Hi there, everyone! My name is Kot and I represent a very small sect of the internet known as Picture Wars (or Pixel Wars, but nobody else likes that name sadly ;_; ). We are a very close-knit community that is sadly in desperate need of resuscitation due to several events that took place with the servers that caused a lot of our players to leave. I apologise to the administrators of Bay12 and understand if it has to be moved or deleted due to breaching of rules.
What is Picture Wars?
Picture Wars, often abbreviated to PW, is a forum set up some time in 2010 that primarily focuses on artwork and storytelling, specifically in pixel art. The game of Picture Wars is one where a person builds a pixel army and then pits them in a deathmatch between one or more other players and their army. These armies can range in shape, time setting and size(The standard size is roughly 10 by 25, but larger or smaller sizes are both acceptable but remember that the maps the community has made often include doors fit for the standard size). Everything from aliens riding dinosaurs to warrior bugs are present in our community. The sprite armies include vehicles, aircraft, spaceships and the infantry for the army, surface navy is rarely included due to very rare navy matches. Additionally, if a member chooses they may set up lore for their soldiers or why they are in a specific match and fighting the other army.
What are the rules?
Forum rules can be viewed
hereMatch rules are often at the discretion of the two or more users who are engaged in said match, or the person who is in charge of that match (Say, in a free for all which contains many players). There are several types of matches a player can engage in:
1v1, PPW, DTK, Civ and
RP are the most common amongst these match types. Each one shares a few common rules, you can't interfere or move another players sprites unless under exceptional circumstances. I.E. a player has left the match and requested that someone else take his sprites out of the match. It should be noted that this rule does not apply to projectiles such as bullets or grenades. You have to let at least some bullets impact your sprites, and your sprites can't be overpowered to the point that they're impossible to kill. Use common sense when applying these rules.
1v1 matches are often agreed to between two players and are usually turn based where one player does his turn and then the other - until a specific end goal has been completed such as all of one players army has been defeated or a point has been captured (This is technically
DTK – Defend the Keep).
PPW, or
Planetary Picture Wars, is a gamemode similar to a Free for all or a 1v1 but the game itself takes place in a space setting and rather than ground infantry and tanks, spaceships and fighters are used instead.
Free for All matches are quite different. In terms of rules, they're similar to all other matches but in terms of gameplay, they're very different. One player has to place a declare on a turn (by posting 'declare'). This means that they have placed 'dibs' on taking the next turn and will do their move. Another player may declare on top of anothers declare, meaning they will take their turn after the current person – This is called 'Double declaring' or 'stack declaring', and it's usually bad to go over 3 stack declares due to the confusion that may ensue. If a declare was taken more than 2 to 3 hours ago without a response by the declarer, the declare is considered null and the game continues unless there are no stack declares ahead of them.
RP, or
roleplaying match is exactly as it says on the tin. Often these matches have you control the movements of a single character based off of a template, rather than an army. Again a specific goal is often in the mind of the games creator, whether that be to escape a facility or to just go to work. Once this goal has been reached the game ends. Sometimes, the creator may become, or give someone else the role of, a 'dungeon master'. The role of this DM is to control outside forces, normally adversaries or civilians that the player has to attack or defend.
The final type of match is the
Civ matches. To put it into a short summary, here's a now famous among the community quote from a former member, Cheshire
'For those who don't know about the Civilization gamemode, which was originally developed on Facepunch Studios:
Civilization, or Civ for short, is a unique type of gamemode developed by Penguinnnnnn... something, back when I first started Pixel Wars. Around early 2010, I believe.
Joining users create their own little map and build structures, forge alliances, go to war, and etc.
How to tie all these maps together? The World Map.
The World Map is a grid of tiles, and each tile represents a user's map.
Armies move between these tiles and stuff like that. 'The gamemode involves a world map, usually a 3 by 3 grid. When a player joins, they will draw in and take up one of these spots and occupy it with a small force. They will then build up this square (On a 2D map, rather than the grid map) in any way they want. This is done freely so there is no need to declare, until another player comes into your grid then it turns into similar rules to 1v1. If more than 2 players are in the same square the players have to declare. It should be noted that not everyone in a civ match is against one another and diplomacy between players is encouraged.
What is PW's history and what happened?
We started some time around late 2007/early 2008 in the forum Facepunch. At first we were integrated into the Facepunch Pixel Art sub-forum but after a few people got annoyed at us due to the larger amount of new threads we tend to post, we were moved into our own sub-forum. We were fairly quiet for a while and some people had made their own forums before we had our own sub-forum. Eventually, at some point in 2009/2010 we were subject to what we call 'the great purge'. Garry, the creator and administrator of Facepunch, had begun to delete specific sub-forums and the Picture Wars community, being one of the smallest sub-forums on the site, was inevitably cut too.
So we were forced to our knees and had to do what we must to survive and a plucky member, Elf, created our own forums using MyBB Forums that merged the Facepunch forums with the other forums. The problem was that we were left with no way to advertise our presence on the internet - we were losing way too many member and gaining way too little. The years passed and the job of administrator passed from Elf to Jacquerel. For about 3 years we had a steady membership, nobody really left or joined for too long and we were fine with that.
Then, 2014 rolled around and disaster struck. The MyBB forum platform we were hosting on was hit with DDOS after DDOS, we couldn't do anything but sit back as the providers tried their best to get their forums up and running. And each time we were taken down more and more people didn't return. By January 2015 we were down to 10 active members. By mid-year we were about 6. By this point, at late 2015, we're down to about 3 active posters. So... that's where you come in.
Why are you advertising to us?
I'm trying to advertise anyone that may enjoy our niche. Warhammer forums, Pixel Art forums, World Building, anywhere that I think would really enjoy what we do and generally have a friendly nature.
What if I can't draw/write?
Drawing and writing is perhaps the biggest part of PW, but it isn't necessary. We've had plenty of people coming here who say they can't draw or can't write and have come back a few months later with amazing pieces of work. One particular member I can think of is
Stefman. Sure he wasn't a bad artist, but he wasn't the best either. But by around a year later he has made some frankly astonishing pieces of work that never cease to amaze me. It never hurts to step outside of your comfort zone and try something new.
Can you show me some of your members' work?
Sure, here are some armies and some matches.
There is also a game ran in this very forum, you can check it out here. We also restarted it recently, you can check the more recent version here.How do I join?
1.
Check us out, see if you want to join.
2. Take a quick look at the
rules if you haven't already.
3.
Register.
4. Say hello in the
Introductions & Departures thread.
5. Get some inspiration from our current
WIP Armies Thread.
6. Join us in our
IRC Mibbit Channel.
7. Start making an army.
8.
Ask for a match.
Anything else I should know?
If you're not into pixel art, it's imperative that you should know to always save your pixel art as a PNG. JPEG files tend to compress and corrupt to data resulting in a mess of colours that can't be used in pixel art. It's recommended that you use Graphics Gale (or Paint.net or something similar, but regular MSPaint will do) to edit your artwork as it allows for much more precise movements. Lastly, try and find a good image hosting site. While Imgur is good it tends to replace the files once it goes over the file limit and after about a year of being hosted there it may have been replaced with another file. Smaller file hosting sites such as Cubeupload or Gyazo tend to be much better.
That's all. I hope to see some of you very soon.
Thanks to Trifon for actually writing this wall of text.
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Topic: Picture Wars (Read 5700 times)