We're going to miss you when you're gone.

<Oswaldo> Why not build one super ship that has thousands of weapons and can take out any ships ever? 

Here's a mirror with your name on Saying, 

"We're going to miss you when you're gone."

Lameness I don't have a whole lot to say right now, but I want to be on record here about this, because I would not want anyone in this community to feel about me the way I now feel about the DS98 staff. I did not know about the DS98 hoax and was in no way a part of it. Nor do I feel like the victim of a good natured prank, I only feel betrayed. But I do have a lot to say, actually. This was not a funny or cute stunt; it was designed to make people sad and to force all of us to reflect on how important and valuable and wonderful DS98 has been. Maybe this is a joke to some people; it is not a joke to anyone who is dedicated to this game and loves it. DS98 faked a grotesque and cruel appeal to the Subspace community's sense of abandonment and desperation, and abused the tendency towards nostalgia that is inevitable in a community where things seem always to be in some way deteriorating or vanishing. But what's most disturbing about this whole stunt is the fact that it seems no one even considered the impact it might have. Half a year ago, I participated in a practical joke that Peasant's Paladin revived from Warstrike's more obscure historical archives. The motive was less base; we smiply wanted an intrigue to get people curious and maybe make a few of them laugh. The issue was less serious; it involved rumors that a bunch of news sites were making up stories just to have something to post. The story was carefully built up over the period of a week, with PP or myself being careful to let people in on the joke if it appeared to upset them. In all ways, this stunt, although arguably as inconsiderate and ill conceived as the present one, was less ugly and less harmful. Its result? The angry departure of Ghost Ship from the Subspace Council. He stayed away for three months, and it took more than a little negotiating to bring him back into the fold. This was a bad thing for Subspace all around. It hurt a number of important efforts, and it temporarily hamstringed the Council's status as a productive and influential body. Why, pray tell, did we not learn from this incident? Ghost Ship has thick skin and a lot of character. How many players among us have thinner skin? And how many of those players are less tolerant of this kind of bullshit than I am, and less addicted to the game, but far more crucial to its operation and spirit? Quite a few. I wouldn't be surprised if we lost a few of them yesterday. Say a little prayer that we did not. Sheepy Wonderland Here's something. I spent a few hours distracted by this horseshit while I should have been concerning myself with tomorrow's event. I'll bounce back, but I guarantee today's opening game of the series will be less tight and less robust than it could have been. Is this my own fault for allowing myself to become wrapped up in this? Sure, why not. Then again, everyone in this game is a human being, and I'd wager all of them who work to keep the game fun and fresh might as easily be distracted (or perhaps even devastated) by what's happened. No hard feelings to anyone out there. It's just that it's been a while since I was played for a sucker by friends. And I don't like seeing my peeps treated that way either. Word to the motherfucker, as they say. Pick yourself up, brush yourself off, start all over again. Well, then. Here goes nothing. The event The first ever Sheepy Wonderland kicks off at 1:00pm Eastern time today. Don't miss it because it's going to be smooth and funky, and don't be late because the games aren't going to last five and six hours this time. But if you're late, come anyway, and if you have a friend who hasn't half a clue bring him anyway. Everyone's welcome and we'll accomodate anybody who wants to play. I'll have some information in the news.txt by then, or check Thursday's news here if you like. The short of it: elimination matches and warball. A few new maps, a few old ones, and it'll all come down to the SCF's patented Last Gasp Match. Next week the winners and losers add up their victories and build a fort with the spoils. Meanwhile, come an hour early and see what's going to happen to the Sheep Cloning Facility soon...

<einexile> i <einexile> am <einexile> going <einexile> to <einexile> wring <einexile> his <einexile> scrawny <einexile> neck <berrie> lol <berrie> if i squint my eyes at what you said it looks like the dragon from adventure 

"This world never stops" you said 

"This wonder never leaves - The time will never come to say goodbye" 

"This tide never turns" you said 

"This night never falls again - these flowers will never die" 

A dark day indeed St. Patrick's Day 2000 WTMFH Well if you haven't seen or heard the news already, brace yourself. DS98 is dead without warning and has been wiped from the face of the Earth. I have nothing to say about this at the moment except that I am disgusted by the suddenness and totality of it, and frankly pretty pissed at everyone involved. More later. Guess it was time to get back to work after all. For starters, here's a download link for 1.35 if anyone needs it.

SHEEPY WONDERLAND!

<tennin> i don't understand the cybersex thing
<tennin> actually i don't understand sex in general but especially i don't understand the cybersex thing 

Well, I'm no saviour 

But I tried to save you 

With all my love 

That rages and hides inside 

Maybe I needed a break God it's been a long time, I think the longest I ever went without updating. I guess I've been in a bit of a rut but also frequently caught up in things happening around me. It's not like I haven't been online much. I've played a lot of Counter-Strike, I've administered and warred with the Cafe and its vile denizens. I eve played a bit of Subspace. I'm not sure why but I've thought of this page for a long time as something else, not as a part of me or at least of my existence online. I suspect it has something to do with the demise of Slayfest and what may be a psychological dependancy on mapmaking. Well so be it. Everyone needs a sabbatical now and then, but everyone also needs a bad habit they can't kick. So here I am again. Slayfest . . . is still good and dead where it belongs, but I'm not happy with the state of SVS and I forgot about the part of Subspace events which was this. The reason I kept doing Slayfest, after it came to bring me no other satisfaction, is simply that I really enjoyed the competition and variety in an informal context. It was like a league without politics or bitterness and where all that mattered was the game itself. When the game was over, it all sort of went away. I have no desire to bring back Slayfest, which was its own odd entity, deviating from the model for special events in its randomness, its adaptation to changing circumstances, and in many ways in a assumption that it would go on forever. So there will be no slayfest, but there will be something else. SHEEPY WONDERLAND! That's what these little bits of propaganda on DS98 are about. The Sheep Cloning Facility needs something to do, I like having something to do, and there's still a lot left to do in this game, I think. So it's back to Saturday, but the prime time slot is now taken by another event. This is a good thing. SHEEPY WONDERLAND! will be a brand new event series Saturdays at 1:00pm EST. Yes, that's 10:00 in the morning if you are on the west coast, but to do it later would erase any hope that the Australians could hope to stay up for it. What I will be aiming for with SHEEPY WONDERLAND! is a more competitive game than the Slayfest events. It will alternate weekly between two different events, Earth vs. Pluto! and Pluto vs. Earth!. Earth vs. Pluto! will be a series of old style elimination and king's men games. Players will be expected to maintain planetary allegiances from week to week. That is, if you play on the Pluto team, you *always*play on that team. There's a reason for this, because Pluto vs. Earth! is going to be sort of a real time strategy game, which is a funny thing to call something that is not in real time, but it's the closest comparison I can make. Also, I call it that because it was originally an idea Gommy and I wanted to use for a scenario to commemorate the release of Dune 2000. Here's the jist of it. Each team will be given a certain number of map tiles each week, and they will use these tiles to build a fortress, adding to that fortress each week. Tiles will be given out based on performance in the elims, so the team that wins the elims one week will have a more additions to their base the following week. Get it? After several weeks, the map should get pretty hefty and the objective may change, but we'll start out just defending flags. Don't worry, there will be rules about base construction to prevent people from just making tiny little rat-mazes, and bonuses may be given if the teams' mapmakers take particular care to make interesting, fun designs rather than just indestructible and self-serving ones. Each team will choose their mapper or mappers at the end of the elims, and the mapper will have a week to design his map and consult with teammates, etc. I'm not sure if the outcome of the fortress fight will influence the elims, probably not, but it may count towards getting new tiles. Meanwhile I'm going to be toying with something similar in the SCF on weekdays, sort of a homesteading simulation. :) More on that some other time. Sorry if this seems like a rambly mess. I'll make it a little more clear tomorrow. All the old Slayfest crew are of course welcome to chime in and help out. Get in touch if you'd like to do some stuff. "See you in two weeks." Damn, when I said that I thought I was JOKING. I didn't actually mean to be gone for that long, heh. Sorry. Other shit There's a sweet new In the Nursery album out called Groundloop. They have always been good but are getting better and better lately and I've had to catch up with them after a long separation, so this album hasn't made quite as great an impression on me as their previous Lingua or their awesome soundtrack music for Dziga Vertov's 1928 film Man with a Movie Camera. They've been doing a lot of music for old silent movies lately for some reason. Anyway look them up if you have a chance. There is more and more Boards of Canada material showing up on Napster lately. The album is pure genius and I have listened to it almost constantly since it came out two years ago, but increasingly it is becoming possible to find rare old tracks as well as a recent live set on Napster. See if you can find Telephasic Workshop, Chinook, Everything You Do Is a Balloon, Turquoise Hexagon Sun, Bocuma, Ryogbiv . . . fuck it, just grab anything you see by them and it will either be gorgeous or else wonderfully funky. Trust me on this one. Don't forget to listen to KCSB at 4:00am pacific Monday morning. Yes, that's four in the morning. Sorry. :) Time to upload Wow, I' really updating my page. It feels so surreal . . . Back.

March 2000

El Blazer> I HAVEN'T SEEN A SVS BURST FOR ABOUT 6 MONTHS!

I am waiting for the sun to go down

I'm impatient for the stars to change

N e w s  o f  t h e  D a y
31 March 2000

Tonights leetish event

Another run of SSPG Warzone West's Squad Wars event is set for 9:00pm Eastern time (same as last week) and will run about two hours. Zone sysop dude22 has been careful to point out that everyone is welcome, so if you don't have a real squad to play with just round up a posse and pretend to have one. divine has started an ASWZ squad, and on behalf of him, the ASWZ administration, and all its players I would like to challenge all you PUSSY WANNABE copy zones out there to show up and prove that you are half the men we are.

The WZW page recently moved to Subspace.Net. If you haven't played West before, the page features a short guide by Eeth Koth to the classic WZW map by rodvik. Rumor has it that Juan made all of rod's maps, but further rumor has it that Juan never existed in the first place, so we'll call it "the classic WZW map by rodvik" until you can come up with something better. :)

Subspace Planet is open

The new SS page announced earlier this week has gone up. For the moment it's just a quiet news page for the most part, but the structuring of it promises a site overflowing with all sorts of juicy content. Maybe. Watch this space.

And yet another Hyperspace site !

Hyperspace doesn't even exist yet and already it's more popular than Subspace. :P Touting itself as "The Voice of Hyperspace", Bombstar has kicked off to a good start with a decent size staff and a nice design. By the way, despite my kicking and screaming to the contrary, HS is apparently going into closed alpha fairly soon, as delays caused by a switching over of programming duties seem to have been minimal.

Mackieman is an ass

Not only is Pikapoo not an ass, but Mackie can't pronounce my damn name.

FOR THE RECORD!

    1. EYE neck sile'
    2. INE eggs isle'

Take your pick. :P

Sheepy Wonderland

Same sheep-time, same sheep-place, only now with more rubber tubing and twice the bleating! Tomorrow's event is Armada. Nuff said. Come early and bop around the Sheeprush map a little.


    With the proper research, binoculars, tear gas, chains, hemp ropes,
    and hidden dungeon basement rooms, NO woman is unattainable.
            - Dariakus

    Why are there so many songs about rainbows,
    And what's on the other side?
    Rainbows are visions, but only illusions,
    And rainbows have nothing to hide.
    So we've been told and some choose to believe it,
    I know they're wrong, wait and see.
    Someday we'll find it, the rainbow connection,
    The lovers, the dreamers and me.

N e w s  o f  t h e  D a y
30 March 2000

Boy am I ever out of it

Okay, so we have't been able to run water since I think it was Monday. The details are too gross for an international audience but suffice it to say that if we run any more water, the flow of water is going to reverse in an unknown capacity and with consequences which we shall not consider.

Anyway, so there's a yellowjacket nest in the ground near the area where the one dude has to dig around, and part of what the diggy guy needs to do is make sure there's not a 40 foot drainage pit for the bee guy to fall into and die. The bee guy thought it was a wasps nest despite having been told they were yellowjackets, so he doesn't have a "bee suit". Get this. The nearest"bee suit" is apparently around 60 miles away.

What's the connection? These people all have that silly frog voice. I don't get it and I probably never will, but somehow I think that stuff like lying to people over the phone, not returning calls, and making up excuses as you go along somehow gives you the frog voice, the way certain activities will give you the gay voice, the realtor voice, and so forth. Or is it a selling point in some circles?

There. I've vented.

Nice nice shoutcast stream 216.32.166.79:12550 if you're fishing around for something new. Good evil drum n bass music and that sort of thing.

How many readers does this page have? Iknow it gets about 110 hits on a good day and since I usually update late at night and never update twice, probably most of those hits are from unique users. Could maybe a third of you email me and let me know when I should run my damned events and what they should have in them that would get you out of bed early enough in the late afternoon to come to them? Thanks. :P Seriously, it's just occurred to me that of 1/3 to 1/2 of the readership of this page showed up to these things, there would be some mad big historic fights to enjoy.

Or I can just run eight-man elims for the rest of the year. I'm fond of that also.

Anyway, so I haven't been playing much Subspace, and have tried not to be home much either. So if anyone needs me I'll be asleep on my parents' couch listening to the Magnolia soundtrack. This is your friendly neighborhood vowel, signing off.


I laughed, I cried - it was like playing Everquest while getting blown.
- spanky

Just when you think it's over

Just when you think it's done

Out of every nowhere

You never see it come

N e w s  o f  t h e  D a y
29 March 2000

Everything is falling apart

If I don't update, it's either because my ISP sucks now, because I fell into an undocumented 40 foot drainage pit in my front yard, or because I was stung by the wasps near there. Probably the ISP though. That's also why the rest of this update is probably going to have little or nothing to do with Subspace, or any other game for that matter.

Music

Okay, here comes the rest of my update. Sorry for the mess.

Magnolia OST. My God this is the best music I have heard in a long, long time. I now have a more acute understanding of how this movie about an old media mogul dying from cancer and a cop going out on a date managed to keep me at a level of suspense comparable to what I experienced in The Shining. When I learned that the composer Jon Brion had produced Fiona Apple's recent When the Pawn... I was hardly surprised. This music is that tight and that arresting, the sort of stuff Bernard Herrmann might have written had he hung around with Philip Glass. Unrelentingly Hitchcockian but at the same time melodic and gorgeous. Subtle though. Lots of nice stuff happening in the background with percussion and low bass, comparable to Gavin Bryars' more gripping music. Gavin Bryars rules, by the way. Check out Farewell to Philosophy sometime.

William Orbit's Pieces in a Modern Style. Sweet stuff. I don't much like William Orbit's music, from what I've heard. It's always bugged me just a little, but here he really really nails it. Composers like Barber, Ravel, and Vivaldi are reworked into quiet, beautiful ambient arrangements that avoid every obvious lameness one might fear from such an endeavor. Everything on the CD comes across as a loving tribute, but he usually does this without being overly sweet. Not for enemies of Brian Eno or other evil jaded types. Otherwise give it a listen. I think it's on the Isis stations right now.

Anyone out there keep a collection of rare Boards of Canada or Autechre tracks?

Amazing stuff on thedownbeat right now by someone called Crewmunity. I'm going to have to hunt this one down. It will be kind of sad but also kind of funny when all of the BUY IT! links that these services plaster all over the place to make it look like they aren't really about piracy have gone six feet under. The local record shop is raising its prices already...

And here I am looking at the modem to see if I am still connected. I need some sleep.


<Shanoyu> what a fashion statement
<Shanoyu> kaki pants and a blue shirt

It's no going to stop 'til you wise up.

N e w s  o f  t h e  D a y
28 March 2000

Onei's graphics replacement

The shipset and bomb/icon replacements by OneIFreak, in the works for a few months now, has finally been released, with full rolling on all the ships. (He says the Shark isn't finished but it looks finished to me.) This is a unique replacement set because it isn't based on another universe (Star Wars, Star Trek, etc.) or even original designs, but rather is a loving reinterpreation of the traditional Subspace ships, loosely based on the VIE designs but with a certain Volkswagenesque cutesy flair. They rock, and traditionalist though I am I might just stick with these. Grab em here. Thanks Onei!

Black Cobra fesses up, quits again, returns again

With luck we have seen the end of this drama. Black Cobra gave up the fight and made some peace on the SSHQ boards early today, offering his apologies. I may have more to say on this topic later (hopefully most of it positive), but right now it's time to upload. But before I go, allow me to point out this telling self-portrait of RedMyst. Perhaps you'll want to refer to it next time you need a staff member or a sound minded collaborator.

In all the unpleasantness, a key news article got deleted from Subspace.Net after Cyberise had a change in heart, feeling he had been a little too harsh. Of course, that's a bit of history down the drain, and being Subspace's resident historian I am thus unhappy. If anyone has it in their cache file, I'd appreciate a copy. I in no way mean to dredge it up and post it here to embarrass anyone, but I never got to read it.

Technicality

It's still the 28th in Hawaii.


<saltygirl> were you serious about going to efnet?
<einexile> if you ask me that again salty im going to be on MSNBC tomorrow all day long
<einexile> with special followup stories for the next week

But there's got to be an opening

Somewhere here in front of me

Through this maze of ugliness and greed

Special Scandal Edition!
27 March 2000

Messing with the Wrong Guy 101

I'm not a huge fan of justice, because it tends to screw up some good things that might have gone according to plan had we only put up with a just little more BS than we already do anyway. I am, however, a medium-to-big fan of justice, because it gives me little tinglies. Don't worry though, the following is not merely a lot of indignant bitching and moaning. It's kind of an interesting story, if you can get to the end of it without having to run for the bathroom.

So, if you're not all caught up, read Black Cobra's posts at Subspace.Net. While you're there you will also want to take a close look at some posts by his friend Critical Condition. They'll be important later.

Next stop, this post to the SSHQ webboard. This is where we left off late last night on this page.

Oh, but what's that you say? You aren't sick to your stomach yet? Brace yourself, gentle reader.

Here is Critical Condition this morning lamenting the overworked and underappreciated Black Cobra. Later we have BC pretending to be shocked that I called him a liar.

From an ICQ conversation with BC yesterday around this time:

    einexile the meek:
          well i meant what i said on the ds98 board
          i prefer that you lied about planning it as a fake retirement than for it to
          have actually been a fake retirement, if that makes any sense


    Black_Cobra:
          I dunno anymore....I really was retiring but then I decided I shouldn't leave

So I guess it just took him 24+ hours to figure out what I meant by "liar".

Oh, but wait a minute. Here's his friend Critical Condition again, trying to calm BC down. The voice of reason allowing that I was right in one way. Thanks for that, really -- your friend, Einexile.

Four minutes later, mind you.

Now I got to thinking about time, and about the fact that this morning I received another ICQ message from BC which I originally mistook as part of yesterday's conversation, because it was dated incorrectly to yesterday. Strangely enough, so was the authorization request I just received from Critical Condition, who identified himself to me as "a fellow Subspace player".

You can see where I'm going with this. Email accounts at the same ISP, a very recent ICQ account, created probably around two days ago. Two and two were almost put together and that's when I found out that BC had had his posting privileges removed at Subspace.Net due to his recent aggrivated and dishonest behavior. The hepcats at Subspace.Net confirmed for me that the IP information for both users was identical. That's right, this nitwit thought he could fool the guy who is running Pro League.

To say nothing of the guy who nailed Bolero.

For someone who appears to be obsessed with this game, Black Cobra would be wise to read up on his Subspace history, to know who runs the pages he works at, and to try suckering someone else next time.

Non-scandal type stuff

I finally quoted myself at the top of the page. Sorry, I know it's poor form but I can't help it. Someone dug that shit up and I thought it was funny. I've decided it's not vanity to quote yourself if you don't remember saying what you said. (Otherwise it's vanity, and also probably not actually funny.)

Sorry for screwing up the radio webcast link yesterday. Thanks to anyone who tried.

Speaking of various sorts of casting, I'll mention on this page when I've updated my shoutcast linked in the left frame over there, so once you are sick of my music it is pretty safe to not listen again until I actually mention dumping new songs into the playlist.

Penny Arcade always rules, but it especially rules today because they have succeeded effortlessly, where so many others have failed, in isolating the essence of Colonel Dave Grossman and his campaign against video game violence. Look here for the actual comic. (Yes, it's a web comic. Yes, web comics always suck, yet strangely Penny Arcade does not.) However, I'm going to have to quote a big chunk of the rant right here because, well, just because I need to.

    You've got America's latest tour-circuit ass-master with an axe to grind
    to thank for today's comic. Of course, we're talking about Dave
    Grossman - check out his website at Killology.com for loads of links to
    his (possibly very astute, hell if I know) written works. Look, I just write
    comics here - I've most certainly never invented a field and then claimed
    to be its foremost expert, or masked a marketing ploy for my new book
    as concern for other human beings - but on the face of it, I think this guy
    is a nut roll.

Right on, Tycho.

Just a reminder . . .

It would be so easy for you to just get this page's fonts right now. You'll be a better person for it, you know.


    Equilibrium defeats Eblana Space Police 12-1
    MVP: Crazy Imp- 6-0
    Nugaa & Toffe> crazy ignored
    Nugaa & Toffe> crazy stole all the kills
    Nugaa & Toffe> wtf wtf
    Nugaa & Toffe> appeal!

You look like the perfect friend

for a girl in need of a tourniquet,

but can you save me?

N e w s  o f  t h e  D a y
26 March 2000

Coming and going, going and coming . . .

Will it never end? DS98 is going away...no, DS98 is just putting on a new hat. Oh, but Mackieman's leaving. But wait, there's Mackieman now! Hi Mackieman! And there goes Black Cobra. Good riddance Black Cobra, GG fucker, EZ $$$ -- oh hey BC! How's it going? Welcome back. And now there goes XDOOM. Well, man, it was nice not getting to know you I guess. Have a good life until you get back. Which one of these people is Critical Condition? Your guess is as good as mine.

For the whole saga, look here to read BC fibbing about his retirement, then read this to see him fib some more about his reason for coming back. For the first time in my life I respect somebody more now that I know he's a liar. Hey, at least he's not . . .

But I've said enough about that. Haven't I.

i88Gerbils' map

By now you've probably read about the new map that has been running in A Small Warzone lately. (It's in the ?go test arena.) For now I would just like to say briefly that this map pretty much rules. It has a few problems, but then again those problems seem to be what most people like best about it, and there are many strong and very fun aspects which are original, especially the strategic relaltionships between the bases.

While you're there, be sure and complain about goofy 19th century era max arena setting.

Radio Mrs. Vowel

moon bee's excursions, the only radio program in the world you can't miss that comes on at four o'clock in the morning. That's Monday morning, pacific time. Never miss it.

I need a short nap

Part of the radio show thing is I get to wake up at 2:45am. But at least the coffee's good. Sorry for the tiny update. Not that Pikapoo could do any better!

And while I am linking sites I'll never actually read, have a look at Target Lock, Flippmode's new (revamped?) predictions site. Now, that's not to say the page is bad. If I were to read any such page it would be FlippMode's. The problem is that if I did read it then I'd be a hypocrite, and I'd have to go back through the news archives here and delete the dozen or so instances in which I made fun of prediction sites. Hey Flipp, how about since I linked your site now you have to read my page. ;) Keep putting me in that Players to Watch section when you predict my squad will lose and maybe I'll do it again!

Thanks for the extra two points, by the way.

Hey, look

This is getting pretty fun, I like to think.

Musical numbers RULE

Paul Thomas Anderson should have won that screenplay award, but American Beauty rocked anyway. Poor sad Fiona Apple though. :( Spielberg rocks, Angelina Jolie rocks, Thomas Newman is a demigod, Kevin Spacey, Aimee Mann, the Wachowski brothers, etc. etc. etc. Billy Crystal, Nicholson, Beatty, etc. Nice show that was. By the way, The Red Violin is better than all of those movies. Shanoyu thinks so too. Oh, and respect to the Wall Street Journal. eris> you can't take credit for inventing intuitive lameness :) Come on now, why don't you follow my words? Because we're almost done. I'll make it easy at first. I wanna see if you wanna see what it means to be the man with the master plan. Are you the man now? Here we go!


N e w s  o f  t h e  D a y 25 March 2000

 Black Cobra retires - All Out War ends 

Black Cobra posted to Subspace.Net late tonight with the unfortunate news that he has quit Subspace and canceled the All Out War events. This came about as the result of an incident in A Small Warzone about 45 minutes into this week's run of AOW. From what I am hearing, it became very ugly over a short amount of time, and ended with BC finally blowing his top, retaliating against ill treatment by the players with a barrage of cursing and inappropriate mod commands. This game is getting more popular right now, but the truth is that it is always going to be at odds with progress and always fighting to keep a population.

More importantly, where Subspace shines brightest is in its really big games. This is where the depth of its design becomes apparent and players can really be individuals and carve out identities and communities for themselves. Such games cannot happen with a small player base, and it harms the player base when we lose creative and driven people like Black Cobra. The game becomes that much less interesting and that much less dynamic.

We also stand to lose players who develop a distaste for the game as they witness these incidents. What Black Cobra did was reprehensible, but it is possible--and frequent--for Subspace players to deserve behavior that is reprehensible, and to bring it on themselves. The problem is that a lot of stuff gets ruined in the crossfire. People need to treat each other better than this, whether they deserve it or not. Sheepy Wonderland I have no time to discuss my own event this update, but I will say that although a lot of stuff went wrong people were very patient and it made the event fun for me despite my frustration, so I want to thank everyone who came.

Although things were kind of a mess this week, the infrastructure is now in place to (with some luck) make the game super smooth next week. Oh, and I was right about one thing. Thrull's elimination map does rock ass. Try it out in the ?go sheepy3 arena. FFA settings are up. Enjoy.

Oh yeah After almost three years of life, my squad, the Eblana Space Police, have our first ever league match tomorrow. What a sellout am I? Anyway, wish us luck. :P

<Shanoyu> I am not having a microsoft discussion today. All you ever need is to be nice and friendly.


N e w s  o f  t h e  D a y 24 March 2000

Sheeprush !
My apologies to anyone who might have gone into the SCF wondering at the state of the Sheeprush map which I mentioned yestrday I would be updating this afternoon. The map simply wasn't ready. It is close to being ready now and I will be putting it up in the SCF a hour or two before the Sheepy Wonderland event, which is at 1:00pm eastern time. Anyone with a last minute contribution should get in touch with me as soon as possible. Presently I have bases or arenas for Mine GO BOOM, Mackieman, A Small Warzone, GameAddicts Network, Capt Yummy, Pikapoo, and Dead-Fish, plus the SCF lounge and a very special homage to the bottomless well of lameness that is SilentDragon. ;) Regrettably there is no contribution from ZetaSquad because they are very busy pursuing mediocrity in a similar online game whose name we shall not recall. :P Oh well. Sheepy Wonderland should last about two hours, and after that I'll be putting the Sheeprush back up again, so announce your elaborate housewarming parties for around 3:00 in the afternoon. ;) All Out War reminder In case you somehow missed out on Black Cobra's staggeringly massive publicity campaign for this weekend's AOW event, I feel I must point out again that it is NOT a closed game and will begin with a big turret fight that is open to the public. After this there will be a closed match in which previous winners will face off for the title Master of All Out War. This championship match is apparently going to happen at the end of each month. Lord Tsura's event In all the fuss about AOW and the Squad Wars game, I completely forgot about the 100 Flags of Hell game which Lord Tsura ran tonight. Anyway, sorry about that. Hopefully we can soon work out a partnership among this new wave of special events and I won't forget about some of them. :( Minefield Radio The Winamp button in my left frame now points toward my own Live365 stream instead of whatever random stream I happen to be listening to. I tended to leave dead links up for too long anyway. My stream has been going for about two months, actually, but I didn't really have the time to put new songs into it. Some of the songs are a bit buggy, so if anyone has some good pointers about cd access and encoding normalization that would be nice. :) Right now the stream is only about an hour long, but I'll be expanding it over the next few days. There is no set genre; the music is basically a mix of guitar pop, trip-hop and electronic music, the guiding aesthetic being that they are all fairly short and either very catchy or very pretty or both. It's 56kbps so you'll need a cable or DSL connection (sorry). The links list is finally up That's right, kids; Hell itself has frozen over and the devil fish are bumping their little noses against the ice. My links list is finished! Well, it's not finished. It's more like I gave up on the idea of a links "tree" in the left frame and just decided to do it as a full blown page. So it's part done, part not-done, but it's funtional and eleborate and oh so cool. Why would you feed your mouse anything else? Subspace: The Essential Newbie This is a beginner's guide I wrote two years ago. It is unfinished, but I'm posting it as-is just for the curiosity of being a newbie guide written by a newbie, if that makes any sense. I'll update it into a new version sometime in the future. Why I did not post this three years ago when I wrote it, I have no idea. Anyway, here you go. Scenarios section updated . . . maybe I'm actually going to "complete" the Scenarios section of this page because I am pretty much retired from the whole scenario thing. I'll be adding information about the last three or four scens that I did, and eventually include the maps and settings plus instructions in case anyone would like to use them. This won't be for a while, but I'm going to try and get the scenario descriptions done tonight. Another project I am considering is a guide to the VIE scenarios. I never attended any of these and know few people who did, so it will be an interesting research project. If you did attend these, or worked on them, or just know a great deal about them, please get in touch with me so I can pick your brain. I'm offline . . . . . . so it may be that today's update is posted tomorrow, but I don't feel like breaking this track record that is so impressing everyone -- OMG E UPDATED THREE DAYS IN A ROW!! -- so kindly blame GTE for this and not me. ;)


<Oswaldo> Will you have sex with me via the internet? H to the E to the R to the O, and here comes your here HO! Here we go! P to the A to the R to the A, Parappa's the name I rap everyday. 

N e w s  o f  t h e  D a y 23 March 2000

The definitive Subspace manual After months of painstaking work, Crummand a.k.a. Zerx, also known to some of us as the infamous sync turret :) has completed his Subspace Manual, an extensive, elaborate guide to the operations of the game that is probably the most comprehensive ever put together.

Partly culled from various sources and fleshed out with original content and illustrations, it is the page many of us always wished we had to refer to but instead resorted to rambling in chat about the workings of the game.

He's even captured the miracle of the minerepel on beautiful 35mm film. Hey, it's Zilla! GG Zilla! EZ$$

Seriously, have a look at this thing. It is bad ass. Squad Wars correction Eeth Koth wrote in to let me know that the flag timer in tomorrow night's Squad Wars event, planned for 9:00pm in SSPG Warzone West, will in fact be 60 seconds as opposed to 90, which means it will apparently be full 100% SVS (unless of course there is circular shrap and a mine limit of 2, heh) so all your angry WZ types have nothing to fear for your sacred cows.

I assume the time to be EST, but I guess we'll have to find out then. If no one's there, come back three hours later. ;)

BREAKING NEWS!!!! 

This just now crossed my desk! Are you sitting down? Are you? Are you sure? Get ready, here is the breaking news. The event is in fact at 9pm eastern time. Well there you have it folks, breaking news right here on the Minefield. It doesn't get any better than this.

All Out War correction, or something I missed this one yesterday. Black Cobra posted to Subspace.Net with news that this weeks AOW event, set in SSCX A Small Warzone, will *not* be solely a closed game for winners of previous games, but will begin with an open turret wars event then conclude with what Black Cobra is calling Masters of All Out War, a showdown between the seven previous winners plus someone else who snuck in because he knows the mods. ;)

As usual, the game will take place Saturday at 9:30pm EST in the ?go AOW arena. Sheepy Wonderland 2 I've decided to number the Sheepy Wonderland events, because why not. The event time will be 1:00pm eastern time, Saturday afternoon. That's 10:00am for you left coasters. (I resent that term.) The base building thing is delayed until there is sufficient interest in the idea, if ever.

For now we will stick with SVS elimination games and Warball, which is not really Warball but just a powerball game without ship restrictions, set in a huge base rather than an open map. We're probably going to use four new maps this weekend, one of them a kick ass elimination map which I just received from Thrull. If you have a soul, this map will give you goose bumps.

Also, assuming I can find the damned thing, we will debut a really nice PB map by sumirp. If he doesn't mind. Or if I think I can do it without getting caught. :)

Sheeprush upload tomorrow I'm updating the Sheeprush page again with a little more information about stuff to watch out for when making a base. There are still a few slots left and I might claim them for myself if no one wants them. Anyway I'll be uploading the map tomorrow afternoon, and right now it's looking pretty boring, so hurry and get your bases to me. :P Also updated the SCF page. Space Junk section is back up My space junk section (see the left frame) is back up after a long hiatus, thanks to SuperFly of the super cool GameAddicts Network.

(Disclaimer: In am their bitch.) This was actually caused by a server move I was warned about but didn't realize would have complex, mind boggling elements such as "consequences". ;) So it's back up for your packratting pleasure. Dig around there a bit and you're sure to find more than a few bits of bizarre Subspace memorabilia you thought lost forever.

<einexile> WOOHOO!! 
<berrie_> what e? 
<einexile> VICCA AND NIKITA LEFT VCA!!!!!!!! 
<berrie_> vca? 
<einexile> WOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 
<einexile> ::::DD:D:D 
<berrie_> what's vca? 
<einexile> Guess. :P 
<berrie_> a music group? 
<berrie_> a subspace squad? 

I never dreamed it would be like this 

I am the number one ruler of the seven seas 

n e w s  o f  t h e  d a y 22 March 2000 

Another SVS event Chesnut of SSPG Warzone West is planning an SVS flag game for 9:00pm (probably eastern time) Friday night. This will be a standard oldskool WZ game with 10 man freqs and 0 start bounty, with the only exception being a 90 second flag timer. Victory points will be tallied over a two hour period to calculate the overall winner. Players are expected to form frequencies with their squads, so if you don't have a squad find some friends and make up a fake one soon.

Visit the Squad Wars website for further info. Bad news I didn't get into the Diablo II beta test, so with that in mind I would just like to say these few words. Fuck life, fuck all of you, I hate the world, everybody should die, and there is no God. This has been an unofficial tantrum not to be confused with the Minefield's regular quality content. Thank you for reading. I'm in one of my moods again What a sad little directory this is. Zone news It's how this page got started, covering the happenings within different zones and between different players. I've been fighting the fragmentation of Subspace for long enough and I give up.

When in the Balkans, do as the Balkanese do, or something. So I'll probably be a little more focused towards that sort of thing, which means feel free to send me your local zone news, since other news is not usually interesting anyway. ;) Sheeprush I'm going to update the Sheeprush page before you read this, I promise. Blind Io is mad at me . . . . . . for being so nice to Hadar yesterday and not mentioning how great a job the Vangels of Chaos East (known to newbies as Chaos Expert) have been doing since, uh, a few weeks ago, I guess. Just kidding. ;)

In all honesty I do consider CZE to be arguably the best run zone due to the longevity of its staff and the zone's successful holding out against an otherwise anti-SVS trend in the server community. If we could only get them to dump the Battle Drone once and for all. Sigh.

Anyway, visit the CZE homepage sometime, if only to massage Blind Io's horrifyingly inflated ego. ;P * Pikapoo feels dumb because he said SFC

You're all I need -- and maybe some faith would do me good.


N e w s  o f  t h e  D a y 21 March 2000

Hadar . . . still gone 

My favorite retiree recently (alright, it was a month and a half ago) made a long awaited (if low intensity) update to his homepahe, The Wormhole. This was the first real Vangel homepage, set up almost two years ago for Chaos West, and later became more of a personal Subspace page after CZW was closed that September. (I like to think of myself as one of the CZW Vangels although officially I was not.) Hadar pretty much inveted the map vote (although proper credit may go to The^Bone; does anyone remember the chronology here?) and later, in an attempt to compete with Chaos East, risked the zone's skin a number of times in running maps by myself and Mafia and using a modified Shark. It made CZW one of the more enjoyable VIE zones up until its closure. We've apparently lost Hadar to the cruel gods of EverQuest, but his homepage remains as an interesting document for anyone interested in this game's history, and a model for what ought to be done with a homepage when it closes. Have a look at the file section also for a pretty graphics replacement pack and a utility that allows you to bind the F8-F10 and F12 keys in Subspace. For another curiosity, visit BountyBoy's Safe Zone, whose name was the original inspiration for the name of this page. All Out War special showdown game The fourth installment of Black Cobra's Saturday night event series will be a close showdown between the winners of the previous events, and will be held in a subarena of A Small Warzone. With a little civil disobedience, though, maybe we can bully him into running an open game afterwards. :) Black Cobra and I have been discussing a possible replacement of the now defunct Slayfest page at Subspace.Net with a joint page for both All Out War and Sheepy Wonderland, so keep an eye out for that maybe. Speaking of which . . . Pull your damned weight in this game and send me some elimination maps. :P

A bit of new material each week keeps stuff interesting, and I don't always have the time to cut together a new level. Some quick guidelines for anyone interested in making an attempt: Use a nonlinear design (few or no dead ends). Keep to symmetrical design or carefully tested balance. As a rule, you need about 2-3 sectors per player. At every important point, have two approaches and an escape. Carefully vary and balance open and tight spaces. A good doorway is 6 to 8 tiles across. Never narrower than 4. Good tunnels are 8 to 15 tiles across. Never narrower than 6. If you can't fly through without hitting something, open it up some. If you use force gates, make them level 1 (the first tile) to keep the action fast. The bigger a map is the more important recognizable landmarks become. You are using the wrong diagonal pieces. Look again! What the hell, let's call it a contest. Anyone who comes up with a decent map for next weekend wins a prize or something. I don't know what. Someone donate something. :) Sheeprush The first bases in the Sheep Cloning Facility's homesteading project will go up on Friday, so if you are involved in this please get your work to me by Thursday. At present spots are reserved for

Wizard 64

ASWZ

GameAddicts

Capt Yummy

 El Blazer

King Brad,

SQ>Dead-Fish

Mine GO BOOM

and one for the SCF staff.

If I forgot you, be sure and get in touch. Otherwise, that leaves eight spots remaining. I will be putting up some more information at the Sheeprush page soon, so check there if you are confused or don't know what any of this is about and are curious. Meanwhile there is a pretty fly sorta warballish sorta PB game running right now, even if I do say so myself. Map Vault starting up again For the last couple of months I have taken a long break from Map Vault to think about the page's future and because of my increasing disinterest in the subject matter.

I've finally decided to keep the page going and to restart work on it, but it is a job I am unable to do alone given my increasingly narrow involvement in action and strategy gaming. If you have an interest in the mapping scenes for either of these types of game and would like to contribute, or you'd like to be involved in some other way, please contact me.

<Shanoyu> If they aren't civilized people you can show their titties

 no ordinary sin was perfect working order i'd rather sink than swim if i can't walk on water 

N e w s  o f  t h e  D a y 20 March 2000

The quiet death of DS98, SNC, and SSHQ Mackieman's apology today at for yesterday's string of events did not go unappreciated, but I cannot even begin to react to the newer post dated the same day. Not 24 hours had passed since the "DS98 is closing" maneuver, with my criticism apparently having had its share of impact. That criticism was not based solely on some doctrine about good form, but had practical considerations tied into the equation. I'm going to be frank here. I don't like or approve of press releases being sent to multiple news sites. I can accept that other pages are willing to pass them on, but I seldom have, and in keeping with that sentiment I feel an obligation not to send out the same stuff to multiple pages.

In this case, I decided to send news items throughout the week to DS98 only. I did this for several reasons, and discussed the strategy openly with Mackieman before. Thus one of the causes of my distress Friday night was that although supposedly DS98 had planed to close down, no attempt had been made to warn me that the only site I'd gone to for help with publicity was no longer going to exist. Surely there are more important things to worry about than a couple of twenty player elimination games, but we'd been in touch every day since Monday of last week. I've accepted the apology and I honestly don't mean this as a slam against Mackiema's character, but I can't help myself. I love that Mackie turned around and did the exact same thing to Minbari. I wonder if he secretly planned to quit Subspace HQ for as long as the DS98-NMEBase axis secretly planned to falsely end DS98.

Maybe that's perverse on my part, but let's take a closer look at this "merger of SubSpace.DS98.Com, SubSpace.NMEBase, and SubSpaceHQ.Com." SNC was dead. Dormant as I have been over the last three weeks, I claim no right to criticize its staff for this, but the fact of the matter is that an increasingly prolific Infantry.NMEBase argues for a lack of interest in Subspace by the NMEBase administration, as opposed to a mere absence comparable to my own, to CybeRise's, to QA Man's, etc.

I also compliment and thank them for not posting a false goodbye in the way that DS98 did. I enjoyed that page and will miss it, but I reject the notion that it is to become a part of SubspaceHQ. In my opinion it has dissolved and will at best have its content salvaged. SubspaceHQ.

What was SubspaceHQ? I don't exactly remember, except that it seemed to change purpose and design every few months, was not intended as a reliable resource for news, and was largely a content page. In some ways it was redundant with DS98, and this was largely by design. The original vision of this page was to act as a community center, but DS98 already functioned as that.

What has really happened here? DS98 has changed its name to SubspaceHQ and will absorb what minimal unique content which that page previously offered, perhaps sacrificing some of its own. Maybe this fits the casual definition of a merger, but it is a depressing and silly merger. A failed attempt at a community center and a dead Subspace page have been absorbed into a long time pillar of the community, and that pillar has taken this as sufficient cause to change its name and start over again. I will not deign to predict its result, but suffice it to say the arrangement lowers my spirits. And now what has happened? The individual who was by far the most prolific writer on the staff has now quit on a dime. The ironic thing is that he appears to have done this exact same thing on Friday at Subspace.PCGaming.Com.

I honestly have no anger towards Mackie, and I wish him luck in what will no doubt be a more worthy pursuit than taking over imaginary gaming networks, but I find it ironic and sad--and perhaps just--that such a large segment of the news community seems to have blindly thrust most of its eggs into one basket, and that now this segment is pretty much history. Who would have thought, six months ago, that by March of 2000 I'd be thanking my lucky stars for Subspace.Net?