The 3D gizmo is a superb concept, I highly approve of those entries. 
Also, welcome!
Minos you're not the first to express concern about the deadline, I was worried it might be a little tight as obviously we all have jobs to hold down. I'm going to extend it by one week and will adjust the original post accordingly, as obviously it's in the best interests of everyone if as many people can enter as possible. This is the only extension there'll be, though. :derp:
Happy birthday! 
Agreed the apple logos are superb.
Haha. I have to admit, I love Frie's. The faux posh look totally suits MapCore's style.
Klein and others: if you want something that is very similar to the current logo or uses elements of past designs that's fine, like I said there're no limits on creativity — and that includes simply refreshing the current design. It's the community that will decide after all.
We just want a new logo that's a bit better put together (practically impossible to do anything with the old files) and that the community is happy with. 
Shit, after that I don't think there's any point in continuing this competition! 
Important: The deadline has been extended by one week until Thrik says otherwise!
OK guys, you asked for it so you're getting it. 
MapCore's ULTIMATE CHALLENGE is now underway: to design a new logo for MapCore. This will used in the upcoming redesign and expansion of the forums, as well as a line of fine garments you may purchase for you and everyone you love.
As the logo will hopefully be used until the apocalypse, it needs to be right. Therefore those interested have two weeks to come up with something, and there are no limits on creativity — it doesn't have to resemble the current logo. In fact, we'd rather it didn't.
The prize: a high-quality t-shirt or small mounted print (to be designed afterwards) featuring your logo. You'll also be clearly credited for your contribution on the site, and will enjoy the warm fuzzy feeling of having given something so important to the community.
Once all entries have been received I will go through and remove any not fitting the below requirements, then the community will choose the final logo.
This stuff is really important:
You'll also want to keep in mind:
Enjoy! All who have entries selected for voting will most likely get some kind of permanent contribution badge/tag once the new design and that feature are implemented.
Can't fault Google+ technically, although it is remarkably similar to Facebook is pretty much every single way.
Going to be a tall order convincing people to switch when they've already invested so many photos, posts, etc into Facebook — although an importer from Facebook's 'download your profile' feature may sweeten the deal.
Having been using Google+ in some depth and exploring all its features I just can't see a compelling reason to use it. The only real plus (lol) it has over Facebook is the fact it's quite easy to separate what content goes to what groups (friends, family, public like a blog), but that functionality is already in Facebook apart from the latter, and Facebook will inevitably make it easier to use now they've seen Google's example.
It can't be denied that Google+ looks the business, and although the interface is kind of boring on the eyes it's very well laid out and the usability is superb. Again though, these are relatively minor things for Facebook to address. And it's not like Google+ can take much credit here: for the most part Google+ is completely based upon the design ideas and layout concepts Facebook has spent years creating and fine-tuning. All it's done is add some polish and introduce novel ways of doing certain things.
It's almost like a small team took Facebook, redesigned it, and then put it out as a different product. This wouldn't be the first time Google's done this with Gmail being a rather obvious example. But unlike Gmail (massive storage), Google+ has no killer feature that makes it easy to describe to your average user in five words or less why it's worth using over Facebook. 
This is a true revolution IMO. Obviously it's going to make things a lot easier for casual photographers, but it's also good for professionals — and indeed, at the price point it's likely to debut at I'd be very surprised if it's anything but pros using it initially. I mean, how useful is it going to be to be capable of touching up focus fuck-ups when filming? Being able to experiment with different focuses on a single photo rather than having to decide prior to shooting it? Often once the moment's gone it's too late to sort these things out unless all you do is shoot macro objects.
I think your camera is doing something different, twiz. There's no shutter lag with Lytra because there's no shutter process — traditional focus/exposure delays are no longer relevant. There shouldn't be artifacts either, and it should perform far better than any traditional camera out there even when lighting is minimal. There're even less parts in the camera because most of the work is done by a single light field sensor and software does the rest. This is one of those rare innovations where there are literally no downsides, only positives.
There's nothing like this on any existing camera AFAIK, it's existed only in theoretical/experimental forms for a long time. It's the future of cameras and will completely obsolete all existing approaches, even though I'm sure every camera manufacturer will very quickly start debuting their own takes on the concept.
Here's a basic run-down of the new type of sensor it includes BTW:
http://www.lytro.com/science_inside
And here's a more objective look at the technology:
The forum home page is definitely going to enjoy an extensive reworking sarge mat, at the moment I'm waiting on the things I mentioned on the first page but it'll be good stuff.
As for the competition, a most splendid idea. We're briefly discussing in the staff forum how to coordinate it and do all the donation stuff, should get this going within a few days. The support and love in this thread is most appreciated by all so on behalf of all MapCore mod and admin types: thanks guys!!
And yes, the cube/cog theme can safely be abandoned; no need to let past conventions limit creativity.
Merch is a great idea, if there are existing designs still knocking around I can use those or alternatively we can get new ones put together. Then when we all meet up we can wear them and look like some company on a day out or something.
Sweet fucking jesus, what a minefield. Makes working with Valve tools sound like a cinch.
Flower was nothing like Snake... it was just an exploration/collection game driven forward by cinematic weirdness. Closer to an adventure game than anything else in that respect.
To be honest I'm like Frie in that I'm only very loosely grasping the point being argued in this thread. Is it that game designers — who typically always think their work is the best thing since sliced bread and will usually be a little generous when describing it — shouldn't try to excite people about their work? Or is that they should forget the theatrics and just release gameplay trailers which can do the talking (which is incidentally what thatgamecompany does)?
You're right that there's a lack of entirely fresh ideas in the industry, but then the games industry is quite similar to the music and film industries in that respect: it's primarily driven by trends and iteration, and while any one segment of 3–5 years might seem very lacking in innovation, if you actually compare segments of 5–10 years you'll find they're very distinct.
There's no problem with the industry's evolution IMO, in fact gameplay is getting more varied than ever with the advent of motion detection and other peripherals. All TGC is trying to do is get people to try weird concepts they wouldn't ordinarily touch by making them sound cool and look all artsy fartsy.
To be fair, all they've done is release a gameplay trailer — it's other people who've gone crazy and hyped the crap out of its visuals, and to be honest it's fairly justified because the game is genuinely beautiful.
Looks quite interesting. Has wonderful art direction, and the gameplay concept sounds novel if perhaps a little limited in how far it can go — but then that applies to most indie games. I can't help but want to see the next Zelda game use such a style rather than the uninspiring approach Nintendo's gone for.
Gotten banned from Paypal?
I'm not sure, I'll look around and see if I can use anything like Google Checkout as options. Otherwise I'm sure I can arrange some kind of cheque thing, not sure I've not looked too deeply into it before. But if the support is there I'll make sure there's a way of supplying that support ASAP.
Donations would actually be very much appreciated. I've toyed with the idea of ads and stuff like that to make some of the costs back, but I'm not willing to degrade the forums like that so if people are actually interested in donating I'll put a donation link in the design and you can do so at your discretion — anything received will go straight back into hosting costs and time as they pretty much just come out of my pocket and have done for years. 
When I have a little time I might integrate a donation user group so people who do so get some privileges of some kind, like a gay custom title. 
The move to a proper dedicated node is long overdue as the forums do consume a fair whack of resources, the only thing actually holding it back is some complications with the domain registrar due to the process of moving it from Mike's account to mine (he's been too busy with DNF crunching and shit to devote too much time to what is a very convoluted process) — however we're working on these and like I say am pretty confident it'll be sorted this month.
I do thank you all for your patience, I know I've been promising some things for quite some time and haven't been able to deliver yet. I do not like this. 
But things will pick up once the aforementioned is done, especially now I've moved home and have a proper computer space for getting serious business done. I know exactly what I'm going to do and have rough mock-ups and such set out, but there's no point building on the current house-of-cards foundation as it'll all need redoing when I reinstall the forum software.
Yeah there's no doubt the forum could use some loving, it's something I've been thinking about and trying to action for the past couple of months in fact. I thought quick reply was now actually enabled on all forums, that setting must have gotten un-set somehow so I'll sort that out.
There are more extensive changes I want to do, namely redoing the design and bringing back the spotlight and a community feed type thing. However the forum first needs moving from its current struggling server to a larger dedicated node, which will speed things up (especially if you happen to be in Europe 
) and give me a lot more flexibility to do the things I want to do. My intention is to reinstall phpBB on the new server and port the gigantic database over, which will get rid of a lot of the broken/dodgy crap that's made the forums harder and harder to work on over the years.
There is a hold-up that's stopping this from happening regardless of how much I want to do it, which I won't go into but it's being worked on. Once this is done — which is in itself a big job considering the multi-GB size of the forums — I can get to work on the niceties. I'm optimistic it'll be sorted this month so, well... hang on.
