News

We're at it again, this time on the interwebradiomachine. Longtime CoN member Kame, who also produces a radio show for Starmen.net, interviewed Tiddles and me together last Friday night. I'm suave and clever, and Tiddles is quite British, and we spent some time together talking about the history, present and future of the Caves of Narshe, as well as our thoughts on the Final Fantasy series in general.

If you like your audio with a side of masochism (for you), the broadcast is going out live starting at 11pm Eastern tonight at http://icecast.fobby.net/radiopsibk.ogg.m3u. If you can't make the show tonight, we'll be mirroring the interview ourselves as soon as we get our hands on the file. Hope you enjoy it, and if so, make sure to thank the good folks over at Starmen and especially Kame for being willing to put up with us for that amount of time.

Update: The audio is available from the CoN YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=E8929AEF57787900

Source: Starmen.net

It appears that writing web code as my everyday job, instead of just managing people who write web code as their everyday jobs, kind of speeds up the CoN development process a bit, too. This is evidenced by the new feature we're rolling out today - the brand-new CoN news section. I'm not going to lie to you, there are a lot of parts of this news section where the enhancements might not be completely obvious to you visitors and members, but that's okay. There's also a lot of stuff that's obvious and useful, too!

First, let's say that you're particularly interested in news we've posted related to Final Fantasy VII or its spinoffs. Well, great, because now all the Final Fantasy VII news is neatly categorized into its own section, and you'll quickly be able to grab all of that and peruse it without having to also see me chatter on about the site. (Of course, if you love seeing me chatter about the site, you can do that too because all of the major types of news we post are also categorized.) Also to help out in quickly finding the news you want, the majority of our news posts also now carry post icons to give you a visual clue as to the main focus of the news. Of course, that's not the only way you can filter. If you've been out to see without internet for the last couple months, you might want to check out all the news we posted from June 2009 in order to catch up, which as you can see from the link is now totally possible. Hey, if you're really interested enough, you can even check all the way back to June 2002, the very first month of modern news at CoN, and every month in between. Hey, we even break it down by author, so if you just have the burning desire to news-stalk laszlow, we're going to give you the option.

Another neat feature we're giving you now is the ability to read news articles and associated commentary by your fellow members without having to go all the way to the forums, should you wish. Not only that, you can even add your own comments right there, too. As an example, check out this very news article that you're reading now. You can view this for every single news article we've posted in the last seven years, and if there are just too many comments, we'll link you right into the forums to view them all and post just like you used to.

Now, here's the biggest kicker as it relates to you guys. This system now enables you non-staffers out there to submit news to us, too. We know that there have been times where you guys have found news and we've been frustrated because you beat us to it; sometimes this results in threads being duplicated in the news forum, people not knowing where or how to post, and things like that. It doesn't have to happen any more, because we're giving you control to write up news just like we do it and submit it for our approval. If we approve it, your own username will show up on the site homepage and in the news forum just like ours, and we'll even track the number of user submissions we get from you guys and display it on every news article you have on the site. It's like postcount, but better! Even if what you post doesn't quite meet our editorial standards, though, we might be able to clean it up a bit for you, and if so you'll be credited right in the post, too.

So, that brings me to my new contest here. We want you guys to share news you find with us, and we're looking to help you get motivated to do it. So, for the next three months or so, we're going to keep special track of what you post and what we approve from your postings. At the end of September, we'll check to see who outside of staff has posted the most approved news items, and if it's greater than five, that person's going to grab up a $25 (or the equivalent in pounds sterling, Euro, or Canadian dollars) in an AmaCoN gift card. If we get more than ten people who post five or more stories, we'll give out another $10 to one of you chosen at random, too. And, hey - if you show up and rock our... socks... with the quality of your news posting, there might be an opening on our permanent news staff for you as well.

You might be wondering, "how best to get my news approved?" It's not too hard. Make sure you write with good grammar and spelling, make sure you post news that's really relevant to our audience (obviously, we focus on Square Enix news, RPG news, and news that impacts big portions of the console RPG audience like important corporate news), and make sure you cover lots of details in your post. Preview your post before posting it. Make sure your sources are accurate, and for bonus points, throw a little bit of your own personal opinion in there too. Follow that formula consistently and you'll be on the way to that gift card in no time.

Let us know if you have questions, we're looking forward to getting your submissions!

Coloring Dragons, a website dedicated primarily to the hosting and discussion of webcomics, has just published an interview of Rangers51 of the Caves of Narshe (yes, that's me speaking in the third person). The initial interview took place in spring of 2008, and I sat down again with them just today to refresh the content after seeing the interview recently posted featuring CoN member Orinocou. Will you find it interesting? Well, probably not, because as a CoN reader you have already heard me spouting off my philosophies for many a year; however, since this is the first time that I can recall being interviewed simply for being an awesome webbish guy, you might as well check it out.

Source: Coloring Dragons

After ignoring it for far too long, I've now gone through and reconfigured the wallpaper section of CoN to be database-driven; additionally, I've rebranded all the offerings so they're more recognizably CoN. What this means to you, the visitor, is that you can now search through all our wallpapers by size or game, and that we've expanded the total collection from just forty-one total wallpapers across all sizes and designs to over two hundred, including the first wallpapers for both Chrono Trigger and the site itself. So, please, install a wallpaper. Don't let my work be in vain.

Okay, so, we admit it; the re-emergence of Moogle30 was utter shenanigans in honor of one of the best days of the year. Not so bad, right? Besides, you all are (we think) quite lucky; while M30 and all his antics were a gag, the blistering-hot new Chrono Trigger section absolutely is not. If you want to talk about a labor of love, well, this is a prime example—this section of the site really began even before Caves of Narshe 5, when Neal wrote his first Chrono Trigger walkthrough (the child of which we use on CoN today), while Tiddles temporarily worked on a CT site of his own while simultaneously helping develop the fifth full revision of CoN. When we heard a Nintendo DS remake was in the works, we decided right away to put all that experience to use and spent the next several months compiling all the information into a usable package for you guys, the gamers.

While we didn't get the section out as soon as we wanted to, I think you'll agree when you go to visit it that the section is among the best that CoN has ever put out, and our reputation for quality game coverage continues with every revision we make. The extra time was worth it to us, and we hope it is for you too, especially as you dust off your old carts/discs or pick up the (pretty great!) remake for NDS. Not only did we pour a ton of effort into the section, doing so sparked us to update and upgrade other parts of the site as well to give everything a bit of a facelift and to give you guys all the more reason to keep coming to CoN. Here are some highlights of what to look for in this launch:

• Chrono Trigger coverage for both the original SNES (which also covers the Playstation port, which changed very little indeed) and also the Nintendo DS remake that launched in the United States in December 2008;


• Updates to our fanart section to display CT fanart along with all the other Square-Enix games for which you might want to submit;
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• Revisions to all the splashy images on the landing page for each game to match our pretty new style instigated by the revisions to site skins for our tenth anniversary in 2007;


• The Caves of Narshe YouTube channel, which started about six months ago to host, specifically, Chrono Trigger ending videos and Final Fantasy VI desperation attacks but has quickly expanded to more video than we can currently organize on the site itself (but we'll work on it!);

This new section would have been impossible years ago, and the main reason why is because of the people. We had a great group of people pull together to work on this section; as I mentioned in passing above, Tiddles' love of this game (and Neal's excellent walkthrough) were of course the catalysts to making this section a reality; even though I wrote the vast majority of the display logic to get the data to your browser, I was only the instrument of their inspiration from years back. Additionally, I can't give thanks enough to everyone else who helped this section become reality. The list is extensive, so please feel free to visit the section landing page to get the whole list, but I do want to thank all the regular chatters who were always willing to lend a hand in helping me understand a game that I haven't played tons, as well as all the more standard acts of data collection and testing. I have to especially thank footbigmike and Olly, the former for being willing to do any task I threw at him pretty much any time, and the latter for always keeping a smile and a snarky comment on hand throughout the drudgery of user testing.

That leads me to a final critical point for this message, and that involves updates to the staff page. As we all get older, our lives become more and more complex and it becomes harder and harder to ensure time for a hobbyist pursuit like CoN. As you should no doubt understand, CoN is a volunteer organization, and as such it can be really hard to keep with in the face of so many other things that we all deal with day in, day out. So, we're losing some staff members today, unfortunately, and adjusting the roles of others; I want to thank each and every one of my staff, those leaving and those staying, for their hours of work and for helping me to enjoy my hours of work just a bit more. I also want to make sure that everyone out there is ready to give props to our newest addition, though, coming on officially today with the CT section and YouTube channel already under his belt, footbigmike. This guy is a fantastic example of just what I like in my CoN members and my friends; he's reliable, smart, and just showed up in chat one day and very quickly became part of the very fabric of the site's community.

Oh, and speaking of chat, if you've ever talked in there you've contributed to chat's latest milestone. While all of the Moogle30/Stockbreak madness was underway, chat very quietly hit the threshold of four million lines chatted. That's a four with six zeroes after it, you see.

For the curious, by the way, the four millionth line in chat happened at 13:56 American Eastern time on 1 April 2009, and it was this absolute gem: [13:56] Gabe: I'll do you fast, Peppy. Of course, if that doesn't prove it to you, check the stat yourself at the bottom of the chatstats, page one. Further, to commemorate the occasion, I even managed to root around on Climmy and dig up stats for the entire history of chat (less a few days that are missing due to system crashes, cross-country moves, etc.). We'll update the big stats about once a month or so, and regular stats will be sure to stay on their schedule of updating every two hours.

Now that we have the new section up, of course, we'll be moving on to other projects that we hope you'll like. We don't necessarily know what those are yet, but we're thinking. So, that means we're willing to hear from you. New game coverage? New toys to play with on the site? Shut down and move on with our lives? We'll listen to just about anything, because, heck, we like the attention.

Hi everybody!

I'm Moogle30. You might remember me as the original creator of CoN. Yes, you heard that right: R51 likes to keep it quiet these days, but this was my site! Check the history if you don't believe me - there's almost no mention of me any more but those old URLs give it away!

Anyway, I'll cut to the chase: I'm back, and now I'm running things again, this site are going to improve!
We're going back to our nineties peak, you'll see. The years of stagnation are over. Kupo!

Check back later today for some exciting announcements about the site's future! Also if you think you can be part of this new site, let me know because I'm looking for good new people!

Source: CoN Staff Page