What's that, Furcadia?

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… #SD

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.

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.

Angel Blaze is a 25 year old woman who started drawing regularly about 3 years ago. In that span of time, she’s improved her artwork immeasurably.

Here you can see one of her earlier works:

Here’s an example of one of her later pieces:

It also just happens to be my star sign, but that’s beside the point.

Her latest piece was done for Heavenly, and to be honest, it looks pretty amazing.

She’s also accepting commissions right now.

Below you can find her price list:

Ports:
Non-remap ports – $5.
No Remapping Ports. Sorry!

Full Body Art:
Full coloured body images with background of choice (not Furcadia ports) – $15 starting rate. Price may rise depending on detail and size.
2 characters in one image -$20 starting rate, depending on size and detail.
Extra characters after 2 – $2 each.

Bust Pictures only. (Torso Up)
Head only (coloured, large) – $12

Sketches (Black and white image only) – $8.

Con badges – $10 (Can print and laminate them, customer pays postage.)

There are three slots available right now, so if you want a piece of art from her, better sign up soon.

You can find her deviantART site here.

Payment Methods are in Dragon Scales or Paypal, at your preference. Payments are made after the artwork is completed.

Seriously. Go commission her.

This information is only for users. Random people can’t see it.

If you don’t like spoilers, stop reading now. I’m putting it behind a cut.

(continue reading…)

Jorvik is a young woman full of talent. She’s been doing art since she could hold a pencil.

She’s also one of the older Furcadians running around, having joined back in 2001. That’s around the time DEP put out a big update, what some Older Furcadia Players call "NewFurc"

Currently she’s accepting commissions for her artwork; these come in various different flavours, and it all depends on what you want. She’s a UK citizen, but I’m breaking down her prices for you in USD. (You’ll want to use a service like XE.com to get the correct amount in Pounds.)

Digital Art
Furcadia Portraits – $12
Lineart
Includes a background to your specifications. Flat rate for character numbers. (i.e there is no extra charge for more than one character)
Bust – $4
Full Body – $8
Colour
Includes a simple background to your specifications. More complex backgrounds will come at an extra cost. Your picture will be soft-shaded unless you specify otherwise.
Bust – $8Full Body – $15
Extra characters – $4 each
Complex background +$4
Traditional Art
Sketch
The most basic commission. Comes without a background. Character numbers are flat rate.
Bust – $2
Full body – $4

You can see examples of her work at her deviantArt page, which also has her commission prices listed in Pounds. I suggest you swing by and see if she has something you’re interested in; I’ve already set up my order. #SD