Appreciate all the hard work the two of you have continuously put into the project over the decade.
One small question IF possible can you elaborate on what's included in the pro version of BlackMagic? I have the current commercial one purchased and eager to know more about the the next iteration of the theme with the updates being applied to nuke. Do you think it'll be more of a evoxtreme 3.0 release time frame and feature lists due the big change and possibility of phpbb being removed?

Here is what to expect from the new BlackMagic PRO theme.

01. Designed with the latest release of BOOTSTRAP 5, current version is BOOTSTRAP 4.
02. Better Crossbrowser compatible
03. Multiple banner carousel (default version only has one banner)
04. Ability to modify individual blocks with custom backgrounds.
05. Custom colour picker, allow you to change any part of the site content to any given colour.
06. Custom AJAX contact form located in the footer (hopefully with be fully bot protected)
07. Custom Profile page, will be very different to the default profile layout.
08. New Cover feature has been added, currently the default theme only shows the banner in the profile, but the PRO version will show it in the member list and group user listing page.
09. Parallax blocks (if I can get this fully working, as trying to create my own script, instead of a 3rd party script.)
10. Upload your own backgrounds
11. Custom Profile editing page, layout will be much different to the defautl version and will be very well documented.
12. Custom Module layouts (this will take some time, as the module need to be updated to use the new template system first)
13. Custom Administration panel, will look very different to the defautl layout, will have a few graphs and extra info been displayed, such as donations to the site, tracked user visits, latest forum topics and much more.
14. Custom login popup.
15. Custom page loader.
16. hopefully will have finished the mega menu, I have been working on.

We do plan on removing the PHPBB forums and making our own, this will only be done after I have finished the plugin system, This will enable us to hook functions to various parts of the CMS, and will prevent the need to do core edits in the future, Which in turn will make update the CMS much easier and possibly automated.

— Lonestar

Here is what to expect from the new BlackMagic PRO theme.

01. Designed with the latest release of BOOTSTRAP 5, current version is BOOTSTRAP 4.
02. Better Crossbrowser compatible
03. Multiple banner carousel (default version only has one banner)
04. Ability to modify individual blocks with custom backgrounds.
05. Custom colour picker, allow you to change any part of the site content to any given colour.
06. Custom AJAX contact form located in the footer (hopefully with be fully bot protected)
07. Custom Profile page, will be very different to the default profile layout.
08. New Cover feature has been added, currently the default theme only shows the banner in the profile, but the PRO version will show it in the member list and group user listing page.
09. Parallax blocks (if I can get this fully working, as trying to create my own script, instead of a 3rd party script.)
10. Upload your own backgrounds
11. Custom Profile editing page, layout will be much different to the defautl version and will be very well documented.
12. Custom Module layouts (this will take some time, as the module need to be updated to use the new template system first)
13. Custom Administration panel, will look very different to the defautl layout, will have a few graphs and extra info been displayed, such as donations to the site, tracked user visits, latest forum topics and much more.
14. Custom login popup.
15. Custom page loader.
16. hopefully will have finished the mega menu, I have been working on.

We do plan on removing the PHPBB forums and making our own, this will only be done after I have finished the plugin system, This will enable us to hook functions to various parts of the CMS, and will prevent the need to do core edits in the future, Which in turn will make update the CMS much easier and possibly automated.

That's an impressive suite of improvements and honestly sounds like a CMS improvement more so than theme capabilities when you write it out like that lol. I know over the years the cms has transformed more from a curator article/file content submission system into more of a friendly platform for gamers. Will there be a good variety still moving forward for such kind of content? There's a community that's like the rising phoenix from the ashes of a old game that does a lot of custom content to keep new life into it (thank you beamdog), but they're using drupal and the site imo is trash. I've always had a softspot for nuke and want to push a change to it and lead that development. https://neverwintervault.org/ Is the site for some reference. Would similar functionality still be retained with all the major rewrites you two are doing leaning out the cms?

I am currently running RD-DarkROTv3 v3.5 HD Theme on the site I keep going for some friends.  Is this something that can be updated to work with the new updates.  Thanks in advance.

— Meph

— Lonestar

That's an impressive suite of improvements and honestly sounds like a CMS improvement more so than theme capabilities when you write it out like that lol. I know over the years the cms has transformed more from a curator article/file content submission system into more of a friendly platform for gamers. Will there be a good variety still moving forward for such kind of content? There's a community that's like the rising phoenix from the ashes of a old game that does a lot of custom content to keep new life into it (thank you beamdog), but they're using drupal and the site imo is trash. I've always had a softspot for nuke and want to push a change to it and lead that development. https://neverwintervault.org/ Is the site for some reference. Would similar functionality still be retained with all the major rewrites you two are doing leaning out the cms?

I will be creating a new blog system to be the new main homepage module/plugin, It will work similiar to the ForumNews module from coRpSE's site, will will be able to list content from the module admin itself, or from selected forum ID's.

Right now we are just trying to clean up the code and get it updated to PHP8.0 <- Has been a major headache so far, Then modules and blocks have to be re-written, we are just two people so we are slow going, but we will bring everything up to date as soon as possible.

— tazman911

I am currently running RD-DarkROTv3 v3.5 HD Theme on the site I keep going for some friends.  Is this something that can be updated to work with the new updates.  Thanks in advance.

Yes I should be able to update it for you, will not be a problem, PM me the theme files, I will get it updated for you.

You guys take as much time as you need. I've been through the code many times over the years and calling it a dumpster fire of cobwebs is being nice. I originally thought it was already on php8 and didn't realize it till the other day when I had to switch wamp over to 7.x for it haha. To be honest 8 gives me the vibes of Vista.. just a pushed on change that no one really likes and many are just waiting to skip over.. Hopefully it'll be worth all the headaches performance wise like 7 did coming from 5. I have some really good old themes I made that I'll need to convert over. I never did bring them over to the bootstrap framework lol. How much of a pain was the conversion for older themes?

Waiting for my New Year gift from you Lonestar

I am in the process now of updating my modules that I have on my site's downloads section that will work on the new version of extreme. I am hoping to be done with them over the course of the next day or two.

For those running custom scripts/modules, expect them not to work with this update as some of the functions are no longer. For example, adding CSS or JS has changed, and the new functions are no more. Some mods I know that some used to advantage of the variety of lyteboxes that the system provided. All but one have been removed, so that may have to be reworked for some of you.

A bunch of stock modules have been removed. I have talked to Lonestar, and some of the stock mods/blocks/modules that were removed, will be offered as separate downloads, so you can add them back in if you want them. We are looking at rewriting them to be better, but as Lonstar has mentioned, it's only 2 of us, and I probably change that to 1.5 of us as pretty much everything has been done by Lonestar. All I have done is lend support in some functions/scripting and some mods that I designed and are looking at being implemented.

Most mods will come out later after the 8.x changes are done.

Great news guy's! Amazing work and we appreciate every bit of it

DRD's Themes will not work with the latest releases (2.0.10). I just found that out just now. I will be rewriting new themes based on the 2.0.10 updates when I have a chance to sit down and look at them. Since the latter part of last year, and the beginning of this year I have had less time in front of the computer to sit down and work on themes. That is why you have not seen me on as much.

I have been working on my day job at the office now four days a week vs. every other day like I was. And it is tough to do anything.

My site is kind of messed up at the moment due to the theme not being functional, but I will fix that.

I know you guys have been hard at work, trying to come up with a suitable release, but I'd love to see anything beyond 2.0.9f really, a 2.0.9g, a 2.0.10 a 2.0.11, seriously anything.  Anything that gets closer to being able to run on PHP 8.2 would be ideal, however I guess I'd be happy with just 8.0 compatibility.  If there is any work I can help with, I'd love to get involved, anything to make this project continue further I'm all for.....  I have been making changes to the 2.0.9f system I'm running, maybe someplace in my diff files there is something useful, I dunno....

edit:
please dont take this as me being a dick,  that wasn't my intention, I know the ole "it's ready when it's ready" thing..  I just know I heard tale of other versions being passed around, and I'd love to get my hands on one!

I am trying my best to get the updates out as fast as i can, there was an update released a few weeks ago, but there turned out to be a session bug that we just couldn't seem to find the cause of, so I decided to scrap it and go with a whole new update.

I could have a look as see how much work it would be to update to php8.0 with the current release. If it would only take about a day to update then I could get the php 8.2 changes done and release that as an update. Until 2.0.10 is done, we are doing away with letter in the version number as it is just confusing tbh.

EDIT: I am almost done with the new update, just finshing the default theme, and a few other things and I will get the update, to some testers for a few days, then will be released if nothing is found to be wrong.

— Lonestar

I am almost done with the new update, just finshing the default theme, and a few other things and I will get the update, to some testers for a few days, then will be released if nothing is found to be wrong.

If you need more testers, I can help....  Otherwise I'll be 'trying' to wait patently.  

I have taken a look to see how much work will be needed to update Xtreme to PHP 8.2.

It is going to take about a week of editing files with thousands of code changes been needed, I do not see a point in doing the PHP 8.2 update as of yet with the update so close to completion, So here is what I am going to do.

I am going to finish the 2.0.10 update and get this version tested and released, I will then start on making 2.0.10 PHP 8 compatible, I will make a GitHub repository for those that want to ge the latest changes when ever I update the repository, But please bare in mind, using a repository version on a live site is not advised, As doing just minor changes can cause a huge amount of errors, So once I get the repository sorted for the PHP 8.0 updates, I will make a new new post, which will provide you with the GitHub repository URL.

I suggest using GitHub Desktop, it is quite simple to setup, there are a lot of YouTube tutorials out there to help you.