We have a small bit of news today. Two items to talk about in particular.

First, the old information pages on the BWL website are gone - taken down.

Instead, we've created a new sub-domain and Lolzzz992 has created a new hosted site for Cat-Life.

It's a flash based page that I think looks pretty nice. You can visit the new sub-site at https://cat-life.bwldevelopment.com.

In addition to the flash site, there is also a blog - set up for entries ranging from news [like this post] to anything the team feels like sharing. The blog is separate from the flash site so folks that don't want to or cannot run the flash site can still visit the blog at https://cat-life.bwldevelopment.com/CLBlog
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The other item of news for today is regarding our voice acting needs.

For the purposes of filling out the story a bit, we have several bits of dialogue and it would be useful to have the sound files for the map team to work with as they go.

That being the case, I've hammered out several bits of script and we are ready for a volunteer casting call.

If you want to take a stab at it, we have five different scripts with several characters each.

As part of the process, I've worked out one Audition Call for each script. These are plain text files that include info regarding the characters and a sample of lines from the full script.

To audition, look over the Audition Calls and send in your audition for any character or characters you think you could play.

We have 13 characters open in five relatively small scripts. Should be pretty easy roles as they are mostly just overheard conversations.

I'll break down the script groups here. And you should be able to grab a copy of the Audition Calls here, on the discord, or on the blog.

1. CL 3Scientists Audition Call[cat-life.bwldevelopment.com]
Dr Hill
Dr Dixon
Dr Leed

2. CL Barney and Kleiner Audition Call[cat-life.bwldevelopment.com]
Barney
Isaac Kleiner

3. CL Civilian Audition Call[cat-life.bwldevelopment.com]
Guard
Sci 1
Sci 2
Sci 3

4. CL Dr Burnette Audition Call[cat-life.bwldevelopment.com]
Dr Burnette

5. CL Grunt Audition Call[cat-life.bwldevelopment.com]
Marine 1
Marine 2
Marine CO

All of these characters are male, however some of them could be swapped to female pretty easily if we had any interested parties with the right skills.

Having discord is a plus as it allows us to add you to the team and give you access to the actual script if you are picked for one or multiple roles.

Discord: https://discord.gg/PFFr5s2

I think this could be fun. I plan to play a couple of roles myself that are not in this set.

By the way, in case you didn't see the ModDB post, lolzzz992 took on the role of Team Cat-Life project lead and is trying to get some work done. He has a couple of guys helping him with maps at the moment.

He's been in the BWL steam group chat some, but we're actually using the BWL Discord to coordinate. He can use a ton of help so if you want to help out, I'd suggest popping in and talking to him.

We need models, maps, code, sprites and 2d art, and voice work. Some of these features are more bonus then need, but we'll take what we can get. The goal is to get some form of release out. Then if we can get additional niceties like improved models, etc we can release updates.

You can find the BWL Discord at https://discord.gg/PFFr5s2

The site will be down for 1-2 hours while our host does some heavy work on it. We're changing to new machines and the DNS entries will be updating too.

So a few issues may pop up here and there. Just FYI.

To be fair, I think some of this may even have already happened. So this should be more or less seemless.

Just be aware of down time in the course of the next 48 hours during the early morning MST.

Today, I recieved a phone call from someone claiming to be from windows support. They had a thick indian accent and were insistant that they were recieving messages at their server from my computer indicating that I had some viruses.

They asked me to turn on my computer and they would walk me through the repair process. To this, I kindly and patiently explained that I was not comfortable with this as I only had this man's word that he was calling from Microsoft.

He responded by stating that he was a microsoft certified engineer calling from Boston to help me repair my computer and to please turn it on and follow his steps.

This part of the conversation went on for a bit and repeated several times. Up to now I had insisted that I get the instructions first and write everything down. THEN I would fix it off line.

This wasn't good enough. He got me as far as opening the start menu and selecting manage on my computer.

Finally, I agreed to turn on my computer and waited for everything to load. Not to follow his instructions mind you, but to look up the scam on firefox.

While I was at it I humored this person. Partly, I wanted to see what he would say. First, we waited for the computer to load. It's nearly six years old, though I didn't say that. It takes time to load. This is especially true since I have several anti-virus, anti-spyware, and anti-malware programs that have to load at start up. I didn't tell him that either.

He said it was taking too long and that was probably because of the viruses I had.

Finally, the desktop loaded and I was able to open firefox while other system checks and scans were running.

This was funny. Funny because he asked if I could see the start menu icon at the bottom left of the screen. i said yes. In fact, in the time that my computer was still loading, I was able to open the manager with ease.

He asked what I saw when the computer loaded. I said, the desk top. He repeated, "what do you see?" I said, "The desk top." It seems that microsoft certified engineers don't know what the desktop is.

We got past that and talked about the start menu icon. "click that icon" "Okay" "What do you see?" "The start menu."

"What do you see?" "The start menu."

Yes. He asked multiple times. Apparently, Microsoft certified engineers are not aware of what the "start menu" happens to be either.

After this time, I was reading THIS discussion about these phone calls. http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_vista-security/i-received-a-phone-call-from-someone-claiming-i/4489f388-d6de-416d-9158-0079764bb001?page=34

My computer still hadn't finished loading and he was getting impatient. He even told me "I don't believe you have turned on your computer" at one point and asked me again to turn it on.

Even as I write this, start-up programs are still running... specifically, virus and malware scans are running. That happens when you actually know what you are doing and have an older computer.

He again asked me to open the start menu, but I was busy reading this article. http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/windowssecurity/archive/2011/06/16/dealing-with-fake-tech-support-amp-phone-scams.aspx

"I said just a sec."

I had said this a couple of times while the programs loaded. He didn't apparently like this and said. "This is taking to many seconds. If you do not want our help then just hang up the phone."

To that I replied. "Okay" and promptly hit the call end button.

Be aware of this scam people. Especially for anyone that is not particularly familiar with your computer. I wouldn't trust my parents to know this for example.

But if Microsoft calls you, they should be able to provide real proof that they are, in fact, microsoft. They would not simply say we are in x city and if you log on I will give you information to show that we are microsoft.

Oh yes. If you follow their instructions, they will send you to a phishing site eventually.

This is just a new warning folks.

Fishers have been joining once again. If you get one of these chat requests, block the user and report them through steam's user misconduct action.

An example of this behavior would be messages like "GET FOR FREE " ANY GAME " IN YOUR LIST STEAM GAMES ! JUST LOGIN AND CHOSE A GAME THEN YOU WILL RECIVE THE CD KEY IN YOUR EMAIL NEXT ADD IT IN YOUR STEAM ACCOUNT WITH OUT PURCHASE ][Fishing URL Censored][

If you aren't sure of how to report these violations, simply look at the user's profile. In the top right corner of the profile will be their current status and above that is a menu labeled "report violation".

The first menu option is User Misconduct. A description box is available. Be descriptive and quote their scam if you can. The more reports Valve / Steam Support recieves, the better. Maybe they'll start permitting public groups a ban tool. [but I doubt it :( ]