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Happy Birthday SLeague!

October is our birthday month. The SLeague is one year old. Although we opened officially on Apolyton only in November of 1998, the design of the pages and the initial reviews were all prepared in October. So maybe it's still a little early yet to be celebrating our triumph. But I think we have reason to be proud. The Scenario League now has 75 reviews available, and over 25 design tips, in addition to two completed scenario design competitions. Who would have thought that a simple discussion on the Apolyton forums would have led to such a massive collection of work? This collection is the work of more than 30 dedicated Civ2 players who have written reviews and tips, but it's also the result of the combined efforts of dozens more who wrote scenarios and contributed to discussions on the forum. Thanks to each and every one of you, SLeague has continued to thrive even when many other Civ2 sites were merged into larger sites, or went belly-up. Large Site Woes The site has gotten quite large, which makes good maintenance difficult. Gamestats asked us to update the pages to bring them in line with their requirements as far as advertising, which has consumed a fair amount of time, and we've also had quite a few staff changes. The end result has been more than a little bit of chaos, and a ton of broken links. You may have noticed that things are slowly getting less chaotic, though. With more editors working on the site, we're starting to get back up to speed. There are still a lot of broken links floating around, but we've fixed several hundred while continuing to add new content. We hope to clear up most of the rest of these bad links in the near future, especially the download links. Positive Changes In addition to our raw size, we're now undergoing a site redesign that features a brighter, more cheerful look created by Cam Hills. It's a bit easier on the eyes, we think. Plus for the reviews we now feature a few screenshots to give players a feel for the look of the game. We've added a guestbook, made it through 99% of the second scenario design competition with the aid of HAC, and worked off our backlog of old reviews. The forums have stayed active and a number of new scenarios are being playtested by site members. There have been some other cosmetic changes that make the site look a bit nicer, too. In the near future, we hope to combine more closely with the CSC and Apolyton Database to head for a more integrated Apolyton scenario collection. In addition, we will be making some small changes to the reviews section to make it easier to find the scenario you're looking for. We also hope to cross-reference the various reviews so that alternative perspectives can be easily compared. Conclusion In the last year, we're had our ups and downs, but the general trend has been good. Here's to another good year. Blackclove October 1, 1999