Sitekick
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| The Sitekick Project | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Developer(s) | Corus Interactive |
| Publisher(s) | Corus Entertainment |
| Release date(s) | September, 2001 |
| Genre(s) | Scavenger hunt, Paper doll-type, Digital pet, Adventure game |
| Mode(s) | Asynchronous Multiplayer, Singleplayer |
| Platform(s) | Any with Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia), incl. Windows, Mac |
| Media | Online |
| Input | Keyboard, Mouse |
Sitekick is a segment on YTV.com, the website for YTV. All members "own" a robot called a Sitekick. These robots run on Chips, which can be collected, traded, or scavenged throughout the website. There are more than 2000 Chips available.
Contents |
[edit] Chips
Chips are little round pieces that members may collect, trade and use on their Sitekick. These pieces each have a unique function on the Sitekick. Some are more rare than others.
In the Chips menu, there are 20 spaces for chips (eight in the install ring, eight in storage and four in trades). Chips can be rid of by throwing them in the Dump, where other members may take and collect them. The install ring has eight somewhat-trapezoidal buttons to allow a certain transformation chip to be loaded by default, or several face chips to be activated.
There are so far 620 chips for Sitekick; however, the count is always increasing; and more chips are released every month.
[edit] Chip types
There are two types of chips: transformations and face chips.
Transformations allow a member to play with their Sitekick. This includes the Sitekick Saga, Monster, Shrink, Carousel, and the BigFunPlayer (that plays other chips that supposed to contain songs from various YTV Big Fun Party Mix CDs). By clicking the Sitekick's antenna, the Sitekick opens, showing the installed chips. By clicking a chip's icon, the Sitekick will then "synthesize" it and then transform to the chip's form. To get out of the transformation, the antenna can be clicked again. To go back to normal Sitekick mode, the "gooey" centre of the open Sitekick may be clicked. Only one transformation chip can be loaded by default by going into the Chips screen, clicking the trapezoid button under the chip (to lock the chip), and then saving the layout by clicking the Save button underneath the install ring.
Face chips are used to provide costumes for the Sitekick, play audio, or add a background to the Dock; therefore they work differently. They cannot be run by opening the Sitekick by clicking its antenna and selecting it that way. The member must go into the Chips menu, and then click any of the eight trapezoidal buttons to lock and activate one or more face chips. The layout is then saved by clicking the Save button.
Only one transformation chip can be locked at a time (unless a background is locked as well). Likewise, only one background chip can be locked at a time.
[edit] How to find chips
There are several ways to find Sitekick chips.
One way is to use the "Free Chip Store" section on the Sitekick page (not the Dock; it can be reached by just clicking "Sitekick" in the navigation bar at the top). Five of the Sitekick Saga chips (all except Saturday; see below for more info) are usually in this area. A chip can be picked up there by using the left and right arrow buttons to select a chip and then clicking "Grab this Chip!".
Another way to find chips is to look at the bottom of each page. There is a small section at the bottom left with the Sitekick logo and an "eject" button. If there are chips on that page, the button will be flashing when the member enters the page. The player can then click the button to flip the tray and get any chips in the tray. (There's an exception with the Anime Master and Whoa! Magazine pages: the chips are to be found inside a container to the right of the screen. That type was formerly used on YTV.com's older layout.)
Besides getting chips from locations, the dump, and trading, members can get chips from codes given out from the hosts of the YTV programming segments The Zone, and CRUNCH, and through a monthly newsletter on the site.
[edit] Ranking
One of Sitekick's most fun and innovating ideas is the ranking system. Players have a monthly collection list, which they must collect certain chips inside the list to advance to a higher rank. After checking a chip off the list, a production bar on the side labeled "To Next Rank" will increase. Once it's full, a new and more higher rank is reached. The higher the rank the player has, the higher they are listed on SK-TV, seeing as how it is a descending pattern ordered from top-rank to lowest rank. First page users get an extreme amount of chip trades that reach thousands and are admired by other players that all strive to be there. The ranking system goes as follows:
- Bronze 1-5
- Silver 1-5
- Gold 1-5
- Amethyst 1-5
[edit] Sitekick Saga
The Sitekick Saga consists of 6 playable games within the chips: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday/Sunday and Saturday. These 6 games must be completed (in any order; Saturday must be played last so that finishing all the other games unlocks parts of the Saturday game) to obtain the ability to change the color of their Sitekick. Littlewhite created the sitekick saga.
These six chips are in fact the first six classified chips in the Chipendium, a kind of encyclopedia that members fill in and update with information about the chips they have (or had).
As currently believed, in order to complete the saga and get the option to change their Sitekick's color, the player must keep all the Saga chips until he/she has completed all 6 games of the saga.[verification needed]
Only when the color change option is unlocked (it can be accessed under the usually blank Setting menu), players can safely trade any chip in the Saga away.
There is a glitch with the Sitekick's colour. If a player visits the dump and the SK-TV feature without refreshing, the Sitekick will lose its colour setting and the player will have to replay and re-finish the Sitekick Saga.
[edit] SK-TV
SK-TV (SiteKick-TV) is a feature in the Sitekick section in which members may view other members' sitekicks, current chips, chips up for trade, and more info, such as the activation date. The listings are sorted by rank (see Ranking above). Members can also search by the first letter of the member's username, or by a certain name (using the search tool). Both of those list types are still sorted by rank.
YTV hosts' Sitekicks can also be viewed here; their user names are named by the segment they host, an underscore, and the names in which viewers know them by. The person is zone_carlos, crunch_ajay, and zapx_simon .[1]
[edit] YTV Forums
YAP! members can chat on the YTV and Sitekick boards about alot of topics. Concerning with Sitekick, members can post in the Trading, Help, Ask Dr. Frantic, Chipendium, General, Glitch Report, and Contest topics all relating to Sitekick. The Contest & Glitch Report were recently created after Monster_man suggested that there were too many Contests in SK General. Although the Contest forum is used, many users still prefer to host and participate in contests in Sk General.
[edit] Member Influence
Throughout the years, YTV has listened to what YTV members have suggested as to ways of how they can improve their virtual game. Board influence was the very first method as members (known as yappers on the message boards would give suggestions. Dr. Frantic, the head of the Sitekick project would come and read yappers suggestions and would usually post a comment in the first early years of the Sitekick project. Now the doctor claims he is too busy creating a new feature for Sitekick and cannot reply onto the massage boards as oftan. Although occasionally Dr. Frantic will look over and respond. Suggestions have been made to improve the mesage boards, create avatars and encourage Dr.Frantic to fix all of the bugs.
Also, there have been contests in which members can submit chip ideas to Dr. Frantic. The first of these contests were held in YTV's own magazine, Whoa! of Issue 24 (Summer 2005) on page 22, there was a sitekick template and anyone with the magazine could draw overtop with an idea of their own to add to the robot. The resuls were later cast in and the winners were:
Buttkick 1, 2 and 3 by members burakuso and dude14237
RazorClaws 1 and 2 by member pancak
SuperSword by members shila, Dragonbeastx and dark-slayer263
The second create a chip event finished recently, members could submit their ideas to YTV through e-mail or post-mail until January 17th 2007. From the thousands of submitions, about 100 entries were posted onto the contests page and members could rate them from 0-9. The top ten best chip ideas will be turned into real chips. Winners were announced on Febraury 9, 2007. The top ten highest ranked designs are listed below:
ImpWings by member FLYINGDUTCHMEN (Chip Created)
BackAlley by FLYINGDUTCHMEN
Paradise by FLYINGDUTCHMEN
Pheonix by villagedx
BlasterClaw by supermet (Chip Created)
Seahorsey by bum12
Fireworks by FLYINGDUTCHMEN
Electrify by FLYINGDUTCHMEN (Chip Created)
Batty by FLYINGDUTCHMEN
Burnify by FLYINGDUTCHMEN (Chip Created)
FLYINGDUTCHMEN is the best chip designer, as you can see, most of the winning chips in the "Design A Chip Event." Were created by her. actually none of the chips were created by flyingdutchman
Other methods of members getting their chip ideas being turned real is through the message boards when very rarely, Dr. Frantic will visit. One of the most popular and sucessful posts was Monster_man's "Official chip idea post" It has about 310 posts filled with ideas. A few ideas were taken from it after ym_diablette posted saying that she gave some ideas to dr_frantic. Some chips chosen were: RadioActive by Mailm and StarryTopper by Myshadow7716. If he reads a topic that has a chip idea he likes then he will use it and give credit to that member. So far, this has happened very rarely, here is the list of the few who have been chosen through the message boards to influence ytv to create Sitekick chips.*
- Note: All these chips were created from Monster_man's Official Chip Idea post
StarryTopper by myshadow7716
Radioactive by FLYINGDUTCHMEN
ChefLid by goflamesgo
LazerBladeGreen by slashboy2
DragonWings4 by Slacker1
[edit] Elimination Contests
On the Sitekick boards, there are many yappers posting new topics, usually about new theories, clubs, or elimination contests. Elimination contests are very popular but only few are successful. They usually have 10 - 40 yappers, all starting with around 10 - 20 points (in most cases). Then, once a day, yappers can vote somebody to gain a point ('in') and somebody to lose a point ('out'). "Twists" are often incorporated in the contest to make yappers lose or gain points. The most successful elimination contest was Sk Grudge, hosted by yapper myshadow7716. It was the largest topic in all of the YAP! boards. The sequel, Grudge 2, is still going and very soon will hopefully pass the original in post count.
Other successful eliminations are the series of eliminations by Booklearner (now bookblade19) & Robeyblade. Mr_patrick also hosts a lot of elimination contests.
[edit] Sitekick Planet
Over time, there have been many Sitekick Fan sites but none of them have been as successful as Sitekick Planet. This group offers many pages full of helpful information such as secret chips and how to get them, how to beat the Sitekick Saga, the Sitekick chip list and information on future events. One of the main attractions to Sitekick Planet is the daily updated locations and codes found on the site. The locations and codes are updated regularly to give Sitekick owners the ability to easily hunt down the current released chips to mark off in chipendiums, collection lists or to keep in storage, but sometimes they are not updated for a period of time, and provokes anger among members of Sitekick Planet. Another feature that brings Sitekick Planet to such success is the amount of freedom the members get. Members can express their thoughts out onto the heavily talked on message boards(but have to be moderated first), and can vote onto the weekly polls. The polls can be found onto the homepage and chip of the week section. Winning results in the chip of the week end up being the chip that will show up onto the Chip of the Week page. Polls allow members to personally vote on how they want the site pages to end up making it more fun for everyone. On top of that, the site maintains new monthly contests for members to actively participate in.
The original owners who started Sitekick Planet are lil_devilxp (FLYINGDUTCHMEN) and freakman__123 (Freakman_123). But ever since freakman__123 quit, FLYINGDUTCHMEN has taken over the site and has been in charge for a successful 2 years now. Occasionally, the manager will choose assistant-managers to help edit, update the pages of the site and help get jobs done. The current assistant-managers are monster_lord_guy (Monster_man), figie-pudding (Shortiviv). Previous assistant-managers were metalmaddness, metalmadness, is a member that has a high sk rank and over 10000 posts, but he is FLYINGDUTCHMEN'S loyal servant. (I'm FLYINGDUTCHMEN, I go on SK, look me up on SK-TV if you don't believe me.) metalmadness will obey FLYINGDUTCHMEN or he will be punished by FLYINGDUTCHMEN. Back to SKP talk: But due to their inactivity were demoted. Together, the site has nearly reached 1000 members and is best known as the biggest fan site known to date. FLYINGDUTCHMEN has been a great leader of sitekickplanet ever since. But even how hard metalmadness pleads and pleads, FLYINGDUTCHMEN slaps him on the butt, and metal goes into a quiet room and thinks about how he can serve FLYINGDUTCHMEN better.
[edit] References
- ^ Simon's web chat transcript from November 9, 2006 - Simon's username is ZAPX_SIMON
