reedom Through Time Quest 7:00 A.M. Pacific Time, Sunday, July 20th to 10:00 P.M. Pacific Time Monday July 21st, 2008 Enjoy a time traveling adventure where we discover the struggle for freedom throughout history, including our new Australian setting. Of course, what would traveling throughout time and space be without the right equipment? This is our most exciting quest ever, and you will love this week’s prizes, which allow you to bring this experience to your own rooms throughout the year! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A Word from Sara July 10th, 2008 As we research our period wardrobes, we are also starting to test several of our newest creations. We were so pleased to have CynAnne accept our latest creation, the Princess or Damsel Hat, as a birthday gift and agree to test it for everyone. As we researched the Princess or Damsel Hat, we discovered that its origin is somewhat shrouded in mystery, though it appears to be reasonably prominent in artwork beginning in the 15th century, especially among royalty. There is also an interesting article about this type of hat on wikipedia under the term hennin, which also includes a number of examples of artwork displaying the Damsel Hat. This is a very popular style of hat in theatrical productions and reenactments and if you would like one in real life, you can find numerous theatrical costume shops who sell them. Some of them are quite beautifully designed, and would honor any princess :-) Of the numerous examples we reviewed in creating our Princess Hat for the many Princesses in our Kingdom, we liked the painting by Thomas Reynolds Lamont titled “The Prince's Choice” the best. Our graphic artists fell in love with this painting and it became the inspiration for our Princess Hat. We imagine that CynAnne and our other princesses would all have been “The Prince's Choice” with this hat! Sara Virtual Family Kingdom -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A Note from the Developers and Graphic Artists July 10th, 2008 We want to thank everyone for their great feedback on our new Fourth of July Fireworks game. We began developing this game shortly after we started this project. During the development of the game we reviewed numerous fireworks games dating back to the turn of the century. We also wanted to place our fireworks game at historical points in history that are the basis for our present day Fireworks displays. While some of you have already noticed much of this, we thought we would share some of the behind the scenes research and development that went into the making of our Fourth of July Fireworks game. Firework games have historically tended to break down into three primary categories. The first category required the player to select a firework just as it was set to explode. A second category required the player to select the firework by color or type just at the moment of explosion. The third category was the coordinated firework game which used a combination of both the first and second. There were also a number of somewhat related games which were more focused on rockets and bombardment, but which followed this general scheme of play. After reviewing all of these fireworks games, we decided that the most interesting was a coordinated approach. However, we wanted to add the ability to explode the firework as it ascended and not just at the moment of apex. This gives each player a greater range of strategies when deciding how to play a game. The play of the game was also defined to some extent by our selection of the 1812 Overture for our music, as we wanted the number of fireworks to coordinate with the music. We also wanted the beginning levels to match the beginning of the musical piece and then build as did the music at each level. We also selected our scenes to be reminiscent of the period involved. For instance, in the lobby for the game we find the verdure of a native forest much as you would have found in upstate New York in the year 1776. Many do not realize that New York was a dense forest of native trees at this time and impassible except on foot or by using the natural rivers and streams. As the scenes progress in our fireworks game you will notice the transition to the depiction of the Battle at Baltimore during the war of 1812. At this time Ft. McHenry was under attack from 19 British ships, some with notable names such as the HMS Terror, the HMS Devastation, the HMS Erebus, the HMS Volcano and the HMS Meteor. It was on the fateful night of September 13th, 1814 that Francis Scott Key watched the bombardment of Ft. McHenry by these British vessels and wondered if on the following morning the United States flag would still be flying over Ft. McHenry. Indeed in the end, it was the American flag that that still flew, and Key wrote the words to the Star Spangled Banner, which became our national anthem. For those who had the opportunity to participate in our Fourth of July Quest, you will remember that the flag which flew over Ft. McHenry was 30 ft by 42 ft in size and was made by a mother and her young daughter, Caroline, who was only 13 years old at the time. In addition, Caroline's grandmother had also made flags for our new country during the revolutionary war. We end the game with a view from a castle in honor of Tchaikovsky who wrote our musical selection. The 1812 Overture was originally written to inspire a love of Freedom in his native Russia, but has since become a standard to celebrate Freedom and Firework displays everywhere. Again, we thank all of you who have told us about how much you enjoy our new Fourth of July fireworks game, and we hope our introduction in the game, the scenes and the music will inspire players to consider the history which this game represents and learn more about the times and the men and women that made freedom today possible. Your Development Team Virtual Family Kingdom PS. For those who enjoy a bit of historical detail, you might notice the American and British flags during one of the depictions of the Battle of Baltimore in the game. :-) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Weekly Featured Rooms June 29th Our featured rooms this week in the order we discovered them are: Glitter scooped up a huge cookies-and-cream ice cream on a cone to help keep everyone chilled out. Jade's cool confection, an enormous chocolate ice cream cone with a strawberry on top made our summer evening cool and tasty. BlueHairedMonkey created our first aquatic attraction, a stellar fish aquarium which created quite a few currents. CuteHalloweenGirl did a fresh and fun pineapple which Surf said made us all think about riding the waves in Hawaii. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A Note from the Developers June 26th, 2008 Many in our community, especially educators, have requested that we make July 4th Day One. These requests are primarily based on conflicts with work and summer school schedules. With your help, we've stayed right on schedule, however, we also think July 4th is an excellent choice as it so eloquently represents freedom and a new beginning. This also works well with the release of our July 4th Independence Day fireworks game! Another reason we like July 4th is that it makes it easy for everyone to remember when beta ended and Day One occurred. Our original choice of June 26th to end beta was chosen purely based on the development timeline we put together, so there is no technical reason why July 4th would not be an excellent date to end beta. We truly appreciate all of our community and beta testers and also everyone who was there for the early alpha tests. As beta ends, July 4th will be day one of the release candidate phase of our new world. For all of our community who are new to software development, the RC phase of a project is primarily focused on refining interface, introducing assets based on the existing structure and feature sets defined during beta. With the framework of our new world so well defined, and because of the excellent assistance of our beta testers, we look forward to the final cycle of development and the launch of RC1! Your Development Team Virtual Family Kingdom P.S. – We have also had a number of questions concerning the transition from beta to release regarding existing items such as furniture, credits, etc. We want everyone to know that they need not be concerned about any of their items being misplaced or lost between the transition from beta to release. P.P.S. – If you have ever found yourself being unexpectedly transported to a friend's room, you might want to know why this happens. The reason for this is that when you click on "go to a friend," and it is not possible to transport you to the friend then just like an old time telephone operator, the next time your friend is available, even if that means they log in hours later, the system completes the connection and takes you to your friend. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Largest Palm Tree In VFK! June 21st, 2008 The first day of summer and the first day of our room list we found lots of great rooms and we discovered the largest palm tree in VFK to cool off under! Our thanks to PrincessWendybird for the shade and this fabulous tree! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I Scream for Ice Cream Quest Fastest Times: 1. Pizza 4:98 2. Guest195 11:02 3. CynAnne 16:02 4. Expederest 17:45 5. PolyphonicSpree 20:98 6. wondermanforever 20:21 7. Gsterg 21:98 8. Wendigo 21:98 9. Stitchy 21:42 10. Rosette 22:98 11. Bugdozer 23:15 12. fonna 23:18 13. slinkyman 24:15 14. iRainieY 26:02 15. computer_boy 27:98 16. caellista 28:98 17. SoakinUpTheSun 28:98 18. SuperLacrosseBoy 29:02 19. cowsROC 29:98 20. riverplate 29:30 21. ThunderLemonOrange 30:98 22. bluelastpool 30:98 23. awesomepatty-cake 30:02 24. blackroger 31:98 25. SkiBoi 33:02 26. AlexKZ 33:02 27. AwesomeGiGi 36:21 28. Belin 36:42 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Daily Highscore Leader Board June 18th, 2008: 1. AlohaBeachGurl 27288 2. BriarOtter 24224 3. rain 23818 4. LittleSnowSong 21166 5. Cindi-Lu 20116 6. Ormonddude 18148 7. ShortBlondeYorka 17718 8. colorsofthewind 15280 9. disneyfan 13672 10. colorsofthewind 13370 11. colorsofthewind 12430 12. JungleDudette 12106 13. Guest5552 11884 14. SkiBoi 11876 15. HyperMaroonGirl 11120 16. MermaidMelusina 11002 17. LaVidaPixie 10954 18. Clarity 10950 19. CursedMonkeyQueen 9950 20. abovethestars 9904 21. JungleDudette 9382 22. PrincessWendyBird 9186 23. SkiBoi 8972 24. LaVidaPixie 8836 25. NotAZoo 8722 26. LaVidaPixie 8588 27. Pizza 7588 28. PrincessWendyBird 7084 29. SkiBoi 7034 30. Infinity 7018 Audubon Wildlife Adventure: All Time Highscore Leader Board - June 18th, 2008: 1. YellowStrangeShark 253918 2. YellowStrangeShark 124226 3. BriarOtter 90212 4. PrincessDelaney 81952 5. JungleDudette 78650 6. Cindi-Lu 68224 7. YellowStrangeShark 65212 8. YellowStrangeShark 57102 9. BriarOtter 43600 10. BriarOtter 41040 11. YoungLink 40500 12. YellowStrangeShark 37394 13. Cindi-Lu 35000 14. YoungLink 32878 15. YoungLink 31778 16. Cindi-Lu 28136 17. YellowStrangeShark 27678 18. BriarOtter 27478 19. AlohaBeachGurl 27288 20. Tomorrow 27254 21. JungleDudette 26556 22. BriarOtter 26218 23. Cindi-Lu 25448 24. colorsofthewind 24744 Credits This exciting game has over 50 levels and 500 paintings by Audubon. Each level is a bit harder and the credits keep increasing. It takes about an hour and a half to go through all the levels and you can get over 25,000 credits. Every time you login you receive a different set of birds to start the game, but the birds stay the same during your login to make it easier to learn them and earn credits. How to Play Watch for birds as they swoop into the scene and click on them to identify what species of birds they are. You can find and identify up to 500 birds in 50 levels with 10 birds being added each level of play. Be careful though, misidentify more than 3 birds or run out of fuel and the game is over! Fuel You need fuel to power your vehicle. Going faster or idling your vehicle uses more fuel than cruising and should be used sparingly. The amount of fuel you have is displayed in the upper right corner of your screen. To collect more fuel, run over the red canisters that appear in the road. Obstacles The road can be rough in the untamed wilderness. And you will encounter many hazards that can damage your vehicle like rocks and tree trucks which cause you to lose fuel and should be avoided. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A note from the developers VFK Gadget is a fine new application, also in Beta mode, which is created by Kurt Boyer (who many of you know as BlueHairedMonkey). Kurt's new VFK Gadget is a simple and FREE program designed to help you view and play Virtual Family Kingdom. If you would like to download and try VFK Gadget, you can find it at: http://www.vfkgadget.com/ Your development team Virtual Family Kingdom -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Wow, what an amazing day we had on the first day of our Beta Test! May 24nd, 2008 We had lots of fun finding bugs. We had people stuck on walls, ghost chatting and even walking around alone in rooms filled with other people. If you missed the first day you missed quite an experience! And, what did you think of the surprise of finding your favorite staff already in Virtual Family Kingdom waiting to greet you? That just made the day even better! Front To help make this experience more memorable, our graphic artists have created the "I Survived Day 1 Beta" shirt which you see here. Like the experiences we all shared, these shirts are destined to be rare. For everyone who got registered yesterday and also for those who register today, this "I Survived Day 1 Beta" shirt will be part of your wardrobe. Back We have had some questions about Day 1 pins. These are given when the beta period ends and the New World is released. Because all of you are such great beta testers, we have our release date set for June 26th! All of our friends who participate in the Beta Program will receive the Day 1 pin. There are some exciting new features for you to test today. The first you will discover when you leave your garden. With our sense of pioneering, you will definitely want to explore the new western setting. Just as our Medieval village of Celliwig is part of Camelot, you will find the essence of our early western towns founded by pioneering stock just like you, right here in the Virtual Family Kingdom. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Stonehenge is BIG! Click here to see the latest alpha walk test! Virtual Family Kingdom News May 16th, 2008 Just a quick note for everyone. If you didn't see it here at VirtualFamilyKingdom.com, it's not from Sara. May 14th, 2008 For all of those who have contacted us today from the west coast who were afraid they would miss the start of the preview, we are extending the alpha preview release by 1 hour. See you at 3:00 PM west coast time!