News Archive

We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own.

Good News! Star Trek online is now... FREE TO PLAY! So head on over to www.startrekonline.com and get the game! Create your character and send a message to @DazzaJay in-game and you will receive a Fleet Invite to the "Icarus Factor" - The official Pothole Studios STO Fleet!

Posted by: Daniel "DazzaJay" Fitzgerald

Why We Shouldn\'t Be Stopping Piracy.

http://games.on.net/article/14585/Why_We_Shouldnt_Be_Stopping_Piracy

- Original story from games.on.net

Two months ago the Swiss Government decided against taking action on piracy, after a year-long study found that piracy had no clear impacts. Some publishers lost money. Some publishers gained money. And overall, people kept spending more on entertainment. Piracy’s net effect on the Swiss economy: nil.

Compare this to what we do know. We do know that combating piracy is expensive. It costs money to design DRM. It costs money to monitor for infringement. It costs money to prosecute offenders.

We also know that gamers suffer. DRM makes games harder to play. DRM allows publishers to discriminate against regions, driving up the price of games for Australians.

So we have a situation where the impacts of piracy aren’t known, yet real costs are imposed by the ‘solutions’. Clearly, it’s time for a rethink. Here are three alternatives... they’ll at least be less whacky than spending millions on a problem that no one understands.

• Games as a service One approach is to sell games as a service, for a monthly subscription. Examples include MMOs like Star Wars: The Old Republic, and services like Xbox Live. The main advantage of these services is they are too expensive to copy, so are largely immune to piracy. The disadvantage, of course, is that the huge expense means the bar is high to new competitors... and it’s getting higher. It cost EA three hundred million to make The Old Republic... and people still find things to complain about. We’re not going to see many new gaming services.
• Games with added value As the Swiss found, piracy doesn’t reduce the proportion of money people spend on entertainment: it simply shifts it to items people believe give the most value. That people buy added value is older than dirt: it’s a classic marketing strategy. But to work, the added value must do two things: It must give the buyer something they value. And it must give that value at a price point that seems lower than what it’s worth.The gaming industry struggles with both these points. First, people don’t value cheap promotional items. I remember the days when every game came with a cool paper manual, and you didn’t have to buy a collector’s edition to get it. Now manuals are five glossy pages explaining the apparently confusing concept of WASD, and collector’s editions come with fake leather journals. Second, too much is charged for this content. Collector’s editions range from $100 to $300. When you’re paying this much for the extras, you’re not getting any added value. You’re just buying something new.Added value won’t completely reduce piracy, but the games industry has a long way to go. Rather than spend so much on DRM and enforcement, maybe they should take a harder look at whether charging $150 for a collector’s edition with a novelty can opener is really the best way to encourage people to buy.
• Games with no DRM Some companies are experimenting with DRM-free software. These are games without any CD keys or registration servers, so you can copy them at will. This has several advantages. First, games with no DRM cost less to make than those that have DRM. Second, gamers may be more willing to buy a game with no DRM, seeing it as added value. Third, games without DRM tend to run smoother, and with less technical problems for those gamers that buy them legitimately. This increases the appeal of these games beyond the principle of being DRM free.But do these benefits outweigh the added vulnerability to piracy? After all, The Witcher 2 was sold without DRM, and was still pirated heavily. Without hard numbers on piracy’s impacts, it’s hard to say. But the best argument for DRM-free games is that the few publishers who have tried it are still doing it. CD Projekt is still committed to DRM-free games despite its losses from piracy.
• Stopping piracy isn’t the answer The biggest problem with software piracy is that it’s hard to measure. This had led to hardline approaches justified solely on philosophy. Anti-piracy Legislation like SOPA is promoted on hot air. DRM is done because “piracy is theft, and theft is wrong.” Yet these approaches do have impacts on legitimate gamers—impacts that can’t be justified by philosophy alone. The more sensible approach is to change the perspective. No one should be ‘stopping piracy’. Rather, publishers should work to make the highest profit. If they ask the right question, they may find that they earn more by making good games, giving added value to their customers, and not spending money on pointless DRM.

original story from games.on.net

Qapla'

Good News Everyone!

Pothole Studios now has an STO Fleet, in preparation for the F2P update for Star Trek online!

If you want to join the Fleet, you can either message @DazzaJay in game, or you can post in the Pothole Studios Forums.

If you have a subscription, you can join now! but if you are waiting for F2P, then you will have to wait until the game goes F2P.

The Fleet Uniforms are finished, and usable, but optional, no one will make you wear the Fleet uniform.

The Fleet Uniform, if you choose to use it, is the canon Enterprise-E Movie style uniform.

See you on the Federation Front Lines!

Posted by: Daniel "DazzaJay" Fitzgerald

MTA 1.1 Released!

After months of hard work, MTA: San Andreas 1.1 has been officially released after a successful beta test that had been done earlier today! Get the latest client version from www.mtasa.com ; however you may want to give your favourite server their time to finish upgrading! The Pothole Studios Gaming Servers will be upgraded ASAP. Keep checking our website for more news!

Posted by: xMar99

MTA: San Andreas 1.1 Beta Test tonight!

Don't miss on this one, this may be the final beta test prior to a stable release. Just grab the latest 1.1 nightly from www.nightly.mtasa.com and join the beta test server! It will be held at 19:00 UK time (GMT +1 W/Daylight Saving). Current time in london: http://tinyurl.com/54oyeAlso if you're lost about what to do to get the 1.1 build, post in the forums or join the official beta test IRC channel at #mta-pubtest @ irc.gtanet.com

Admins, don't forget your clan tags when joining to make it easier for us to find each others between 100+ players! See you there!

Original MTA team post: http://tinyurl.com/4yohfjj

Posted by: xMar99

Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 Tuned by DazzaJay

The Competition to win this car in GT5 ends 8th July 2011.

Posted by: Daniel "DazzaJay" Fitzgerald

Radical Dude!

Been going about my day and noticed many small issues with the site. so I have fixed a lot of them :-)

• Fixed: "Register" button was going to "login" page instead of "register" page.
• Fixed: "Online" and "Offline" status images were missing in the forums.
• Fixed: "Similar Topics" now appears in the bottom of most forum threads.
• Fixed: "Who is Online" block now appears in the Forum Index.
• Fixed: "User Map" button was missing.
• Fixed: "Store" Button was incorrectly spaced.
• Added: "Login" button when not logged in.
• Added: "Facebook" button to lower bar, where you can see and like our FB Fan page.
• Changed: "My Account" to "Account" to save space.
• Changed: Font and Capitalisation in the upper menu bar.
• Removed: Flash based header until it can be converted to HTML5.

Posted by: Daniel "DazzaJay" Fitzgerald

Vote Riggers suck nuts.

The Final vote has been reset due to Vote rigging. You will need to cast your vote again for the FINAL TDSA!

Posted by: Daniel "DazzaJay" Fitzgerald

Forecast: Heavy Wind

Tour de San Andreas Championship Number 13 has been cancelled due to the unforeseen circumstance of Christmas 2010.

See you all at the TDSA Championship 14 in January 2011!

Posted by: Daniel "DazzaJay" Fitzgerald

Craptastic Crap.

We are aware of the "Security Error" that occurs when a new user tries to make an account.

We do not expect this issue to be resolved till the server is moved to a Windows Based server.

If you are receiving this issue, Try a different browser. IE6 seems to work, due to the fact that there is no security at all in IE6. other than that, just Bear with us.

Posted by: Daniel "DazzaJay" Fitzgerald

Championship delayed!

Due to some technical errors, the championship for this Saturday has been delayed for Sunday 12/12/2010.

Sorry for the inconvenience caused.

Posted by: xMAR99

Server Splode

Does anyone know what happens when you run out of space on the HDD of a Linux based machine? It explodes into a pile of stinky shit with chunks.

Either way, we are fixing the server right now and it should all be working properly in about an hours time.

Posted by: Daniel "DazzaJay" Fitzgerald

Classic Detonation

The old Pothole Studios theme has returned! and its fixed!

Turns out a rogue adblocker string was blocking the entire site.

Filter: ~mail.google.com##table[cellpadding="0"][width="100%"][style^="border: 1px solid rgb("]Addres: ##table[cellpadding="0"][width="100%"][style^="border: 1px solid rgb("]

Either way the sites code has been rewritten to get around this. and the site should now be visible on all browsers, even ones that have this rogue adblocking string, that as far as I can see, blocks EVERYTHING with a table that is 100% width with a padding of 0 and a border of 1. which is pretty much everything. if your adblocker has the above mentioned filter in it, its probably blocking a lot more than just sites running this theme. and I would recommend removing this code.

Either way, the classic theme is back with a new header menu bar! Woohoo!

Have fun.

Posted by Daniel "DazzaJay" Fitzgerald

Holy Snapping Duck Shit Batman!

And we are back, after some... "unscheduled downtime"

For no apparent reason what-so-ever the previous site theme we were using was stopping the site from loading in Firefox (ANY VERSION!) Either way, I went through, fucked around for a few hours, found the problem (the theme) and I have swapped out the theme with this new one.The last theme has done us well over the last 5 years, and I am infuriated for leaving it, I will look into trying to repair it and get it running again. but until then we say Goodbye to "PH2_Blue" we welcome "Sovereign_Blue" as the temporary site theme.

Everything should be in a similar place to where it once way it once was, along with some new buttons up the top, such as "Gaming" and "Multi Theft Auto"

Either way, Have Fun.

Posted by Daniel "DazzaJay" Fitzgerald

And we are back! - oh yeah

Good news everyone!

The server has undergone its update and is back online, however we may have some intermittent downtime as we sort out the rest of the bugs that the update has caused. (such as some CHMOD issues, FTP issues, and the fact that the servers GUI isn't working) but we plan to have all of them sorted soon!

Either way, I have a couple of new features to show off, the first is this fancy new bar at the bottom. it contains a Pothole Studios Search thing in it, a translator, so you can view this site in your native language, also has some games, a Facebook like button, also a Live Chat system, so you can chat to other people that are online at the moment!

Posted by Daniel "DazzaJay" Fitzgerald

Updating the Pole

Good News Dirtbags!

I have been working on a new Pothole Studios Logo. - Well, not a new one, just an update to the current one.

I've decided on removing the Warthog from the logo because its been a long time since we have done anything with Halo. and I have replaced it with a Real Car, a Holden Overlander Ute.

Posted by Daniel "DazzaJay" Fitzgerald

Unscheduled Bananas

well, thanks to Ben (Not Benji, the other one) and a faulty RSS feed, the server damn near exploded. it actually Imploded which is similar to an explosion, with less "Boom" - Either way, the database has been fixed, and the site is working again.

Posted by Daniel "DazzaJay" Fitzgerald

We're back

I doubt our 700~ visitors a day had much of an effect, but every little bit helps to raise awareness about how terrible the proposed waste of money... i mean, Internet Filter, is.

either way were back online.

also heres some usefull links.

http://nocleanfeed.com

http://www.internetblackout.com.au/

http://www.efa.org.au/

http://nocleanfeed.com/

http://www.democrats.org.au/campaigns/no_internet_censorship/

PS will be down for a few days

Pothole Studios will be going offline for a few days as a part of the "Great Australian Internet Blackout"... or, as how i would word it "Wake the bloody hell up Australia"

Either way, here are some Useful Links.

http://nocleanfeed.com

http://www.internetblackout.com.au/

http://www.efa.org.au/

http://nocleanfeed.com/

http://www.democrats.org.au/campaigns/no_internet_censorship/

The Madness Begins.

The teaser trailer for the upcoming comedy series "Spatial madness" is in the video section now!

Woo! Check it out!

Automotivley Updated.

We have updated the cars in the initial D server from 12 to 14, and replaced a few bugged cars.

Changelog:

• Supra Model has been changed to a different supra due to Collision issues.
• Impreza Model has been changed do a different impreza due to a collision issue.
• Honda CRX Replaced with a Honda Civic EG6 due to a Roll-over issue.
• Added Honda Civic EK9
• Added Honda S2000

Current Server Car List:

Subaru Impreza WRX - Toyota Supra - Nissan Silvia - Honda S2000 - Mazda RX7 - Nissan Skyline R34 - Honda NSX - Ford GT - Honda Civic EK9 - Honda Civic EG6 - Chevrolet Camaro - Toyota Corolla AE86 - Mitsubishi 3000GT - Nissan 300ZX.

Posted by Daniel "DazzaJay" Fitzgerald

Drifting Around!

Oh Yes! Its here! The Pothole Studios, Initial D Server! Powered by MTA!

Complete with 12 Custom cars, and 2 Custom maps, (With more to come!) (Altho the custom cars and custom maps make the Server download rather large (60~MB) Its well worth it!)

Here is the complete list of current cars in the server:

Nissan Silvia S15 - Nissan Skyline R34 - Nissan 300ZX - Mazda RX7 FD - Mitsubishi 3000GT - Toyota Carolla AE86 - Honda CRX - Subaru Impreza WRX - Honda NSX - Toyota Supra - Ford GT - Chevrolet Camaro IROC-Z

Currently there is only 3 Variations of Akina, (Uphill, Downhill and Compound) and only one Variation of HJPHill.

More variations of HJPHill and More maps will be added over time!

Posted by Daniel "DazzaJay" Fitzgerald

Bugtracker

Good news! i have made the Pothole Bugtracker easier to find! Its now located at the top of this page (above this message) and also at the top of the forums index! Report your bugs with our game servers, or request features in there!

Posted by Daniel "DazzaJay" Fitzgerald

Browser Errors Fixed!

I spent a half hour today tweaking our sites ua.inc file, and have successfully fixed a lot of bugs!

The site now works in Google Chrome, on the PS3, and even PSP! it probably even works on a lot of other browsers that it didn't before, such as Safari.

Turns out the problem was a line that detects some browsers that run on the IE engine. (Yes, Internet explorer yet again fucks a site for others) either way, it all seems to work now.

Posted by Daniel "DazzaJay" Fitzgerald

Oh noes.

Well, after a complete loss of the Database, we are manually restoring what we can of the site from what we can see on Google's cache, it will take a while to get the site running smoothly again.

But sad news, the forums are gone and so are all members, so you will have to re-register.

We will be working over the next few days to bring back some sort of familiarity back to the site.

Posted by Daniel "DazzaJay" Fitzgerald & Ben "KeyboardKiller" Tolley