Donation System Changes, GMod Cruise Line, New Moderator Process, and Beyond

WinterPhoenix

Founder
Staff member
Founder/Lead Developer
Hello and Good Evening everyone! We have some stuff to share today about updates to the Donation System, our (tentative) roadmap for GMod Cruise Line, our new Moderator Recruiting Process, and retiring YukiTheater's old social media accounts! Please bear with us, this is going to be a long post.

Donation System Changes
Starting today, we will be merging the old $5 Donator and $15 Power Donator ranks back into a single rank, Donator, which is now $10 USD.

The Perks for the new Donator rank have also been updated and you will now get, in addition to Donator rank in YukiTheater:
  • Donator rank in any Solstice Game Studios servers going forward, including GMod Cruise Line.
  • Access to GMod Cruise Line's Closed Beta.
  • Recognition as a Donator on our Discord Chat and Forums.

If you donated before May 1st, 2017, you are now known as a Legacy Donator. This means:
  • In YukiTheater, the Power Donator and Donator ranks are now merged into a single rank called Donator. Please note there is no difference between Legacy Donators and new Donators in YukiTheater; they all have the same rank and the same perks there.
  • Your Donation only counted toward YukiTheater and is not eligible for Donator rank on Discord, the Forums, or in GMod Cruise Line. You will have to donate again to get those perks.
  • However, if you had a Donator rank and over 48 Hours of Playtime in YukiTheater as of May 1st, 2017, which was 1,082 of you, you will be getting some Exclusives in GMod Cruise Line, including a Snow Particle Effect (not purchasable in the Shop), TBD Loot, and a special "Legacy Donator" tag on GMCL's Scoreboard. You will also have access to GMod Cruise Line's Closed Beta (more info below).

GMod Cruise Line's Roadmap
We have been asked several times about the progress of GMod Cruise Line as well as when it's scheduled to be released. As such, we thought it might be a good idea to at least share a tentative roadmap to give you an idea of where we are and where we're heading.
  • Pre-Alpha Testing (Right Now) - Developers are able to test new content and code in a GMCL Development Server hosted on the same machine as YukiTheater. This allows us to work together and discover bugs quicker due to there being multiple players testing and doing things on the server.
  • Alpha Testing (July 14th, 2017) - All Staff members will be given access to the server to allow Devs to test content and code more thoroughly as well as gain feature feedback from members outside of the development team.
  • Beta Testing (September 29th, 2017) - Donators starting today, as well as Legacy Donators that had over 48 hours of Playtime in YukiTheater as of May 1st, will be given access to the server. This is the first time anybody outside of SGS Staff will be able to playtest the gamemode. Players will be able to give extensive feedback to the developers as well as strain all of the systems so we have an idea of what we need to optimize, change, and improve.
  • Public Release ("When It's Ready" (Late 2017/Early 2018)) - Everyone will be able to play on the server at this point.

New Moderator Recruiting Process
To address complaints about how we used to process moderator applications, as well as allow us to better provide feedback to applicants, we have changed our recruiting process into a rolling system with existing Staff voting on Moderator Applications every other Saturday. All Applicants will now get a response within a certain time-frame, whether it be a Denial or an Acceptance.

You can read more about our updated process in the Staff Application Sticky.

Retiring YukiTheater's Old Social Media Accounts
We have had, for a long time now, social media accounts for YukiTheater. As we've grown and eventually became Solstice Game Studios, with has own set of social media accounts, we've used YukiTheater's less and less.

As such, we will be retiring YukiTheater's Facebook and Twitter accounts in favor of using SGS's Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube accounts exclusively going forward. However, please note that we will be continuing the trend of having separate Steam Groups for SGS, YukiTheater, and GMod Cruise Line.

Phew! That was a lot. If you have any questions, don't be afraid to reply to this topic. We'll be sure to answer them all as quickly as we can.

Thanks for Reading! Love You All! <3
 
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I'm very excited to see these projects going forward. I don't doubt that I will be donating in the near future.
One question I do have, though: At what point along the roadmap of GMod Cruise Line are you going to be releasing more information about it to the public?
We plan to begin doing Development Streams once Alpha Testing has begun, which will be when the Public will first really be able to see what the gamemode is about. Besides that, we'll be adding more information to its website once it's in Beta or so.
 
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