New Merit Ranks and Icons!!

Hey guys,

We have decided that it was time for a little update on the forum rank icons (one of many things that we have being planning to improve and for which we have finally found some time).

TBMF is full of great people, and yet the only reward system we have had so far, were ranks based on post-number. We therefore felt that members who have been contributing in some particularly remarkable manner to forum life should be given the possibilty of getting a little something
fancy to ornate their profile box with. This will also provide a form of positive feedback system.

Cianty took the lead on this project and came up with some fantastic new versions of my previous
rank icons, and even revamped the Mod and Admin icons in the process (Yay for me too!)

Without further ado, let me introduce the brand new MERIT RANKS!

Features of Merit Ranks

• Merit Ranks will be awarded by the forum Administration (= Admin + Mods) on the go in the next couple of months and thereafter. We regularily discuss happenings on TBMF and will be giving out these merit "badges of merit" to individuals who have shown special dedication and/or have brought something new or exciting to the table and/or have contributed in some constructive way to make TBMF a nicer/better place.
  
• Merit ranks are on voluntary basis, meaning that if you are nominated for one, you may accept or refuse to have it put in their profile box. "Nominees" will be contacted via PM.
  
• Merit ranks will replace the current post-count rank icons and will not change with post count. Your post count ticker will be unafected though.
  

Special Ranks

Below you can see the list of new icons along with a little description.

Icon	Rank & Description
	Admin: Tom, the Boring Administrator
	Honour Guard: The Moderators
	Forum Engineer: This one is specific for Ashton, the eager helper concerning the forum
	Rules Guru: This is related to Answer_Mods on the Specialist Games forum, who are sanctioned to officially clarify rules questions and help people.
	Master Painter: Exceptional painters such as Golden Daemon and Golden Tom winners, or people that have just submitted above average and impressive pieces of work.
	Distinguished Poster: This rank is an exception to regular merit ranks, as it is automatically given after making a certain amount of posts. We won't tell you what the threshold is though
	Eager Little Helper: This rank is given as a reward to especially helpful members constantly giving advice and constructive criticism to those in need.

What about the Eager Elf-Bashing Poster icon?

Those are sweet. Good work CIanty. I can't believe you kept my icon. *blush* I'll be back soon to deserve it again, I swear... as soon as the snow sticks, and I'm forced to be inside.

Eager little helper - that title reminds me of the perks you can earn in fallout! I like the idea!
Can you only get one of the above or is it possible to get more? Deafnala springs to mind: A talented guy like him should qualify for at least master painter and distinguished poster.

No, you can only have one of them. And the Moderators are excluded. They keep their Honour Guard icon and that's it. No need to praise ourselves with additional awards.

how you would like to though aye? though, in my mind you'd deserve additional ones as well for bringing us both this outstanding forum and some seriously great inspiration/rules/paintjobs/models/scenery/something to do when bored at work!

Once I get a decent camera, you'll need to slap one of those painter icons on me.

Looking quite nice.

Hmmm that master painter.. is that by my standard? cuz you'd have 1000s of that title in here (myself NOT included haha)

Some of the ranks are soon to be given away to the first persons...

Horatius wrote:

Eager little helper - that title reminds me of the perks you can earn in fallout! I like the idea!
Can you only get one of the above or is it possible to get more? Deafnala springs to mind: A talented guy like him should qualify for at least master painter and distinguished poster.

I was hoping for Forum Idiot myself...it's the truth in advertising thingy.

DeafNala wrote:

Horatius wrote:

Eager little helper - that title reminds me of the perks you can earn in fallout! I like the idea!
Can you only get one of the above or is it possible to get more? Deafnala springs to mind: A talented guy like him should qualify for at least master painter and distinguished poster.

I was hoping for Forum Idiot myself...it's the truth in advertising thingy.

Or Forum Town Cryer... Or Forum Crazy Jester... There's so much rank that fits to you

I find the colour background of these pics awful if you compare with the colour background of the forum, can't you remove it ?

cool idea, im glad it takes the place of the shield and stars, cos people information some times takes up more space than there actual post!

ive got a long way till Distinguished Poster!

Lanyssa Ryssyll wrote:

I find the colour background of these pics awful if you compare with the colour background of the forum, can't you remove it ?

You mean the background glow?

It can be removed but I don't want to make Cianty go through all the icons again. Besides, I quite like it... adds to the "bling"

Don't you think?

Hmm... I don't know how to explain in english...
It's not the matter of the (great ) picture, cause when I save it, the background is blank, perhaps it's my browser, but I see that :


And I find the colour weird, it's perhaps just a parameter of status background from the forum, to have that (sorry, I did it with paint in 2 minutes it was just to give you the idea):


Perhaps I'm the only one to have this problem/who don't like it ?

Ohh nice new icons, great work Cianty!

Lanyssa, it's actually your browser's fault! The icons Cianty made where saved as .PNG (If I remain correctly) which enables the creator to save the icon with a transparent background. The problem is, you use Internet Explorer which doesn't allow to show the transparency of the image. IIRC there already is a new version out of IE that does support transparent images, or just either download Firefox or Safari. It'll solve the issue and makes browsing the intarwebz a hell lot nicer!

Hope this explains it a bit, JC!

They look like this in my browser btw, just to be a bit clearer..

I didn't understand why it's okay for all the pics ranks ("elder", "warlord", etc...), but that's because they're .gif !
My apologies, I'm just too old fashioned IE

The new shields look very nice!

Thanks for clarifying Lanyssa and Pfreck!

I think they're great! But then i don't have the weird white background

And Deaf, you'll need a stand-alone title of congratulier! You OWN the birthday posts

Deaf needs a unique, absolutely, uber, mega, giga SPECIAL ICON, as he is one of a kind (Although I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing ).

Lanyssa, I have version 8 of IE on my laptop (although I never use it) and it looks find on that. If you are using an older version, then you should upgrade (to Firefox ).

I didn't know IE was THAT bad. Had I known, then I would have chosen GIFs... oh well.

Glad you all like the new icons.

And yes, part of the whole idea was to replace the big Moderator and Admin icons we had before.

i really try my best to bash elves



....its not always easy, them having a 5 4 4 3 3 1 6 1 8 base profile, you know...

Oh god Asp, not the elves again!

Nice, the icons look very cool. It's fun to have a bunch of little awards like that hanging around.