Hello GUNners and GUNnettes!

As you may have noticed about a week ago, we've went full in with the Halloween theme this year. But besides the temporary visual decorations, Halloween has also brought us some significant Site Improvements!

They have all been personally validated by the master-scripter Ange Tuteur from Forumotion, although the exact sources of these scripts are many more and difficult to list down. We are grateful to all those involved in making these scripts functional and stable :0kay:

Among the new scripts (and I will try to list them all):

Chatbox is Everywhere!
We've added the chatbox to the toolbar so that it now has a pop-up feature
which allows you to chat from whichever subforum or topic you're at:

Spoiler:

The notifications will appear from the toolbar as well as through that squeaky Zelda sound you all got so used to. On that note, if you have a short sound file to replace the current one, we'd be happy to listen to it and implement it!

The chatbox AutoLogin has been disabled for now, but you can log in from any page whatsoever through the pop-up so it should be easier for more people to log in now.

Chatbox Rules
We've created and published the oft requested Chatbox Rules
The topic is also hotlinked on the main page right under the chatbox. Easy to get to for everyone, old and new members alike!

Quick Pop-Up Preview for Private Messages!

Spoiler:

From now on, you can open the new Private Messages you receive in a quick pop-up window which doesn't force you to navigate away from your current page.
This plugin allows you to quickly view notifications you've received simply by clicking on the notification link of it!

Similarly, we've applied Quick Pop-Up Previews
for Friend Requests!

Spoiler:

for New Replies to Watched Topics!
for New Posts on Your Profile!
for being tagged in a Topic!
for a Hashtag you follow!
for Post Previews!

Spoiler:

and even for Search Results!

Spoiler:

Improvements to the #Hashtag system!


*This is a sample image. Ange Tuteur is the script overlord of Forumotion, not an admin here.

You can now follow certain Hashtags and be notified when they are used. The drop-down menu which appears from clicking on a hashtag also allows you to view other posts with that tag and to even manage your followed tags extensively.

Improvements to the @Tagging system!


*This is a sample image. Ange Tuteur is the script overlord of Forumotion, not an admin here.

You may have noticed we have a new button called "Mention"
That now works as an automatic tagging feature, so that all the members above (and not including) Survivor rank can tag other people in their posts without having to put in too much effort for it.

Improvements to the Reputation buttons!


*This is a sample image. Ange Tuteur is the script overlord of Forumotion, not an admin here.

The Thumbs Up and Thumbs Down buttons are now on top of each post with a clear count of the rep given corresponding to each icon (green or red).

Be careful to not give someone negative rep (thumbs down) by accident when you try to give them positive rep (thumbs up) or Mention them. I advise maximum caution, but if you do make the mistake, then notify the member whose rep you've affected and apologize as soon as possible.

Avatar in the Top Toolbar!
Not a significant improvement, but I thought it's cute to see your own avatar next to the Welcome ____ text in the ever-present toolbar. Hope you enjoy it as well.

Double-Post Aggregation is back!
This means that double-posts (successive posts made by the same user) will appear under a single Avatar and with a single Signature. This does not merge them, so they will still be counted as individual posts, so double-posting is still against the rules of the forum (unless certain conditions are met) but it will make the topics seem cleaner until the staff intervenes and properly merges the posts (when that action is required).

Also, to further combat double-posters,
Double-Post Block is back!
This means that after you've posted in a topic, you won't have the option to post again until someone else replies. The "new reply" button will disappear and the "quick reply" option will be disabled.
This is to prevent consecutive posts by the same person in the same topic.

Twitter Emoji added as separated Smilie sets!

As you can see here:

They are available in 3 sizes: 16, 36 and 72
Right now they are set at 36, but if the people request it, we will modify their size.



More Improvements will be added (or readded) as we fine-tune everything and test them out properly before implementation!

Tell us what your favorite features are and what else you'd like to see us implement!
Best regards  and have a great Halloween!

I gotta say, aside from the hashtagging system (avid hater of these things. They're meant to be used on phones, not the internet! Whaah, back in my day we didn't have these fan-dangled one-word nightmare wurds to explain our babblin'. We did it with REAL words. REAL SENTENCES I TELL YE! And hashtags as yew youngin's call em, we used em' fer tic-tac-toe boards!--), I like the new upgrades. Especially the chatbox. It saves me the headache of having to keep an extra tab open just to have access to the thing to begin with, though I admit it'd be nice to see more people hopping into the thing. As an IRC-type person, it makes me sad that it gets such a short span of traffic.

Let's hope that traffic increases. :3 Only other thing I'd say would be a slight issue, is the emojis. I don't seem to recall there being a way to disable these, so you could type the good ol' emotes, (IE: :3 :) :D :( D: o.o ^^ etc.) never was a fan of the visual emotes. Other than this... it's perfect.

I gotta say, these changes are nice, it's sleek, and it looks good. I probably will not be using the hash tags but hey, never know. I for one hope more traffic is brought in. The more people the better I say. I especially like this Halloween skin. Especially the spider that drops down. Props to whomever decided to put that in.

Like the new changes being able to preview your post without being transported to a whole other page is really nice and the new emojis unveil a whole new layer of dank memes. Ayy Lmao

I like the changes, looks great and able to see a post on a a pop up instead of going to the page itself is a good improvement

This is good. This is definitely good. A little unfortunate for the "legitimate" grey-boots, but if they wanna be true members, this gives them a sort of perk to look forward to. The Halloween mood was set beautifully I feel... even minus the experimental mouse pointers. Can't wait to see it again next year though, but now I've got a tiny thought and possible suggestion if you'll hear me out:

While a Christmas theme near that time is definitely good... how about a Thanksgiving theme too? Perhaps for other holidays as well maybe..? Minus the political/religious ones perhaps as to pertain to site rules; Christmas is easy since it's shared world-wide generally, but I think holidays like Easter or the Fourth of July (Independence Day) would be left out since one is based on a religious holiday, and the other on a political one. Thanksgiving of course would be a good one since it's a season of remembering all the good things in the year. For Japanese, it's considered a blessing of the year's good harvest and such... Perhaps New Years because well... it's the new year. October 23rd as a yearly reminder of when the bombs fell?

Now my second thought/question is... could there possibly be a way to have it set to an automated system if it isn't already? That way the mods/admins don't have to do much except set it to the forum's internal clock if it has one and let it trigger on those days? Just... an idea I had. For all I know though, it could already be set up like this and I'm just babbling on. :S