The 'Ignore' Function (VIP-only feature)

[Special thanks to Kelsea Hoare in the Newbie Question Forum for the help.]

Let's face it. Not everything will come up roses. Some places less than others. In most cases, I'd like to think you can talk out your differences, but in cases where you can't, that's where the 'Ignore' Function comes in.

It's pretty easy to use. It's just not obvious where to find it.

Well, okay, it is obvious where to find it once you know where it is. You just start wondering why you never realized it was there before once you do.

Keep in mind that this is a VIP-only feature, so if you're not VIP, you won't see it.

So, take a forum post, any forum post and look at the message header bar above the actual content of the message. Ya know, the pale blue bar that says who the post is by, who it's addressed to, messageID and date and time?

When you're VIP, you'll see an empty word balloon beside the name of the person who wrote the post, like so:



That's your trusty 'ignore' button...

To use simply click it, and it turns into a word balloon with an ellipsis:



The message text becomes hidden and you'll get a notice informing you that the user is ignored. From this moment on, anything this user says will be hidden from view.

'Course if you're curious enough, you can click on 'View message' to see if the ignored user has anything of substance to say. (Who knows? They may surprise you.) This will not undo the 'ignore' setting on this user. You just get to see what they said in that one post.

To remove an 'ignore' on a person, just click on the ellipsis word balloon above an ignored users message. It'll turn back into an empty word balloon, and it'll show all posts by this user again.





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The Main Menu Bar

Once you've created an account and logged into Popmundo, you'll notice this Menu Bar on the top of every page (without the crappy numbering, of course):


This Menu Bar will be your primary mode of navigation in the game. What each menu item is... that's pretty much self-explanatory, but I've listed them anyway, just so I can link to each item later if/when I write up more detailed entries for each.

That's if/when I get around to it.

1. Local City Time. Not to be confused with your local time of your location in real life. Your character may start out in a single city and spend most of your time there doing things and meeting people, but eventually you're going to wander into the great big world.
   
   This is when timezones will become the bane of your existence.
   
   The timezone of each city corresponds to the timezone of its real life counterpart (for most of the year anyway. There seems to be a hiccup twice a year when the world switches on to and off of Daylight Savings Time).
   
   So 8am in Paris in the game would be 8am in the real Paris.
   
   Keep that in mind when scheduling jams, gigs, bus departures and such. 'Tis not fun to schedule your tour bus only to find out you didn't take timezones into account and left too late for you to make your big concert in time.



2. City takes you to the City Screen, where you can find more detailed information on the city your character is currently in.
   
   More on this on a future entry.



3. Character goes to the screen where you can access pretty much everything related to the character you play in Popmundo. Probably the screen you'll spend the most time on in the game.
   
   I'll definitely type up an entry on this one.



4. Career leads to the screen containing information on your (musical) Career. Also sometimes called the Artist Page or the Band Page. Not to be confused with any non-musical career your character may also have. The screen you'll probably spend the second most time on in the game.
   
   Another one that'll need an entry.
   
   Probably several entries actually.



5. Company. (Only available to Company License holders.) Gives you access to the Company Screen. More on this later.



6. Location brings up details about the specific place (often called a 'locale') your character is currently in.



7. Community takes you to the Community Screen, where you can access information on the latest Game Development and Community News; the Charts; the in-game, in-character Magazine 'It's Pop'; and some other information that's escaped my mind at the moment. Hopefully, I'll remember most of it when I get to typing up that entry.



8. VIP leads to information on VIP Subscriptions. (Hey, somebody's gotta pay for those servers.)



9. Menu Icons. A few extra links behind the icons that lead to additional tools, features and functions. From left to right: the Phone (a VIP-only feature), the in-game Search Engine, the Discussion Forums (Will I be lynched if I say "Abandon all hope, all ye who enter here"?), the Help Pages and the 'Log Out' button.

Also, missing from the Menu Bar is the link to the 'CEO' screen. (Mainly because I wasn't a CEO at the time I took the screen shot, and totally forgot about it. Normally, it's inbetween 'Company' and 'Location'.) More on CEOs in a later entry.

As I mentioned earlier, I'll update this post with links to entries that relate to different items in the Menu Bar. I just haven't written them yet, and it's going to take a lot of time to cover all these different things.


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Forum Message ID xxx.yy

Every single individual message (also sometimes called a 'post') in the in-game discussion forums of Popmundo has a unique ID number, found on the upper-right of each message header as highlighted on the image below:



The first six (or more) digits before the period identify the unique thread ID. (For those not familiar with forums in general, the term 'thread' is used to describe a series of individual forum posts that are ideally linked together by topic of discussion, but considering the organic and ever-changing nature of conversation in general that's rarely the case. More often than not, the only thing linking a particular message to a thread is the fact that it's a reply to a previous post that was a reply to a post preceding that one... and so on and so forth... And I'm rambling again... )

The digits after the period (ranging from 1 to 1000) represent that particular message's place in its thread. So message xxx.1 would be the first post in a thread, xxx.2 would be the second, xxx.365 would be the 365th post, and so on.)

Okay, I admit that's all dull and boring. But if you ever need to find or link to a specific message in the forums, it's something you'd need to know.

(I'll get into finding and linking to specific forum posts some other time.)



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Gotta Start Somewhere... Let's go with Skills...

Not exactly the best place to start off a 'help' blog, but I wasn't really sure how else to kick this off.

Except maybe an introduction. But that's already on the top-right side of this blog anyway. So let's just dive right into it. Best to be less cerebral about it. Besides it's not like this is a formal document, eh?


Starter Skills

A new girl asked me this question when she requested apprenticeship:

"What skills should I start out with?"

Or something to that effect.

Much less to say, I drew a complete blank. It's been awhile since I've been a full-fledged newbie (though I've had newbie moments almost constantly since then ;p ), and most people who've asked for apprenticeship from me know exactly what they want to learn, so the question caught me completely by surprise.

There used to be a listing of some of the basic skills suggested for artists just starting out in the in-game Help Files, but it's gone through some edits, so I can't seem to find it at the moment (if it's still there).

Anyways, I'm rambling.

Newbie skills... Should they really be called newbie skills? They're more like 'foundation skills', 'cuz whether or not you're old or new, they're skills you need for your entire career. Once they're learned and improved, they're the backbone for other more advanced skills that improve your music and performances even further.

Um... I'm rambling. Wasn't I supposed to stop rambling?

Anyways, skills to start with...

(Note: Any links to skills in the following text lead to pages from the Popmundo Unofficial Skills Bible, which was created by the player behind Jörgen Thorstensson. Questions, comments and compliments regarding his handy site and his awesomeness should be directed his way.)

• • Basic Showmanship - Essentially the foundation of every single stage event you'll ever do. It's needed to perform any Generic stage event well, and is the pre-requisite for Professional Showmanship, which is needed to perform any Genre-specific stage event well.
  
  So you can probably see why any new person should get this skill early...
  
  
• • Music Genre Skill - Whether it's Punk or Pop, Rock or Reggae, whatever your music style of choice is, you need the skill for it. Songs need to be practised (also called jamming) up to 100% to be performed at their best in a show, but without the skill, you can only go up to 50% and can't reach 100% until you've got at least 4* in the skill (assuming you're the only musician in your band. If you've got bandmates, it'll take the average. So if you've got 5* and your bandmate doesn't, you'd be able to practise to over 50%, but the maximum you can reach on the Practice bar would still be under 100%. See the Help Page on Jamming under the heading Jamming and Music Genre Skills, and the one on Skills under the heading Genre Skills).
  
  The Music Genre Skill is also needed for Genre-specific stage events, along with Professional Showmanship (as mentioned above) and whatever additional requirements each individual event may have.
  
  Music Genre Skills are as follows: African Music, Blues, Classical, Country & Western, Electronica, Flamenco Music, Heavy Metal, Hip Hop, Jazz, Latin Music, Modern Rock, Pop, Punk Rock, Reggae, Rhythm & Blues, Rock, World Music
  
  So take your pick and study up. :)
  
  
• • Instrument (or Band Role) Skills - Not as urgent as the above skills since you can perform your first few shows without setting your role(s) in the band right away. (See Help File page on Skills, under Instrument Skills.) But if you were anything like me when I started out that's probably the first thing you did after creating your first artist. ;p
  
  That said this affects how well you do when you perform on stage, though I'm rather in the dark with the specific mechanics of it myself. (See the Performance Help Page under Band Members & Instruments for more details.)
  
  Anyways, Instrument Skills actually 'come in pairs', for lack of a better term to describe it. To play any instrument well, you need the basic general skill with at least 3* and then the advanced specific instrument skill. (See the Help Pages on Skills under the heading Instrument Skills... I think I said that already... ) Like how Basic Showmanship is the pre-requisite for Professional Showmanship, Basic Instrument Skills are the pre-requisite for their instrument-specific counterparts.
  
  I think the Help Files explain it better than I do on that one.
  
  There are seven Basic Instrument Skills: Basic Brass Instruments, Basic Electronic Instruments, Basic Keyboard Instruments, Basic Percussions, Basic Singing, Basic String Instruments, Basic Woodwind Instruments.
  
  And no, I am not listing and linking to all the Advanced Instrument Skills here. There's too many. ;p
  
  To find out what Basic skill you need for the instrument you want, it might be best to browse through the Musical Instrument skills listed over at the Popmundo Unofficial Skills Bible, to see which skill is the pre-requisite for what.
  
  Oh, and if anyone's wondering, the Dancer band role needs two skills too: Basic Dancing and Professional Dancing.
  
  And correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the only role that doesn't need two skills is Keyboard Player, 'cuz I can't seem to find the second skill for that.
  

That's all the skills I can think of that are a must-have for any aspiring artist in Popmundo. There are more plenty more skills out there (185, according to the Skills Bible), but they're not all necessarily essential for every person to know. It'll be up to the individual if they want to learn Stagediving or Ritual Summoning... or both! ;p



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