Old soldiers never die . . .

<SoSD> Majick is for wankers.

<SoSD> Cold steel, baby.

    So much silence
    Deafens our ears
    So much emptiness
    Hinders our movements

Old soldiers never die . . .
Without my making a conscious decision, this page has gone back to being what I originally intended: A collection of information and opinions and so forth, about my favorite game, updated more or less whenever I had something to add, with the primary function of news being to note changes made to the content of the site - if any.

Well I'm going to do that instead of what I've been doing. So this marks the end of the Minefield's lifetime as a new page, at least for now, and you'll see stuff updated and added - and perhaps more importantly repaired after a total of four host moves now - over time and when the time is right.

I had a lot of fun doing this as a news page and it makes me a little sad to stop, but I really stopped several months ago and so this is a formality. Four years ago I felt very strongly about Subspace and had a lot of opinions about it as well as other things. I also really wanted to contribute to the way it was run. Over the course of those four years I did manage to contribute and more than a few people cared what I thought. I've been at peace with the game for a long time now. Good people are running it. I don't feel the need to complain about the state it's in, and I certainly don't need to defend it or its community. I am violently proud of this game and of the people who make it what it is.

So I've kind of had this albatross here, this thing I once not only liked doing but needed to do, which was cathartic for me. And here I've been feeling I was supposed to update it, and yet all of that stuff I used to put into it, which people came to expect - no longer resides in me. I'm afraid I don't have a hell of a lot to say today that would interest the people I once interested. And I'm hoping there also aren't quite so many people today who need that vindication of a clarifying rant, an exposed conspiracy, or whatever it was people came here for.

What I know is still important is the game's history - the archiving of its documents, the preservation of information about who has been a part of all this. I maintain that Subspace is the first true entry in the last significant new artform of the past century, an artform which will probably be with us forever. More importantly to me, I care about it and don't want to see any piece of it vanish due to everyone involved being so busy.

I've been busy avoiding a false requirement to do something I no longer want to do, and I'm glad to say tonight that that is over. It doesn't mean that I or this page will be gone. I frankly wouldn't do it unless I believed very strongly that this has been the primary factor in my becoming less and less active. So maybe tomorrow I'll wake up and say, "Gosh, I'm glad to be done with all that, and it was good while it lasted but it's time to move on." I make no promises, but I expect instead to come back here tomorrow and do what I actually want with the page instead of thinking about doing what I am supposed to and then putting it off.

My most heartfelt thanks to everyone who has stuck with the page over the years. It means a great deal to me, and I promise that at a bare minimum I will keep its archives up for anyone who wishes to thumb through them.

I have a parting, but not really parting, gift for the really die hard types to whom I feel closest, a final news item. Old news, though. The very oldest, actually. . . .


Hey, look what I found. 

From: Rod Humble (rodvik@ix.netcom.com)
Subject: Virgin Games wants you. 
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action, comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.adventure, comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg, comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.strategic
Date: 1996/02/27 


Virgin games needs a few good testers to help with their future
internet games. Minimum requirements are as follows.


Windows 95
486 75+
An internet connection. 


If you are interested please send a short mail to:


rod_humble@vie.com


please include the following details.


Machine speed & video card.
Internet provider.


Cheers,
Rod


----------------------------------------------------------


From: Jeff Petersen (jeffp@itsnet.com)
Subject: Beta testers 
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action
Date: 1996/03/08 


We are currently looking for people to help us test a simple internet based game. If you are interested, please e-mail rod_humble@vie.com and he will e-mail you information on how you can participate. Thanks!


Jeff Petersen


Jeff Petersen
Artificial Software
jeffp@itsnet.com


----------------------------------------------------------


From: R. McPherson (rjmcpher@rigel.oac.uci.edu)
Subject: Re: Virgin Games wants you. 
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg
Date: 1996/03/13 


On Tue, 12 Mar 1996, Lee MacEwen wrote:


>The ever-so-wise rodvik@ix.netcom.com(Rod Humble) once said:
>Virgin games needs a few good testers to help with their future
>internet games. Minimum requirements are as follows.
>rod_humble@vie.com 
> > Has anyone responded to this? I'm curious if it's real or
> > not. The


I responded. It is real. It is an asteroids network game called
"SNIPER". It is sort of like network TANK except in an asteroids
spaceship. It plays fine. New users log in and get killed by
veterans who are relentlessly furthering their kill ratios.

Halloween 2001

<saltygirl> the coolest part is looting indian villages
<saltygirl> you get to smash their inferior culture
<saltygirl> and take all their gold!

---

and those who deny this world
is the soul of the unbroken one
lie
this is indeed Paradise
(come i shall show you where the stars give birth and sleep)
and all around you is the warm bluegreen breath of heavens
do not fear
around you is the vast blueblack space of stars
do not fear
this is the great ocean
on which the endless waves crash down
God is not dead
there is no death i say
(come i shall show you where dreams go to when they die)

hurry now; the sun is descending
the shadows wait to play

Halloween 2001

I cannot hang words on the silence
I didn't know there was a Dawn of the Dead tonight. It hadn't even occurred to me to check. It's frankly been a long time since I checked. 

Rude Awakening maybe doesn't know what it means that he ran that game tonight. All I can really say is I'm beside myself.
I'm sorry for doing another token update. I'll probably do one next month too, just to have a nice round four years and finally melt into the mountains. Check back though sometime just in case. 

Meanwhile, all I really want to say, is to thank Rude Awakening again for what he did, and also to Mine GO BOOM and anyone else who helped him with it. 

The song quote above is from Current 93. "This Shining Shining World" from the majestic and wonderful Of Ruine or Some Blazing Starre: The Broken Heart of Man. It just sort of seemed appropriate to post the whole passage instead of being clever and cute and only quoting a limited and cryptic bit of it, so I thought I'd break with tradition and actually give the source. Also because it's an album I think everyone should hear.

It's beginning to and back again

<Lews> your job, as the game master, is to fuck the players at every turn

<Lews> only when everyone is fucked over do you win

I meant to ask you how to plow that field
I meant to bring your water from the well
And be the one beside you when you fell
Could you tell?

It's beginning to and back again
Another month has gone by without comment from me. I'm not sure what to say except that I've always approached this game from a creative standpoint and have been holding out for some sort of inspiration. That inspiration has not been forthcoming.

In the last week something's been buzzing around in my head. May amount to something; might not. I'll let you hepcats know. Give a holler if you'd like to help.

Most of the fun in this game was dealing with other people who had fresh ideas and who liked bouncing them off of each other. Sometime last year we seem to have settled into something and it became increasingly difficult to encourage and harness that attitude. It seems we're kind of set in our ways now, but perhaps I'm wrong; I've been outside the loop for a while now. I'd like to be told I'm wrong.

Anyway . . .

<Roseo|Work> The controller looks like someone left a pile of jellybeans in the sun too long

O the dragons are gonna fly tonight

They're circling low and inside tonight 

It's another round in the losing fight 

Out along the great divide tonight

Anyway
They fixed Anarchy Online, sort of. I wrote the preamble to a review some time ago for Gamehacker and never got around to writing the actual review since the preamble mysteriously vanished in the same way that this page mysteriously vanished.

Since I no longer wanted to write the review, I sort of forgot to keep playing the game. It was no fun. Especially it starts out no fun, with new players imprisoned in a non-massive, usually non-multiplayer area I came to refer to as the Newbie Hutch.

Along came my friend Dariakus, purchasing the game on the strength of my lack of enthusiasm for it, and soon it seems like everyone around me is playing the thing. So that's what happened to me. The same bug that gobbled up Rod Humble two years ago finally got around to me. Of course there are major differences between EverQuest and Anarchy Online. The first and - sue me - most important is - finally - the graphics. It's become a little irritating to read comparisons between ugly graphical MUDs and beautifully written text MUDs. Especially offensive to me is the assertion that the imagery communicated by that text is not graphic or vivid, cannot be measured against the content of a graphical mud, and is either superior or inferior because of its form rather than its content.

To my mind, Anarchy Online proves this isn't true. Finally we have a graphical MUD that is more vivid and prettier than its text counterparts, not because it is graphical but because of the stylishness of its design and the professional quality of its execution. A curious thing happens: Players share common points of reference, experience immersion in and respect for the world around them, and the conversations and actions between them become a text MUD of sorts within the graphical context - actual roleplaying, and by this I mean not making stuff up but interacting honestly with what is around them as though those things were real. As a result, mundane details and made-up storeis are replaced with convincing discussion of the world and debate over its events and politics.

It's like Subspace, with cities instead of web pages.

Segue to the all important issue of Cosmic Rift, the last of its kind.

It was with some enthusiasm I learned today that the new zone, whose name has now escaped me, had gone up at some point in the recent past. It sounded somewhat promising based on the description. Sounded as though some interesting things would happen in that zone. So I tried it out.

Shortly after entering the zone I experienced a crushing fatigue such as I can't compare to any recent gaming experience. I remember some years ago I was made to sit at a table full of graduate students in music theory. Watching and then playing in this zone was something like that. I can't criticize the game because I didn't give it even the beginnings of a chance. Other people seemed to enjoy it. I was first struck by the complete lack of terrain (read: "wall in space") in the zone. Apparently the Cosmic Rift team is shooting for gritty realism or something. I'll try and force myself to play it later. Right now things look pretty bleak to me.

Two pithy additional comments about Anarchy Online. It pretty much works right finally, though it literally requires 256 megs of RAM to run properly. (Fortunately, the stuff is dirt cheap right now.) And 95% of the screenshots I've seen from it are terrible, including all the ones on the box. They make a gorgeous game look like another EverQuest or Asheron's Call, and it's not one.

Another months with one update. Let's see if I can double that in this next month.

My thanks to anyone who still checks here.

Where was I?

<Phyrian> You're on jury duty?
<Phyrian> Hmm
<Phyrian> Do they still have laws in California?  

 Met Jesus up on a hill
He confessed I was dressed to kill
Saw fear eternal in his eyes
He's seen what happens when the soul dies

Where was I?
I have this crazy theory. Maybe it's not me who's lazy and boring; it's you, and you just can't see it that way through the tunnelvision of your preconceived reality.

Long story short, my wife recently finished graduate school and I feel like I just got out of prison. Not a normal prison either, but the kind they build on asteroids in the future. Too bad there aren't any movies for us to go see. Remember back when people would get together and make movies, and they would show those movies to other people at a common gathering place, and that second group of people would react with laughter or fright or joy or sadness? Those were the days, weren't they.

I have things to say about stuff other than Subspace, and a little bit to say about Subspace but mainly stuff to do in Subspace. We'll discuss that later. My apologies for not having addressed the missing-ness of this page for a full month now, and many many thank-yous to the Mackieman for taking me in and setting me up here.

By the way, I did update in June; I just forgot to upload one time and the other time I found my account was gone. :P So there's a little bit more in the June archive if anyone's aching to know what I thought during June.

I'm out of time. See y'all in September. ;)