Shadowlack

New User Registration Open

Wed, 20 Apr 2011 15:59:16 -0600

After a long time of being "closed", Shadowlack is once again open to new user registrations. Have you stumbled across our game before? Register an account and join our community.

We still have quite a ways to go to finished Phase II of the Shadowlack site, but progress is being made at a great pace. Here are just a few of the things that we have up now:

Timestamps can now be set for In Character threads. Make sure to edit your old thread topics to add in an appropriate Timestamp.
The Codex has now been made completely public to guests. As more information gets hashed out in the wiki, it'll appear there.
Diseases are up.
Holidays & Festivals are up (and we could really use some new suggestions for more to add!)
Shadowlack now has its very own TV Tropes article. Take a moment to check it out and contribute if you haven't already.
Character avatars have been added to the In Character world boards.
New Game + permission levels have been added to the site in order to help guide newcomers.
The site should now work fairly well in the majority of mobile browsers.
Many aspects of the admin back-end have been updated. A little while longer and I'll be hiring a new set of staff members.

Minor Security Upgrade

Fri, 08 Apr 2011 21:07:05 -0600

Shadowlack has just undergone a minor security upgrade in preparation for open registration. Please report any issues that you come across in the Bugs & Glitches board. Thanks!

Shadowlack Wiki

Sat, 12 Feb 2011 00:21:48 -0700

The wiki is now back up and fully operational. Your wiki login is tied directly to your account, so simply login with your Shadowlack username and password. Additionally, if you visit any one of your character profiles, you will also see a new "Wiki Page" link that's dedicated specifically to your character. Feel free to put whatever extra information that you'd like on these pages.

It's time for...

New Things of the Now!

Many new guides were added to the Guides section
Several new resources were added as well, including a Colour Contrast Checker and a Word Counter
New Game Plus levels were created, and the first NG+ quiz was released
You can now see how many visitors are lurking on the site >__>
Thread Subscriptions
Our fancy text editor has been upgraded to fix a few minor bugs
Many new (and some old) Linking Banners an Buttons have been added (we're still accepting submissions, so get yours in!)
Ye old Rapine wallpaper can also be found on the linking page, as well as,
Shadowlack's official "brand" images that you are free to use in your personal projects
A fancy new Ramathian world map is also in production (here's a sneak peak)

Button Drive

Wed, 19 Jan 2011 00:00:37 -0700

Let’s all make some new buttons and banners for Shadowlack! Since the name change, I haven’t had a whole lot of time to dedicate to this effort myself. So I thought I’d get others to help me get this ball rolling.

Rules

All imagery that you use in your submissions must be either a) 100% created by yourself or b) you have explicit permission to use.
Can’t draw? You may use and edit any of my artwork found in my online galleries (1 & 2), as well as anything in my sketchbook folders to help promote Shadowlack. Just don’t claim the image(s) as your own. ;)
Your submission (or submissions), must fall into one of the size dimension categories below.

Small Buttons

88 x 31 (micro button)
80 x 15 (micro bar)
120 x 90
120 x 60

Banners

234 x 60 (half banner)
468 x 60 (full banner)

Icons / Journals / Avatars

100 x 100
125 x 125

Vertical Banners

120 x 600 (skyscraper)
120 x 240
240 x 400

Where to Submit?

Send your entries to me either via PM, or to the graders@shadowlack.com email address as attachments!

Shadowlack Legacy

Mon, 17 Jan 2011 19:48:04 -0700

Fear not, all of your old posts and characters are not gone!

You may access all of your old role-play information at http://legacy.shadowlack.com

Please keep in mind however, that this is a static archive. So, you will not be able to login.

Special Requests

Sat, 15 Jan 2011 00:03:38 -0700

The Special Request form is up for characters. Currently the only type of special request that you can make is for additional trades, but I do plan on expanding on this in the future.

Feel free to fill out the form if you happen to have a character who has more than two trades.

Roleplaying Boards Open

Tue, 11 Jan 2011 17:46:14 -0700

Deadlines are awesome, aren't they? Well it's January 11th, and roleplaying is officially open on the Roleplay boards. If you haven't made your character(s) yet, hop to it. Roleplaying has officially ceased on the old phpBB forum.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask them in Hatchling Central. Otherwise, just have fun because I'm going to be working on all of the shiny extra features now. ;) Thanks for being patient with me and for keeping on top of bugs! You've all been a great help.

Character Creation Open

Sun, 09 Jan 2011 02:23:51 -0700

Character creation is now open! Feel free to create your characters. There are still plenty of character fields that will be added later on down the road, so if you have any suggestions as to what sort of things you'd like to see listed on a character's profile, let me know!

Also, the first In Character sphere is up: Fronima. I'm slowly going to be adding the other spheres over the next couple of days.

Currently working on:

Special request trades / multiple trades. If your character has more than two trades, please be patient. That functionality is coming soon.
Character avatar uploads.

The Game Plan

Thu, 16 Dec 2010 22:48:12 -0700

As I've been working on Shadowlack, I've been keeping track of my progress via a handy project management system. Consequently, I can tell you that we're currently sitting at 84% for this phase of the project. We should hit the 90s this weekend (provided I'm not too hungover from all the Christmas parties). What does this mean? This phase of the project has been surrounding the core functionality of Shadowlack, that is, making sure that we can get our asses roleplaying again. ;)

The hard deadline for when roleplaying will open again on the site is: January 11th, 2011 (1/11/11). It's quite likely that I'll have things finished before then, but that's the coolest looking date in the next little while. At that point the old Shadowlack forum will completely close down and we will assume operations over here.

After that, the server is going to be upgraded. I'm not entirely sure on the timeline there, as it might even end up in February. We're taking a video gaming rig that we have here and putting its super-duper processor into our server, as well as salvaging a few other parts. Probably only a day of downtime, if that.

Phase I: Core Functionality

Nearly complete!

Phase II: The Bells and Whistles

Appointing new staff members
Final site design
Polls
Groups
Friends
Buzz Board
User invitations
Character relations
Want another feature added? Suggest it! It can be done!

Phase III: The Home Stretch

Improve user friendliness
More art!!111one
Plot and scheme like there is no tomorrow
Advertise, damnit

There you have it. It'll be sometime in Phase III that public registrations will open again. Still no ETA. And now for...

New Things of the Now!

Character Census (this will be a sweet page to watch as people start creating characters)
Playable Races DB (still populating it with data and formatting)
Trade Catalogue (will be prettified during Phase II)
And a bunch of admin back end things that I don't need to bore you with.

Gender What

Thu, 09 Dec 2010 17:53:43 -0700

I made a few small changes, but they're pretty significant in regards to gender and users.

Gender no longer appears on the account registration form.
Gender is now a fully editable text field on your account.

It still won't show up on your profile yet, as I'm organizing the layout of data there... but feel free to go in and enter in whatever you want. :) I know that on Shadowlack, we're really all over the place in regards to demographics. We have a substantial LGBT community, and a fair amount of people who are much more fluid when it comes to things like gender.

So in the spirit of keeping this a welcoming and open community, have at 'er.