2004 Town Meeting
Saturday, May 1st, 2004

Felorin: Hi everyone, and welcome to our Town Meeting!

Felorin: I mainly want to hear all of your questions, so I'll keep my news and announcements brief.

Felorin: We've put a lot of work into improving server stability over the last six months. It's kept us from getting many new features, but I hope you all have noticed the server restarts a LOT less often, and there's been less netlag lately too. #SA

Felorin: Now we're going to shift our focus to working on new features again. We have a new programmer working with us, Kunnis, to help come out with alpha updates, so we should be able to add more neat features each year, and fix more bugs.

Felorin: This also means that sanctimonious should have more time free to work on the beta. He's been doing some programming on that just recently. He's also been working a lot on some new web-based services on our site that'll integrate with the game. Our shopping cart system is just the beginning of that - we hope to add personal pages about each furre character, and a lot more. #SA

Felorin: Our planned features for the Beta have only changed a little bit since our last Town Meeting, for those of you that were there or read the logfile. But we'll still take questions about it if you want to ask.

Felorin: We're a small company, so we can't get these things done as quickly as the big game companies that have millions of dollars in funding and dozens of full-time developers. But we keep plugging away at it. #SA

Felorin: Of more interest in the short term, our next alpha update is coming out soon, with the squirrel/skunk, bug fixes, batwings, new DragonSpeak commands, and some guild support features. We'd be more than happy to answer questions about that. Or about anything else in Furcadia. #SA

Felorin: We also might drop a few hints about the Furcadia Fantasy Festival if you like - though we're early on in the planning stages of it. #SD

Felorin: We've been wanting to do that for years, so we're very excited about it. Speaking of which - before anyone asks a "when" question, let me repeat our official answer to all "when" questions at Dragon's Eye Productions: We never know when anything will be done until the moment we finish it.

Felorin: Sorry if that sounds a bit coy, but that's what game software development is really like. It's very unpredictable work, and companies that promise people a release date usually just end up dissapointing people. We try not to make promises we know we might not be able to keep, to avoid dissapointing all you fine furres. If we did know, we'd tell ya. #SA

Felorin: Ok, I'm going to open the meeting to questions now. #SA Whisper your questions to TownMeet - can't promise we'll answer, but we'll get through as many as we can!

Felorin: Ravyn Syet asks, will the squirrel and skunk avatars cost money?

Felorin: They're one avatar - the tail is striped or non-striped depending on whether you fur and markings colors match. And it's totally free for everyone to use. #SA

Felorin: Chrono Draw asks, how about the batwings?

Felorin: The batwings will cost something like $25-$25 a year - we haven't decided on a final price yet.

Felorin: Kitzibeth has asked whether we're adding support for guild combat and quest systems in the next update, or what else we'll be adding.

Felorin: That would be mostly PhoenixSpeak, and some DragonSpeak. Those will come in later alpha updates, not this one. As for the guild features in this update, Emerald, perhaps you can say a word or two about that?

Felorin: For this next update we are adding in Guild Packages that will help the admin side of running a guild.

Felorin: We will be offering some new free features as well as two packages. They will include features like ways to keep your dream up better, special desctags for all members of your dream, your own chat channel and the ability to give all your members a message no matter where they are in Furcadia. There will also be web features like auto-generated webpages, email addresses and forums. :-)

Felorin: Cadohacan has asked what new DragonSpeak commands we'll be adding in this next update.

Felorin: We'll be adding commands to check whether the triggering furre was within a certain diamond or rectangle... To trigger things when a furre doesn't move for a certain number of seconds, DS to make a furre stand up, sit down, or lie down, and possibly DragonSpeak to make an effect happen at a random spot within an area, or to change the object in a furre's paws.

Felorin: Mister asks who drew the portraits for the squirrels.

Felorin: The squirrel portraits are being drawn by Winter Porcelain, who does wonderful artwork in my opinion. #SA

Felorin: SpottedKirby asks, will all this make Furcadia slower?

Felorin: Actually we've done a lot of work in the last few months to make the Furcadia server faster. Kunnis has been a big help with that, and has several more ideas how to make it faster still. Plus these changes won't really make the Furcadia server do much work to implement them, so they shouldn't slow us down a bit. #SA

Felorin: Hellfire's Fury asks if we'll be replacing Furcadia's default portraits with new ones made by some of the many talented artists that play here.

Felorin: Our original plan was actually to make the portraits give you a choice of several, not just one. And then add a "face kit" where you could put on different noses, ears, etc. And the final step would be the custom portraits, where you can draw ANYTHING, of course. We think people have done great things with the custom portraits, we love looking at them!

Felorin: But I would still like to add the face kit in at some point. We might go to multiple default portraits, so you'd have 10 different free ones to choose from, but if we do that it won't be for a while - so many other things we have to get done right now.

Felorin: Twilight Spirit wants to know if we'll ever have a battle system in Furcadia.

Felorin: We decided not to have combat in Furcadia when we opened it, because A) a lot of kinds of people that don't even play most computer games but might like something different would just say "that's about fighting, it's not for me". And B) for the people that did play, there'd be the danger of combat and/or acquiring money overwhelming all the other game mechanics we want to put in, which are more new and original.

Felorin: We do intend to keep providing tools (like new DragonSpeak commands) to let dream owners make better and better combat in their dream. But for global game mechanics, we want to add things like an "attention economy", where the more people visit your dream, use your patch, read your messages, etc. the more "magical energy" you get. And other fun things like that. #SA

Felorin: Napster wants to know why we call our time FST, Furcadia Standard Time, instead of FDT, since we change with daylight savings time.

Emerald|Flame: We will have a brief break while Felorin deals with a windows crash! Be back in 5 minutes #SA

Emerald|Flame: Please do not whisper Felorin or other DEP during the meeting as we are not able to answer. #SA Whisper Town Meeting if you have a question. #SA

Felorin: Well, it would be nice for people in a lot of the world to have an unchanging time standard, like some parts of Indiana do here in the USA... But since we're in Texas, and our computers (and the server machine!) are programmed to do daylight savings time, it's most practical for us to make our time standard conform to that too. By the way, I believe our FST clock is automatically synchronized to an atomic clock for accuracy. I know you didn't ask, but I think that's cool. #SA

Felorin: Frenze DeMarco2 asks, if we make the face kit, will it be free?

Felorin: Yes, we would make that totally free if we put it in. #SA

Felorin: We try to keep most of Furcadia free, and just put a few optional things in to keep the game funded and make ourselves a living. We want people that can't afford to pay or who just would rather not to be able to enjoy the game. #SA

Felorin: July Blue Fox wants to know, will we support larger maps, more patches, or new types of patches? And will there be a way to automatically "loan" a Digo item to someone and have it come back after a set period of time? And July says Radio wants to say that Emerald looks good. #SA

Felorin: Ok. No to larger dreams, linked semi-permanent dreams will someday fill that role. The next update will have more dream gates you can patch, and "local species" in addition to all the normal ones, that you can patch to anything you like. Auto-loan of Digos is something we might do some day, it causes disputes now and we don't promise to enforce terms of deals players make - if it was automatic there'd be less trouble.

Felorin: And if you think Emerald looks good here - you should see her the way I get to see her here at home. #SD

Felorin: I can't show ya Emmie in her kimono or out in the swimming pool... But here's how Winter Porcelain envisioned her - hit F8 to see http://www.bga.com/~cat/emerald.jpg #SA (I commissioned that portrait as a christmas present.) Ok, enough sentimentality, time for more questions. #SA

Felorin: Shimofuri wants to know if we'll release a soundtrack of music by Furcadia players.

Felorin: We haven't made any definite plans. If we ever do an optional Furcadia CD, we thought we'd at least put some music on it by The Fat Man and/or sanctimonious. The Fat Man has several awesome music CDs out already. #SA

Felorin: Caltosy asks about ways we could give chartered guilds more control over keeping their spot, so other people don't upload there. And also about expanding the chatbox and people's description space. (That's a lot of questions!) #SA

Felorin: Solar Ralos wants to know how we'll give EVERY furre a personal web page, if there are so many of ya. #SA

Felorin: Well, we won't do it by hand. We'll program the Furcadia server to automatically make each page. And they'll all be small, so there'll be enough room for them all on our hard drives. #SA There's hundreds of thousands of characters in our database, so they can't be TOO big. #SA

Felorin: Zaboo asks if we'll support diceroll modifiers in DragonSpeak, the way the roll and ROLL commands have now.

Talzhemir: (i.e., you can type roll 3d6 but roll 3d6+1 doesn't work yet)

Felorin: That's a good question. #SA You can apply a modifier in DS by using the math commands to add and subtract after the rolling, of course. But maybe you meant reacting to the ROLL commands that players type? I believe currently the DS will treat "roll 1d20" the same as "roll 1d20+5" - you'd just be more likely to get a "high enough" number and you'd have to watch for people cheating and using pluses they're not entitled to. Maybe in a future update I can have DS check for ya.

Felorin: Sunkaya wants to know if there will be different types of clothes people will be able to pick, to tell the difference between males and females.

Felorin: We're looking into the possibility of doing that in the beta or sometime after the beta release. Gar also had a fun new idea - possibly coming up with clothing pieces you can put on the full-body image of your furre that appears just the right of your portrait. We might do that at some point. We also might put in base avatars that are clearly male and female, in the future.

Felorin: Zidders asks if you can make Furcadia full-screen.

Felorin: Right now, if you set Windows to 640*480, Furcadia will come up in full-screen. In the beta, it'll be able to do it automatically, and run full-screen at higher resolutions too. #SA

Emerald|Flame: Please do not whisper Felorin, it just makes things take longer.

Felorin: Fiana asks whether we're still intending to add the Planning Beekins and the Roleplaying Beekins as new volunteer groups.

Felorin: Emerald says: We'd planned to put the event and RP beekins off until the Beta is out. We will probably still do that, though we do have a few event Beekins even now to help run the Festivals. :-)

Felorin: Remus asks if guild packages will need to be renewed yearly, how many levels of them there will be, and what they'll cost?

Felorin: You will need to renew them yearly, yes. We're currently leaning towards having two different packages, though we might start with just one. And we don't have an estimated price yet, sorry.

Felorin: Radio says Emerald *and* Talzhemir are looking nice today. And asks are we going to add other roses, like roses for life.

Felorin: Don't MAKE me post a portrait of Talzhemir too. #SD We don't have any plans for more roses currently. But they have been popular, and we might do other colors someday. I think for-life roses are less likely, that's not how real flowers normally are unless they're plastic! #SE We'd be more likely to add more kinds of gift items, things people might give each other as small fun gifts in real life.

Felorin: GreenThing asks, didn't we promise never to have male and female avatars you can tell apart, to avoid harassment?

Felorin: Well, we explained that's why we'd done it this way - didn't promise we wouldn't change it. We've noticed the Internet, and online games, have changed a lot since 1996. It's no longer 20 guys to every gal, it's more like 50/50. Anyway we will still offer the "unspecified" option for people who don't wish to say, and they generally don't get harassed.

Felorin: Bateater asks if we'll ever add child avatars. We don't have any plans to at this time - it'd just take up too much art resources on top of everything else.

Felorin: Misuterii asks if the squirrel portraits will clash with the art style of the originals, will we have name variables in DS, and will we release batwings for life at the same time as the yearly ones? And says I promised her name DS for her fish game. #SA

Felorin: We've already got newer portraits not matching the style of the original ones. We try to update our look somewhat over time. If we have multiple free portraits to choose from for each species that'll be less of an issue, and of course custom portraits are in every conceivable art style already. We will add name DS, but probably not any in this next update. And batwings for life will probably come out a little while after the yearly ones rather than right away. Maybe. #SD

Felorin: Xinul wants to know if there'll be a way to edit your input text using the arrow keys, which currently will just move your furre around instead.

Felorin: *poof* I just now made it so that holding CTRL plus an arrow key will let you edit your text! Just kidding, we did that a few years ago. #SD In the beta, we're going to make every keyboard key and control user-configurable, so you could make the arrow keys work without the CTRL down, pick what movement keys you want, special command keys or macro, etc. etc.

Felorin: Jax Greyclaw asks if we'll add more colors for character creation. In the Beta we will, it'll support 16, 24, and 32 bit art, and translucency, so we'll give your furres and clothes more color choices for sure. #SA

Felorin: Trezz asks if personal portrait spaces will ever be free. And will there be different avatars for male and female, and how do you set Windows to 640*480.

Felorin: Portrait spaces won't be free, sorry. We need to pay for this server (and food for us to eat) somehow! We may well eventually have male and female, and right-click your desktop and pick properties to change Windows screen resolution. #SD

Felorin: Hellfire's Fury (and Mortain and others) want to know if we'll make a Digo Market item that lets you turn feral.

Felorin: Sorry, but we don't have any plans to make any official feral avatars right now. Though the local race feature will help people that want to use feral patches in their dreams, somewhat.

Felorin: Kitzibeth wants to know if there'll be a DS command for "in the direction the furre is facing", and will guilds be required to buy a guild package, and will we upgrade the dream editor ever?

Felorin: Yes, that DS will be in the next alpha update, along with the squirrels and such. #SA Guilds will not have to buy a guild package. Even now, with our free "chartered guild" system, you don't HAVE to get a charter and most guilds don't. You just upload your dream, let people in, and have fun. #SA Add as many or few guild rules as you want to establish and enforce - it's your dream. And we will have a much better dream editor in the beta. Dunno about upgrades before that.

Felorin: Cadohacan wants to know how local species will be activated. We are going to have a DragonSpeak effect to set someone to one of the local species. There might be other options later, like letting a player say "whenever I'm in dream A, I always turn to species 3". But we haven't decided that for sure. By the way, I hadn't mentioned - regular dreams get one local species, but paid guild dreams will get extra local specieses. #SA

Felorin: Judgement asks if we'll add any new color choices soon, in the alpha.

Felorin: We don't have any plans to add any soon, I'm afraid. We're just going to wait for the beta on that.

Felorin: Twilight Spirit asks if it'll be possible to walk through other furres, ormove them aside? And if I'll go on a date with her?

Felorin: You can actually make 8 lines of DS that makes people bounce "through" other furres. We've thought about putting that in some of the main maps, or programming something built-in to the game, no decision yet though. And Emerald says "Sorry, he's mine #SA"

Felorin: Hellfire's Fury asks if we can make an age verification system.

Felorin: We plan to add one, but haven't worked out all the details of our plans yet. If you look in the fsh file with the silver sponsor and for life tags, you can see what the verified marker will look like when we add it.

Felorin: Talzhemir's answer to moving other furres - I think we're having growing pains on some maps, and that's a symptom. Moving someone else's avatar is negative, with potential for abuses. We're inclined to cure the "cause" by giving furres reasons to be in more different places,

Felorin: Teonnyn Kedenia asks if there'll be a way to allow strings of text in DragonSpeak variables.

Felorin: Yes, there will. Not in this update, but it's a high priority. Possibly as soon as the update after this next one. (No promises though!)

Felorin: Single asks if we'll "retire" any other Digo items like we did with the classic wings. And if there'll be a way to ban someone from dreams.

Felorin: No plans to retire any more Digo items in the foreseeable future. Maybe someday when we have tons of different ones available. And very soon we're going to add a dreamban command that'll let you not only keep a particular furre out, but also ALL their alts, so they won't just hop in on a different name to bother you more. #SA

Felorin: Katari asks if the main maps will ever be updated. Several people have also asked us if we'll add news ones. And Katari asks if I have sugar to spare for her cookies. #SA

Felorin: We have one of our Mason Masters working on a new and much better version of Challenges right now. We hope to re-do Acropolis after that. And we will add more main maps as Furcadia grows - we'll have to. #SA We have a new Community map in the works that's going to have several nice features, hope to have it out soon.

Felorin: As for sugar... It's down in the kitchen, help yourself. Unless you're flirting with me, in which case go ask Emmie's permission first. #SD

Felorin: Ghidorah wants to know if furres will ever be able to do things like dance and wave. That's something we hope to see if we can add in the beta version at some point. Along with bowing, hugging, and lots of other animated actions. We'll see.

Felorin: Seana T. Darkfire asks about the Pawtograph Book and Silver Sponsor card she's been expecting in the mail.

Felorin: Our new shipping goddess, Monica, has ALL our back-orders caught up and shipped now, and is shipping new orders generally always within 2 weeks of when they're received. We apologize for the late shipment problems we used to have, hopefully those are all over now. If you didn't get something you ordered, drop us a note at orders@furcadia.com and we'll look up what you ordered in our database and send out another one.

Felorin: Dib wants to know whether we'll ever do a sale with six portrait spaces for the price of three again. And will there be different desctags for each type of wings for life. And more rose commands, like a way to reject roses and hide them from your desc.

Felorin: Maybe on the six for three - this weekend's spring sale will have 3 for 2 again. We will have desctags for the different wings for life - possibly even in this next update. More rose commands are a good idea, we'll consider putting those in at some point too.

Felorin: Okkitula wants to know if we'll make an option to have people's speech appear over their heads, as some other games do. We might at some point - it probably wouldn't be the default option though, you'd have to go into your settings and turn it on. I want to slightly animate furres that are talking, like flash their border or even make their muzzle move, that'd help a little I think.

Felorin: Chemical asks if we're going to improve on the forum software. Also if people will be able to upload their own personal specitag, and if there'll be a way to change the upper/lower case letters in your name.

Felorin: We're planning on upgrading from the free forum software we use now to a package that has better support - I believe the one we settled on was "Envision" or "Invision", and we're going to have the lifetime support contract from them. Specitags we probably won't let you customize, since having a standardized layout, positioning of color bands, standard shape for each species and gender, etc. helps you identify people. Custom ones wouldn't work with that.

Felorin: And there will be a way to change the case of your name. sanctimonious programmed on already, but it caused a few problem side-effects, so we turned it back off until we can fix those. It'll be back someday. #SA

Felorin: Self-confessed Furcadia addict Mortain asks, are we going to integrate proxy options into Furcadia like popup whisper windows and buddy lists, and are we going to use the extra tags like wedding rings. And says WennWulf wants to know the meaning of life.

Felorin: Yes, many of those proxy options are things Talzhemir and I planned to put in Furcadia back when we made it in 1996, but haven't gotten to yet - it's hard making a game with just 2 people! We have half a dozen or more now, which helps. Buddy lists and separate whisper windows for sure, other features too. And we will use all those extra tags eventually, each for a different sort of purpose of course. #SA

Felorin: As for the meaning of life, I think it has something to do with giving Felorin backrubs and belgian chocolate. Failing that, you might try reading the novel Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa. I enjoyed it, and that guy certainly seemed pretty confident about whatever he was doing at any particular time. #SA

Felorin: A lot of people are asking when Beekin applications will be open again. That's a "when" question, so the answer is we won't know till it's done. But we think that'll be soon. We just finished making a new Beekin Database that vastly reduces the amount of administrative work it takes our associates and group heads to administer the Beekins, we wanted to wait on applications till we have that running smoothly. It's been working great so far (thanks to sanctimonious!)

Felorin: TIenesh says thanks for having the town meeting, and wonders if there'll be more features added to the FSH editor?

Felorin: There'll definitely be better drawing tools in the Beta fsh editor. Plus it'll support new features we'll be adding like translucency, and built-in automatic animation sequences for Furcadia objects. We don't expect to improve the FSH editor during alpha, unless some programmer with too much free time surprises us by making an amazing new one. #SA

Felorin: Cry asks if I would like fries with that. As always, ask Emerald first. Er, I mean no thank you, I already ate. #SA

Felorin: Cliff asks if Furcadia will ever support multiple fonts, or bold/italic styles.

Felorin: Yes, we probably will, and most likely we'll support color text too.

Felorin: I'll note that you can already patch the default font in your dream, and many people do... And there's two or three fonts now, if you click the tiny font button at the lower right under the scroll bar, or press control-F.

Felorin: We've been asked if we'll be supporting accent marks, umlauts, tildes, etc. that people need for languages like French, Spanish, and German? And will we add a werewolf, and will we support animated portraits?

Felorin: We plan to support Unicode eventually, so we can support every major language on earth, including chinese and japanese and korean too. No plans to do a werewolf currently - though we do have those wolves we use for the Halloween Wolf Howl, I guess. #SA Animated ports is a very good idea, we'll probably add a way to do that eventually. But we'd be careful so they wouldn't take up too much bandwidth and download too slow.

Felorin: Several people have asked what language Furcadia is programmed in. The client is programmed in C, and the server is also. It's got a bit of C++ in it now too, though, as of a few years ago. #SA

Felorin: Neko Mizuno asks if there'll ever be customizable clothing. The answer's maybe. We'd definitely like to work that into the beta at some point.

Felorin: Cudgel asks if we can tell more about the festival, and if there'll be a price for admission.

Felorin: Yes, it'll cost money to get in. Hotels charge a lot of money to use their conference space, so conventions charge money to cover that - and they also often fly in a few special guests, set up 24 hour video rooms, etc. The price will be comparable to the cost of typical gaming, sci-fi, or anime conventions.

Felorin: The main cost for most people is the price of travelling and paying for a hotel room and food, anyway. #SA We're thinking of having "dream labels" people can put on their hotel room door, to invite people in for parties, guild activities, etc. We're going to have dealers that have ears and tails available, an art show, probably a live bardic circle, singing, crafts events, panels discussing all kinds of interesting topics, maybe a big barbecue dinner saturday night.

Felorin: Definitely bubble-blowing. Some of us staff will be there wearing our wings. Lots of fun things to do and see I'm sure. #SA

Felorin: Emerald says: Also a costume ball....dream(room) contests with prizes, live action role playing and other gaming, cosplay....so much more. :-)

Felorin: Talzhemir says: Conventions sometimes offer discounts or even free admission to registered volunteers, who work a certain number of hours. We might do that, too. 

Felorin: We also are planning to offer some pre-registration packages that come with free Digo items. Knowing way in advance how many people are coming helps us make the right arrangements with the hotel, so we'll try to encourage and reward that. #SD

Felorin: Jaquelin asks if festivals will be held all across the country. Well, we'd have to get a LOT bigger and more successful before we'd be in a position to do something like that. (Though I hope Furcadia WILL get that big and popular someday!) For now it'll be just in Austin.

Emerald|Flame: Remember that this won't be until March of next year, so you have a whole year to save a prepare to come! #SA

Talzhemir: We'll be doing things that aren't "standard" at fantasy or furry cons, new things. I'm going to host Egg Exchange, in which those who donate minidragon plushies concealed in beautiful handcrafted shells will get one at random made by someone else. There will be a couple of extras, too, given away as door prizes.

Felorin: Farrier asks which of our plans each of us is looking forward to most. Wants me to say we'll never support blinking text. And says since Emmie would hit him if he tried to date me, can he have my permission to date her instead?

Felorin: I'm looking forward to finishing this meeting soon and relaxing and having some sushi. #SA But seriously, probably the "attention economy", and also PhoenixSpeak and more animations and social features. Mainly the attention economy. (And voicechat!) And yes, after seeing it on the World Wide Web, I don't want to have anything to do with blinking text. #SE

Felorin: And I can appreciate your logic - if you need to get Emerald's permission to date Felorin, you might think you'd need Felorin's permission to date Emerald. But that's not actually how it works, so I just gotta tell ya: "If you wanna do that, ask Emerald". #SD

Felorin: Emerald says, regarding future plans, she just wants the beta out, very much.

Felorin: Mister wants to know if there'll be animated objects, and do you pronounce our name "FurCAYdeeya" or "FurCAWdia".

Felorin: Yes, we'll have animated objects. and it's FurCAYdeeya, if it was CAW it'd be strictly for the birds. #SB

Emerald|Flame: Remember now to whisper staff please. If you have a question please whisper town Meeting. We are catching as many as we can. #SA

Emerald|Flame: I meant "not", honest #SB

Talzhemir: (I suggest, if you're west of the GMT line, use FurCAYdia, but east, use FurCAHdia...)

Felorin: *ShadowKat K'shala n'ha Kyr* asks if we'll let people pay a fee to clear a portrait space, so they don't have to buy a new one if they don't want to use a certain piece of art any more.

Felorin: We're going to put a feature on the shopping cart page for Silver Sponsors only, that'll let them clear a portrait space out for a $5 fee.

Felorin: Snowolf wants to know if any of the "Weecons" will be added in the next few updates.

Felorin: We don't plan to add any in this very next one, but maybe soon after. We're also going to make it so guilds can add their own, and set it to display in the descs of their guildmembers only.

Felorin: By the way, we prefer to call them "desctags". #SD

Felorin: Remus says someone on the help channel asked if full portrait spaces would ever be transferrable. Also will there be an in-game command to transfer empty spaces rather than using the web. And his sister wants some of my sushi, and how does it feel knowing we're responsible for several thousand people losing their social lives?

Felorin: Silver Sponsors can transfer full portrait spaces, or anything else, for a fee. Yes to transferring empties in-game, I already asked timo for it. Then you could swap them for other stuff in secure trade, which would be good. #SA

Felorin: She can't have my sushi, and I like to think that we've just replaced their old, flawed, analog social life with an improved shiny new all-digital social life. #SB And it's 50,000 or so as far as we can tell, by the way. Seriously, a lot of people meet new friends all over the world, and some even get engaged - like me and Emerald! So I'm happy what this does for social lives overall. It's easier to meet people with the same weird hobbies online than in real life.

Talzhemir: Some of us aren't "housebound" by choice. There's parents who have to spend most time at home, people on disability, and people in the military, for instance. Furcadia is our "outside"; the friendships can be real if we choose.

Felorin: Inhandra wants to know if we're fixing some of the art glitches in some of the avatars in the next update, and if there'll be a way to disable mouse-based movement.

Felorin: I think some of those are fixed, I'll have someone double-check those specific ones you mentioned. And we'll have totally reconfigurable input in the beta, both mouse and keyboard. Sorry we won't have it sooner than that.

Felorin: Flake asks whether furres will be able to get married in game. Absolutely, that's why we have a wedding ring desctag we'll be using someday. #SA

Felorin: Calignous Ice Mage asks if we could make a command to trade names, can we send out a shoutout to his PEEPS, and how do you pronounce Felorin?

Felorin: Mandaliet asks if we'll make it easier to click on people that are surrounded by folks with wings, phoenixes, etc. Yes, I'm a little embarrassed that wasn't programmed better to begin with. We'll definitely improve that when we can work it in.

Felorin: Ness Mirakki wants to know the date of the Furcadia Fantasy Festival.

Felorin: Desgatos wants to know what other avatars are being added. Just the squirrel/skunk and the batwings in this next update are definite, we haven't decided what other avatars we'll add in the future, or when. I'm sure there'll be more at some point though. #SA

Felorin: Comatose asks us to define "weird hobbies".

Felorin: Emerald says I have a collection of weird hats. This is true. #SA

Felorin: Xanthic wants to know if Furcadia will support more wall-patching. I'm not sure if that'll be added in the beta, or if we might squeeze that into an alpha update before then. We'll see how things go. Definitely at some point, it's badly needed. I want to make walls work with a "wall shape" and a "wall texture" that's mapped onto that shape, eventually.

Talzhemir: I'd like to have walle.fsh myself. In the meantime, I also recommend considering the use of "Wobjects" (walls that are really objects). http://www.thegenieslamp.com/dreams/wobjects.htm 

Felorin: Complicate asks if Furcadia will be able to rotate views. No, we don't plan that. There's more "mutuality" (Talzhemir's term) if all the people that are interacting are seeing roughly the same thing at the same time.

Felorin: Ashleen asks if there's a way to see what the upcoming batwings will look like.

Felorin: Emerald says: They're the ones that were in the Wolf Howl dream last fall, with a few fixes. #SA

Talzhemir: regarding batwings, here's a screen shot of the 3D art used to produce it: http://www.thegenieslamp.com/art/batwinged.rabbit.gif 

Talzhemir: http://www.thegenieslamp.com/art/batwinged.rabbit.gif 

Felorin: Last question for tonight: Nebuchenezer asks if there'll be any new sound effects in the next update. No, but we'll try and put some in the update after that. #SA

Felorin: Thanks everyone for coming - that concludes our town meeting. Goodnight! #SA

Talzhemir: Thank you for listening to the Town Meeting. If you have a suggestion, we urge you to bring it to the Furcadia Forums. www.furcadia.com/forums (You can also record bugs there!)