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I'm glad to see XC is still alive and kicking. This place will always hold a place in my heart, and without is there wouldn't be dn, devpro, or any of those other knock offs. They did it better, but we did it first.

have a great day! 

Here we go!

All the LESSONS in game have a step-by-step on the upper screen, so we draw on the touch screen.

 

We start the game with an "admission exam", drawing a Pikachu/Froakie/Piplup face with nothing but pastel crayons.

Then we go through the Beginner course, where we draw upon a layer of outlines... This isn't so interesting, so I won't post those pictures.

 

The Novice course is a bit more challenging, where we draw upon basic shapes (and start to use other tools, shadow effects). Now, this still isn't the same as drawing by myself, yet we are much more free to work on details.

 

After that we have Graduate lessons, starting with a blank layer. Of course, we still have the step-by-step, but now it's real work!

 

Actually, it's possible to "cheat" by requiring the basic shapes and even the outlines, but I don't do that. >_>

 

 

I really liked some results in my Novice course. Keep in mind the backgrounds are added by the game. <.<

 

Snivy with pencil tool.

 

Chimchar with the regular marker tool.

 

Eevee with pencil tool.

 

Pumpkaboo with marker tool.

 

Lugia with paintbrush tool.

 

The "final exam" (but not different from a lesson, really): Pikachu with pencil and paintbrush tools!

Just. Let. This. Place. DIE ALREADY!!!!!!!!!!! You already killed off half the damn reason people came here in the first place when you got rid of YuGiOh.. Just pull the damn trigger and get it over with.. 

 

If you really didn't care you wouldn't come on just to be a whiny little bitch.

This is dumb. the forum and site is dead. This is pointless.

I can save it though.

I have been working on something during my hobby hours with Unreal Engine. Don't quite have the exact direction that i want to go with it.

But it deals with a life size duel arena

 

I'm not going to go around and stir things up, but if you think it's pointless, why even bother making a contribution? There is some things going on behind the scenes that I can't mention but I wouldn't consider us out  of the count. The direction with all these "revival" attempts were just something that couldn't be done. I think DarkBlaze was the only worthy contender but with the amount of negativity going on, he was just getting stressed (which may or may not of been the case, just how I saw it). I have some plans going forward but right now we need to focus on one thing that will bring people in and not a mound of projects that will have everyone confused to as what's going on. Baby steps. Throwing too much on the plate is going to get us nowhere. Recreate an identity, stick with it to draw more people in or bring people back, then add something new. We've all moved on from YVD and accepted it's death. Jesse and storyteller are doing a great job trying to keep people interested. I want to expand more into M:TG. It's a dream that I could achieve with a little time, effort, and dedication. I'm sure someone is going to ask why I'm not a mod or admin or whatever since bringing these ideas on board. Right now, time is something I can't control. After my cancer treatment is finished, I can dedicate more time into this place. I was planning on raiding in WoW again but since the guild I was in died until next expansion, I can really put some time in here.

 

There was some that told me I should just move on and leave this place behind. Sadly, I can't. Most of my past came from this place and I would like to be the one to say "Yeah I was that asshole troll back in the day but look, people can change and do great things!" It was a pleasure to be able to finally get a moderator position as the M:TG mod for a while but life took over. It happens. However, the way I have my life planned out on stone now, I want to put more of my resources here. It's not dead. Just needs a purpose again.

 

 

TL:DR I care for this place too much to let it die. It's not dead. If you have nothing positive to say then don't say anything at all. Honestly, there's been more activity here then when Setever tried to do too many things at once.

 

His ideas were good on paper, but were they needed? If there's one thing I learned in life it's question everything. Gives you a better understanding of the situation. 

Not all of us are debating, some are just watching with popcorn in hand.

It was bound to happen sooner or later, I suppose. No, I don't care that this is a necro of sorts. I...guess you could say I feel obligated to speak of it one last time. 'twas fun while it lasted...well, for most of it, anyway.

Okay. Well here are my 6 cents. The situation though hopeful looks bleak. There can be a comeback. But it won't happen just from small changes here and there. These have to be changes that have IMPACT.

 

1) Services 

 

In my opinion i think XC should become a service. Just like how MS is becoming a service now.

As setever has outlined. I do like the direction of the deck builder for all TCG. I also believe its being made for the web. Well that is vital,

If its standalone executable it will fail. Anything standalone in terms of online F2P will fail in this day and age, unless it comes in form of a app and that is where windows 10 comes in.

 

2) Deck Builder App on All Platform

 

I believe you also need a deck builder app for windows 10. With 10 being universal; meaning the same apps will run on the desktop, tablet, phone and console. That is alot of market you are reaching that will point back to XC. People can build decks from anywhere and then you can have addition features like rulings, combo, suggestions.

 

Like an Office Suite. The goal should be to provide as many services as you can.

 

3) TCG related NEWS

 

News relating to TCG should be headlined on the main page. Take for example hololens that was just revealed.

Alot of talk have been circulating about its potential for dueling and pokemon battles. These news angle are what needs to be covered on XC. Brings in fresh breathe and leads to fruity discussions.

 

These are in-direct TCG related news. When people search keywords like dueling with hololens.

XC becomes #1 site that comes up. They read the news, they like the speculations, the discussion and the proposed concepts and ideas.

They are now thinking, let me save or register for this site, because when a software does arise or additional news concerning a new yugioh software in relation to VR/AR. They will be on top of it and i will be informed.

 

4) Cover related Games

 

Cover games, there are a few games that have been released, MTG, pokemon something. write about phenomenons like the viewers playing pokemon on twitch.

 

Remember you are looking for exciting stories and news that will incite rich discussion and clicks from google and interest from new visitors. You won't keep any new visitor ten seconds if your main news on the main page is from 3 months ago.

 

5) Site redesigned

 

Its too basic and is lacking content. That doesn't mean overload it or even make it TCG or yugioh centric.

But it should be a richer experience and not just a bunch of text slapped onto a brown background.

There needs to be icons, and the works..

 

6) Creative-Dueling

 

Whatever name you want to call it. It must happen. 

All successful business or ideology has a defining product.

A flagship product. I have a few ideas, but i will keep my mouth shut for now.

Just because I used DevPro Stomach doesn't mean I like it.

Never have I ever said I've never used it.

Get your facts straight.

 

Alternatively you could say "I have used it before, but that doesn't mean I like using it", and left it at that.

 

I know, hostility can be fun and relieving, but it's unnecessary. Especially here when we're just trying to find a solution and throw ideas around to keep the tournament going.

 

Kinda saw this coming.

 

Would a client-side script solve this problem? DN won't host the images, but people still have access to them via the interwebs like they always have. A quick javascript script to overlay while using DN could make this fixed pretty easily. Run DN, then run your javascript snippet and viola. Like SparkyFlary said, it'd be kind of an underground thing. I'm not a lawyer, but the script would essentially be an aggregator of images, and even if XC were to host it, I don't imagine there could be any legal action done. Making this script would take an intermediate javascript user a total of 30 minutes? BTW I didn't actually read the C&D so I dunno.

 

Just some thoughts; I'll go back to being disappeared now. 

Nice idea. Love the last part.

 

 

 

man, we know you never liked him but just drop it, you've come so far

Might as well get this down while it's still somewhat fresh in my mind. Some of these will come to most as "Well duh" but hear me out.

 

First off, in order for any of this to even have a slim chance of succeeding, everyone has to work as a unit. IE: Teamwork! I know, I know. Secondly, I'm not going to push for it until I get my computer fixed. This laptop can only do so much. I'm hoping tomorrow but anything can happen.

 

 

So what do I have in mind? Expansion. Moving beyond most people's comfort zones. Take a step back and look at us. Do you honestly believe this site can be revived just with Yu-Gi-Oh! as a base? Maybe. With YVD still in it's reigns? Absolutely not. Just accept it. YVD is dead. Deader then anything. Deader then the dead horse I use to beat in between meals. I don't follow Yu-Gi-Oh! anymore so someone is going to have to bring me up to speed on other dueling applications. I'm aware of DevPro and DN, but those are the only two I know about (and I would just assume the only two that matter). So we can use one or both as a base to find opponents. We can still make this a dueling site, a trading site, a whatever we used to be without YVD. I know someone is going to come out and say "XC was founded on YVD." True, but XC was founded upon the idea of people being creative. We can still make other applications or art or anything really. And why does it have to be YGO? There are other TCG's out there. I'm becoming more and more active in the M:TG community and trying to learn Modern and Standard, as well as Legacy as I generally play Commander. I'm trying to expand into applications like cockatrice, maybe take a look at M:TG Online, delve into the steam games (which are not limited to), go beyond the limit of knowledge for the game. Even rulings. Hell, playing in Commander pods at my LGS gives me new information everytime I play. And not just M:TG. Cardfight Vanguard, Chaotic, Duel Masters (is it dead?), Force of Will (which is trending), Legend of the Five Rings (for you old people), Netrunner, Pokemon TCG (which has picked up a lot of steam recently), Warcraft (TCG is dead, but Hearthstone exists). All these are available. Pick the big three: YGO, M:TG, Pokemon. If we (the XC community) want to exist as a TCG site, these would be the three to use. As a fourth, use a other TCG forum. I know Force of Will is becoming popular (how much is still unknown to me), and some people still play Duel Masters and LotFR. Or just make subforums for a community vote on which other TCG's we can showcase. However, I don't think TCG's will be enough.

 

Expanding beyond TCG's is what I'm after. Gaming, art, developers (one can dream can't they?), etc. There is always an artistic part of any community, so art is a given, but gaming can be brought in and expanded over time. So we have two sections. TCG and Games. Expanding into the TCG community is easy... well easier then the gaming community. Both require effort. Advertise, but be discrete about it. We don't want to take people away. We want to bring new people in and have another place to go for others. Anyway, back to my point. Some ways to expand into gaming is tournaments for certain games like Team Fortress 2, Hearthstone, WoW (Arenas or even raiding), CS:GO, League of Legends, etc, etc. I wouldn't start too big. Start small. Maybe one or two games to start then expand once we gather more people in. Streaming can also help. I stream games and can advertise that way. Having active streamers is another way to bring in people, though picking up popularity that way is also another challenge in itself.

 

So reshifting the topic a bit, having too large of a focus will be too overwhelming for new people, but having a small focus will only lock ourselves to a specific group of people while having no expansion at all. I think the problem that XC had over time was it never really expanded (though it certainly tried) into other areas. There used to be a small M:TG community here back in the day, when I first joined in 2006, and I thought it was well received to some. Dr. Tom, Farseer, SwingBlade, and a few others including n00bdragon all had their part. I started getting involved towards the tail end of that little group. Down the road, I asked DarkChaos to bring it back and let me manage it, but it was hard to keep people interested. Then life caught up and had n00bdragon take over for a while. I believe if we want to reshape the forums, then leave Pokemon out for now and take the focus to YGO and M:TG. If people are willing to learn Magic, I can teach them on Cockatrice. For gaming? Maybe make clans in certain games. TF2, CS, make a guild in WoW that specializes in only PVP. The sky is the limit, but only limit what games we are focusing. I started a Zombie Survival clan in Garry's Mod in 2008, and with brute force and determination, I managed to recruit over 50 members. Sure it started off slow, but it quickly picked up steam. Sure the name of the clan was corny (during the time anyway, we were kids), but we all had fun. We tried expanding into making our own server instead of the resident server we stayed on, that didn't work too well. Tried a forum, didn't work too well. We experimented, didn't like it, stayed with the basics. Eventually everyone grew up. It happens. If I could go back and recruit new people I would. Anything is possible.

 

So there's some ideas to work with, but what about forums structure? Our current members? Other ideas? Pitch your input. Give me criticism. Mold the clay I gave you guys and shape it into something creative.

 

Forum structure? Simple.

-Xerocreative Main

--News

--Heldesk

---Introductions (Should only be a subforum)

---Application Help (This forum may be redundant, can keep help threads in other forums)

---Site Help

---(open to ideas)

 

-Yu-Gi-Oh!

--Devpro/DN

--Real-Life Trading

--Discussion Forum (Tourny Threads would be stickied, or super sub forum if it's possible)

--Decklists (Tag decks with formats)

 

-Magic: The Gathering

--M:TG Online

--Cockatrice (Keep them separate. One uses money and the other is free and open source. We can also only focus on one. Cockatrice > M:TGO)

--Real-Life Trading

--Discussion Forum (Tourny threads would be stickied)

--Decklists (Tag decks with formats)

 

-Video Gaming

--Console Gaming (Super sub forum for specific consoles)

--PC Gaming (Super sub forum for tech help and dev pages)

--Mobile Gaming (iPhones and Droids. Yes, there is a mobile gaming community surprisingly)

--(forums dedicated to specific games if there is a playerbase big enough to warrant it, ie clans)

 

-General Discussion

--Water Cooler (basically any other threads go here, real world stuff)

--Creative Arts(subforums for GFX and Creative Writing)

--Blogs

--Dev Forum (if needed)

 

-Mod Forum

--(I'm sure mods knows what goes here)

 

 

I know I brought up other TCG's/CCG's. If there is a demand for it, then another separate forum would be created for others, but all bundled. If there would be, for example, a pokemon community consisting of more then 25 members that were all active, then I would create a forum for it. It's expanding conservatively while not expanding too much. Again, this layout is not a final thing I'd throw out for the sake of throwing out and trying something without input from other members.

 

The other question that would probably get brought up is my experience with IPB. It's... mediocre, but I have worked with it and used the Admin panel once before. Coding, however, isn't my strong suit. Am I suited to be admin? That's not my decision to make. I'm just merely putting something out there for people to use, expand, and pitch in ideas. DarkBlaze tried something, Setever tried something, and now I'm trying something. This is just a rough draft. Ideas for trying to advertise is something I'll be working on this week.

 

 

Now, before I hit the "Post New Topic" button, I want to make one thing clear. Keep the discussions civil. If you can't do at least that, then we can't move forward as a team and as a community. I need everyone's effort. Ideas and criticism (tame) is welcomed but trolling and calling people idiots and saying there idea is bad because you don't like it is not. If I have to give a lesson on constructive criticism and well, though-out posts, then obviously I don't need to waste my time trying to make everyone work together.

I'm pretty sure this is a bit of a necro, but I don't even care: I was part of this for quite a while, but life eventually led me off to do other things, and I forgot about this for quite a while, in part because the state of the main YGO game just doesn't have me as interested in Yu-Gi-Oh anymore...

 

But regardless, I always had a lot of fun with the XCG, duelling people when I could, making tons of cards (which I still have laying around!) and so on. So I'm sad to see it go, even if it makes sense given how dead it has been.

 

So farewell, XCG, you served us well and provided great fun for many years. And who knows, if Xerocreative itself gets more activity, maybe you or something like you will rise from the ashes...

Gurl I'm saying you gots da pregnants

Episode Eight Hundred Thirty Three

Reflection

 

 

 

I find myself thinking about this place a lot. There have been so many people I've met, friends I've made, memories that I enjoy. There have been a lot of people that have come through this site that have touched me in some way or another: made me into a better person. I grew up here. 

 

As I reminisce about this place in my head, I find myself going back through old threads and reading things; laughing about distant memories and remembering people that are gone. But going through these threads, I read what I posted back then, and the first thing that comes to mind is: HOLY BALLS WHAT WAS I THINKING? 

 

I wish I knew what this was called: going back and reading things that you've written in the past with a different thought process, a different maturity, and being embarrassed, frankly. I first joined this place when I was fifteen years old. I grew up a pretty sheltered child, being from a pretty small town and coming from a humble family. My family never traveled anywhere, and the Internet wasn't a thing for me until I was thirteen. I'm a lot like most of you here: introverted, mostly. Actually, I qualify as an ambivert, but close enough. Being a pretty isolated person most of the time left me unaware of so many things about the world and left me socially awkward. I made up for that in being overly confident and self-shaming for humor's sake. I always knew that much about myself, but coming back on here and re-reading it all really shoved that back in my face. And holy crap was that embarrassing for me.

 

It's nice to see just how far I've grown as a person, though. Reflecting back on major turning points in my life and seeing how that changed how I interacted with people back then is super interesting to me. But the most amazing thing to realize is just how much I've grown more recently. Sure, I can read a post from 10 years ago and be like, "Fuck me I was an idiot back then." But it's different when you read a post from 2 years ago and think the same thing. Because at my age, 2 years isn't very much time at all. I've been working at this University for 2 years and it feels like I started yesterday. So when making that comparison, I think the same thing when I read posts from 2 years ago. "That was just yesterday. Fuck me I was an idiot."

 

Going back and reminiscing because you miss people is great, I love doing it. But going back and re-reading things I've done for some self-reflection is new to me, and it's a little strange. I can actually go back and analyze every little thing that affected me at any specific time, how much I've learned and grown since then, how naive I used to be. Seeing how every interaction and event changed you and looking at it almost in real-time is baffling.

 

I guess what I'm trying to get at is maybe 2 years is a longer time than it feels like. Any span of time can change a person so long as events occurred that allowed them to grow. And self reflection can always be turned into a positive in a quick amount of time, so long as you make it so.

 

Also, I miss a lot of people from here and wish they were still a part of my life. Breaks my heart that some of them are gone. No shout-outs. :)

Thank you all, guys. <3

 

And here I start the Graduate course!

LESSONS are still step-by-step, but we start with a totally blank screen! We still are guided to draw the basic shapes, though.

New techniques are taught, and we have more freedom to choose the colors.

 

 

Remember, the backgrounds are from the game (yet).

 

 

 

Vulpix with pastel (+ smudge tool)

 

Lapras with marker (shadow with outline pen)

 

Lucario with marker (shadow with outline pen)

It's been awhile.

I've had a shitton happen.

Let's start from the top.

I have a PS4 now. You people should add me. IGN is KotovBestPony.

I ended up moving out of my house, since my parents were moving out. Luckily for me, my "sick" friend who was bedridden for 3 months got kicked out after not being able to pay the rent since he hadn't been to work in 3 months. I say "sick", because he was perfectly fine until anyone asked him to do anything. He also broke the sink in the bathroom with his beard hair. I still haven't tried fixing that.

So I moved in with the people who put up with him, and I've just been chilling ever since. Work sucks, but such is life.

I've given up on just about every TCG, since A. the card shop here became a complete shithole, and B. bringing them up around the previous owner of said card shop tends to make him a bit on the mopey side, with the exception of the pony card game, and Magic, since he's wanting to start playing that again.

But other than that, life has been pretty chill. Got everything I need here, planning a second trip to Florida around Spring Break, and above all, I have cats around me.

...They're complete assholes. Except for Fatty. She's adorable.

Fuck I'm bad at ending these.

...Yeah.

Why you're saying things is just as important, if not more important, than what it is you're saying.

Unfortunately, he's probably going to keep doing it until there are repercussions. Like a swift hard ban hammer to the head.

no it's not okay to give up, not after everything you've accomplished at this point. you've been through a lot and you continue to go through so much. after all of this is said and done, you're going to be a much stronger person than you once were.