Avara.com -- the phoenix rises

As some of you may or may not know, the AmbrosiaSW.com web site, as well as all of our product web sites, have undergone a complete redesign of late. This includes Avara.com -- thank you all for your patience with us in this process; the final pieces are now falling into place.

This eMail is to let you know where the new Avara.com stands, and what you can do to help bring it to fruition. First, the URL:
(url="http://"http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/games/avara/")http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/games/avara/(/url)

This page serves as both a product page, and as the new Avara.com web site -- in other words, (url="http://"http://www.Avara.com/")http://www.Avara.com/(/url) and (url="http://"http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/Products/Avara.html")http://www.AmbrosiaS...ucts/Avara.html(/url) will both point to this web site as soon as we believe it is ready for mass consumption. As such it must cater to two goals: a) selling the game Avara to new customers and being a recurring resources for existing Avara players.

The links under the "Options" heading are all managed by Ambrosia Software, Inc. The links under "Resources" are managed by folks from the Avara community, with assistance from Ambrosia. Here's how you can help:

--> The main page: I'm open to suggestions for the main page, but by in large, it will stay as it is -- the links under "Options" and "Resources". The page could probably use something under the mech picture (I was thinking of a cool Horizon screenshot from Avara -- though I'm reluctant to add more images to the page), but I'm not quite sure what yet. It's pretty good as is.

--> Screenshots: If you have any cool screenshots from Avara games, level designs, anything Avara-related, email them to me at: andrew@AmbrosiaSW.com along with a one or two sentence caption, and I'll throw it up into the screenshots section. The goal of this area is to give casual visitors a place to see cool shots of what the game has to offer.

--> Reviews: If you find a review of Avara on the web somewhere, submit the url to me at: andrew@AmbrosiaSW.com and I will post it. I certainly will be doing research on this myself, and posting what I find, but any assistance is certainly helpful. Just doing a Sherlock search on "Avara Review" will probably get some hits.

--> Newswire: Post any upcoming news you have here (click on the "Submit News" button) -- things like upcoming tournaments, level file set releases, web site debuts, etc. I am in need of a few people to handle reviewing news submissions, and releasing items to the Newswire with alacrity -- it's rather easy. Let me know if you are interested.

--> Chronicles: Post any strategy guides, rants about the Avara community, level design tutorials, fiction, level file reviews, etc. here -- I know there are a number of older stories out there, so if you can find them, and get permission to repost them, I think it could become a really nice resource for folks. Again, I am in need of a few people to review chronicle submissions and release them; it's very similar to handling the Newswire.

--> Web Board: This is the place for you folks to talk about Avara -- I am in need of a few people to help admin it (given the traffic, it should be quite easy to handle). The way to make this area interesting is to let people know about it, and get them coming to the web board.

--> Web Links: Anyone can add web links, but if a few people helped out by putting up the important web links, with good descriptions, it'd be very helpful. Basically, any Avara web sites/pages of decent content are game. An admin who will delete bogus links would be helpful, but probably not too necessary.

--> Add-On Files: Vetere (a name that may be familiar to some of you) has been working on the script for handling the Add-On Files area. It allows for multiple categories, file descriptions, ratings, download counts, etc. This area is not finished yet, but when it is, we'll definitely need help first getting the archives up to speed by putting up and describing existing content, and second, to handle reviewing and releasing new submissions.

Zebe has some special Avara-related pages; I'll let him put them in the /avara/ directory, and link them in via the Web Links area (while retaining permissions on the files so he can edit them) but other than that, all of the admining that needs to be done can be taken care of via a web browser, so it's fairly easy to handle.

I realize some of you have some pending Avara-related products/add-ons that you're probably dying to get out the door, but helping to build up a bit of infrastructure first might be a very good idea.

That about sums it's up -- let's get the ball moving!

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Andrew Welch / el Presidente / Ambrosia Software, Inc.

Quote

andrew wrote:
I know there are a number of older stories out there, so if you can find them, and get permission to repost them,

Heh, I guess that means Avara's own uber-author should go through his archives and try to ressurrect that crusty ol' peice of fiction known as Wide Open Spaces. Zebe and I had talked briefly about re-writing the series, clean up the (thousands of) mistakes, add some twists we never got around to doing, etcetera, etcetera. Perhaps this is a good time to, I thought the story was always a good extension to the game, if I ever got around to editing the pissant out of it.

sigh

-joshua 'achilles' bruce