March 1999

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Fatkid



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

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

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


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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

    Quest for the Necronomicon


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

    Turf Zone Homepage


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


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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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





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

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


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

    In Defense of the Lag Turret


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

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

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

And no I am not kidding. :)


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

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


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

    Center Ice


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


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

    We apologize for the inconvenience.


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

    Nice people swallow.



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

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

hurry!
13 March 1999



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

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

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

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

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

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

Sorry to be a stranger. :)

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

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

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



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


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

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


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


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

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


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


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


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

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

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

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



    <xalimar> i'm just dumb

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

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


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

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

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

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


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

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

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

    Thanks fer nothin.


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


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

    The Subspace Map Index


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

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

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

Oh yeah, sorry about all the smileys.

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

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

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



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

    interview with Bolero, 25 February 1999


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


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


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

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

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

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



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


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


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


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

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

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

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

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

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

February 1999

    <Pl0k> what a fucking waste of bandwidth www.hamsterdance.com is

    "You look like you've been losing sleep,"

    said a stranger on a train.

    I fixed him with an ice-cold stare and said,

    "I've been having those dreams again."

N e w s  o f  t h e  D a y

27 February 1999

The Slayfest presents CTFBRAWL '99
Captain Harloch recently updated on the Slayfest page with information on today's events, which I was too stupid to link to earlier. This is happening at 8:00 eastern, TONIGHT (i.e. very very soon) so cancel all your plans; you are cocooning and spending quality time with your mate (i.e. your computer). If it doesn't get plossed out again, this events is going to rock like nothing you have ever seen. Extreme Games settings, nice big 2-base map by CPRman based on designs by Roseo and The Romulans, lots of flags.....hopefully a nice big bloodbath.

I am posting this update early to get the word out as soon as I can, so please excuse the lack of proofreading and the bad link to Bolero's interview. I will have these things fixed later today.


RiSC secession explained
A couple of weekends ago, RiSC left the SSC abruptly and with no apparent explanation save a reported argument with Baudchaser over planned score resets used on the iNET billing server. It seems that what happened here was not a planned secession per se but s sysop level decision on the part of Kice. The official policies of the RiSC and SD server banks is that the zone sysops decide which billing server they wish to use and whether or not they wish to be part of the SSC. At the time of the name and billing changes, I believe Kice was either sysop or co-sysop of every RiSC zone except for mine, which was being moved between machines and had several days of downtime. I will be moving the zone back to SSC unless another council member objects to this. Kice does have the agreement of NfoCipher and the rest of the zones will remain on their own billing server under the RiSC name unless they change sysops.


Bolero relocates
In response to threats by Captain Harloch and Kafka to take down Bolero's Subspace Cheat Information Page if he would not produce his anti-cheat program The Deliverer, Bolero asked that his page be taken down. He is now at Warstrike, thanks to Wampit, who had the page set up less than an hour after I put in the request. For the record, this is not an endorsement by me of Bolero in his fight with Zetasquad, and I did suggest that he only move if and when his account actually was removed by Zetasquad. At present I take no position in any of this except that I don't believe in denying someone hosting over unproven statements or an appearance of seediness. In fairness to Zetasquad.com, they are not a web hosting service but a squad page, and don't necessarily have a journalistic obligation to host pages they disagree with.


The interview
Bolero has been quite a controversial character for the last several weeks. After launching an informational page on Subspace cheats, he began testing in Extreme Games of an anti-chreat program called The Deliverer. By late that month, it had become clear that more than a few people were out to get him. Falsified screenshots were published implicating him in the creation of dCap, and a mysterious publicity campaign was launched in service to this fact a full two weeks later. Meanwhile, the messageboard at sog.java.net was rife with fake Boleros. It came as no surprise, then, that when he was accused of cheating in Extreme Games earlier this month, some of his accusors met appeals to reason with hostility and seemed to be feigning ignorance of these fairly well known incidents.

The forces aligned against him slowly mounted, however, and the people at the highest levels of Extreme Games became increacingly convinced of the charges. Bolero eventually left the zone in what can only be called disgrace. In this wild tale, Bolero discusses the mysterious history which he claims led up to his being framed, and explains how the Extreme Games brass can have done the right thing while being completely wrong--if you believe his version of the story.

    Bolero Speaks



The Dark Zone returns
One of the first super zones (predated only by Shine World and Pure Hell), and in fact the first player zone ever reviewed at this page, is back up and running, with Byobong7 as pointman, he being one of the old zone's mods. They will be using one of the classic TDZ maps for atleast a while, but may do some experimentation in the future. Welcome back. :)


The problem with Find Servers
You all probably think you don't need to read this, but read it anyway because you might learn something. :) It is common knowledge that to update servers you must now use sscentral.vie.co.uk instead of the old sscentral.vie.com, but what is less understood is the client's tendency to crash while updating. For some time, the old address was mirrored to the new one, but this is no longer the case and attempting to connect with the old one will likley crash the program. More importantly, because the front-end client just plain sucks, don't do anything while you are downloading the server list! Just sit there like an ass and stare at your screen for the fifteen seconds it will take to get the list. Don't even touch the mouse. Don't breathe. Almost any change in your facial expression can cause the update to crash on you. For some reason this has been happening to more and more people lately who never had a problem with it before, so I thought I should mention it here.


War Zone turns to map cycling
After a preliminary floating of the idea, Peasant's Paladin sent out a list of the maps which will be up for consideration as the next War Zone level. The zone is taking a conservative approach and easing into the process by narrowing its options initially to only a few different maps, all of them tried and tested. Up for consideration are Happenstance's and Arctos' maps (both known from about a year ago), rodvik's old map with the fish and the funky tileset (this was the third WZ map), and Mixman's level from June of 1997, which only saw about one month of use and is very spooky for some reason. :) Personally, I think Arctos' map is the best one up for consideration (and one of the best, period) but I would also like to play in Mixman's map because it was not up for very long. Good things come to those who wait, however, and Arctos III is a tried and tested masterpiece with lots of good bases, dense greening terrain, and nice floating artifacts to make red chases more interesting.


Sick fuck link o' the day
Since I get so many of these I figure it might as well get its own section for a while. :P This is pretty harsh but it is one of the funniest things I've seen on the web in quite a while The whole site is pretty amazing actually so take some time to dig around it. Thanks to Dariakus for the new hole in my stomach lining.

    ewww




    You know you have no life when it is 9am and you
    have already played Extreme Games for two hours.
                                                          - Minbari Warship

    And when you wanna kill it dead

    you let it throttle you instead.

update for the week of...

24 February 1999

Kidding !
Don't worry I'm not doing weekly updates from now on, I swear. ;) It just turned out that I am doing one at the moment, but hopefully the next update will be of the daily sort...


BoleroGate continues . . .
An accusation no one seemed to take seriously, againt the secretive Bolero by an incresaingly hostile and shadey Mongoose, blossomed into something much nastier when Zennor backed Mongoose's accusations this last week. The accusations quickly gained the support of Captain Harloch, Kafka, and many other EG staff. This follows an apology last week by hunter2 with regard to previous accusations. Bolero has said he will now be moving his Subspace Cheat Information Page after implied threats by Harloch and Kafka to take the page down for its anti-Zeta remarks and a lack of activity or credibility with regard to The Deliverer, an alleged anti-cheating program which has been in the works now for months. Bolero has recently lost favor with many of the Extreme Games staff (dominated largely by Zetasquad), because he is unwilling to produce evidence that The Deliverer exists even to the sysops there.


Dolly gets a makeover
SilentDragon has given the Sheep Cloning Facility page an update, with a nice new look and the infrastructure what what will soon be news posts by all six (!) of our sysops and different sections for various events such as Slayfest, TNT, and Armada. I would like to rebuild the map archive along with a history section of sorts, but haven't really got time for it. Any volunteers? I have all of the maps and can put together notes for each one, but I'll be damned if I'm going to cut that page together. :)

In special event news, the Slayfest on Saturday was awesome, and while SSX' trademark packetloss was a problem, it didn't hurt nearly as bad as it did a week before. The bunching of ships in the Death Star trench run was a bit much, however, because every time you lagged out you would have to get back on your old team and then get in a legal ship without getting negged. The game moved on to the incredibly fun if perhaps inane ;) Braveheart event which has to be seen to be believed. After that I had to go but the events continued for quite some time after. TurfNight Tuesday was a lost of fun yesterday, with a medium size turnout. Split between only two teams, we had some long and very violent fights in the grid area of Giga's Megaplex map, which resembles a chunk of General Rage's map floating in a big oval. There is some really nice terrain all over this map so be sure and remind yourself to come next week if you are a tunnel rat. ;)

In the next month or so you can expect a few full blown scenarios from the Reverend Spork, Mailiw, and RuneCaster (who is doing a shipset and sound replacements or his), and I'm working with mDk to get the ASWZ League games set up for Sundays, hopefully with The Romulans doing his big ol' Armada game as a kind of halftime or post-game show.


Proof that War Zone is really back
Peasant's Paladin sent out a mail yesterday to the moderators of SSCU War Zone SVS soliciting suggestions for (gasp) could it be? A map change! The ruin of Subspace, to be sure. On the table are three classic VIE designs, at least two Arctos maps, two each by Warhammer, T2-17, Happenstance, and myself, and work by The Romulans, B8_Factor, Gommy, and Shanoyu--so if you want a say in what map you play in next, start doing your homework. ;) Damn, and I thought we were all just mapping for the love of tedium.


Giga does Chaos
GiGaKiLLeR, best known for authoring more Turf Zone maps than everyone else combined, is trying his hand at a map for Chaos Zone and the result thus far is a beautiful and original level which may actually be the one to unseat the Battle Drone if the Chaos old guard are willing to give it a trial run. Careful with those diagonal walls over there, my friend; they are still very much WTF material in the Chaos subbacultcha...

I'll post a teaser screenshot as soon as Giga is willing to let me. This is the first new Chaos map since SilentDragon released his this last Fall.


Subspace . Net legit?
According to WiZT, who was on the staff of the first Subspace.Net page, the domain is still owned by The $niper, but CybeRise has assured me that he intends to buy it from him, and that the actual machine it's hosted on is owned by a trusted friend. The last incarnation of the site (the hacking one) was in fact running on this machine. "The only reason we took ss.net away from a shadow rift was because we didn't like the way he was running it," WiZT said.


JeffP interview
Last Friday, Infantry HQ posted an interview with JeffP. I didn't read it because I didn't really give a damn and figured it would be a lot of stuff about Infantry that has been asked time and time again. Well guess what, it's not about Infantry but about Harmless and the people who run it and the ideas behind it, and various technical and industry issues, a kick ass read if ever I read one. Big props to slick brick for doing such nice work here.

    Infantry HQ interview with JeffP


Boring . . .
It's been easy to not update for the last week or so because almost nothing interesting has happened, so I'm going back to my old trick of just writing about nothing. ;) Let's see, just now I turned my heater off because it was getting too hot. Later on today I hope to have an interesting interview with my cat for you to read plus a review of last nights episode of Felicity and some reflections on the new planks they are replacing on the wharf down at the beach.


the skinny . . .
The lowdown on Bolero's departure from Zetasquad.com and RiSC's departure from the SSC, tomorrow's update.


Important opportunity for Subspace players
mDk sent me this link so he can get into Hell. Just think of the possibilities, though, for increasing the Subspace player base. Let me know when I can claim my finder's fee.


    <tennin> but they raise the price of sleep on you once you're hooked on it

    I'm a little teapot,

    short and stout.

    Here is my handle,

    here is my spout.

N e w s  o f  t h e  D a y

18 February 1999

RiSC leaves the SSC
Old news, but not clear until just recently the why and where of it. Warstrike reported Monday that the RiSC server bank had bailed out of the SubSpace Community deal "after Saturday's billing server outage", implying that this outage was the reason for the secession. While that may be RiSC's position, there is no reality to back it up. RiSC changed its name from SSCE back to either late Friday night or early Saturday morning, before the billing server disaster (an iNET-wide crash, in fact, which had nothing to do with iNET's Subspace administration). In fact the departure seems to have been over power issues and peeves involving the use of the billing server. In particular, RiSC co-sysop Kice had voiced objections over Baudchaser's planned score resets and Star Warzone's jackpot announcements. This in my opinion is the only explanation for the fact that RiSC left the SSC without any warning or statement. In my opinion, considering what the rest of us have been through, and what many of use have compromised, to make the SSC work, departing in this manner is very bad form, not a mere rejection of someone who has done a great deal for the game, but an unabashed insult.


Turfin' plossed out
Mine GO BOOM's organized mini-Turf game in the Philosophy Club on Monday fell to pieces because of extremely high packetloss, and will probably be rescheduled. This was the second event in a space of three days to have been spoiled by packetloss, Assault on the Death Star having been postponed a week from this last Saturday. The SSX servers have been experiencing worse and worse problems with packetloss due to routing problems with a local backbone. We are aware of the problem and looking for a way around it, so bear with us and give Turfin' another chance next week. (Details forthcoming.)


hunter2 apology, retirement
PCGaming staff member hunter2, who recently took some heat (mainly from me) for posting a "Queer of the Year" award against Bolero based on cheat-authoring allegations made by AWOL and Mandude, posted an apology Monday to Bolero, effectively retracting the story. Two days later he posted his retirement message to PCGaming. He will remain on as an occasional staff member.


Witch Doom returns
The oldest and best of the super zones is back after some down time, unless I'm mistaken. I didn't see it listed for quite a while. Witch Doom is about as nasty as a super zone can get without crashing the game client, but is set apart from other zones like it by the superb Arctos map which has been used since the zone's inception. On that note, Arctos pimped up his new SSCU Warball zone on Warstrike news. I haven't had a chance to go there but I know the map well and it is excellent. Expect a very biased review of this zone ASAP.

Yeah, yeah . . .
I know, I neglected you. Tell it to Cybrid. ;)


DAMMNNNN . . . !
If you missed the first two installments of Storm of the Century, consider your life and reputation utterly ruined. This sucker is GOOD. Don't leave it on your to-rent list for any longer than you have to once it's out on video, and for God's sake don't spoil it for yourself by joining the fray four hours into the story. You'll be sorry. ;)


    <Nemmers> Man was given a brain and a penis and insufficient blood supply to use both at once

    Innocence is hurting,
    a world speaks out of tune.
    Promise calls, promise falls;
    what are we to do with a clouded view?

N e w s  o f  t h e  D a y
13 February 1999



Assault on the Death Star
Can't pimp this up enough! Last weekend's Slayfest event was the most fun I've had in Subspace in a long time, and stayed at its max arena size of 60 for nearly five hours. Captain Harloch is making this a weekly series, and the newest installment is a proven favorite from the series' roots in Star Warzone. Be sure and read up on the rules and ship types before the game as they are a bit different from SVS. However the Star Wars settings are very nice and this is indeed going to be a pilots' game.

Please note that the map presently up in Sheep Cloning Facility may not be the finished version, and the settings are left over from this week's TurfNight game. I just uploaded what I had there as a precaution because I am getting an FTP error from SSX at the moment. The game starts today at 8pm Eastern in SSCX SCF West.


Bolero hits back
Subspace's best known anti-cheater, certainly a controversial character but most likely not a cheater himself in my opinion, has updated his Subspace Cheat Information Page and sounded off on recent accusations against him. An obscure trash talk page by AWOL and Mandude posted a screenshot in mid-January implicating Bolero in the authoring of the cheat known as dCap. Nearly 2 weeks later, hunter2 of PCGaming fame reposted the story for no apparent reason other than to celebrate the confirmed spoofing of Bolero's identity on the Pro League message board. More recently, an IP faker apparently used his identity in Subspace to wreak havoc in Extreme Games. It seems that fake Boleros are on the rise.

(I should point out that I invited Bolero on to my squad after two of the above incidents had occurred, and he is a member because I have respect for him. It probably doesn't need to be said that my defense of him has everything to do with the ludicrous nature of the accusation and nothing whatsoever to do with squad loyalty.)


Quest for the Necronomicon
No, it's not a sequel to Dawn of the Dead, although there is plenty to do with Zombies. ;) Mailliw's new scenario, based on the Sam Raimi movie Army of Darkness, involves more of a Trench Wars style attack on a castle, with the living attempting to defend a certain less-than-sacred relic from the dead until the Sun comes up. Tentatively scheduled for February 27th. Check the page for details. A map outline should be posted soon.


oh PLEASE . . .
Subspace.Net is back in yet another laughable manifestation. Hasn't this gone on quite long enough? First a disappointing Subspace page pumped up by three weeks of advance hype--useful only for its realaudio show and often phony affiliations with prominent game hosts. This site started collapsing almost from the moment it opened, then closed without warning, leaving no archive to speak of. A few months later it returned with a grafitti looking logo and no content at all this time, and then that too was gone--in its place, a hacking site, declaring Subspace to be dead. Now they're at it again, this time sadly enough with staff members who are (were?) actually reputable, again promising great web design and--yup--squad hosting. I have one thing to say to the squads foolish enough to go to this place for hosting: Back your shit up, because if history is any indicator someday soon it will be GONE without so much as a rude email explaning why. By the way, do you all really have the word Squad in your names?

To CybeRise, Tombstone, and (wtf?) SilentDragon: get the hell out while you still can with your good names intact. To The $niper or whoever is running the stupid place now: get a life and sell the fucking domain already. It is a disgrace.


Freedom good, totalitarianism bad
(a Tribes manifesto, with apologies to Cybrid)

In the first week of Tribes' retail life, there was much confusion. Team damage was the order of the day, and it created problems and dilemmas among responsible players--and those problems and dilemmas were good things. Multiplayer gaming is at its best when it demands decision and creates suspense--but it wasn't always working here. At least once a night, on any given server, an individual would use team damage specifically to ruin the game for his teammates, and unfortunately it was very difficult to kick these players off of the server. In a system designed to be abused, kicking a teamkiller required consent from the enemy team. Often his victims would need to switch sides and teamkill the enemy just to get their attention and thus a voting quorum. Rather than deal with this confusion, the game's population--unaccustomed to team damage in first person shooters and weary from the player-killing endemic to Diablo and Ultima Online--began choosing to get rid of the problem by eliminating team damage altogether. We have only the team killers to thank for this, but all they ever did was spoil individual games. By contrast, well-meaning response to their havoc spoiled Tribes as a whole in meaningful ways.

For a few weeks, team damage was turned off almost everywhere. This was justifiable; players who had become tired of losers screwing up their games learned how difficult it really was to remove these people efficiently. Worse than simply requiring help from the enemy team, one of the inexcusable flaws in Tribes is that in voting an abstention effectively counts as a no. While perhaps this was meant to discourage people from opening the same votes repeatedly in an attempt to slip one past, there is already a delay mechanism to this end, and it's always possible to kick people who spam the voting system. There is frankly no good reason to count an abstention as a vote against. Because they are in fact counted this way, it takes an unreasonable amount of work to disable team damage, and even more to turn it back on. Disabled damage thus became something of a guarded prize, and a single attempt at reenabling often resulted in bids to kick whoever dared initiate the vote.

Most folks can't spend all of their time playing Tribes, and it's easy for a TK incident to become ugly and ruin a 30 minute game, so all of the above was justifiable--until Kaptain Kickass' Anti-TK script came along. With Anti-TK it is still possible to ruin the game, but such attempts actually involve work and cunning--a scarce commodity among troublemakers--with a payoff amounting to little more than the mild irritation of one's teammates. Anti-TK has other, more serious problems than this. Defensive mining becomes almost useless, either shallowing the game across the board or providing an overwhelming advantage to the more experienced team; the most conscientious defenders are punished regardless of how many times they send mine warnings over radio, and players who screw up their team's defenses by stepping on mines never learn their lesson. Anti-TK is also not a good setting for new players to learn about explosive weapons for obvious reasons, and removes much suspense from the game for all players: Do I lob grenades into the control room; is my teammate in there or on the roof above? Do I hurl discs at the flag carrier; is my teammate in pursuit keeping his distance? The skilled player thinks analytically here, types quickly, makes difficult decisions based on the moment's importance to the objective, and usually manages not to kill his teammates. Usually he isn't killed by his teammates, either. The unskilled player, on the other hand?

Well, this is a after all democracy. Unskilled players can simply band together and drag the entire game down to their level of ability--and it's not uncommon to see those who want team damage disabled resorting to teamkilling in order to drive home their point. I was recently present for one such campaign that destroyed two whole games. With no teamkilling problem visible, a player took it upon himself to show the other twenty-odd people using the server that disabled teamkilling was better. Did he leave the game for one of the three hundred servers where team damage is turned off? Hell no. He massacred his teammates and destroyed their equipment, then changed teams and massacred the enemy as well. Between him and four or five other like-minded, equally frustrated allies, the server we were on became a waste of bandwidth without any strategy or objective to speak of. More surprising--and more loathesome--was the degree to which he successfully made his case, as players not participating in the havoc increasingly were willing to buckle under his coersion. "Just vote so we can play," they cried. There is no word for such behavior but cowardice.

For players legitimately concerned about intentional teamkilling, Anti-TK does what it's supposed to, and is a superior solution. Why, then, do we more and more often find team damage voted off on servers that are running Anti-TK?

Because the next best thing for a lamer to do is camp.

The maps are not designed for this. The once beloved Stonehenge is now reviled. Much of the richness of Scarabrae and Siege are gone. Too many times now have I seen games end in a stalemate because someone discovered the art of tossing mortars around inside their own base. And who is going to object? Bouncing grenades around corners into your own generator room no longer carries a penalty. Combat in the field is quite a bit easier when you've got two or three people standing half a map away in heavy armor, hurling explosives into the area at no risk to either your livelihood or their own. Far beyond an already despicable need to remove a dilemma from the game, what's really going on here is these people actually want less strategy. They don't want to look at their map, they don't like to type; most likely they can't pilot or aim either, and again, who is going to complain? No dignified offense player would lower himself to criticizing enemy defense as too strong, and teammates of the mortar artist are likely not to notice him; they have not been needed in a defense capacity for ten or twenty minutes and will only be home long enough to suit up and load their weapons. The game degenerates into a flagless dogfight in the open while defense in its entirety consists of one or two people dropping mortars down a tube. What's really sad about this is that team damage has been so rare for so long now that many players probably have no experience of its virtues and don't know what they're missing in these situations. As a matter of fact, I have never witnessed a public objection to such behavior.

Anti-TK is, all things considered, bad for the game, but its advocates mean well, and may have single handedly saved Tribes from becoming a silly rehash of team pickup Rocket Arena. The depth they have removed from a once-sophisticated game is unfortunate, but forgivable. The modification is also first generation; the future may hold more surgical solutions that further revive the team damage factor. At very least it is a good precedent.

By contrast, simply disabling team damage absolutely ruins this game. Advocates of the solution have now shown their true colors, and proven that they neither understand nor actually enjoy Tribes as it was designed to play out. The seasoned disabler will complain that the kicking mechanism doesn't work, that troublemakers can simply reenter the game under a different IP, or after the game has ended. What of it? So can anyone else. Further, he will complain that the issue of abstentions makes it flat-out impossible to kick another player from the game most of the time. This simply isn't true. Just try sending racial slurs over the public channel next time you connect to a server, and see how long you last there.

Without the option to disable team damage, we'd have worked this all out by now, kicking being the only viable solution. We would certainly not be looking at the present standard: a starting vote without explanation amounting to 6 for, 1 against, and 15 abstentions. It's a computer game; people will learn to play it properly, but not in the presence of so many easy solutions. Instead, what has happened is that a tool supposedly needed to combat lameness is now used primarily to combat player frustrations with their own faults, with the faults of their teammates, and with the complexity of Tribes itself. Many players unfortunately see this complexity as a liability, because they choose to see their own inexperience and laziness as design flaws in the game. In fact the only true design flaw in Tribes is that team damage can be decided by a vote. The players ought to have no such control; those who require it don't really want to be playing this game.


In the spirit of fairness
For those of you who will never sleep soundly again because of the Hamster Dance, I offer sweet revenge. Azure Mercy, better half to RuneCaster, sent me this link to Hamster Golf. Rune, don't let this one get away man. ;)

Erm...click on the games button....you'll find it.


    <RuneCaster> Do you why Big Macs are so cheap? :)
    <Golbez> RuneCaster- why?
    <RuneCaster> Lettuce is cheap, meat is free when you have traps, a dumpster and a thriving metropolitan stray animal population
    <Golbez> big macs are good, dammit
    <RuneCaster> Lots of homeless people, lots of stray animals, the answer seems obvious
    <Golbez> and anyway, DC rats are too big. Subway uses those. ;)

    Oblivion has always been such a friend.

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


SSX becomes SSCX
That is to say that the SSX zones will now be listed as SSCX in keeping with the Subspace Community naming standard established by Baudchaser. This was decided at a meeting Monday afternoon and puts to rest the question of whether SSX would be assimilated into Baud's evil world domination plan. The official name for the server bank remains as SSX. In case anyone is curious, the servers are located in Washington state. At the above mentioned meeting it was also decided that Dueling Zone will stay with SSX rather than being hosted with iNET.


Turf Lives !
Thanks to a billing ad from Baudchaser and hydro's recruiting of players from his own zone for the cause, TurfNight made a huge comeback yesterday, with the game peacking out at 39 players and lasting for a few hours. This came after several weeks of poor turnout which resulted in short, boring games.


Followup to Clockwork Chaos this Saturday
The next game in Captain Harloch's scenario series will run this weekend at the same time and place (Saturday 8pm Eastern in the Sheep Cloning Facility) and is back to the Star Wars theme for which the Cap'n is well known. You will need a ship pak and sound replacements for this, and the game will be a little more complicated, so take a look at the propaganda ahead of time to avoid confusion.

    Captain Harloch's Saturday Night Slayfest


New installment of Cyb's Soapbox
Cybrid chimes in with a second issue of his new editorial series for Warzone. There's a shout out to me and I can't exactly figure out why :) but I'm proud of it anyhow. This month: Baldur's Gate, dealing with teamkillers and other lamers, and the Tribes map editor. Enjoy.


Oh hell
That's my update for today because it's almost midnight and I have to eat dinner. Tomorrow: details on Mailliw's scenario-in-progress and a huge Tribes manifesto which is kind of a response to Cybrid's pantywaist approach. ;)


    <Moby> c'mon, trashtalk us some more
    <Moby> god FORBID i'm not popular with the "pro" crowd

    while the cold wind blows
    the heroes return
    left are troubled souls
    that nothing but yearn

N e w s  o f  t h e  D a y
7 February 1999


A future for Turf?
The ballsiest zone in the history of the game is risking its neck (and huge player base) yet again with a radical set of changes. Incoming to Extreme Games, what looks to be one of the finest Turf maps ever designed, courtesy of EG's resident mappers Dr.evil and hydro. Yes I finally got to see this map in progress. :) Yes it will maintain the spirit of the zone, with a big dogfighting arena in the center, a soccer goal as incentive to hog the powerball, and safe zones deep in the bases for ballkilling wars. What's not necessarily in the spirit of the zone is the size of the hallways and fighting areas. While there are a few of the cramped networks of snake tunnels and closely spaced obstacles we all (well, most of us) know and love, there is also a good deal of classic VIE Turf Zone territory here. The rescue of Turf from obscurity? Perhaps. At present I am attempting to broker a test of the game for TurfNight Tuesday. If I survive the negotiations (and secure permission from the authors) I will meanwhile be putting up some teaser screenshots here. Stay tuned.

Oh, I will say this much about the map: It looks like Castle Mafia may finally be getting the echoing corridors and bloodstained walls it has deserved for so long. >:)


Board spammer exposed
Suicide named the culprit in a recent spamming of the Sog Java Net webboard, publishing his IP information and other nasty details. More importantly, he has provided an explanation of how the mischief was accomplished and how to counter the problem as well as an attack made against the board a month ago. If you use Matt Wright's Webboard script this is highly recommended reading, as there have been many such spam attacks on Subspace related message boards in recent months.


L E G E N D S
I'm not usually one to report on League matches, and usually I don't enjoy watching them or playing that sort of game in a prac, but I have a few friends in Legends and have been a quiet fan of the squad for quite a long time now, me being largely a Chaos player and all. Wow, what an ass kicker of a match, not a dull moment and both teams played superbly. Too bad most of the spectator frequency didn't really deserve to watch, or for that matter deserve to continue breathing, as there was little to see there but endless bitching (mostly vicious) about Legends' lag, for the better part of an hour--specifically that suffered by Silent Death, who is located in Australia. Sadly enough for the spec freq, lag settings were kept the same as they had been all season, and a strong lead retaken mainly by Moby in the last moments of the game (without the aid of Silent Death) pretty much erased the issue.

I have to say that Elements were very, very impressive though, forgiving some rather ungraceful retirements pronounced by Underachiever and Aero in the game's aftermath. Legends were the better team, but sadly could not withstand the crushing humiliation of the immortal nivaG calling Silent Death "fuckboy" after the game. (niva also carries the distinct honor of being the first League player I ever managed to repel into mines.) Whether the squad's bruised ego will heal in time for next week's match versus RaDaR (or maybe ONE, probably not, heh) remains to be seen.

Congrats especially to Codeine on MVP and Moby on those two awesome kills. :)


The (attempted) rape of Chaos Expert
Some time ago an argument ensued over the nature and purpose of VI Chaos. The majority opinion (i.e. not mine) held that the zone was needed because North American lag to iNET Chaos Expert was unmanageable for many players. Finally, a place to play Chaos without lag! And certainly a welcome addition to the Favorites list to those serious players unwilling to fight with over 300 ping, etc.

Two weeks later, VI Chaos is empty, and now making a second attempt to draw players in the form of a map change, to none other than the immortal Battle Drone. This makes VI Chaos a near complete mirror of iNET Chaos Expert. Baudchaser made an admittedly fair-spirited billing announcement late Saturday, for the second time suggesting an exodus to VI. I happen to disagree with this move, but it may be the only way to give American hosted Chaos a fair shot before it goes the way of VI Jackpot.

So what do we have here? A respectable attempt to bring life back to the American zone, or the death throes of yet another zone everyone wanted around but no one wanted to actually play in? This was a busy Saturday, with a major League game following a large SCF event and a RiSC Star Wars tourney. A nice way of putting this would be that over the next week we'll see if VI players really want an unlagged Chaos as much as they claim to want it.

The realistic way of describing this? Undignified player grab which will probably amount to nothing because Chaos Expert is the most well organized and lively community in the game. No one dedicated to Chaos will leave it unless lag actually holds them in spectator mode constantly. Guys, if you want to play Chaos so bad, give the zone to Bortas and run small maps and arenas there, like you should have done with iNET Running Zone three weeks ago.


Correction re ASWZ tourney
mDk, sysop of A Small Warzone, is a DAMNED LIAR. The tournament he announced on Friday is not actually happening Sunday the 12th, since the next time Sunday falls on the 12th is in September. ;) Oh well, I should have caught this. The tournament is today (!) in ASWZ at 2pm Eastern. If it goes well, this tournament may go weekly and become ASWZ's answer to a league season.


Clockwork Chaos - Hope you didn't miss this one !
Captain Harloch's first scenario for the Sheep Cloning Facility was packed last night, and one of the most successful event-style games I've ever seen. With the arena size locked at 60, it was difficult to get in for most of the night, but nevertheless the game went on for five hours before dying off around 1:00 in the morning. Even in hallu's WSL games I have never seen an organized event go on for so long. The Cap'n spiced things up with a little variety in team sizes, ship limits, and so forth, but it still amazed me that such a simple game could keep going for so long and stay that fun. I guess that quote about simplicity is true.

Details on the next game are already up, along with Harloch's review of last night's events, at the Slayfest Events Page. My thanks to everyone who helped out with this, especially Baudchaser for the billing spam and the moderators who kept the game orderly, moreover the players in general who were the damned nicest bunch of people I've played with in some time now, and most of all Harloch who brings glory and honor to the SCF and all that good stuff. ;)

Red up on next week's event early as it will feature slightly more complex rules and be best played with some shipsets and sound replacements.


New name for Sheep Cloning Facility
No biggie here really, as the IP information has not changed and if it's already in your favorites list you won't notice the difference. SCF West is now known as SSCX SCF West in keeping with the new standard established by the Subspace Council. Other SSX zones haven't done this yet, as it is optional and has not been enforced by Xalimar, but if you notice a few zones missing from the roster, check lower down the list for SSCX or possibly SSCW.


New can of worms
sage386 has released his "final release of subspace update", whatever that means. To me it means a lot of talented people wasting a lot of time trying to figure out what the hell the program does, whether it works or not, etc. Thanks to mDk for the can opener.


My left frame works now !
Or so I think. Thanks to QA Man of Subspace at PC Gaming for pointing out the obvious error. If you've become accustomed to opening news.html here, please load the proper index page, and please don't hesistate in letting me know if you have problems with the left frame in your browser! This page does NOT favor one HTML-incompatible browser over another and if it still has problems in any frames-enabled browser I would like to know about it. Thanks.


Shanoyu updates
And it's still only the first week of February! Fear the misc.txt.


Cute beyond the limits of good taste
Giga sent me this and will spend long hours in Purgatory for it. Anyone caught praying for his soul will be punished severely. :P


Famous stands up for abusive moderators
He's right, too. (Reposted because I screwed it up last update.)


    <Leigh> spike doesn't like my hair cut
    <Leigh> but i'm not changing my hair cut just because the cat doesnt like it

    Kcab og cisum eht ekam uoy,
    gnikaeps Natas raeh uoy!
    Kcab og cisum eht ekam uoy,
    gnikaeps Natas raeh uoy!

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



Clockwork Chaos event this Saturday
The first of Captain Harloch's new scenario series will be held tomorrow (Saturday the 6th) in the Sheep Cloning Facility. This is actually a continuation of a long line of scenarios which Harloch has run in Star Warzone and SW Events, but he seems to be moving away from scenarios per se and towards the kind of events Hallu ran in the World Subspace League this last Fall. Clockwork Chaos is going to be awesome in my opinion, even if not very many people show up, but with the Star Warzone population and Zeta-Squadron behind it there will probably be a good size game.

This week's scenario is an rumble-type elimination game with a different ship type for each frequency. Teams will start at the outside of the map and converge on the center for....well, for a slayfest, I suppose. :P If this doesn't rock, I quit! Game time is 8:00pm Eastern. If you're not there, you will be required to show evidence that you were with a female at the time, or it's the Minefield Beatdown 4U.


A slightly more helpful Extreme Games teaser
hydro mentioned in the Extreme Games news.txt that the new map for the game is going to be back to a Turf style game. If you were there for the early days of EG you should be excited because Turf style flags rocks in that zone. ;) Best of all, I talked to hydro the other night and he has hinted at a more open feeling to the bases....hmm, an evil/hydro Turf map with rooms like the ones in that huge cathedral of theirs...I think I'm going to be a little harder to reach if this happens...


Upcoming tourney in ASWZ
mDk is holding a squad tournament in SSX Small Warzone on Sunday, February 12th at 2:00pm Eastern time. To enter you will need to contact mDk before noon that day with your squad, its captain, and the number of members in the squad. There will be a cap on the number of players allowed to participate, so it is recommended you enter soon if you plan to participate. br>

Why does e only ever talk about SSX?
Because none of you wankers from iNET or DSG ever send me news! (The VI people send me things in unmarked packages that I am afraid to open heh.) If you are running an event or a new zone and think I should know about it, please feel free to send me the information on it. I've always tried to use this page to keep folks informed of new games and maps that go up, but there is a hell of a lot to keep track of and if I played in all the zones my girlfriend would leave me, not to mention SilentDragon would probably kick me out of the Space Police. :(

Got a new map or zone? A tournament? Tell me, dammit! :)


Famous stands up for abusive moderators
He's right, too.


    <Golbez> whoa
    <Golbez> squirrel's got big nuts

    When the May rain comes
    all of this shall be washed away.

N e w s  o f  t h e  D a y
Groundhog Day


wtf new map??
It seems that someone loaded a new tileset into the Battle Drome map being used in iNET Chaos Expert. This wouldn't be much for news except that either the tiles are in a different order yet fit anyway in a weird way, or someone went through meticulously replacing all the joining pieces of the walls with the correct pieces from a different set of wall tiles. It's a bit hard to describe, but you should notice it immediately upon entering. It's as if the material used to connect the wall were made up of a different material than the walls themselves.

And just as I've finished writing this the mapis back to normal. Turns out the changes were part intentional, part mistake, and the whole thing was a planned 48 hour trial period. Bortas has said that he is open to more experiments like this if the actual level design isn't altered.


A not very helpful Extreme Games teaser
I'm not sure I can say anything specific at this point, but some fun oldskool type stuff is going to be coming back to EG, including a favorite old base of mine from way way back...I will have the details of this soon, hopefully...


How to bring back Jackpot
The VI and League folks seem a bit bummed lately at the failure of Jackpot to return to life despite an apparently availablity of people who say they want to play. While it took two months to revive War Zone and no more should be expected of Jackpot, it is true that the zone does have the ability to come back and just can't seem to make it happen. I understand that it is Poor Form™ to link my own messageboard posts, and I'm sure I'll get more than my share of (negative) feedback from the board regulars, but I'd like to hear from some config artistes about how this might be pulled off, and there are some possible problems that might be solved through mapping. I also don't think it's a bad idea at root, and it could use a few shouts of support or a revision by someone who understands the League settings better than I do. Anyway if you're interested in bringing back the Running style flag game in any form, please have a gander.


Tribes Stuff
I meantioned the other day that Tribes sucks.I don't have the time or energy to write about this for the present update, but I assure you the game is still quite fun and I am about to play it just after I am done uploading here. My objection has to do with the intricacies of piloting, which I've concluded really is more of a level design problem than a flaw in the game's overall philosophy.

Meanwhile, the Prima strategy guide for Tribes is finally out, and the new PlanetStarsiege page is also hosting its own guide. The player authored one is good in parts, but the Prima one is horrid, not to mention short and largely pointless. (It spends 85 pages on things found in the manual before launching into a general primer on internet gaming.) About half of the book actually has anything to do with strategy, and most of that is taken up by cursory breakdowns of the different maps. The guide at PlanetStarsiege has huge chunks of trivial and useless information, and contains scattered gems like "The first technique, which is imperative to the awesome player, is the ability to move sideways." Nevertheless, it is a good page for new players, and there are some veins of information helpful to intermediate players. I'd recommend reading the PlanetStarsiege one and burning Prima's guide.

I haven't seen much press about this, but there are at least a few full-blown custom maps running right now. The only place I have seen these is on the WarWorld server, but I've heard of two other servers running custom maps. One particularly interesting level has two ships grappling so high above the ground that it is apparently impossible to survive the fall. Another map, aptly title Tunnel Rats, is very rough but still great fun to play in. It features an endless and chaotic maze of corridors winding about underground--and I do mean chaotic to the point of real confusion. As soon as I get a chance to spend serious time in these levels