Furcadia’s updating soon.

Silver Sponsors will be soon testing the test build of the client. This is a stress test for the client to make sure there are no catastrophic bugs still in the system, and also to make sure all the new DS is going off without a hitch.

Lets get the big stuff out of the way, first. This is from the update page, which will be linked at the bottom of the article. (For those who want to skip ahead; cheaters!)

Rabben Ferian

The newest Ferian to hop into Furcadia is this bouncy bunny avatar. Portraits were made by Talzhemir with additional work by Youlanda.

Noble Equine

A Spirited Purebred horse avatar and the next in the ‘Noble’ series. Avatar by Tiggerbaby with portraits by Aries.

Woolie Seasonal

A Fluffy Sheep avatar flocking to Furcadia for Easter! Avatar by Tiponya with additional work by Tiggerbaby and Gar, Portraits by Tiponya and Kittrel (Available Now!)

Toytle Seasonal

Slowly but steadily getting to Furcadia is this Toytle. Its portraits were made by Kaelin’yFiae. Additional animation by Emerald Flame and Gar. (Available May)

Tusker Seasonal

Certainly not a boring avatar, this perfect piggy was made, portraits and all, by Kaelin’yFiae (Available June)

Those’re the new avatars.

Some of the cool new features, (perhaps previews later)

New Icons – All of Furcadia’s Icons have been re-worked for 32bit colors. You can see them in the Furcadia folder after it’s installed to check out how they look.

New DS – More on this a little further down.

Tab Functionality – The Tab feature for showing names is getting an overhaul. Not only will you be able to set it and forget it to leave names on all the time now, but you’re also going to be able to see who is afk, which ties into another new feature…

Furcadia Pounce – A proprietary, first party Friends List and Whisper center that has been a staple of proxies for ages. This feature, (surprisingly? Not really) works much like the Dogproxy feature. I wonder if it’ll look and act like the Dogproxy feature…

Cookie Economy – A precursor to the Attention Economy and one that has been touted for years, this has finally made it into the client. You can read more about the Cookie Economy Here.

The New DS that made it into the update Focuses on a few core areas:

Cookies – The New DS focuses a lot on cookies because DEP is trying to get the Cookie Economy to hit big with the community. As a result, you can buy additional cookies on the Digo Market for a dollar.

The iPhone – There’s an iPhone Client on the Horizon. DEP is now making a publicly official statement by putting the DS in for the iPhone. This is DS that will only affect iPhone Clients, so only use this for features you want iPhone users to see. (Maybe soon we’ll see “Windows” “Linux” and “Mac” DS too? I hope not; that seems like it would cause problems.)

Arrays – Not often used by most dream owners, (because each portion of an array takes up an additional variable slot.) DEP is trying to add increased functionality to these long-forgotten brethren of the standard Variable. Basically, they’re trying to give more power to the Arrays so they will seem more attractive and lucrative to dream owners and dreamweavers in general.

Avatar – New DS focusing on Avatar location and Avatar Animation. Some of this seems cool and looks like it might be useful for patchers and dragonspeakers alike.

So, that’s the update in a nutshell. Pre-order your new avatars on the Digo Market and check out the update page for more in-depth info here.

As several people have become aware, the Heroin Puppy website is currently down. It is our understanding that this is going to continue for the foreseeable future. When asked about this, Cluracan basically said that he was done with Furcadia and Furnarchy, as well as his not-as-well known project “DreamNova”.

For those of you who don’t know, Furnarchy is a modular proxy that imbeds itself into the Furcadia client. It is one of the older Furcadia Proxies, (over the past few years several new proxies have sprung up out of the woodworks.)

Furnarchy was completely open sourced, and some people have, over the past few days, been wondering what was going to happen to it.

Damadar of Entwined Studios, and Lothus Marque of Mercenary Enclave Productions are currently developing the proxy together. You can read more about the announcement here.

For those of you who don’t understand exactly what went on with the recent ‘alt rollback’, here’s some of the specific information about what went on.

I do warn you, however, that the details could prove boring to those not interested in the world of alt trading.

Special thanks to the FAM/FAZ staff members who helped make sure the information was accurate.

February 7, 2009 – Dragon’s Eye Productions fixes a ‘bug’ in the ‘expiration’ for characters that have been inactive for a specified period of time.

February 11, 2009 – Dragon’s Eye Productions issues a rollback on over 200,000 alts that were incorrectly removed in the rollback.

You may have noticed the new influx of ‘information’ about the alt rollback that Dragon’s Eye Productions performed on February 7^th. Over 230,000 alts were removed from the Character Database at that time.

Since that time, over 200,000 of those characters were returned to their original owners. Still, from that number over 30,000 characters were cleared from the list appropriately.

The alt-trading community was in an uproar when this information was made public. The reason for this is twofold.

First, a lot of people lost alts without an e-mail warning them that the alt was about to expire. These were names that were ‘special’ to the owners and they wanted to keep them. This group makes up the majority of the 200,000 alts that were returned. Some of these people lost alts that should not have expired, and some of them had been long-standing, (active) characters that were active within a week before the expiration.

Dragon’s Eye Productions is chalking this particular issue up to a bug, and those particular alts were returned to their owners with an apology from Felorin posted publicly on the Furcadia Forums.

Alts that should have normally expired were allowed to remain expired. That means some 30,000 alts that were supposed to expire, but hadn’t, were allowed to expire, and remained expired.

Over 100 alts that had Digos recently purchased on them were not returned to their original owners; Dragon’s Eye Productions allowed the new owners to keep their Digos and their alts.

The part that made the situation tricky was that several alts that were not supposed to expire did, and were claimed by new owners who had wanted them for quite some time. These new owners were upset because the previous owners had not logged on for several months, but were still within the six month expiration limit.

These new owners stated that because the alts were never used by their original owners, they should not get their alts back. The new owners said that they grabbed these alts specifically to use them, in effect pulling them out of the mothballs and making use of names.

DEP seemed inclined to listen to these requests and, (for one time only) reset the expiration date for the older alts to 3 months of complete inactivity.

Some people rankled at this, but overall it seems to have appeased most of the people involved with this situation.

So, I managed to sit down with Amia and get a few words in with her.

Damadar: How did getting the Daily Deviation make you feel?
Amia: Honored above anything. It’s a strange feeling to know you inspire people, and that others genuinely enjoy looking at your work.

Damadar: How long have you been interested in photography?
Amia: I think I can safely say I’ve been artistic ever since I was able to pick up a pencil, so any form of creativity was of interest to me, but I was brought my first digital camera around the age of 13. I only began to take it seriously at 16, and start pursuing my career at 18.

Damadar: You’re 19 now, yes?
Amia: I am. March the 4th!

Damadar: How much success do you feel you’ve had in the past year, pursuing your career?
Amia: I think I’ve been very, very lucky to work with the people I’ve worked with, and things do seems to have moved quickly. I’ve had the opportunity to work with clothing designers such as Samantha Cole London, and models like Skye, who was recently featured in the latest Ford adverts in the UK, but I don’t think 2008 was my year. I’m hoping 2009 is my break-through, but all I can do is cross my fingers!

Damadar: What are your goals for 2009?
Amia: A few months ago I would have told you “To become agency represented.”, but now I’m not so sure. I’m enjoying the freedom of freelance work and managing my own clients, so I think the ultimate goal would to be to have my own extensive studio space, as I hope to soon be upgrading my lighting equipment. It wouldn’t be too shabby to get a couple more tearsheets, though.

Damadar: Have you ever been published before?
Amia: I have, and to be totally honest.. I’m not even sure where! For example, I was featured in a hair magazine after working with avant garde hair stylist, now a good friend of mine, Sean Butt. I’m also expecting a tearsheet from February’s issue of Digital Photography magazine.

Damadar: For those of us not in the know… Tearsheet?
Amia: Haha, I thought you might ask that! A tearsheet is pretty much exactly what it says on the tin, it’s a term in the industry for being published. If your work is featured in a magazine, as proof of publish, a lot of people ‘tear the sheet’ out for their portfolios, hence the name.

Damadar: Which do you prefer: Photographing, or being Photographed?
Amia: Definitely photographing, without a doubt. Modeling was so frustrating being a creative - having no control over the final product drove me nuts! Some photographers noticed my talent in post processing though, and asked me to retouch their work for them, so that was a nice compromise. I’m glad I’ve experienced modelling though, it’s really helped me understand how to direct models when you’re working.

Damadar: What do you think about models who are overly thin? Do you think it’s needed for the industry to survive?
Amia: That’s a tough question. The first priority to every photographer or designer, (or should be at least) is the models welfare, it goes without question for me, but it is true that the slimmer models do create better images, not just for the fact they ‘look’ better themselves, but you need to realise a lot of clothing designers create clothes for smaller sizes, it’s just the direction fashion has gone in. If I could change the entier industry and stomp out the illness of many models, I would, but it’s not something you can let get in the way of work unfortunately.

I’ve known Amia for over a year, and when she devotes herself to something, she tends to give it more than what you’d think she could. I could easily expect hers to become a household name (in the fashion world) within a few years.

You can find more of Amia’s work at her website: http://www.felicefawn.com/

And on deviantART: http://felicefawn.deviantart.com/

Beekin Head, Amia managed to get a Daily Deviation on popular artists community deviantART

You can see the Deviation here.

Amia was visibly overjoyed as she ran around Naia this morning in ecstasy over the award for her Artwork.

Amia is a Beekin Welcomer Head, A Beekin Teacher, a Beekin Pixel, and a resident of the UK.

Amia was unavailable for direct comment at the time of posting, as she was out celebrating the recognition by doing what she was recognized for: Taking Pictures.