Blog

The blog is where information about Nitrome.com is posted on their site. It includes a New!, a Works, a Preview, a News! a Fans, an Updates, a preview, a Vote, an iTrome, a Distribution, a Industry News!, a Memory Lane, and a Pixel Love banner section. On August 5, 2009 a Vote section was added. The entire blog was updated on February 25th 2011, dropping some old features while adding new ones. Two new banners were added with nitrome 2.0: the Industry News banner, revealed on January 12th 2012, and the Memory Lane banner to be revealed between Sunday January 22nd and Saturday January 28th.

History
Before the blog, a similar update information was used on Nitrome's first site. This blog was called "news" (sometimes referred to as Nitrome News), and it would be updated every time something interesting happened at Nitrome. This usually happened about 1-2 times a month.

The official Nitrome blog was first started up in May 2008, the first game to have a blog post being Knuckleheads, the blog being made by Mat Annal. Borders for the blog would change depending on the Skins used.

It suffered some neglect during August to September in 2010, but was eventually began being updated again with current content. Later, on February 25th 2011, about two years later, Nitrome updated the blog, adding new features to it. This time the blog was being done by Tom.

Content
When Nitrome post information on their blog, they use a banner for what type of news it is. Below is the banner used and the information covered with the banner. This is a feature that was introduced with the commencement of the new nitrome blog. However, blog posts created before its introduction were also allocated the appropriate banners.

New banner


The New Banner is used when either a new game is released, a new skin is released, or a new feature is released on nitrome.com.

The banner is an image of a caveman in a mechanical machine, while other cavemen are making stone wheels.

Fans banner


The Fans Banner is a banner used when a posting fan related content. It is used now and then, as fan content is rarely published.

The Fans banner shows several mail storks coming to deliver mail, while several other brown birds dig through all the dumped mail on the ground.

News banner


The News Banner is used for Nitrome blog posts about Nitrome on other sites. The news for this could range from an interview with Nitrome on a site, to Nitrome wining an award.

The banner is an image of a human reporter and a robot of the human reporter.

Works banner


The Works banner is used when a post regarding maintenance on the site or game is used. This appears very rarely on the nitrome blog.

The banner for Works is of penguin like creatures in suits on a road doing maintenance on it with big machines and pylons.

Updates banner


The Updates banner is basically the Works banner with "Updates" instead of "Works".

Preview banner


The Preview Banner is used when Nitrome reveals a preview for a game. It has only been used for this purpose, and has since been more frequently used.

The banner is of a fortune-teller reading her crystal ball, which reveals Hot Air in it. Glass bottles with creatures in them - one including a sporty - are seen in the background.

Vote banner


The Vote Banner is used for posts that have a poll in them. In Vote posts, the poll is a box and has multiple options, with the topic being above the box. Unlike other polls, the player can vote multiple times, but only their first vote will be counted.

Oddly, the votes for some options may increase, while the votes for others may decrease. Only 2 polls have been done on nitrome.com: The first was what new feature would fans most like on nitrome.com, while the second was what games fans would want a sequel for.

The banner for Vote is of various primates going to drop their vote in a box.

iTrome banner


This banner was used when Nitrome content for the iPhone was posted. The image of the banner is of an iPhone with a face rocketing away from metal hands trying to poke its screen.

Distribution banner


A banner used for posts about Distributable Games.

It shows a picture of ten wooden crates with letters spelling "distribution" printed on them. Dirk and a Viking are being squished down into the first crate. The Snot is coming out of the 5th crate. Chiseller is coming out of the 8th crate, and all the flavors of Ice Cream are melting out of the last box.

Industry News banner


This banner is used for posts about content that could help of potentially affect Nitrome. It's graphic is a variation of the News Banner.

Appearance
This banner is a spoof of the previous News banner. In the middle is a big yellow construction sign with the words "Industry" and "News!" on it. On wither side of the sign it shows the same man and robot with microphones in front of them, but this time the man is wearing a yellow hard-hat, black goggles, and a white shirt with overalls. His face and clothes are dirty. The robot is wearing the same brown suit as the man was last time, as well as a brown reporter hat with a slip of paper sticking out of it.

Memory Lane banner


A banner found on Nitrome's site on January 15th. The banner is used for posts for reminiscing about past Nitrome games.

Appearance
The banner has the word "Memory" in a daytime scene and "Lane" in a nighttime scene. The Daytime scene shows a bunny (somewhat resembling Fluffykins) joyfully walking down a road eating a carrot. The hills and sun in the background are all smiling, and there are rows of carrots covering the hills. The nightime scene shows that the same bunny featured in the day-time side is now (now holding alchohol and with a hangover) reminicing his happy life (revealing the sunny side to just be his memory). The Dog is peeing near the drunk bunny.

Pixel Love banner


When Nitrome features a game outside of Nitrome, they use this section, with a link to the game's page. They feature a new game each Monday.

Games mentioned so far in the Pixel Love section:


 * Super Puzzle Platformer
 * Guardian Rock
 * Tower of Heaven
 * Roar Rampage
 * Depict1
 * Small Worlds
 * Reprisal
 * Agent Turnright
 * Slayin
 * Gamma Bros
 * Escape from Puppy Death Factory
 * Fracuum
 * Photon Baby
 * Sheepwalk
 * Cactus McCoy
 * Tobe's Hookshot Escape
 * Seedling
 * Puzzle Farter
 * Five
 * Corporate Climber
 * Snow Tale
 * Magnet Kid
 * Llama in your face
 * Gravity Duck
 * Cat Astro Phi
 * One Button Bob
 * Duo Tasking
 * Enough Plumbers!
 * Next Please
 * Space Odyssey
 * Planet161
 * Recursion
 * Uirdz
 * Perspective
 * Qoosh
 * Abduction
 * Revive
 * Counter Terror
 * 400 years
 * Random Heroes
 * Bump
 * Howmonica
 * Give Up, Robot
 * Minibot
 * Dino Run: MD
 * The Love Letter
 * Aqua Boy
 * This Is Not A Minimalist Game
 * Quantum Corps
 * Colossal Cleanup
 * Leaf Me Alone
 * Back Door
 * Night Lights
 * Hyper Pixel Man
 * Minimalist game by Zapped Cow
 * Sydney Hunter
 * Ripple Dot Zero
 * Running Warrior
 * Once in the Cave
 * Soom
 * Clockwork Cat
 * Pivot
 * Blym
 * Wild West the Sheriff
 * Exposure
 * Naya's Quest
 * Enough Plumbers 2
 * Captain Commander
 * Bytejacker
 * Dead End
 * Persist
 * VVVVVV
 * Dyna Boy
 * Dino Run: Enter Planet D
 * Tiny Dangerous Dungeons
 * Crash TV
 * Shine

Appearance
The letters are shown in an style that is supposed to resemble pixels. On the left of the banner is a heart with a bow and arrow, firing at unhappy blobs on the left side. The blobs that were hit are now happy. The green hills in the background have smiling expressions, that when moving from the left to right begin to turn into frowns with tears.

Questions banner


The Questions Banner is a banner about Nitrome seeing if any fans have questions they would like to ask Nitrome.

Appearance
In the center underneath ''Questions? ''is a small frowning blob. surrounding the blob are dentures, saying "Blah".

Unused banners
The only two unused banners on Nitrome.com seem to date back to 2007/2008, and seem to be done by Simon Hunter. These banners can be found via a .swf decompiler, or by typing in the banner's exact url. Unusually, these banners were not removed at all, even when Nitrome switched to Nitrome.com 2.0.

How
Link: http://cdn.nitrome.com/blog/images/banner_how.png



This banner is one of two unused Nitrome banners. It is uncertain what this banner would have been used for, or if it was superseded by another banner. It could be under a section for showing how Nitrome produces their games. Judging from the art style, this banner was done back in 2007/2008, probably by Simon Hunter.

Rant
Link: http://cdn.nitrome.com/blog/images/banner_rant.png



This banner is one of two unused Nitrome banners. It is uncertain what this banner would have been used for, or if it was superseded by another banner. Judging from the art style, this banner was done back in 2007/2008, probably by Simon Hunter.

Categories
Each post has a category under based on an object in the banner. The category has the same name as the banner used. When the category is clicked, it will pull up all the posts with the same banner. They are not present in the new blog, but an image of the category appears next to the title of each post.

Old Blog (May 2008- Feb. 2011)
The old blog can be navigated quite easily. A scroll bar on the right side of the blog box allows for vertical movement (up and down movement) of the previous blog posts. Each post has a banner and a category with the name of the banner.

When the scroll bar in the blog box is brought to the bottom of the blog box, a button with an old man face and a button with a baby's face (the baby face button only appears if on a past page) will appear. The old man button will go back to previous pages with old posts when clicked, while the baby button will go to more present posts.

New Blog (Feb. 2011 - Present)
The new blog has several new features added, along with retaining many old ones. The outside borders of the blog are the same, while the inside Borders are smaller. Things that are no longer available, but were available in the previous blog. The first, and only, being categories, which were probably removed to due infrequent usage.

New features include the post to be shared on Twitter and Facebook, via buttons at the button of the post. A button between the tweet and share button is the 'keep' button, which when pressed, will display humorous quotes and is mainly there for amusement.

The baby and old man buttons were added to a bar at the bottom of the blog Box that moves when the player moves, and can be easily accessed by just clicking them, without having to scroll all the way down. The blog can also be easily scrolled by clicking and dragging vertically, by clicking the up and down buttons on the bottom blog bar, using the up and down arrow keys, and for the first time, can be scrolled with a mouse wheel.

On the title bar on each post, a little arrow is present at the end of the bar. Clicking it will hide the post. At the top right of the blog box is a '?' box, clicking it will display short animations of how to use the new blog.

The new blog does not use Flash; instead, JavaScript was used. The new blog was made by Nitrome's web developer Tom.

Friday updates
Every Friday, Nitrome posts an update. It sometimes has content about next week, like whether there will be a new preview or game. At the end, it wishes the reader a happy weekend

Weekly updates
Rarely, usually due to a statutory holiday, Nitrome will make an early update. In the past this was done once on Monday, twice on Wednesday, and four times on Thursday.

Compatibility Issues
Nitrome has tested the new blog in various browsers, and said there "may be some compatibility issues with the blog on other Browsers". They say that the only problem they found is that in Internet Explorer 6, the Shrink Function does not work and round corners will not appear around the content.

Keep quotes
The keep button, when clicked, will bring up a box with a humorous quote. Below are a list of them.
 * WHY?.... Why would you keep it all to yourself?
 * Keep it where exactly? In the attic gathering dust?
 * What did you actually expect to happen?
 * That’s not very social of you!
 * This is a useless link built entirely to entertain ourselves!
 * What?! Oh... you must of missed the share button. It's just over to the left!
 * How many times have you clicked this link now?
 * Finders Keepers...Losers Weepers!
 * This has nothing at all to do with Castles!
 * This isn’t exactly the Facebook alternative it eludes to!
 * Meaning – ‘To retain possession of’
 * You have now just accessed a secret Nitrome game...nah just kidding
 * Don’t be so selfish!
 * Keep? It's not yours to keep! It's Nitrome's not yours!
 * Mine all mine! My....precious!
 * Did your parents not teach you to share?
 * This is my avatar... err... I mean blog post!

Avatar
On December 4 2013, Nitrome released an avatar challenge with the hint "I guess we will just "Keep" this on the blog.".

Glitch
There was a glitch in the old Nitrome blog. If the bar on a blog post which says the name of the post and the date it was posted is right clicked, and "Play" is clicked in the drop down box, the borders of the blog will change color.

It is not known what causes this glitch, but it is the second non-in-game glitch. (the first being the Highscores Glitch). It has since been fixed with the change to the newer blog.

Trivia

 * Some Nitrome Wiki users have been featured on the blog: Santiago González Martín on a Pixel Love blog post and for making a Touchy Controller in Minecraft, Random-storykeeper for her Nitrome Fan Medley, Frostyflytrap for his 3D Nitrome Fan Art (as the user Wimow), for making a replica of Nitrome Towers in Minecraft, and for making a spin-off of Enemy 585, Happy Jump Land, and Sim533 for being the first person to complete all of the Test Subject Arena 2 challenges.