March 1999

    <Chakotay> fuck the admin! oh wait, I'm an admin! fuck the user!

    It's no secret that the stars are falling from the sky.
    It's no secret that our world is in darkness tonight.

N e w s  o f  t h e  D a y
31 March 1999

Rod checks in . . .
Rodvik posted a short update on the Infantry HQ messageboard, commenting on the state of the game, how far off the alpha test is, and what will be under development during the test. He also promised that keeping the servers up will be a major priority. Good news here especially for those concerned that Infantry were be merely an action game.

"Better days"
Baudchaser posted a lengthy and optimistic update Sunday to Subspace Headquarters, following the most heavily populated weekend Subspace has seen in months. It appears as though the World Domination Plan is working. And yes that is correct, the iNET Subspace Web is now officially known as Subspace Headquarters. It's about time, if you ask me. The present news includes a last minute update on the Subspace Euro Con, which will be held tomorrow in Copenhagen.

Turfnight relocation and squabble
TurfNight Tuesday has moved permanently to <SD> Turf Zone SVS in hopes that the event can be used as a springboard for finally bringing life to the zone. It should be noted that because of an incident which followed the move, I am no longer associated with either the event or the zone, but the Turf Zone moderators remain as mods in the SCF. I do realize that yesterday's dispute caused problems for people not directly involved in the disagreement and I apologize to those people.


Anal entertainment
Famous Anus has released a new work of art, a tribute of sorts to Trixter. Thanks to Captain Harloch for the heads up. What amazing music is this?

Delayed Slayfest rant
I had intended this for Saturday, but it didn't happen, obviously. Friday night I realized I was behind schedule on the map which I had promised to Mailliw for his scenario. Little did I know how difficult it would be making a two dimensional map out of a three dimensional picture, which is what I was attempting. The level I made for this scenario was intenfed to look like a landscape in the alt map, with a graveyard in the foreground and a castle in the background. This wouldn't have been so difficult to plan out except that I want to show the castle in perspective, so that ships could enter through the main gate at the bottom, reach the upper story by climbing the towers, and fight on an upper courtyard. because of this they had to be able to fly behind towers which would appear solid on the screen, but also fly through empty space which would appear as solid on the alt map.

I had a great time designing this and trying to solve the problems associated with it, but it left me very burned out. I completed it only ten minutes before the game was scheduled to start. This would not have been so bad; Captain Harloch's girlfriend had abducted him for his birthday, and I expected to end Slayfest slayfest early, with a few light events following the main game. Unfortunately, who should appear just before the scenario's end but the Cap'n himself, and of course I couldn't leave to work on my page while Braveheart and the other Circus games were going on. Sure enough, it was 1:00am Eastern by the game the game ended, and for the first time in weeks I was jazzed enough about Subspace that I wanted to play more.

So I made yet another mistake. I uploaded SilentDragon's chaos map. SD worked on this sucker for a long, long time. I beat him over the head with it, and over the course of a few months it evolved into an impressive looking map, with what I thought were some solid tunnel systems and a great open space dogfighting area at its center. Oh man, did I ever underestimate this map. I had only ever played it before with three or four people. Start bringing in more players, and that sucker really sings. I had a lot of fun fighting in this, but by the time I closed the game client I never wanted to see another tiny spaceship again. I'd been playing for seven hours. This is small potatoes to some people, sure; I've heard of people averaging 10 hours a day, or going 24 hours straight with breaks only for food and bathroom. Personally, my usage is a little under 1000 hours after two years in the game, and my record is 11 hours in one sitting, while I had the flu. So anyway I've been playing Quake all week long. ;)

A lot was going through my head after last week's Slayfest which I meant to go over and never did. That was the scenario with the bases in the corners and the wormhole tunnels in the center. This map was very popular, but it also taught me a great deal about the difference between designing for a zone and designing for a scenario. Although I was happy with the map on a basic level, I felt it failed in some ways as a scenario map, because it was gimmicky. The main premise of the game was a hub at the center where players would have to negotiate a system of wormholes in order to pick up the flags spawning there. During tests I ran earlier that day, Cuervo Muerte remarked that, because of a disprarity between the style of entrances to the wormhole tunnels from the different quadrants of the maps, teams 1 and 3 were going to find it much easier to get in than teams 2 and 4 would. I heeded his advice, but in the wrong direction. That is, I made the easy entrances more difficult, rather than making the difficult entrances easier.

As a result, no one used the hub as a path between the bases. I had included a tunnel around the map's perimeter as a secondary path of attack between the bases. Use of these was discouraged by a built-in defensive advantage and by long-duration force gates guarding the back entrances--however, people chose that path of attack rather than the frontal approach because it was so difficult to navigate the wormholes. Further complicating matters were a set of floating artifacts which certain unscrupulous people used as secondary bases, and I'll grant them that there was no explicit rule against this.

In all of these cases, it was a matter of too great a complexity for a short term game. In a zone it is proper for the map to have depth and contain many quirks, secrets, and balancing functions which aren't immediately apparent. Usually the playership spends some time griping about these before coming to understand their value. In a scenario, there is no time for such growing pains, and they shouldn't be an issue. The moral of the story is to keep scenario maps simple, free of distractions and gimmicks, focused on the game objective and only the game objective.

I think I learned my lesson somewhat this time around. While the Necronomicon map was in no way free of distractions, it was at least free of pre-designed gimmicks and oddities, and I think it showed. While Wormhole Surfing was run very tightly, it was mostly an exercise in Chaos, while Necronomicon, though very poorly organized due to the absence of Captain Harloch stayed a bit more focused because of the well designed objectives.

Next weekend's event is the 1999 Xalimar Micro Machine Cup, and is entirely Captain Harloch's baby, with a brand new (awesome) shipset and everything, probably including a new map by Harloch himself. My next Slayfest scenario map will be for a relatively simple Alien-type game run sometime in late April. Between now and then, we have a few games of Harloch's design planned, as well as a very ambitious piece which Runecaster has spent some time putting together.

I forgot to link to this . . .
The Famous Anus link reminded me about it. I don't remember who sent me this but thank you. This is the best shockwave page I've come across, not that I did a lot of hunting. Weird and long, and funny as hell.

    Fatkid



    he's a great sysop, just a wanker :)
                              - Captain Harloch

    Don't think 'cos I understand I care.
    Don't think 'cos I'm talking we're friends.

N e w s  o f  t h e  D a y
25 March 1999


iNET running VIE subgame . exe
iNET has become the second player-run server bank to run the special VIE version of subgame.exe which allows the Super and UFO ships among other things. It became apparent two weeks ago that the VI servers were running this version when odd debug features were spotted in action there; this was later confirmed on the Infantry HQ message board, and the server is apparently identical to the one used in the final days of VIE. The Ghost Ship, outlaw sysop of Trench Wars, confirmed for me today that the version being run at iNET is not left over from the company's contract with VIE UK but came from JeffP and has been patched against the infamous sysop hole.

For this particular subgame.exe to become publicly available would mean an end to the need for pirating the game, as it allows sysops to remove all restrictions on demos including the much loved CD check. iNET is now running subgame.exe as an end user; the question is no longer of legality but of safety. While much or perhaps all of the dangerous aspects of the program are said to have been removed by JeffP, those dangers raised considerable concern in the past and iNET may be reluctant to release it to other server banks--especially those which allow ftp access by sysops.

What I would like to know is this. Why would JeffP allow the program to be used by iNET yet not advocate its use elsewhere?


mDK on 1 . 35
The sysop of A Small Warzone has come out for sage386's infamous client-server patch, and makes what I think is a strong argument. mDK sent me this rant, which I commissioned from him in return for letting his cheap mappers rip off my bases. ;) Be warned, it is a rant....

    You know what pisses me off? People who assume. They really piss me off. If it's not "so-and-so cheats" because a person can't deal with being killed, it's "so-and-so lags", "this zones lag sux", or some other senseless comment that no one cares about. I watch Subspace and A Small Warzone die because of those little kiddies playing with cheat programs, not understanding the ramifications of their actions. Its funny just to talk with one, and see him deny it like he just stole a piece of bubble gum from a store and got caught, yelling NUH UH! all the way home.

    For the last 4 friggin months we've had a fix, sage's 1.35 server/client patch. When it was released, I started using the client side patch--it's quite nifty, removing the CD check, fixing the 3D sound, other little crap. Oh yeah, it also disables TWISTER, but who wants that? :P

    I just wanted to tell everyone who says "I just don't trust it (the patch), I mean. HE made it, he'll prolly steal the zones from us!". Yeah, right. Some guy is just waiting to take over these HUGE zones full of people so he can be worshipped as a god. That's just dumb to even think that. Do you really think sage cares? I'm going to bring up the idea to run ASWZ-LEAGUE in v1.35 server, so everyone that wants to play has to download the 1.35 client side patch, maybe people will then realize we've had the fix to our largest problem for the last 4 months...

    Most likely, you'll all say 'I just can't trust him, and his patch' ... Oh well, its only a game, right?

    Its just all bullshit. If we would have just tried the damn patch long ago, things would have been better, so lets do it now, so at least.. I can play one more fair game :P


SSX breathes its last . . .
After a partial move by some SSX zones to iNET last week, the lag problems which have plagued the servers there for so long picked up substantially. Meanwhile, the EG Classic zone, set up by hydro as an SSX sister zone to Extreme Games after its relocation to iNET, was mysteriously deleted. Philosophy Club crashed around that time and has not been reset since. A Small Warzone has decided to open its League server at SD and may move the zone itself there as well, the Sheep Cloning Facility brass (we have six sysops, heh) are debating a move, and Star Warzone--once the server's second most popular zone--is all but dead, recently showing a 0 player base at normally busy times.

It is perhaps poor form for me to state the following, but I am going to blurt it out it anyway, because a very good thing is being utterly destroyed here. What only four months ago was arguably the best server bank in the history of Subspace is now in ruins, not because of lag, but because it has no administration to speak of. When I asked Xalimar what he was doing about these problems, he said to me, "I'm not really around anymore," and offered no other comment.

The SSX zones have been abandoned, and this is an eerie throwback not only to the final days of VIE but to the quiet disintegration of the Maxgaming web host in May of last year. I say now as I say then: Get your valuables and get a life vest. This ship has no captain.

Sync Turret to attend Slayfest
In case you hadn't yet guessed, the infamous sync turret, known for its antics in Alpha Zone last year, is kind of a friend of mine--and we're going to chase him around a bit tomorrow. For those ill-informed among you, no, this turret is not a cheat, and JeffP has said in the past that, while he disapproves of it personally, it is not a violation of the user agreement. Anyway, we'll be putting it to some good use in the future, but this weekend don't expect to see it used in Mailliw's scenario or the elimination game or anything serious like that. It will be some kind of a Circus event. So if you are an Alpha geek who has a score to settle, now's you're chance. ;)

Slayfest
Expect a big update on Slayfest first thing Saturday, as in midnight. I have been away for a while, so I apologize for the continued sparse updating. I still have a lot to say about last weekend's game, and I will be doing something of a writeup on this weekend's scenario, Quest for the Necronomicon. Also an interview with Mailliw if I can catch him.

    <Shanoyu> No not robots
    <Shanoyu> chess you foolish Enchanter.

    Silence, like a whisper
    So this is all we need
    The fully air conditioned
    sound of speed
    A violent whisper
    And this time it's for real
    So this day I made plans
    for us to leave

N e w s  o f  t h e  D a y
21 March 1999


Mailliw and the Slayfest
Mailliw's Quest for the Necronomicon is the featured Slayfest scenario for next week. Basically this means there is no Slayfest scenario proper in Captain Harloch's absense, but there will be a scenario with some sort of elimination game and other light fare afterwards (not Circus unless the Cap'n order is, hehe) as best as we can manage, if the players want it. The main difference is that the scenario--fully Mailliw's game and not a Slayfest production so to speak--will start an hour into Slayfest. We'll start at 8:00pm Eastern as usual with some light fare, probably a bit of the ol' Clockwork Chaos since (I think) we didn't get to that this weekend. It should be pointed out that DS98 did not misreport this; it had just not been fully discussed at the time Minbari Warship posted about it.

    Quest for the Necronomicon


TNT venue change
TurfNight Tuesday will be held in <SD> Turf Zone this week. We are testing the lag conditions for insternational players and investigaing the possibility of running some Sheep Cloning events on the SD server. No matter what the situation, we will not be dealing with SSX' trademark ping spikes and mass executions, so come on down and help us push Sabre's computer to its boiling point. ;) My guess is we will probably be using the old VIE C5 map with with the crossroads, combs, and so forth just to keep things simple. Thanks to GiGaKiLLeR for arranging this.

    Turf Zone Homepage


iNET lives
After a considerable absence, Baudchaser updated the new Subspace Headquarters, also known as the iNET homepage, on the 16th and again today. Quite a bit of news and information to read here. Thanks to Relic for getting Baud addicted to the game yet again. ;)


Leviathan Chic
Is it just me or did the Levi used to be the vulcher's ship, the frowned upon behemoth favored by Metallica fans who tended to bounce all over the place, hurling L3 bombs down corridors and into their teammates? That's how I viewed it for a long time, then one day in ye olde Chaos Zone West I hopped into one just for the hell of it...and saw within its control panels and sensor displays my own reflection. Chaos West was never quite the same after that. >:) Yes, the Levi was a popular ship with a certain set, but was it ever this popular? Last week during Slayfest's Clockwork Chaos event, frustrated with the team size limits which forced players to use ships that have no advantage in open space, and observing that midway through the game teams became horribly imbalanced anyway, I asked Captain Harloch if we might get rid of the team balancing for a round. Hey, everyone loves an underdog, right? I expected majorities of Warbirds and Javelins, with the Levi running a distant third.

Well guess what happened...over half the players in the arena piled into Leviathans. Pretty soon I'm sitting there in the team's safe zone with three super turrets and about twenty or thirty other players--I am not exaggerating here--and I'm thinking, Jesus, I bet Harloch isn't going to be listening to my suggestions for a while. Guess what else? We got our ASSES KICKED. :) Despite an overwhelming majority, our team was the fourth or fifth frequency to be eliminated out of eight. I like to think it's that logo up there at the top of my page working this magic. More likely, it's the way the Leviathan is consistently made to be the heavy bomber in player zones, however strange the settings may be there overall.

One thing that hasn't changed is Levi pilots seem to barrel into things like minefields and bombs rows. Usually this is a pretty good tactic, since we're also the only pilots who know to stay the hell out of our own minefields and bomb rows. Unfortunately, Clockwork Chaos is an elimination game--and this type of behavior, applied consistently, is a good way to get eliminated.

I learned my lesson. Come time for All the King's Men I was belted in tight to the child safety seat that comes standard with every Warbird, all ready for action. We won that match. ;)
Last night's Slayfest
I'm not going to comment on this yet because I have a lot to say and some to mull over. Most of it is good, and I think the night in general was a success, but the game had its flaws and I learned quite a bit about mapping for scenarios. I've chattered enough about Slayfest in this update anyway (I can't help myself!) and so I'll get into all of this during tomorrow's update. Check the Slayfest Homepage, probably later today, for Cap'n Harloch's usual post-game commentary as well as news of upcoming events.
Don't touch that refresh button . . .
Has anyone got Bolero's rant for the 17th? The weenie forgot to put it in his archive and lost it. Search your browser cache for files containing the word motherfucker and it should probably turn up.

Speaking of which . . .
I posted to this effect already on the Infantry HQ board, but I want to state it here as well, in the bluntest possible terms. The newly founded Infantry Scenario Guild has no association whatsoever with the Mapmaker's Guild, and never did. Regardless of his claims to the contrary, VectorBoy has never been listed as a member there. Further, the InfSG members' former "owner"ship of the Sheep Cloning Facility was limited to one member's temporary ?owner privileges in the SCF owned by VIE and run by rodvik, during specific scenarios. I consider these claims to be strategic posturing; others are of course free to view it as a mistake. vB's motives are less interesting to me than the integrity of the two organizations' reputations, which I am proud to say do not in any way overlap with what the InfSG is attempting here.



    when i go to the university library on Wednesday I am going to find these books,
    teach myself lucid dreaming, and shag Winona Ryder all night, every night
                              - Pl0k

    You're gonna feel the wind at your heels, you know...

N e w s  o f  t h e  D a y
19 March 1999





Slayfest down the drain
This weekend's Slayfest will be the best ever because--you guessed it--I'm doing the map for it. ;) Ol' Cap Harloch is designing this scenario to be lighter fare than usual, in preparation for the next couple of weeks' scenarios which should be more intense and require more careful moderation. The really good news about this scenario is it gets its roots in the classic symmetrical scenarios of the early days such as The Damned and Clan Wars. The fight will be War Zone style, but with a catch....to get at newly spawned flags you'll need to navigate through a field of wormholes. You can check out the full info at the Slayfest Homepage as always, and be sure to also look over the Events Page for information about other games on the schedule. The Slayfest is building up a damned impressive roster of events IMHO, and there are sneak peeks at future events included here as well as Harloch's patented post-game rants. ;)

I'll be playing with the map a little tomorrow in the SCF. Please get in touch with me on ICQ if you're willing to be my guinea pig for a little while.


Moof! on lag turret chic
In reaction to a threat on the Infantry HQ board, Moof!, everyone's favorite neg killer and Dark Vangel at large, mailed me a defense of the infamous lag turret as a harmless, fun, and legitimate part of Subspace.

    In Defense of the Lag Turret


SCF mapping contest
I felt a little bad not dressing up the page for Saint Patrick's Day this year like I did last year. I spent most of the day at my parents' house, where I had no access to my ftp account. I did manage to get in touch with SilentDragon, who was good enough to upload the infamous stpatty.lvl map to the Sheep Cloning Facility for me. Thing is, it's one of the worst maps ever made. For God's sake, it has the Death Star on it. Among other things.

What the SCF needs is a dedicated holiday mapper, and there are enough decent newbie mappers out there, as well as active old ones, that I think it's worth attempting a contest. As winner, you will have a one year tenure. You will be responsible for a bunch of holiday themed maps, including but not limited to the obvious biggies (yes, Kate Moss' birthday is one of them), designed as a quality, playable level but with a proper look to them for the occasion. In return for your services you will receive the thanks of the Facility, special status within the legendary Cafe, no mod so don't ask dammit, and maybe (just maybe) the coveted, mysterious Dolly Prize. Oh, and you get to pick your replacement next year. And be kind of famous.

Submit your maps to me over ICQ or on your own webspace in .zip format. Entries must include two or three impressive maps including one for Easter. Yes we are having an Easter egg hunt in the SCF.

And no I am not kidding. :)


La pie qui chant . . .
Should have linked this a bit earlier. ZombieBobie's Warbird is arguably (going to be) the best new Subspace related page since DS98 started up early last Summer. Great page design without the silence that usually accompanies it--there is a lot of content here and he is covering different ground from the other pages, with a nice page on victory songs and the beginnings of a quote archive and a squad information...oh, and he's uptating news more often that the rest of us fossils. ;) ZB recently moved his page to Warstrike.

Wait, I forgot about Gommy's poor ol' neglected SCF page. Okay, well this is the best page since that, then. ;)


Center Ice !
Another great page, and this is one I failed to link to for far too long. Hockey is as much another world to me as League is, if not more. Hockey people please accept my apology for missing this one. It will be on my links page as soon as I fix it up. This is one of the best done pages out there; Hockey players are very lucky to have it.

    Center Ice


Fools
TurfNight Tuesday had a pretty low turnout despite a billing server notice courtesy of SCF vangel-in-reserve Super.Fly. and a nice pimpin' over at the news dot text...AND YET! It was a fun game anyway. In fairness, it would probably have held together and peaked at about 35 players if not for the terrible lag problems that is destroying SSX. (More on this in Saturday's update.) Why? Who, you ask, was TurfNight Tuesday fun in spite of it all? Roseo's badass map! We barely played in the turf base areas, but the neg fight in the center greening area has all the makings of a classic Subspace fight. Without even counting the other nine, I will tell you without hesitation that it is one of the ten greatest free standing structures in the history of the game. Send your apologies to GiGaKiLLeR and kiss his ass for an encore performance next week. You will be glad you did.


Mostly Harmless in byline SCANDAL
JMCDaveL asked me to make sure everyone knows he is the organizational and creative center of Mostly Harmless, and the wind beneath Cybrid's wings. Go Navel! I have a screenshot of him falling in the slime pools, by the way. :)

    We apologize for the inconvenience.


The angriest neg in the world
Bolero has reinvented himself in the form of the most obnoxious and pissy player in Subspace. I hate to say it, but he's doing a decent job at it so far. This page WILL make you mad. For the record, Bol, Pat Buchanan is a demigod, and the Cheerleaders own you nothing. :P Oh yeah, and I've got the entire Subspace History page archived on my hard drive, including the html and graphics, so like, buzz off.

    Nice people swallow.



    YOU SHALL HAVE 5 MINUTES OF MY TIME, AND 5 MINUTES ONLY.
                              - Cybrid

    Daa daa daaaaaa, dum da-daaaaa, dum da-daaaa;
    daa daa daaaaa, dum d'daaaa, dum, d'daaaaaaa.

hurry!
13 March 1999



tiny update cuz i only got 15 minutes
Man, I feel completely out of the loop and I don't even have a good excuse. I've actually been playing Subspace more lately than I have in quite a while, though unfortunately by the time of the day I realize it's become an integral part of my soul, I am too tired to do very well at all and the zones I go to have about 10 people in them.

One of the best new pages to crop up in a while is the The $niper's Subspace History page, which has a lot of old Subspace versions posted, and will hopefully will more soon. The $niper has posted his ICQ number there so that you can send him whatever you might have that he's missing. At present the archive only goes back as far as version 1.16, so break with the classic beta executables you vet types. :) Props to Cybrid for the initial news post of course.

Waited an extra day to see the Star Wars trailer projected instead of on a tiny screen in crap resolution, shelled out the $7.50 and damned glad I did it. Afterwards I got to see Wing Commander for free. ;) Low budget movie, kind of bullshitty, a bit cliche, bad script, bad effects, sets, backdrops, sound design....actually pretty well directed, though. I think Chris Roberts will be making some solid action pictures eventually.

Slayfest kicked ass as usual, but owing to a simpler concept (back to the old Clockwork Chaos, SVS style) and a bigger arena, the games ran very nicely and we played more matches than we usualy do. After the post-game Circus events, Captain Cohn (another Zeta slime and Harloch's cosysop in Star Warzone) ran a Chaos elimination tourney in a tiny map and I camped like a little bitch. :) Got killed for it too.

It's almost midnight so I have to post this now or I'll be a damned liar. Thanks to the Dark Zone faithful for trying out my map, by the way. Please contact me about that if you wanna gripe at me or offer other observations.

I feel like updating more right now so keep an eye out for changes to the other sections, particularly the Map Index and the Harmless Rant.

Sorry to be a stranger. :)

    If you guys don't hurry up with this beta, I'm going to take the
    money I have set aside for the game and buy a hefty bag o' weed.
                                                        - hydro

    He saw the hands that build
    could also pull down...

N e w s  o f  t h e  D a y
9 March 1999



Bolero comes clean
After a few very nasty days during with various Subspace authorities spared no expense in tearing his elaborate conspiracy story limb from limb, Bolero caved. Less than a day after announcing his retirement from the game, he admitted the whole thing, first in a private conversation with me, and then shortly thereafter in a full confession and apology posted to the ruins of what once was his Subspace Cheat Information Page.


The greatest trick the devil ever pulled . . .
A little slap fight has broken out at the Infantry HQ boards over the appropriateness of Harmless Games signing with Trixter for publication of Infantry. Between the flurry of outraged posturing and the hurried reassurances that this is all business now so none of that old stuff will happen in the future, it seems everyone has forgotten what Trixter said a few months ago that he would do if he managed to purchase the rights to Subspace. Ban Suicide, if memory serves. I guess two million dollars just isn't business to some folks. ;) In my opinion, a lot of people are being unfair to him here, and the whole deal deserves some benefit of the doubt--but it would be nice to see some reassurances coming from Trixter himself instead of from JeffP.

And I've had it up to here with this corny "real name" shit, like we're a bunch of beer drinking quake players or something. Their names are rodvik, BagMan, and Trixter, god damn it. :P


Alternate Alpha map makes an appearance
DS Games has taken down the old staple map from their Alpha Zone server, and replaced it with the lesser known map that was used briefly in the Spring of 1997. It has already been running for far too long and will hopefully be gone soon, so be sure and check it out while you still can. ;) Seriously, this map has a few really fun things about it, but big chunks of it are just awful, and the wormhole trap and diagonal tunnels were nasty tricks to play on beginning players. All respect to Minbari of course for using a weird old map. This was one of only three maps made for Alpha Zone. The best of these was by The Romulans and saw almost no active duty. In honor of the special level, the zone has been renamed to SSCE DuelX Alpha SVS. ,


A bit of history
Sunday's news at SubRealm featured a neat li'l piece of trivia...icons made to represent powerups that were never implemented in the game. I love this stuff. Hail to Underlord. Oh, did I mention ONE beat The Dark? So much for my shit talking and my predicting career. Apologies for the barbs I made a while back. ;)

Uranus moves
U R A N U S ' page has moved to a new location. Everyone always says to update your links, but please be sure and really do it in this case, as it is a special situation. Because he no longer has access to the server it's running on, the old page can't be taken down, and a proper forwardng link can't be set up, so unfortunately it will probably be there forever.


Slayfest kickin it oldskool style
While Captain Harloch continues adding to what has become known as the Circus Map, a busy-box of different structures designed for post-game lite fare events, the Slayfest is going back to basics this next weekend with a rerun of the hugely popular Clockwork Chaos game. This one never really got a fair shake because during its initial run the arena size was accidentally limited to 60 players. Be sure and mark your calendars for this weekend and we will have a fuggin humungo elimination game. :)


Getting my act together
Sorry to leave some of those links over on the left unoccupied for so long. They are now gone for the time being, and every link in the left frame should take you somewhere.


Ramble
Anyone get a screenshot of my 33,333rd hit by any chance? Speaking of screenshots, the Slayfest Gallery will go up soon and yes the person who sends me the best screen captures will get his name in lights even if it takes me all day to do it.

Cybrid posted a badass lookin turret design over at Mostly Harmless. Unless I'm mistaken this is the first moving picture we plebes have seen from Infantry. Gee, I wonder if Juan made that. :)

Did I mention this already? God forgive me but I am back into SVS and a War Zone player again thanks to Peasant's Paladin's probably suicidal upload of Arcwar 3, one of my favorit maps. This is the one with the huge, broken-up combs structure in the bottom right hand corner and that great spiralish base in the center of the map. Sorry Cap'n but I am going to be pretty sick of Subspace by the time Saturday comes along and will probably be spending a lot of time on the spec freq. (Yes, the War Zone event is still officially Friday nights.)

The new Squarepusher mini-album is out and it rocks like always. 73 days til The Phantom Menace destroys the world economy. U2 are recording with Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno again and Kate Moss is buck nekkid on the cover of Dazed this month. Life is good, God is great, faster than light speed travel IS possible, and Stanley Kubrick will never die. Goodnight my little spaceships.



    <xalimar> i'm just dumb

    If you wanna touch the sky,
    better learn how to kneel.

N e w s  o f  t h e  D a y
5 March 1999


Cap'n Harloch's Slayfest - Saturday nights at 8:00pm Eastern in the Sheep Cloning Facility

Do not miss slayfest tomorrow
This is going to be fucking incredible, like the old Brick Wars scenario we never got entirely together mixed with the Protect Ur King stuff that hallu did in the WSL events. If you miss this you are next in line for the beatdown Harmless just gave Bolero on the Infantry HQ board. It's all about RUINS baby. Build up a big strong fortress out of a castle blown apart Back In The Day, hide your king inside and stop the enemy from assassinating him. The King will have his own ship with some kind of exclusive power (my guess is thors and xradar), and the armies will be split between engineers, for castle building, and knights, for spilling the old bastard's blood. A quick hint on that note, to those who have gone through life under the false impression that Subspace is about carrying flags around and shooting at each other. Unless CH makes this impossible somehow...bricks make a good offense tool. If used correctly they are how we'll get into the enemy castle, by laying them perpendicular to the enemy walls and punching holes with them. Also, since the spawn radius is going to be narrow, spending bricks to warp away the defenders might be a smart idea.

If you're really good, afterwards we can go to the circus.... For those not in the know, this is the ever-growing level full of weird little bases, play fields, and obstacle courses for various lite-fare goofy events after the main game. Dammit, I forgot to put up my Braveheart screenshots from last week. Check here tomorrow and I will have those up for your gawking pleasure.

I want good screenshots of this weekend's event, because I would rather play than take pictures and buggy Subspace makes me crash when I use HyperSnap...so I'm gonig to hold a contest of sorts. Send me your screenshots and you will have your name in lights at the top of my page. Hey, I can't really offer anything better that without some sort of credit card age verification. :P


I can't feel my legs . . .
A short request for opinions on the secret history described in Bolero's interview turned into a bloodbath yesterday. I expected the vets at Infantry Hq and Sog Java Net to be pretty ticked off by the allegations he had made; what I didn't really expect was for JeffP and rodvik to tear the interview to pieces. They and others were quite merciful to me and very forgiving of my kid-gloves approach, but as for Bolero...I am tempted to put another cheezy quote from The Usual Suspects here but I think I'll just leave it alone. I would like to remind everyone involved that, in the worst scenario, however much of a liar and demagogue Bolero may be, and however badly he may have taken advantage of people's trust and faith, he does not appear to have destroyed anything and has almost always refrained from viciousness towards other players. It may be that he has been developing a new cheat all this time, however, and he has flat out admitted to posting lies about Zetasquad. Meanwhile, check the sog.java.net for a thorough breakdown of the technical side of Bolero's claims, courtesy of Wick.

Bol man I think it might be time for another interview...

BREAKING NEWS. Bolero has retired and supposedly severed all his contacts to the game. Pretty rude, in my opinion, considering Wampit had just set up a directory for him at Warstrike and Bolero by his own admission owed Zetasquad and Extreme Games an apology. I didn't want it to come to this, but now that it has...good riddance.

    Thanks fer nothin.


WOOHOO !
As reported by Mostly Harmless, Infantry now has an official publisher in Brainscan, and will be based around a pay-by-month plan. Damn, what will we do without all those people who play only because they hate the game? ;) Cybrid will have an interview of sorts with rodvik up at the site probably by the time you read this, so keep checking back there. Rod is in rare form these days. :P


The Subspace Map Index
This is a project I've been meaning to put together for quite a while now. I made a reference to it on my mapping subpage but it seemed too daunting a task for me. Last night I realized I was never going to actually do it unless I started out a bit shabby...so here it is, the shabby beginnings of the Subspace Map Index. Suggestions and help are welcome, and especially maps. Don't just mail me maps though please because I probably have 95% of them already and my mail limit is low. :) Catch me on ICQ first. Anyway, enjoy.

    The Subspace Map Index


Other stuff . . .
I had some important things to blab about but lost the list in a crash and am a little bit scattered at the moment. I had intended to get this update up fast and then spend the day out, but instead became embroiled in the biggest messageboard thread of my life :P then wound up playing a huge flag game in the Sheep Cloning Facility. It started as a brief tour for Byobong7, who is going to be using (or at least trying to use) the map in The Dark Zone (yes I am jazzed about this) but SilentDragon uploaded the old Anarchy settings (how the fuck did he get these) and all hell broke loose. Playing a War Zone game in a map intended for Chaos is quite an experience, especially with wanky super ships. The settings up at the moment are hydro's experimental configuration; expect Captain Harloch to take them out soon for tomorrow's event though, so if ur a hydro fan or otherwise EG player get in there fast and check them out. ;)

I got an editorial from Captain Harloch to put up on the Bolero topic, maybe a review of 8mm that I posted to Infantry HQ yesterday cuz why the hell not....oh! They used my Tribes editorial at Datumplane, which is one of the major Starsiege sites. :) It's the same damned thing you read here a while back but it makes me happy just the same.

And now since it's getting really late I am feeling an urge to go out for something with three shots of espresso in it...see you punks in a few hours. ;)

Oh yeah, sorry about all the smileys.

    <AtmaWeapon> the common man doesn't wanna wade through text files the size
                              of aircraft carriers to figure out why his backspace isn't working

    When you're strange, faces come out of the rain.
    When you're strange, no one remembers your name.

N e w s  o f  t h e  D a y
3 March 1999



Bolero interview is up
Sorry about the delay. I needed to follow something up after the interview, plus it took a long time to edit because we had so many multiple threads going at once. In the end, though, it is one of the more fascinating exchanges I've had with another player, and I think you will be intrigued, maybe even outraged. Check the archive for February 27th for additional notes, but it's all pretty self contained, really. Enjoy.

    interview with Bolero, 25 February 1999


A Small Warzone homepage opens
After much bellyaching and sculduggery the ASWZ page has opened to the public, complete with news, a webboard, and uhhh...a bunch of broken links and pages under construction hehe. I dare anyone to attempt a map archive for that zone. ;)


Revenge of the Notable Posts
Cybrid's Mostly Harmless is finally up! He is back to doing the Notable Posts like he did on Warzone a while back, so there is again no longer any reason to bother reading the Infantry HQ boards. ;) JMC is working on this page also. Good luck to them both, of course, and props on the page name, pure genius if you ask me.,


Subspace . Net delayed again
Tombstone announced that the reopening of Subspace.Net has hit another setback and will now be pushed back to March 10th. It's bad enough that the site wears the albatross of a very seedy history, now they have technical problems to deal with as well. I'm actually rooting for them now, it seems such an underdog story. ;)

    <saltygirl> oh wow
    <saltygirl> dancing hamsters
    <saltygirl> how surprising

    People are strange when you're a stranger;
    faces look ugly when you're alone.
    Women seem wicked when you're unwanted.
    Streets are uneven when you're down.

N e w s  o f  t h e  D a y
1 March 1999



Sorry about that.
I know the Bolero interview is still busted. It took me forever to get together and I need to clear a few more things up before I finally post it. Wish luck I will have it up late tonight or early tomorrow.


GiGaKiLLeR Chaos up for testing
Giga has put up the latest, posssibly final, draft of his new Chaos Zone map up in Turf Zone. It is amazing, and one of the best looking maps I've ever seen. The terrain is awesome, the map breathes but is still full of bottlenecks, and there are going to be some nasty tunnel fights like we have seen in his Turf levels. Check it out and start emailing Bortas. ;)


Yet another 31 Flags remix . . .
I've cut together a brand new small version of my Chaos Zone map for The Dark Zone. It's now set up in the Sheep Cloning Facility for testing. It's a lot tighter and there are some new bits. Beware the settings, which are for the unfinished Zen Zone and won't give you any recharge. If I have time to change them today I will. The map goes down tomorrow for TurfNight. Please let me know if you have any suggestions or other thoughts on the map.


Short update, doh
I may add more to this later but probably won't be able to. A few things on my mind, though.

This last Saturday's SCF Slayfest event was by far the best yet, in my opinion, but that only made the packetloss problem all the more frustrating. The better a game, the worse it is to see it screwed up, and it's getting so that it's impossible to have a big fight on an SSX server without experiencing packetloss and spikes. It seems like that's something people are starting to take for granted in Subspace--that this is just a fact of life for internet gaming--and that just isn't true. We had fights of that magnitude in Sheep Cloning when it was hosted by VIE, and certainly in other zones, and there were lag problems at times but not always. This is a new phenomena, and it is not only affecting SSX but some of the other server banks as well. I'm not one to complain about something that has been given to me for free, but it upsets me to see the two biggest zones on SSX (Extreme Games and Star Warzone) lose between one third and one half of their players, without those players seeming to have moved anywhere else. My impression is that, only a month after Baudchaser posted the news about increased overall playership, people are starting to quit again--and it will really be a shame if this time it's happening for technical reasons that can be worked around. I have no solution to suggest, but I think that if this keeps up it could succeed in ruinin Subspace where so many other problems have failed.

The new Stina Nordenstam single is out. I think it's actually been out for a while now, but since she no longer has American distribution and her UK label pretty much sucks, it is unfortunately more difficult to find her work in the US than any other artist I can think of--and I say that as someone who mainly buys imports, actually. Because of this, I didn't hear the best album of 1996 until late in 1997. ;) The single is just one track off the album, accompanied by two fairly useless remixes...but my god, the one song is gorgeous. It's a reworking of People Are Strange by The Doors, and manages to be completely different and yet very faithful and true to the spirit of the original. In some ways even more true to the spirit of the song than its original recording, more reflective of the alienation addressed. She has gone from being a wispy alternative performer, with heavy jazz influences, to one of the darkest, most assaulting, most sincere artists I can think to name. I'll toss up an mp3 when I can replace my shitty Toshiba cd drive. (Don't worry Wampit I won't use your webspace. ;)

Saw 8mm. Great movie. Andrew Kevin Walker is a brilliant writer and Joel Schumacher is getting back to being the really strong director he was in some of his earlier movies. Accusations of cliche and self awareness are absolutely false, and I think probably driven by pretense and a desire not to be shocked by anything, ever. Go see the movie. It is very suspenseful and very well put together, with one hell of a score and some solid cinematography.

New screenshots of Drakan up at drakan.net. Have a look and enjoy because when the game comes out it's going to be limited to eight players. Why do they think people will spend money on that in this day and age? Gorgeous screens, though.

Don't forget TurfNight Tuesday tomorrow, and especially don't forget to recruit someone and bring them along for the game. ;)