Jingle Bells

Merry Christmas, everyone!

As a special Christmas treat, I've entered a new issue into the game. Enjoy! Also, if you need to contact me, send a telegram to sirocco@nationstates.net as I've been too busy to read my telegrams. Sorry about that!

Happy Halloween

I apologise for the lack of updates - I'm putting most of my energies into university work at the moment. But I'll still do what I can.

Have a fun evening, everybody!

N-n-new Forum Mods!

A big old welcome to our three new forum mderators: Czardas, Lunatic Goofballs, and NERVUN. A big welcome to all three of you!

Since the move away from Jolt, the General forum's become a bit of a pariah as the idea of sensible rational arguments about ideology, politics, religion, etc. got thrown out the window somewhat and players decided that anyone with an opposing viewpoint must be trolling. This led to some rather ugly drama in the Moderation forum as you can imagine. That's where our new moderators come in! We needed some fresh blood... some General blood!

I wish our new mods the best of luck in their endeavours!

N-n-n-new Features!

A first step towards the 'annexe' feature (see previous posts, can't be arsed finding a link) has been made! Regions now have history pages for an automatic record of notable events. Check out your own region page and have a look! Regional settings have been twiddled with so that everyone can see them without having to manipulate URL addresses. You can check that out too!

I've been rather absent from NationStates recently. I've got a LOT of university work to do, and I also got engaged as well, so I've had little time to tell you guys to play nice!

Welp. I've got stuff to do (sigh) but we should have some new issues on the way (huzzah) so keep your eyes bright and your tails bushy. The only way is up.

Jennifer Government Hits The Small Screen!

And in two different ways! If you've read the latest MaxChat you'll already know that AMC (an American TV channel) is going to turn the book that launched NationStates into a TV series - very exciting! - but if the wait until we actually hear more about it is too much for you then you can thank some students from Weddington High School for filming their own abridged amateur version.

Watch it here!

I only learned of this because it was linked by Seculartopia in this thread so kudos goes to him/her for discovering it as well.

MaxChat V: The Log

http://www.nationstates.net/pages/MaxChat5.html

It's been great fun and we all look forward to having another... hopefully not after waiting for three years again though! Thanks everyone for coming, it was a blast!

Oh, and something I forgot to mention: telegrams now have a 'preview' feature thanks to Pythagosaurus! If you haven't already seen it, give it a shot.

Oh! And something else I forgot to mention! The new spiffy banner at the top of my blog is courtesy of Imagey Nation. His name is as apt as his banner is awesome. Thanks!

MaxChat V Coming Soon!

As in quarter of an hour! If you haven't already downloaded an IRC client, do it now and join us at #nationstates on the Gamesurge server!

Click here for more details!

MaxChat Date Announced

I don't have anything more to add to this except that I hope to see you there! Just follow the link:

http://www.nationstates.net/page=news/2009/09/10/index.html#maxchat5

Regional Flags And More!

Hello everyone, I've been away for a while! Among other things I've had a tooth removed, which wasn't pleasant at all. There is nothing quite like the horrors of mouth pain is there?

Anyway, let's see if I can round up all the changes that have happened while I was mourning the loss of my incisor:

Regional flags! I do believe this is something we've been wanting since... well, November 2002! Thanks to [violet]'s wizardry, regions can now proudly fly a flag symbolising the whole smorgasbord of countries in their membership. Take a gander at the official news post here.

Also, thanks to Pythagosaurus, you can also add regions to your dossier.

There some other tweaks and minor changes too. Founders and delegates may have noticed that new buttons have been added to nations in their regions so they can ban offenders without having to take the long road all the way to regional control. Some graphics have been updated too. If you haven't noticed, I'm not surprised - it's subtle. Go look until you see it.

[violet] has announced an intent to overhaul the telegram system to make it more efficient. A lot of big region delegates will look forward to this I'm sure!

There has been a little more added to the annexe discussion since I last mentioned it. Check out the thread for more details.

The aptly named Imagey Nation has set up a thread in gameplay where he designs seals/logos/heraldic shields for other players' nations. Very snazzy.

[violet] has posted the latest Moderator Olympics in the Moderation forum. I should probably note that about 3000 of my 'Moderator Actions' were deleting issues! [violet]'s also posted all the old olympics (except for the missing first one) in the Archives forum for anyone who feels like reminiscing.

GMC Military Arms has been playing video games instead of modding the forums, the cad, but he does do it wonderfully. Check out his amusing playthroughs of Perfect Dark and Goldeneye here.

I, meanwhile, have been quite fascinated by a game called Dwarf Fortress recently. A rather intriguing part of it is the generation of rather detailed pseudo-ASCII maps which some NSers might be interested in. It generates everything from oceans, rivers and aquifers to mountains, civilisations, geographical data, and wildlife. Climate too. And a bunch of other things. You can download the game (which is still in its alpha stage) for free at http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/ - though it is very complicated so I fully recommend the wiki project other players have set up to help you get into it. Unlike NationStates this could easily have been called Micromanagement: The Game.

That's all from me for now. Just remember that MaxChat begins in a couple of weeks! I wouldn't want you to miss it!

Slow News Day

Ever wondered just exactly HOW are you supposed to play NationStates? How do you get started? Never fear! There is a handy online instructional video for all your NS needs.

New Forum Moderator: Flibbleites

Welcome aboard, Flib! We've been needing some additional WA expertise for a while and Flibbleites, who's been hanging around the UN/WA side of the game since the year dot seemed just like the man for the job. We all look forward to his contribution to the team.

In other news:

The daily update has been, well, updated! Delegate turnover is now recorded every twelve hours instead of every twenty-four. This will add some spice to the raider/defender game! Follow the link for more details.

WA proposals have updated formatting thanks to Pythagosaurus, and players can now link to individual proposals - it's not the simplest of arrangements, but it works! Click here for more details.

Well, that's enough procrastinating from me for now, I suppose. This flat's not going to tidy itself!

We Have Issue Editors!

I'm back from my holiday! I'm certain lots of interesting things happened while I was away but I can't remember what any of them are.

Except for the thrilling conclusion to the issues contest!

I'm pleased to announce that three volunteers have taken up the role of 'Issue Editor' and will be helping me convert player submitted issues into game-worthy dilemmas. Our winners are:

Kandarin
Responsible
Glen-Rhodes

You'll notice they all have a rather nifty badge designed by Charlotte Ryberg. Kandarin seems to be building quite a collection of decorations for his spotlight page!

I'm going to be very busy over the next month or so, so let's hope our new editors are up to the task!

For more details, you can check out the forum post I made.

MaxChat V: The Empire Writes Back

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.

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!

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.

In conclusion, and in reference to my second point, the new rules for Security Council resolutions need to be sorted out with co-operation between moderators and players. So if you have any ideas, let us know. If you think any rule shouldn't be there, let us know. We've got a framework from which to build something that could benefit the gameplay. So let's build!

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.

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:

• 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.

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.

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.

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:

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

I've omitted the wee flags because they didn't cross over to Blogger very well. In other news, I've recently added a brand new daily issue to the game. Although it credits me as editor, this one required little input by myself!

Oh, and NationStates 2 closed down today. Bye bye, NS2.