Codex Issue #3 Released

[atmospro]

The staff of the Heroscape Codex is proud to announce the release of the third issue of the fan-created magazine. The Codex is devoted to fans of Heroscape, and includes a wide range of game advice, new scenarios, custom units, and much more. The Codex is created entirely by fans of the game, and made available free through the Codex website.

You can download issue #3 of the Heroscape Codex from the Codex site, available at:

www.hscodex.com

[shakey_snake]

awesome!

(there's some kinda funky javascript going on at the codex site that gecko doesn't like)

[Hex_Enduction_Hour]

It is an awesome issue indeed. And fat!

Love the use of photos on the pages and the break in font color to white. Each issue looks better and better.

[Doc_Savage]

Loads of good stuff in there. If only there was a mac solidscape...

A very impressive issue. I skimmed it and will critique it thouroughly when I finish reading it.

[Parduz]

I'm so impressed.
You all have my full admiration!

[ultradoug]

whos Doug Wilson? O_o; I'm credited as Doug Wilson! @_@;
hahaha! Wow. I'm Mr. Wilson I guess, time to go make sure I set booby traps for Dennis the Menis. I'll get him this time for sure.
Epic.
To be fair, I didnt give a last name, and said just to use "ultradoug"
Ok, well. My two Articals are under Doug Wilson everyone. Injoy.
I'm so confused, but I'm in there! Yay!


http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f348/coolmondoug/confusedname.jpg

Funnyness aside, this is a epic CodeX! Go read it now!
Wow, Soildscape dude makes music, I'm gonna have to request a few tunes! :D

Oh, I'm loving the contest! Is this going to be posted in the contest section?! Wow those are alot of good Mage Knight figures.. I have a few, but of course these are for Heroscape use! They look great!
I'm guessing this will be in contest? Also, side note, the CodeX being out should be a big banner on the top or something eh ? :D

-- Edit, the contest entrys are to be sent here: submissions@hscodex.com
perhaps the guidlines should be posted in contest section as well? If this is OK I could do it? Let me know.

Wow, reviewing this whole thing would take forever! Its huge! Its packed! I want that Heroscape table, I could stack them on top of each other and make a real life heroscape map! HAaaaha! Oh my word so much in here, its awsome, its epic, I'm Mr. Wilson. Everything rulls.
Great job to all involved!

[atmospro]

Hey UD!....
sorry Mr. Wilson

If you want to start a discussion thread for the Zaravi contest go right ahead,
Lord Raidor has all the units posted in the customs section.

As you said enteries are to be sent to submissions@hscodex.com.

Good Luck

[LordRaidor]

...I went ahead and posted a contest thread. Thanx for the nudge, UD. ...I mean, ...Mr. Wilson...

^_^
-LordRaidor-

[Teamski]

Once again, BRAVO!!!!! What a work of art.

:bowdown: :bowdown: :bowdown:

-Ski

[Nooblar]

Whoohoo! I just LOVE the new issue! So much information to digest...it's great!

[Vydar]

My last name got messed up on my article as well. The Codex has it correct on page 2 but incorrect on my actual article. I'm not really happy about that, is there any way it can be fixed?

[LordRaidor]

...Sorry to hear 'bout the goof-up, Vydar. I bet Atmospro can fix it, though. ^_^

Your article ROCKED, by the way. Well written, nicely organized, intelligent content - great job. I especially like the way you tagged other articles as references/continuances. Nice touch.

^_^
-LordRaidor-

[ultradoug]

I blame Dennis the menace.

[Agent Minivann]

UD, we could just call you Wilson if that makes you feel better. Of course then you'd need to edit the pics of you so we can only see your eyes peering over the fence. And while you're photochopping it would be good to put in the bucket hat. Wisdom from Wilson, and we don't have to go to the backyard to get it!

[Vydar]

Atmospro took care of the misspelling of my name. Thanks atmospro!

[markwars]

You know I was going to just skim through it before I posted my thoughts...but three hours later I'm still reading it! Thanks folks! :P

[jbbnbsmith]

WOW! So much good stuff. I really want to try that Soulstead variation. I like the way it combines the classic HS game with the sort of building/resource mechanics of games like settlers. It will take me a while to properly digest all of the great articles. And it looks fantastic too. Beauty and substance - quite the combination.

[ultradoug]

UD, we could just call you Wilson if that makes you feel better. Of course then you'd need to edit the pics of you so we can only see your eyes peering over the fence. And while you're photochopping it would be good to put in the bucket hat. Wisdom from Wilson, and we don't have to go to the backyard to get it!

What was that?

[Vydar]

Funny thing about my article: I was reading it and noticed a few places where things didn't seem to flow the way I thought I would have written it. I just figured that I hadn't read over the paper closely enough. Finally, I ran into something where I knew a word had been changed, so I checked my original and sure enough, everywhere that didn't sound like me had been edited. It's interesting to see how different people read and write and how you can pick out exactly what is edited.

@LordRaidor
Thanks for the compliments!

[InfinityMax]

Yep, we edit everything. We don't usually go re-wording stuff just willy nilly, so if we edited your submission, it was probably because we thought it worked better our way. We look for spelling, grammar and style errors, and I authorize my editors to take a hatchet and a pitchfork to the articles. Sometimes we get submissions that are written so badly, it appears they were created by seventh-graders, and so my editors have my absolute permission to make any changes they feel necessary to improve readability. I have no problem taking full responsibility for any submissions where the writers are unhappy, and I also take full responsibility for errors that get past me. That's why my editors are allowed to cut stuff to shreds - I would rather see your article completely transformed than having errors.

And to be completely honest, there's a good chance I edited your article and made those changes myself. I edit a lot of this magazine myself.

[Agent Minivann]

UD, we could just call you Wilson if that makes you feel better. Of course then you'd need to edit the pics of you so we can only see your eyes peering over the fence. And while you're photochopping it would be good to put in the bucket hat. Wisdom from Wilson, and we don't have to go to the backyard to get it!

What was that?

That works. Love the new avi!

[skyknight]

Hey Infinity, I do not know if you have been reading the thread where we have been talking about how I get logged out every ten minutes or so from Scapers or not but I do. I am trying to download the Codex but keep getting bumped, is there anyway someone can email the file, or is it to large. Otherwise is there an alternate site to download from?

[Karkadinn]

Why would problems with staying logged in at heroscapers.com affect your ability to download a file from hscodex.com?

[skyknight]

I seem to be having the same problem there as here. Is it the same kind of site? Anyways Xotli says it is my Aol browser jumpin IP's or something.

[ultradoug]

yeah, aol is the bane.
I'll try sending you it whenever your on chat.
@ Agent Minivann, Mal hooked me up! YAY ^_^

[skyknight]

Got it by shutting down scapers first. HScodex is fine for my browser. Thanks anyways UD :lol:

[Malechi]

UD, we could just call you Wilson if that makes you feel better. Of course then you'd need to edit the pics of you so we can only see your eyes peering over the fence. And while you're photochopping it would be good to put in the bucket hat. Wisdom from Wilson, and we don't have to go to the backyard to get it!

What was that?

That works. Love the new avi!

Agent Minivann, Mal hooked me up! YAY ^_^

Agent Minivann, when I read your Home Improvement take on "Wilson" as opposed to the Dennis the Menace slant it had been spun on earlier, I knew it had to be done! Originally, I had a few more knotholes in the fence, but the fence blocked too much of the image. So I removed some of the boards - I mean why wouldn't Tim 'The Toolman' Taylor be working on the fence? - and that just made the image rock!

[Agent Minivann]

Nice work Malechi. It cracks me up whenever I see one of UD's posts, and it looks good too.

[gibberish_47]

Man, I leave for a week and you guys pull all kinds of stuff on me. I'm checking this out now, or at least as soon as a wade through all 17 pages of "Posts since last visit." :?

[Vydar]

@InfinityMax:

I wasn't trying to complain about the editing. In fact, I attempted to rephrase my original post to make the statements fairly neutral so that I wouldn't upset the editors (which I may have failed to do - sorry, if I offended anyone with my previous post).

However, since you responded:
Being the author of an article, I do consider it my work and have some territorial feelings towards it. As such, I was under the impression that any changes would be checked with me before being published. This did not happen. Most of the changes that were made to my article were minor and related more to a preferred phrasing rather than an actual "right" or "wrong" way to write (at which point I think you should leave the original author's wording). I felt that some of the changes actually made the wording more ambiguous. There was at least one change where I do think it could have been phrased better than either my original or the edited version and I could have fixed had it been brought to my attention. Unfortunately, I even found a spelling error that got through both the editors and my editing. :(

I understand the need to get the editing done as expediently as possible and squabbling over phrasing with an author is probably the last thing the editors want to do. I do not know how most magazines work the editing of their articles, but in the papers I write for my research no one is authorized to change phrasing without the explicit okay of the original author. Even those I am directly performing my research under do not touch my writing without permission. I do appreciate the work that the editors do. It is a job I would not want to do, but am grateful that someone is willing to do it. Thank you all you editors who put in the time and effort to work on the Codex!

Again, I'm not trying to upset anyone and I'm not upset about what happened. I was caught off guard at first but then kept asking myself, "What did you expect? Of course they're going to change stuff around."

[InfinityMax]

Vydar, I completely understand being protective of your work. I do a decent amount of freelance writing, including a regular gig on Knucklebones Magazine. I know how odd it is to pick up a magazine, read your work, and say, 'I didn't write that.' It's a little disconcerting, I know, especially when you know thousands of people will read your piece and think that's what you wrote.

I also have experience with academic writing, mostly vicariously. My wife is finishing her doctorate in Transatlantic history this fall, and has edited theses and dissertations for a few of her colleagues. I know that the rules are very different for such writing. I think this is mostly because a) academics tend to be better writers, and b) academic papers do not tend to contain the same quantity of writers. So I completely understand your concerns about seeing your work altered, especially if your experience has been more with academic writing than mainstream publication.

However, if we had to run every change past the writers, the magazine would never be finished. You may have noticed that Doug Wilson did two pieces for the magazine - that's UltraDoug to you and me. And interestingly enough, he's not the worst offender when it comes to assaults on the English language. The worst are the English-second-language contributors. They often have the most interesting articles, but they usually require extensive editing. Even the people who speak English exclusively are not immune to poor writing. Some people are extraordinarily creative, but not particularly skilled with the language.

So please understand that, while I would love to be able to submit every article back to its creator, there simply is not time to do so. I hope you understand, and fervently hope that you will keep submitting excellent work to the Codex.

[Vydar]

@Imax

Thanks for the response. You're also right to put me in the category you did with your wife. I'm a grad student in engineering right now, hoping to some day finish my PhD. ;)

Like I said, you really didn't change much at all on the article, mostly just little phrasings here or there. I do understand the inefficiency it would create to do what I was suggesting, that's why I'm not upset about what happened. I tried to make mine as close to a final draft as possible before submitting it. That's probably why I had minimal editing done to my article.

Again, thanks for the understanding.

[reapersaurus]

See - I just don't understand why as a simple courtesy, the edited file isn't sent to the creator, so that he sees "his" work before the issue is published to the world.

I don't know the internal procedures/processes, and am open to anyone explaining why something that takes 10 seconds to do isn't done as a matter of course.

[ultradoug]

Vydar
could be worse you could be Mr. Wilson crossovered with Wilson from tooltime, I'm so confused now. @_@; whatever. I will win that battle of the clear figure guys and do this dance:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3diC11QbvI

[Ryougabot]

You guys keep paying me huge compliments. I can not believe that my little Two Ships game was included in this Codex. Thank you for grouping me with the great map makers that are showcased in this issue. Thank you again.

[Malechi]

See - I just don't understand why as a simple courtesy, the edited file isn't sent to the creator, so that he sees "his" work before the issue is published to the world.

I don't know the internal procedures/processes, and am open to anyone explaining why something that takes 10 seconds to do isn't done as a matter of course.

I am pretty sure IMax was quite clear in the fact that the Codex would never see the light of day with a write, rewrite, re-rewrite, re-re-rewrite, etc. It is the job of an editor to edit articles submitted. The Codex staff sending an email to the author with the intended edits means nothing if that is how the article will be printed in the Codex regardless. If you write something and don't want it edited, post it here on the boards. Of course, the AdMins may edit it anyway if it is made up of inappropriate language/subject matter! As far as I could tell reading this thread Vydar, being unfamiliar with the real world editing process, was a little shocked to see the edits made to his article. Vydar did not appear angry because his article was made to appear coming from a completely different POV than intended (which happens frequently in magazines/newspapers).

The nice thing about this topic in this thread is that now more people are aware how the editorial process works. You submit an article to any magazine/newspaper, the HS Codex included, and the editor will as edit as needed.

Reaper, although I have no connection to the Codex, I hope that my explanation helps in furthering your understanding of the editorial process.

[InfinityMax]

Thank you, Malechi. I think that sums it up pretty well. Any magazine edits is contributors' work.

I would hate to limit the contributions to the Codex, but anyone who submits needs to understand that we will be editing your work. I prefer to take a light touch with editing, but that's not always possible. I really hope that doesn't keep anyone from submitting.

[Jormi_Boced]

Just be happy you got credited at all. Not all of us were that lucky.

[LilNewbie]

Nice job on the Codex, everyone! I've been away so that's reason for the late comment but enjoyed the articles and it looks great!

Newb.