Construction! Bring on TESA Media Et Al!

[DarkRider]

Hail folks!

Just updating here with a couple things we are actively working on and will be bringing to the site:

TESA Media: We're working on bringing TESA Media online, We've got it in place, but needs some reskinning before we can launch it. TESA Media will allow mod authors to upload their trailers and custom music tracks right here on site and embed them throughout the forums! No more hassling with external sites for your media hosting! In addition Voice Actors will be able to host their voice samples and never fear about an external site shutting down

Tracker Upgrade: We recently launched our project tracker, a TESA custom module based on IP Tracker, and the first of its kind to be opened and offered freely to modders for tracking bugs in their modding projects! Today we purchased a tracking alternative and will be upgrading our current tracker to this much more stable and user friendly version. Because our current tracker is based on IP Tracker (which is in beta, known for a lot of inherent bugs and issues) it just can't provide the stability modders need and deserve so look for that upgrade soon!

Modding Contests: We will be hosting a lot of new modding contests in the near future after receiving requests for more challenges like our annual Halloween challenge, we're happy to oblige. We have 3 challenges planned for what remains of 2012, with more to follow so watch the News Stand and TESA blog for those announcements!

TESA Chat Room We've brought the old chat room back to TESA, though for those of you who have been with us long enough to remember the old chat room you'll notice it's been updated quite a bit since then! In the early days of TESA we simply didn't have enough traffic to justify a need for a chat room AND a shoutbox. Since the shouty was more pronounced on site and seemingly more popular we kept it. Now, things have changed. We're bringing the chat room back for a few reasons but chief among them is to loosen the chat hold we have to maintain in the shoutbox because it's on our index. We sometimes curb convos that are not painting the site in a flattering way because it's one of the first things our guests see while deciding if they'd like to sign on to this madhouse. We wanted to give our users an alternate outlet for some of those more raucous convos (though please don't read that as free for all, we will still be monitoring rule violations, there are just looser rules in the chat room).

We also wanted to give mod authors a way to be able to collaborate real time with their friends on site, and that can be done in the chat room. During quieter hours, mod authors are free to hog the chat room with their dev chat, start private chats with their friends, Project Leaders can even schedule a meeting during which we will close the chat room to their Team only so they can participate in a scheduled collaboration.

Not everyone can private chat in the chat room, just for security reasons, only users with colored tags or members of the new chat room group can participate in private chats. Do not ask to be added to the chat room group unless you've been here actively longer than 6 months, we need to get to know you before giving you access to private chat.

[DarkRider]

I've updated this thread to allow questions, comments and suggestions on our newest features in the wings.