DGL Nations Cup Signups Ending Soon

Posted by Warsprite 15/08/2008 at 09:15 17 Comments

The sign up period for the DGL Nations Cup will be closing Sunday evening, after which no new registrations will be allowed so we can finalize the teams. So if you haven't already, go sign up to participate in this awesome event here. Anyone can join and everyone will get the chance to be on a team and play. You'll also need an account on the DGL website.

If you're wondering what the Nations Cup is all about, read on:

Rather than host a traditional "Nations Cup" where each country sends one team of their best players to compete for victory, we've opted to do something slightly different. We've opened sign up to anyone and everyone who'd like to play, in order to allow people who haven't gotten a slice of the DGL action to get in on it. While this may make it not a "true" Nations Cup, we hope everyone won't get hung up on our use of the phrase, since it sounds a lot cooler than "Regions Cup". This also allows players from countries that otherwise wouldn't have been able to field a team to join in the tournament, as well as more players from big countries that would otherwise not have had the chance to play since they would have been cut. So how's this all going to work?

After the sign up period ends, we'll finalize the draft teams that we've been working on, which have been adjusted for both balance and locality. While we freely admit that some teams will be a little better than others, we think each team will at least have a chance of beating any other. The teams themselves will then elect their own captains from within the team.

After this has been done, matches will be scheduled and played in a single elimination bracket. All matches will be played 6v6, but otherwise according to standard DGL rules.

The DGL Staff wishes everyone a wonderful time and the best of luck in the upcoming tournament!

-Warsprite

July Update - Throw us a bone here, we've thrown many!

Posted by urinal-cake 31/07/2008 at 19:21 33 Comments

Our apologies for being so late on the monthly update, at the last minute of course! This month's update is just a little bit different. Earlier last week, we asked supporters for their help with a little bit of a dire issue.

In the past, we've asked for help from the community with things like looking for new talent, getting your opinion or just generally seeking different forms of help. Today, I come to you with a bit of a bigger problem.

In the past, we have offered our great supporter package for a measly $10USD, which with current exchange rates is chump change. But I'd like to ask the help of anyone willing, to keep Dystopia alive.

In October of 2007, we moved from a server owned by Fuzzy to a server owned by our IT staff. The server was equipped to handle the load at the time, but has grown pretty old. At the moment, there are many problems plaguing this server -- one of which being the risk of losing our next version, entirely, along with the stats system, US test server and many other great services that we allow free of charge.

Hard drive failures, overheating, and other catastrophic system failures have lead us in pursuit of a better server that will last much longer, and provide faster response time for all of our services. Imagine stats, forums, website servers and the like at exponential load times and never experiencing down times. That is the kind of dedication and experience we want to bring to this community.

However, because everyone on the team works either part time jobs or full time jobs to do what we love (Dystopia) and live on ramen, we're a bit strapped for cash. Help us meet our goal by donating so that we can have a safe haven to house all of our information, and bring the next versions (yes, I said versions) to you quicker.

To contribute, again, donate through this form.
Any help, from $1 to $10 is highly appreciated!

As a bonus, if someone decides to donate $50 alone, they get to pick any area to show a screenshot of in 1.2. It is recommended that you take a screenshot of the area you want to see in 1.1, and we will carry it over to 1.2. This is not a guarantee that you will see what you want to see.

I'm happy to announce that as of very late last week, we sucessfully made the move over to the faster, better server, and are already seeing great load times and response times for our utilities! We hope that this server can accomodate the needs of the community for the future.

However, what money that was not donated, was money donated by the development team. Seeing as we've already donated close to a 5 digit number in expenses throughout the last few years, and we're still living off of ramen, we'd like to open up the donation reward process for EVERYONE!

Everyone is free to donate to recieve the supporter status, however, if someone chooses to donate $50, they will recieve their choice screenshot of 1.2 in the next monthly update!

Here are some of the screenshots that were requested by the supporters!

As a special bonus, we've also included more screenshots to unveil, new areas, new models and more!

And one more for good measure:

We'd also like to take this time to welcome Atomy to the tryouts team as a Programmer. He's a workhorse so far, and is quickly making a great impression on 1.2!

Finally, as a special thanks, we'd REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, like to thank WhiteHawke and esoj for their fabulous charity! As well as once again thanking all the past supporters and future supporters for the new server fund! Remember, $50 for your personal sneak peak of 1.2. Plus lots of great supporter benefits!

The website went Kaboom!

Posted by mindstormmaster 07/07/2008 at 22:00 15 Comments

Our database server crashed a little while ago. Efforts to recover it cleanly were unsuccessful and it has been reloaded from our nightly backups. We've lost about 22 hours of activity (12:01am Monday to 8:15pm, the time of the crash).

The root cause of the crash has not been determined, but we'll keep an eye out for anything out of the ordinary. We're thankful our backup procedures worked, though this was an unwelcome test of them.