If you've seen me or my art lately, you know it's focused on my ARPG, Xiunus. Well, we've opened our Lorekeeper-based site and are hosting a big event to celebrate!

Xiunus is an alien-based ARPG with tabletop rpg elements. It's based on a faraway planet where you are a researcher who has control over your own colony of alien species from the planet. You're in charge of your colony, while an inept corporation watches over their planet.

Anyone who joins at any point will get their first Tsabhua free! c:

Current Event - Tendrils of the Spore

We're currently running an event with multiple parts! The parts:

1. Promotional Event - That's this! If you join and post a journal or other tangible ad (like a status update or forum post), you get an additional free colonist from either the Tsabhua or Belemoid species! If you join because of my journal or ads, I get to pick a gene per person (max of 5) to add to my event colonist --- and if one of you joins because of this and posts a promo journal/post/etc, I get a free mutation as well!

2. Tendrils of the Spore - The namesake event prompt is focused on figuring out why these weird tendrils are popping up all over the continent. If you submit one of these, you get some cool stuff and a raffle ticket for a free Tincture of Mycelium, which gives you a crazy looking new mutation to add to one of your colonists.

3. Scavenger Hunt - We have a scavenger hunt going on around the site - look for mushrooms that are in odd places and get to keep them!

4. Mascot Design Contest - We also have a user-designed mascot contest currently running! These mascots will give additional bonuses to people who depict them in the future and if your mascot's chosen you'll get a free whelp (baby colonist)!

Tags

If I've tagged you it's either because we're friends/mutuals or I just love your art and would love to see you around Xiunus! If you're not interested, that's alright, thank you for your time and space in your notifications~

Also, if you've never seen these names before, check them out! They're great!!

Alunaa keptune thelunapower Arkyls KJfromColors DasFischi MykalaBlue rhiow Avian-king chosaguro Infectedwaters ArualMeow xillicix ScribbleWoof Aschefall ForeverFrosty sunnyhallows starry--knight Lairai Arukanoda AniutqaART bolthound Ginsuke SgtRayFox

Sorry there's so many of you tagged... I just love all your art ;w;

INCOMING TRANSMISSION FROM DPIP - JULY 21, 2020

Dearest Researchers, Colonists, and Message Interceptors,

It has been a minute, hasn't it? We are still here, still alive, and still hard at work on the Lorekeeper website for xiunus! It can be found at xiun.us and is now at the stage where people may join, if you so desire! It is still a huge WIP and a huge project, but we're moving along well.

Just like some other arpgs, like Tokotas, all imports will be hosted on the new website. As of currently, the plan is to have everything migrate over so that those individuals who don't wish to stick around on deviantArt for much longer can head over to our site for Xiunus fun! Before you do head over there to create your account, here's a running list of the current locations for game functions. Due to the limitations of Lorekeeper, we have to code some functionality from scratch - namely the Research system. Initially we were going to use the items system for research, but decided it didn't quite fit.

Soon, we'll be removing the joining form and allowing free-joining of the Xiunus group without having to have a colony! This will take place once all the bits below are finished and we are able to completely move over to the site!

If you do join and you have trouble with the email verification, let me know and I'll manually verify your account! The email provider we use has trouble with Hotmail, Yahoo, Outlook, etc.

Xiun.us

• Colonist imports.

For now, we are still making colonies on the original Sheets, but we will no longer be uploading colonists to the xiunusDPIP account. All pedigreed colonists have been shifted over onto xiun.us. We still have to move a number of non-pedigreed uploaded colonists and finish migrating non-designed colonists over.

Also, as a note - There were some migrated belemoid who have ancestors who are not migrated. From now on, those ancestors will be auto-migrated onto the site, as not migrating them will cause the lineage steppers to break! Apologies for that :')

• Leveling

Leveling is now taken care of through the site! Here is the guide on-site for leveling. The artist/writer (or owner, if the artist is not a member) should submit the pieces as either Prompts or Claims, depending on whether the submissions fit into any of the activities of the game or if they're just leveling submissions.

Random Events can also be collected still this way! Just mention it in your submission comment. As per the fairly recent decision, only three colonists (per owner) per submission can get random events. If you don't make it clear which three colonists you want the random events for, we will grab the first three of yours on the submission to have random events rolled for.

• Breeding*

If both colonists are on the site, breedings should be submitted as prompts on the site. We still need to rewrite a guide that fits the new site. In the meantime, if you're submitting a breeding that has a courting image, the courting image should be posted as the url for the breeding prompt. Litter images should also be submitted through the site on their own prompt.

*Due to the lack of a comments system currently, slot permissions should be on deviantArt in this comment thread.

• Crucible Entries

All entries to the Six Crucibles should be submitted via their appropriate prompt.

• Story Mode

The first chapter of Story Mode is accessible here and the prompts for the two parts of the chapter are here.

• Seasonal Events

The seasonal event for this season can be found here.

• Colonist/Geno Transfers

If a colonist is on the new site, it will need to be transferred there. If you are not interested in sticking around with the game and want to transfer your colonists to other people or the Immigration Center without an account, feel free to shoot the group a Note and we can take care of the transfer for you.

DeviantArt

• Research

The research tree is a huge project that we are working on. In the meantime, research will be stored on Sheets and will be purchased using the form from the Form Hub, as before. We will let you know when it's moved over!

• Breeding Permissions

As mentioned above, breeding permissions must be submitted via the aforementioned comment thread on dA.

I'm sure I forgot something, so feel free to ask about any specifics in the comments below!

If you have any questions or anything, feel free to join our Discord server!

- preimpression

Read Old News Here

This is for the @xiunus ARPG.

I'm wanting to get rid of some of my undesigned genos!

I'm mostly in search of levels, specifically Crucibles.

Tsabhua

None Currently!

Belemoid

None yet.

So, yeah. We all know what's coming sooner thank you know it. You've seen journals like this from everyone, I'm sure. Well, I'm not leaving, at least not yet. I'm sticking around to see what happens. I wanted to write out my take on it.

Am I a fan of Eclipse as it stands? No.

Am I a die-hard No Eclipser? Also, no.

Don't get me wrong, they're going about it terribly. I had to tinker in Inspector to give myself room to type in here without feeling claustrophobic. Doing so made me see some more code which just made me put my head in my hands. It's a coder's nightmare. This site needs some SERIOUS work to look good and act as a functioning website. No offense to all the hard work they've put in, but there's so much more that needs to be done that I doubt will be complete by the time May 20th comes around. There are FAR TOO MANY MODALS. This journal writer is in a modal! No! Stop that!!!!

Honestly, I'd recommend they reel back on what they're doing and restart from a different framework. Bootstrap is wonderful and has proven success in places like Toyhou.se. Plus! It's mobile-first in a way that works so much better than whatever Deviantart is using.

Speaking of T- ok, pause. I wrote the TH url there, it auto-linked, and when I continued typing, my text was underlined. Wtf, deviantart. This is one reason why forced WYSIWYG editors are trash.

Anyways, speaking of Toyhouse. As much as Deviantart likes to mimic other websites (seriously, Eclipse is clearly heavily inspired by Artstation), they could learn a thing or two from Toyhou.se

It has a pleasing mix of "Big Thumbnail Design" and "Old Fashioned Text". It allows for HTML use with a whitelist/blacklist that makes it pretty safe imo, if not sometimes annoying to figure out workarounds to get some not-whitelisted stuff to work. For paid users and for worlds, it allows for CSS! As Deviantart is so concerned with those people who don't know how to use HTML/CSS, there's forums specifically for the sharing of code, both paid and free use.

Face it, the current version of Deviantart has its problems. Many.. aren't going to get fixed by Eclipse. Some are. It's old-as-balls code. Still, you shouldn't change old-as-balls code into badly-broken-code just for the sake of change.

WHY A REDESIGN CAN BE A GOOD THING.

Classic Deviantart's code is SUPER outdated and prone to breaking. Making a website with tables is so 2005. Divs are the way of the modern world, reactive layouts that work on multiple screen sizes and devices is essential. Classic DA looks and runs like crap on mobile, but at least it runs.

WHERE ECLIPSE FALLS SO, SO SHORT.

Groups are getting the short end of the stick.

Most of you are aware that I participate in ARPGs, a specific type of group on deviantart that's pretty common and is being hit especially hard by the changes. I admin one (and a half) and just in the few days of trying to use predominantly Eclipse, there have been a lot of problems I've noted.

Group notifications are easily missed.

You have to go into the group itself under the drop down to actually see any of the notifications. I've accidentally let one person trying to join Xiunus wait a couple days because I had no idea that there was anyone trying to join. Same thing happens with comments, submission requests, etc.

I already submitted this one to Feedback, but knowing that they're likely being bombarded by people just plain complaining, maybe linking that Change petition, etc. I'll be submitting the link to this journal to them with the hopes that they see it and take notice. I know they have seen some of my previous Feedback and have returned to it a couple of times, either last year or the year before I don't recall. So, if you guys read this, thank you and please listen!

Comment threads are a pain.

Some groups, like Tokotas for example, have HUGE comment threads where admins work from the oldest to the newest. ikazon already told me that pagination will be brought back to comments, but I urge the team to keep that in mind! Trying to navigate as it is in classic dA can already be a pain, as journal comments are known to break when they get too long and the threaded view itself can just revert you back to flat. I can only wonder how insanely difficult it's going to be to navigate through that in Eclipse.

:Thumbs: are SUPER necessary for many ARPGs. Forcing thumbnails on every deviantart link is terrible practice. Also, WYSIWYG Comments are a nightmare.

For example, most of the groups I know use the thumb codes for items that people can get after submitting art to the group. We use the thumb codes in our own off-site coding, to reduce the amount of code bloat we face and make our scripts off-site run faster.

We then paste the thumbnail output, with its thumbs, into deviantart codes. As <a href> codes don't work in the forced-WYSIWYG comments, it'll turn something that SHOULD look like this:

into this:

Not to mention I couldn't just show the image here from an outside source, I had to upload this and my cover image to my sta.sh, where it's using up pointless space.

Submitting to groups.

I've already read that submitting to groups on the deviation page will be coming back. I just wanted to remind any staffer that may happen upon this that we're waiting on that.

Submitting journals to groups as groups.

When we try to submit a journal to a group AS the group, as we can in Classic, it decides instead to throw it on our user journal instead. For groups that post metric tonnes of journals every month, that just will not do. Allow the group to have submitted the journal instead of forcing it on the admins, please!

MODALS. MODALS EVERYWHERE.

Modals are useful for little things like colour pickers, notifications, etc. Not for FULL JOURNAL POST STUFF. When attempting to change the colour of text on my custom box on my profile, it threw the colour picker all the way to the left. Probably because the edit box I was already on was a modal, so it was layered modals, which clearly doesn't work. I like pages I can physically go to instead of being forced to stay on the same page and enter a hundred line breaks so I don't get vertigo from writing against my task bar.

Searching the site is a Pain

If anything, please just give us the Stock category back as a topic. Also, let us look at most recent/etc while searching! I like looking at newly posted ARPG art so I can support people who aren't super popular :c

JOURNAL DRAFTS =/= STASH WRITER.

ikazon, my dude. You recommended we use drafts, but you missed a certain essential fundamental to why we use stash writer for so much stuff: WE LIKE TO SHARE THE LINKS. Journal Drafts are creator-viewable-only. We like to have the comment threads so that ARPG admins can comment so we don't have 50 journals for 50 different characters in 50 different ARPGs. I'd like to keep everything in one account and not have to make another one just to store my ARPG spam journals.

Design looks... weird at best sometimes. Also, very limiting.

Please, continue to reduce the weird spacing things you have. For journals, maybe have

sliders for allowing more/less padding? Let us resize images inside journals!

Thank you for listening.

Some of the things I've suggested in the past have been fixed, such as the header image for journals having to be an image posted in the journal. I'm so happy they fixed that, because mannnn it was a pain. You made