I hope you all enjoyed Milano - San Remo. I didn't - I was stuck in a summer cottage in a dark part of Denmark which has never even heard of the word "internet" and / or "Eurosport" ;) Anyway, I hope you're all enjoying the Easter. If not, here's the 54th edition of the Weekly News ;)
Beta tests to start next week I got "back together" with Clément Pinget last week - something which PCMBenelux obviously have much harder with for some reason :P - and he told me that the beta tests of Pro Cycling Manager 2008 are probably going to begin in the upcoming week. The beta testers are most probably going to have to sign a non-disclosure contract, meaning that you won't be able to pressure us - the beta testers - to tell anything ;) And if you manage to do it anyway you can always use the information to get the beta tester fired. Believe me, I've tried ;)
ECDB closes down The German database team, ECDB, which has been pretty much invisible for PCM07, but was a quite popular team when making databases for PCM 06, has closed itself down. The lead person of the ECDB-team, Andi, has lost motivation - so, it's now closed down, including the English forums which until now has been our main rival ... with their 10-20 posts ;)
UCI NG DB - not a 08 DB! Yep, it has happened. It's Friday evening when I'm writing this, and at this point I'm yet to add a 2008 database to the download section. How amazing and unbelieveable is that? ;) Instead, I've had the pleasure of adding an imaginary database, the UCI NG DB. It's a DB made by our friend Rasmu89, Pereiro89, Evans89 and what else the guy has been calling himself the past few years. As said, it's a "partly" imaginary database. It has real riders, but no real teams. Instead, we have teams such as "Aldi Markt", "Red Bull", "Seat", etc.. With the package you get jerseys, mini-jerseys, accesories, etc. to give you the feel of actually having a "new world of cycling". So, if you're looking for something new, try this by downloading it here.
More new save games In one week, we have received three new save games to use with PCM 07. The first one is submitted by mrlol and is based on PCM Spain. Mrlol has led Quick Step to victory in "pretty much all Pro Tour-races". The World Championship in Belgium is coming up, and everyone are expecting your rider, Tom Boonen, to win the jersey on the flat parcours. If you're interesting in taking over, download it here - if you rather want to see how mrlol is doing with his team you can read his story here. The 2nd one is rather amazing. Shaft, a Danish member of the site, has submitted a save game which is in ... 2017 - yep, that's right. It is actually possible to get that far in PCM. The save game is based on the PCMGeeks DB, and you are controlling a CSC-team which is actually Danish. There's lots of Danish riders on the team including a (Danish) World Champion. This season, however, has not been too good, and the team will have to get some good results in the Tour de France which is just about to start - otherwise, 10 seasons of leading CSC is over. Keep in mind that there's a whole lot of information stored in the save game. This means that it's remarkably slower than normally, and especially on the 1st of July and the 1st of January it will take between 5 and 10 minutes (maybe longer) to proceed to the following day. If you're still interested it's downloadable from here. Last, but not least, we have our Tinkoff end-2008 game which is submitted by rjc_43. You're in August, the national championships have just been ridden, and there's still time for transfers although some have already been done. Contador signed for the team for this season and won the Tour de France ahead of Schleck by less than 0 seconds - so, you've got something to live up to for the upcoming season. The save game is based on the PCM Spain DB, and you can download it from here.
New site soon to be opened This is more of a "personal" message. I, CrueTrue, have been working on a new website for a while now. It's about my favourite band, the Gin Blossoms. Since there wasn't really any fanpage for them I thought I'd have to start my own, so for the past few months (it's been going so slowly ;)) I've been adding live material, etc. to the site, and it's now about to open - the domain will be http://www.gbfan.net , but it hasn't opened yet. I don't hope it will have any effect on my time here since it's more of a one-time job (compared to this one which is almost full time :P).
PCM.daily is searching for a programmer With 7500 users it should be possible to find just one programmer. PCM.daily is now searching for a programmer who's willing to help out the site by making a few new features. The current crew got lots of ideas, but don't have the neccessary skills needed to make the ideas real :) Therefore, if you're interested, send me, CrueTrue, a Private Message or contact me through the "Contact" form, MSN or E-Mail. We don't have any specific requirements (except programming skills), so just apply if you feel you will be able to help us.
Best luck to you all beta testers with the task. It's much earlier than most editions of PCM, so let's hope that means the game is bug-free and nice to be played. My mate Aroda is working there at Cya in Paris from two weeks ago.
1: Im awfully disappointed not to have gotten a beta-spot for "DB testing" issues In other news; ive once again failed to use a week off to write the Titan05 review. One day ill write a review, most likely a 2008 DB review.
2: I cant mention one ECDB project for some reason. I bet they've made a 2008DB
3: UCI NG? I will disagree with the fact of Aldi being capable of sponsoring a team that isnt complete crap
4: I like save games
5: I dont like Gin Blossoms as much as i like save games
6: Yes, i could do programming. And yes, i aspire to become a professional programmer. But my PHP skills could end up turning PCMdaily's server into a bomb capable of taking out the server room by accident ops:
AaB-ern posted like two days ago. So there you have a capable programmer.
Also, its not the difficulty of PHP that makes me stay away from it, but rather the fact that whenever im involved in something that will require data travelling from one end of a wire to another, things break.
Ive broke WoW (the client, not the server) with a LuA-script involving an alternative message system which the Gamemasters couldnt read because it didnt run over the official chat channels.
Ive bricked my printer using BASIC (not entirely sure how that happened )
Managed to break my friends GarrysMod client with bad LuA code too
Many attempts at modding the the open-source PHP game Dragster have left it totally unuseable, save the new-fangled home programmed shoutbox!
Ive also had limited sucess tooling with networking stuff in various open-source apps.
So, you can either have a capable programmer, or me
