Good day all. With the holidays fast approaching, your Foundry staff have been feeling festive and making some changes. We've already begun to celebrate the season by kicking off a pair of mapmaking competitions and the first round of voting will take place in mid-December. Also to further spread the holiday cheer, MrBenn has been having a bit of fun with the Foundry's stamps. Watch out for them appearing as you stroll around the Foundry in December, and try not to slip on the icy patch.
We are also pleased to announce a new addition to our C.A. team... iancanton has been active in the Foundry for the past year and half, and has been a reasonable and respected voice throughout. He will be taking over the Gameplay C.A. role in December; checking in on threads in the Main Foundry, giving feedback, and stamping maps when they are are ready to go. We think iancanton will look quite good in blue, so the next time you drop him a line be sure to thank him for devoting his time and expertise to our little piece of CC.
With iancanton moving in on the gameplay duties, that would seem to leave oaktown without a job... not so! Oaktown will be turning his attention to those maps that have already received both the gameplay and graphics stamps: forging maps and moving them into the Forge, overseeing that last round of concerns and changes, calling in XML checks, and alerting Andy when a map is ready to be quenched. It is our hope that assigning a CA to the Forge will make that end of the Foundry process more efficient and get maps into play faster.
As the CAs settle into their news roles, we'll be reviving a pair of old projects that have been sadly overlooked as of late - the Stamp Lickers group and the Mapmakers' Guide. We're in the process of identifying and contacting folks who would be suitable volunteers in these areas, and we thank them in advance for their service to the Foundry. Look for updates soon!
And finally, in the interest of keeping the world a clean and healthy place, the Foundry is going green! The Scrap Heap has become an ugly and dangerous place what with all the old spare parts everywhere, so we're renaming it the Recycling Bin. It's function will remain the same, but sans the depressing title.
With best wishes for the holiday season, from the expanding Foundry Team (too many banana-flavoured mince pies...)
