Hello and welcome to the return of the Roleplayer Guild News. On today's edition of the News: Zordon kicks off the Dank GifMemes with a no-no word, the Guild server breaks bad, the Arena RPers gets combative, we talk with as random a member of the Guild as we could get our hands on...at a random Guild time, at a random Guild place. Plus, wait, what, the Guild gets a new boss? All that plus Roleplays That Don't Suck, and maybe an Interest Check or two, or three, or whatever number, we're too drunk to keep counting. First, however, we begin with a much needed word regarding the RPGN itself. At the moment the plan for the RPGN is one post a month, bi-monthly if we get lippy, with a focus on consistency and survival over the bells and the whistles of RPGNs past. (Headers? If we have to? Maybe in the future, if anyone wants to donate their services. It's not our focus.) Ideas, submissions, or feedback are welcome, and should clearly be directed at the Fonz. Can't find him? Hell, I don't know, leave a response to this thread, or PM the RPGN account. We'll probably remember the password and be able to log back in, hopefully. Also we pour out a lil' for our fallen homies: Guru, HeySeuss, Sep, and countless others that have contributed to the RPGN over the years. Thank you. [hr] A quick review of reader questions. (Real questions from real readers, I guess.) [i]"Can I submit the roleplay I'm in for a spotlight?" From Pepe McKeksalot[/i] Great question, McKeks! No. Don't be selfish. [i]"How about my Interest Check? Can I submit that for a spotlight?" From SumYungGuy[/i] Hell yes. Why do you even need to ask that? Of course. No promises. [i]"Is the RPGN accepting volunteers?" From edgybutcaresOOC112[/i] Ayyyy. And that by that we mean; eh. Maybe. Must care about the Guild community, and must love dogs. Contact us. [hr] In a recent OOC thread discussing the state of the Guild, the conversation drifted into the area of re-organizing the Guild's categories. One suggestion was merging sub-forums. When Arena was suggested to merge into another sub-forum for various reasons, things quickly got real. Really-real. Some Arena members came back with restraint and reason. Some came with the passion and the rage. Then came the full page ads, the tomes posted in defense of the Arena. Meanwhile the entire purpose of the afore mentioned thread got highjacked and steered into Arena Existentialism. Eventually Arena Mod Rilla jumped in. Oh, but it got better. The Arena conversation this OOC thread spawned moved TO the Arena's Chat thread. At that point our reporters lost the trail, or had to go for a liquor run, or stopped caring. The story didn't stop there, however, as not long after afore mentioned Arena Mod Rilla nailed a notice on the door of the Guild addressed to all the Guild: [quote=Rilla] Have you ever wanted to join the Arena, but were put off by the perceived Ill-tempered, short fused, argumentative, and quite frankly bullish personalities said to roam those war torn lands? Well, we - the argumentative and Ill-tempered few - would like to invite newcomers to our messy home. The Arena's very own premiere middle man is offering to host a bevy of new fighters, and has called in some of his chips to get them mentored by some of the best fighters of the Arena universe. The tournament itself will be hosted in the legendary Lobby of the Liaison, where popular Arena tournament, the Way of the Warrior, is hosted. Consider this, the winner of the tournament will Automatically have a spot in the Way of the Warrior, meaning they'll be accepted without worrying for a spot. The rules of the tournament are few, the mentors will help walk you through the rules we commonly use in the arena. The scale will be lower tier, minor powers to provide a diverse, yet easy to engage level of combat for those who may not have tried their hand before. Other rules will be discussed forthwith. Restrictions apply. [/quote] Mentors for new folks? Tangible reward for the winner? Where's the Arena bookie so we can place our bets?! [url=http://www.roleplayerguild.com/topics/162607-new-challengers-approach]Take a look.[/url] New approach for an old part of the Guild. Certain to be a lot of fun and draw a lot of eyes from all over the Guild. [hr] BREAKING NEWS (to none of you reading this): the Guild has been experiencing some server issues. 502s, Application Errors, time outs, general irritating stuff. The Guild's founder and coder-bee, Mahz, is on the case. While it's always a solid survival strategy to keep an eye on the [url=http://www.roleplayerguild.com/topics/75056-mahzs-dev-journal/ooc]Mahz's Dev Journal[/url] for actual updates not given through the prism of our drunk asses, a few highlights: [quote=@Mahz] I'm currently updating the source code to adapt to major (breaking) changes in the underlying framework. Quite an undertaking due to the size of the Guild's code. Update: I'll continue working on this for the rest of the weekend. I reckon I'm 50% done with the source code upgrade. Unfortunately I haven't yet spent much time tracking down the root of the timeout errors, so I hope yall can endure in the meanwhile. :sun [/quote] [quote=@Mahz] Here are the stats for the pending code changes: - 40 files were modified - 4,661 lines of code were added - 8,890 lines of code were removed (many of these were just from deleting some files) For a bit of good news for a change, I've been experimenting with a spam detector. I ran it against 25 spammer posts and 25 legit posts, and it correctly differentiated between them. I'll be testing it out after the dust settles. :lol [/quote] [quote=@Mahz] I have to fix the perf issues, first. Right now I have the Guild running on a cloned server + cloned database where I'm testing some upgrades. I've enabled the slow-query logger on the main database which is now collecting data and will help me figure out what I need to rewrite. [/quote] The highlights: it's a work in progress but serious progress is being made, no changes have been pushed yet, and there's an alternative reality clone version of the Guild in existence now. Will it sneak in and replace the normal Guild in it's sleep? Would any of us know? Has such a thing already happened? Is the clone server bizarro Guild? Serious questions for people into serious thinking. (Read: Not us. Too drunk. If not too drunk, too hung over.) [hr] [h3]Music That Doesn't Suck[/h3] In this issue's Music That Doesn't Suck, Guild Comrade [@Sputnik] brings the gravy sauce. If you think it sucks, we don't really care, but we're also open to suggestions for the next issue's Music That Doesn't Suck. We don't discriminate against genres. Except maybe K-Pop. [youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqYgNiZdfh4[/youtube] Thanks for not sucking, Sputty. [hr] If you've dug about some of the OOC threads we've mentioned already, you've probably noticed maybe the biggest bit of news to come up in the past few weeks. Yes, that's right. [s]TACO NIGHT.[/s] NEW ADMIN. Who? When announced? These are details crack reporters would have for you. Given we only have the crack part, uh, we don't know. The details we have right now is rather sparse: the new Admin likely won't deal with the programming/server side of the Guild and that would remain Mahz's main gig. Their focus would be more on the day to day non-technical side of Guild House. All we know right now is there's a new Moderator, who's really an old Moderator become a Moderator again: Ruby. Confused? Welcome to the club. New Moderator though, yay. Don't suck old-new Moderator. Otherwise the rotten produce is assembled and ready for catapulting. All you Moderators are on notice. Pew-pew! Pew-pew! (Clearly the sound produce catapults make. When you're lit.) [hr] [h3]Dank GifMemeage[/h3] [img]http://i.imgur.com/DjYvnv5.gif[/img] Our crack (ha) team of reporters can only canvas so much of the Guild. Come across a gif/meme with mucho dankage? Let us know so we can put it up as next issue's Dank GifMeme. [hr] [h3]Interest Checks That (Probably) Won't Suck[/h3] Werewolves. Bikers. Bitches. http://www.roleplayerguild.com/topics/162765-the-wild-hunt-mc-werewolf-bikers-in-1969/ooc Steampunk. Floating Stuff. Skyships. http://www.roleplayerguild.com/topics/162640-broken-skies-war-in-the-eversky/ooc [hr] [h3]Roleplays That Don't Suck[/h3] Wisheater - [i]Casual[/i] http://www.roleplayerguild.com/topics/154651/ooc The Elder Scrolls: Fruits of Contention - [i]Advanced[/i] http://www.roleplayerguild.com/topics/87915-the-elder-scrolls-fruits-of-contention/ooc We don't care what sub-forums the Interest Checks or Roleplays come from. Just make sure they don't suck. [hr] Keep your eyes open for our Weekend Conversation, where we interview one of you Guild hooligans for some reason about some subject. You stay classy, Roleplayer Guild.