❅November Pebble Count❅

Hello, all!

The November Pebble Count is finally up. You have until November 30, 2010 to give us a shout. Just reply saying, "Here!" or something of that sort and you'll be safe. Please post only once, unless it's a helpful addition to the discussion about the news/announcements. (that means no solitary "xD"s or "LOL"s or "Yeah, I agree"s and etc posts) It'll help with the organization, here.

For all you new members:

Spoiler:

A pebble count is basically an activity check. When you reply, you're saying that you're here and you still want to be a part of Soaren. If you don't reply, your account will be deleted. Don't worry, since from now on we'll be sending you an email announcement to remind you of these things. We usually give you about two weeks or more, so there's no need to panic. Just click "Reply", type something in and "Send". It's that simple. Thanks for being a part of Soaren!

For Confuzzled Minds:

Spoiler:

START DATE: Sunday, 11/14/10
END DATE: Tuesday, 11/20/10
TO BE COUNTED: Reply to this thread saying "here"
CONSEQUENCES OF NOT REPLYING: Your account will be deleted
"I HAVEN'T BEEN COUNTED YET!": Relax. Unless it's already November 30, wait a day and send Fishy or Rabbit a PM. Chances are we haven't gotten to you yet.

NOW FOR THE ANNOUNCEMENTS

INVENTORY 4.0!
"Another inventory??" Yes, another inventory. I've revamped it again. >xD Now before you begin groaning or cheering or doing your whatever, let me explain. I've started noticing how complicated things were getting with our poor, solitary inventory. Things were pretty crammed up. The solution? Break it down into three. You have a seperate inventory for food, toys and other miscellaneous stuff (like presents and tickets). You can have more items than ever before. Now isn't that nice?
PERSONAL NAME/RACE CHANGE = NO, NO.
To prevent future confusions with people changing their name or species/race whenever they like, we're going to hand the power over to the admins. If you haven't noticed that already, you should notice now. However, you still get to choose your name. I'll be getting to that in the next mini-announcment. In the future, if you want to change your name/race, there will be a place where you can request a name change for a certain amount of S$ or buy a potion that morphs you into a different species (hint, hint). But, for now, if you want to change your name PM Rabbit or Fishy and we'll do it for you...for a price. (BTW, this is also so that we don't have anymore alter-ego NoNamers - a.k.a. inactive alter egoes)
I WANNA BE A FLAMINGO!!
...Okay. Well, very soon, you can!! Miss Mistress Fishy has been doing a lot of googling and super-top-secret missions and has compiled a grand list of somewhat-similar-looking GIFs that will soon expand your choice of race from 6 to approximately 40!! The catch? The bears are gone. I'm sincerely sorry about that. I couldn't find any suitable pixels. The one we have currently was supposed to only be a subsitute. I have neither the skill nor the time&patience to create bear pixels of our own, so I'll have to omit that as an option for now. I'm trying to create as many options for each species as possible while keeping them realistic-ish and sort-of-a-set-looking, and I just couldn't find any. They're all kawaii teddy bears o.o But if you find any or create any (1 black, 1 grizzly & 1 polar), that'd be absolutely wonderful. I'd be willing to grant you 500 S$ for it. ANYWAY, you can be looking forward to this wide range of races coming up around the end of November/beginning of December. Thanks!
possible races: sparrow, woodpecker, tropical-colored parakeet, cream/gold-colored parakeet, white duck, chicken, penguin, flamingo, owl, brown/maroon rabbit, pink rabbit, yellow rabbit, green rabbit, blue rabbit, purple rabbit, gray/white rabbit, green frog, blue frog, yellow frog, pink frog, gray cat, orange/brown tabby cat, black cat, white cat, brown cat, cream tabby cat, gray tabby cat, beagle, chihuahua, husky, golden retriever, cocker spaniel, daschund, pug, bernese mountain dog, bull terrier, dalmation, german shepherd, black labrador, yorkshire terrier, poodle, boston terrier, miniature pinscher, schnauzer
I WANNA BE A FLAMINGO!! PART TWO
Since power over Soaren Alter Egos has been passed over to the administrators, that means YOU will have to tell US what you want your alter ego to be. The form will look something like this:
ALTER EGO NAME: Mary
RACE: orange/brown tabby cat
GENDER: female
HOMETOWN: Berylville
FAV FOOD: berry island drink :tropicalsoda2:
LEAST FAV FOOD: seal drink :sealdrink:
FAV TOY: white bear plush
LEAST FAV TOY: pink bear bouncy toy :bouncy3:
MOST DISTINCT GOOD CHARACTERISTIC: outgoing
MOST DISTINCT BAD CHARACTERISTIC: hot-headed
The first three are self-explanatory. The hometown is where you start. Currently, everyone starts at Soar City. However, now you can start in places like Little Town. But hard-to-reach areas such as Valleystop and Floe will most likely require a price of something like 500 S$ (which you might as well use to buy plane tickets). The favorite food will give you a happiness bonus when you eat it. Vice versa for least favorite food. The same goes for the toys. Now for the characteristics: this is to make sure you character isn't all-good and no-bad. If you find someone going out-of-character (their bad characteristic is selfish and they are giving you 1000 S$-worth of presents free), report that and they'll recieve a negative consequence. However, eventually there will be a chance that you'll get to update your good/bad characteristics in the future. You can be looking forward to this option in late November/December
FLIGHT SCHEDULE!!
Valleystop flights are now scheduled. Why? Because if you roll a 5 (meaning a delay) and your friend rolls a 6 (meaning the flight goes on as normal), it would make no sense if you boarded the same plane. So now, if you book a flight to Valleystop, your plane is scheduled for a certain day. You can board early - as long as you board the plane by the time the day is over. Valleystop fliers, go to the Plane board under Travel & Communications to check which day your flight is. (Due to my delay in typing this crazily-long pebble count/announcement up, it's either tomorrow or Tuesday) However, since this is the first, no consequence will happen if you miss it THIS TIME. But since it makes no sense if this only applies to Valleystop, I'm thinking we should spread this to the other plane rides as well. No worries -- you'll be able to choose what day to fly, as long as it's within a week's range of today Rabbit, I haven't talked about this to you yet, so tell me what you think, kay?
SOAREN WORLD PARTICIPATION
I just want to say that I've worked really hard on this, guys, and it's very sad when it just seems...ignored. <:( This is the really big "highlight" of Soaren if you haven't noticed by all the above announcements yet, the part of Soaren that no other site really has. Where else can you do all this stuff in as an extensive text-roleplay style? I've put a ton of time into this. It can be really fun if y'all participate. Maybe it's just because of the craziness of life. I dunno. I'd just like to say that you should jump in and participate in the Soaren world! You don't have to go online much. In fact, I'm thinking about resetting everyone's happiness and hunger bars to 100/100 to get a fresh start (with Rabbit's permission, of course). Instead of -2 happiness/hunger per day, again with Rabbit's consent, I may lower it to -1 instead since I know how busy all of us can be. Personally, I'm pretty stressed at the moment. But really just participate in that. Call it the "Official RP of Soaren" or whatever. Just do your part and be a part of it. 'Tis all you have to do. (Oh -- and btw, DAILY DECREASE OF HAPPINESS/HUNGER BARS HAS BEEN PUT ON HALT ONCE AGAIN UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE)

Spoiler:

Rabbit
MidnightRaven
Albert Bao
Espeon
FiSHY
squirt4eva
zwx1103
COOLIOPHROG
piekat
zhang_wenliang
hannahblast
Shadowfire
bubblez2pop
Dwagon
Wolfbane
ilovegizzmoe
Kamikaze_Kangaroo
Amgine
Fallenangel
Harta
`daarkflower
BrennaC
Anna B.
UhmMonkeys

I'm replying to myself. xD

Here!

Here :)
I like how you made a poll and how you neatly organized everything. Also, 'I WANNA BE A FLAMINGO' made me laugh

Here! C:

HERE! HERE! OOH! OOH! HERE!

Fishy, I don't mean to be nit-picky or anything, I'm just trying to help Soaren and make sure we don't get sued or something, but:
Apparently an adoptable site can get banned if you take all (or one) of the images from Google. I've seen some other sites get banned for this and the owners were not happy :P
However, if you took the images from Miss V or something that lets you take images for free, that's okay. As long as you follow their rules and give them credit. =3

*jumps in through window* I'M HERE!

Also, yes, Soaren can get shut down if you use other peoples art. If they specifically say on the site you got the GIFs/art/etc. that you CANNOT USE without permission, then Soaren can get shut down or something. Go somewhere where it says you CAN use it (most sites like that say you have to give credit, of course), or make the art yourself, so Soaren can stay active and won't get banned

I'm pretty sure Miss V will let us if we give credit. And that's probably true for most others.

It honestly depends on the art/artist.
I'd recommend making the GIFs ourselves, that way its for-sure nothing will happen to Soaren, 'cause it would suck if Soaren got in trouble D:

It's true about Ms V, and you did give them credit and it's okay for you to use them.
But for the others.... not so much. Fishy said she got them on Google. Unless each and every site she got them from specifically said that anyone is allowed to use the, it would be considered stealing.

I haven't forgotten about that. ^^

I've been keeping track...

Most birds are from Pata2, which provides a wide arrange of GIFs

I got the chicken from PixelJoint. It appears the artist hasn't been on lately, but I'm planning to contact him/her anyway. If there's no reply, I'll just link back. ^^

The others I've collected from an ah-may-zing site called Peachie's Collection. I've already pinned her guestmap/page and planning to link back to her site.


Thanks for bringing that up, though, even if I haven't put them up yet. Anything else?

(EDIT: all of you who have posted are counted ^^)

Oh okay, that's good ^^

For Pata2, I think you should still contact the person, especially since they said:

DO NOT "direct-link". DO NOT alter them in any way or redistribute them without my express permission.

Though the site is in Japanese, so that won't be easy ._.

For Pixeljoint, yeah I think that's a good idea
Same with Peachie's Collection.

Well, I'm glad you're checking these things and making sure you have permission ^^

Heh heh. I guess I'll just have to rely on the power of Google Translate for that xD

Mfff...here!

Here!
(I think)

Yes, you are all here. :)

Anyways, I didn't see Pata2 yet(PATAMON) and really? They said that you couldn't alter or distribute? Are you sure you actually read closely when you used the icons, FiSHY? xD