You're just going to abandon us like that? If SubSpace dies, it's your fault. Fuck you.
- Cybrid
Desert sky
Dream beneath a desert sky
The rivers run
But soon run dry
We need new dreams tonight
Dream beneath a desert sky
The rivers run
But soon run dry
We need new dreams tonight
warning: no data coming from server
31 August 1999
I'm outta here
I've got to leave town and won't be back for quite a while. With luck I will be able to access a computer on Saturday and for the rest of the trip, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. No time to update now either as I gotta pack still.
Would someone please mail me the model number of a really nice set of earphones that don't sound like ass and aren't freaking huge? I've now wasted money on four shitty sets of ear and headphones. Sony sucks now. You probably knew that, but Sony didn't used to suck so I didn't have to buy new earphones for about six years.
<tennin> your house is infested with girls?
Well there have been better plans
But none that I could ever understand
Emerald signal the green on black
The lights say move say never look back
And so I find a place where I've never been seen
Find another place where the red turns green
Where the emerald glistens through the darkness again
Where the emerald glistens through the rain
Slayfest Tiny Update
28 August 1999
The plan
I've got no time to update at the moment as I am getting ready for Slayfest. I just wanted to put up here for anyone who checks the site, game time is in fact 8:00, not 9:00. We have been starting at 9:00 lately because of bad luck with the server. Hopefully this will not be the case again tonight.
If the zone does crash again, I may attempt to put up a lag zone called Tiny Slayfest so look for that on the directory server. Meanwhile get on ?chat=slayfest and if worse comes to worst we'll just do a zone crawl, maybe do some heavily anti-moderated eliminations in Alpha Zone or something. ;)
Oh yeah, I'm closing down the subarenas during Slayfest from now on. Sorry, but I'm not convinced they are uninvolved in the zone's instability.
Arnor mon amour . . .
If anyone out there managed to get most or all of Arnor before it went down please contact me. :(
<Shanoyu> Please direct any questions or comments at the wall to my left.
The lights shine clear through the sodium haze
The night draws near and daylight fades
Ignore the voices, discard the day
For the brand new darkness, for the bright new way
We're All in Shit Together
27 August 1999
How about some old salt for those old wounds . . .
kboom of version 2.00 infamy appeared yesterday at the Pro League board and refuted some of JeffP's post from the 25th. His remarks were was promptly shot down in a short followup post by Jeff. But then you can decide for youself if that is in fact the case. We all knew the plot would thicken when kboom got involved in this mess, but this thickening is something of a disappointment. Anyway read this and then read this. Thanks SilentDragon.
A bit of history for those among you who spent the Christmas holidays actually enjoying yourselves. It may be worth noting that during the late part of that December, kboom attempted a patching of both the server and client whose purpose was to prevent the use of Twister. Unlike the now-popular 1.35 version (written by our own sage386; did you all realize that?), this version would have required a client upgrade which was not downward compatible with older versions of the server. The patch was implemented in some of the VIE zones including Chaos, Pro League, and I believe Alpha as well, remaining there for only a few days before public outcry forced its removal. JeffP, who in late November had authored a patch plugging a dangerous sysop backdoor password, was quick to dissociate himself completely from this new unauthorized version, and Ghost Ship--once a collaborator with kboom on the scheme--followed soon after by denouncing kboom's tactics. kboom disappeared into a sort of Finnish exile after all this, but it was never established whether his move was in fact as conniving as it appeared to many, or merely an innocent misestimation of the player base's willingness to trust a lone sysop with a grand design.
If anyone would like to see an alternate version of this history posted or simply offer a rebuttal against any of these points, send it along and I'll put it up.
How it may work
A post from Sumirp on the Hockey Zone board alleges what may or may not be a fiendish plan brewing within the Harmless camp . . .
trix was in pro league for a while, and he was saying how what may happen is that if you subscribe to infantry, you get SS for free. If you dont subscribe, you are limited to 2 hrs a day, or something like that.
4U2NV counters:
For one, trixter can't shutdown any servers as long as you own a SS CD. On the CD box it gives you the right to run your own private server. Trixter also can't charge you for the current SS version that is out. The only way he can charge you is if he does an upgrade and no one has to upgrade if they don't want to. Jeff has also talked with the council and has told us that SS will always remain free.
What 4U2NV neglects to mention is that no one is any longer using the server program provided on the CD because it is not secure; many of us are using a version patched by JeffP in November of 1998 as mentioned in the story above. While Brainscan would be hard pressed to forbid players from using a server willingly supplied to the community by Harmless Games, it must be pointed out that most of us aren't using that version either. The cold hard truth of the matter is that 90% of the reputable servers are using a subgame that was not only was never licensed to us, but which was obtained illegally and then patched without any permission of its owners beyond VIE UK's willingness to look the other way.
As Cybrid said in his recent Council message posted here yesterday, "By buying it, then being pissy about it, he'd alienate EVERYONE. Nick is not a stupid person." It can be safely assumed that neither Harmless nor Brainscan mean to replace the new, modified Subgame with their own by force, but I submit that we'd all be wise to keep in mind that they most certainly can if they wish.
So let's not get too sure about the lay of the land just yet, eh?
Clarity
To be perfectly honest, the subtitle for today's update is a joke. I don't think we're in deep shit; I think we'll probably be just fine. Just in case anyone takes offense at the remark. I do think we're up a creek without a paddle, but then that's another story...and I stand by the frying pan metaphor I made yesterday. But hey, it's just a frying pan.
Life's a . . .
Wolfperson, cosysop of Witch Doom, informs me that the zone is down for a few days due to unforeseen problems with the server. There may be an extended period of downtime but with luck it will be taken care of fairly soon. Witch Doom keeps a homepage which is one of the better web presences I've seen for a single zone and features a messageboard, map voting, and top player listings. It remains the oldest and truest classic "super zone" in the pure sense of the term, complete with the insane settings you all know and...tolerate...not to mention rabid loyalty to Arctos' wicked cool RZ map. If you are and old Witch Doom player check the site for news on the zone's resurfacing.
AML events
I forgot to mention the AML game last night because I am so used to being unable to attend it. Would you believe that on the first night I am able to go I get completely scatterbrained, forget about it, and stay out the entire god damned night. Doh. I guess all I can say now is be sure to come next week. :/
This week in Subspace History . . .
Forgot about this stuff. Oh well, I've got a lot for you this time. I hope at least a little of it is interesting. I'll post more tomorrow including a fascinating look back at the Jihad-Purists fight as well as some other goodies from my packrat attic.
Very early draft of my first map, a giant and varied dueling arena which will someday become 31 Flags and then finally Pleiades. (1997)
Timer is added to Jackpot Zone to discourage hiding. Players protest the epidemic of negging which follows. And then there's this. (Go and look at it. It's funny.) Thanks Dnrc, wherever you flew off to. (1997)
Woah...yesterday was the second birthday of The Unofficial e Home Page. Find it and win a prize. (1997)
Some newbie posts a brief defense of the oft-maligned neg fights at J12 in Chaos East and A1 in Dueling Zone....and it's still valid after all this time.
The Minefield MMG page opens. (1998)
Pent closes the worthless SubCenter with what was probably the rudest and lamest retirement message of that summer if not ever. "Hi I'm back... Sorry about updating, xoom wouldn't let me upload my site...so I will not update it anymore since nothing really cool is happening in Subspace anymore, therefore I will take my site down and another site with the same name will be up by someone I don't know, but it will be called Subcenter, so bye. I will be making a StarCraft site now. And thanks to all who visited! -Pent"
Rift Subspace.Net breaks the news of a real-life plot by activists to kidnap Dolly, reported in an unknown newspaper. Dolly also gives birth to a lame who is given the name Ewe Bonnie. (1998)
a pez addiction denounced einexile on the Turf Zone messageboard. "SHUT UP EINEXILE, YOUR A FREAKIN IDIOT," he pronounced before a crowd of dozens on July 21, "YOU DO NOT HAVE ALL OF THE ANSWER!!!! SHUTUP". pez went on to explain that he was sick of hearing einexile's retarded views on Turf. shutup. (1998)
Chakotay's one and only Subspace map, Circle Turf, has its world premiere in the Sheep Cloning Facility. I think six people came to this. Someone please break it to Fatal Image easy that we spent that entire evening learning to fly through walls. ;)
Jolly Roger follows his remix of the Chaos West map with his long awaited remix of the Chaos East map. "I hope my reputation speaks for itself when I say that you will be pleased with the results...TRUST ME, i know what I'm doing with maps" LOL -nt- (1998)
Rodvik's Cutter go back up after a long quiet period, at the now defunct Humbling America. (1998)
The second T2-17 map--perhaps the finest ever made for that zone or any zone--goes up in VIE War Zone East, and is viciously attacked then carelessly redesigned. It is never used again.
As a special thanks to the slagging of his War Zone maps by various philistines, Shanoyu creates Bravehome, arguably the most cramped and unplayable WZ map ever made. It is later used for a Hunted-style event in the SCF. (1998)
The Mapmakers Guild moves to Warstrike. (1998)
Flippmode's Kill the President scenario, later renamed to The Assassination, is postponed indefinitely. It has still not been run, but those interested are invited to play The Hunted or Betrayed for TeamFortress Classic since they stole his idea. ;P
Shitty music
No, not the kind they play on the radio; not their shitty music, OUR shitty music. If you do Shoutcast indulge your disgusting closeted lust for tacky goa trance on the one and only Philosomatika. Sure it may be sick trash...but dammit, it's our sick trash.
Did I say something about a map archive?
I lied. I can't upload it because Warstrike is haunted. I'll upload it as soon as Reaps comes on. :) By the way, screw all you people who can make good maps but didn't send me one yesterday. You have one more day.
* ojnk <- ^5 <- e
<ojnk> see that
<ojnk> thats me REVOKING my high 5
I want the seventy billion future Earthlings,
and you know where they are!
End Day Special Edition
26 August 1999
The end of an era - the beginning of an era
Confirmation is coming in from several different sources this morning that Trixter has indeed made the arrangements to acquire Subspace. In what capacity remains a question unanswered, but from the way he and JeffP are talking it appears as though what's being sought is complete ownership of the "forever throughout the universe" variety.
According to SS Impact, the deal has already been made and Trixter has in fact acquired the rights. According to Fiery, Trixter informed her yesterday that he has in fact bought the game, but there is some question as to whether the paperwork has been finalized. JeffP came up short of confirming an actual purchase in his posts yesterday to the Pro League board, using language which implied to me that the arrangement had not been totally finalized.
Those posts are the real story, not Trixter's purchase. To wit:
If we do get the rights and start making changes, all the new servers will be released to the public for their use as well.
Rod and I have asked Nick that if he can get the rights to subspace for a reasonable investment, that we would really like to fix it up and release it freely. He agreed that would be cool and has proceeded to try and obtain the rights.
I stand on my record of managing subspace while at VIE and would use that as proof that the future of subspace is best served in my hands. Players are always free to ignore anything I do to the code and use the version they have now.
Jeff's massive post covers not only these issues but--perhaps more importantly--addresses virtually every concern that has been voiced in the last year with regard to the safety and legality of the VIE server program and the various loopholes, abuses, and backdoors which have been found within. He goes so far as to explain the chronology of each matter and, where applicable, his line of reasoning. If Trixter's purchase of Subspace is in fact the beginning of a new era for this game, JeffP's long and in-depth review of how we got where we are today is the end of one--and a good end that will work for the benefit of the game. It may well be that those who don't trust Trixter stand on reasonable ground, andin many ways I count myself among them--but Jeff's words add a great deal of credibility to the arrangement, and are reason for calm and consideration. Be sure and read this.
I can't help but notice, though...a single ominous remark made in response to a comment from ShadowRipper. "There must be SOMETHING he is gaining by buying it," ShadowRipper mentioned in a later post. Jeff's response: "What few details I know regarding this I cannot go into as they are confidential at this point."
But let's wait and see where this goes, sez I.
Fiery takes a leave of absence
Fiery, who has been instrumental in building the Subspace Council's relationship with VIE UK over the last few months, was visibly upset with the news, judging from the tone of her posts (my personal opinion, there, and I don't blame her), but bowed out with class and grace, and what amounted to a promise that she will be back. May we all exhibit such good form when the time comes. Fiery, your work is what got us to wherever we're going. Those who understand what you've done for the game appreciate it and I think it's safe to say we all hope to see you back in the game soon. Meanwhile the community will be a little bit the lesser for it.
Read Fiery's quasi-retirement message here.
The Council lives
While it can be assume the Subspace Council is reeling from the recent news, we've known it was coming for a little over a week now and most of us are probably well prepared for the news. As always there is disagreement among the members, but based on my early estimation it is apparent that a consensus exists which will continue the Council forward into whatever new configurations and relationships become necessary. Put simply, we're not quite sure what we'll be doing, but we'll be here to do it when the time is right. If you have strong feelings about the Brainscan purchase of Subspace, now would be the time to start thinking about voicing them to whoever on the Council you feel represents your interest in the game. But of course please do read the recent posts first and give the news some time to settle.
On this note, be sure and have a look at Captain Harloch's recent update (today, but dated the 23rd because Harloch has a third nut) at the NMEBASE, which covers a lot of what's gone down and offers his own insight and spin plus a bit of speculation as well.
And lastly, some soothing words from Cybrid
Excerpted with his permission from a recent post to the Council board. Cybrid has a unique perspective on these matters as a long time member of the Warzone/Brainscan posse who nevertheless has always made his convictions known and always formed those convictions on principle. But then I shouldn't have to tell you this; maybe in a few decades someone reading these archives will need the reminder. ;) Enjoy, and relax a little.
The game doesn't have much to gain: SubSpace isn't going to attract many moreplayers, even with active marketing. There really isn't THAT much technical stuff that needs fixing. The amount of oomph the game would gain by having someone working on the source code, and maybe even an active promotional force in brainscan, would be outweighed by the amount of flexibility we'd lose.
Now...let's think about something for a second here: why would entr.net want to buy the SubSpace source code? I see two possibilities.
1. He just wants the source. Probably to integrate it into a SubSpace clone/sequel. This makes SOME sense. But, one has to wonder, why isn't he just licensing the Infantry source? It would be a pain in the ass to make a modern space-shooter out of either one (SS because of its age; Infantry because it just wasn't designed for it), but Infantry would probably be easier in the long run.
2. This one seems more likely. He wants to take over the game, and market it online. This makes good business sense. With Infantry, SS and one or two other games, not to mention EGN, he'd have the basis of a strong online gaming service on his hands. There are two ways for him to handle this:
a. Rip the game away from us, set it up on the Brainscan network, then sue the engines off of anyone that supports the current community.
b. Transfer the current community over to this theoretical new network. This is the smarter move . . . by buying the game, he'd alienate off all of the oldschool players. By buying it, then being pissy about it, he'd alienate EVERYONE. Nick is not a stupid person. I can only assume that we'd get some level of control over the new setup.
Yesterday's update
In a nutshell, you didn't read it. What am I now, chopped liver? Go read the good news. :P
Map archive at Warstrike
It should be up by the time you read this. I will be adding to it over the next few days. Thanks Reaps for setting me up and SuperFly for accomodating and tolerating my pesky web needs. Erm, no it's not up just yet. It will be up tomorrow. :) Damn, I forgot about Giga's news. Coming soon, GiGaKiLLeR news, promise. Look down here in about ten hours. Right now I am being lured away from the computer by evil spirits . . . goodnight, punk rock friends. Sing while you may. And don't forget Slayfest this weekend!
Trixter is completely nice and genuine, besides from a little trash-talking. - Trav, who is also completely nice and genuine, besides from a little trash-talking The seventy billion people of Earth... where are they hiding?
N e w s o f t h e D a y 25 August 1999 Where are they now . . . ? I happened across our old friend BFrog yesterday and he informed me that he is working on a game called Nox for Westwood Studios. This is a promising and very nice looking top-down action RPG in the tradition of Diablo but with a focus towards fast action and cunning. While it is a multiplayer game, the single player side of it appears to be quite elaborate. You can find Westwood's homepage for Nox here. The best information I've found on the game is a Q&A with executive producer John Hight. The game received an enthusiastic treatment at E3 and from all appearances Westwood intends to make it their big Christmas release. BFrog was the last person at VIE other than blackie to actively support Subspace in its post-retail days, and is best known for correcting a number of bugs in the early part of 1998--most notably among them the infamous negative packetloss double-bomb. He never did fix that turf bug, but we'll let him live. ;) And in another rare surfacing of a star retiree...well, I meant to post this a couple of months ago but was in a bit of a pinch at the time as some of you may recall. (Burp.) I'll quote my own ICQ message to Captain Harloch here actually... jesus, i just went to the PlanetFortress page and thought i'd read editorials...i really meant to be at the Grassy Knoll which is a page for snipers....anyway I'm reading the first editorial which is rather long and I think to myself, hey this is kinda fun, sort of like the old days of Subspace when I would go to Rincewind's page and there would be these editorials and lively discussions about how the game should be played and made me interested in the game...here i was starting to feel a bit of deja vu and all nostalgic and shit, and I get to the bottom of the fucking editorial and Rincewind is the author. Is that god damned weird or what? Maybe I spoiled the surprise a little there with the preamble but I wanted to share my violated outrage with all y'all. :) For those of you not holding a grudge against the man who inspired me to start this page, Rincewind's editorial for PlanetFortress can be found here. Enjoy. If you happen to see him in the game, be sure and infect him with something nasty and put a few nails in his eyes. He never sent me his page archives. Baudchaser defends Trixter In a surprising move, Baudchaser has all but endorsed Trixter's attempt to buy out Subspace. He may well be right in assuming Trixter's good intentions and the potential of the deal, as well as the limitations of Fiery and Ghost Ship's pending arrangements with VIE UK (which did in fact involve source code), but he ignores or accepts the sneakiness of the maneuver. From all appearances, Trixter has made no attempt to consult with a single one of the people who presently run and care for Subspace, and the fact that he attempted this buyout without any involvement of the game's community proves that business is not just his primary concern but his only concern. I am also a bit tired of the argument that Trixter sees Subspace as a role playing game and is a completely different person in real life. Perhaps this would be a valid point where it not for the fact that he plays the role of this supposed "Subspace character" outside of the game and even outside of messageboards. He plays it in public statements and in private chats beneath thinly veiled officious language. The only place where I see this "businessman" persona materializing is in the form of occasional canned press release statements. I think more than a few of you are making excuses for the man in an attempt to make the future look more rosey than it is. It is not okay to mistreat people in real life, on a messageboard, or in a computer game. You do not get to have two reputations just because you say you have two. Above all, being a "businessman" does not exempt you from being judged as a human being based on your words and actions, or allow you to be condescending, conniving, or pretentious. We do not tolerate this of other businessmen; why do so many of us hurry to justify it in Nick Fisher? Having said that, Baudchaser makes an interesting argument, and is dead accurate about the fate of Subspace. Trixter may or may not only be interested in attaining the source code for JeffP's use, but it is paranoia to assume he wishes to murder the game. Excepting the possibility (for which there is much precedent) of legal threats against server administrators and news pages, the fate of the game still rests with us. And I reiterate my statement from a few days ago: The Subspace Council does not have a relationship with Trixter--but we did have a relationship with VIE UK and they seem to have ended it without so much as a fuck-you. Good riddance, at least, to that relationship. Out of the frying pan and into the fire...but hell, why not? And for the love of God will you please stop calling people by their real names. Dorks. Read Baudchaser's editorial on the Subspace Gazette. Pro Tourney coming up . . . I normally don't post press releases but this is particularly important because a relatively large number of slots in Pro League are open to anyone who can take them in the tourney. Thanks to Damien for the heads up. Hey all, This is Damien. Pro Tourney is starting up so can everyone please post the following on their site. Pro Tourney for Season V is starting after Pro Bowl to determine which squads gets slots. There will be at least 6 spots open for grab next season because all the teams that went 1-9 (6 in total) this season will have to defend their spot in the Pro Tourney. If you wish to sign up, please visit http://www.req.org/protourneysignup.html. The zone is up and ready thanks to Ghost Ship, look for SSCE Pro Tourney (VI) Zone in either sscentral.vie.co.uk or sscentral.ds98.com. For more details about Pro Tourney for Season V, please visit http://www.req.org/protourneymain.html. Damien - damien@req.org Pro Tourney Host The Gauntlet I visited Lord Tsura's new zone yesterday after reading about it at DS98. It's called The Gauntlet and is fresh out of Tsura's recent departure from the WLI server bank. As one might expect from a zone originating in the WLI camp, the settings are more or less along the lines of a super-zone, but conservative enough that one can have a nice long tunnel fight and with some skill or luck survive for a while in the open air without dying under an enormous hail of blue emp bombs. The zone is doing pretty well though, and seems to be gaining a small following. What really sets it apart is the map, which features a wonderful open center combat area with a nicely constructed tunnel systems at its perimeter, a couple of defendable bases in the main arena, and two very nasty J12/T20 type safe zone wars branching off from the top and bottom. This would actually make a superb map for Alpha Zone or an elimination game. (Hmm.) Have a quick look at the map image here. Good luck to Lord Tsura with this, as a lot of time and care has clearly been put into the construction of the zone. Just when you thought it was safe . . . OneIFreak, who made that cool 2fort style map for the Slayfest eliminations last weekend, has released his own shark design, a shipset which replaces only the Shark and leaves the original seven ships intact. Rolling for the ship is not completed but you can get the 2D version here. Arena for this weekend's eliminations . . . On that note, here's a sneak preview of one of the maps I'm cooking up for the elims this weekend. There will be two others of my own design (not including the old Zen Dueling map which will make an appearance), and we'll use a couple of other people's work as well. Please get your maps for this event to me by tomorrow, at least in preliminary form. I don't care if they are tiled or not. :) Map archive at Warstrike Hopefully by the end of the day I will have my map archive moved to its new home at Warstrike with a bit of an expansion. Anyone wanting to help me with this just holler. :P hmm let's see... play a ss clone with addons, owned by trixter and monthly pay, plus a community based on wannabes from subspace OR quake 3 with prize tournaments, change, great free gameplay etc etc.. i think i'll go play quake. - Candyman All last night sat on the levee and moaned, thinkin bout my baby and my happy home. N e w s Y o u C a n P e r u s e 23 August 1999 Turf is a go Had a short discussion this morning with mDK, sysop of A Small Warzone, and set in stone what had been tentative plans to open a ?go turf arena in ASWZ. The arena will come up sometime in the next few days, with settings identical to those in the main arena and a map designed for that style of gameplay. Those present at last weekend's Slayfest saw a sneak preview of this map when I ran a couple of miniature Bloodbath games in it. We will also be using a cool map made by sumirp unless there are objections from him. Sometime soon after opening ?go turf, we will also be bringing up an SVS arena to replace the now dead War Zone. Since mDK is in charge, the WZ players can't fuck it up and maybe it will survive. Since this is an SVS game it will use more traditional map style which initially will be pieced together from classic WZ designs (sue me) but which will maintain the ASWZ principle of a small map with minimal greening and overland travel. flame . txt Shanoyu, the scariest mapmaker alive, updated the feared and hated Misc Txt with a nasty editorial on the subject of Trixter's apparent designs on Subspace. Tune in almost daily, give or take a week now and then (sound familiar?) for unauthorized mean opinions from the Bad Eblanaite. My spankin new predictions section Welcome to my predictions column. Here are my new precitions for September. Someone will start a new page, staff it with people who are already staff members on competing pages, and then it will collect dust. Four little spaceships will fight four other little spaceships, and some of them will blow up. The surviving spaceships will be added to a list somewhere and then promptly forgotten. Various seedy individuals will continue to entertain the notion of making money off of subscriptions to a two dimensional action game. Something bad will happen to Subspace and because of this the world as we know it will again come to an end. Freedom fighters on the web will cry out in protest against yet another bid by the powers that be to destroy freedom of speech as we know it. Then they will get bored and do something else. Planet Earth will be consumed by the fires of God's wrath. Someone will crash the Sheep Cloning Facility. Please stop I know there is a Subspace active list. I don't want to be on it. Please refrain from sending me any more invitations. :P Would you believe I am standing in the cafe at Borders, getting ready to leave, contemplating the $105 worth of shit I have accumulated on my table, thinking, gee that's a lot of money, maybe I should put a couple of things back. And then I spill my fucking tea all over everything. Alien Reminder You have only a few days left to send in for the Alien Legacy offer. If you buy the DVD box set they throw in a fifth disc for free which covers the making of the movies etc. Evil^Jedi is a bungmonkey Say what you like about Subspace Accelerator but anything nice which may come out of it will forever be marred by his selection of one Sarah Michelle Gellar to kick off his groundbreaking Babe of the Week section. Dear God, I was going to do something like that and now I can't possibly work up the nerve. ;) A note on maps Please send me maps over ICQ rather than through the mail. My quota at Westnet is sort of limited. Also it should be noted repeatedly that the .lvl format used by Subspace likes to get corrupted during certain kinds of transfers, so it is best to zip em up. As I think I mentioned before, if you are making an arena for Slayfest Lite it would be nice to have it by Thursday (at least in rough form) so I can plan for the game and maybe offer a few suggestions. <Shanoyu> You cannot hide from me, Captian Vowel. If it keeps on rainin', levee's goin' to break. When the levee breaks I'll have no place to stay, N e w s o f t h e D a y 22 August 1999 Slayfest Lives I don't know how it keeps happening, but Slayfest keeps getting rained out to the point of total disaster and then mysteriously picks itself up off the ground. Thank God that Xalimar was on today right when the SCF went down mysteriously only minutes after Slayfest was to begin. I was certain I'd be playing a short series of small and boring pracs on my modem and calling that Slayfest (get this--I don't remember how to set up a Subspace server!) when back up comes the server and everything is fine. One of the best things about Slayfest is its little inner circle. The Sheep Cloning Facility gets an unusual amount of newbie traffic for a server whose name is just a series of seemingly random letters with the word "West" after them, and that's a nice thing, but as Harloch has said on a number of occasions the heart of Slayfest is its core of hardcore loyalists who keep coming back and will endure the weird experiments that don't work out long enough to give them a chance. Sure enough, a full hour after the event declared itself dead, people were still checking the server for activity and coming in. Soon we were floating comfortably around 25 people--not a spectacular turnout for Slayfest but a comfortable number if you are the kind of sysop who never figured out how to use macro files. ;) The event lasted pretty long for one of my nights, dying off a little before the three hour mark when a second server crash cut short its final game. Those of you who saw the incredibly freaky map I uploaded for that game have something to look forward to next weekend, as we give the infamous and ancient Infinite Fish map its long overdue maiden voyage. This is one of the rarest, most clever, and most beautiful maps in Subspace, it is over a year and a half old, and it has never seen action. Next weekend we'll do the right thing and start off in it. A sneak preview for those who haven't yet seen this weird masterpiece. (Oh, and click the image for other funky Infinite Fish food.) Lastly I want to send a special thanks to Khris Kruel who has become the official saver of my ass for Slayfest events. I was lucky to have him helping me run events last night and we are fortunate to have him working for the zone and the event. On a more important note, KK had to step out early after getting news that his grandmother was in the emergency room and asked that a few prayers be sent her way from anyone so inclined. You have mine KK, I hope everything turns out alright. NMEBASE returns No sooner had I sullied his kangaroo racing, beer guzzling reputation by pointing out that Captain Harloch's infamous NMEBASE was down, than the site came back up at its new location. Harloch's quirky, weird , noisy homepage, which doubles as official homepage for Slayfest, is now up and ready to go at Subspace.Nmebase.Com, complete with a scary new design. Included in the first news item are the details of Harloch's surprise sabbatical and a special guest appearance by Zeta zone artist-in-residence Cuervo Muerte. A bit of Slayfest history there as well. This is going to be fun. Call for maps Slayfest again, but you don't necessarily need to be a Slayfester to take an interest in this. My specialty at the Slayfest has become SVS team elimination games, I'll be running the event for at least three more weekends before Harloch takes back the reins, and I'd like to have some new arenas to play in. I plan to come up with a few myself, but I'd like to see some attempts by others so that we have a variety of styles for the games. The reigning elimination map is this weird little thing I made. It has become very popular for reasons I didn't quite understand until after the fact... The last thing I want to see is more maps that look like this one, but it is the clearest way of illustrating what I want from a map in theory for these events. Simplicity of design and a predictable flow. Familiarity should not be an important skill. No camping spots, very few dead ends. Balance between open spaces and tight areas, with options for retreat and a few traps. Opportunities for interesting flanking, pickles, and narrow escapes. No old designs except for maybe a signature type structure now and then. A reasonably large center area so we can use a decent size warp radius. Symmetry or very careful balance between sides, or start points near the center. Easily recognizable, easily described start points. Simple safe zones positioned near well-traveled areas. Preferably between this big and twice as big. (This arena is ten sectors wide, five tall.) Careful you don't accidentally make swastikas. They tend to occur naturally in maps. Have fun and don't burst a vein--but don't make tiling errors or else. :P Enough blabbing about that. We'll make it a contest, and no you are not required to please me. Make a playable level that shows some love has been invested in it, and we'll play in it some. At the end of the game a winner will be chosen based on a vote, my knee jerk reaction, or some other reliable empirical measure of quality. I should have bought that Quad Damage at the computer show for $31, I could give away the original Q2 for a prize heh...oh well, you'll get a coveted spot on the waiting list for the myserious Dolly Prize. (Yes, the Dolly Prize is real.) Other events I realize I am getting very behind the times with regard to these and the reason is that I am never around at the time that they are run. UAML events are running on Tuesday and Thursday nights and Alpha Zone is running Turret Wars on Friday nights. These are consistent events which are running on a weekly basis. Sometimes soon I mean to bring back the Events page from back in the Warstrike days. It would be best if this were something all the event planners could access and update; if you'd like to help with this or host it, please let me know. Quota: Above and Beyond I've secured a bit more space at Gamehacker for this page's many components, and will likely be moving the map archive to a new home at Warstrike sometime soon. I realize that a lot of this page is not functioning right now and would like to point out that this is in no way the fault of Gamehacker, as I have plenty of room for those, just not for all the maps I mean to keep on the page. The ill repair of this page at the moment is simply its amazing volume asserting itself against my inevitable scatterbrainedness. I'll get to it soon; thank you for the reminders. :) What the hell is a Dolly Prize ? Unfortunately even the recipients thus far don't know because they haven't got theirs yet. A few don't even know they've won it. So far there are six winners. In other news . . . I actually updated only al little over twelve hours ago. If you gave up on me over the last week and didn't see yesterday's news, the archive is linked below. Especially check there if you haven't been following the alleged Trixter Subspace buyout. *cringe* <saltygirl> you kill them and put their heads on metal spikes Johnny take a walk With your sister the moon Let her pale light in To fill up your room N e w s o f t h e D a y 13 August 1999 Trixter purchasing Subspace The news of his attempts first materialize on the Subspace Council mailing list and in the days following rumors floated around the community. Now Fiery, who has been in constant contact with the offices at VIE UK and all but created the Council's relationship with them, has confirmed in this post to the Pro League board that Trixter has in fact made an offer to VIE UK for the rights to the game. Her message is quite ominous and should be read by anyone who cares about the future of Subspace. Although I am inclined mostly to agree with her sentiments, I must point out that a few days ago I posted a message to the Council mailing list suggesting that the SSCC either clarify its relationship with VIE UK or assume the worst with respect to Trixter's bid. Cybrid responded with a post which was largely sympathetic to my position but which nonetheless made a number of strong points in defense not of Trixter himself but of the path Subspace is likely to take through Brainscan as guided by Harmless. As much as I dislike and distrust both organizations, these observations made me feel a lot better--not necessarily about what ought to happen to Subspace, but certainly about whether or not we can have a functioning game in the future. I'll post bits and pieces of it next update if he'll allow it. New rumors are beginning to surface that Trixter has in fact already closed the deal. If this is indeed the case then consider the magnitude of betrayal committed by VIE UK against the player community which has worked for so long to reach an understanding with them. To me it looks like the same story all over again, told with new backstabbers and new victims. On one hand it would be nice for Supspace to be truly independent--but if in fact VIE UK is selling the game off without any notice whatsoever to the people who are presently making it worth buying in the first place, then good riddance to them. Slayfest Lite™ That's right, you're stuck with me again. We're going to do the whittled down shareware version of Slayfest without Captain Harloch as he has been quite busy latey with being Australian and plossy. He is also apparently going on a bit of a creative sabbatical. Of course the new ideas are already pouring out of him and we will likely get back into normal form sooner than expected. Therefore over the next few weeks I will be running things and keeping it simple. If you've been to my Slayfests you probably know what this means...team elimination games in weird maps, occasionally maybe a flag or two. Short games often taking place in unexplored maps; half of them suck and half of them are a lot of fun, but we move through them pretty fast so no one gets too bored. I may think of some weird objectives for the team elimination I'm going to upload this now so everyone knows there is still some Slayfest type stuff planned for this evening. The NMEBASE is down pending a domain move. More in a bit if I have time. Gone gone gone . . . Had some shitty stuff happen, had a friend leave the state for good, had to try and kidnap a cat. They installed a DSL line and it didn't work, then the splitter they used fucked up the phone line. Also I am hopelessly addicted to the q3test now. Anyway welcome back to my page. Maybe I will even update it again before next weekend. ;) you could be the president of a multimillion dollar company who is backing a new online game and still act like a child...this has been proven. - blind io (And sixsixsix It makes us sick We're sicksicksick Of 666) trances and drones 13 August 1999 ZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzz I took Nyquil and I'm going to bed. I'll try and update early tomorrow (Saturday), but thought I should mention some stuff now. There may be another Turf match early in the afternoon, and Extreme Games is holding another bigass jackpot game like last weekend. This time it's at 6pm eastern--an hour earlier than it was last week. Finally, Slayfest will be a rerun of Red Rover, which was only getting started when the server went down last weekend. If the EG game runs into Slayfest, I will run some eliminations for those uninterested in joining the EG fray. If we lose the SCF again, we'll probably have an arena in Trench Wars Dark to play with. Also remember that Xalimar is making repairs to the server in the afternoon, so we might simply not have SSX back by the time we need it. In case you were wondering, the scrollbar was gone yesterday because I thought I'd see how many people out there would go for it. Personally I do not like scrollbars, but I didn't realize people with no wheel couldn't just use the Page Down key. Speaking of first person shooters, the Quake III test is getting much easier on the old framerate somehow. I gave up on it for a while because it was too demanding on my PPro 200 with a Voodoo 2 card. This was to be expected...even with effects and textures turned down it was very nasty. While I was considering whether to purchase a Voodoo 3 or something comparable I downloaded a new version and found that it was now nearly playable under the old version. Thank you Carmack, I can go another year without upgrading my motherboard. ;) Anyway if you were borderline a few months ago it may be playable for you now. Trances and Drones by the way is a kick ass old ambient album by Robert Rich before he turned to the Dark Side (i.e. New Age). Check it out sometime if you ever make friends with someone who works at a record store that doesn't make a profit. ;) Think I'll put that on now and go to bed "early" heh...later........ it's all about chicken stock... ;) - kj God do you look evil in the dark. N e w s o f t h e D a y 12 August 1999 Hockey Zone is back Alastria posted to Center Ice with the good news that Hockey Zone, homeless since the SSCD zones were taken down two weeks ago--and without any server at all after the SCF crashed (sorry) on Saturday--has been set up with a new zone on the VI server bank thanks to Ghost Ship. There has been no change to the zone administration or staff. The new zone may not be listed under the VIE UK directory server so use sscentral.ds98.com if you can't find it. SSX downtime this weekend Xalimar informed sysops of the SSCX zones that the server will need maintenance and goes under the knife Saturday afternoon. If all goes well, the zones should be back up in time for Slayfest (and with some luck we won't crash this week). These things always take longer than expected, however. If the downtime runs into Slayfest, SilentDragon has donated Trench Wars Dark as a waiting room to run eliminations in. AZWZ to return soon In related news, A Small Warzone should be back up in the next several days and will be located back at its own home, none other than SSX. Maybe the curse on the zone and the curse on the server bank will cancel each other out. ;) Expect the new zone up sometime this weekend. For the time being, a pirate ASWZ game is presently occupying Delta Zone. Messes and maps . . . As you can easily see for yourself by accessing almost any link on my left navbar, most of this page has still not been uploaded to Gamehacker. However, I have put up the old mapmaking section in (I think) its entirety, and have added a new section which is just an archive of maps. At present it is just most of my own maps, the beginnings of a Chaos section, and a mirror of the MMG vault. If and when I get more space it will expand. In other mapping news, I was a bit unhappy to hear that a brand new GiGaKiLLeR map went up in SSCE Turf Zone this weekend and I missed the game. People need to tell me these things. :) Puma has sent me the beginnings of what looks like a promising and very original Chaos map. If they are willing to run this one at Chaos Expert I will be very surprised, but it has the potential to turn the game on its ear and make things interesting again for a while. Meanwhile, conspiracy theory has put together a hybrid of the Battle Drone and old West maps which...hm maybe I shouldn't be too specific but it's got some good stuff in it. :) My map for the upcoming ?go turf arena of A Small Warzone is finished and we will probably open the arena shortly after the new situation is shown to be stable. This will probably be my third to last map for the foreseeable future. There will be a new map for this year's Dawn of the Dead scenario and I may finally complete the Lunar Subterrane for Chaos Zone (probably not) and then I will finally be out of your hair. (And have more time to work on the map pages.) The Minefield Map Archive Extreme Games has its revenge I was a bit sore about the 12 billion point jackpot crash on Saturday but I must nevertheless congratulate Extreme Games on topping its old 100 player mark and on maintaining what looks to be a steady recovery back to the old days of player zone dominance. I also retract the middle finger I offered to Pointman, although I still plan to ballkill him at first opportunity. einexile is a bastard with an mwheel fetish But then if you're reading this you probably already figured that out. This article is dedicated to all those people who think they are too cool to play first person shooters. ;) Oh, and to Chakotay. Hi Chakotay! Today in Subspace History . . . I will put this up later today. I promise. Grin. you hear that?? ahhhh.. its the sound of no one asking, " can you host my zone? " - Nfocipher Well I'm back. What are you crying for? When I'm dead, will you cry more? N e w s o f t h e D a y 09 August 1999 Well hello there stranger . . . Welcome back and thanks for following me here. I'm pretty much set up at GameHacker now. The domain won't work for quite a while but I do still have it. Maybe in a few months. I do want to make very clear that the page was down for much longer than it should have been, and that this was largely by my choice. For those interested I will explain most of what happened. This is not a good story, just a bit of history. Maybe a few years from now it will be a good story. A few weeks ago, a conflict between Suicide and the Subspace Council over unwanted mail being directed towards him culminated in his threatening to release confidential documents about BanG and the new Subgame. He previewed the tantrum, and showed he meant business, by mirroring our private listserv onto the sog.java.net Pro League board. Captain Harloch, who had tried to remove Suicide from the list, was forced to shut it down list entirely rather than risk Suicide's wrath. (Keep in mind that this is a low traffic mailing list and Suicide is a capable mail administrator.) Recalling Suicide's sudden closure of Infantry HQ, Ghost Ship set about building a new Pro League site in secret, and about a week later announced the page as the official one for the league. Sure enough, Suicide tore down every component of sog.java.net within hours of finding out. Back around May, I had moved the Minefield onto Suicide's server. Our infamous discussion about Infantry actually came out of a more mundane conversation about setting up my directories and resolving the domain. For the record, I found Trixter's threats against him repugnant, and I was disturbed and disappointed to see Jeff and Rod sit by and watch while Trixter contradicted their responses to our actions, then sit by again and watch while Trixter punished Georgia and Bishop22 for Suicide's actions and started a silly campaign of small-pond "gaming network" style legal harrassment against Infantry HQ. However, I did not agree at all with Suicide's treatment of Trixter in public nor of Jeff and Rod in semi-private. I now see that it was a mistake to maintain a relationship with him. In mid-May I did not hold that opinion, and I enlisted Suicide to help me with the effort to bring back Jackpot Zone. He chose this as his time to skip town, and with a very few brief exceptions I did not hear from him again during the seven week history of that effort. In parts of the Infantry HQ log which I edited out before he posted it, he had mentioned to me that he no longer played Subspace, that his interest was in the community only and that his enjoyment came from maintaining databases and webboards for the players. After he tore down sog.java.net, I understood that, as far as I knew, I was now his only real remaining tie to Subspace. I contacted him and asked if he in fact meant to take my page down as well. He responded: yea you need to start moving your stuff off of my server and have the domain name point to your new home. You have a week to get this done e. I am pulling out of all subspace contacts. ill be getting a new icq number soon and will shut down all email addresses that go to me that subspace knows about. I responded with a few questions about preserving his archives. Because he needed to remove the emf.cx domain from his DNS server before I could relocate in earnest, I knew he would respond to my questions before taking apart the entire page. He didn't, and this sudden dismantling of my directories caught me at a time when my new host had gone offline for a week. Unable to resolve emf.cx, we had not set up the new site and I was now without a host for an unspecified amount of time. After a week I gave up and pursued a long standing offer from Baudchaser and SuperFly to host my page at GameHacker. And here I am. I want to say thanks to the many people who offered me hosting while the page was down, especially to QA Man at PCGaming who tried to set something up for me in a hurry, to ZetaSquadron who don't normally host non-Zeta pages, and to the people at Warstrike who offered to take me back despite of our falling out a few months ago. All of the offers and checking in on my situation were very much appreciated. Center What? To clarify one point which a few people brought up, at no point was I ever intending a move to alastria.com. Center Ice the main page for Hockey Zone, which for a long time I neglected to link to. The logo is there because I don't play Hockey Zone, because I don't report much on Hockey Zone, and because of Hockey Zone's unique nature as not being an ongoing piss war. If there were more backstabbing and politics involved in the administration of that zone, I'm sure it would make the news all the time, but because it is a fairly nice and orderly community, few non-regulars know what goes on there, and some don't even realize it exists. And besides, I think the logo looks nice. Hockeybeau sent me the image and javascript a very very long time ago, asked me to put up the link, and of course I completely forgot about it. Anyway so I dug it up finally and there it is. Slayfest SE: Night of the Mishaps What a God-forsaken mess. Fortunately it was also quite a bit of fun, at least for me. 8:00 rolls around and no sign of Captain Harloch. Some asswipe scheduled a false giganto-jackpot game to begin in Extreme Games a mere hour before Slayfest was supposed to start. Of course Harloch has to stay because he helps run the zone, his squad has a stake there, and it's bringing tons of people in. All the same, I'd like to extend a very special Minefield raised-middle-finger to Pointman for putting me in charge of an impromptu Slayfest elimination tourney for two hours with no notice whatsoever. POETIC JUSTICE ALERT CLANG CLANG CLANG Guess what happened? Yup, the server crashed, sending a falsely inflated 11.6 million point jackpot to the bottom of the Atlantic where it belonged. I can assure you that, of the thirty people in the Sheep Cloning Facility enduring my weird and pithy elimination games, exactly one felt bad about this. No, this was not just because my server crashed too. (It was actually a burp from the billing server which crashed nearly half the zones on my favorites list.) The truth is I rather like to hear about Extreme Games making a comeback, I knew Harloch was between a rock and a hard place here, and these elims were the most fun I'd had at the computer in a couple of weeks. But when I found out that it was apparently Extreme Games which had caused the crash in the first place, that pretty much won me over to the majority opinion. I certainly hope Pointman has as much ignorance and disregard for Slayfest as he appears to, because he won't be attending any in the future, at least not under his own name. :P So Harloch arrives, and takes the reins, and we set up the game in the main arena, and we've got maybe 50 or 60 people now. Real Slayfest™ is in the house and in effect, we're starting to bomb down tubes, we're illegally laying portals, the ball is not where it should be. Things are just getting good...and Harloch disappears again. But wait, is that him on the player list? And he seems to do nothing for about 5 minutes. ZombieBobie, head Wolf in the Red Rover game, is wondering if maybe he's the one supposed to be calling the players to try and make their way through his minions to the other end. Now here comes Harloch, asking if anyone can see his messages? We can see them, sure--or at least some of them. Trouble is he can't see any of us telling him that we are getting his messages, as the Aussies seem to be getting hit with almost unprecedented packetloss for an SSX server. I was starting to wonder if he was ever going to make it back into this weekend's game, but our grand finale disaster made that speculation unnecessary Sure enough, along comes the time honored Mine GO BOOM Subgame Crash to obliterate the server yet again. Not only does the zone go down; this time it never comes back up again. Mine GO BOOM has done some very cool work in the SCF and set up subarenas for a lot of people. Along with SilentDragon, ASWZ and Hockey have temporary setups there largely because of him. But this shit keeps crashing the damn server. The Slayfest That Wasn't Meant to Be met an abrupt and final end then, with the SNS Faithful flipping between Zeta zones and well known chat channels in a vain attempt to reorganize and salvage. This was not going to happen, and the weekend's Slayfest went out with a whimper. Coming next week: Probably a big old scen from years ago, featuring....drum roll.... THE SERVER PROGRAM FROM THE GODDAM CD. Low end cpu, high end card. I just installed a Voodoo 3 2000 PCI on a Pentium Pro 200 with 64 megs of RAM and I'm getting between 90 and 130 frames per second in Subspace with the thing. It's not a showing me a huge improvement over the Voodoo 2 in Quake II, but there is indeed some improvement. Anyone who tells you a third generation card on an old machine will actually slow it down is just plain wrong. You already know this but . . . I just read at DS98 that Assault Craft has come out of his coma and is recovering from his wounds. This news is from Friday but I thought I should mention it here for the record and thank everyone in the game who cared and checked for news and kept him in their thoughts and prayers all that time. I really didn't think this was going to turn out right and I am very happy to hear it did. Welcome back AC. Get yourself fixed up soon; we need you back. ;) Under construction The main part of the page should be back up and in working order, but most of the subpages are still down and it will take me a while to upload the images and redo some of the links in the archives, etc. I'll try and get back to the SS History section for tomorrow's update. Thanks again for bearing with me and hunting down the new page. Back.
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