Spark Headquarters

The ISL Needs YOU!

The ISL (Independent Spark League) is looking NOW for staff and competing clans.

If you think you have what it takes to step up and contribute to your community, make your response in this thread:

http://spark-hq.net/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=3236

Help make Spark what you want it to be!

Spark Atlas now available

Courtesy of Patabugen of Spark-Stuff.net:

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I've created a map of the world which shows where abouts in the world Sparkers are from. You can see it and read a bit more about it here:

www.spark-stuff.net/profile/ammap/

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So make sure your "Location" data is up to date in your Spark-Stuff.net profile page.

[Correction] Your Spark-Stuff.net profile, not your Spark-HQ profile as previously reported. Apologies.

Spark Bug & Feature Tracker Up And Running

http://bugs.spark-stuff.net/

If you run into technical bugs (especially ones that others are experiencing) then please check if the bug is already reported on the Bug Tracker and make a new post. Any relevent/additional information pertaining to how the bug is produced would be helpful.

The format for reporting is pretty straight forward. You will have to create your own account before reporting (and so you can receive email notifications of status changes to your reported issues), but there's also an anonymous 'view only' option if you just want to see what's there and how it's going.

The Bug Tracker will better enable us to deal with technical game issues so we appreciate your time in helping us catalog them. Also, for your convenience, you'll find a link ('Report Bugs') in the menu to the left.

Spark Community Atmosphere & Attitude

In response to the two related threads in the forums, we'd like to find out where the general community thought lies regarding this issue. The active thread is: http://spark-hq.net/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=2769

Orginal Donators to Spark

Those who orginally donated to Spark months ago and received the donation star are now invited to participate in testing the clan system. I have sent an email with the details to the account which you have the star. If for some reason you used an invalid email with that account and did not receive that email then you can message me here.

Thanks for your contributions and ongoing support of Spark!

Public release of the clan system will commence when we have fully functioning features such as setting user/member ranks, clan challenges, etc..

-Spark Leadership Team

Clan System Enters Testing, Lag Fixes Continue

If you log on Spark you may notice a lot of the admins have clan tags. This is because the clan system functionality for the lobby and game is now complete, and is in testing!

This is especially thanks to Gamer, who has designed a web based interface to manage clans to save the ridiculously time consuming task of doing a ton of java dialogs to try and manage it (which is what has delayed it for so long already). Thus, I was able to focus on getting the actual system to work in the lobby and game, which is now complete.

The clan system lets you create a clan, and then invite others to it via a drop down list. You can then assign different ranks to your clan members. The ranks control what permissions other players have in the clan. For example, you have to be a certain rank to be able to invite other players into the clan. The titles of the ranks are customizable.

In other development news, many if you may have noticed a lot of downtime and server reboots lately. That is not only because of the clan system updates, but because we have also been fixing a lot of serious lag issues. This has finally paid off. After tonights update, pings are lower and the bad spiking is gone. As another interesting side effect, signing into the lobby and joining the game is about 5 times faster.

Thanks to all players for having patience during the heavy period of updating while we really went after the problems. Things should be settling down now as we get clans released and finish fixing up minor bugs.

Quick Tournaments

I'm planning on running a Mini-tournament to test the functionality of a script we have in development. The tournament signups will begin at 7pm. I hope to have enough players for at least 4 teams of 4.

Those interested should check out this link for further details: http://spark-hq.net/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewforum&f=41

Serious Bugs Fixed

An update was released last night to fix some serious problems introduced by the past two updates. These problems were a type of god mode/bad lag, and a nasty stuttering problem introduced by an update this morning. However, the game is now the smoothest it's ever been after fixing those problems.

I'd like to remind everyone this is why Spark is still in beta. Sometimes things get broken in updates, but we'll fix them when problems do arise.

Donations/Spark Store

We've currently taken down the donations link for two main reasons:
1) Generating donations has been slow and unsuccessful
2) We intend to implement a Spark Store in the weeks to come, and would therefore prefer not having to deal with the 'people who have donated' issue on a wide scale. IE. We want to avoid releasing the Spark Store and having some users who have donated in the days prior, from missing that opportunity.

Therefore, if you intend on donating at this point, please wait until the store is released.

Spark Storyline

We thought it would be a good idea to include a Spark storyline/theme. It is likely that graphics and sounds will be be developed with this in mind.

Speraachus IV: A class H planet in the outer reaches of space, known throughout the charted universe as the richest source of energy-yielding compounds yet found. The elements found on this harsh desert world could power the largest of the empires until the end of days. It is spoken of in reverent tones; it is regarded as near-legend by many. But mostly it is known by the nickname given it by its discoverers:

'Spark'.