Gamingforumz Blog
The Official Gamingforumz Blog

Well after all the stuff that’s gone on recently, and my hectic schedule, I’m getting GFz forum back online this Sunday. Of course all the work is going to be going on before then, but i want to get it all sorted and looking like it should for Sunday, rather than have a messed up theme etc. I know it’s been a pain for a lot of you, but don’t worry, the summer fun is almost ready to begin. I’m already 65% of the way finished doing the treasure hunt. It would have been done by now, but unfortunately this hiccup has thrown timings a little. Anyway, hope to see you guys on the forum soon…

Kaitora

Well basically we got hacked, by some script kiddies who believe using an exploit script makes them a wonderful hacker. In the vain of trying to make their country look good… and well I’m not really bothered, going to sort the files etc out tonight, so gimme 5 hours to get back.

Really i must blame myself for not updating the forum software, and so i’m going to fresh install onto the latest version of myBB. However this doesn’t mean i’ve finished there…

Keep your eyes peeled. Forums should be back up when i get 10 minutes later in the day.

Kaitora

Post Wrecking Ball

Now that the forum is almost fully functional (or at least we hope), it’s time to tell you guys just a little bit of what decided to go down that threw a left hook at the forum for a few days.

The service that GamingForumz runs off of, MyBB, came out with a new update recently that released a few extra nifty features that I’m still trying to grasp 100% myself.  This update however had a lot of things changed, and a lot of things rearranged, almost in the since of taking the bottom piece out of the tower first, thus making the whole thing collapse.  There were also errors within the structure of the update that caused even more pandemonium technical-wise.  In the end the whole update shot the theme we were using into a burning pile of ash and left a lot of internal workings in shambles.  These problems contributed to users not being able to sign in for certain occasions and for some, not being able to even see the new theme we were forced to put up to prevent the forum from looking dull.  In the wake of this whole thing however, many new features have sprung up, and you may have already noticed some of them.  In the end, we were going to put a new look up anyways, so this occurrence if anything is just another promotion to us pushing forward the upgrades of our own desire for the forum and the new look.  We can still use your help in all of it of course, and would love to hear from you.

Next on the List…

We’re currently focusing a little more on user oriented features next in our parade of updates to come out.  One of which is a better user CP page, giving you more of a motive to actually use the User CP than to just let it sit politely at the corner and give you a glowing stare of innocence. Some suggestions have already been made, to both user features and user CP additions, but we would love more.  Feel free to give us any more on the list that you may want to tell, and most likely they will at least be taken into thought as we design our new forum.  Some changes may begin taking immediate effect, or you may have to wait until the full release of the new forum.  It all depends.

One thing that’s currently out there is the new market items in which you can buy yourself a new user group that has a new color to you.  This user group however does not do anything other than give you a new color, in case you were wondering.  As a thread has already been posted, you can suggest other colors to use.

We’re also focusing on a more advanced and more intuitive ranking system.  Rather than just giving you a new little member title, we’re also planning on giving icons and perhaps username colors to accompany the rank

Staff Changes

No…I don’t mean changes in the staff, I mean changes for the staff!  Really the only reason this may apply for you guys that aren’t in the staff is for the fact that you may start seeing changes in what the staff looks like in their posts, their username colors and other possible things.  This little snippet of info is really more of a heads up to pay attention to take mind anything that might change so you don’t freak out when you suddenly don’t see that wonderful green name above all of my posts.  “What!? He’s not longer an Admin!?” No you silly little person of the internet, we just got a new color.  That kind of thing.

Final Notes

There’s not much else to say here this week, as we’re still hot on our feet at work, both here and at work or school.  Stay frosty and stay tuned folks!

And now you can stalk my life and follow my daily shenanigans through Twitter! Find me at www.Twitter.com/BrantRecon

Wassup guys? It’s been a while, hasn’t it?  Here I am, here to bestow upon you knowledge so unfathomable, so great, and so almightily that you’ll be screaming for more, hoping that you’re head doesn’t explode in the process.

Let’s do this thing!

This Spot for Renovation

If you’ve been sitting in a rock, or have simply just not heard of what’s been going down, GFz is prone to another one of them things we like to call an “overhaul”.  This definitely means what it means.  The forum is prone to go under some major changes, in which we’ll be making the switch to a totally unique looking forum and completely new functions.  Coming this summer in the slew of many giant new releases, in the form of Direct Access Gaming and among other things, we thought it only appropriate to upgrade GFz once again as well for the occasion.  Who doesn’t like a new interior?

What? You’ve seen changes already? Blasphemy! Actually, no, things have already begun to change, thanks for making that astute observation!  If you haven’t seen already, there’s already a handful of new things beginning to pile up onto GFz page, one of which you might have noticed, the Marketplace.

You’ll see the link that says “Exchange Tokens” at the top of your page wherever you go, and when you click on this, you are taken to a new place that has been set up for your picking.  The Marketplace is finally another place to spend all of your tokens and do cool stuff.  As of right now, the selection is small, but that doesn’t mean that’s all that’s going to be there.  New items will be added soon, especially in the department of tweaking your profile in special ways.  Suggestions? Shoot them our way.  We do have a Suggestion forum, you know.

To use the Marketplace is pretty simple.  You simply go to the Marketplace, choose the category of items in which you want to see from, and if you want to make a purchase, you select the item you want to purchase! When you select your desired item, you’ll be taken to a page in which will let you use what the item is designed for.  Once you make your necessary changes or uses (depending on the item), you select purchase and the changes will quickly take effect! It’s that easy!

On top of the Marketplace, we’ve also added the mood changer to the top as well as the arcade.

Our next step on the list is improving on the user, and their profile.  We’re going to focus on ways to improve the user’s home page, their profile, and posting matters.  We’ll be working to make things look cooler and implement more user-oriented features.  We’re also going to implement a more advanced class-structure, while possibly coming out with new ones.  User Icons that can be placed to names, like for admins, and special user icons to help special-ranked users be more easily distinguished.

We’d love to see what you have to say, tell us, why don’t you? Enlighten us with your opinion, help us grace the internet by making us make something great and mighty that everyone loves to the fullest.

Feel free to help us with anything that you might be capable of doing.  Should you help us greatly, you’re time and volunteering won’t go unnoticed.

Looks Can Be Everything…

One of the giant changes that are going to happen to GFz is the way it looks.  We’ll be completely transitioning from a forum under a previously made design and template to one that is completely our own.  A few things that we are currently looking for to help us with this is to have forum icons that will take over the icons that are currently either blue or red “G”s with unique, specific icons for each of them.  Like pretty much everything else that we are doing with this overhaul, you have the chance to get in on the action.  You can make forum icons yourself and submit them to the Forum Icon Submission thread, and see if yours makes the cut! If you make an icon that makes it into the new icon set list, then you get 150 tokens!   To give you a little heads up right now, the dimensions for the icons are 30×30 pixels, and we’d love if you submitted one in something other than paint, please.

We’ll be continuing this series of changes as we finish one and move on to the other, so if you don’t do something in one area, you can help in the other!  Pay close attention to make sure anything might open up.

LAN Party = Late At Night Party

I’ve recently have gone to a small influx of Local Area Networked Xbox Parties (Or LAN), and played through the night with some buddies to kill time and have fun.  Between every game we’d laugh at what we did, until we hit sometime around 1 o’clock in the morning and were merely lifeless carcasses in front of a TV, killing each other.  Here are a few images that I took to kind of highlight the midnight chicanery.

Want to see the larger images? Here to look at these pictures and more!

To be bluntly honest, I crashed around 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning.  Everybody played it straight through to daylight.  What’s even funnier is that right after the Xbox’s turned off, the all fell asleep on the couch.

Forum Focus: Role Playing

Something that has more or less subtly came up to GFz is a form of forum that allows somebody to basically make a completely different universe, then let anybody willing to join come in on the fun and “role play” through a story, or just hang out in different form or being, or human…I don’t know, it depends on the owner.

The reason I’m focusing on this particular forum this week is the potential that always comes out of these kinds of forums.  Role Playing, though can be looked upon as somewhat nerdy, can also be extremely fun, and can really help entertain anyone willing to read a lot of text, so calling it nerdy just makes you deserve to be kicked in the face really hard.  A Role Play can also help anybody wanting to be a writer improve upon their skills, it has mine, so it may yours.

So, in the end, like every other forum that I urge you to at least look at, I urge you to at least take a peek at the Role Playing forum if you haven’t already.  I’ve also just started my own colossal RP myself, and would love if you at least took a quick little look.

I’m sure many people love Role Playing that aren’t currently part of this site as well, so if you know a friend (should they just be a friend over the internet) that likes to Role Play, you could always tell them to come this way, and perhaps start one here.  The more people we have in just area, the better, as we love having more people at Gamingforumz.

Final Notes

As we wrap stuff up, I will like to say there are some things in…”production” that can’t be reveal until they come out themselves, but I will say that they are more visually stimulating than anything else.

Have fun and stay tuned. I’ll see you guys out on the forums.

The PR update took kindly on Gamingforumz again, and http:www.gamingforumz.co.uk has risen to PR1 from PR0. This is a good thing, however we used to be a PR2 site, so there will be work carried out to boost it back to its former glory and beyond. As mentioned on the forum, we are undergoing a backlink campaign over time, to generate 1-2 backlinks ever day or two, so any PR increases will be gradual.

Sorry again for the delay on the Insider folks, I’ve been having many things come up that just wrangles me away from getting to work on this.  Unfortunately I’ve got one more weekend that’s stacked and busy, so the Insider may be delayed again this weekend.  Hopefully that’ll be the end of it though.

Let’s move on.

GFz Game Day the First

I will admittedly say that I was rather disappointed on the lack of show from people that came to this game day, but it still did happen regardless, and we still did have fun.  I’m hoping that by the next time this happens, we can get more of a crowd, but that’ll be next time.  We did play for some time, and I brought back some pictures to show what we did.  Take note that this was all played on Halo 3.

First off, let’s just show the first game that was played:  Slayer.  For the most part, we just went around and killed each other on a map that was edited to have all of the weapons and vehicles in one spot, which normally attributed to some fun carnage.

Next we just did some campaign on Halo 3 online.  This was much more entertaining I will say, as there were so many more things to kill, and so many cool things to take a screenshot of








It may be some time before another GFz Game Day, as they too can be decided upon by the public (which is you people).  I also hope to find ways to easily make these possible even on the other consoles.

Eyes peeled!

Heads up! Some stuff is on the way to GFz, and I will say contest wise for the most part…but these ones may test your observational skills.  On top of that there are a few things feature wise will surface in the future as we discussed earlier.  We’re currently looking forward to implementing a market in GFz in which can be used to buy many things with your tokens other than just the cards we offer for the 2,000 posts.  On top of that we may be coming back to you guys to help with recruiting for our forum, so we can spread the easy awesome.

That “When If” Scenario

Currently there are many things that we have stacked up and ready to roll out to the GFz public, but we’re holding out because these features and positions can’t really be implemented until our population explodes exponentially.  Basically what I’m trying to say is that we need more people so we can give more stuff.  A few examples can range from new positions like contest assistant which can help make contests and a position awarded for certain things achieved.  We can’t do too much though until we get more people, and we depend on you guys to help us out.  We can only do so much to help, and we ask you guys to help us so in expanding our awesome to everyone out there!

Direct Access Insider…for real

First off, I’m letting it known to you that Direct Access Insider does now technically exist and can be visited by anybody wanting to…however we haven’t done anything with it yet, so you are only going to see a little domain host-like page.

That’s not the point though; the point is we have made one giant step into expansion to something superb, something amazing, something Uber. Yes, Uber. We still have a few things open to anybody willing to help making something Uber out of Direct Access,  one of which being the Website Stockpile forum we still have open under the GFz Help and Feedback Center.  If you have anything you think would be a great addition to Direct Access, fling it our way.  It may appear on the final build of the website!

All in all, we’re really excited to have one foot forward now, and can’t wait to give you more updates as they come.  Hopefully we’ll have at least some banner on www.DirectAccessGaming.com to replace the weird hosting thing, so that way you all will be reminded that we’re working on it.

Toys for boys (…and a few girls)

As of recently, there has been a good number of plugins and various add-ons that have been added to GFz, one of the most obvious being the “Mood” feature.  Currently to change that all you need to do is go to www.gamingforumz.co.uk/mood.php and you can change your mood.  That’ll be in a short while upgrade in a way that you can change it more easily, but currently that’s what you must do.

A few other toys we got are less noticeable, but will bring some serious changes to operations in the forum.  We will soon be adding a new section in which you can buy things with your tokens!  These will range mostly from items you can use on your own profile, like a name changer and title changer, but each item will cost some tokens.  We thought it appropriate to give you guys more freedoms, but also something else to spend your tokens on rather than just saving them for a Console Point Card.

We are also searching for even more to add to GamingForumz!  Anything that you may want added to the forum, especially features, don’t feel afraid to voice your opinion!  We currently are really adamant about adding things to our forums that can in turn get us more members and have GamingForumz be more fun to participate in!

After having another week without an update, you guys may have thought more would be about, but unfortunately, I have zip left to give.  Once again I urge you guys to help GamingForumz spread by telling your friends about us, whether their just online buddies or friends from school.

Also, be expecting a few things from us in the near future, and look forward to the Game Day with the Staff going on tomorrow all of you Halo 3 players.

Smell the Flowers

As the winter slowly draws to a close, ever so closely, we begin to start seeing the 2009 line-up slowly come over the horizon.  In the past few weeks, major titles like God of War 3, Lost Planet 2, and Mass Effect 2 have sprung up with a teaser or two.  This is only a sign of what’s to come as the video game industry slowly begins to wake up from its cold hibernation.  It’s only a matter of time before E3 looms over the horizon…

Want some trailers?







Rest In Peace

As the economy in this here U.S.A. has been on the flakey side, the brunt force of it has put down the company Midway, mostly popular for their Mortal Kombat games.  Currently there are no plans on a recovery for the company, and so for anybody who was a fan of Midway’s games, you have just been shot through the heart.

In the Name of Competition

Microsoft is taking on Apple in the form of retail, as the company has partnered with a Wal-Mart veteran by the name of Dave Porter to open up stores across America (sorry East Coast, Bill Gates hasn’t looked overseas yet) that sell nothing but Microsoft products.  This could mean that on top of Microsoft just wanting to compete against their biggest competition, Apple, they could possibly be opening up to a wider range of products.  Stay tuned.

Remember That One Site?

Direct Access Gaming, that one site that we announced a while ago, is still happening, just to let you all know.  Us people that run this here website are coming up with ideas to make something awesome to hang out at and will be working hard on it soon enough.  Unfortunately, due to something called life at school, most updates DA wise are being held off until the summer when both Kaitora and I have much more time on our hands.  Please excuse the long wait as we look forward to making it up with you!

For all of you Animal Crossing: City Folk owners, you definitely know about the game’s feature in which slowly deterioates the snow and grass that you step on to mere mud.  As far as I can tell nobody likes this, including myself.  This feature takes away from the happy and positve mood that Animal Crossing is known for and will eventually have everybody that owns the game have a nothing but muddy town.  There is also no known solution to fix this aside from restarting your town or hacking or that is otherwise efficient or worthwhile.

There is currently a petition underway in which anybody that feels the urge to save their sweet grass/snow that is being sent to Nintendo that is for an update that will cut off this feature and return our towns to their original state.

Sure, you can put tiles up in your town and tell everybody that visits to not step in the grass, but the fact is still that you have to do that, and that people will constantly be picking up your tiles or otherwise step on the grass anyways.

Support the cause! Save your grass!

Save Our Grass Petition

Night Owls

This weekend is a nice holiday weekend for us in the U.S. as we have the day in which we celebrate our presidents’ birthdays.  What did this mean for me?  Well, one of our Master Hands here at GFz, Luigi, invited me to go with him to an all-night Halo 3 tournament.  When I mean all night, I mean from 4 pm on Friday to 7:30 am on Saturday, literally more than 12 hours.  The experience was quite fun, and I enjoyed every game that I played.  On top of an ample supply of Xbox 360s with Halo 3 in them, there were a few Wiis, one with Guitar Hero World Tour and one with Wii Sports.  There was also a spare 360 for people to play Rock Band (I gave myself a sore throat singing and sore arms for playing the guitar too much). To top it all off, there was a PS3 set up to play Blu-Ray movies all night long as well.  With a surplus supply of caffeine, some pizza and a lot of people wanting to play games, we were all in for a fun night.

What came of the night?  Too many Halo 3 games to count, a whole bunch of singing and a whole bunch of rockin’, tons of movies and a fun competition that led to us all looking like zombies by the next morning.  What were the results of the tournament?  Luigi placed in what I believe to be 8^th place, and after playing on a large 20 foot projector I placed in 4^th out of 30 contestants, scoring some cash to spend at a game store.

In the end we had a blast, and I would definitely be willing to do it again the next long weekend as long as I have a steady supply of caffeine and food, and Rock Band (perhaps even Rock Band 2).

Filler

I honestly don’t have much more to say than the tournament, as not much news wise has appeared and not much has happened in the gaming world as of late.

So, that means I get to do share a video or so that I’ve come across that I particularly enjoy just to make things seem worthwhile.

Tune in soon for the first Brawl Competition details.

Oh, and don’t forget, buy some roses for that special someone, because it happens to be that special day, and not doing so could get ugly.