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.