Turf insider September 2024

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Round winners – August 2024 (Round #170)

Congratulations to the winners of round August 2024: Marcus_P from Hamburg biked home a Gold to complement his two Bronzes, Veit from Hamburg added a Silver to his medal row and Nybegynner from Østlandet turfed home the first [[Bronze medal|Bronze] for Norway. Well done mates!

Upcoming events

If you are organizing an open event, don't forget to write to insider@turfgame.com couple of months in advance to get the information about your event into the newsletter :)

Bonanza 2024 on the 14th of September in Enköping

Over 200 turfers are signed up for the two Bonanza heats this year. Are you one of them? It is not too late to sign up for the Events.

Sign up with Swedish text HERE.

Sign Up with English text HERE.

Don't forget that the Turf Awards for 2023 will be handed out during the banquet.

Turf Ultimate Region Fight 2024

The Ultimate Region Fight will go for five weeks this year. If you are not participating yourself, you can keep an eye on the competition HERE. There are several teams from Sweden, UK and Germany competing this year.

Let's talk about raising issues a bit.

The most common issue is a zone issue and this category can be divided into:

- The zone is missing an attribute or has the wrong attribute. This is usually very straight forward to correct.

- The placement of the zone has become unsuitable over time, like a public space has become private or changes in the environment has made the zone dangerous to take. A zone issue of this type, is often also easy to correct and neccessary in order to keep zones active in the game and safe to take. Keep 'em coming!

- The zone name has a spelling mistake or doesn’t make sense to the player or feels unsuitable for that zone.

For zone names, be aware that a name CAN be misspelled deliberatly, eg Ssslinget in Uppsala. Local slang can be used, and is often encouraged thus making the zone name more fitting for that area.

Capital letters are used for each distinct word in a zone name (no spaces) – BigGreenCar would be correct, BiggreenCar or BigGREENcar would not. This is not always easy if you are not native to the language. And sometimes, zonemakers like little jokes, like SandaVägen is a better zone name than Sandavägen where the first is more fun since it means to "put sand on the road" (to make it less slippery during winter) whereas the second is just the street name close to where the zone is located.

Issues regarding Name change can be tricky, and generally if the zone is old, the old name stays UNLESS something has changed in the area close to the zone, like FillItUp next to a gas station becomes NoMoreGaz when the gas station is torn down. One thing to remember is we have people with Swedish as their first language setting UK zones and people with English as their first language setting Swedish zones – we try our best but you might see zone names in your country not in the native language and we are all human and make mistakes, especially in a foreign language! And sometimes a second language "mistake" can make for a fun zone name :)

Despite what some people think, it is quite ok with ”Zone” in the zone name, an English name for Swedish zone is also ok and a mixture of different languages in a zone name can be quite fun! Turf wasn't created with linguistic correctness in the zone names in mind. Quite the opposite really; whimsical Swenglish names, puns and odd names has been encouraged, even though many names are dry ones with no other inspiration than the street names near-by. The developers and Turf crew haven't decided to change this, and will from now on be more strict when it comes to changes in zone names.

So remember that the issue system is for issues affecting the game, not improvement suggestions. Turf Crew welcomes comments on zone names, especially creative zone names, but each one is dealt with manually by a human, so unless there is a spelling mistake or something has changed in the zone to warrant a name change, think twice (or thrice) before writing an issue about a name change especially on old zones. Old zone names are part of Turf history, eg in the beginning zone names could not contain special characters such as the Swedish letters "å ä ö". Today they can, but you will still come across zone names without them. I find those kinda cute and hope you do to! And as always, be kind!

More about zone making can be found HERE on the Turf Wiki. It gives you some idea what is ok and what is not. I especially encourage you to read (and maybe re-read) Maqqan's excellent blog post about making zones, link can be found at the end of the Zone Guidelines Wiki page.

Embarrassing Turf Moments

Recently a post in Turf Stockholm Facebook group had turfers talking about embarrassing moments when out turfing. I think we all can recognize ourselves in at least one of the following: 1. Dog owner holding the dog on a tight leech IN the zone and expecting to bike by, but instead you stop, take the zone and turn around the way you came. 2. Dragging the bike out on a beach between sunbathing people. 3. Leaving the bike on a forest path to walk 50-200 m to a zone with your bike helmet still on. 4. Biking past the same jogger on a track 4 or 5 times. 5. Intruding on people in romantic situations, like on an out of the way bench next to a pond. 6. By biking real SLOOOW through a zone to prevent from having to put down your feet and doing a full stop. 7. When meeting non-turfers and not wanting to explain what you are doing, side-stepping the other person in order to take the zone when your GPS is acting up. 8. Taking zones at nudist beaches fully clothed. 9. Taking church zones when either a wedding or a funeral is happening. 10. When you take a water zone on the fly, removing all your clothes thinking you are alone, but when you emerge from the water, you are not alone any longer...

Do YOU have an embarrassing moment not covered above or with a twist? Please write to insider@turfgame.com and share with the Turf community :)

Turf Picture of the Month

This months Turf Picture is of the zone Hubertus taken by DasHuhn, "A zone at the end of the world. Crazy":

If you have a Zone picture you want featured as Turf Picture of the Month, send it to insider@turfgame.com. Please include your Turf nick for recognition!

Turfa lugnt/Safe turfing!

//Munin