The Login and Logout procedures have been changed to fix a bug where the login link would not work. In addition, there is now a logout link as well.

The next step will be to improve user management: Find and warn inactive users, have users change their passwords themselves and so on.

[Sorry, German only...] - Ab sofort ist maelcum's Cyberpunk Blog online. Hier sollen in loser Folge diverse Themen rund um Cyberpunk und die Zukunft behandelt werden. Mal sehen, wie die Sache läuft, wir hoffen auf reichlich Feedback!

Effective now, Sin City is online as the latest in a series of Chromopolis cities. SC features a large map and densely packed gangs, so that it won't take long until the first clashes will take place. But there's always room for new players, even if the game is already in progress. So signup for SC is still open.

To keep gang sizes small, some prices in the MobShop have been tweaked. This makes for some new approach to Chromopolis, we'll all see what happens.

Effective now, Chromopolis 0.79i is the current release. As it seemed to run stable in testing and in Demo City, it has now also been applied to Enigma and ChroMax. Now we'll really see how stable it is. Backups are current :-)

Sin City is also advancing. The City Map has been finished and is waiting to be imported into the city geo database. This will most probably be done next weekend. Afterwards, it's time to ping the registered Sin City players for signs of life again. Depending on the results, the City will come a-walkin' either soon or end of this year.

Now it's finally online... took some time to put it together, but it was worth waiting for. Tools of the Trade picks up where In the Line of Fire left off. Rules to modify and improve guns, strange ammo, rules for handling explosives. And answers to questions that have been troubling quite a lot of CP2020 players for quite some time... check it out!

Chromopolis: ChroMax is now also on Release 0.79i.

By the way: Remember the new editors on the villa staff from April '04? They've grown quite a bit in the meantime. Let me introduce you to Rebecca ("Becky"), probably the most adventurous being on earth:

[Sorry, German only...] Im deutschen Forum gibt's ab sofort einen Ausblick über die weitere Entwicklung von Chromopolis. Feedback welcome..!

Demo City now features Chromopolis V0.79i - never meant for public release, but that's life. As it seems that 0.80 will take a major code redo, it became impractical to wait any longer. Some of issues of the past few months have been fixed, but not all. Focus is clearly on the 'really new' version. For a list of changes see the version history.

As soon as 0.79i works smoothly in Demo City, it will also be applied to ChroMax and Enigma. And in a few week's time, even Sin City may finally start!

While on the train tonight, I modified the villa's registration procedure. We're now banning some mail domains:

*@hotmail.*
*@aol.com
*@yahoo.*

If your mail account is Hotmail, Yahoo! or AOL, we will not allow you to register with the villa. This may seem unfair, but as 90% of the problems with Chromopolis zombies are caused by people from these domains, we felt it was about time something happened. And besides... this is a Cyberpunk site, so keep your head down low, chomba...

(Of course, we will not really keep you out by all means. If you want access, you can still use the contact form and drop us a line, so we know you really exist and might even come back.)

Gotta finish, the train is almost there... I'll write a better access system some day, I promise...

... mal auf Deutsch...

Bei der Cyberpunk Community gibt es ab dem 01.02. einen Cyberpunk Kurzgeschichtenwettbewerb. Die Frist zum Einreichen der Stories läuft bis zum 30.04. [Wenn man doch selbst ein bisschen mehr Zeit hätte... seufz! - Anm. d. Linksetzers]

Weitere Infos zum Procedere - und was man so gewinnen kann - gibt es unter diesem Link.

Lots of people didn't respond to my little sign-of-life-ping from Jan. 4th (those who got the mail will know what I'm talking about...), so I deleted every record of them ever existing in the villa. This also means that the number of signups for Sin City has dropped significantly. I'm seriously pondering a ban of *@hotmail.com, *@yahoo.* and *@aol.com. They make up 90% of our zombies...

Due to technical maintenance, the Villa Straylight/Chromopolis Website may be down intermittently tonight.

The latest Chromopolis City will now come a-walkin' for good. All the players have been added, the zombies sorted out and the map is finally in place. We're down to 14 players (from somewhere around 50 signups), which is a pity, but hey! Next Step also started with a mere 15 people, and it's still running!

Enigma is the first city to use all 8 subway lines, so it will be interesting to see how that particular aspect will develop.

The first phase sync will happen Saturday, October 2nd - around 2 o'clock c.e.t. - maybe a little earlier.

Happy Hunting :-)

NextStep has been running for two years now - starting out with 15 Gang Lords, now down to 6. And still the tension is rising! There have been many victims among the gang members, several alliances are fighting for dominance.

Who will prevail? Now Chromopolis Release 0.79h is in use - will it make the decisive difference?

Finally - along with the release of Chromopolis release 0.79h in DemoCity, the new City 'Enigma' will come a-walkin'!

There will be a new starting procedure, however. Because of the armies of zombie players we encountered when we started ChroMax, new players will only be allowed into the city in small groups to see if they really show up. Anyone who receives his invitation mail and does not respond within one week by making his game move and finishing his phase, will be deleted.

If this seems unfair to you - bad luck. You don't know how much trouble it is to reconfigure a running game when half of the players don't come to play and you have to introduce new ones. Chromopolis is BETA - there is no shiny admin frontend yet. Everything has to be done by hand.

So any new Chromopolis game will only enter its first phase sync after enough players have given a sign of life. Now everyone - starting with the first ones who signed up - will receive their invitation mails in the next days.

Stay tuned!

We're glad to report that the Villa Straylight/Chromopolis editorial staff has two new members now!



As you can see in the picture, they're already busy exploring the hardware and trying to decide who saw that tasty USB cable first...

We're sorry to report that Chromopolis Release 0.79h will not be rolled out as planned (mid-june), but will be delayed at least until the beginning of july.

This is due to some memory handling problems in Java which cause intermittent crashes in the phase change procedure. We're busy trying to pinpoint the exact source of the drain on application server memory, but to no avail (as of now). Please bear with us!

Unfortunately, this also affects the new Chromopolis City "Enigma", which was to be started along with the release of 0.79h. Enigma will also come a-walkin' later. Keep on signing up though - maybe we can reach the size of ChroMax once again!

All running games have been upgraded to version 0.79g. There have been some quite important changes, so please read the version history if you haven't done so already!

Demo City now features the latest Chromopolis release 0.79g. After the easter holidays, the other cities will also be upgraded.

You can find all the changes made in the version history as usual.

1. Login Problems: We had trouble big time with the signup mechanism in the last few weeks, it would not work intermittently, so no one could sign up for new games. (Ouuuuch!!!)

These problems should be fixed now. Sorry it took us so long, but the workaround wasn't that easy and required some more work than we had expected.

2. ChroMax Signup: ChroMax is almost through Round 2, so now it's time to sort out all the accounts from players that never showed up. This allows for 'fresh meat', new players that didn't find a place in ChroMax because they simply arrived too late. For that reason we have now re-opened the ChroMax signup, so if you wanna play there, hurry up and get yourself listed!

If you want to change your Enigma Signup for ChroMax, just use the contact form and tell us - your listing will be moved.

3. Mock/Double Registrations: All shady/suspect user accounts will be deleted soon without further notice - no matter if they have already signed up for a game or not. In case your account is among them, you'll have to re-register. Use your real name please, otherwise you'll be deleted again in the next vacuum cleaning process. Background: We're simply fat up with all the dead mails on the server from all those 'cool geeks' stating one-shot mail addresses they never check and the like. If you wanna take part in the community, state your real name and mail address so that you can keep in touch with us. Period.

Demo City has switched to the new Chromopolis release 0.79f today. There are many, many changes including a major GUI update, check it out!

The complete list of changes will be posted here soon. At the moment it's just too dangerous to tell people about a fixed bug they may not have discovered...

By the way: We had some trouble with the Chromopolis Signup mechanism, but that should be sorted out now.

It's done. Villa Straylight/Chromopolis is back online on a new, faster, meaner server machine. The layout has also been changed quite a bit. I personally like it a lot better than the old one, hope you agree. Step by step it's now about getting the old content back online. Some stuff will never reappear though, we took the opportunity to sort out the things nobody ever wanted anyway.

The site language has now been switched to English only. The amount of time & nerves to arrange for two languages (technically and contentwise) was too much. If we had a multinational editor team, things might look different, but given the circumstances, this is the only way to go. There's a game to improve, not a novel to write... and existing German content is here to stay anyway.

Older news have been moved to the news archive to facilitate a fresh start with the new machine. When you browse the archive, please keep in mind that 99% of it is in German and lots of the older links might not work any more. (That's why the archive was created in the first place, to be honest...)

Es wird einige drastische Neuerungen bei Chromopolis geben. Daher ist es ratsam, seine wichtigen Messages und Informationen extern zu sichern (Im Notfall empfehle ich notepad.exe...). In der nächsten Version der Serversoftware (0.79f) wird das komplette Messaging-System umgebaut, daher fliegen alle bisherigen Messages, Know Your-Enemy-Einträge und Recon-Meldungen raus. (Es wird eine "Universal Inbox" eingeführt, in der zukünftig alle Meldungen landen. Die alten Einträge sind zu dieser neuen Inbox nicht kompatibel.)

Die neue Version wird darüber hinaus ein überarbeitetes GUI und diverse andere kleine Änderungen mitbringen. Ich plane das Release im März, also muss noch niemand in Hektik verfallen. Es wird auch noch eine weitere Warnung geben, bevor umgestellt wird.

This piece of news applies to German players only, so I'll not translate it here :-)

BUT! We're still looking for ChroMax Players! We need at least 40 people.... register for a user account here and then signup for the game here !