Hi all,

It's been a while since I've sent an announcement, and with the end of the year upon us, I thought I'd put something together to wrap up 2011.

Firstly, I'd like to start off with a personal update.

As most of you don't know, I got a big career break 2 months ago when I switched jobs in RL. Besides managing SL projects and consulting, I started working for a new company with big responsibilities. While excited for this amazing opportunity, it also put me in a bind with the things I love doing on the side. If you've had a hard time getting a hold of me the past couple months, it's mostly due to that and a few trips I took.

Though things are keeping me busy, life is stabilizing and I've gotten a consistent amount of work done in SL recently - a trend that should hopefully continue into December to accomplish everything I've mentioned over the year.

That said, on to the announcement!

Management Overhaul

I'd like to acknowledge and thank our dedicated team of community leads, security, GMs, Mods, and Admins. We did a lot of work this year in restructuring our team, identifying new leads, and recruiting fresh blood to help with security. Thanks to Espi, Peri, and Stu, new staff guides were drafted and put in place to help define staff duties and responsibilities. We're putting a big emphasis on transparency and disseminating information to the community.

• Live Help Team
• Player Guides
• Available Land
• Available Rentals
• Active Businesses (Yellow Pages)
• Re-Invitation Kiosk
• Staff Guides
• Daily Twitter Digest (Word on the street... notices in-world)
• Rosters (Businesses, HPD, HGH, FDH coming soon)
• Admin Dashboard (Group Proposals & Directory Management, Player Registration Lookup, Player Presence Overview, Security)
• Security HUD (v2 coming soon)

Finally, I'd like to formally introduce Esperanza Hernandoz's involvement. For 6+ months now, we've been working on both RL and SL projects together. From handling land, rentals, apps, announcements, to helping interpret what players need, she's been a tremendous help behind-the-scenes. To put plainly, the release of CD4 would have been significantly delayed this year, if it had not been for her dealing w/ the day-to-day and organizing projects.

Since Espi is in direct and daily contact with me, you can contact her as a last resort on urgent issues in my absence. For everything else, please defer to the help team!

What can Admins do?

Admins can deal with griefers on private land, manage estate settings such as sim restarts / lag / bans, and mediate OOC disputes between players. Admins and a few GMs have also been granted access to the management dashboard, giving them special abilities to help you with the following:

• Lookup a player's application/registration status and re-issue invites (if you missed your invite, you can initiate a re-invitation instantly by visiting the OOC area and clicking on the blue Re-Invitation board there)
• Update Group Directory & Yellow Pages

What can GMs do?

GMs can be contacted to send group notices and facilitate community-wide events. They also can handle all security and RP issues when the above are not available.

What can Group Leaders do?

Official group leaders are now part of the security team. Besides bouncing griefers, they also manage rosters if they run businesses, giving them the ability to keep track of who is active. They also help newcomers settle into the community by assisting with any questions, facilitating any stories they have within their group, and provide general guidance.

What can Roleplay Moderators do?

The following " RP mods" should be contacted for issues regarding role-play, such as powergaming, metagaming, Not respecting limits, etc. They can also be contacted to handle security needs when the above are not available.

What's the fastest way to get help?

Management roles, SL names, and their online status can be found on the In-World Live Help page.

glimpse of the management dashboard:

glimpse of hpd rosters:

The Build

Whew. For the most part, It's complete. If you remember, it was exactly on January 1st of this year I decided to tear it all down and start over. Over the few months that ensued after, I built it up in a series of weekends. I could have done a better job prefabbing in my sandbox, but honestly, it's hard to do that without a full road layout in place.

As promised, I put a big emphasis on region efficiency and realism. I think for the most part, I was able to accomplish this by custom texturing almost everything (sized and repeated efficiently), re-use some of the same sculpts in as many places as possible, etc. I think if there was ever another update, it'll be a replacement of everyday props with mesh objects when they are a bit more mainstream.

The layout of the sim is finally setup so that we spread the RP and avatar load across the estate as much as possible. The hospital and FDH in D8 actually frees up Hathian quite significantly so that we have more players able to RP there. If folks can't afford land, we've setup a plethora of low-cost rentals (ie. trailer and row homes) right on the border of Hathian. Also, for the first time, we're offering rentals within the Hathian sim, too.

Group leads were allowed a prim allowance to furnish areas of the sim which they occupy. With most of that down on the sim now, I am going to go back and review/replace items that are commonly used around the sim to squeeze a bit more efficiency.

While the build was in-progress, I know it was painful for the community. However, we got through most of it and I appreciate you guys sticking around. I hope the build is a more updated representation of Hathian and the quality our players put into their story writing!

just before i started building, blank hathian:

our city today:

Technical Upgrades

There's a lot of work the community is not aware of that makes CD run efficiently… and more importantly, as easy as possible! Here are some major updates that were completed:

• Migrated websites and in-world related systems to a new and dedicated server. Everything loads faster and less downtime than what we were experiencing).
• Dashboards! I built out a few to keep me sane; from managing incoming player registrations, all our rental systems, to tracking leaders, it's all in a pretty format that maximizes efficiency and leaves me with more time to focus RP-related development.
• Bug fix galore! With all the new systems that were developed from scratch this year, I have to fix the errors you guys catch too.

For the most part, any issues we see now are likely due to the grid's instability and constant major updates made on both the sim server and viewer side.

Character Evolution System

Besides the shiny build in CD, some of the major RP features that were announced last year were finally deployed this summer:

• CD Player Registration Portal, CU Player Registration Portal, HPD Application Portal
• New Group Proposal & Registration Portal
• Rosters (Business, HPD, HG)
• Medical Charts
• Police Reports (Incident Reports, Arrests, Citations, Jail Tracking, APB, Warrants)
• Instant Employment / Group Invites ("For Hire" signs)
• Avatar Presence Tracking

Through a series of algorithms and tracking player-to-player interaction, CD also features automatic role awards and enable the maintenance of criminal and medical history on every registered character. It's been working fairly solid for the past couple months and we're thinking of some really cool things we can do with "street cred" and role awards as people use these systems more into the next year.

How does it work?

We have a series of special role titles such as "CD Criminal" and "CD Felon". When a player racks up citations, incident reports, admitted to the hospital, spends time on the sim, to arrests (and spends that time in jail), their "street cred" is increased. Eventually, as they hit certain milestones, they are rewarded a role and notified automatically via IM. This is all part of the magic that comes with the "Character Evolution System" – a system I designed and built specifically for CD which doesn't require the use of a HUD and replaced the reliance of forums for tracking.

So really, all you need to do is play fair with the police, take your fair share of licks to spend time in the hospital, and most of all, be active on the sim! In return, you'll be awarded with special titles indicating your experience and dedication to the sim - in the general RP groups to promotions within busineses, HPD, HGH, and the FDH.

glimpse of a hpd reports form:

Policy Change on Businesses & Gangs

In the spirit of eliminating rigid rules and encouraging creative stories, moving forward, we will allow gang leaders to run CD Official businesses (if vacant) as well as their gang (or one of their members can run them). Proposals will still be required for forum feedback. We will also allow affiliations between gangs businesses. However, it's on leaders to walk the "fine line" and make sure the business remains open to new players to RP at.

I have reached out to gang leaders to claim a vacant business should they choose to have one.

Weapons Policy Updates

Keep in mind, when it comes to weapons, we are approaching it with two important goals in mind:

1) how can security quickly identify those who have not read the rules
2) how to deter powergaming while leaving opportunity for writing creative situations

Firearms (TBA):

Late next month (end of January 2012 - Date TBA), guns will be returning to the Den, but will only be in the hands of characters who qualify. These qualifications will be based on their activity on the sim which requires X amount of time spent in jail, on the sim, and both decent history of criminal and medical history on file. Eligibility is automatically tracked and determined by the Character Evolution System. To put simply, the opportunity to apply for the "CD Armed Citizen" role will privileged to those who play fair and have experienced a wide range of RP over time.

Police will be allowed to apply for a standard-issue handgun so long as they're an active member of the department and have achieved a rank of "Officer I" or higher (any level above rookie).

Again, this rule has NOT been implemented, but just a heads up this will be coming. A full announcement will be made next month.

Explosives:

They are continued to be prohibited unless approved by an Admin for a special event.

Everything Else (ie. Blades/Bows):

Avatars with any weapon attached must be a registered member of the Crack Den (ie. "CD Citizen"). Security will warn and/or boot players who are in noncompliance. No exceptions.

Weapon which can not be concealed (ie. katana, bow/arrow, etc.) will likely be confescated by police, and with firearms now available to officers, will be allowed to deploy on any assailants attempting to attack as such. Officers can/will deploy non-lethal forms of defense for concealable weapons.

Furthermore, if you plan on using a weapon that you can't conceal, it should have been very apparent and worn on your avatar before a scene becomes combative.

Common sense and fair play trumps this portion of weapons policy. Any complaints of powergaming can be submitted to an Admin for review.

The Weavers

The "weavers" are folks who have volunteered their time to write sim-wide plots, or stories that impact the entire city. This ranges from natural disasters, riots, serial killing, to more. This is a great way for people to flex their creative skills, work with leaders across the community, and help bring people together for a "moment" in Hathian history. We will also attempt to bridge the gap between Dead End and Crack Den by playing out some stories that would impact them both.

All active stories will be posted here.

How can I Participate?

If you have an idea, there are several ways to approach it:

• post it on the forums for community review
• contact an established weaver listed here

In Summary

We're coming up to 6 years now. I'll do my best to keep things running as smoothly and fresh as possible. With the help of good people, we'll continue keeping CD a positive outlet for creative stories and having fun.

I'd love to hear your comments or any questions you might have about things mentioned or that you'd like to know about.

Thanks for reading!