The work behind "The Robloxian Army in 30 seconds."

Most of you have probably seen my newest video by now. If not, you can check it out here. In this blog post, I will explain the work behind it.

Every proper video I make starts with music. Be it a funny sketch, or a recruitment video. For this one, I wanted to use the battlefield 3 theme. I was not sure if it was copyrighted or not, so I spent days contacting different people at EA asking for permission to use the song. In the end I ended up uploading a random video with the song, to test the copyright my self. It was not copyrighted, so I started work on the film part.

I had allready written the manuscript while waiting for EA to reply to my messages about the song. So the only thing left to do was record everything, and edit it together. I worked on a tight scheme, because I wanted to finish the video in the weekend. I built sets, recorded and edited for three days, and the 3rd day it was done. I had compressed two hours of recordings into 30 seconds.

Both the recording and editing part were pretty easy, I got a couple of my friends to act, and then recorded some nice scenes. I had most of it planned allready, but sometimes I come up with super ideas while filming. The tank and plane scenes were both figured out on set. I use ScreenFlow to record.

The editing part was probably the most fun to do. I use final cut express, and I am quite good with it. The four scenes in one part with the jet was pretty awesome to do. Originally I did not plan for it to be there, but I had so many jet clips and so little time. I just smashed them all together and it looked goid. The part I am the least happy about was the end. I kinda rushed it because I was going to visit someone. Rushed projects rarely turn out great.

I hope the video was as fun to wach as it was a learning experience to me. -Tonitoni

Making a video advertisment for TRA.

Yesterday, roblox officially released a new feature. Place galleries. This new feature includes the ability to upload pictures and videoes to your places. I decided to make one for darox II. I know I haven't done much in TRA lately, but I love making videoes, and this seems really fun. Especially since the video will be seen by thousands of people at roblox. My goal is to create the best place advertisment ever! (Not very hard since so few have been made.) Hopefully it will continue to impress people even after video advertisments become common.

My first challenge was to find fitting music for my video. I allways get inspired by the music I use. After browsing youtube for a while, I settled on the official battlefield 3 theme. I looked around youtube to see what other people hade done with it, but I was suprised to find very few videoes with the song. This lead me to thinking that the song might be copyrighted, but I continued with the project anyway. The evening went on planning the scenes, and writing the script, but the chance of my video being instantly removed from youtube was hounting me.

I have had my video removed before, an epic TRA advert that never saw the light of day. I used days on it, just to have it removed from youtube instantly. I should have known that the song I used, the transformers soundtrack, was copyrighted. Anyways, back to the TRA recruitment video, when I was done with the manuscript, I decided to check if the music was indeed copyrighted. I tweeted the official battlefield support center, but right as I did it, they stopped responding to tweets. I did not give up, I wanted that song. 30 minutes later, I had tweeted every single lead developer at DICE, sadly it seemed they had all gone to bed, so my efforts stopped there.

The next morning, I still did not have a reply, so I went to school thinking if I would ever be able to use the song. I was relieved when I found that someone had tweeted me. It was one of the developers at DICE, he said I probably would have to pay for the lincence, although there was a chance no one would care if I used the song. Unsecure as I was, I was still not satisfied with the answer, I wanted to know if I could use the song or not. The search went back to youtube, and to my relief I found a video with the song creator's name in it. A quick google search, and five minutes later the email was sent. Now I just have to wait for the reply. Let's hope that I can use the song.

WIJ log entry #2

After getting accepted as a STA trainer, I finally thought there was a way for me to become an officer. I was wrong. I keep getting this feeling of hitting the wall. I have a goal, and when I REALLY want something, I will do EVERYTHING in my power to make that happen. The problem is, my obstacle is something I can't controll. Timezones.

I am trapped in a place where I cannot move on. Most of the officers live in america, while the majority of the high command is british. I am managing to stay in touch with the high command, but the officers just don't know me. The only people that actually are online when I am online are iRykorz and Rykarz. Problem is, they rarely hold trainings. So I figured: Hey, I should become an STA trainer, so I can host trainings my self! Well guess what, that aint helping me get anywhere. I can't get cP for hosting my own trainings, and I can't go to other peoples trainings.

So what do I do? Well, I try to find alternative ways to earn cP. How is that working out? Not very well. First of all,my suggestions often involve changing rules, or doing things in a new way. Of course the high command does not like these changes, and the officers can't do anything about them. The high command says: "Go to trainings." I would, if someone actually hosted one.

I asked the officers, how do I get cP for officer? They said: "Go guard bases and you might get cP." Hey guess what. THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT I HAVE BEEN DOING THE PAST 4 MONTHS! AND GUESS WHAT! I NEVER EVER GOT CP! BECAUSE THERE ARE NO FUCKING OFFICERS AT THE BASES THAT CAN GIVE ME CP!

I am not getting anywhere, but the frustration I have been feeling lately just keeps raising. An entire holliday wasted patrolling bases. For nothing.

WIJ log entry #1

Yay! I have finally become a WIJ STA trainer! After trying to become one for weeks, I finally made it. I think it all comes down to having the right connections. Many other WIJ are trying too, they be jelly. But yeah, having a network is vital when wanting to move forward in a group, not just in WIJ. Back when I was active in VAK, I was friends with all the highranks. I became a HR in just a month. Not bad, considering it is VAK we are talking about.

The more highranks you know, the better. After I got xfire, communicationhas been really smooth too. I'll start training the people in STA as soon as I get admin at the training places. I think it will be awesome. My next goal is officer. Wish me luck :D

ROBLOX's New Layout

When I checked ROBLOX this day on school I noticed something strange. ROBLOX had a new design, and loading it in Internet Explorer 9 took me ages! Luckily when I came back home, and I went on Google Chrome, it worked a lot better. So let's speak about the new design in this article!

The homepage

If we look at the homepage when logged out, you will see that the content hasn't actually changed. I am not sure if ROBLOX is going to change the content on the homepage, but I don't really mind about it. the most important thing changed on the homepage is the menu and the log-in box, which has changed layout both.

My ROBLOX

As far as I can see, nothing really changed to My ROBLOX apart from the menu and the location of the advertisements, which are now located under the menu.

Something that I noticed was that this is still the 3.0 design, and not an all new 4.0 design, although I think a lot of things changed since the very first version of the 3.0 design and the 3.0 design as it is now.

I am not sure if you can put this as a part of the new design, or it's just the fact that ROBLOX wants to reintroduce it, but you can now view the sets of a user on his or her profile. If I'm right this was actually enabled before the new menu already.

I haven't seen any other changes on the My ROBLOX tab yet!

People

Not a lot of changes on this tab, although after searching really well I found this "Tips" button thingy. It gives a blue pop-up which you can't really read yet, due to some stupid CSS coding, After some smart copy paste work I got this out of it:

Tips Exact Phrase: "red brick"

Find ALL Terms: red and brick =OR= red + brick

Find ANY Term: red or brick =OR= red | brick

Wildcard Suffix: tel* (Finds teleport, telamon, telephone, etc.)

Terms Near each other: red near brick =OR= red ~ brick

Excluding Terms: red and not brick =OR= red - brick

Grouping operations: brick and (red or blue) =OR= brick + (red | blue)

Combinations: "red brick" and not (tele* or tower) =OR= "red brick" - (tele* | tower)

Wildcard Prefix is NOT supported: *port will not find teleport, airport, etc.

It sounds like nonsense to me! Roblox, you will have to explain me that, later!

Help

I'm not sure if the help page changed, because I never really took a look at that page before.

Over all

In the overall changes, it seems that the only thing really changed is the header, with the menu, the ads and when logged in the statistics, with the number of your robux, tix, friend requests, and unopened personal Messages. Also has the background changed to white instead of the blue picture or black picture.

Conclusion

I don't think you can say that this is a bad design. Actually I pretty much like it! Apart from the white background, it's too boring, and too bright. I gues BrightEyes designed it ;) Anyway, it's up to you if you like it or not, but if you ask me, it's a good design!

Virtual fame

This text was written for my english writing day this spring. I just got it back from my teacher, and decided to share it with you.


What is a famous person? I define a famous person as a guy or girl that a lot of people know about, possibly a person with a lot of influence. From now on, I will refer to a famous person as a he, because I am the only famous person you will read about in this text. I don't care about other famous people, nor do I know anything about them.


When my friends in real life see what I type on the internet, they often call me arrogant. Famous people can be arrogant, at least I can be at times. What makes me so famous? First of all a lot of people know about me. In fact over 500,000 people have seen my name. Not my real name, my virtual name. These people know me on a game, the online game ROBLOX. You might be thinking: "That's not a lot of people." or "It's only a game." Well let me tell you something. Wherever I go on that game, people stalk me. People constantly send me messages saying: "Tonitoni, are are my idol." or "Please Toni! Be my friend." People actually look up to me, and hope to become like me one day,

What did I do to earn so much recognition? I created one of the most muccesful war groups on ROBLOX. At one point this group, named The Robloxian Army had as much as 35,000 members. Thirty five thousand people ready to do whatever I told them. There were thousands of people looking up to me as their leader and idol. For over a year I worked on this group, making it known by anyone important in the world of ROBLOX. I was hated, hated by my enemies. I was hated because I was more famous than them. Because I had done something they would never accomplish. I even had bodyguards with me, trained elite soldiers, ready to die for me if necessary.

There have been countless attempts to assasinate me. Not because it would hurt my virtual character, or me sitting in front of the computer. They tried to assasinate me so that they could humiliate me. Humiliate me in front of the entire clan world. I have tried to avoid humiliation, as keeping my image of undefeated and powerfull was vital to my success.

The Robloxian Army (TRA for short) is no longer lead by me. I passed it on months ago, although I am still 2nd in command. Partly because administrating a group of 35,000 people takes a lot of time. I had no manager or secretary most of the time, so administrating everything drained my energy. In fact, I spent so much time on the group that my real life situation was getting worse. My grades were dropping and I was sitting up to 4 AM reading and anwering private messages from my members. All this time spent on the computer was making my health worse. I tried hiering a secretary, but she quit just weeks in. She could not handle the pressure I had been subject to for over a year. The other secretary I hired was too lazy, so I fired him after a week. Like for any other famous person, the career has to end one day. I decided to end mine before all my energy was drained from me. After all, real life is more important than what happens in a game, no matter how famous you are.

I was semi-famous before my clan became so popular. Making games was my passion for almost a year, although I never really became famous for my games. They were mostly redone ideas, or improvments of allready existing concepts. In total my games managed to rack up around half a million visits, which is not bad by any standards. Looking back, I am not very proud of them, they were mediocre at best.

After quitting as the leader of TRA, I have started spening much of my time on social medias like twitter nad youtube. My youtube videoes have been seen over 45.000 times in total, although I am not very happy with most of them either. I guess you could call me a perfectionist, as I am never really satisfied with my work. There are allways things I think I can do better.

If you are still in doubt of my fame, let me refer to some of my accomplishments over the past two years. My games have been played over 1,490,000 times in total, my ROBLOX profile has been seen over 1,200,000 times, I am ranked as 99/99 in the ROBLOX level calculator, I am the most famous ROBLOX player from norway. possibly even Scandinavia. Klout, an online influence measurment site ranks me as 42/100,  just by calculating my influence on social medias outside of ROBLOX. I am the ROBLOX leader with the most youtube videoes dedicated to him in the world, over twelve thousand people have sent me a friend request, and thousands of people look up to me. When I look at what I have accomplished in less than two years, who knows what I wil accomplish in the future?

Being famous brings both good and bad things. On one hand you become popular, rich and important. On the other hand you lose much of the free time that could be spent on other things like family and friends. In my opinion it all comes down to finding the right balance. I don't think the countless hours spent on ROBLOX were wasted. The fame and recognition I got on that game, will probably never be replicated in the real world. I guess you could call it, a once in a lifetime experience.

Team Domino changes name to Team Jessie J.

Phone picture editor... (I need a graphics designer!)

Team Domino, a group that was just about to get accepted by the clan community has screwed it up again. The group description states that the group has changed name to Team Jessie J. Why their leader pieperson50 has done this, is still unknown, but speculations are sirculationg on the C&G forum. One of the reasons for the recent change, might be because pieperson50 likes the british artist Jessie J. This means that the group, which is allready considered pieperson50's fan group by some, will lose its status as a war clan.

The change of name also confirmes what many allready have said: "Pieperson50 only wants money, and does not care for his members." Pieperson50 has also changed the name of one of his places to "Team Jessie J HQ" It is expected that Team Jessie J will loose many members, if the group does not go back to being a war group. The name change has raised many questions, but the most important one would have to be: Will Team Jessie J keep their their current name? or is this just a prank played by pieperson50?