November 1999

<Merdoc> Any woman who can put up with e deserves a medal :)

I will walk with my hands bound.

I will walk with my face blood.

I will walk with my shadow flag

 into your garden of stone.

Forever remain . . .

30 November 1999

The game Klache is afraid of

Subspace players unwilling to wait for Hyperspace, Subspaze 2, or Infantry to reach playable states have (if they read this page, at least) for some time known about another top-down 2D action game in the works, this one on a fantasy theme. Unlike Diablo, the game's acknowledged competition, this is a full blown action game with emphasis on fast paced combat and tactics--not roleplaying. This game, called Nox, is now in alpha testing stages at Westwood Studios, and at least one member of the Subspace team is involved--BFrog, the last Burst member ever to patch the game under VIE.

Nox's new website opened on the 17th of this month, offering more in-depth information on the game than had been released previously as well as a fan site kit (whose rude and fascist provisions we will ignore for the moment). Now news comes in across the wire that Westwood's FTP site has posted two new soundtrack MP3s and eleven short movies of the game in action. The music is quite nice and some of the movies are impressive, showing off beautiful scenery, line-of-sight far superior to anything I've seen before, and a complex spellcasting system.

Also nabbed from Blue's News, there's a big interview with Bryan Hansen, one of the three founding members of Nox's now massive development team, which last I heard included four dedicated level designers. The interview addresses a great many issues. One disappointing detail is that the multiplayer game is apparently limited to ten players. (Whether this is by design or a limitation of bandwidth remains unclear.) However, the multiplayer aspect was developed first, with the apparently hefty single player campaigns taking second priority.

Nox is slated for a February release.

No news might be good news

Ghost Ship knows something the rest of us don't know, and it has him excited about the future of Subspace. "I think you underestimate the future of Infantry and SS," he said to me in a chat earlier tonight, "I think we will be blooming again, and not in a dark and distant future either, but soon." I've been promised the details sometime in the next week or so.

Slamball

Another one of those mails has been sent out which the news sites seem to be receiving on about a weekly basis lately. Usually they involve a fairly new zone idea based on a fairly old zone idea, and I usually can't bring myself to translate them into something more interesting than a cut and paste zone advert--the zone will have disappeared before my next update anyhow.

Why then, you may ask, am I posting this? Well, this week's selection is brought to you by Evaugh and Pikapoo, and not only do they just generally kick ass, but they've been careful to test their ideas within a closed group of people and then to use Slayfest as a venue for an initial public reaction. What we have in SlamBall is a zone that has had its rightful baptism of fire and seen several incarnations. Its finely tuned bad self can be enjoyed at SSIA SlamBall. And welcome, by the way, to Subspace Internet Alaska, assuming that new host is as serious about the long haul as Evaugh and Pika are.

Oh, did I mention that this zone is a lot of fun?

League news

In a startling development late Monday, a bunch of little spaceships blew up a bunch of other little spaceships, shocking respected community predicters who had predicted that the second group of little spaceships would in fact blow up the first group of little spaceships. Fallout from the fiasco was wide reaching, with a bunch of guys and their friends reportedly talking about it for a while. In one such incident this went so far as to prompt some of those guys to disagree with some of their friends on the matter of whether one of the little spaceships had blown up one of the other little spaceships in good faith. By late tonight the dust had settled, but with league insiders making lists of various things and predicters also making lists, surely it seems that the excitement will be continuing on for quite some time. Indeed, this may be only the beginning, and the beleaguered Subspace community might well be in for a great deal more of this craziness and good times before the commotion lets up.

A warning to the faithless

Do not remove my link from your navbars or there will be pain and suffering for you and you will be sorry. Keep reading my page and the rewards will be unprecedented, the pleasure without equal. This may be the last night I update the Minefield as a dedicated Subspace page, but it will remain a page about online gaming, and Subspace--in theory--is still the best of them. Leave me and I'll turn it into a porn page, so help me God.

In all seriousness, thanks so much to everyone who has read the page these two years. With Subspace perhaps winding down and Infantry being a source of comfort to fewer and fewer Subspace players, I feel it's only inevitable that this page must either go its own way and flourish, or go the way of Subspace and risk extinction. I like to believe most of the people to whom this page means something would rather I take that leap than just grow more and more quiet, updating less and less as the news continues to thin out. To my mind it's best that I use the occasion to jump into things head-first. The change would have come eventually anyway, but along that slower road I think--I know, because it's been my experience in recent months--that there'd have been many opportunities to lose sight, give up, and throw in the towel.

I don't even own a towel.

Stick around. I'll try my best not to disappoint anyone.

<Seath> the only reason they get larger is because each game has more and more ammo

<Seath> so she needs some place to store it

    But how many corners do I have to turn?

    How many times do I have to learn?

    All the love I have is in my mind.

Last Exit for the Lost

28 November 1999

Slayfest

After another disasterous weekend I am almost ready to call it quits. My feeling is that events beyond the point of Master of Chaos / Five Million Point Jackpot Nite type of stuff is basically a thing of the past, but we'll be making one last attempt. I sort of restructured how things are going to be happening, so with luck you will be seeing a bit more news about SNS on the various pages and not so many people will forget about the games.

In fairness, the games have been very dull for several weeks now and I can't see the recent runs interesting anyone who enjoyed what we did earlier this year. That isn't the fault of anyone in particular, except mine insofar as I should have done what I now have done, which is to make sure no one is responsible for more than one element of Slayfest. There is (hopefully) a division of labor now that we didn't have before, and with luck people will be seeing a more visible and more polished SNS in the coming weeks.

We could use a mapmaker and an artist. If anyone out there is interested in making a small amount of new stuff for us on a weekly basis (that means not vanishing mysteriously when "real life" suddenly becomes remotely interesting) then contact me.

Two years

I'm coming up on the second birthday of this page and wondering exactly what to do about it. This time last year it was very important to me that the page go through some kind of a metamorphosis. At that point I redesigned it and clarified the "minefield" part, which had been its defining characteristic through most of 1998, then started off in a new direction. Through most of 1999 this page has been a clear cut news page, and I think one of the best ones out here because the news was always found, never ever pasted from emails and ICQ mass messages. It was also sometimes invented, not by way of my imagination but because when there was no news to report I tried to do something that was worth reporting.

The problem with Subspace now is that the news we receive through email and ICQ spam is pretty much all that's going on in this game anymore, and as anyone who has tried the "do something worth reporting" part can tell you, that kind of effort usually falls on deaf ears. I warned a long time ago that the community was fragmenting into cliques which seemed to be sharing less and less overlap space. To my eye, that fragmentation is now complete, and most or all of the active players including myself are not interested in trying games and events they don't already know. And really, we do know them, because thanks to this dynamic, innovation has pretty much left the building.

Looking back, I see hydro's giving up on Extreme Turf to be the closing of a chapter. One of the most innovative people in the game, who enjoyed an enviable captive audience, reinvented a dead and badly missed game variant in the tradition of Subspace's most popular server settings--and the effort not only fell on those deaf ears but was met with outright hostility, both from his supposed zone faithful and from the Turf community, who should have bloody well been kneeling at his feet and kissing the ground he walked on.

I cannot continue this page along its present path, because that path leads to closing it. At best it maybe leads to dead silence. You may at this point refer to your favorites list and say, "but e, look at all those players". Yes, quite a few people still play subspace, but I don't think many of them love it. Even when this game was in really pitiful shape a year ago, there was dedication and enthusiasm. People were doing things, people were making stuff. Even then, Subspace was a little bit cutting edge, the only massively multiplayer game. The only game involving teamwork at a slow enough pace to inspire suspense and reward guile. It's not anymore. And while it may still be a lot of fun, I think Subspace has lost most of the players who really appreciated its charms to other games. The community that remains is made up solely of those who are new to online gaming and unwilling to start spending money on it, and those of us who stick around because it's home.

This is why I can no longer bring myself to read other news pages, to read mass messages, or to hunt down my own news. All of the news in this game today is stale and excruciatingly boring. The really sad thing is that instead of losing our best and brightest to Infantry, that game has become a rallying point for the worst elements in Subspace. The people who were really dedicated to and excited about it a year ago have been driven off by Harmless Games' piss-poor treatment of them and by the development team's unforgivable ignorance of the Subspace community in general. In saying this I do not speak only of myself--after all, I still play Infantry some--but of so many players I knew from the early alpha test and before that the flourishing, wonderfully fun scene at Infantry HQ. What's left is 300 immature people with low end video cards and lousy attitudes, along with a few real gems who honestly love the game and don't deserve the lambasting I'm sending out. Believe me, I know your situation and I feel for you, but I can't be a part of it. Try as I might, I cannot enjoy Infantry or bring myself to care about it. Usually I cannot bring myself to play it.

I think this page's third year is going to be about conforming it to reality. If I am going to continue maintaining the page, it must become compatible with the fact that neither Subspace nor Infantry are any longer worth discussing. Come Wednesday the Minefield is pulling up stakes and heading for higher ground. If there's anyone left out there--and your numbers have remained staggeringly constant, something I am strangely proud of--who reads this page and still plays the game, I apologize in advance if the coming transition is a bit boring. Take comfort in knowing that I am bored along with you.

1337 or l33t stands for Elite

 it's like hacker lingo or something.

 look it up in the dictionary.

 - Frostee

So if you catch me trying to find my way into your heart from under your skin,

fast as you can, baby scratch me out.

Free yourself fast as you can.

Happy Thanksgiving

23 November 1999

Short update

I say happy Thanksgiving because I'm going to be messing around with my computer tonight or tomorrow, and if I screw it up I might be gone for a while.

I'm dead tired because I am hopelessly hooked on the Counter-Strike mod for Half-Life. Last time I found myself unable to tear myself away from a game like this was a year ago in the glory days of Tribes, and before that the crazy J12 days of Subspace. Kind of a pain in the ass to learn but god damn what a cool game. Like both Subspace and Tribes (and nothing else) there is an emphasis on teamplay but it often comes down to individual heroism and inintiative. Like Subspace and Tribes there are times to rush in with guns blazing, and times when you absolutely must hang back and be patient. And the maps. Rocket Arena 2 quality maps...absolutely brilliant nonlinear designs, full of bottlenecks, flanking points, and escape routes. As any Subspace player knows there is nothing like being pinned down under fire only to have teammates arrive just in time to kick ass for you. Half-Life is now $20 and the mod is free. Play this damn game.

As I mentioned earlier over at the Map Vault (can u smell the pimpin?) anna-puma has quit Chaos Zone (not all of Subspace, was previously thought) with a rather nasty retirement message. He leaves behind one of the best maps ever made for Chaos (after Rodvik's and of course mine, heh) which will go up for a second run this coming week. Sunday thru Tuesday be sure and spend some time in Chaos Zone. After that it's back to the Battle Drone for a while and the treat is over.

Btw I am not *really* neglecting this page for MapVault, but Subspace is kinda quiet these days, the potential for that site is tempting, and I'm getting more heavily into FPS of late, so I've been directing most of my efforts there. Plus I know you'll all be sure and read it. ;)

I'm probably out of here for at least a couple of days. If anyone gets messages from 27281087 on ICQ, that's me desperately in need of tech support. ;)

Be safe and don't let the Y2K bunny get your chickens.

<Oswaldo> It's dramatic irony

<Oswaldo> The reader knows what oneko is going to say, but oneko still says it

    Please forgive me for my distance

    The pain is manifest in my existence.

    Please forgive for my distance

    The shame is manifest in my resistance

N e w s  o f  t h e  D a y
20 November 1999

Flu season

Just a friendly reminder from the Minefield that Jim Henson and the little girl from Poltergeist were both killed by a common flu virus, and it'll kill you too if you don't take your antibiotics and stay the fuck in bed. Oh, and you still can't get AIDS from a flu shot. Enjoy.

Breaking news - Slayfest

This just in from conspiracy theory...this weekend's Slayfest is Slamball, a new zone type invented by Evaugh with help from Pikapoo. This is a powerball variant with emphasis on fast teamwork and goal camping, and from the screenshots looks to be a lot of fun. Check SubspaceNet for the Slayfest page when it goes up.

ASWZ map election

As promised, Daga put up the page for map elections at the homepage for A Small Warzone. Presently there are six maps being featured, including El Blazer's particularly nice oldschool style map and an interesting, innovative level by Mr Spiff. There are still four slots left to fill before voting begins, so if you have an ASWZ map send it in. Daga was careful to point out, however, that mDK has the final say as to what map is used. ;)

hedcase takes a break

With the Amateur League season nearing its end, hedcase1 has decided to take something of a break from Subspace, although this hasn't affected his work at Subspace.Net and he maintains that he'll still be around, just a little scarce.

What's wrong with Infantry

Buddist Monk, like many, has some problems with the way Infantry currently is set up. What sets his complaints apart (aside from being one of the few who have criticized the game intelligently) is that he comes from the position of enjoying an advantage because of these aspects of the game. Of Arena Zone in particular he says, "It only worsens as time goes on and soon you get super players who can kill everyone in the zone. I already have a 2000-50 record in Arena because of my stat advantage." You can read the rest of what irks him at the InfantryZone General Forum.

Mapvault

The main reason I remain a little dormant is that I have been putting most of my time and energy online into MapVault, the new GameAddicts / GameHacker level design site. In the process of catching up on my FPS knowledge, I am ashamed to say I became quite addicted to Counter-Strike and will no doubt be basing Subspace scenarios on it in the future. ;)

At any rate, as I mentioned earlier I am working on it with StarClassic, and we've just put up our first hosted site, a Subspace mapping page by El Blazer. Check out the SSMMA while you're over there, and please drop me a note if you have any opinions on the main page or where we're taking the site.

Slayfest . . .

I have no clue what is happening for Slayfest today, and boy is that ever a good feeling. :D Actually it's not such a good feeling because I'm not sure conspiracy theory is actually around lately heh....no matter, I'll be in attendance so if worse comes to worst I can submit you to my patented lame elimination rounds.

<finalfantasydog> talk a little bit less, i'm reading the history of pac-man

    Feelings go on and on

    Killing, it's all man made

    The rhythm of life is all too strong

    So we burn it

N e w s  o f  t h e  D a y
16 November 1999

Bored

Oh well, at least I'm not really sick anymore, aside from having no sense of taste and far too much sense of smell for some reason. Pardon the quirky news.

New ASWZ page

Daga opened the long awaited new ASWZ homepage, announcing new rules for a semi-monthly map election and with preliminary sections for ASWZ League, squads, etc. The page is kind of a mess at the moment as Daga had hoped not to make it public for some time, but now that the word is out it should suffice as a basic news source for ASWZ players until the entire site is ready. Thanks DS98.

The VectorBoy Show

Well known Canadian trash-talk personality vB posted his newest Infantry Livecase at Infantryzone yesterday. VectorBoy recently came into the limelight as the first person ever to publicly defend the spelling of turret as "turrent". At press time it was unknown whether or not the livecast was entertaining.

Yazour is unstoppable

Another prestigous honor has been bestowed upon Subspace culture's favorite target. This time he's been pronounced Wanker of the Week over at the The Nontester's Page. According to tradition, this qualifies him for readmittance into Vast.

Anyone else notice?

The Nontesters Page is Warstrike. Christ what a weird title graphic, though.

The NMEbase-8025 flame war

Are you serious? I had the impression the whole thing was a joke, although a couple of weekends ago things seemed to be getting a bit more nasty than joking between friends normally supports, and I still don't quite see why it is being taken seriously by anyway. What should be taken seriously is the little bitchmoan session about hedcase's contest. Bottom line, Redcats got egg all over his mug, and the entire NMEbase staff rushed to his defense anyway even though instead of just admitting he was wrong he launched a second attack on hedcase and others--this time levelling the grievous charge that they dare feel unappreciated after being taken for granted. For shame! I do admire the loyalty it takes to rally around someone who simply doesn't deserve the support, but next time let's avoid doing so at the expense of the people they've attacked . . .

Belated Infantry map reviews . . .

Callisto Crossfire. Like all CTF maps I have seen thus far (including Titan), the bases here tend too much towards the kind of simplicity that's missing from the fighting arenas. Enter, turn, turn, dead end. There's the flag. With eight identical flag bases on one map, this has to be the dullest war zone level I've ever seen. Although it had many problems, Twin Peaks, with its vulnerable flag chambers, weird cubby-hole emergency stash points, and its cave system, was a more interesting design. That is not to say that the CC base itself is particularly bad; the frustrating thing is it's very nice. The problem is there are four of them identical, and the best part goes to waste. Another disappointing thing about this map is that it seems to be as big a level as the game supports. Hopefully sometime soon though we'll start to see the linked maps that were discussed long ago, if that feature is still planned. If this is in fact around the maximum size for an Infantry map I think the game is going to be a bit cramped with a decent number of players present.

The Arena. Another disappointing map but this one is also irredeemable. Given the size of the field and the very basic ideas that the game calls for, I find it annoying that no one found any inspiration to do something interesting with the terrain. Obviously some care was put in or there wouldn't be so much detail to the scenery, but I don't see why they didn't use one of the other maps as a base. This one contributes nothing.

Deep Zone. Wonderful. Could have done a little more with interplay between large and small passages, but with the ships not yet balanced the little guys don't need that advantage right now. The present design is still lovely terrain to fight in with a lot of nice flanking points, traps, and bottlenecks. Visually this level lends the game an atmosphere which it had previously been mostly lacking. Obviously I'm partial to it anyway, because its style more closely resembles Subspace than any Infantry zone thus far save the basic jetpack game (for those of you who've given up already, Deep Zone is Subspace underwater with two different sizes for ships)...however, the underwater setting lends a unique feel which the visuals and sound effects compliment nicely. Along with the simplicity of the game's design and slowness of the ships, the overall effect is very chillful, and there are some nice, weird, lonely moments hunting through the outer trenches which remind me of those creepy old floater hunts in War Zone.


The Q3A demo . . . I was really really looking forward to the new map and am thoroughly disappointed in it. Like the other new ones, it is very light on interesting terrain, very flashy, and without much to it in terms of being an actual three dimensional fighting arena. Although all of the map have a gimmick to them, q3tourney is the only one where you see a lot of interesting crossplay between sections of the map. This happens in various sections of qtest1 but even that map by far misses the mark of excellence as drawn by the Quake II deathmatch maps and the Rocket Arena 2 maps which are their closest equals.

Someone reminded me, "It's just four out of who knows how many," and that's a fair defense--one which I am trying to believe. But the truth is we've seen those four, plus the one from the Mac show, plus the one from the original movie. And no, it would not be fair to count those other two except that they are better than two of the other three standard-type maps. (I am not including qtest2 in any of this because it is so far off the beaten path.) Do I still have faith?

Well, it's id, after all...but it's id minus American McGee, and id minus American McGee is starting to resemble The Cure minus Porl Thompson. Maphappy I'm in a mappy mood today because I'm taking over webmaster at MapVault, GameHacker's new level design site, along with StarClassic. With luck we'll have it interesting by the end of the week. If you have a weird area of interest in this category (i.e. some game we don't follow) and would like to help out from time to time as a correspondent, drop me a line. Nut uh It's midnight. I'm not proofreading this. Screw it.

<einexile> it's all going to come crashing down, and i'm going to be that dude in The Postman <einexile> not Costner; the bad guy 

<Shanoyu> can I be your right hand man? 

<einexile> Shan - will you wear a fool's costime? 

<einexile> with the three pointed bell hat? 

<Shanoyu> as long as it's dignified. 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 13
November 1999

Swoon Hello there. 

I got back on Thursday afternoon, actually. It feels like about three hours have passed since then. Came down with dual 103 degree fevers on the last day of our semi-impromptu honeymoon. How's that for timing? And so I am now on my third hour working on this piece of shit update, on and off between other even less engaging activities, such as arguing with Shanoyu on IRC and forcing myself to eat chicken soup. Never did hook up with the other SS'ers, unfortunately. Sorry guys. :) Las Vegas owns by the way. Oh well, I'm going back to bed. Goodnight.

<tennin> i wasn't talking to you but oh well 

<Pl0k> i know you weren't talking to me, but oh well With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. 

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

Off I go . . . 

Wow, I'm actually going to a Subspace convention. Well, I'm going to Las Vegas at least. I might just get married and go to strip clubs. (I'm serious.) Very few people were interested in paintball, and my days of twisting arms ended this last Sunday (thank God)....if you want to play some paintball at the SS Con, meet up with some people sometime and uhh...organize it. :) Save two spots for me if you do. ;) Hi Minbari. Put away that laptop and go be social or something. :P Everyone staying home, don't forget this weekend is the first Slayfest being run by conspiracy theory. hedcase1 will probably run some of the old WSL events in there too as warmup or cooldown. Do not miss these! Also be sure and spread the word. They have a hell of a job ahead of them. If enough pressure is placed on the Chaos mods maybe Anna-Puma's new map will be up again this weekend in the zone. I unfortunately had no time last weekend to play but received a copy of it from someone who did. My god, it is a work of art, one of the best maps I've ever seen and maybe the best Chaos Zone map since the old Rodvik design. If it gets a second chance do NOT miss it. No fucking way am I getting on Stratosphere.

Sorry guys. BTW . . . I seriously am going to be on my honeymoon and stuff (there is a good reason for this which has nothing to do with Subspace), so I'll be gone past the end of SS Con and into the next week. However I don't mind if you come here and put a hit on my counter anyway. :) One thing I must say on that note...this page by no means has the biggest readership, but one thing I love about this page, which I try not to take advantage of and makes me feel like a jerk sometimes, is that when I don't update I never lose readers.

This last week I have been especially neglectful of the page with all the stuff going on, and want to say thanks for sticking with the page, and also especially to everyone who absorbed some of the pressure from Dawn of the Dead and other events last weekend. Saved me an ulcer. Lastly, a sad goodbye to Khris Kruel, who after this coming weekend will be neither a Subspace player nor and internet user.

The world sucks a little more because of this. Good luck to you in whatever you have planned, KK. This game would be very different without you, and it will be very different without you. See the rest of you hepcats in a few. Back.