September 1999

    <Zanshin> if there were to be a major quantum event of that nature we should be able to detect it going backwards in time
    <GreenCalx> zanshin you just severed my brainstem

    When Madeleine appeared, it always rained.
    The people locked their houses,
    drew the curtains, prayed,
    and painted crosses on their doors.
    They wondered who would be the next for last respects;
    began rehearsing:
    dressed in black with white carnations,
    weeping 'til their eyes were sore.

N e w s  o f  t h e  D a y
28 September 1999


Breaking news
I'm not going to break this story, because whenever I break a big news story I get flamed on the Pro League boards for it ;) but according to Peasant's Paladin, our man inside the Forces of Evil, something major is brewing, a story so big and so shocking that its scope literally spans the entire Subspace community, and when the dust settles no one will be left unchanged. You'll read about this tomorrow on probably all of the other major news sites. Oh wait, there are no other major news sites. =)


Slayfest changes
I have had second thoughts about what I said yesterday and decided that I will not be making this coming weekend's Slayfest permission-only because that goes against the spirit of the event and the people who cause the least trouble, and are the most fun to play with, are often those who just happen to wander in to see what's going on.

I've also decided that I am done with the elimination games and will generally only run them as interim events from now on, or whenver a small group of people asks for them. I'm going to attempt to run a brand new scenario. More on this as it forms together in my head.

I still do want you to write in with your opinions of recent games and thoughts on what future games ought to be like. It pretty much sucks to spend hours working on something and have absolutely no idea if it is entirely contrary to what people will want. The good thing about Slayfest is the die hard SNS'ers are willing to give just about anything the benefit of the doubt, enough to give it a try. The bad thing about Slayfest is the die hard SNS'ers are there in the first place because they honestly don't know what they want.


Minefield
As you can probably tell, I'm spending a bit less time on news lately and more on the massive derelict fleet of odds and ends that is this page's namesake. Have a look at the Space Junk section as it is starting to fill up with both useful Subspace stuff as well as useless amusements, plus bits and pieces of history and nostalgia and whatever else I can dig up. Many, many, thanks to SuperFly for hooking me up with the webspace for this courtesy of GigaParts. It is already full of funky happy shit so have a look if funky happy shit tickles ur third nut.

And now it's actually the 29th so I'd better upload this now or I will get in trouble with the Update Police.

Oh yeah, if you do Shoutcast click on that Winamp button. :)


    <GreenCalx> Oct 4th is when i have to return these CDs to the library... i guess not

    This is not really happening.
    (You bet your life it is.)

N e w s  o f  t h e  D a y
27 September 1999


Yeah, yeah . . .
Yeah I know, I got lazy again. I can't sleep and I spent a lot of time getting ready for Slayfest this weekend, but mainly I've been rather addicted to TeamFortress Classic again. MMmm. Good game.

This isn't really an update. Sorry. I am going to be working on the page today but it will largely have to do with the archive section. This page is going to have a massive archive of fun stuff soon and I'm going to be starting on it in earnest today, so check the Space Junk link section on the left if it's there. I think that's where it's going to start.

The quotation above is about a secret plot by mad scientists in Rhode Island to turn the Earth into a black hole. Actually all they really want to do is get rich as hell by making discoveries which will benefit all mankind but by total coincidence also allow us all to construct even more powerful and deadly weapons of mass destruction. But there is a chance they will destroy the Earth, so tell everybody you love them and save your prayers, and delete all your porn, or at least the gay porn, so God doesn't find it in the cloud of plasma which will soon be orbiting the Sun at a distance of approximately 93 million miles. I'm not normally in favor of blowing up stuff or people, but if anyone has a truckload of fertilizer handy now might be a good time to use it. I'm sure Shanoyu has already linked to this but here are the ugly details in case you haven't seen them and want to lose some sleep. Oh well, at least now I don't have to stockpile distilled water.

Speaking of Shanoyu, the 25th of this month was his grand gala 50th Update at the feared and hated misc_txt. For those of you who have a third nut, the misc_txt is the second best Subspace news page in all of history. You really should know this shit already. Anyway congrats to Shan.

I haven't slept. Can you tell? Did I mention this already?

Props to the mighty DS98 for not linking to the fuckheads who are auctioning off the worst Subspace news page of all time at a certain online auction house to which I won't link either. Really classy way to cash in your chips there, $niper. The irony of this is you'd probably have got more money for the thing if you'd just gone directly to the SS Council and asked for a reasonable price. By throwing it up at a public auction you have probably alienated quite a few of us who would have been bidding on it by now.

On the subject of Slayfest . . . I did my best to get the news out, got two billing server spams if I'm not mistaken. Hey, thanks to whoever scheduled an Amateur League game right in the middle of it for one of my mods. I really got a kick out of that. Anyway, the game didn't really work out. Although it seemed to be fun for the few players who accepted the premise to begin with, I'm not sure it went over well in general. It seems that the idea of actual competition isn't really compatible with a game that is designed simply to be fun, and that if there aren't going to be dire consequences to a game people would rather just have a mindless fragfest. I'm going to make one last attempt at running these games and then either revert to something less demanding or simply cancel them. It is ludicrous to attend a game you know has been planned and then be upset at its contents when you made no attempt to learn in advance what that game was or to influence how it would be played. Moreover, I do not appreciate receiving no feedback whatsoever about these games because it places me in a silent vacuum where player reaction is nothing more than an unpredictable and violent force of nature. The players responsible for that are doing more harm than good. If you would like to attend the next Slayfest or help out in running it, please send me some mail so I know what should be done with these. If your only thoughts on the matter are as simple as "It's fine how it is," or "Get rid of all events forever, or "Let me run it," I would still appreciate hearing something. Silence is worse than rejection and I had more fun being kicked around Jackpot Zone. At least I had something to kick against. Next weekend the zone will be closed except to people who notify me they are coming and tell me how they feel about the present path the games are taking. This way at least we can have a fun 6 player game of Bomberman rather than a depressing 25 player game of Who Can Fuck Up This Round.

Why are we discussing Subspace? Here's Kate.

Just got word from SuperFly, the vile ubergod of Gamehacker who rules the web with an iron fist. My archive directory is up and I am presently dumping maps into it, though who knows what else I might stick in there. Have a poke around if you like.

For the record, the Slayfest before this most recent one was really fun, so I realize there is a balance to all things and etc. I'm just not a big fan of balance. (Yoda told you no, mothafucka!)

Today's update proudly features spelling and grammatical errors. Someday maybe you'll learn to accept people for who they are and stop trying to change them.

    I'd rather be known as a lame asswipe who wouldn't sit down and mind
    his own business than someone who didn't even try to make things better.
                    - Absocold

    How could I ever think it's funny how
    everything that swore it wouldn't change is different now?

SPECIAL SCANDAL EDITION
22 September 1999


Dangerous allegations
Peasant's Paladin dropped the bomb today on what could well be the biggest Subspace scandal of this year, or perhaps any year. As reported elsewhere, rumors are flying through the community that, as PP describes, "a certain unnamed subspace site is rumored to be creating news solely to have something to post."

I have long suspected this to be the case, and have now dug deep into the dark underbelly of Subspace to find out what is really going on. It's not pretty. According to a reliable source, while the problem started with a single site, it has recently run rampant across several of the major news pages. In some cases, the people running these sites were apparently not even aware that their own staff members had posted news that was simply not true.

It sickens to me to find that some of the more respectable pages have taken part in this charade, even to the point of feigning moral outrage and warning of dire consequences while they themselves are parties to the crime. No community can survive if its self-appointed moral spokespersons cannot even adhere to the truth while they preach about journalistic responsibility and the damage done to that community--and Subspace cannot hope to survive if its fate is entrusted to panic mongers who are more concerned with calling attention to themselves than with exposing what is really going on in this game.

There is a great deal more to this story, but the perpetrators of this scandal are only looking for attention by publishing this made-up news. I refuse to contribute to their mystique or raise greater interest in their activities by embarking on further investigation or commenting beyond what I have said here. In tomorrow's update I will explain my reasons for this stance, and go into greater detail on why it is crucial that the webmasters in this game who honor journalistic integrity meet this demagoguery with a cold wall of silence.


21 September 1999
This was supposed to be yesterday's update but as you can see things kind of got out of hand. With regard to yesterday I have two things to say. First of all, happy Fall and good riddance to another very mediocre Summer. More importantly, props to Nine Inch Nails on finally releasing a new album (even if his stupid record label did fuck up the art on the new Autechre ep and charge album price for it in the US).

What's that you say? It's only been three years since the Quake soundtrack? Well, that's not a real NIN album, silly. That's weird crazy ambient music.

    Q2 is not a game, it is a real time rendering engine with a semblance of a game bolted on.
                    - Yankee99

    Nothing can stop me now because I don't care anymore.

D i v i d e  a n d  C o n q u e r
21 September 1999


You may be a lover but you ain't no dancer
That up there, my friends, is straight from the pen of Harmless Games' new level designer.

-NT-


Return to Turf
The Reverend Spork has announced a followup to last month's huge Last Stand event in Turf SVS. This time it begins quite a bit earlier--noon eastern time on Saturday? Sheesh. Well, it eliminated a potential overlap with Slayfest (or more importantly my preparations for Slayfest) so that's not too bad. Just remember you're going to bed early on Friday night because noon eastern is 9:00am pacific. :) Conspiracy Theory will be co-running the event.

I was not going to comment on this but I will now because I am angry about it. Rev.Spork took some undeserved flak at the last Slayfest for his low intensity maintenance of the zone in recent months and I don't remember where it came from but it was not appropriate. As the successor to GiGaKiLLeR, Spork was given a zone that had become inactive despite some of the most dedicated promotion and radical innovation of any zone in this game's history. During Giga's tenure it became a matter of some dispute whether or not Turf should be a full fledged zone, whether or not there should be a league, etc. Many people have worked hard for the good of Turf and suffered a tremendous deal of frustration. Rev.Spork is among those people. Over time, the people who work for that zone reached a consensus that there were certain things they wanted, and some things they very much did not want. I do not agree personally with the majority opinion at all, but that opinion is held by most of the zone's faithful, and Rev.Spork should not be given flak for respecting those feelings and traditions.

Having said that...I know many of you have not experienced a real Turf game, because I have been to most of the good ones since it came back under Chakotay's watch in early 1998 and I didn't see you there. :) From a cursory looking-over, Turf looks kind of boring. One looks at the map and sees a giant version of Trench Wars. One spectates a small game and understands that much of it involved flying around quietly, talking trash and tagging the flags. Sometimes a fight erupts in a certain section of the map where there aren't any flags, and never seems to end. Occasionally one sees someone setting up bomb lines that never see much use.

This is not what Turf is about.

The sad fact of Turf's history is that it has almost never been what it should be. But when it is, it truly shines like few other games in Subspace, and there are fights of duration, intensity, and consequence to match any zone of any period at its height. The intense teamwork made possible by large frequencies and a front line that gives the rear guard room to breathe and think and plan...the flanking maneuvers encouraged by good map design...the balance struck between one's need to green and one's hurry to assist...the overwhelming magnitude of a full blown base fight with all its antechamber maneuverings, last stands, and hair raising escapes into dangerous tunnel systems. Worst of all, the pain of losing a huge section of territory after a bloody twenty minute dogfight--the horror of seeing that lone bogie sneak past your rear defenses and strike deep into the unprotected heart of your turf, and that moment when you see his team start to attach.

I cannot argue enough for the cause. There are so many cans of worms to open in Turf Zone that it would be wrong not to open a few now and then. Make no mistake: this zone is dead and buried. Show up for the event, help it be what it should bem and savor the amazing treat like it once was, while you can.


New Mapfolios
In a related story, GiGaKiLLeR, who is probably the second most prolific mapmaker of the last year, has posted the final update to his Subspace Mapfolio. The map used in Turf: The Last Stand some time ago (and hopefully used again this weekend) represents his last offering to Subspace as a mapper, and he has closed this canon with a nice reworking of his folio and archive which includes not only images of and comments about every map he's made along with the actual level files, but also covers every draft of those maps. It's really an amazing bit of work and something I hope to match eventually with my own work.

More importantly (sorry Giga!) and longer awaited, we finally have a mapfolio by Arctos, a founding member of the MMG who has always been my favorite mapmaker, and who has been making maps longer than anyone left in the game other than The Romulans. He is building it up piece by piece and has just added a section for War Zone which includes a shot of an amazing new small level for that game. Also included are his Battleball (a.k.a Warball) map and a big collection of his Leauge maps.


Fiery lives up to her name
As you may have read some time ago, the Subspace's Council's own resident hothead has kicked off an tentative reopening of Subspace.Nu. The reopening has been described as "temporary" but from the looks of things she's not screwing around. To wit:

    Yes indeed the news service here at Subspace.nu is reopening. Enjoy a news
    server that will give you all news not covered by 'being politically correct'.

    First of all I would like to start with what we have. We have a subspacehq
    that is forced to remove the Official to its name. We have zones that will be
    replicated in the US and with it make the population split to many servers,
    and most probably there will be way to many server for this player base to
    fill up. That means some player based zones will close in a near future.

The move back to her old station involves a conflict over the "official" status of Subspace Headquarters and a request by Trixter that the word be removed from its title bar even before the transfer of Subspace to his ownership. This leaves Subspace essentially without an official player site, and effectively counters the wide eyed musing by many that the page ought to be renamed to The Official Subspace Players Site or something comparable. Put plaintly, without her it can't and won't be any such thing.

In an even more disturbing and depressing development, JeffP clarified in an email tonight that Fiery does in fact stand to be barred from the new servers if she continues down the road of activism and protest against Trixter's administration of Subspace. My understanding is that the threat has also been made to her directly. In Jeff's defense, he was very clear in stating that he personally would not be a party to such a ban.

    The Mighty Subspace.Nu


SubspaceZone
In yet another related story, it appears that a new page called SubspaceZone is in the works, this time courtesy of the folks over at Brainscan. From appearances it is intended as a sister page to InfantryZone. Lame name or not, though, it's taken -- and I really am sorry for saying this, but this is just about the gayest move I've seen from the back end of Subspace culture in quite a while. Fortunately, Slowbob doesn't seem fazed either publicly or privately. SubspaceZone continues to chug along merrily as ever. Props to Slowbob for taking the insult with more restraint and class than I (or most of us, I'll hazard) could ever have displayed.


A Small Revolution
This just in. :)

A small Turf subarena is coming to A Small Warzone featuring oldskool ASWZ settings in brand new maps by sumirp and myself. We may also be cycling through GiGaKiLLeR's maps if he and Rev.Spork don't mind us using them. The old Turf SVS will remain online as ever and there is no affiliation.

Better yet . . . simultaneous with this new arena, ASWZ will also be opening an SVS arena featuring the jaw dropping new WZ map by Arctos pictured in his new mapfolio. The arrangements are being made as you read this, and the subarenas should be ready by the weekend. If all goes according to plan they will share a single score across the three arenas. More on this as things start to coalesce.

    <The-Pretender> What's Kansas?
    <Kjata> Tp - Its from StarWars.
    <The-Pretender> Ohhh

    Hey Mr. Policeman
    Is it time for getting away
    Is it time for driving down the mother fuckin' road
    And running from your ass today

N e w s  o f  t h e  D a y
11 September 1999


Top ten reasons to play Subspace in 2000

    We're going to win the big game this time.
    Can't make my own super zone in EverQuest.
    Can't buy a 3D card; spent the money on gaming magazines and webspace.
    Won't buy a 3D card; too scared or dumb to install it.
    Can't kill anyone with my sky high 220ms ping.
    Can't operate the mouse accurately enough to see where the rockets are coming from.
    Don't much like computer games but it's fun to insult people who have no life.
    No girls around (ever) and I ran out of beer.
    Subspace will die without me.
    Keep getting banned from #quake for some reason.


Did somebody say Slayfest ?
Few times in my life have I been dealt so much bullshit by so few individuals. How hard is it to stop killing people when you are told to stop multiple times by moderators, and even put into spectator mode for it? How many times do you need to be told something is a TEST before it occurs to you that the game being run is not there as a special favor to you? Behavior like that is the reason more people don't run events, and the reason most events are simple and monotonous.


One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.
This update is dated the eleventh because up until this part, that is when it was prepared. It took me this long to actually post the thing because I believe in taking a breather and cooling off. Well guess what? I took a breather, I cooled off, and I still feel the same way, only I care a little less about what the reaction will be. In fairness, there are some good things happening within the community, but that community is becoming ever smaller lately. As people drop out from the upper ranks, no one rises up to replace them or their responsibilities. Meanwhile the upper tiers of the pyramid become increasingly ambitious and cram into the tippy top corner--a perfectly honorable thing to do, were it not for the fact that the pyramid is getting smaller and no one from the lower tiers is rising up to fill the empty spots in those upper tiers.

I have reached a few conclusions here and I will try and put this as nicely as possible despite the venom obvious in my previous posts above.

First, Subspace does not need leadership. That leadership will be Trixter or some other element at Harmless or Brainscan. Should a conflict arise, a leader figure within Subspace will be in no position whatsoever to match those resources. The only useful role of a leader in such a scenario is to galvanize. Well, we already know who is going to galvanize the community in a bad situation. It's happened before, it will happen again, and we are all of us on pretty much the same page in that matter.

The problem is that when the day comes we will need to respond as a community, and this community presently has no infrastructure. There are very few people left about whom one can still say, "Talk to so and so; his specialty is this and he will take care of these and that, and refer you to so and so." Too many of us are all over the map. I used to criticize SilentDragon for this, not out of distaste but because I felt it did him more harm than good. Back then, his situation was unique. Today there are so many of us taking on so many different tasks, and starting new ones for ourselves, that Subspace no longer has a center, nor do many components of it seem to have their own centers. It is important to remember, when we move on to better, more interesting, or more pressing tasks, not to leave a void in our place but if at all possible to leave either a completed task or another person.

This is why it upsets and angers me to see Warstrike close. For a long time Warstrike was, in spite of Cybrid's presiding over the community as a whole, the de facto center of this game. In recent days it seemed to be making a comeback. Now it is gone again, truly gone this time, and we again have no real center. As much ill will as I may have towards certain elements within Warstrike, in my estimation there will not be a replacement for the site. As a mini gaming network...sure. Those are a dime a dozen. As a Subspace page it cannot be replaced--not because it was irreplaceable, but because no group of individuals in Subspace is qualified to be today what Warstrike did a year ago.

And that brings me to my second point, which is the more important of the two and in my opinion the most serious problem facing Subspace today: What I have asked for above--for people to make sure they do not leave a vacuum in their place--is utterly impossible today. When an influential person in this game leaves to move on towards other things, often there is nobody qualified to fill their place. This is partly because many of us have become jacks-of-all-trades with no clearly defined roles in the game, but mainly it is because (it seems to me) everyone interested in helping this game to survive already is helping.

Subspace cannot and will not survive a prolonged period of player apathy and administrative ambition, especially taking into consideration the times we face ahead. Until we get some new blood into the game, and the wanderlust of the old blood reaches some kind of an equilibrium, we're not equipped to deal with the worst case scenario.

And then again.

A year and some change ago I wrote,

    But just imagine what would happen if Cybrid, Omicron, Imago, and Famous
    Anus were all buried alive in a freak coal-mining accident tomorrow. This game
    would end that very same day.

Well. No one's been buried in a coal mining incident but we've in many ways lost all of these people to various forces, yet the game perseveres.

If you have ever considered becoming deeply involved in this game, now is the time to step into the ring. We're taking applications for almost every job description except God Emperor of Subspace. Right now we have about eight of those.

16 September 1999


    <saltygirl> i hate kansas
    <saltygirl> i want it to burn to the ground
    <saltygirl> except it's too flat

    I'm in the room without a light
    The room without a view
    I'm here for one more treacherous night
    Another night with you

N e w s  o f  t h e  D a y
10 September 1999

I am so out of it
It seems like there's nothing to be out of and yet I feel strangely disconnected even from nothingness. (Man, I should win some kind of a Subspace literary award for that line eh?) Honestly, thanks for not doing anything important while I was gone. You can all go back to your regularly scheduled lives now. :)

First order of business, Slayfest. I want to thank hedcase1 for his attempts at running a game last weekend. I had made multiple arrangements in order to ensure that something would definitely happen, so a game was already running when he arrived and he left during it since he was not needed in that game. My apologies to anyone from Amateur League who came because of his posts to the AML page and were disappointed to find something else running. I had to leave in a hurry on a personal matter, and had limited time to prepare for all of that. hedcase1 will probably be running some events at Slayfest in the future, and as Captain Harloch mentioned a week or so ago on the NMEBASE we will also likely be working together with the AML events in a more cooperative arrangement, for a better staff lineup and more consistency to styles of events. For instance, the AML events may end up with a monopoly on Slayfest's SVS games.

Tonight, it looks like I'm more or less on my own again. I'l be running the same style of games as I always run (one life team eliminations) but will try and keep it spicey by digging up some fun old maps and maybe running Bloodbath rules. Those who stayed late two weeks ago saw a test for an aliens-vs-humans game I am slowly putting together using an old scenario map by The Romulans. There is a slight chance I will pick this up where we left off late in the evening, but otherwise I'll only be online until 10:30 eastern time, so unless someone can take the reins for a couple of hours it will be a pretty short night.

What the hell is New Reality Gaming (other than another Subspace page masquerading as a gaming network, ha!) and how many of its staff members are cybering our friends over at Brainscan? :P Maybe there is just no one left asking for interviews. Here's my favorite part of the new interview with Yankee (sorry, I mean Jerimy "Yankee" Weeks, gotta make sure nobody thinks anyone on the Warzone network has a one word name) conducted by dragor.

    Well for a team game, infantry will have no rival I am sure.. I have always thought FP/3d shooters did not have the combat awareness or communication systems to be good team games. Isometric is really the way to go for that.

This from someone who plays Tribes. Similar remarks have been made by both Rod "Rodvik" Humble and Jeff "JeffP" Petersen. To anyone who has played Subspace, the advantages of a 2D environment should be obvious. Am I really to believe, though, that three dimensions means diminished awareness and communication for team awareness? The position suggests a disregard for sound design and an ignorance of first person shooters in general. Exactly what does 2D versus 3D have to do with communication between players who are far apart from one another? What Subspace has that first person shooters do not are slow combat and attaching. These are what allow players to communicate effectively during combat and they are why it is the most team-oriented game ever made. All indications are that the entire Harmless team thinks the issues are perspective and the systems used for communication. This cannot be a good thing. At any rate, despite his not calling Yankee on that remark it was a very well done interview and makes for some good reading. Time to post this and get ready for Slayfest. Sorry for the big long unbroken ramble and for posting it later than promised. I should be back on track properly tomorrow. <Zanshin> Hrm, what's with this virtual Notre Dame cathedral.. Some guy licensed the           Unreal engine to lovingly reproduce the Notre Dame cathedral.. And you know           some jaqnad is gonna convert it to an unreal level and have assholes fragging in it. It don't matter where you bury me; I'll be home, and I'll be free. It don't matter where I lay; all my tears will be washed away. N e w s  o f  t h e  D a y 10 September 1999 Subspace dead I went away for ten days and came back to find everything exactly as I left it. Is it just me or is stuff incredibly boring right now? I'm going to go play Rocket Arena for a while. There will be an early Saturday morning update, and for the first time in ten days there will be actual relevant Subspace news even if I have to pull it right out of my ass. Otherwise, welcome back everyone. Back.