by Alex Kurcharski, featuring Tanner Rogalsky and Matt Blaylock

Archive:
  #1     #2     #3     #4     #5     #6     #7     #8     #9     #10     #11     #12     #13     #14     #15     #16     #17     #18     #19     #20     #21     #22     #23     #24     #25     #26     #27     #28     #29     #30     #31     #32     #33     #34     #35     #36     #37     #38     #39     #40     #41  

Next   Previous

View feedback on this issue.

The Daily Rundown
December 17th to December 23rd

December 17th

This is definitely one of the best specimens of this type of map I've seen.

atob returns to his time-honored style, with one of the coolest Ten Minute Maps

Just so you know, this map isn't in here because it was a birthday map, it's here because it's awesome.

Evil_Bob returns to his former form with a fine puzzle map.

Goddamn this is fun.

December 18th

4lternate usually doesn't make anything out of the ordinary, but this one rocks.

Regardless of attempted abstractism, VV33 actually makes a map that's fun to play.

December 19th

Another precursor to one of Sendy's incoming map packs, this is definitely an awesome thwump puzzle to rival Dave.

December 20th

Speaking of thwump puzzles, booyah.

Cooby done made a lord_day map.

December 21st

Nothing!

December 22nd

Funass blue_tetris map.

December 23rd

Wooooooo! rocket_thumped and LV! Togevva!

I think it's become apparent that I like maps involving one ways.

This is the coolest misleading map ever.

I'm really not a fan of yahoozy maps, but this one is tight.

Two smtid maps in one day. Who'd'a thunk it?

Maps of the Week

1. 9400 - It's Kickin' In
2. smtid - Fairy Tale Of New Edinburger
3. Sendy - Electric Trickery - Final Cut
4. rocket_thumped and LittleViking - Loco Bilo, Texcoco and the Robo Named Armadillo
5. Evil_Bob - Keep Running First
6. 4lternate - How to jeopardize a once in a lifetime business opportunity
7. romaniac - This means nothing to me
8. Cooby - Contemptuous
9. funman - ^_^
10. astheoceansblue - Use Of Weapons

News

Cerberus

Cerberus has deleted all of his maps from NUMA. If you happen to have any sitting around, for some unknown reason, do post in this thread, as some people really would like them.

Map Packs

Three fine map packs for you this week: one by Amlt, as Tryst, who has recently revealed that he was MasterJmd.

One by lord_day, rocket_thumped, and smtid.

Lastly, one by Dave, a sequel to his super_fluffy pack.

The Multi-Accounters

Alright, so I skipped out on this last week, 'cause reports were still coming in. Recently, an admittance by dejablue that he was a multi-accounter, and rated up his own maps, spurred a large number of other users to admit, and a fair few more to be found out.

Here is a list of all those who confessed: dejablue, Jakel, spiker5, Element, Frogs, asian_gangsta / AsTimeFliesBy, xdude, motocrosser, lord_day, TheDailyLlama, Shark

And here a list of those who were found out: MaximumRide, McP, revamped, GreenEggsAndHam

The Dronies

Make sure that if you haven't already, you Vote for The Dronies! It's definitely worth your while to take some time to sit down and put in your vote. Sweep wants to hit one hundred votes this year, and I think we can do it.

Nterviewed

By Tanner Rogalsky

maestro is a web designer, prominent member of the Metanet community and kind enough to agree to be the first person to appear on Nterviewed. Not only is this the first installment of Nterviewed, it will also be marketed as the Christmas edition in order to cash in on the hype. Enjoy.

Tanner: Welcome to the very first edition of Nterviewed. Tonight, we have the special treat of grilling maestro like the hot piece of meat he is.
maestro: Oh, am I ever. The best meat's in the rump.

Tanner: So, maestro, these are pretty exciting times for the Metanet community and especially for you because you are involved in so much of the current projects.
maestro: Yeah. Although I'm not involved in much apart from NUMA.

Tanner: Can you tell us what some of your hopes are for NUMA?
maestro: At the moment it's very... One-dimensional, basically. People submit maps, people rate & comment on maps. There's no cohesion. We're wanting to broaden the possibilities within NUMA. And of course stamping out voting abuse. With a revamped voting system it should be very easy.

Tanner: Do you have any fears about how the new system will turn out or be used?
maestro: Fears, no. It can't be worse than it currently is, put it that way. NUMA was absolutely not designed with abuse in mind, so it's very vulnerable. You can deal with a lot of that if you have defensive measures in place from the start.

Tanner: Are you finding the suggestions from the community helpful?
maestro: Yeah, it's great. It's nice to have them all there to look through. Many of them we've already thought of. Don't PM me with them though, please. It's not that urgent unless there's a serious issue that needs fixing.

Tanner: On this project, you are working with Sweep and, to some degree, Arachnid. Do you find that you make a good team?
maestro: Good team, I think so. Sweep's got great ideas. And we agree a lot.

Tanner: One of your more famous (or infamous) maps on NUMA is called Shine. Care to tell us a bit about that, what it is and where it came from?
maestro: Hahaha. Yeah, people got really riled up about that. And many people seem to think that's basically all I've done, which is a bit of a shame. I make plenty of serious maps I think are pretty good. I just fiddle around a lot as well. Now, what is it? Basically, I wanted to get the best ratio of rating to map content. Later on I decided it's a bit of a tribute to the complexity of the game that is belied by its simplicity. 47 people have rated it, you know. An average of 3.5. That's impressive as far as I'm concerned.

Tanner: Lots of people thought it was just an inside joke.
maestro: Inside to what? No-one was actually 'in' on it. #loungelizards was a bit more of an inside joke. (side note: 'We Are The Winners', Lithuania's Eurovision 2006 entry, just started playing on my media player)

Tanner: You were the driving force behind the creation of the N wiki a while back. Are you satisfied with what it has become and how it is progressing?
maestro: I always thought we needed a wiki. It's alright. Progressing sporadically. Better than nothing, though. Way better. There's quite a bit of content there. tktktk started a drive a while ago to get people making some contributions. I think a lot of the editing is driven by ego. Sooo many edits of personal pages.

Tanner: NEHS used to be the darling of the projects that the community was working on. What happened to the N Episode Help Site?
maestro: Wasn't it just Maniac? It died when trib4l's site went down.

Tanner: I think so. But you mirrored it.
maestro: Yeah. But as it happened I had downloaded a copy of it before it went down. So I stuck it up on my host, and now there's the wiki people can come and transcribe.

Tanner: As well as being involved in Metanet, you also have your personal site that houses a blog and the occasional N reference. Do you have any advice for up-and-coming web design enthusiasts?
maestro: Certainly. #1, don't use Frontpage. Oh, #0, don't use Word. #2, it's probably best not to use Dreamweaver's WYSIWYG also. And don't use <font> tags or tables for layout. www.alistapart.com is an awesome website. It's for web developer types, and it's full of great articles. They've got a couple of summaries for beginners as well. I can't advise about learning the basics, because I'm not sure how I did. Looking at the HTML source of other websites, I think. And also looking at the official specifications at www.w3.org. Web design is a lot of fun. Everyone ought to give it a shot.

Tanner: Over a month ago, you announced that you would be working on a multiplayer strategy game called Territory and since then all we've seen is a frustratingly vague screenshot. Why must you tease us?
maestro: Heheh. I don't mean to tease. Have I said anything about what it's about? Not really, I suppose. I'm working quite steadily on it (NUMA has been quite a distraction). I think the reason I've been very vague is, well, firstly to build up hype (ha!), and also because I'm not so sure how I could summarise it. The current description in the HTML for it is "Territory is a free browser-based online turn-based multiplayer strategy game with a simple concept and simple rules (simpler than that sentence)." Apart from that all I've got is a Word document full of notes and ideas. All I've got in terms of description, that is. Oh, oh. "The game is all about having territory. The more you have, the better you are (and the more your parents love you)." And "The real game is in diplomacy." I'll reveal more in due course! I'm also working on a redesign of said site.

Tanner: You're going to sexy up maestrosync.com?
maestro: Yes. Sex it up like a dossier.

Tanner: Alright! I think that's a good note to wrap it up on.
maestro: What on earth was with that saying, by the way. Dodgy, sexed-up dossiers.

Tanner: Thanks for being my first victim, maestro.
maestro: Thanks for having me in this here interview channel.

Next week's installment of Nterviewed will feature the singularly attractive krusch who has promised to be both arousing and informative. Don't miss it.