another attack.
Ah, irony.
Moving on, Erastide has devised a new Security Council proposal category: Open Immigration - this category, if passed, would clear and disable the banlist of a selected region. I haven't had much time to mull over it yet, but the debate makes for an interesting read.
Another liberation-related debate is on whether it's up to the moderators or the World Assembly to ascertain how factually accurate a resolution is. If a liberation tells outright lies to further its argument should it be deleted? But how can mods tell whether something is true or not without psychic abilities? Hmm.
Max Barry has posted to the News page summarising recent additions to NationStates.
The issues contest ends in just under two weeks! I've received one shy of fifty entries. I've been very impressed by the quality of even the losing entries - the standard has been very high! I'm looking forward to being able to take a step back and supervise the budding new editors (whomever they may be...). Still plenty of time for creative NSers to win a position.
Remember, there is also a badge-making competition for designing a little logo to go on issue editors' nations. The winner will be able to select their own custom forum title! Those are like gold dust, don't you know!
Good luck!
In other news, Belgium has been liberated prematurely by various defender regions who somehow learned what the password the raiders were using was. This has put the liberation debate into a different light, since the original intent of the resolution is now moot. Congratulations to the defenders, anyway, and hard luck to the raiders. I'm sure they'd have been able to put up a better fight if they hadn't been ambushed. There's still a chance though! If the liberation resolution passes they can rally another attack.
Ah, irony.
Moving on, Erastide has devised a new Security Council proposal category: Open Immigration - this category, if passed, would clear and disable the banlist of a selected region. I haven't had much time to mull over it yet, but the debate makes for an interesting read.
Another liberation-related debate is on whether it's up to the moderators or the World Assembly to ascertain how factually accurate a resolution is. If a liberation tells outright lies to further its argument should it be deleted? But how can mods tell whether something is true or not without psychic abilities? Hmm.
Max Barry has posted to the News page summarising recent additions to NationStates.
The issues contest ends in just under two weeks! I've received one shy of fifty entries. I've been very impressed by the quality of even the losing entries - the standard has been very high! I'm looking forward to being able to take a step back and supervise the budding new editors (whomever they may be...). Still plenty of time for creative NSers to win a position.
Remember, there is also a badge-making competition for designing a little logo to go on issue editors' nations. The winner will be able to select their own custom forum title! Those are like gold dust, don't you know!
Good luck!
25 July 2009
Discord And Chaos In The WA
I'm tired and I don't have much time for pontificating so I'm just going to summarise recent events:
- The proposal to liberate Belgium has reached the floor and is now being voted on by the World Assembly. With liberation proposals been written left, right and centre I can't help but feel that maybe the defenders are spreading themselves a little thin. Reclaiming one region will be difficult, regardless of password restrictions. Organising a way of reclaiming several regions will be much harder.
- A temporary ruleset has been written up by Ardchoille for the Security Council. This has been quite a formidable task in many respects and it's still in the process of being beaten out on the anvil. We need rules that are clear, concise, and appropriate. I just hope we can manage it quickly, because a lot of players are rather losing their patience!
- Voting times on proposals that have reached the floor has been reduced from a week to four days.
- We've had a few glitches and bugs popping up here and there but they've not caused too many problems.
- I've finished the latest batch of issues and am waiting upon admin to give me the next.
16 July 2009
La Mort d'Ordinateur
My laptop has kicked the bucket, given up the ghost, and pushed up the daisies. You know there's something wrong when error messages predicting an imminent failure of your hard drive disc haunt your every virtual step. Ah well. I'm under warranty so I guess it'll either get fixed or replaced. I don't know when though. Fingers are crossed that it will be soon!
As you can imagine, this makes it difficult for me to contribute to NationStates as much as I'd like so new issues are probably going to be a bit rarer over the next couple of months. Don't worry about the competition though! That's still on track. I've had around thirty-five submissions so far! Not bad at all! There's still about three weeks until the contest ends, so there's no need to be anxious about not having written an entry yet.
Due to the new feature I and Pythagosaurus have developed, I decided it was high time to give past issues a bit of a make-over where needed. Sadly, all my changes disappeared with my laptop, so that may have to wait a bit longer. In the meanwhile, though, you can report typos and grammatical errors and such to this thread.
As you can imagine, this makes it difficult for me to contribute to NationStates as much as I'd like so new issues are probably going to be a bit rarer over the next couple of months. Don't worry about the competition though! That's still on track. I've had around thirty-five submissions so far! Not bad at all! There's still about three weeks until the contest ends, so there's no need to be anxious about not having written an entry yet.
Due to the new feature I and Pythagosaurus have developed, I decided it was high time to give past issues a bit of a make-over where needed. Sadly, all my changes disappeared with my laptop, so that may have to wait a bit longer. In the meanwhile, though, you can report typos and grammatical errors and such to this thread.
08 July 2009
Liberation And Customisation
We've had two new features added to the game in as many days! Let's cover the new 'Liberation' WA proposal category first.
Liberation is a new Security Council proposal category that [violet] suggested a while back. The general idea is to give the WA the power to remove the passwords from invaded regions to give defenders a chance at throwing out invaders. How effective this will be remains to be seen, but I'm optimistic that this will give the raiding/defending game a bit more balance and also put an end to the 'game over' scenario that's been a blight on the R/D game for a while.
Goobergunchia has almost immediately submitted a 'Liberate Belgium' proposal for the delegates to vote on. Belgium has been a particularly infamous case of the afore-mentioned 'game over; scenario so it should be interesting to see how it goes. Though it reads 'Liberate belgium' because the code doesn't automatically stick a capital letter on the beginning - I'll see if I can get that changed. You can read more about the debate over liberating Belgium here.
Other thoughts I'd like to hear your opinions on:
I've set up a new sticky in the Security Council forum for discussing things. If you have any problems, let us know.
There've been a whole bunch of bugs affecting the WA recently, probably as a result of all the admins tweaking and adding things of late. The current resolution at vote is still on the World Assembly page despite voting ending a day ago and there's been a lot of other WA-related oddness reported in the Technical forum. OK, the last one's not WA-related but it is odd.
Now, moving on,
I don't want to spoil too much, so if you'd like the new issues I put in recently to be a complete surprise then stop reading now.
HERE BE SPOILERS
The second feature in the game is something that you guys have been wanting and demanding for six years so I'm quite honoured to have had the chance to be responsible for it. I've contributed stuff to the game before, but this is the first time I've been able to create something new rather than add to what was already there.
The new feature:
I have devised three special issues that give your nation brand new customisable fields (akin to national animal, currency, etc.) - I won't mention what they are specifically for those who'd rather wait and see - if you pick particular options. After the issue goes into effect, you can edit the new field(s) from your Settings page.
Everyone will be able to get these issues except those whose population is not high enough and those who have already chosen an option which gives you a field. This rewards players for sticking with the game.
I wrote all the issues (that's why there's no editor), the new descriptors, the automated telegram you get when a field becomes available, and decided how the whole thing would work. So yeah, if you can't already tell, I'm really quite proud of this! It's my one major contribution to the mechanics of NationStates. I'd like to thank Pythagosaurus who wrote all the code to take care of the new macros I made up and implemented the feature into the game for me. We put a lot of work into getting this right for you all, so let us know if you run into any problems!
Will there be any more special issues in the future? I'm not opposed to the idea, though three should be enough for now. If there's anything you guys think NationStates just couldn't be without then let me know and I'll maybe consider it. Just don't submit special issues to me for editing because that would be really annoying.
Oh, and I had a lot of fun reading this thread here (don't click the link if you don't want to be spoiled). You guys are cute.
Liberation is a new Security Council proposal category that [violet] suggested a while back. The general idea is to give the WA the power to remove the passwords from invaded regions to give defenders a chance at throwing out invaders. How effective this will be remains to be seen, but I'm optimistic that this will give the raiding/defending game a bit more balance and also put an end to the 'game over' scenario that's been a blight on the R/D game for a while.
Goobergunchia has almost immediately submitted a 'Liberate Belgium' proposal for the delegates to vote on. Belgium has been a particularly infamous case of the afore-mentioned 'game over; scenario so it should be interesting to see how it goes. Though it reads 'Liberate belgium' because the code doesn't automatically stick a capital letter on the beginning - I'll see if I can get that changed. You can read more about the debate over liberating Belgium here.
Other thoughts I'd like to hear your opinions on:
- Liberation proposals are inherently quite urgent - should they get higher priority in the queue than other WA resolutions? Or perhaps just other Security Council resolutions as the General Assembly crowd might not like that at all?
- Should any changes be made to voting times/quorums?
- What rules should govern how Liberation proposals may be written?
I've set up a new sticky in the Security Council forum for discussing things. If you have any problems, let us know.
There've been a whole bunch of bugs affecting the WA recently, probably as a result of all the admins tweaking and adding things of late. The current resolution at vote is still on the World Assembly page despite voting ending a day ago and there's been a lot of other WA-related oddness reported in the Technical forum. OK, the last one's not WA-related but it is odd.
Now, moving on,
I don't want to spoil too much, so if you'd like the new issues I put in recently to be a complete surprise then stop reading now.
HERE BE SPOILERS
The second feature in the game is something that you guys have been wanting and demanding for six years so I'm quite honoured to have had the chance to be responsible for it. I've contributed stuff to the game before, but this is the first time I've been able to create something new rather than add to what was already there.
The new feature:
I have devised three special issues that give your nation brand new customisable fields (akin to national animal, currency, etc.) - I won't mention what they are specifically for those who'd rather wait and see - if you pick particular options. After the issue goes into effect, you can edit the new field(s) from your Settings page.
Everyone will be able to get these issues except those whose population is not high enough and those who have already chosen an option which gives you a field. This rewards players for sticking with the game.
I wrote all the issues (that's why there's no editor), the new descriptors, the automated telegram you get when a field becomes available, and decided how the whole thing would work. So yeah, if you can't already tell, I'm really quite proud of this! It's my one major contribution to the mechanics of NationStates. I'd like to thank Pythagosaurus who wrote all the code to take care of the new macros I made up and implemented the feature into the game for me. We put a lot of work into getting this right for you all, so let us know if you run into any problems!
Will there be any more special issues in the future? I'm not opposed to the idea, though three should be enough for now. If there's anything you guys think NationStates just couldn't be without then let me know and I'll maybe consider it. Just don't submit special issues to me for editing because that would be really annoying.
Oh, and I had a lot of fun reading this thread here (don't click the link if you don't want to be spoiled). You guys are cute.
06 July 2009
Jolt Forums Update
I'm thinking OMAC/Jolt didn't appreciate Max tampering with the nationstates2.net redirect because they've taken away our access to the moderators' private forum over there. Either that or wiped it. And if they have wiped it, it's not unreasonable to guess the rest of the forums may follow. SO - again, if you have any threads still on Jolt that you want to save, here's a step-by-step guide on how to back up forum threads to your hard drive.
You can find a link to the Jolt forums by clicking the redirect link I posted above.
You can find a link to the Jolt forums by clicking the redirect link I posted above.
02 July 2009
Oh, OMAC!
They really don't give one crap about their players do they? Now that NationStates 2's been wiped, visiting the NationStates 2 website brings you to one of Jolt's other games without so much as an explanation. What a kick in the teeth. Players really are just numbers with dollar signs in OMAC's eyes and they're not afraid to show it.
However! Even though Max Barry doesn't have the rights to the game, he still owns the domain! www.nationstates2.com now redirects to an announcement explaining what's what, a link to NS2 support, and the NS2 forums. Like what should have been done in the first place.
To finish... here's how our players reacted to the news: The Loss of NationStates 2
Have a good day.
However! Even though Max Barry doesn't have the rights to the game, he still owns the domain! www.nationstates2.com now redirects to an announcement explaining what's what, a link to NS2 support, and the NS2 forums. Like what should have been done in the first place.
To finish... here's how our players reacted to the news: The Loss of NationStates 2
Have a good day.
01 July 2009
How To Use Tags In NationStates
I've been hearing that a lot of people don't know how to use tags in their telegrams/RMB/whatever! It's in the FAQ guys! Here's the appropriate part copy/pasted:
Oh, and NationStates 2 closed down today. Bye bye, NS2.
You can use some BBCode-style tags to improve the look of your telegrams, Regional Message Board posts, and (if you control a region) your regional World Factbook Entry. These are:
- Bold: [b]Hello[/b] becomes: Hello
- Italic: [i]Hello[/i] becomes: Hello
- Underline: [u]Hello[/u] becomes: Hello
- Regions: [region]The Pacific[/region] becomes: The Pacific
- Nations: [nation]Testlandia[/nation] becomes: [flag deleted by Sirocco] The Borderlands of Testlandia
You may optionally specify "short", "long", "flag" and "noflag" formats. If you omit these, the default is "long+flag".- [nation=short]Testlandia[/nation] becomes: [flag deleted by Sirocco] Testlandia
- [nation=noflag]Testlandia[/nation] becomes: The Borderlands of Testlandia
- [nation=short+noflag]Testlandia[/nation] becomes: Testlandia
The following tags work in Regional World Factbook Entries, but not telegrams or Regional Message Board posts:
- Links: [url=http://www.maxbarry.com]Hello[/url] becomes: Hello
- Colors: [color=blue]Hello[/color] becomes: Hello
Oh, and NationStates 2 closed down today. Bye bye, NS2.
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