Update: Friday, December 21, 2012

Sorry guys for late updates... It was due to my pc problem.. but I guess it's working okay now...
So here is one more late update...

Developer News   2012-12-21

Merry locale graphics christmas? We've finally added custom locale graphics to version 2.0, and valid locale- and home owners of almost all shapes and sizes (not rented apartments, though) should now be able to spice up their place. The image dimensions has changed to better match the official ones. The new size is 489 * 258 pixels, so fire up your image editor of choice and resize your old images. Visit "Edit information" on your locale page to add your image. Also, remember to refresh your browser cache in order to update any CSS files that has been stored locally. For those who do not wish to be offended by the creativity of others, there's an option to only show official locale graphics under "Account Details" > "Content Settings". Have a merry x-mas, splendid kwanzaa or whatever you choose to celebrate in the end of December!

Update: Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Developer News   2012-12-19

Phone memory upgrades The phone memory upgrade credit product was removed from version 1 of the game today, and any memory upgrades you've made in the past has been transferred into the address book in version 2. The V2 address book supports 300 entries in it's default form. All upgrades made has been directly converted into the equal amount of extra "memory" in the address book.

Update: Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Developer News   2012-12-18

Brace Yourselves Brace yourselves, hold on to your hats, and take whatever other precautions you feel necessary. Operation click-reduction is now in full speed ahead which will mean frequent gusts of awesome implementations all across Popmundo in the days to come. Okay, that’s promising too much. But changes do keep trickling in at a steady pace and hopefully, there will be time for a fair few before the coming holidays are upon us. New for today is a Diary remake and Record Studio to Artist messages. Read more about them below. Diary remake Your personal diary has been given a remake, and now shows a week at a time instead of a day. You also have the option to filter your diary to only show a certain type of events. The categories right now are: - Complete Diary - Character Focus - City Travels - Cash Transactions - Artist Essentials - World Tour - Company Management Record Studio to Artist messages The same functionality as in the old version, you can now send messages to one specific/all signed artists on your label. You can find this option in the Studio Management menu, called Artists Announcements. As an artist, you will see messages sent from record studios as an entry in the Artist Journal. They are also notified like normal journal entries, so you won’t miss them.

Update: Friday, December 14, 2012

Developer News   2012-12-14

Is it Friday Already? Before we know it, 2012 will be over and we've spent yet another tinkering on the world of Popmundo. It's hard to believe. What isn't hard to believe however, are some of alterations to the game we've done recently which you can check out for yourself here in the new version. We've redone the page listing artist invitations so it includes relevant data about the venues, competitions etc in addition to a new view which lists your invitations together with already booked shows and hours between shows. Accepting the invitations is also easier now since we've added that option to this page directly. We've altered the list of your current bids on the Property Market in a similar way. This page now also allows you to quickly increase your bid on locales without having to leave the page. VIP members can pick up & drop multiple items at once, using checkboxes to select which ones. You can now pick up protected items in your own home(s) which belong to other people. You still can't use them however. We know this is can be a real problem when the items belong to dead people, we'll take care of that problem soon. Have a nice weekend! P.S. Don't forget that if you're arranging any final competitions in the old version of the game, you should have handed out invitations for those by now. Like we announced earlier, we're removing this possibility from the game for a while. We we're officially removing it on the 10th of December. And we've now given you an extra week.

Update: Thursday, December 13, 2012

Developer News   2012-12-13

Divorce tweak If your partner does not sign your divorce request withinfour weeks, it will be automatically granted. This only applies to divorces made in V2 from 10.00 CET today, so if you have an old divorce request that hasn't been signed yet, cancel it and file a new one.

Developer News   2012-12-12

Clubbing for Rookies We all know how rough it can be to get a gig sometimes - not to mention an audience. To try and help this problem, we - in our almighty power - have made a few changes that you’ll notice both as club owner and as musician. Genre strength Genre Strength is no longer affected by all gigs played at a club, but instead only by the best act who has played there during the past year. That means lower rated shows won’t lower the genre strength at all. (Also, just in case there’s any misconceptions on this, high genre strength does not mean you sell more tickets - you just sell your tickets faster.) Stray sales We also recognise the fact that fans are a little bit nuts. From now on, that may even save you from an otherwise failed show if you are very lucky. A few odd Does may rumble in to your gig even if the ticket prices are a bit off, or if you’ve played in the city a bit too many times already. Just remember, there are no guarantees here. So don't rely on stray ticket reservations to get an audience, they just popped by randomly for the music.

Update: Wednesday, December 05, 2012

Developer News   2012-12-05

Goodbye Yellow Brick Company Licence That which used to be known as the Company Licence is now for sale as three separate credit products in the new version and it's now cheaper than ever to start your career as a company owner. There's one for starting up a company, one for buying new company locales, and one for trading company shares. Please check out the credit product page for detailed information about how these three products work exactly. Why did we make this change? Please read the rest of this news to find out more. We felt that having one subscription based product was enough. We like the simplicity of offering a VIP membership for the hardcore gamer and complementing this with credit products sold separately as items without expiration dates. Granted, having two subscription based products wasn't all that confusing, but when we started thinking about future games within the Popmundo Universe it became clear to us that multiple subscriptions was not the way to go. The three credit products that replace the Company Licence are priced to make it cheaper for players to get a company of their own up and running. It also offers the player the flexibility of only paying for what they are interested in instead of the whole expensive package we offered before. Some players interested in managing countless companies and massive global chains of clubs will protest and say that this new setup is much more expensive than the old Company Licence. But that is only true if you were to buy all the locales and companies in your empire with credits. We'd much rather you traded shares with each other and bought locales on the Property Market without spending massive amounts of credits. (Although we're sure our owners would love it if you did.) The idea here is to take care of the companies and locales that already exist, and not flood the game world with more businesses that only end up littering our cities. Anyone with an existing company licence from the old game will be able to enjoy it like they are used to until the day it expires. The date of expiration is shown on your player information page here in the new version. To make this change less sudden for active company licence holders we've extended all Company Licences that expired in November, or later on this year, to the end of 2012. Thank you for your attention.

Update: Tuesday, December 04, 2012

Developer News   2012-12-04

Slight disturbance in conversations We're adding some functionality to the conversation system, and for a few hours, starting now, you might (will) experience some problems with accessing yourconversations. Please bear with us!

Developer News   2012-12-04

Communication is key Sorry for the hour long disturbance on the webs today. Billy Bob, most likely hungover on tequila, managed to overlook one slight detail... Anywho. We've made a few changes to the conversation system, that we wanted to publish today: 1. You may hide individual messages in a conversation. Click the little eye icon on the right hand side to do so. Hidden messages may be brought back later on, by clicking "unhide conversation" on the top of the conversation page. 2. You can now mark messages as unread, by clicking the envelope icon on the right hand side. Please note that messages you've marked as unread are going to stay so until you manually mark them as read again (once again, by clicking the envelope icon), or until you mark your entire inbox as read. We've also revamped the inbox page a bit. A few more improvements are coming, in a future not so far from now. And oh, if stuff doesn't work, clear your browser cache.

Update: Friday, November 29, 2012

Developer News   2012-11-30

Shameless plug - Ever wanted to know which the best bands from you hometown are? P2 will answer your query! - Do you suffer from memory loss, and need a fast way to know exactly how you interacted with someone recently?The answer is now out there! - Have you always wished you had cute headphones and other symbols in your repertoire? We have solved that too! - Often feel the need to dump a whole lot of items at once, when littering a park? Go right ahead - it’s easier than ever! - And, you, business owner! Did you ever wish you could repair all your locales with one magical click of a button?Now you can! Our head scientist estimates that for the average popmundian, the below changes alone reduce the average number of clicks per gaming session with 10.000. On that bombshell, we wish you all a good weekend!  For those of you unsure about the contents of this message, these are the major changes made this week, in a more comprehensive style. - The City page has been given some new content. - There is an easier way to reach recent interactions with a character. - The repertiore page has been reworked. - More options been added to items, where you can now drop many in one go instead of one by one. - A "repair all locales" function has been added to Companies. Disclaimer: The product has no proven effect on baldness.

Update: Monday, November 26, 2012

Developer News   2012-11-26

It's all about looks The main chunk of functionality is now in place, and so, we are (finally) able to sink our teeth into the interface as such, and start making the new version a nicer place to be. You will start seeing changes fairly soon, and they will happen gradually along with the remaining functionality being finished. Some things have already started popping up, such as "pay all" for bills and a slightly reworked City page for example. It won't reach its final look right in one magic wave, but step by step, so keep checking in. We hope you'll like the changes!

Developer News   2012-11-23

Houston, we have a winner! Or several, actually, in the Avatar Contest. Thanks everybody who participated! So, who won? Head on over to the forum to find out:Message:2112393.500

Update: Thursday, November 22, 2012

Developer News   2012-11-22

HO HO HO and Snowballs Until the end of 2012 we're adding some extra value to our most popular products in the shop. This means more VIP and credits for your money... and SNOWBALLS! Snowballs are unique items that will raise your Christmas spirit when thrown back and forth between players. The snowballs are given to the oldest character on your account and a single snowball can be thrown five times before it vanishes. Please head over to the shop for more information.

Update: Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Developer News   2012-11-21

Not at all quiet on the western front So, we've finally come to the end of cleaning up the mess caused by the money issue that was introduced in the beginning of November. As far as we're concerned, the matter is now closed, but we will do another sweep later on to double check a few things, just to make sure we didn't miss anything. Besides the extra work load caused by this, we haven't been totally unproductive. In fact, far from it. Below is a short recap of the bigger things we've done lately, for those of you who haven't figured it out yourself: We've begun work on competitions in V2, primarily used for the festival right now. Information on competitions is now available in the new version. But you're only allowed to use the new booking interface for the festival qualifiers. We're currently working on completing the new company license system so we can start selling them in the new version next week. We've recently added the possibility to give away shares, throw away shares, move locales between companies you own and control, as well as abandoning companies completely. We've made sure that you can use items on other items, which is needed when you want to create shots of medicine. We've implemented the base foundation of recipes, and you should be able to both see your recipes and use them. Have a nice day y'all!

Update: Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Developer News   2012-11-20

Say "keeeys" Today saw the start of phase 2 in the quest to rid the world of keys. As of now, access codes will work in V1 as well. You can only create these access codes in V2 though. We've removed the ability to create new keys, but the old ones will continue to work until the 10th of December. Therefore, make sure to add your friends and family to your access code lists. And, oh, you can still change your locks. A lot more stuff (most of it fun) has been released into the world as well the last couple of days. Stay tuned for more info on that!

Update: Thursday, November 15, 2012

Sorry for Late Update but I was on a mini-vacation..  :)

Developer News   2012-11-15

Important Information Regarding Competitions Over the years we've tweaked the way competitions work a couple of times but we still feel competitions aren't really what they should be in the game. Therefore we've decided that the way competitions work will be redone in the new version of Popmundo. Early next year we'll take the old version of Popmundo offline. When this happens club owners will no longer be able to manage competitions they have arranged in the old version.  Therefore, to prevent everyone from investing time in competitions they won't be able to see through to the end, we're going to remove the possibility for artists to book shows in competitions on the 10th of December this year. This should give everybody enough time sort out whatever competitions they have planned right now. We realise a lot of you will miss the old fashioned competitions in the game. We will too. But things aren't always as bad as they seem. Stay tuned for more information as we continue to develop the new version of Popmundo.

Update: Monday, November 12, 2012

Developer News   2012-11-12

Avatar Makers Assemble! Once you start you can’t stop they say, and that goes for contests too. We’re in the mood for more! This time it’s not about music though, it’s about yourselves. The challenge is pretty straight-forward: create the best avatar! It can be funny, stylish, cool, following a theme or whatever you think of. The only must is that you create it using the avatar maker. To compete, take a screen shot or save the generated image, upload it somewhere, and submit it in thread Message:2112393.1 before 12 CET on Friday 23rd November. We’ll then take one of those friday afternoons to pick the winner. Or maybe several winners! There are two simple rules: you can only use the avatar maker (no external editors), and you may only submit one avatar per puppet master account. The jury will consist of us three developers, plus whoever else happens to be at the office that afternoon. The winner, or winners, will be awarded a choice of 3 months VIP or 1000 credits!

Developer News   2012-11-12

Scheduled downtime on Wednesday We need to stop the game on Wednesday morning, in order to install some updates to the operating system. This will occur around 10.30 CET, and we expect it to take about an hour. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Update: Wednesday, 07 November, 2012

Developer News   2012-11-07

Festival Booking Addendum Attention all Festival contenders! There's one more piece of information for you, which may save you from unneccessary grinding of teeth. In previous years, there has been set slots, with one show per timeslot. This thime though, there are parallell stages so room for more than one artist in each timeslot. Also: you can only book it through the new version (the Festival Pages are found under the Social menu). Happy booking!

Update: Wednesday, 07 November, 2012

Developer News   2012-11-07

Festival Doors Opening! After a week of tumbling around in money, we are finally able to turn focus back to the world of music. It is time to open the Popmundo Festival X - the biggest, baddest competition we have! So, are your songs rehearsed, instruments tuned, and your stage show designed to show off your coolest moves? No?? Don't worry, there is plenty of time yet before it is time to get up there and play, the competition itself doesn’t start until 16th of January. The bookings however, they open really soon - tomorrow to be precise!   Just like in earlier Festivals, there will be a show level requirement in order to be able to book during the first couple of days. This booking requirement is then gradually lowered and finally removed entirely. There are also a couple of other rules for taking part in the festival, so go read about it on the Popmundo Festival Page - where you should find all the info you need on levels, rules and how booking your own show will work.

Update: Friday, November 02, 2012

Developer News   2012-11-02

Mo money, mo problems. Part I It's been a few interesting and frustrating days here at the Popmundo office. We know that a lot of you are frustrated by the turn of events these days as well. Especially by the seemingly slow response by us developers to act upon certain injustices in the game created by the whole situation. We understand that you might not agree upon the actions we've taken. However, we've tried to explain it all in the form of a little Q and A. It's so big, it'll occupy two community news posts! Is the bug that caused this situation fixed? Yes. We've also made sure that if we're struck by the same type of database problem in the future, we'll be better equipped to deal with it. Why not restore a database backup? Restoring a database of the size and complexity of ours take a long time, and must be performed with the game offline. Although the complexity of the problems caused by the latest "crash" was the greatest we've ever had to deal with in Popmundo history, the data governing the core game was only corrupted slightly. That is why we decided to let the game world keep spinning instead of shutting the whole thing down for a long time, which would have created a whole other set of problems in addition to the ones were already facing. What did you actually do, and why did you take so long doing it? During the downtime on Wednesday we took care of the problem which caused the crash. Then we made sure the core game was brought up to speed as soon as possible. This was all done the same day the problem was discovered. After that we've mainly focused on tracking down the people who actively abused the system to gain unfair advantages somehow while the game was malfunctioning. Where it is possible we're currently in the process of removing money, skill levels, and attributes that these people gave themselves. Everyone we've dealt with so far have received some form of appropriate punishment suitable for whatever they did.

Developer News   2012-11-02

Mo money, mo problems. Part II If you haven't read part I (above) yet, do so first. Otherwise, continue below: Why don't you hunt down ALL persons who've gained money out of this? Following the money trail of every person takes an absurd amount of time, especially when people are trying to hide their tracks by moving money back and forth. Money is also not the key to the success in this game, which is why some players will get away with their abuse this time. But we'll make sure to deal with the biggest abusers. You should get to the bottom with this! We've already removed truck loads of counterfeit money. And we'll continue to do so for a while. However, tracking down every little cent would be counter productive and halt the development of the new version too long. There are things that benefit the players more than making sure every little shoplifter gets caught and slapped on the wrists. What's next? We're still dealing with bug reports in order of core game priority and others are waiting to be closed together with others of the same type we're currently dealing with. That is why some of you haven't seen your reports properly answered yet. We'll continue to clean this mess up next week while we slowly get back to business as usual with festival bookings and the usual things. Thanks for being understanding. An extra special big thank you to those few players who've taken the high road in the past few days and actually helped limit the effects of the crash instead of abusing it for their own greedy desires. Hope you all have a great weekend!

Update: Thursday, 01 November, 2012

Developer News   2012-11-01

Money for nothing, and chicks for free? One of the worst downsides of yesterday's database issues was that some people found ways to make money out of nothing. On top of this, people have been using this money to purchase valuable items from other, unsuspecting players. This clearly is in violation with our rules regarding cheating and abusing loop holes. Please continue reading below. We've already taken action against some of the players who used the temporary loop holes. The problem is that in some cases, we simply cannot trace the abusive transactions, which means that there will - no matter what we do - be a lot of counterfeit money in the game. We are going to have to look at individual cases, and take action on the based on suspicion rather than hard evidence. As said though, we wont be able to catch all culprits. We strongly suggest that all of you law abiding citizens should be a little suspicious on offers from people you know not to have had much money in the past. We also suggest that you hold on to your most precious items. We'd appreciate any form of anonymous tips. Submit them as secret bug reports. Those who have abused the system in any way, and now regret it, are free to do the same. In fact, it's better, since we will punish and possibly ban players who are later found guilty of this scam. Thanks for listening, and for understanding.

Update: Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Developer News   2012-10-31

Magical Mystery Tour Due to the situation caused by the database problem we experienced early this morning we've activated an automatic teleportation feature which will make sure you make it to your next show on time. We will keep this feature running for a couple of days untill everyone has had a chance to catch up with their tour buses.

Update: Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Developer News   2012-10-31

Day of the Bugs! Seems something is causing errors across the system. We're looking into it now.

Developer News   2012-10-31

Hello world! Around 02:00 CET, when we were sound asleep, a central part of the Popmundo database got a severe case of the hiccups. This caused the system to be unable to perform certain tasks. It also caused it to perform some tasks multiple times. We've taken care of the underlying problem. We've also given all of you some nitrous oxide and steroids, so you should be feeling happy and strong. All those with VIP and Company License have had their subscriptions extended with 3 days. However, some of you have lost updates. Some of you have lost money. Some of you have become stuck where you were and missed shows. Due to the complex nature of this problem, we cannot automatically recreate what happened during the downtime. Therefore we're gonna have to rely on you to send us bug reports of your most urgent problems. Please note that we cannot help you with minor bugs such as missing character updates. We're truly sorry about this. The database gnomes will have their butts thoroughly spanked!

Update: Monday, October 29, 2012

Developer News   2012-10-29

Clone Wars It seems we've reached a time when some clarifications about how we look at cloning is needed. First things first. We still, strongly, think that cloning in order to get ahead faster, or to gain any form of benefit that you could'nt otherwise, is wrong. It's like doping, and most of us agree that doping is wrong (except you, Lance, we know). (more below) The last few years however, we've spent less time hunting down and punishing cloners, and more time trying to remove or tweak the parts of the game that could be abused by running multiple accounts. As always, we're not "there" yet, but we are getting there slowly. That aside, we also know that many of you play together with friends, family or people you are otherwise connected with out there in the real world, and we do know that sometimes you forget to log out when taking turns playing - or even help each other’s characters keep on their feet while away or otherwise busy. And we get human factors, and don’t really feel this “babysitting” is something that should be punishable by death. It does merit a firm slap over the fingers with a piece of bamboo though, because keeping your account secure and to yourself is good.

Update: Friday, October 26, 2012

Developer News   2012-10-26

New payment solution! We are happy to announce BoaCompra as our new E-pin supplier. BoaCompra, based in Brazil, mainly operates in South- and Central America as well as Portugal and Spain. By visiting the BoaCompra Shop and using their local payment solutions, you can purchase codes for one or more of our products. After you receive your code from them, you go to our shop and instantly activate it. Worth mentioning is that we're testing this to see how it goes. This means that BoaCompra have a somewhat limited supply of codes. If all goes well, we will extend the partnership.

Update: Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Developer News   2012-10-24

The Property Market As of now it's possible to sell and bid on locales in the new version of the game. We've grouped all this functionality on a new company page we call the Property Market. The Property Market work pretty much the same way as "Locales for Sale" did in the old version. But last minute bids will push ahead the deadline of bidding in this version. It's also possible to cancel sales completely on the new Property Market. Not all types of locales will be possible to sell on the Property Market. Some are excluded for obvious reasons, such as subways, airports, etc. And some like second hand stores which have an uncertain future in the new version of the game are also excluded. We know a lot of you has requested a way of directly transferring locales between companies you own. We will add this function. But it won't be part of the Property Market. Instead it will be a separate feature. As a result of the launch of the Property Market in the new version of the game we will shut down the old Locales for Sale in the old version today.

Update: Monday, October 22, 2012

Developer News   2012-10-22

If you happen to be on server 126.popmundo.com today... ...you might experience some minor disturbances, as we try to solve an issue with currencies not being displayed correctly in some cases. Please bear with us.

Update: Friday, October 19, 2012

Developer News   2012-10-19

Rituals are risky things Through a dramatic string of events that culminated with a seance at the Temple of Doom, it seems the long dead Melvin Stjärnblom (ex dictator of this world and rude know-it-all), has gathered back some strength. We have no idea if it was the candles, horoscopes or something completely different that did it, but whatever it was the message was clear: He will be back. Not yet, though, he is still safely in the ground! When it will actually happen, we cannot know. It may be years. We will try to keep him at bay for as long as we can!

Update: Monday, October 08, 2012

Developer News   2012-10-08

Taking care of Business The quest continues! During the past week we have primarily been battling areas such as club management, record studios and factories, where you should now be able to take care of business in a good way - and even find a fair few tweaks made that have been wished for. Did those wishes turn out exactly like you hoped? We almost hope not, because that may mean we lost our mojo. Other things you can now find in in the new version is surveillance, deleting warrants and ordering of vaccines. We also gave Robocop a bit of an adrenaline injection and magically made you all able to tune your instruments to perfection. (Phew, did someone say Monday?)

Update: Wuesday, October 03, 2012

Developer News   2012-10-03

Popmundo Festival X Update The Ministry of Music is proud to announce that the windy city, Chicago, will be hosting the Tenth Popmundo Festival! The cities which will host the qualifying round are the following: Amsterdam, Antalya, Berlin, Budapest, Glasgow, Istanbul, London, Madrid, Rio, Rome, Seattle, Shanghai, Tokyo, Vilnius, and Warsaw. Qualifications will start on the 16th of January and last until the 18th. After these three days the number of contenders will have dwindled from roughly 1000 artists to 50. The final will start on the 25th of January and end on the 29th. Contestants in the final will compete in order based on the results of their qualifying show, beginning with those who scored lowest. For those of you who have no idea what the festival is we just added some new pages to the social section of the game. Stay tuned for more information about the Tenth Popmundo Festival in the weeks to come!

Update: Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Developer News   2012-09-26

Announcing the Popmundo Festival X The Tenth Popmundo Festival is waiting to once again separate the kings and queens from the peasants. Have the dinosaurs of the past survived the transition into the brave new world of popmundo 2.0 or is the throne of music ready to be conquered by new blood? Like always there will be a qualifying round that lasts a couple of days, shortly followed by the final round. Qualifiers will begin on January 16th and you'll be able to sign up for them well ahead of time in November. Stay tuned!

Update: Friday, September 21, 2012

Developer News   2012-09-21

The Popmundo Triad We don't normally post community news for the addition of a new achievement. But in this case we figured we'd make an exception. The Popmundo Triad will be awarded to anyone who wins all three major competitions in the game. The Popmundo Festival, The Popopalooza, and the Big Bang. So far nobody has managed to win all three. But with the next festival around the corner there are a few possible candidates out there. Stay tuned for more information on the Tenth Popmundo Festival next week after we've recovered from the weekend. Enjoy your friday everyone!

Update: Thursday, September 20, 2012

Developer News   2012-09-20

Popopalooza Popopalooza of Year 64 came and raged world-wide for 10 rounds this time. In all, over 3000 shows with all kinds of crazy in them were played out before it was over. Apart from the insane amount of guitar solos played, people pulled no punches to get to the next round. Here’s what some did to win a round in the competition: 5 people went nuts in the Maasaai Jumping Dance, 88 people accidentally showed their nipples, 12 dare-devils fired six shooters on stage, and last but not least, 70 people claimed the very throne of jazz - seems like there’s an interesting debate arising there! As for what the 37,921,139 US$ in riders for all the round winners went to, we dare only speculate. Or actually, we don’t even dare do that. Who won? Let’s see... Gata Salvaje, Sound Coming From Darkness and Equimanthorn were the final three. Which of them came out Last Band Standing in the end - and all the other results - you can find in the Charts. Meanwhile, we’ll just sulk at the fact that if the Backstreet Devs had taken part, we wouldn’t have made it any longer than to round 2. P.S. We've begun handing out achievements for the Popopalooza now. These will be awarded retroactively for all past Popopalooza contenders as well. In the next couple of days we'll make sure everyone gets the ones they've deserved. The same will also be done for the Big Bang.

Missed(Late) Updates!

Sorry Folks! My Puppet Master was not able to connect via pc! So he missed to post the updates but here are all the missed ones!...

Developer News   2012-09-18

Conversation updates Some new features to the conversation system just saw the light of day. First, you may now forward messages. Simply click the little arrow in the upper right section of the message you wish to forward. It's hopefully pretty straight forward from there. Second, you may now hide a conversation by clickin the little eye icon next to the conversation in your inbox. This is mainly an inbox clean up tool, not a way to delete old messages. Also, you'll be able to continue conversating - it does not block the other person. Please note that hiding a conversation marks any unread messages as read. To unhide a conversation, start a new one with the same person and click "Unhide conversation". Hope you'll enjoy.

Developer News   2012-09-14

Usability improvements Apart from a bunch of minor tweaks to the site, we've rewritten some stuff to make them easier to use withmobile devices and screen readers (for the visually impaired). The "stuff" we've improved is sortable tables, theshortcut editor (VIP only) and the record track list editor. Feel free to try them out in their new form. However, make sure to hit CTRL+R a few times before, since a bunch of javascript and CSS files need to be updated. Have a great weekend, folks!

Developer News   2012-09-13

Pipeline unearthed We know many are curious about the transition to the new version of Popmundo; what will happen and when. Now, we can't tell you everything, because surprises are fun. But to give you a peak of which areas are coming next, we haveactually made an effort and dug up a piece of the infamous object known as The Pipeline for you. You can find it in the development forum, Message:2100072.1.

Developer News   2012-09-11

Manage thy community! Something we have lacked for a very long time (too long if you ask us) is someone who has the dedicated job to take care of the community. Someone who can be the link between developers and players and keep the community more involved. What we lacked was Tonya Cullen. So without further ado, give it all up for Tonya and make sure she feels really welcome in this brand new role! Since a Community Manager best resides in the community we'll just point you to the English General Forum (Message:2099440.1) where Tonya will introduce herself properly! Welcome Tonya!

Update Friday, September 07, 2012

Developer News   2012-09-07

Big Bang of year 64 - and beyond The Big Bang of Year 64 is now over, and we'd like to congratulate Turbojugend who when the dust settled were the ones coming out on top of everyone else. We salute you! But let's not stop there. Nuh-uh. You see, with the new community news archive in place we made the staggeringly embarrassing discovery that no more than two Big Bang results have ever been announced and celebrated properly in this space. This needs to be remedied.  So let's shout it out equally loud (albeit a bit late) also to Eyes Two Eyes, Eleven Is One Louder, Spektrum, Going for Chicago, The Obscure Preachers ~in mem., Orange Moka Frappuccino, Static Vibration, Kiss of Death, two time winners The Apostrophes and last but not least three(!) time winners Nervous Instructors and BarBullann still alive. Oh what the hell... let's throw in a shout to Equimanthorn too! That still doesn't do it for you? Go check the complete Big Bang results on the Charts page.

Update: Thursday, September 06, 2012

Developer News   2012-09-06

Community news about community news (and managers) First of all, the community news section here in P2 has been refurbished: there's now an archive with all the old posts. Let's see if you can find it. Second, the process of appointing some form of community manager is going along quite well. More info on that is coming in a few days time.

Update Wednesday, September 05, 2012

Developer News   2012-09-05

Former Band Members As of today, if you check out the artist page of an old inactive band, you'll be able to see a list of former band members who've contributed to the artist's career somehow. Either by performing on stage or having their songs published on the artist's records. Information on if former members were band leaders at some time before 2007 is regretfully lost however.

Update: 31st August & 1st September, 2012

Developer News   2012-09-01

Changed block settings Yesterday, we made Popmundo 1.0 respect the permission system in Popmundo 2.0, since some people had problems with blocked persons interacting with them via the old version. If you experience problems with interacting or messaging people you usually have no problem with, consult the text below: 1. Make sure that the persons aren't blocked or lack permission to talk and/or interact with you. Blocked persons are found in Character > Settings > Blocked characters. Permission settings are found in your address book (VIP only) 2. Make sure your default permissions are set correctly. If a person isn't in your address book, the general permission system takes over. This is found under Characters > Settings > Permissions.

Developer News   2012-08-29

Regarding Old Songs We're phasing in a new way of judging old songs on stage. A lot of you already know about this but here's an update. The new system says that for every year a song has it will lose 1% of its potential score on stage up to a maximum loss of 20%. That would mean that a potential five star song that's 20 years old would become a 4 star song. However, in order for all of you to get used to this new way of looking at the age of songs, we haven't fully activated the system yet. Up until now the age of a song has only been allowed to remove a quarter of a star. As of today though, we're allowing the system to remove up to half a star for those who are affected most by this change. A month from now we'll make the final tweak to this change. Before that we'll take another look at the effects of this new system to make sure the final tweak is fine tuned properly. Most of you won't notice much of this change at all. But there's a couple of artists out there which should consider refreshing their repertoire a bit in the near future. NOTE: Encores aren't affected by this tweak. So feel free to continue playing your oldies but goldies at the end of your shows like always.

Update: 21 August, 2012, Tuesday

Developer News   2012-08-21

Tweaks to death by inactivity The new adoption and custody request systems solved a lot of troubles that we had in the old version. However, we have seen a few unneccessary deaths of kids in V2, when the request wasn't made 4 weeks before the parent died of inactivity. As of now, we're trying to prevent this by making sure that kids aren't "retired" until five days after their parent. That should give the system time to automatically accept any pending requests. Expect that to occur within 24 hours of the parent's death.

16th August, 2012, Thursday

Developer News   2012-08-16

The Old Automatic Tour Bus Movements Roughly two weeks from now, on the third of September, we'll deactivate the old system for automatically moving tour buses.   This means that anyone who's still relying on automatic touring preferences from the old version of the game should consider activating the automatic transports in the new version instead. The automatic tour bus system in the new version makes life much easier on the road. The travel times are shorter, band members can tag along, they aren't limited to specific city connections, and they are no longer a VIP only option. So there aren't that many reasons left to continue using the old system. Thanks for listening and making the change as soon as possible to avoid interruptions to your touring schedule.

8th August, 2012

Developer News   2012-08-08

Competitions & Fame Like discussed and voted on in the forum a while back ago we've decided to remove the effects on fame and media from competitions. We made this decision to prevent competitions from being used as monotonous tools for harvesting fame and fortune. We think competitions should be held as fun loving social events or to settle personal vendettas instead. The time has finally come to act on this decision.   Here's how the effect on media and fame will be removed from competitions: A month from now on September 8 the effects will be reduced 50%. Two months from now on October 8 the effects will be gone completely. The negative effects on fame for "losers" were removed this morning. Keep in mind that this won't affect fame and media gained from festivals and their qualifiers. What!? Another festival is in the works? YES! When the leaves have fallen to the ground and the harsh winter is looming around the corner.

Update: Tuesday, July 03, 2012

Developer News   2012-07-03

Notifications not working properly? Make sure to reload a few times in your browser. CTRL + R for most Windows browsers, and Command + R for Mac. The reason for this is that sometimes, local ("cached") versions of our resource files (containing code that runs in your browser) are used instead of newer ones. So. Make a habit of reloading once a week, and especially if stuff doesn't work like it used to.

Update 28-06-2012

Developer News   2012-06-28

Prepare yourself for a keyless world In a not so distant future, all apartments will have their locks changed to a keyless system. Instead of using keys, you'll give your friends and family a personal pass code. Since the system is wired to the net, you can add and remove the codes from anywhere in world. If you own an apartment, you can start preparing your access lists already. Actually, those you add to it will be able to enter your home from within Popmundo 2.0.

Update... June 26, 2012

Developer News   2012-06-26

Request sole custody The ability for mothers to request sole custody of fatherless children has now been added. If the father does not acknowledge the child within the its first two years, the mother may visit the court house and request sole custody of it. Please note that this is a Popmundo 2.0 only feature. Also: due to technical reasons, we have now removed the ability to adopt and request paternity tests in Popmundo 1.0. Any pending adoptions in the old system has been cancelled.

Developer News   2012-06-26

Regarding Ticket Limits From now on shows booked in Popmundo 2.0 will have a ticket limit of 10,000. That way nobody will have to worry about the tedious task of altering ticket limits anymore. For now, this won't cost clubs anything. In september however, the clubs will automatically be charged for the "ticket limit costs" at the time of the show. The costs will then be based on the actual audience that showed up for the performance.   NOTE: Shows booked in the old version of the game will still be subject to the old way of dealing with ticket limits.

Developer News   2012-06-25

Adoptions and paternity stuff in P1 going offline It's becoming obvious that our adoption- and paternity request systems are at war. Therefore, we will shut down the option to perform them in P1 in a few days time.

Update June 18, 2012, Monday

Developer News   2012-06-18

Another go att proper screen reader support We've just released an updated version of our status bars and star indicators, which hopefully should work better with screen readers (used by people with impaired vision). Go to your Account details page, click "Content settings" and enable "Impaired vision support". That way, JAWS should be able to properly tell you the values of status bars and star indicators. Everyone should make sure to hit CTRL + R (PC) or Shift + Command + R (Mac) to refresh the CSS and JS files.

Update: May 31, 2012

Sorry To be Late but The Servers went down here Too!

Developer News   2012-05-31

Our servers took an arrow to the knee! We think we've removed the arrow completely now so hopefully we'll remain standing a little bit longer this time. Once we're confident that we've regained our footing completely, we'll compensate for this unexpected downtime by extending your membership subscriptions. Thank you for your patience.

Developer News   2012-05-31

Minor Network Issues We've experienced some minor problems with the strange electronic gizmos that rule our world down in the basement. We're back online now and we'll do whatever damage control is necessary to get world spinning properly again. Thank you for your patience.

Update May 28, 2012

Developer News   2012-05-28

Resurrect the Dead Challenge the laws of nature to bring back an old character of yours from the grave. Skills, attributes, achievements, and personal works such as songs will all be available for the resurrected character like nothing ever happened. However, the resurrected character will not have any items, tattoos, money, or material possessions left. Likewise, the resurrected character won't be part of its old artist. This resurrection option will be available FREE OF CHARGE to old players returning to the game without a living character on their account real soon. Old players have asked us for this feature for a long time and we're adding this option mainly for them as a free service. Right now however, it's only available as a credit product for existing players with dead people on their accounts. When this resurrection option becomes available for free to those without any living characters on their account, we will also add a similar feature for those players who dislike the idea of reviving an old corpse. This option will be to start the game with a somewhat less skilled replica of an old character but at a much younger age without any previous history or accomplishments in its past. If this game was about your life as a sheep we could call this feature "cloning", but since it's not, we'd like to think of it as the discovery of an unknown groupie love child. Please consider the following before purchasing this as a credit product from us: With the exception of skills, attributes, songs, and some eventual family ties. You'll have nothing but old age to brag about. Note: old songs still score high on stage these days and this is something that will be tweaked in the near future before we go live with the free resurrections.

Thursday, May 24, 2012 Update

Developer News   2012-05-24

Let's try that logging in thing again! In the deepest dungeons of Popmundo 2.0, where a significant number of Ice Trolls dwell, we stumbled upon a little surprise which we think may have caused all the login problems. So. Please try to log in again, even if you tried it after yesterday's community news. Actually, even if you tried it before 12:10 CET today.

Wednesday May 23, 2012 Update

Developer News   2012-05-23

Logins and unread messages in Popmundo 2.0 The login system has been rewritten, which hopefully solves the login problems some of you've been having. Please do try to log in again, and if you still fail - report what happens in a Popmundo 1.0 bug report. Also - the system responsible for unread messages has also been rewritten. From now on, messages should remain unread until you actually read them. In order to save your inboxes a bit, we've marked all messages up until 15.30 CET yesterday as read. Going live in 5... 4... 3...

Update: Thursday, May 10, 2012

Developer News   2012-05-10

Logging in using Skweezer or other "mobile transcoders" We currently cannot support logins via Skweezer.com, or other services that converts Popmundo into a more mobile friendly experience. In fact, we can only support logins made from our website directly. The reason is that Skweezer, and most like other services like it, have problems with how our load balancing system (the one making sure that you end up on the server with best performance) works. We are still working on finalizing our own mobile skin. For more info, check below.   We validate your login on www.popmundo.com, and then transfer you to the server that offers the best performance, and Skweezer seems unable to handle the "redirect" to the new server. This is not an error on our side, but rather in Skweezer. Our own mobile skin is a work in progress, and as soon as we've come up with a good way of presenting the menus in a manner that works on a smart phone, and have rewritten some of the more complex functions that require more than your phone can offer, it'll be released. Until then, please notice that we do not, and can not, offer support on logins made via other services.