www.whyville.net Aug 5, 1999 Weekly Issue



Bigfoot
Staff Writer

Show Me The Money!

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Ah, I love the clean crisp smell of money in the morning. Or in the evening. Or in the afternoon. Aw, heck, I love money pretty much any time!

And now that we're all getting paid to visit Whyville, it's going to be even harder for me to let myself go by even one day without logging on. Whyville Clams are the name, and buying Whyville stuff is the game. Once the stores are up and running, we'll be able to buy new bricks for our houses, new furniture for our rooms, and new pieces for our faces!

Here's the deal: every week, your salary is determined by what awards you've received since you first came to Whyville, and by what activities you've done in the past seven days. So, to make money, you want to do two things: one, make sure you already have all the highest awards you can get on things like the Skater Game and so on; and two, go to the chat rooms and the BBSes and post good questions and answers at the BBSes every week.

You receive your salary every day you come in to Whyville. For example, say your actual salary is 15. That means you get 15 clams for each day you log in to Whyville. If you come every day of the week, you'll get a total of 105 clams (add 15 seven times and you get 105).

If you don't come in at all that week, you won't get anything. If you come in twice, say on Monday and on Wednesday, you'll get 15 on Monday and another 15 on Wednesday, for a total of 30.

Hey, it's just addition! No sweat!

Every Thursday morning, your weekly salary will be re-calculated. To find out how much you're getting this week, and to figure out what you could be getting, go to your backpack and click on the little checkbook. Your ledger will come up in the main screen.


Scroll for cash
A close look at the ledger page


In the left-hand column is a list of the activities you can do at Whyville. (Click on a name to go to that activity.) In the right hand column are scrollbars, which show you how often you've been doing the activities, or how well you are doing at them. At the bottom of your ledger you will find your daily income for the week, called your "Actual Salary."

To find out how much money you could get next week, click or drag on one of the scrollbars. This will move the purple marker from your Actual Score to a Projected Score, and will change your Projected Salary (at the bottom in red) to a new value. That's based on the markers in purple.

Your actual salary will stay constant through the week. Use the projected salary to figure out what activities you might want to do in order to get a certain amount of money next week.

The check-boxes near the bottom are one-time bonuses; they don't count as part of your salary, so whether they're clicked or not won't affect your Actual or Projected Salary. But you can get instant cash by doing an activity that hasn't got a check next to it. So, for example, if you haven't picked your nose, go do it, and get 10 clams all at once. If later on you change your face, that won't get you more money -- although that that's no reason not to be creative and have a different face every day!

The first three scrollbars are obvious -- everybody knows about the bronze, silver, and gold awards. The House of Illusions scrollbar counts how many of the 8 rooms you've been to. The Alien Rescue game numbers how many of the 12 aliens you've rescued. And the next three 'Weekly' activities count how many days per week you submit to a BBS, receive a response on one of your BBS submissions (so it pays to ask cool questions!), and visit the chat rooms.

Finally, the "Cash on Hand" line at the very bottom tells you how much cool cool cash you've got in your pocket. Like I said, in a couple of weeks there'll be stores to go shopping at. But be careful with your clams -- don't spend it all in one place!

From the heads and tails of Bigfoot's pocket change, this is Bigfoot Bill, wishing you many happy returns!

As a reminder, here's a quick checklist for figuring out this salary and ledger thing:
    SALARY:
  1. The more activities you do, and the better you do, the more money you'll get.
  2. Whyville Clams can only be used in Whyville and Myville.
  3. You get paid every day you come in to Whyville, once a day. If you don't come in, you won't get paid.
  4. Your salary changes every week at 12:01 Pacific Time, Thursday morning.
    LEDGER:
  1. Find your ledger in your backpack.
  2. At the bottom of the ledger screen, "Actual Salary" tells you your daily salary for the week.
  3. Use the scrollbars to change your "Projected Salary". This will not change how much money you get this or next week; it just tells you what money you could make next week if you change your behavior/awards this week.
  4. The x-boxes indicate one-shot bonuses. If it's already clicked, you've gotten that money.
  5. "Cash On Hand" tells you how much money you actually have right now.

 

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