At 8/9/05 03:44 AM, TomaO2 wrote: It's time for Xin to get's it's own spot. What other series combines the full animation action, drama, and intrigue that it does in a single package?

It's actually a funny coincidence that I put XIN up yesterday right after you posted this! Shok had prepped a Xin series page before we launched the new system, so I just had to move it all over through the new system to launch it.

The reason why new stuff is getting categorized is because I want to stay on top of it. If I waited a month to add something to a collection, I would completely forget about it. We'll probably have to do some pruning later.

I have been doing a lot of maintenance with old submissions as well, using both NG search and recommendations from users. The Madness collection keeps GROWING AND GROWING and I set up a page for Poninjas since it also has a lot of fan tributes. It's such a giant web of related content.

We have lots of plans to better publicize the collections and series, it just takes time to implement them because NG has become such a beast nowadays.

At 8/9/05 06:02 PM, Needle wrote: Private messaging system? This sounds intriguing. I do hope there will be a way to turn it off though. The last thing I need is a bunch of jaded folks telling me OMG NEEDUL U R TEH SUQ AT FLASH ROOFLEZ while I'm online doin muh thang. As long as there's some ability to control the system though, it could be fun! Private messaging could eventually wipe out the BBS! erm well... okay, that'll never happen.

PS thanks for the series page Tom, much appreciated!

Actually, the private messaging system will be more like an internal email system for communicating with other users in private... Sort of like how sites like Friendster and Myspace let you write back and forth with other users.

The random active user of the month and winner of $100 is... Xiivi! Congrats, Xiivi!

Mindchamber and Eric Black are coming to the neighborhood to visit tomorrow! Stamper and I are doing a meet & greet with them to finally see each other face to face after all these years. I gotta take some pictures!

I spoke to a group of aspiring video game programmers at Penn State's Malvern campus today - thanks for listening, guys! Thanks for asking questions, too! I prefer answering questions to drawn-out storytelling. :)

In other news... We just got a new database server which should be going live within the next two weeks. We want to launch it in preparation for some new features, such as the private messaging system!

At 8/8/05 10:53 PM, TomaO2 wrote: Tom, what exactly is the policy when collaboration works win? Do all artists get 250$ or just the top placed artist? If the former, what steps, if any, are being used to safeguard people from simply adding names of friends in order to let them get money they don't deserve in case that submission wins the monthly prize?

David Firth submits awesome movies and deserves the cash. :)

As for collabs... The organizer will receive the t-shirt and money. It is up to him to split it up among the group as he sees fit. For a submission like a game where there is an artist and a programmer, I will probably send out a t-shirt and check for $125 to each (like I did for Luis and NegativeONE when Muscomorpha won), but for larger collabs, I don't even want to start to figure out who gets what, since some users contribute a lot more than others and only the organizer really knows. Hey, it's the risk you take when you are part of a collab. :)

At 8/8/05 07:30 PM, Inglor wrote: don't forget an extra iPod shuffle for the 5 best games !

I was actually gonna save that for the best of August winners to give it some more promotion time, but we could do that for this month......

At 8/8/05 07:16 PM, Rabid-Echidna wrote: Does that mean that the Super Flash Bros. and David Firth both get $500?

Yuuuuup

The votes are in and the best of July have been picked by our top 2,000 users! Each of these ten winners will receive $250, an award certificate and a Newgrounds t-shirt!

Top Movies

1. Decline of Video Gaming 3
2. Salad Fingers Episode 6
3. Tomorrow's Nobodies Ep.3
4. B/W Cartoon About Berries
5. Code Veronica: Flash Edn

Top Games

1. Zelda: Lampshade
2. Battle for Gondor
3. Clash'N Slash v2
4. Orbit
5. the NG Calculator

Congrats to our winners! Thank you to everyone who submitted!

Runner-Up Movies:

6. jackson chocolate factory
7. Handmade Clothes
8. The Doom Project
9. One o'Clock Jump
10. Noodles on my Back
11. Angrybot 2 - Recess
12. PSM: Blam Police
13. Super Mario Physics
14. Do You Like Waffles?
15. The BINGE-er-bread Man
16. The Filth
17. Rest in Peace
18. kegel: stopping for gas
19. XIN Session 15
20. Salty Swamp

Runner-Up Games:

6. Alkie Kong
7. Throw It! (KB Game)
8. Mario Remix
9. Freds Adventure
10. Sonic Boom Town
11. Shoot For The Sky
12. Willy Wonka -Shoot em up
13. Graveyard of Drunk Souls
14. Exofusion 2
15. Lunatic
16. Flash Mario Bros
17. War On Spam
18. Element Saga Chapter 5
19. Green & Black
20. Middle Age Tamagotchi

Big news, Marty fans!

Ribbachile! turned five years old today!

Just an FYI, Dad 'n Me isn't in the voting list. Sorta a tough call since I like to be a part of the userbase as much as anyone, but we didn't want to make anyone else feel slighted.

For the next week, the top 2,000 active users (as well as the mods and the nominees) can log in to their Grounds Gold accounts and vote for their ten favorite submissions of the month. The five best TOONS and the five best GAMES will each receive $250, a certificate and a Newgrounds t-shirt.

Read more about the competition and prizes as well as the panel of judges! When you log in to your account, you will see if you are eligible to vote!

Next month, the best of August winners in the GAMES category will each receive a free iPod Shuffle, courtesy of Games of Gondor!

At 7/30/05 07:27 AM, Infinik wrote: Wow. All this for a repetitive Flash game? OK.

Maybe they'll show Ode To A Penis next time!

At 7/30/05 07:19 AM, echo_machine wrote: Yeah, it was actually me that sent the request and hooked you up with that story and coverage, Tom....

I sent you and Wade an email.... guess you didn't get it.

I got the email - that's how I knew about the coverage. Sorry I didn't send a reply back, should have! Thanks you!!! :)

At 7/30/05 02:06 AM, da_pope wrote: Sweet.

But Tom. Please don't make the next Behemoth game a side-scroller.... Please.

(

Ok, we'll make a first person shooter instead. Or maybe a racing game.

Big thanks to Attack of the Show on G4TV for featuring Dad 'n Me today on live television! They showed a really generous stretch of footage which went all the way from the intro to the fight with Wilbur. You can catch repeats this weekend.

It's also cool to see websites such as Joystiq.com providing coverage for Dad 'n Me! Thanks guys!

I've noticed that under the new collection system, pages with .swf file title graphics have a tremendous lag when they load. It must be something to do with the table structure and the pre-loading of the .swf before it renders on the page. Has anyone else notices this? Basically, you'll have gotten a long lag on collections such as the Video Game Parodies page.

I'm working on replacing all the .swf titles with GIFs. Trying to make them more fun than the originals to make up for the lack of Flash on the page. :)

At 7/28/05 09:59 PM, Glaiel_Gamer wrote: Also, I see you used the banner from www.ngcollabs.com as the NG Collabs banner.

Yeah... I used a .SWF file before, but I get this strange page lag on the new collection pages when they have .SWF title images, so I'm planning to replace them all with static images. Kinda a bummer. Who made the image on ngcollabs.com?

At 7/28/05 10:22 AM, MasterGehn wrote: I'm going to take a wild guess and say that Dad 'N Me fueled the inspiration for Ye Olde Sidescroller. You can even hear the same sound effect when the "GO!" sign flashes across the screen.

Am I right Am I right Am I right?

:)

But Ye Olde Sidescroller already kicks the crap out of Dad 'n Me.

At 7/28/05 10:51 AM, HuIk wrote: Tom, get battery backups. You could of had at least 5 minutes worth of power. :)

I have battery back-ups, but they didn't last. :(

At 7/28/05 07:09 PM, _Luis_ wrote: Not the prize itself but just the immense amount of time and effort that Tom goes through to take care of and acknowledge the community hes worked so hard to build.

Thanks! Although I do have every intention to make an intern address those envelopes... some day....

At 7/28/05 06:59 PM, KaynSlamdyke wrote: Just refreshed for me. That's fantastic. Love the new layout.
Been a busy bee this month haven't we, Mr Fulp? San Diego, then Dad 'n Me, now a redesign of some of the sections...

Thank James for the endless hours of programming he did to make it work!

We are starting the process of crossing over the old collections system to the new database-driven DYNAMIC COLLECTION SYSTEM. This system will be replacing and will forever control the following:

THE ENTIRE GAMES SECTION
THE ENTIRE TOONS SECTION
THE ENTIRE COLLECTIONS SECTION
THE ENTIRE SERIES SECTION

The changes will be subtle. The first thing you should notice is the collections have a lot more content than before - this is because we have been updating them on the back-end for a while now without updating the static html pages on the site. From now on you should notice that more content gets categorized and the GAMES and TOONS pages have fresh content on a more regular basis. The entry page for "GENRES & SERIES" also will have more fun dynamic content, such as longer daily top lists, birthdays, etc.

You will also notice that any submission in a collection or series page will now have a link-back icon on the view page. This was a manual chore before but is now integrated into the system so that it will be consistent for all entries.

There are little touches that may be appreciated - you can now roll over an entry in a collection to see an alt tag with the rating of the submission. At the bottom of the page, you can see when the last update as, as well as a list of the top recommended submissions that aren't yet in that collection.

We have other plans that we can now implement once this system is in place, so just wait and see!

Also, thank you to all the users who have been submitting icons for older submissions. When we launch the BIRTHDAYS section, you will see those icons are being put to good use!

It should just be a few minutes before the action starts!!!

At 7/28/05 12:12 AM, ramagi wrote: Are you going to create sub groups with in the page.

Since some groups have submitted a lot of flash together. IE Clocks, SS...Etc

I current have sub-pages for Time Trials and Shades Of. I can't decide if I should just link to the general Clock Crew and Lock Legion collections, or if they need their own sub-collections for their collaborative works.

Talk about a nightmare; after not having the pleasure of submitting a new game to the Portal in such a long time, I had to miss the opportunity due to a POWER OUTAGE.

My power went out around 7pm and just now came back around 4:30am. It was agonizing, not to mention one of the hottest days of the year and we couldn't run the A/C.

I had to make the decision to either postpone the midnight launch of Dad 'n Me or give Dan the greenlight to submit without me, so I decided to disappoint myself rather than everyone else. One of my favorite moments in life is the initial response to a new submission - seeing the first reviews pour in and the first votes get tallied. The feeling is often more exciting than the first time I saw Alien Hominid on a store shelf and I think most Flash authors would agree it feels great when you first submit something new. It's a bummer I missed it, but now I get to catch up in the middle of the night!

Thanks so far for all the positive feedback, as well as the criticisms. The game was meant to be more for stress relief but we decided to add some challenges along the way, so I'll admit it may have turned out a bit imbalanced. I just hope everyone has fun knocking stuff around and creating chaos, which was the main goal of the game! Almost 12,000 views and a score of 4.65 after five hours on-line! Woohoo!

At 7/27/05 06:20 PM, mojonano wrote: i'll look around..... also, glad to see you doing stuff to organize all of the free particles this site contains..... damn you must work constantly.

NG definitely feels infinitely vast sometimes... It feels good to get stuff organized!

At 7/27/05 06:12 PM, GreenSkullKid wrote:

At 7/27/05 06:09 PM, TomFulp wrote: If someone wants to create a title image for the SHADES OF collab series, I might give that it's own page. Follow the same dimensions as above - 430 width, max height of 200. You can email me any banners you make.

Tom.. Can it say.. Made by <user>

This is a tough call because we might implement a title image credit system that puts the name right under the image... If you can incorporate your name tastefully and non-obtrusively, it might be ok. :)

If someone wants to create a title image for the SHADES OF collab series, I might give that it's own page. Follow the same dimensions as above - 430 width, max height of 200. You can email me any banners you make.

I'm putting together a collection page for NG collaborations. I have some ideas for what the title banner art could look like, but I have a feeling artists here on the BBS could make something better. Here are the specifications:

Width: 430
Height: 200 max
Text: "NG Collabs" - unless you have a better idea. :)

Also, since the collabs are really spread out on the site, I could use a list of URLs and even descriptions! I want to be sure no one gets left out in the collection. Before posting a URL, please check to see if someone else has already recommended it, so we don't have too much redundant listing in the thread. Thanks!

At 7/27/05 02:00 PM, Theotter wrote: Hey Tom, what are the buttons gonna be in the game incase any of us want to setup our JoyToKey program beforehand so we can use a controller for Dad 'n Me?

Uh, I don't remember the site to download JoyToKey, but check out Alloy: Arena for a link.

Arrows = Walk
A = Jab
S = Fierce

That's it!

At 7/27/05 10:45 AM, Zendra wrote: Ey, that's cool. :)
I guess it doesn't change anything for the users too? We can recommend submissions for certain collections and series? Or will another feature will be released?

From a user-interactivity standpoint, nothing will immediately change. We do, however, have some plans that will allow users to get more involved. Even the new public icon-submission system ties in, since we will be showcasing more content than ever before.

At 7/27/05 02:57 AM, Acid-Rain wrote: let's see.

Tom: wouldn't have the time of day for me.

Sorry. :(

As many of you know, we have an NG Mod Meetup on the weekend of June 17th! It was during my Comic-Con crunch, so I never had a chance to put together a photo page. With Comic-Con out of the way, I have finally put together a page for NG Mod Meetup 2005!

Also be sure to check out the page for Comic-Con 2005!

The new collection system will launch this week! It won't appear to be a dramatic change on the site, but it will make the collection and series pages much easier to maintain in the future. People will hopefully notice they are already much more up-to-date when we launch the new system.

Finally, sorry to anyone who was looking for Dad 'n Me this morning at 12am. I was trying to be clear when I said Wednesday night at midnight. From now on I will say 11:59pm. I will be submitting Dad 'n Me to the Portal tonight at 11:59pm! Just a heads up, I have noticed it runs a lot slower in the browser. We might release a standalone version later. Sorry in advance if it runs slow for you.