Hello, and welcome to this 2nd edition of the Weekly News. Not much has been said and done this week, but since we're a new site we can always dig up in old stories which we are yet to report about ;)
1989 DB - now in 12th edition! I don't think I've actually ever seen a DB which have been released in twelve editions - but this one now has. Compared to v11, this one has corrected the small career bug which was present in v11. We're yet to upload it to the website, but until we upload it you can download it at an external site: http://www.partage-facile.com/36645-OfficialRelease_1989.rar.html
PCM.daily League: Chuck is still undefeated! After a pretty chaotic game Chuck is still undefeated in the PCM.daily League with 5 games won in a row. Only_one is also undefated, but only with two wins. For the sake of excitement we'll hope Chuck gets some competition in the upcoming days ;)
Danish championships continuing During the latest few weeks the Danish championships has been underway. With 24 people to start with, the "peloton" has now been reduced to 11 people - including the leader of PCM.daily league, Chuck. Good luck to all participants!
PPDB getting closer to 1st release Earlier this week, it was announced that Savoluca, known for his databases for the earlier versions of Pro Cycling Manager, joined forces with PlakkerNL and the rest of the PPDB-team. He'll contribute as a "co-project-leader", and he'll therefore be a very central person in the making of the PPDB for PCM. The DB will of course contain a whole lot of teams as with the version for PCM1. It also includes updates graphics, entirely new stages, etc., etc.. To start with, they'll only release a 06-version which is due for release around Christmas. A week later, near New Year, they'll release a 07-version which then will be updated from week to week after that.
Other exciting database projects One of the most exciting projects for PCM is the "Cyclocross Manager"-project. It actually transforms your game into a totally new game, a cyclocross-game. It changes the road textures so it looks more dirty - more off-road - and teams / riders are of course also changed to match the real world of cyclo cross. To read more about the project, click this link: http://www.cyanide-studio.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=49646
Another exciting project is the "Danish DB"-project. If you're into the Danish cycling scene, it's pretty exciting - it contains only Danish teams, including a lot of new Danish races and riders. It's still far from done, though, but we're getting closer...
The first few 2007-dbs has started to pop up. The first one has been released by Mic91, but it contains quite a lot mistakes and doesn't seem to be well-worth the download. Other than that one, the following has started a project each: Rasmu89 (who has also made a 89-db), elfouc (who also has made a 89-db) and the PPDB as mentioned earlier. Especially the elfouc-project seems very detailed, but currently no release dates have been set.
Minor site updates Not a news update without a notice of the updates on the site: - We've added a few new screenshot categories, but without adding any pictures to them. As a user you're more than welcome to submit screenshots to the categories. - Actually, this was added last week, but here we go anyway: I've added a Donations-panel below the "Who's online"-panel. If you like the site to continue its work, feel free to make a donation - it'd be really helpful.
It's back! The yearly edition of Cyanide's stage creating contest has now been launched. Basically, the contest's purpose is to find stage creating talents for the upcoming version of Pro Cycling Manager - so winning this contest could end up with the winner being an official stage maker of Pro Cycling Manager 2007! The main prize, however, is the possibility to choose a game from the Focus-catalogue.
This is what the announcement said: Stages creation contest 2006 There we are at it again...
In order to find out the best designers in the community and the evolutions, we are planning again a stages creation contest.
This contest is open to every Pro Cycling Manager 2006 player (not a judge ). We strongly recommend the different countries' communities to take part in it to be able to discover their talented designers.
The involved will have to do a mountain stage of 2000m of positive height variation. No imposed place.
The stage's length will have to stand between 150 and 250 kilometers. You'll be able to choose by yourself if the arrival will be uphill or not. The limit of time to give back the stages is set at Monday the 1st January 2007 at 23h59.
Stages notation : The stages evaluation will be done by a few people jury : Wawan, Wizaja, Freire and myself.
The stages will be noted and a classification should be published in January. No reclamation will be accepted against the classification. This notation of course won't be objective because of its artistic part. We'll try to be as impartial as possible.
We'll have a strong looking at the following points : - Turns (pins, variety, not too much turns but enough) - 2D profile - the passes summits - « Isolated buildings » utilisation - Cities places - Forest places - Realism and cohereance of the stage (place of beginning and arrival, passes choosen...) - Global render of the stage - Lakes or seas are better, as bridges, tunnels or secondhand roads
We'll strongly penalize the stages including the following points : Non-respect of the little flat zones between downhill and an uphill sections. 3D surcharge which would make the stage unplayable (too many buildings, too many cities, too many roads...) Too high declivities due to hazardous villages or crossroads "Flying" objects over the road
Stages sending : The persons taking part of it will have to send their creation to the following adress : concourspcm_AT_cyanide-studio.com (replace _AT_ by @) The sending will be done by mailing of a .zip or .rar file which will absolutely need the following files : - The stage xml file - the bmp file (the map) (With the same name as the xml file and 512*512, 1024*1024 or 2048*2048 pixels)
Prizes : The contest's winner will be able to choose a game of his choice in the Focus ones's.
The best stage makers may be asking to help for the next Pro Cycling Manager's official stages.
Welcome to the 1st edition of "Weekly News" at PCM.daily - your #1 English PCM-site! Since it's the first edition, we'll have to introduce the small concept first. Basically, all sites have at some point though: "Is this "news-stuff" enough to make it to the frontpage?" - and in many cases, it's never posted. But most times, they're actually good news which to many are useful. Therefore, we've made Weekly News which tells the news which normally wouldn't make it to the frontpage. These are usually posted as close to the end of the weekend as possible. So, let's get off with the first edition ;)
PCM Spain Pack released: Normally, this pack would absolutely make it to the frontpage, but since the website opened a few hours after it was released it wasn't mentioned. So, now we do!
By many, it's called the best DB to date - and much, much better than the Atess DB. It doesn't have as many teams as Atess, but it does have 88 well-worked-through teams, plenty of new races (f. e. GP de Llodio, Tour of Georgia, Tour of UK), faces of a lot of riders which are true to reality - and of course, a lot of graphical stuff. However, the most important thing, though, is the riders' skills and the realism of the results, and to most, this seems like the most realistic DB released to date.
The database can of course be found in our Downloads section. Also, please notice that a small fix for the database has been released. That can also be found in our Downloads section.
DB Nation goes into 2nd edition: The pretty popular Nations DB which lets you play with the national teams has now gone into the 2nd edition. It now has more teams completed, more graphics and more realistic stats than before.
PCM.daily League gets going: Slowly, the PCM.daily League has now started with most victories for Chuck who - at this point - leads the standings. If you want to read more about the races you can check out Chuck's blog which describes the races ridden: http://www.pcmdaily.com/infusions/member_pages/blog/blog.php?readmore=8&site_id=45
You can also participate yourself. Start by reading the rules, register for the league and search for players at the forum. Good luck!
Also notice that we're currently working on finding a prize for the guy who's leading the table at the end of January.
Cyanide Forum Awards has started: The yearly awards at the official forum has started. These results will show who's been the best at making different kinds of updates for PCM, f. e. databaes, shirts, stages, etc. - and it'll also show who has the best humour, and who in general has been the best member of the community - the winner of the "Member of the Year"-award.
First poll ends - still trust in the world of cycling: Our first poll has ended - you can find the exact results by clicking the "Poll Archieve"-link at the bottom of the current poll.
The first poll surprisingly showed that people still trust today's cyclists even after the Puerto case which is still to have a real outcome. 33 % answered that they thought that only between 6 and 20 percent of the cyclists are doped. The second highest vote-winner was "Between 81 and 99 %" - so it seems as if the Puerto Affair has splited the fans in two. 8 % voted that the thought all cyclists were doped.
General site updates: - As mentioned earlier, we'll be down on Tuesday, but actually I also noticed that we had some down time during the night between the 1st and the 2nd - most weren't awake at that time, but I sat in a plane from USA to Denmark, so I didn't really have anything else to do ;)
- You can now view the latest 8 topics at the front page - on request from a member of the site, Thomas.
- The rules of the PCM.daily League has been updated a little to avoid confusion on some points.
Today, we added a new, interesting file to our Downloads-archieve - it's the Save Game Editor, made by Jape. People usually fiddled with all kinds of converters to f.e. change their riders' morale, the sponsor's confidence, etc., but with this new tool you can forget about converters. It's very easy to use - as Jape says: "Even a chimp should be able to handle it."
The design of it is also very "understandable" and sensible. The screens are designed, so that everybody is able to understand what they are about to change. The editor can be found in our downloads section. Click "Read more" to see screenshots of the program.
Due to relocation of the webserver on which your site resides, your website will not be available for approx. 2-3 hours.
The relocation of your webserver is scheduled to happen somewhere between 18:00 and 05:00 Tuesday night (5th of December).
We apologize for any inconvenience this might cause."
I know it's not the best way to start a website, but as you can see there's not really much I can do. As the e-mails says, we apologize for any inconvenience this might cause.