From this page, you can browse the news that has been posted by the administrator. This page only shows the last 10 news articles.

A bit of a belated update (my laptop has been faulty for a week or so, and the internet connection has been quite poor) - but I've improved the poll system. It now shows the bars based on the maximum value, instead of the total. What this will mean is that the bars will be much more visible and easy to compare.

Secondly, I've changed the poll, as the current one was a bit boring. Vote on whether you prefer Pie or Cake. You'll notice it looks much more easier to read.

Finally, I've added a little note next to the 'success' message when you vote to let you know it might take a moment for the vote to show up (or another refresh, to be precise). This should clear up some confusion.

Enjoy!

Yes, unfortunately I didn't renew the site domain name, and the site was down with a parked page from "GoDaddy.com", the register which I use for my domain names. It's all fixed now, and I'm sorry for the troubles.

--Tom

P.S.: In case the site can't be accessed from http://www.lizard-mania.com, use http://www.tgohome.com/lizardmania/ - it uses the same database and lizard-mania.com basically mirrors it.

As of today, Lizard Mania has officially reached 1,003 members! Congratulations to everyone who's made this happen. Thank you! :D

It seems the Lizard Mania bank is being festive today (for once...) and a 15% bank rate will be available until the 26th December. Enjoy!

By popular demand, I've added the feature to retire pets. When a pet is retired, it will no longer show up on the user's homepage, but it won't go to the rescue shelter either. Instead, it will just sit there, probably losing health, and once reaching 110, will completely disappear from the game. It will still show up if the ID number of the pet is entered, albeit without an owner name. Enjoy :D.

It's true. It's actually been a whole year since Lizard Mania was a distant idea in the farthest corners of my cortex, and when I began programming three days before my birthday (8th December), I never knew it could come this far. In this news / blog / geek-o-rama, I will be exploring the history of Lizard Mania.

As part of the celebrations, I have added an Christmas skin to the site. A bit ugly? Yes, but aren't all rushed 10 minute designs?

Subtle Beginnings: The Lizards Mania Game

No typo, Lizard Mania was actually orignally called 'Lizard's Mania' or 'Lizards Mania'. It was renamed later, because although Lizards Mania was more gramatically correct, Lizard Mania was easier to say.

Starting Off With A Crackle: Lizard Mania

I keep a copy of the old site on my second domain name and it's amazing: it has an incredible TWO files driving it (global controller and the index page), and nothing works at all. Apart from the index page. In total it has 138 lines of code and takes up ~5kb of space (all it does it sit there). For comparison, the current Lizard Mania has ~39,000 lines of code and takes up about 6mb, including all media files (logo, etc.) and others.

Note that the only planned species at the time were (you guessed it) lizards, and the ever-so-popular snakes. Lizard Mania later increased the number of species to five, which stuck for about six or seven months.

An idea of the features planned at the time - a role call from the menu: User Page, Edit Account (now User CP), Bank, Search, Shows, Food Store, Forums and PMs.

A logo to keep for a moment

The original Lizard Mania logo was a big, bold font with a leather skin applied to it. This was created in Jasc Paint Shop Pro. I don't really like it in comparison to the current logo.

The current logos are listed below. The original logo was created by a friend of mine, Ross Turch. I have subsequently touched each logo up by making various edits and additions to it.

Announcing Lizard Mania as a BETA game

I also have a second vintage copy of Lizard Mania using the old URL, before I migrated it to the full-on domain of lizard-mania.com.

This version is much more attractive than the original - it has the green colors and the window and box based style, but the odd/even row style came later, when I decided to do a massive overhaul of the site's design to make it more 'Web 2.0'. It's also ugly in Firefox, because I hadn't switched to the 'true path'. Ha ha. Almost all of the site has been converted to the Web 2.0 style now.

Ugly Code

I'm quite a fan of the 'Code is Poetry' phrase, coined by one of the lead developers of Wordpress. In my eyes (and in those of many others), code should flow, almost like a poem, or story, and have comments and notes inserted whereever possible. This makes it readable by anyone else. Unfortunately, when I first started Lizard Mania, I did not follow this. My code was messy and sloppy and, above all, ugly.

So, over the past few months, I've been rewriting Lizard Mania almost completely from scratch. This has sped it up enormously and made the code readable (in my eyes).

Now

Lizard Mania has evolved since the humble beginnings. It is fast and efficient, designed for a shared server enviroment. It is free, and will continue to be free forever, never shall there exist only Platinum accounts. And it's my hobby, and I hope to continue to bring you this site forever.

The Future?

I'm unsure about the future of Lizard Mania. Likely it will stay online for a long time — as long as I can support it — but I do think that there are not many more features that can be added. So, this means that Lizard Mania is almost finished, and I will begin focusing more and more on my next project, A Human Sim. Don't worry though, I'll still be active on Lizard Mania fixing bugs and helping users, but I will probably not add many more features. I will still add little tidbits, maybe make a holiday color scheme now and then, but I probably won't introduce a new game or feature or change to the mechanics of the game.

It's the end of the downtime for Lizard Mania. My server appears to be working faster than before. Thanks for everyone's patience.

Ace

I've fixed the homepage. It looks much like the original, but there are a few critical changes. First, I've completely rewritten it from scratch. Secondly, the news has been moved down, and the forum posts up. Thirdly, to counter for the news being moved down, I've added a newsflash feature which shows the title of the last news piece, so people can then look at it. Fourth, I've had to remove the show wins thingamabob. It'll probably be reborn into a statistic on the pet's page, but it was slowing the index down too much. Fifth, the index is lighting speed! From 1.5 seconds to 0.04 is massive improvement, and it should make it better for people to visit.

Enjoy!

I can't work on the site at the moment because I'm quite ill. I hope to be back shortly.

This is an extension to my previous post (Where is everyone from?). This time, I decided to have a city / town view. It seems that London and Seattle are the most popular cities.

It also seems that there are a LOT of cities too:

London		156
Seattle		118
Pikesville	66
New York	47
Cumberland	38
Iver		38
Maidenhead	37
Sydney		29
Monterrey	28
Sheffield	27
Skurup		26
Mobile		25
Malabon		23
(not set)	22
Mississauga	19
San Diego	18
Reading		18
Hesperia	17
Pittston	17
Pittsburgh	17
Kent		17
Reno		16
West Hollywood	15
Mexico City	15
Southampton	14
Evans		12
Sparta		12
Castleford	12
Burnsville	11
Schijndel	11
Mission		11
Windsor		11
Kidsgrove	11
Melbourne	10
Bristol		10
Sjobo		10

I hope to see more people visit. I'd like to thank everyone who's suggested ideas, visited, registered even and contributed to the game.

Tom