New Feature: Scythe Freeze

Attention all Scythes!  The day is finally here.  That’s right, you can now freeze those pesky, misbehaving, mergery, no good, very bad branches.  CB carpet?  Get rid of it faster than you can say “you are tearing me apart, Eyewire!”

How does Scythe Freeze work?

Scythe freeze is pretty similar to admin freeze, but with some slight differences.  Let’s explore those similarities and differences.

Toolbox

As with Admin freeze, you will now have access to freeze via the toolbox.  The freeze button is denoted with an “F” and can be toggled either through the toolbox or by pressing the “f” key.  You can freeze a single cube, or freeze multiple branches using the freeze parents or freeze children buttons.
You will also be able to see which player froze a cube by looking in the “Players” panel.  Whoever froze the cube will have their name highlighted in bold white text.  For now you can only see which player has frozen a cube, and not which admin.  This has to do with how admins accounts are represented in Eyewire’s database, and cannot currently be changed.

Color

Admin freeze is white, Scythe freeze is grey.  Simple enough.

Here we can see the difference between Admin freeze and Scythe freeze

Permissions

Freezing and unfreezing are granted slightly different permissions at Scythe level vs Admin level.  Scythes can freeze any unfrozen cube, and can unfreeze any cube frozen by another Scythe.  They cannot unfreeze a frozen Admin-level cube.  Admins can freeze or unfreeze any cubes, whether they have been Scythe frozen or frozen by another Admin.

Changes to Scything

As we’ve all heard many times before, with great power comes great responsibility!  Scythe Freeze is a powerful tool, and you must learn to wield it correctly or else there may be dastardly unforeseen consequences.

Scythe Complete

Scythes previously used Scythe Complete as a freezing hack when necessary.  Now that we have Scythe Freeze, please only use Scythe Complete for its original intended purpose – declaring a cell/branch complete.

Freezing and Unfreezing

Please using freezing sparingly.  Any cube frozen with no longer be playable by the Eyewire community.  Here are a few examples of how to use freeze:

  1.  Oh no!  a small merger has turned into a CB carpet merger!  The horror!  This is a great time to unsheathe your Freeze tool from your toolbelt.  Freeze the whole merger, and then work on eliminating the merger sections from the problem cube(s).  Once you’re finished with that, unfreeze the section where the merger connects and wait for the bad stuff to disappear.  Once unfrozen, the cube you reaped should also be able to grow correctly.
  2. Oops, an admin forgot to freeze a section of a cell body.  If you’d like, you can go in and help them out by freezing it for them.  This will help ensure that no pesky mergers decide to attach themselves to the cell body, and no players will end up with a cube that makes their computer feel ill.
  3. Uh oh, this cell appears to be a full-cell duplicate.  Now, rather than emptying the cell via reaping, you can just freeze it.  Freezing a cell will unduplicate it from any cube it shared a segment with when active.  (This mainly applies to Mystic-level cells).
  4. That’s odd, another player left a cube frozen but it doesn’t seem like it needs to be frozen.  Let’s make sure they didn’t leave a note about it in the Scouts’ log.  If they didn’t, go ahead and unfreeze it.

How to NOT use freeze:

  1. Please do NOT freeze entire cells.  Once a cell is frozen it is no longer playable.  The only exception here is for full-cell duplicates (usually these are relegated to Mystic-level cells).
  2. In most cases freeze is a temporary fix.  Try not to leave cubes frozen if possible.  In the majority of cases a freeze will be deployed because a merger is out of control.  Once you’ve gained control over the merger, unfreeze the repaired cubes.
  3. I’m sure this goes without saying, but use freeze only for its intended purpose and not for things like pranking your friend and freezing a cell they’re working on so they can no longer do work on it.  Purposefully misusing the tool in this way may result in a temporary or permanent loss of Scythe status.

 

That’s about it!  Enjoy your new power, and remember to stay cool with freeze 😎 ❄