The new home for The Furry News. Soon to be finished by Honcho.
A few weeks ago, I asked Honcho to make a dream for me so I can have a place for furrs to come to to read my news and submit their stories. What he insteaed has done is embark on the creation of a totally new patch style, in which he is replacing the medival them with a modern one. When I asked him why, his responce was thay he had been slowly doing this with his present dream (Honcho's Hangout) and considered it the logical path to follow. Unfortunately, he's taking his sweet time with it.
Honcho: "When making a totally new patch, you can just swap out images from other patches, but I am designing each new image on my own."
TFN: "Why are you creating each new image?"
Honcho: "Artistic credit. I could find the images I need from other patches, but then I have to credit those that made them, and sometimes you have to hunt down those that have created these images because some furrs don't go into the effort of crediting other people's stuff. I though I would just be easier to MAKE the things I need."
TFN: "How hard is it to make a patch?"
Honcho: "Depends on how experience you are at it. If you are new, it's hard. If you have experience, then it depends on how extensive the patch is. You can do something a simple as swapping out a set of images like I did for my Bathoom patch which I have recently published, or create a series of images in the iteme.fsh to add to the standard set, or completely overhauling the dream with new patches for items, wall, floors, portraits, characters, and the furcadia window itself."
TFN: "Is that what you are doing?"
Honcho: "I'm just working on the item, walls and floors. I might tinker with the Furcadia window, but I want to finish the objects first, and a stardard map and DS coding to let anyone build their own city block."
TFN: "You will be publishing this patch? And when will this be finished?"
Honcho: "Yes, I will, and it will be finished when I finish it. I have several innovations I need to work the bugs out of."
TFN: "Like what?"
Honcho: "A way of having dozens of different wall patterns you can select from and import into your dream without having to adjust their postions."
TFN: "Into the wall patch?"
Honcho: "No... the wall patch is altered so you have the outlines of walls, doors and windows, and you drop in a image pattern behind them to create the finished wall."
TFN: "Then you can have more than the 2 different wall styles?"
Honcho: "Right. You can have dozens if you want, it's just takes 3 images for the effect to work... a right, left, and two walls joined at an angle. I hope to have a folder included in the download of the dream were all these assorted walls are pre-made to import directly into the item patch and will fit all the alignments and shadows."
TFH: "Quite an effort. I hope you finish MY dream soom"
Honcho: "It's looking so good that I may even move my pub into it."
Talzhemir's Q&A
Talzhemir: "Yes, eventually; it's nontrivial."
The Furry News: "Talzhemir, is there going to be some sort of tribunal set up for solving the disputes of dream theft?"
Talzhemir: Well, copycatting is not something we can realistically prevent. If we announced that we were going to harass those who did it, by banning them or whatever, we would be taking on a job we would have no way to accomplish. Furcadia's philosophy, of necessity, regarding Dream designs, is, "If you aren't willing to share, please don't bring it here."
Ka'Mang: "Will there be dream linkage? If there will be then how will it be implemented? Will you be able to decide "where" you link to in the other dream or will it be a generic dream entry like we see for dream portals?"
Talzhemir: "There is, yes, going to be dream linkage. Our original design says that those who make portals should be able to pick them up or banish them. We also planned, from the start, to have online dream editing, with multiple furres who have permission to change the Dream. It's not certain whether dreams-in-dreams will involve the owner putting down a "Place your Dream" pad, or not. Presumably, making it like Allegria or not would be something the owner can toggle.
Yuriko D: "How do you make patches that take up a lot of memory have less download time for others?"
Talzhemir: "One way is by not modifying item.fsh or item2.fsh. Instead, you click SAVE AS in FSH Editor and create a file iteme.fsh and put your new things in that. (You don't have an iteme.fsh already; it'll be new). Also, instead of a Wall patch, use a couple of one-tile filling big stone blocks in Items."
DarkThunder49: "Will the message centre ever be fixed?"
Talzhemir: "Yes, because we someday must have something that's easier than regular email and more fun than HTML. Someday."
Blank T'Lone: "Will you ever allow us to use the last 2 tabs for personal use within a dream?"
Talzhemir: "The last two tabs are already earmarked for use. I'm seriously rethinking how the existing tabs can be removed; they violate a serious design parameter we've normally supported which is, always being able to go back to where you were. Patching wasn't supposed to allow Dreams to remove those. I suspect the farthest we'll go in customizing the tabs is putting in several buttons that you can name, change their appearance, and have it activate a URL.
DoomHound 153: "Will there ever be anymore (non-profit) avatars?"
Talzhemir: "The one that's coming for-sure is the Bunny. From time to time we will add new ones."
Mage Rooster: "When will (5:?) Eject the triggering furre be implemented?"
Talzhemir: "I don't know if that's on Felorin's mental drawing-board. There *is* a definite plan to implement a serious number of "doorkeeper functions"; it's a fairly high priority as it enhance "self-organization" and stable communities. So I would guess it will be done long before flying donkeys."
Mage Rooster: "But we already have flying donkeys, Talz."
Talzhemir: "Oh no! We're late!"
Strago Bloodstone: "Talz, will there ever be a Female and Male sprite released in the future?"
Talzhemir: "I suspect that having male and female avatars both will come at a point in history when DSL is as cheap and easy to get as a normal telephone. In a choice between whether to have male+female Cats or Cats and Horses, I chose the latter. We're THAT tight for space in our download. Sprites aren't on the schedule for avatars; they might be someday."
Kage: "When will limits on dreams be lifted, such as only 195 objects in Item3.fsh, only 208 wide by 200 tall dreams, only 3,000 lines of DS, and so on?" (When will Furc get a better server? *HINT HINT FELORIN
:-D*)
Talzhemir: "Like in the last question, overall Internet bandwidth is our choking point. People don't realize yet that this is like living with dirt roads instead of highways, and the Internet needs support from every angle. The current size limit produces Dreams that furres with 58.8K modems throw up their paws saying, "This is taking way too long," already." We *could* label a Dream with its download size but I think that leads to a division in Furcadia between the Bandwidth Haves" and the "Bandwidth Have Nots." So, when everybody has DSL, that's when we can think about making things bigger. (Felorin will upgrade the server machine when the current one can't handle the number of players on it - probably when we get to around 4000 or 5000 players online and it starts to slow down. Most delays now are caused by the Internet, not the speedy little dual P3-800 machine.)
Chibi Marie: "I was wondering if you were planning on making the typing process on Furcadia more 'Typo' resistant by adding a backspace mechanism to be able to fix most of the errors?"
Talzhemir: "I think you mean, backspace without erasing. This will eventually be done, because it is simply good design. Windows doesn't always do things the best way but an important principle here is "Stick to platform conventions." We already do support control-V to *paste*, but, of course, we don't have "highlight and control-C". Eventually, we should."
Ghost Tiger: *grins* "If you had a chance to redo Furcadia, what would you do differently? Assuming there were no technical/feasibility problems in doing it."
Talzhemir: "It's gone pretty much the way we wanted it to go. With 20/20 hindsight, I would have said, all walls are done as 1 tile objects, the way it was done in DragonSpires, and saved Felorin the grief of coding the auto-wall-placing code of both the game and the Dream editor." (If anybody is curious, here are some design notes from 1997. It ends with "After a few years, there will be multiplayer games with graphics, played for pay, with userships who can be polled. The 20/20 hindsight will be invaluable." I was wrong: They apparently didn't ask players a thing.)"
Shandusky: "Regarding the tabs... and the suggested customization, a menu on the client window for each dream to be able to change by patching, would not only be helpful but fully appreciated. It could tell furres, what species they would need to be, to be a certain avatar patch in the dream, menu's specific for the kinds of dreams, IE, bar, instructions, directions, contact info, anything that the dream owners may like their 'patrons' to know by looking there for further dream information. It would help build continuities and communities within dreams. That isn't quite a question.. but as long as you are listening to me.. I figure I may as well give you an ear tuft full. A button that activates a specific URL would be great! I really like that idea. That isn't quite a question.. but as long as you are listening to me. I figure I may as well give you an ear tuft full."
Talzhemir: "Dragon's Eye has just had a minor setback in losing our satellite link through our internal LAN. That means we've been sharing a connection. That's impacted us all, because if one of us wants to see a web site, they're going to seriously lag the rest of us. It's been that way for weeks now. Normally,
Shandusky: When you upload a Marbled.PCX with a dream, the area around the butler shows through from the normal, or system Marbled.PCX. Why does this happen, and will it ever be fixed so that the new marbled will show instead of the default one?
Talzhemir: "That area is coded to change the colors to the Furre's own colors, within that area. It does it that way so that the Butler can be patched. If it doesn't do that, that's a bug."
Honcho: "Is the reason you and Felorin and other well known furres are absent from Furcadia because of the numerous requests for help, advice, suggestions and mob scenes like this when you do show up?"
Talzhemir: "Wwe're on a LOT. I'm not visible on some "detectors" because a mere 20 furres paging me "Hi!" will spam me silly. I'm here a minimum of 10 hours a day, and I'm on as Talzhemir about 2-3 hours *if* I can upload my Dream.
Pandemonia: "Are there going to be any new maps in the future to hang out in or put dreams in? If so can I help? Better portraits, please, I have seen some much better patches. No offence. I feel bad because I can't talk your ear off like others tend to. :~("
Talzhemir: "There will not be more Dreams added, and yet again, it's because the Download is already as big as it can be. We intend to add Patches to existing main maps, such as Challenges, which will take up more precious space. The folks who will be doing this are a division of the Beekins, called the Masons. If this is what you'd like to do, please add that if you apply for the Beekins. If that's *all* you especially want to do, that's okay, just let us know. On the subject of Portraits, I have two things to say. When I designed them, I think I could have done much better portraits, in the area of "style". I kept my designs relatively close to the natural animals. Some furres prefer that, some prefer very exaggerated Toons, etc. I knew I couldn't satisfy everybody... So.... We are going to offer a service in which, for a fee, you may use your own custom portrait, instead of the default. I can't say more about that, though."
Kavaria: "I would like to know if it would ever be possible to have sounds play to whomever is in a certain area of a dream. Instead of either to one furre or all. Like, have the sound of a fire play in the area where you can see the fire... have music being played that is heard only in one room, etc... Or is that a total impossibility?"
Talzhemir: "Fel, you want to answer that one?"
Felorin: "Those functions have actually been in the design specifications for DragonSpeak since the beginning. I just started with the two sound functions I did because they were the easiest to program. ;-) We'll get the ability to play sounds in specific areas later, it is on my to-do list."
Chibi Marie: "Is there a log of this going to be made somewhere?"
Talzhemir: "I won't be posting a log. The Furry News will; Ka' Mang will be posting it on his guild mail. Please be kind if you spam them with requests for a copy, etc."
Grimgroth: "Is it true... that you... Have a guild... at you will... to which you pretend.... to be vampiric kin?"
Talzhemir: "There have been a number of RP Guilds doing that, actually. I haven't done any that are "Furre" type. I was experimenting with one called "Sabbat Rule", using Vampire the Masquerade's rules. I only got three players for that. I'm considering doing another one that is "Camarilla" ('nice' vampires) soon. It's hardball, as far from "freeform" as you can get."
Grimgroth: "Sounds like fun. Where do I sign up?"
Talzhemir: "I'm allowing all World of Darkness characters that a MUSH called Dark Metal allows *except* for Mages. So you have to telnet to dm.ennui.net 9999 and make a character there. Then be on the lookout for a Dream called Horror."
Youlanda hands Talz a Beekin plushie. "Can I give you a hug from the helpclan furs and Hoku?" She hugs Talz and runs off!
Pandemonium: "Can people put dreams in my dream in the future?"
Talzhemir: "That's in the plan, yup."
Triek: "Dragons and Phoenixes are paid-for items. While i realize that Furcadia must have financial support... especially from those using it... Will Furcadia ever be a totally paid community online, or will there be free characters to play, and if it will become a mostly paid-for 'chat/game', what is the timeline for that? (oh... wings too)"
Talzhemir: "Furcadia will keep going the way it has been, with free Furres, but you can buy special "perks". On the flyers we hand out at conventions, it reads, "FOREVER FREE."
Talzhemir adds, "Five points to anybody who can name what that title is from." :-)
Shyrae: "With the Phoenix Release there were also new DS commands provided, later (?) implemented, for when a phoenix flames, or a dragon, and effects to play MIDI. Those appear to be missing from the full install program 017 package's template.ds file. Were those commands abandoned, never completed, or are those operative DS commands? If operative, will the template.ds file be updated to include those?
Talzhemir: "They work in my Dream; you should ask the Beekins, okay? I've got Phoenix flame sound effects, for instance, and I've also seen jukeboxes."
Eagle T'Lone: "When Furcadia is updated, what new changes will it bring? it has brought new DS commands and a new Avatar, but will the next update bring more to us? Dream Linking would be Nice."
Talzhemir: "We typically work on a lot of features at once. It's impossible to say what will be in an update. Something that seems trivial to do might actually be complicated when we have to debug it."
Miamor: "There is an option in settings.ini to "Shrink Patches" which is supposed to minimize the downloading and uploading of unchanged items in the "default" patches using the compressed mode. Based on your previous advice to use iteme.fsh, is this setting not functional?"
Talzhemir: "What ShrinkPatches does, is to run each Patch item in item.fsh and item2.fsh through a pixel-for-pixel comparison with the Defaults. If the item is the same, it doesn't get uploaded. This action takes time if you're a Dream Uploader. It doesn't compress the Patch, that's something different. Either way helps to make your Dream Patch as small as possible."
Triek: "Will the Walkthrough Map/DS checker be working in the next 6 months to a year?
Talzhemir: (smiling) "I don't know."
Nattan Mathias: "Is there anything else on the drawing board in terms of plans for "giant" pay-for characters, along the lines of dragons and phoenixes? Maybe a dinosaur-like creature or something? (even tho I'd be too cheap to buy it. lol) If so, what kind’a ideas do ya have? Or maybe you could have people submit ideas..."
Talzhemir: "As furres outnumber us so much, we can't hear every suggestion. My vision of Furcadia tends towards things like Everchanging Palace and Redwall. I love the Dragons and Phoenixes but I didn't intend for the place to be so "mythological". Perhaps the best way for a race to be suggested, is to get somebody to do it as a Patch. Maybe (but no promises, here), maybe if Furres happen to flock to that place well beyond the time in which it's a novelty, I may see or hear about it, and think about doing a version, or asking for the use of those graphics."
Miamor: "Is there any truth to the rumors that you are studying ways to regulate passage to the R-rated maps such as Furcadia Nights?"
Talzhemir: "No. Six years ago it was fairly clear to us that if there's "censorship", it has to be done by parents-- or by kids who choose on their own not to go there. The law in the U.S. has acquiesced to the way that web pages are accessed, so we're content to emulate them."
Pyrus Whitefire: "In the default patch of furcadia, there are two sets of usable walls, being the stone and brick walls. However, when you open the wall.fsh in the patch editor, there seems to be extra walls that are not used. These are blue walls and wooden gate pieces. I was wondering what these extra walls were for, and if they would be usable at any point?"
Talzhemir: "The blue walls are a "template". If you make three shades of a surface texture, angled the right way if there's a pattern, you can fill them in to make your own walls. You can then use those wall pieces either via FSH Patcher or Unicorn Patcher. The gate pieces were not included because there was no time allotted to recoding the Dream Editor or the Server to have a third set of walls. As it wasn't high-priority, we didn't bother with it anymore. I added the fences to my own Dream once as Objects. They take up a space, but they fit together just fine."
Keircye: "Um... I have been having a problem with a patch for portrt2.fsh and portrt3.fsh (ie not uploading into my dream). I have spoken to an umber of people, including beekins, about this and no one honestly knows what is wrong, other than getting the same problem (so far it looks like I‘m doing everything right on my side). I was curious if this was a known problem and being worked on, or it should be brought up with furcbugs...? :-) (it has uploaded once, however, but never again)
Talzhemir: "I found that bug myself, and it may have already been entered before or not. It should be easy to fix; it seems like the names of the .FSH's were left off of something somewhere. Felorin or Timo may have already fixed it, even."
Kavaria: "Will there ever be a walle.fsh patch, or does the special coding for the walls with the junctioning images make that too difficult a task? I'm mostly wondering because it would be nice to be able to use, for instance, 3 different types of walls, and the current wall patch size only allows for 2 unless you cut out some of the wall variations. :-\ "
Talzhemir: "We're at a crossroads of development here. The answer may be neither or both. On one road, we take that blue and orange template, and, in the Dream editor, allow you to enter .BMP files with surfaces. Niko's wallmaker does that to construct individual .BMP images. Down the other path is adding walle.fsh, and tagging time for revamping the editor as well as the client and server. What will probably decide what we do, is the issue of something we might add, called "Wall Objects." If you put a painting or a sword on a wall, it takes up that space, which can be annoying. I would rather like to have things that go on the walls. And we need to be able to have two of them, for in a corner. We're not sure ourselves what will be done."
Pyrus Whitefire: "Do you think there might ever be more variations to character animations, other than Stand, Sit, and lay down?"
Talzhemir: "And again, because of the old Bandwidth bugbear, I would say, the answer is, no. But keep in mind that this is ultimately good for Patchmakers. There's a limit to how much you have to do to create a new kind of character. If I added a frame, I'd have a huge pile of work making new frames, multiplied out by all the different types of avatars we've got."
Triek: "At one time... you could set the floor to be the image of an item... when the new update came... the 'stages' that were coded into the dream's DS no longer worked. Can we do this again.. or what is the deal with that? I liked being able to specify a table floor tile.. or whatever.."
Talzhemir: "Do you mean, that with dragonspeak, you could make one item look like a table or floor?"
Triek: "No... You could make a stage.. by saying.. When dream is starting up... set floor tile # to floor tile # (that of the table) and it made it look like you were walking on the table. I know you can do it with the patches.. but if you don’t have to upload it.. its faster.. like doing it with the ds."
Talzhemir: "As in, making the number bigger than the actual number of floor tiles, Triek?"
Triek: "Um Yes I believe so.."
Talzhemir: "I would say, that isn't coming back. We have here a rare moment when that might have been considered a "feature" and not a "bug", but it had other icky consequences, so it had to be changed."
The Furry News: "Will there be an event where furres can showcase their Dreams?"
Talzhemir: "Definitely. Watch for amazing and good things from the Beekins. I won't say more, 'cause that's Emerald's thunder. We're working hard at bringing back the old communications that Sidereal had, too, where you could announce events with little hassle."
Grimgroth: "Have you any questions for us?"
Talzhemir: "Did we ever get any new Furres from Anthrocon? or even GenCon, I wonder?"
Grimgroth: "I think so. Considering gencon was right at the beginning of the new furc, and the near doubling of the members at that time, I must say, at least a few had to have come from that."
Keircye: "Other than sound triggers and triggers for pay avatars, will the DS be updated (more triggers added) to make it so you can put less triggers to get an action done? Sometimes you have to "go around your elbow to get to your nose, so to speak, now."
Talzhemir: "That is, very much, Felorin's stuff. Dragonspeak doesn't have variables, for instance, and your ability to "loop trap" your code is very limited. What will get changed is up to him."
Kavaria: "Is Kinetic Sage still in charge of Guild Chartering at the moment, and um... do you have any idea of whether or not they're going to be chartering any more guilds anytime soon? We've sent our charter request in twice, with more than two weeks in between requests, and its' been almost a month since the last time, and we've still received no reply."
Talzhemir: "Yes, I believe Kinetic Sage is in charge at the moment, and, yes, Chartering is supposed to be going on. Hang on, though, let me double-check this. Felorin, do you know?"
Reporters, photographers and columnists are needed for The Furry News.