By Espark on Sun 06 Jun, 2021.

Ai-Mo Times

June 6^th, 2021

“The only literate tribe deserves the best in information and entertainment.”

Polytopia News:

Double Dash Drama

The Double Dash tournament is a 2v2 tournament based on the idea of fast play. The more games a team wins in the first four weeks of the event, the more points they get. Even if teams lose, they get points for completing games in the first four weeks. Yellow (12 hours left) counts as a penalty.

The drama involved two pro PolyChamps pairs of players: Team 32 Astrea + Resetti (Reapers) vs Team 39 Tomas + Hitarth (Sparkies)

In game 87211, Astrea + Resetti were the host team. As host, they chose a drylands map. However, according to the Double Dash (DD) tournament rules, for a drylands map, Cymanti, Bardur, and Zebasi are banned.

Astrea picked Zebasi and informed his opponent, Hitarth, of the mistake. Astrea sent Hitarth a screenshot showing that he had picked Zebasi in error. Hitarth agreed to mirror the same tribe and take Zebasi. However, neither Tomas nor Hitarth took Zebasi to mirror their opponents.

Then, Hitarth timed out (yellow) before picking a tribe. Remember, in DD, going yellow counts as a time out.

Tomas claimed he didn't know Astrea was playing a Zebasi, didn't look at the SS showing Astrea as Zebasi and that he did not read the messages about it from his teammate, Hitarth about it.

On turn 2 Hitarth lost a village to Reaper's Elyrion. They already knew the other team had Zebasi from score counting. At this point, Hitarth reached out to the mods that the rules had been broken. Hitarth and Tomas were asked if they wanted to restart the match or claim the win (because their opponents had picked a banned tribe). Tomas agreed they would claim the win.

At this point, Astrea showed that Hitarth had known their team had picked Zebasi (as evidenced by the SS above showing Astrea as Zebasi when Hithari went yellow before picking a tribe) and that Hitarth had agreed to play a mirror match.

The DD directors decided to penalize Hitarth for trying to manipulate the match and claim the win. Hitarth was kicked out of the DD tournament. Tomas was given the option to find a new teammate, but he declined and quit the event.

As the tournament announcement said, “Directors have later checked both game channels and found out Hitarth tried to manipulate the end result of that game by claiming win at any given time since team 32 messed up on tribe picks, and he attempted that on turn 2 when he lost village to team 32's Elyrion. So, Hitarth has withheld that information while knowing zeb is banned, and he knew what Astrea picked on tribe picking phase already. During our discussions we had with each individual, Hitarth has lied to the directors multiple times. Due to Hitarth's attempt at manipulating tournament results and unsportsmanlike behaviour, he will be kicked from this tournament. If he will be allowed to participate in any future tournament is a subject to be discussed.”

Mr Resetti said, “It's pretty simple actually. Hitarth said he would mirror. He didn't. We had a banned tribe. He then didn't mirror and used it for a win with mod decision.”

About the director’s judgment, Tomas said, “[Hitarth’s] only mistake was not saying to Astrea that Zebasi was banned before when we discussed our tribes. He could have done that, but I don't think it was necessary tbh.

Tomas continued, “I do think that announcement is too hard. I’ve DMed Vorce about that; he said nothing can be done. Okay, but I don't like the way Hitarth was blamed for everything, like if he had an evil plan to make things happen that way. He did ask me if we should restart and I was the one who said no, just claim the win. So because of that… I don't feel well to play this tournament with any other Sparkie after the way [the mods] blamed Hitarth.”

A competitor in Double Dash from a different team, GruesomeGhandi, said, “Listening to both sides, [my] conclusion is that this problem wouldn't happen if both sides had a good relationship from the start. Sparkies were upset for Reapers not allowing leniency on time-outs and wanting to play exactly by the rules. So when they picked the wrong tribe, they decided to take it to mods. Imo, the mod decision could have been to force restart the games and everyone would be happy. Deciding win and loss for unplayed games and ban from tourney etc is an over the top solution for a simple problem.”

Polytopia Entrepreneurs in #tribe-pride

Since February, and with humble beginnings, Dugong’s Hoodzali Bakery has taken #tribe-pride by storm, as well as several other notable polytopia servers such as Quetzali Qorner, Crab Cult, Hoodrick Capital, and Tribeverse. This emoji-based business even has its own menu, which was recently redesigned by Mokia. The bakery, described as “very popular” by Krab King, has amassed over 2000 polystars since its opening, and has even created its very own server with over 30 devoted patrons, and growing!

Dugong’s Bakery has become so popular that Dugong had to hire additional staff. Ev118 recently started helping run the bakery. To become a co-baker, Ev118 said,“I had to do a not-very-rigorous interview to become a co-baker, and now I get a portion of profits from anything I sell.” Dugong says the most popular items on the menu are the pancakes and the ice cream.

A long time customer, Cody, said, “Dugong’s bakery is one of the many things I like about #tribe pride. Instead of emojis and stuff it's nice to see something new, and it's great to see daily activity going about. As for improvements, I don't have anything at the moment. It's quite good. Props to the folks who made the menu and props to Dugong for keeping up the great work.”

Other businesses are popping up in #tribe-pride. A few weeks ago, bixo opened a shop called “bixo’s cookies ‘n drinks stand.” and Samantha recently started selling her products delivered by mail/DM. Unlike Dugong and bixo, Samantha asks for payment upfront since there have been reports of people not paying for their purchases from Dugong’s shop. Although most of bixo’s cookies are made with butter and sugar, the special ice cold mix is made from ice and the Elyrion flower. When asked if bixo had plans to expand the menu, he said, “I have many ideas for the manu, I'm just too lazy to expand it.”

Ai-Mo News:

Happy June and Happy Pride! PolyPride is in full swing with rainbows and spicy discussion popping up all over the server. This week, Ai-moya has seen a big jump in membership growth since the end of May, most likely due to the PolyPride events.

In addition to some new channels, like #PrideParade and #PolyPride-Art, and new gender pronoun roles, the server has two new commands !Pride and !Recommend-Pride. Also, Espark is posting a low effort PolyPride pic every day through the end of the month.

Interview

The following is an excerpt from the Polytopian Interviewer, a weekly podcast with occasional bonus content. You can read the full transcript or listen to the podcast through the RSS feed.

Tnt: Welcome to The Polytopian Interviewer, where I interview people on their experiences and views on the Polytopia, discord community. I have Professor Funny with me today. How are you?

Prof. Funny: I'm great.

Tnt: How did you first get into the Polytopia discord?

Prof. Funny: A year or two ago when I was first discovering Polytopia I was on Discord. So I naturally was like, “Hey, why not just join the discord server, because they're going to be interesting to join that.” So I went ahead and looked it up and found that there's the official one. So I went ahead and joined that.

Tnt: Forgive me for my pronunciation. You've made the Burikiyu, your own fan tribe, as well as a mining tribe. Are you planning on adding them to the Fmt server?

Prof. Funny: Yeah, so there's actually a huge backstory behind this. And the first answer to that is probably not, because when I first got into the game, was when I usually started joined fandoms I got pretty interested in and usually to kind of make my own things with some, whether it's an fmt thing, but I like made these fingers for the effort. And each of them, I just smashed first in Google Translate together because I did not know how to name things really well, back then. Burikiyu was supposed to just be like these defensive dudes. They actually work as a good tribe so I will look into doing that. But the mining tribe, formerly known as Sashishi, but now the miniroids are just miner guys. And I kind of expand upon them. So I'm pretty proud of them. I probably would also add them to the Fmt server, but probably not after I finished my current tribe there.

Tnt: Was your mining tribe an inspiration from any of the other mining fan tribes? Because if I recall correctly, there was quite a few different ideas for that.

Prof. Funny: Not really actually ‘casue I was not in the Fmt whole thing until, like I was in Fmts, I was like, not until I start posting artwork I made in Blender for the mining tribe. Then people were recognizing those and then asked me some of my questions about that. So I decide to add it to the Fmt wiki. No one asked me anything. A lot of people also add mining tribes. I think that's pretty cool about that. I'm pretty sure my ideas are original. I hope they are.

Tnt: One of the features was carts can go through mountains like roads, correct?

Prof. Funny: Yes. Kind of like the creep feature, but it's basically just only ignoring mountains as a block. Roads can go through mountains. Basically, roads is replaced with tunneling. Worse, the roads may probably be like a dark blue gray color, or like purpleish, and it will go through mountains. So trade routes can be connected through mountains and I thought it was pretty original concept.

Tnt: Sounds pretty cool to me. I hope you continue working on it. Is there any comment as to why you aren't in the Polytopia sprite art server?

Prof. Funny: I was part of it at first. After I first joined the Fmt server, I kind of just wasn't ever posting anything there and it was it seemed a little bit inactive to me. Probably because I wasn't paying attention to it ‘cause I was focusing on other things. I guess it kind of just left it to clear space because I'm already part of a lot of servers. I could join back though to maybe post some sprite art I've made. Guess there's not much for me to put there.

Tnt: You mentioned Blender a lot. Is that your main program for making art?

Prof. Funny: Yes, I usually make a lot of renders in Blender already. Like my main program I use but for sprite art I make, I usually make it in Blender that I trace it in IbilPaintX. That was most of my art like that. A lot of my artwork for my haunted tribe on Fmt server, pretty much all the art there was made on blender and then traced in IbilPaintX.

Tnt: I forgot that there was a haunted it. So that one is different I’m assuming from the one somebody submitted for an old Halloween contest?

Prof. Funny: Are you talking about necrosis?

Tnt: Yeah, that one.

Prof. Funny: It was the inspiration. I had inspiration behind that, but there were just Halloween monsters in this tribe is more like eerie ghosts. Mysterious ghosty. A lot of gastropods are present too. One reason they got back into Blender was a person who made that as like inspired by their Polytopia art. I thought it would be cool if I tried doing this and I did. That's pretty nice.

Tnt: It's always cool to see artists in Polytopia. Even though some people claim all they do is do art and not really play any games.

Prof. Funny: I'm like on the school bus or whatever. I usually play Polytopia then, but I'm not good at the game very much, so I usually play an easy mode. By way prefer like our like, my favorite thing about the game is the gameplay but also like the charming of all the tribes and the artwork is so cute, but also charming. And it's just a really fun art style. I really enjoy it.

Tnt: Does that mean you won’t enjoy doing Hexonia art?

Prof. Funny: I always thought when I first heard what Hexonia was I was like “This game’s pretty similar to Polytopia,” and I tried playing it my phone was being all weird and not letting me play it. So I just watched like gameplay of it. It's an interesting game, I have to say. And I get like it can be inspired by Polytopia. So I think that's nice. Well I guess very similar. But not too similar. Like the techs are very similar at the same time.

Tnt: On the other extreme, what about pixel art?

Prof. Funny: Oh, I've used to dabble in pixel art a lot, especially when I was in a Pokemon phase. I would make a lot of sprite art for that with my own little fantasy characters. But otherwise, I usually don't use pixel art.

Tnt: Do you have any tips for current or aspiring Polytopia fan artists?

Prof. Funny: Yeah, so I usually am not good at this kind of thing, interviews. With tips, I guess mostly tracing, needing thinner lines a lot. I see a lot of people using a bit more messy lines. I guess it depends on the program using like a lot of people use MS Paint. If you're like a phone or iPad MS Paint is free. So that's a pretty good program to use. Blender is also free and it's kind of difficult to get the hang ofbBut if you just look up tutorials on how to use it, you can get the hang of it pretty fast.

Tnt: And probably start on not too ambitious projects, especially if you're not great at computer.

Prof. Funny: Yeah, that was my big mistake when I first started using blender. The reason I got Blender was I could do some stuff that was not probably tip related because I got it beforehand and stop using it. But then I got back into the app, throw in the basics and tried redoing the things I previously immediately jumped into and it turned out way better. I guess another tip is don't jump into things. The projects mainly.

Tnt: That's all the questions I had.

Prof. Funny: Nice. I should probably be going now. Thank you for this interview.

Tnt: Gonna work on some more art?

Prof. Funny: Probably actually those I was planning on doing. I should probably start working on more of the units for my ghost tribe.

Tnt: Sounds like a good idea to me.

Prof. Funny: Alright thank you.

Tnt: See you around. Bye.

Prof. Funny: Bye.

Read or listen to the rest of the interview in the Friendly Polytopia server.

Mute ban column

Disclaimer: Many mute and ban commands are executed on admin only channels. Some fields below will show ‘unavailable’ because the commands were not performed in public channels. In some cases, the data can be inferred from context and will be placed in parenthesis.

Credits

Thanks to all our contributors - Espark, Dust, Druid, and Tntmasta. A big thanks to Artemis for setting up the website for the newspaper. Also, thanks to our faithful readers for encouraging the paper to continue.

If you want to submit a piece to the newspaper -- art, news article, opinion piece, puzzle, etc -- let us know in #article-suggestions.

Keep up Ai-Mo!