You might have noticed the newly added tab at the top right corner called "running events". This is a little thingummy that will, as the name implies, list up to 3 of the most imminent events taking place. The following is a small list of the features implemented.


Visibility: self
Every event that anyone posts will be visible to them, no matter whether they are public or private. In other words, if you set an event, it will only be displayed to you, nobody else. The difference to public events is that those will be visible in the calendar for anybody. This behavior is completely independent of usergroups.


Visibility: others
By default, only users with moderating priviledges may place public events in the tab. This is to keep the amount of items minimal and reduced to interesting/important bits. For community-organized events with deadlines and the like, please inform a moderator (ideally by reporting your own thread) so that he can add your topic to the tab.


Event type
Only single events are supported. The way recurring events are stored in the database is absolutely ugly and I don't want to invest heaps of time to allow both of them. They kind of work in a way that the first date of the recurring events is shown but any following is ignored. Keep that in mind in case you wonder why a recurring event you set a year ago will not appear anytime it should.


Date
The list will only contain entries that lay in the future. Due to the way single event dates are stored in the database, the cutoff-time is midnight GMT. So, if you set the event date to "29 Nov 2015", it will be treated as "29 Nov 2015, 00:00 GMT" and hence will disappear after that date/time.
UPDATE: events are now treated as happening midday instead of midnight! In other words, setting the event date to "29 Nov 2015" will imply a datetime of "29 Nov 2015, 12:00 GMT". I hope this clears out some confusion.
To check the current GMT-date/time, scroll down at any page within the forums; at the bottom right, your current time and GMT-time will flip back and forth in the bottom right.



Alright, that's all. Just giving you a little heads up about what this thing does and what not


tl;dr: if you have some sort of event that should pop up at the top right, inform a mod, yo





edit: I have been informed that the font rendering might appear bugged. If it looks similar to

this (Click to View)

The official LFE-contests are back! Now with increased awesomeness! Exclamation marks for good measure!

After a hiatus of over two years, we are finally going to launch a new round. As the title implies, it will be related to spriting! However, because a single sprite would be boring and we have all seen our fair share of those, we're going to add a little twist to it! Get hyped, for the topic is:

Multi-theme Sprites

Requirements:

• 5 sprites are to be created; 1 for each of the following themes:
  
  1. Grunt* as a main character
     *Grunts are: Bandit, Hunter, Mark, Jack, Sorcerer, Monk, Jan, Knight, and Justin.
     
  2. Creature (i.e. something which does not exhibit humanly traits)
     
  3. Character from a video-game or an anime of your choice (please provide an image to compare how he/she originally looks)
     
  4. Female
     
  5. Character representing an LFE-member performing a special attack*
     *effects may be added, as long as the character-design is still easily visible
  As you can imagine, overlap between these topics is possible (e.g. a "Grunt to Main" of Jan would also fit under "Female"). In this case, you're free to choose in which category you wish to enter your sprite in; entering the same sprite in both is not possible because you are expected to create 5 sprites in total. Please also split each sprite into a separate file, so it will be easier for voting.
  
• The voting will be a little different from normal. Each of the above themes will receive its own poll. The winner of a poll will receive N* points, the second will receive N-1 points, third gets N-2 points, and so on. The final winner is the one who accumulates the most points. In this way, you could also participate with less than 5 sprites, however, your chances to reach top rankings drop massively because you essentially forfeit some points. During the voting procedure, the poll results will remain hidden and only be revealed upon completion of the poll.
  * the number of points N will be determined by how many people enter the contest, after the submission-deadline.
  
• Standard size (80x80 or 100x100) for the characters, the creature may be twice as large (up to 200x200). You may create larger sprites but they will be downscaled in the polls (and I'll do it the worst way possible, so better do it yourself )
  
• Copy-pasted chars are accepted but original ones are preferred
  
• Sprites may be animated but do not need to be
  
• Post your entries in this thread, preferably all in one post, so I can later collect them more easily. If you wish to remain anonymous during submission- and voting-phase, you may as well send the entries to me via Private Message; I will then add your name after completion of the votings.

During the past few years, the forums have gotten a little rusty. In fact, the last major update was 4 years ago and since then, quite a few things changed.

In the next few days, I'll undertake the mission to upgrade the forums to a new version. What will this mean?

• I'll lock the forums and then backup the database --> no posting possible
  
• Upgrade of the forum software --> possibly weird page display which does not necessarily make sense
  
• Bringing back the major features of the forums which are not included in the default system (usermap, chat, HoF, MotM, Awarded List, and possibly a few other thingummies I forgot)
  
• Fixing major bugs
  
• Opening the forums again --> from then on, you can proceed as-is
  
• Fixing smaller bugs, i.e. bad images
  
• Working on a theme á la "LFE v2". The other themes (blue, black, red, green) have reached their end of life and will not be developed further. Once theming is completed, it'll be made the default one again (those that don't want a dark theme and prefer the light MyBB theme will have to manually switch back).
  

• Add links to: motm, hof, usermap, stream, awarded, java-chat is deprecated and will be fully replaced by the one on lf2stream
  
• Dark theme
  
• Awarded list avatars
  
• HoF styling
  
• Modnotice
  
• [spoiler], [motm], [award], [img]
  
• exclude forum games from general searches (getnew, getdaily, ...)
  
• show [code=lang] in editor
  
• "//phoenix edit"s --> plugin - WTF I ACTUALLY MADE IT THROUGH THIS LIST
  • custom page locations (unless they have an associated plugin)
    
  • GMT-display (will toggle between current and gmt @ bottom right)
    
  • calendar bg images --> necessary? nope
    
  • Display a warning that the user must activate his account within 3 days.
    
  • Different style for motm
    
  • Display "Offline since {Date} ({Time})" instead of just "Offline" when you hover over the offline-icon
    
  • legitimation of bot-ban & unactivated accounts removal
    
  • userpruning for bots & unactivated
    
  • add country in memberlist
    
  • search thanks
    
  • poll countdown
    
  • the havoc that takes place on the stats-page
    
• "Who was online today?"
  
• "View New Posts (x)"
  
• Left/right scroll @ worldmap
  
• geocoords in user cp
  
• The highly elusive } in postbits
  
• Different editor? --> off the list for now. The default works well enough, imho
  
• Port Overview from 1.6 to 1.8
  
• fix "Unknown Location" in who's online
  
• advanced editor in quick reply
  
• give links in posts their own class (unnecessary, css will do the deal just fine)
  
• registration-questions
  
• spoiler class
  
• gravedig-warning
  
• The highly elusive linebreak-characters that get added in nested quotes