May 1998

5/28/98
Bile of the Day
 Straight faced, but under my skin I am laughing.
- Not much. How about you? -
Things are real dead around Subspaceland right about now. I guess maybe it's StarCraft Effect manifesting itself in the release of Unreal. I've been working on the SCF page. Most or all of the Sheep Cloning news will be posted there from now on, in either the news section or the message base. Good little sheep will heed the Call and get their wooly asses over there on a regular basis. :)

- If you can't say anything nice, -
go a few days without updating. This, however, did not work for me. I still have nothing nice to say, so instead of nice I will aim for subtle--or at least cryptic.

1. Chaos West is in ruins.
The zone has cleared out before, but never like this. Even when VIE caused its location to be forgotten by neglecting to mention the January move to GWest, it managed 20 to 40 players during peak hours. We now have a situation where the zone seems to go for days on end without usage. Let's put it this way: I spend a lot of time monitoring Sheep Cloning Facility. This week has been relatively bad for the SCF. Since reset, I have only three times seen enough players in that zone to really have a game. That is to say: five or more people. This translates into 187 people total who have entered the zone since reset. Compare to Chaos West's 174. How the hell does a big, big zone like Chaos West become the most disused and obscure on the entire VIE roster? It sure as hell isn't lag that's weighing fate against this zone. Anyone who frequents GEast or MEast servers can attest to that. So what is it, then? Ignorance of the move? People seem to have found Chaos MEast just fine on their own. The map? Settings? The will of the Good Lord?
  It doesn't really matter what the cause is as long as the response is the current recipe of sleep, message board posts, and prayer. Now is not the time to succumb to depression and sit around waiting to be fired.

2. Turf Classic is in ruins.
Is it really acceptable to allow a known bug to crash a server for any reason? Here, the reason is fairness. Not fairness in combat, but fairness in overall point count. Even if life was not unfair to begin with, and even if building and maintaining a large, working team wasn't a crucial and interesting aspect of the game--even if scores were more important than the terrifying battles Turf sees on a good day, it is not okay to crash a VIE server; it is not okay to keep settings in place which we know with absolute certainty are causing the server crash.
  All that is necessary to stop Turf from crashing is to remove the team-size divider from the scoring system.
  VIE has been promising an imminent fix. Promising to have it implemented on specific days, even. Those days tend to come and go without incident--as they probably should. BFrog is not here to fix our little $20 game every time our experiments prove beyond its limitations. Team-size scoring does not work for Turf, just like Jackpot scoring does not work for Turf. We should accept it and move on, and VIE's programmers should not waste any more of their time trying to fix the problem.
  Assuming, however, that they are kind enough to do so, do we really need to be married to this stupid detail of the game while we're waiting? I'm informed that the bug fix is still imminent. All the more reason the scoring system ought to be changed for the time being. All the shorter-lived our shrieking horror at smaller point bonuses and unfair team sizes.

3. Wampit caves to public pressure.
Self-censorship rears its ugly head at Subspace Maxig Com in response to the shadey, omnipotent forces of Public Outcry. This over a demo on hacking javascipt passwords. What about those of us who wanted to read the damned article? To hell with all of you who wrote in and complained. How dare you?
  If someone would be so kind as to provide me with the information, I would like to post it here.

- Arctos Is The Man -
On the brighter side of things, instead of wasting my time on Turf, I've been speccing in War Zone East, and sometimes even playing if the MCI routers happen to grant me a few moments of low packetloss. Arctos' new WZ map is a masterpiece, perhaps the best War Zone map of all time. Ingenious, organic bases are set into cool Chaos mazes that call to mind the Combs/Castle map's N4 and P18 areas and T2-17's scary rectangular castle. As in Arctos' other maps, the greening area is full of nice obstructions and floating space junk, making the level a hell for neg killers and turrets. The tileset, although based in part on others before it, has a sinister new look, perfect for the weird layout of the map and the creepy base designs. The bases themselves are for the most part neither Terrier-  nor Levi-friendly, and require slow, well considered attacks. The lack of open space makes red chases more interesting than in many maps, presenting all sorts of opportunity for a flag carrier to lose a pursuing swarm should his team be unable to assist him.
  I've been pretty skeptical about this map for a long time. In its earlier form, I considered it inferior to Arctos' first WZ map, which was withdrawn at his own request around this time last year. As he made his way through more recent revisions, I was skeptical about some of the base designs, and bitched about favorite bases from the earlier map which he had left out. Now, seeing the finished product, I know I was wrong. This is Arctos' best map to date and I'm proud to have played a small part in testing it. Be sure and play there while you can; War Zone is experiencing more frequent map changes lately, and it may be a while before we come back to this one--although I certainly hope not.
  Kudos, also, to the WZE vangels for running what is now the best VIE zone in the game. Even if I do have to spectate there most of the time.

- Final Fantasy Online -
Yep, you heard me right. Just a news story. Perhaps a lot of hooey. Hopefully real. Check it out. Many thanks to Shanoyu of the mighty Space Police for bringing this to my attention. Go Eblana!

- Meow -
  Oh yeah! I got a new kitty. Her unfortunate name is Anya; I think I'll call her Ornery instead. I already have a big scar across the back of my hand. I think I'm in love.

- Sheep Cloning Facility -
Mafia's weird, cool Turf map. Speed and thrust penalties for flag carriers. Big rewards for holding on to those flags, and an even bigger jackpot. Pick a flag carrier and head for the tunnels. :)
5/24/98
- Lameness Comes to Turf Classic -
This was perhaps inevitable. Shanoyu reports of a player by the name of "I hate blacks&jews" who showed up in VIE Turf Classic GEast today...

        He immediately procedded to crash the server. We managed to stop him
        for 5 dings, but he befriended Shikka- or something like that, and they
        finally crashed the server.

This is the first incident I have heard reported of someone intentionally crashing the server. Expect to see more as the news spreads. I strongly suggest that anyone who understands the Turf bug not spread any information about how it works. The greater the proliferation of information, the more armchair troublemakers are going to show up in the zone when they can't find anything better to do.
  Shanoyu has suggested one solution and I am working on a different approach. I'm sure Chakotay has something in mind as well. Let's hope this is resolved soon in some way.

- Maxgaming, R.I.P. -
It was announced late Friday that Maxgaming, which had for some time been the second biggest site for Subspace related page hosting (among other things) was on its last legs and would be going down by the end of the day. Sure enough, Maxgaming, former home to this page, is dead, and dead ahead of schedule--the server disappeared yesterday six hours before the announced time. While there was some confusion as to whether this would mean the end of the Maxig server as well, Wampit reported at Subspace Maxig Com that the server will in fact stay up. The question is, for how long? Let the death of Maxgaming be a lesson to everyone: The web is an unstable place. Keep backup copies of your pages!

- Sheep Cloning Facility -
Say goodbye to the weird powerball game. Tonight I'm putting up a red hunt in a tunnel system. A big, BIG tunnel system, dug up from the forgotten archives of the long-ago past. Stay tuned. :)
5/23/98
In the black sky thunder sweeping overground and over water, sounds of crying, weeping will not save your faith for bricks and dreams for mortar.
- Maxgaming Going Down Today -
Get your valuables and get a life vest. Maxgaming will be gone by the end of Saturday if not earlier, and by all reports Maxig is going with it. The machines they are running on are most likely being disconnected from the internet. Back up the files you need or you may well never see them again.
  You will need to downoad multiple files one directory at a time. Omicron provided this link to Bullet Proof FTP for those in need. Sith posted at the Maxgaming main page that anyone wishing to find new hosting should contact Thump. Since there will probably be a lot of noise from this mess, Sith has requested that no one mail Thump about anything else.
  If for some reason you have a dire emergency and are unable to back up your files, send me your login and password and I will try to do it for you if and when I am home/awake during the day.
  Good luck everyone. Thanks to Omicron and WiZT for information.

- Sheep Cloning Facility -
New map up, a small powerball arena by Silent Dragon. Funky settings. Let us know what you think on the SCF Messageboard.

- Movies! -
For those not in the know, yesterday began a week of classic movies rereleased to theatres as part of Warner Bros.' 75th anniversary celebration. Each movie is showing only once. I saw The Exorcist last night and the print quality was superb, so they seem to have really taken some care with this. Great movie, too. Today is dedicated to the 1980s. The Color Purple, Chariots of Fire, Blade Runner director's cut, Full Metal Jacket, and The Shining. Woo! Check your listings. This may be your only chance to see some of these on a big screen. Remember kids, film has hundreds of times the contrast ratio of film and thousands of times better resolution. :)
5/22/98
- Out of the Loop -
Well I've been gone since Sunday so bear with me. I have no idea what is going on, except that VIE moved their servers again and AOL bought ICQ, and for some reason a lot of people I'd previously assumed were rational seem to give a damn for some odd reason. ;P Since Sunday I was up in Portland, Oregon and on my way down.  Portland is a nice city but it only ever stops raining when I go there, from what I understand. Spent a day packing my sister's stuff. I don't think I've had more fun packing someone's apartment...all these people fresh from with finals and thesis papers were there helping out. Reed College is just a damned cool place. I'd gotten used to calling it the University of Benny & Joon or the University of Sodom and Gommorah, but the truth be told it is an awesome place. I have a shirt now of the unofficial "Seal of Reed College". It has their logo in the center, and around the edges: "Atheism - Communism - Free Love".Drove down through Cascades half covered with snow.
  The rest of Oregon seems frankly pretty lame, and though it's even worse, I was pretty happy to enter northern California. Highway 5 sucks though. It's only really once you're on the 101 that the nice scenery kicks in...all those rolling hills with the sparse cypress trees, rickety old farmhouses and weird machinery hiding amongst them. I love those weird blends of sweeping natural beauty and weird man-made artifact. People who balk at such exquisite beauty are enemies of the Minefield!
  If you ever find yourself in San Luis Obispo, there is a kick ass fruit shake place I always go to when I am dragged up and down the 101. Blazing Blenders, on Broad St. just off of whatever that silly main street is called. Get a Cherry Breeze and one of those kooky peanut butter things the name of which I forget.

- SCF -
I'll be focusing on Sheep Cloning Facility during the next few days. That and just plain playing the game. I haven't done a whole lot of that lately. At any rate, the SCF messageboard Silent Dragon set up is working out to be a pretty intelligent forum so far. Lack of updates to the Maps and Vangels sections are my fault since I forgot the FTP password. I mean to set up a kind of MMG-style chart of map descriptions along with downloads for both images and level files, hopefully soon.
  The current game seems to be going well, except that the lack of a timer plus the Rabbit upgrade seems to encourage a lot of running. I'll be removing the upgrade and adding a 10 minute timer, probably by the time you read this. Saturday I will put the Sheep Shrines back up, with a few alterations. Play in this while you can because it is like limited or something. :) That is, the bases will change over time.

- Speaking of Maps -
I got a bit of negative feedback over the Mafia Chaos map, again over the L7 pentagram. The issue had come up previously during the Chaos Nevada (now Chaos West) map vote when some of the Vangels had expressed concerns that it might offend some people. Mafia agreed to make any changes requested had the map won...but he did not have to agree to that. I wonder what would have happened if his map had won and he had refused. To what extent does VIE care about the people who make maps for its games? Do what extent will Blackie and the other Subspace demigods encourage or tolerate censorship, if the issue ever does come up?
  At one point motivation came into question. Is the pentagram a religious or political statement? Does there need to be such justification for it? I wonder if I will ever be made to answer for the crosses that populate most of my own maps.
  No sooner had I finished ranting against a new objection to Mafia's Pentagram when I received a new map from Xirphoid. As I mentioned here a long time ago, Xirphoid's signature map detail bears disturbing resemblance to a swastika. I suppose my own self-righteousness may have caught up with me, because I do not know if I can run this map in SCF. Then again, who among us hasn't seen very similar structures all across the famous Alpha/League map? I've never been one to entertain the standard cop-out question, "Where do you draw the line?", nor am I interested in the question of who draws the line. What I ask myself is this. Can I draw that line in good conscience, and can I abstain from drawing that line in good conscience?
  My impression is that some of us taking mapping very seriously and some of us don't give a damn about it. In my experience, the latter group is made up of players who don't make maps. At the moment I am trying to disprove this assumption. I don't like the idea of working to please an apathetic audience. I've asked a number of people to write me with their opinions and feelings about whatever map related issues concern them and plan to put together an article of some sort over the weekend, or perhaps for next weekend. This may include some sort of a realtime discussion as a followup, if I can get it together. I contacted very few people, though--only those I was confident would be interested in receiving spam about this. If you have opinions, please write in. A few sentences, a recalled incident, an issue which bothers you, or a big ol' manifesto. Let me know what you think.

- Elsewhere -
I know I've been slacking lately with respect to player zones and wanted to point out that Cybrid's page has had a lot of good zone news or late. I also want to thank Cybrid and the Maxig crew (especially Omicron who was kind to my Shark even tho he doesn't personally like it) for the nice zone and page reviews they gave the SCF.
5/21/98
News ov the Day
There is a silence that comes to a house where no one can sleep.
- Hi! -
I'm back. Got a stack of ICQ that won't fit on my screen, got a floor full of cat pee and a cat with a red bottom and no dinner. My feet are cold from the windows being open and I still have to feed the sheep. No update for you! Well, maybe later, but this is not it. Try me again at midnight. :)
5/17/98
i Viva los News !
In the black sky thunder sweeping overground and over water, sounds of crying, weeping will not save your faith for bricks and dreams for mortar.
- Bye! -
I'm gone til Thursday night proabably. I lied a little. What's running in SCF now is a Rabbit Chase game in the Mafia Chaos map. Enjoy. Thanks to the news.txt and Maxig for the p1mping. Don't trust my links table, and don't let the bat get your sword. Remember to play Turf! See you all next weekend.
5/16/98
In the black sky thunder sweeping overground and over water, sounds of crying, weeping will not save your faith for bricks and dreams for mortar.
- ZERO Annihilation West is back. -
The first hugely popular player zone is back. This place probably still holds the records for most players in a privately run zone. There was a lot of fuss when the server went down, but unfortunately little noise over its return. Annihilation went down for a few weeks due to hardware issues but it back in its old form--weird patchwork map, super settings, and a big flag game. A bit rambunctious for many people's tastes, but I feel warranting a prominent mention here because of its former popularity. Welcome back.

- Map Changes -
Gommy's WZ map made its premier yesterday in War Zone West. It should be stressed that it is being tested so don't go getting all testy about it, but enjoy its many splendors anyhow. One thing I've found unique to this map, probably because of Gommy's roots in small player-run war zone servers, is that it's playable with few people and low bounty. We played a 2-on-2 game in there for maybe 45 minutes yesterday afternoon, and I don't think anyone reached higher than 30 bounty.
  Meanwhile, Hadar has changed the map in Chaos West back to the good old' Battle Drone standby in hopes of catching runoff from Chaos East's upcoming 0 bounty policy. Fat chance. The zone is still empty and you've lost the Jolly contingent, Hadar. Maybe we weren't all there building up the zone, but we were playing short games from time to time and I felt a growing mobilization. Don't give up on this after one week. Slow and steady wins the race, and this is not a popularity contest anyway.
  If the Chaos West Vangels are dead set against hosting the Rod/Jolly map, may I suggest Mafia's or Slappy's map. Mine isn't too shabby either. I don't think people are sick of West of Rod.Jolly so much as they are sick of the game in general, and I think part of that is the lack of change. This is no longer a dynamic, living game, and we can't blame that breakdown on anyone's actions. It's a lack of action that we have been seeing, an atrophy caused by an absence of activity. The way to combat that atrophy is not to be part of that absence. For God's sake take some risks. Make changes that scare the shit out of you.
  (See Shark story below.)

- Is Scenarios of Irony dead? -
The best player run zone of all time is gone. Where the hell is it and what are they doing with it? The last two weeks saw an inexplicable drop in population, of which I am ashamed to admit I was a part. Who killed Irony? Will it rise again? Clove, please bring it back!
  Any information on this upsetting topic would be much appreciated.

- Sheep Cloning News -
Just to make it clear to anyone wondering, yes, VIE Sheep Cloning GWest is open to the public! Except under rare circumstances such as scenarios and other announced, temporary events, it will remain permanently open as long as I have any say in the matter. With the exception of a couple of months, the Sheep Cloning Factility does have a long tradition of being closed. No longer! Add the server and come play there whenever you like. Since the zone population is small and will probably remain so, greens and multiprizes are high, and most of the games run there should be playable by just a few people for the foreseeable future.

    Page
        Silent Dragon put up the official SCF Home Page, no thanks to yours truly who had to be dragged kicking and screaming out of the zone itself on a number of occasions. SD has set up a nice page with a message board and a kick ass logo. There will be a section for maps we've used, and this will hopefully grow quite large over time. Some of it's not done yet but it's open. Have a look and make sure to use the messageboard if you'd like to see something tried out or have comments on current or past games. The FAQ is temporary, supplied by SD because I kept ignoring his ICQ messages. ;) Real one up soon.

    Maps
        I've changed the map. Thanks to everyone who chimed in on my Chaos map. I'd have taken it down a bit sooner because it did seem a bit self-serving to have it there for so long, but I was enjoying playing in it after all this time, and I got mainly good feedback about it. The new map is a small level, what I'm hoping to be a prototype "home map" for the zone. It'll be up when I can't think of what else to put up or want a few days between real maps. Just a hangout, really (I hope), though there is a game running. Five bases, each with one Turf flag. All five bases are brand new and most involve some sort of cheeky trick in getting to the flag. The flag chambers are set up as Sheep Shrines, the tileset being largely based on Silent Dragon's sheep logo. Most of the other tiles are mine, based in large part on T2-17's diagonals. It's kind of in-progress. I want the map to be more of a cafe than a battleground, so it will probably change over time, with some bases taken out and others added, including designs by zone regulars.

    Ships
        The Lev is back to normal. It's a bit easier to get high shrap now. If you green for it you can get really nice shrapnel. I got some good tests in for our special Shark design. The majority opinion seems to be that it is too weak. Good, because I'm enjoying flying it and hope with some familiarity that weakness will wear off on some other people as well. I didn't explain this fully here, actually. What I'm doing with the Shark is based on my opinion of its current design as redundant and an insult to the Spider. I drove a Spider almost exclusively between April and August of 1997 and the Shark frankly pisses me off. If you feel the same way about this, come test out the Shark in SCF and let me know what you think--then let the owners of other zones know what you think. We can never get rid of the ship, but I'll make it my crusade to remove its overlap with the Spider and make it worthy in its own right.
        
    Time
        The favorite time for this zone seems to be mid-evening, so I'm changing the time for the bubble from 4:30pm EST to 8:00pm EST, though certainly I don't expect anyone to go out of their way. This is really just my way of informing the Zone Faithful of when peak usage seems to be. Of course it would be better for the players to take care of this on the message board for the zone.
        
    Laggers
        I set lag tolerance to a maximum, figuring what the hell. The atmosphere is friendly enough and the population seems intelligent enough to figure out basic courtesy issues. Somebody won a 50,000 point jackpot the other day by sitting in a safe zone, so it's not as though score is really an issue. Please don't make me lower the lag limit by taking advantage of it, ruining flag games, etc. I have valued critics in New Zealand and Australia.
        
    Next Week
        Late Saturday night we will start a traditional Running game in Mafia's much-touted Chaos map. This should be up until the following weekend. Enjoy. Check the SCF page for news updates from SD. Please keep in mind that he can't make changes to the map or settings and don't bug him with that stuff. :P

- Turf FAQ -
I posted the wrong link to my FAQ for Turf Zone. Here is the correct link.

- Millennium -
Off-topic but I have to say this. BIG ol' props to Carter, Wong, Morgan, and company for what has to be the biggest kick in the teeth I've been dealt by a television set in my entire life. Millennium has become the best, hardest-core, most harrowing show on TV, and you missed the damned season finale. Catch up over the summer or you will come to regret it.

- I'm Gone! -
Well, not just yet. This game will probably squeeze another update out of me this weekend, but for the next week or so I'll be out of the state. Specifically I'll be in Portland for my sister's college graduation and to help her move home. Remember that I have magical powers and can see what you are doing even if you minimize the window. Also keep in mind that Silent Dragon is Grandmaster Sheepdog and can make bad little sheeps' heads unscrew from their shoulders just by thinking about it. I've seen it happen. Do not ask questions! All will be revealed when the time is right.
5/13/98
Kill the lights in the middle of the road and take a look around.
- Day Off -
A belated Happy Birthday to moon bee, a little known but very cute Subspace player who back around version 1.23 learned to fly, burst a three man turret, then retired, all in the space of a week. Tsk. Girls.
  Back to Subspace tomorrow for me. ;)
5/12/98
Kill the lights in the middle of the road and take a look around.
- Map Problems -Silent Dragon put up the St. Patty's Day map in his directory for anyone who may have overwritten it by playing my zone. Keep in mind I still don't know how to change the filename so keep the file safe! Guard your maps at all times. I'm informed that this issue is what's making Chaos players have to download the map over again each time they change between East and West. When the Jolly map was uploaded, it kept the J12 map's filename. If anyone knows how to give a filename for the receiving end, please help us out.

- SCF™ News -
I saw the homepage Silent Dragon is working on for the Sheep Cloning Facility. It rocks. :) Grand opening soon, if anyone is interested. As for the zone itself, I will be taking down my map tomorrow and putting up a Jackpot game in a big maze. I have further weakened the Shark. If you drive a Shark alone you will be a sitting duck. Fly with a Shark wingman, hit fast and hard then fade into the shadows, and you will take your enemy apart. At least, this is what I am hoping for in the end. Input on this would be much appreciated.
  As for the activity in the zone, it is growing. Twice I came on to find 6, 7, or 8 people already there. Went over 10 twice. Small potatoes, but then again so are a number of other VIE zones, and we're getting some ZF™. Preliminary Sheepdog list somday soon.
  Tomorrow is the last day for the current version of my map. I'll be changing the map tomorrow night, and the game itself will probably change Friday if not sooner. For those people who have told me not to change a thing, please realize that change is the nature of the zone, but occasionally I'll be bringing back the more popular maps and configurations. Stick with me and I will keep things interesting even if it's bound to piss you off now and then.

- What in the hell is that on the Minefield!? -
I'm playing around with the damned sheep thing, ok? :P

- Mein Gott im Himmel, they killed Paintball! -
Paintball has moved to Warzone for new hosting. Congrats to Gold. Now don't abandon him. Find the server and keep playing. :)

- TC KA -
As reported by Cybrid at the news.txt, Turf Classic is really taking off. I played there for a few hours today and the population held between 40 and 55 the entire time, with most of the zone flagging and a minimum of neg killing, bitching and other annoyances. Chakotay made a point of asking that flagging teams not disband entirely without first losing their flags. Failure to do so could cause problems with the server for reasons not yet undestood.

- Chaos West is DYING. -
Due to some lag problems and an apparent lack of interest on behalf of the J12 contingent, the former Chaos Nevada has taken a huge hit and is spending most of the day with a playership of 0. This is no way to treat the most responsive and democratic set of Vangels in the game, people. These guys spent a month collecting votes for the Rod/Jolly map and now no one wants to play there? Best map in the game. I just don't get it. For those still wondering what exactly is going on:
FIND SERVERS.
DOWNLOAD LIST.
Scroll down the left hand list.
VIE Chaos GWest.
ADD.
FINISHED.
5/11/98
Nothing lasts forever but the Earth and sky.
- Map Disaster Averted -
Silent Dragon had the St. Patty's Day map archived because he is awesome. Sorry everyone for the mixup.

- SCF™ Home Page -
Silent is also setting up a page for the Sheep Cloning Facility™ and will be maintaining it, with myself probably supplying most of the news unless life in the zone becomes more interesting than just map and settings. At the moment there are no official Vangels for the zone, and I am a bit confused at the way some zones seem to be voting in Vangels without Blackie's approval. (That isn't to say I necessarily object, but it seems a bit radical to me.) Even so, I'll probably be setting up some sort of a membership for the Zone Faithful (ZF™) who want to regularly help out and participate in the Mutton Bubble™. ZF™ will be given Shepherd* status and possible access to the SCF™ Home Page*. (Sheep Cloning Facility™ is a trademark* of BRE Industries®. Resistance will not be tolerated.™)

- What in the bloody hell is a Mutton Bubble™? -
I'm glad you asked! Every day at 4:30pm, the ZF™ and Shepherd Legion* will appear as if by magic at the Shepherd's Pie. All who question our divine authority will be Slaughtered. Those who survive in the aftermath will be witness to Glorious Greatness. Baa ram ewe! The Way of the Wool cometh truly! Then we will blow up each others' little spaceships until Ovr Lvrd ynd Mvster Ch'ak'otay cometh. It is writ that when the sun reaches its point of Great Orangeness at the Blessed Eastern Grazing Grounds (BEGG™) all those who have survived the Slaughter will follow Ovr Lvrd ynd Mvster Ch'ak'otay eastmore still, there to assemble at the Turf of Ages for a great feast and a waving of many flags*.

- What in the hell is Shepherd's Pie®? -
The Shepherd's Pie® is that round thing that looks like the Death Star. Shepherds* and Zone Faithful™ will report there at 4:30pm Eastern for Lambination™ and a complementary "security check" courtesy of the League of Space Police. Please do not touch the flags. If the Death Star shaped thingy is gone, the Shepherds Pie® will be another roundy thing. Do not ask questions. Everything will become clear in time. Those who are late will not get Fruit Cup.

- What in the hell is that on the Minefield!? -
5/10/98
Nothing lasts forever but the Earth and sky.
- Addendum -
I'm gonna miss everything today cuz of Mothers Day stuff. That includes the bubble I myself suggested below. I guess it doesn't actually matter, but I didn't want my absence to seem rude or flip. Maybe Monday.

- Map Emergency! -
This is very important! If you have the St. Patty's Day map, first of all please back it up under another name immediately! Don't go into Sheep Cloning Facility until you do. I made the terrible mistake of uploading a new map with no target name, and by default it picked the current map name, so I believe people are downloading my Chaos map as the St. Patty map. I don't want to be the one responsible for overwriting that map everywhere, and I would like to keep a copy of it for myself, so please if you have a copy send it to me, and make sure it is safe in your own directory before playing in SCF. I'm really sorry for the mess.

- Sheep Cloning News -
I'm zonked out on cough medicine and have been playing in SCF most of the day so forgive me the self promotion but I wanted to get this up as soon as possible even though it will probably look kinda crazy once I am sober again. Just to keep you apprised of the SCF situation...

    Official Game Time.
        I am following Chakotay's lead and going to try and focus a bubble of activity in the day, to aid in building a population. The official game time is 4:30pm Eastern. That is 90 minutes before the Turf game starts. TC is back up and working, and I don't want to damage it in any way so at 6:00 I'm going to ask people to leave for Turf unless they are not interested in it.
        
    King of the Hill
        In answer to the assassination of King GEast, I have made the SCF a King game for the time being. The settings are a little different from what people might expect. I don't play a lot of King so I'm sorry if the settings piss anyone off and I'll be open to suggestion about this.
        3000 point reward.
        90 second timer bonus for non-crowned kills.
        150 bounty required to receive this bonus.
        Die once, lose your crown. Kill one king, get it back.

    Shark 2.0
        I am working on a nastier shark, designed for risky hit-and-fade attacks. It's a little quicker than the 'bird and has a faster charge rate than any other ship. On the other hand it has 900 start energy and only upgrades to 1500. Severe drain from stealth, cloak, x, anti. I mean that. Severe. And no mines. This is a first attempt at making a genuinely new and scary ship out of the Shark that no longer just serves as a replacement for the Spider. Please let me know what you think.

    Other Changes
        More mines for the Lev, and laid more quickly, but at a higher energy cost. Almost everyone gets more shrapnel, but it will require a good deal of greening. Lev gets the most shrap but will need to green like hell for it. Antiwarp is a tactic, not a way of life. Anti is more costly for all ships but the Warbird. (I know if I mess with the 'bird my head will be handed to me on a plate.) Because the map has some nasty tunnels, bursts are a little less severe.

    SCF Page
        Silent Dragon is setting up a page for the SCF at Warzone, with help from Zero3. Hopefully we will have a message base and some other good stuff. Yes, there will be voting. No, your votes will not be counted. ;)

- Turf Classic is Back!. -
Looks like all systems are go after a temporary and perhaps accidental one-day shutdown. Be sure and show for the game tomorrow if you are Turfy and available. 6pm Eastern. :) God damn...all this time playing R9 and south of there and along the bottom of the map...I always thought the west side of the map was a poor choice...too hard to defend and not enough flags to make it worth it. Now I know why people play the west side of the classic Turf map. It's funner'n hell. The fight at the C5 juncture is insane. For those who haven't experienced it, imagine a very intense tunnel fight in Chaos West, or even a J12 fight. Now make the spaces a little more open, stretch the battle out over five or ten minutes, and involve two frequencies numbering between ten and twenty players each. The last time I got this kind of a thrill from the game was in Rod's old War Zone map. Those hair-raising battles in the combs. The C5 fight is actually more intense. It is quite simply the bloodiest, scariest fight in the game, the closest I have come to experiencing actual feal while playing. And the D7 fight aint much to thumb your nose at either. The map has its problems but I am starting to understand why players put up with them. People will study this crap someday. Mark my words.
5/9/98
When I am king you will be first against the wall with your opinion which is of no consequence at all.
- Sweet. -
I've got ownership of Sheep Cloning Facility!@#%!@ God damned awesome. Thank you Blackie if you are reading this. I'll probably be putting up a page for the zone soon. In fact I definitely will because my rants and cursing shouldn't be on a page that is official for VIE Vangel stuff. Anyway keep your eyes peeled. :)

- Zone News Everywhere! -
As promised, Chaos Nevada is GONE, Chaos West is now up in its place and owned by Hadar, and the ass kicking Jolly Roger CZW map is back! Dueling Zone is back and waking up. On the disappointing side of things, Turf Classic is gone. In its place we have a Turf Arizona which is hopefully just a new name for the same zone. At the time of this writing it is closed, however. And despite a surprising resurgence in the popularity of Speed Zone, I entered the game late last night to find it running the same old map and no owner. I've actually become a fan of the reigning Speed map, but the newer map is better, and I think most of us know who should be running that zone.

- Sheep Cloning Facility -
  For those not around early last year, Sheep Cloning Facility has been the traditional name of the Subspace test zone, and I believe was several times used for scenarios. Last June(?), when the Lancaster was introduced, the SCF was opened to the public for quite some time. We played simple, weird maps which were frequently changed. Occasionally there were super settings. I remember a base war based on bricking and cross bricking. Someone would warp deep into your base and you would haul ass to get there and he'd have bricked himself a little hole and you'd spend the next half hour getting him out.
  Late during the Summer, the SCF became private again, and all this variation ended until the retail version of the game was released. Of course, back then a super zone was a rare treat. Today it is commonplace, but there are interesting games I don't think have been tried. If I have anything to say about it, Sheep Cloning will find a nice niche between standard and super that will be innovative but hopefully not offend the really passionate and dedicated players. At least not too much. ;) Maybe some of these ideas will find their own zones. The Romulans' Armada will probably get another chance, as will The Ghost Ship's Realism Zone. There will be tests for existing VIE zones, if requested, and maybe other zones as well. Most importantly though, I aim to make it a quality place to play, one that doesn't bore or frustrate the average player. Please let me know if I'm succeeding.
  At the moment I am running my Chaos Zone map with fairly traditional settings, only--guess what--more mines. I couldn't think of what else to put up and I've been itching to play my map for a long long time. ;) Within the next week, if there are no objections or other plans for the zone,.I will probably set up the zone's first "red hunt" game, loosely based on the much-maligned Running-style flag game that snuck into Turf Arizona a few weeks back. Watch the skies. And please do let me know if you find buggy stuff with the current map or settings, including any tiling errors. Thanks and enjoy.

- Addenda -
First, a Fake Blackie Alert. Someone came into SCF and asked for my password. This would be pretty obvious except that he wanted me to send it via e-mail to Blackie's address at VIE. It was decided that he probably thought he could sniff the mail somehow, or was just messing with me. All I have to say is why don't you people get a fucking life, never again ever concern yourself with mod commands, and go make something like everyone else can? Christ almighty. Anyway, no disrespect meant to anyone at VIE, but to my fellow Vangel types: Trust no one. Send information only by registered mail. Monsters exist.
  And thanks to Gommy for pointing this out: The credit for the map in the ?sheep response is wrong. The map is mine. Chakotay and Vectorboy made the St. Patty's Day map that was running there when it reopened. No offense meant in taking it out but I had to set the tone for me being a self centered prick, and after all it was a map meant for a holiday. ;P

- Annihilation Returns!. -
Everyone's favorite laming superzone is back up and running....for testing. It seems they lost their settings. Lord knows it'll be hard to redo that from scratch. ;) I'm just kidding tho. Annihilation may be superzone but it is a fun flagging superzone with a nifty brick fight. Don't be fickle and forget you grew up there, ok?

- Warzone Is Back -
Just thought I should repeat this for anyone who missed the late update yesterday.
5/8/98
- The Revenge of Chaos West -
Where the hell are the VIE servers? Scores have been down for most of the day, and now it appears that all of VIE is on the blink. Word from Control (Chaos West vangel and  is that when all is said and done, Chaos Nevada will be no more and Chaos West will have risen in its place. Let's hope that we see some other changes kick in as well. Why is everything down, you may ask? Your guess is as good as the Minefield's on this one, gentle reader. I've never seen this happen before in a year of playing and then some. Perhaps VIE remembers what happened last time there was a major server move. A whole bunch of players who didn't feel like playing with Find Servers weighed down the few servers that hadn't moved, and in fact Chaos West never recovered from this. This time if you want to play you HAVE TO use the dreaded Find Servers button! :o

- Well that was damned quick. -
Warzone is back up already.

- The Romulans Return -
Subspace's nastiest cloaker and most prolific mapper has indeed returned from the dead after a long period stuck offline. Welcome back Rom! Bring back SubScene please. :)

- iNET Servers Overhauled -
Baudchaser has reworked the iNET Games servers and created five new zones based in Finland. This is great news for European users who have lagged connection to North America, and the zones should be (and have been in the past) a draw for non-European users as well, since they carry mostly original maps and fairly traditional settings. Read the spam here, as well as Arctos' glowing review.

- Dueling ZoneUpdate -
Tyrsis reassured the boards that Dueling Zone is down only for the time being and will return. You can read his post here, or you can just forget about silly ol' Tyrsis and learn to use your Find Servers button. ;) The OLD Dueling Zone boasts an oldschool Dueling map without the no-running-in-the-halls sign and the fun Dueling Tournament! safe zone.

 - Rumor Dispelled -
Guys, it's not July yet. ;)

- Warzone Temporarily Down -
Warzone is doing some planned downtime with its servers to move junk around etc. I don't really know what the hell I'm talking about but since no one seems to have known I thought I would mention it here. quake3.net and entr.net are also broken for the moment. They should be back up soon, probably today.
5/7/98
So it goes. You come into this life alone; you're going to leave on your own.
 - SubArena is back! -
One of the best Subspace pages returns to activity after a hiatus that had us all a little scared. ;) SubArena is alive and well. Welcome back Bobby D.

- Server Update -
VIE posted an update to the server program at the Subspace Downloads page. This apparently is the same patch applied to the VIE servers on Tuesday. If you run a server, you may want to upgrade with this. Can someone please confirm that this fixes the double bomb cheat?

- Turf FAQ -
To kick off my long overdue Minefield Guide, and mainly to help people learn Turf so we can get as many new players there as possible, I've put up a quick and dirty guide to Turf Zone. Comments and criticisms welcome. Enjoy. More of the M. Guide soon.

- Gommy needs a host! -
For the last couple of months we've been able to watch the development of Gommy's map for War Zone on his page as it progressed. Now, as it nears completion, Gommy is looking for someone to host it for testing purposes. It is a kick ass map, rather diabolical by my estimate. I also think it would be a great map for Chaos Zone. Have a look at the map and let Gommy know if you're interested in hosting it.

        map
        ICQ
        mail

- TC Poll -
Two days left tocast your votes in the first Turf Classic poll. With regard to the new topic on team greening, although I did vote to raise it by 50, I would like to comment on Chakotay's apparent philosophy about the matter, which I think is shared by many--the idea that if something is a pain in the ass it ought to be taken out or altered in some way. Surely this is true in some cases, but whenever we're discussing making changes in the name of convenience or efficiency, it should always be considered whether the reigning inconvenience or inefficiency are really bad for the game, or if they enhance it. In Turf, having to green past 100 for energy or recharge may be bad for you, but is it really bad for the game overall? I don't think so. Considering that this is a problem likely to afflict most players equally, I think there's a good side to the frustration of greening alone for something your ship is missing. you're faced with the choice of aiding in a battle at 66% charge or greening that extra moment while your teammates fight without you. Once in the maze, you must make the decision whether or not to green again when things quiet down. I think dilemmas like these make the game more interesting.
  Then again, I did vote to raise the team greening limit. It's worth testing out. To balance this, I think it might be interesting to see an decrease in DamageFactor (i.e. an increase in likelihood of taking damage). This coupled with a higher percentage of bounty added to kills might create some unique problems.

- Links Overhaul -
I finally tore up the links section down there in earnest, adding the Big Three server pages to the table. I kind of liked the idea of a separate chart for these, but the fact of the matter is they make for some of the most interesting and dependable reading in the game right now, which is what that table is for. maybe at some later date I can throw together a list of links to server-dedicated pages which are introductory in nature. Then again I might do this myself. Hrm.
  The stuff below is basically on the no-update shit list but there anyway because they're important or good or whatever. I also linked to the Server Information page, which is not part of the shit list

- Elsewhere -
If you're gonna quote me could you please fix my typing errors so I don't look like as much of an ass? Thanks. ;)
5/6/98
- King of the Hill changes? -
Arctos posted a proposal to the Suggboard for changes to King Zone. Personally I think he's off his rocker. ;) They're sound proposals though, and could benefit a zone that has never really enjoyed any level of distinction or specialization.

- New Can of Worms -
Puppykiller of the mighty Space Police reports a nasty incident of cheating in A Small Warzone yesterday. Apparent doubling of nearly everything, a 49:0 kill ratio. A bad scene, if you will.
  This brings up an obvious question I didn't think to ask, and which I think passed up most others as well. Will yesterday's server modification be made available to private zone owners? In our little euphoria over the end of this cheat, let's not overlook that for now we of the VIE zones have probably sent a lot of cheaters heading for the smaller zones. Maybe it shouldn't hae been implemented without warning. It even might have been proper to give the private servers the modification first.
  A word to the cheaters themselves, if any are reading. It may be that in the VIE zones an argument can be made that you are just having fun with something innate to the program, or that you are sticking it to the man, or you're bored and there's not much else to do. None of this ought to apply to the player zones. The people running them had no hand in the design of the program, obviously have nothing to do with VIE, and are largely working to energize a game that many think VIE has abandoned. Mostly they are in it for fun, not for money or self promotion. These people have enough trouble dealing with the buggy quirks of the server code, responding to abusive players, worrying about people dropping flags outside their small maps, etc. They don't need someone intentionally jerking them around as well. Moolie Zone closed because of the bad apples. Let's not contribute any more bad blood to this game than we've already got. If A Small Warzone were to shut down again, we would all be at a great loss. Please give your fellow players a break and respect the servers they set up for you.
5/5/98
A man makes a picture, a moving picture. Through light projected he can see himself up close.
- Chaos Nevada, R.I.P. -
The Nevada server is apparently going down within the next week. Not to worry, Chaos Nevada will move to the West server and reintain the same Vangels who are running it now. This came up at tonight's Chaos East Vangel meeting with Blackie, along with other issues. For the full story check out the CZE Vangel Page.
  I'd like to point out that the dedicated VIE zone pages are *all* kicking ass right now, with updates every few days. This is the kind of attentiveness the game needs. I have the three linked below the main links table for easy access, with the odd man out being War East which makes its home at Subspace Maxig Com. The whole links table is kind of a mess right now what with things constantly changing but I'll have it spiffed up in no time.

- Cheaters Fuck Off -
BFrog fixed the cheat. GO BFROG. You people who tried to screw with everyone at the expense of the game's integrity can go back to negging people in War Zone now. The bomb cheat is ded ded ded ded.

    Posted by Chakotay on May 05, 1998 at 18:56:51:

    In Reply to: Re: GOOD NEWS on cheating. READ!!! posted by Xirphoid on May 05, 1998 at 15:41:32:

    I received this message from Robin (Bfrog):

    New server code is in place. Packetloss in the range -5% to -30% will result in being put into spec. Anything less than -30%
    will result in being kicked off.

    The double bomb has been banned from VIE !!!

    -Chakotay
    -Head Vangel TCE
    -suggestions and comments: TCEHP
    -UIN for Assoc/TCE stuff: 7869244
    -«auto-add UIN 7869244»

5/X/98
Super ! Template
Who needs a virtual world when I can see it now?
- Sassy Headline -
Unchecked rant against the "powers that be" goes here.

- Obscure Song Reference -
Chain together slogans about community spirit and wholesome togetherness. Optional screenshot.

5/4/98
I was born to fly.
- God damn it. -
I was going to say something important and I forgot it.
  Oh yeah. Look at the cool button. :)

- Addendum -
Please see duel update below.

- Wither Vangeldom? -
With Blackie AWOL again and no one else from VIE active in the Subspace community, it may well be for nothing that we went through the whole Vangel debate and ownership process for nothing. A clean and well designed vote on Chaos Nevada's map and settings ended four days ago with decisive conclusions in all categories, but these can't be implemented until a VIE rep acts, either by changing the congifuation himself or by giving someone zone ownership to someone. Other zones have no vangels to speak of, or even don't yet exist in the first place.

- A Turf Gambit -
Chakotay wants Turf Classic regulars to try and move their game sessions as near to 6:00pm EST as possible. The idea behind this is to attract those players who might be interested but who mass up the zone because no one is in it. It seems to be working. Friday he made the request on the Turf Classic News and yesterday announced and increase in the playership. The zone peaked at 23. Let's keep this up. If you are in a position to p1mp, p1mp TC. We need your help. :)

- A Suggestion -
On that note, I'd like to point out that, since competition between the player run zones is obviously unproductive, their owners might take that fact a step further by linking up. Jurisdiction over the news.txt would make this a lot easier. Pointers along the lines of "if you find this server empty, please try (whatever zone) and come back later" would not simply serve to steal players from Chaos. I am convinced that many players open their client, look for zones they like, and on finding that only Chaos, Alpha, and Dueling are alive, kill the client an go play something else. Little reminders such as this upon entering a low-population zone might curb some of this dynamic, if in fact it is what's happening.

- New Settings for the Lev? -
I mentioned to Tito's Burritos that in order to combat the stagnation of Subspace something ought to be tweaked up a bit for Chaos East. Call me the devil on the shoulder but I am just looking out for y'all. Of course, TB was true to his Vangel obligations and told me to piss off. "I have a reputation to uphold," he said....so I challenged him to a duel. ;) Today, the fate of the Leviathan rests in the hands of its greatest pilot. If I don't get my ass kicked, maybe just maybe we will be treated to a new Lev with a 12 mine limit...at an additional cost of 300 energy each. I may be a self-serving bastard but I'm a balanced self-serving bastard. Wish me luck. The fight goes down in Chaos East at 9:00am Pacific.
  You may ask: Does TB know what he is dueling me for? Probably not...but I can hope.

- Duel Results. -
I came. I saw. I got reamed and hung out to dry. :( Tito's Burritos and I fought in Chaos East around 8:50 this morning at N16. It was not pretty. Actually, quite honestly it was a good fight but I blew my wad early on a convoluted minerepel. An intense little fight followed, ending when TB caught me against a wall in an attempt at rushing him. He pinned me down and tore me in half. Oh well.
  Be it known to all that Tito's Burritos fought with honor and risked his filthy, wretched Warbird hull, that the denizens of Chaos East might live the drudgery of their miserable lives safe from the threat of the Super Leviathan. All hail the mighty Vangels of Chaos East, protectors of the Old Ways. May they live long! May they increase in number!
  May we have a new map please? :)

- Cybrid's Dirty Little Secret -
Remember kids, the Minefield sees all. Shanoyu, meet Cybrid. Cybrid, Shanoyu. Couple of sick bastards. ;P

- Elsewhere -
Elsewhere is dead. SubScene, RIP...SubArena, RIP...MMG, RIP...
  Actually, The Romulans is back, after a fashion. Let's all cross our fingers that SubScene returns with him. As for the MMG page, its sorry state is as much my own fault as anyone's, and will be seen to shortly by someone in some capacity. That is a promise.
5/2/98
Happiness coming and going, I watch you look at me, watch my fever grow, and I know just who I am.
- All Hail the Ghost of Chaos West -
Congratulations to Jolly Roger as well as to Rod Humble for trouncing the rest of us in the Chaos Nevada vote. Also to Hadar for running the whole thing smoothly and with class. Chaos East Vangels please take note of who came in second. ;)
  Now...how about a map vote for TC while we're at it?

- Shanoyu's Dirty Little Secret -
In case anyone was wondering what my good friend Shanoyu is up to in his spare time, wonder no more.

- How do you make God laugh? -
Tell him your plans. (Hence the .plan link below.) With that in mind I'm going to be up front about all of this since it's bloody obvious and I don't like being cheeky. I intend to move to Warzone eventually, and it is really just a matter of going through the process of applying for the space and so forth. As for the Maxgaming situation, I want to clear up that Sith and I are not enemies. I left Maxgaming partly in anger, but my reasons remain although my anger is now gone, and I won't be going back. The practical issue of the server experiencing problems was outweighed for quite some time by my perhaps naïve assumption that it was someone's baby. Sith had done me a favor by setting up my directories and responding to other requests, and I felt that leaving for practical reasons (as several others had done) would be disloyal and not in the spirit of construction, collaboration, etc. I left yesterday because I came to the conclusion that no one else saw it the way I did.

- Burn Baby Burn -
It was the Minefield's five month birthday yesterday.
5/1/98
With this hand I can blot out the sun.
- Collapsible C, All Aboard -
I left Maxgaming, obviously. No comment just yet. If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. There will be a comment eventually.
  Let me say this now, however, to those still at Maxgaming. I may be out of line here, but someone has to bring it up. Having cleared 99% of my files out of my directory, there are now about 3.5 megs of space left on the drives there. Please don't fill it up with stuff you don't need. There are pages at Maxgaming that update news on a regular basis, pages with message boards and surveys that won't work if the space is filled. Until the problem is taken care of, realize that you are dealing with a shortage--that if you're to remain at Maxgaming you ought to try and conserve space or you risk crippling other people's pages. If you have room on another ISP, move your graphics there. Don't make people mess up their pages so they can update or post if there is any alternative.
  Anyway, half my internal links are messed up again. Bear with me. For the time being know that almost everything should be in the current directory with the same filename as before.

- Maxig Fixed -
Subspace Maxig Com is not physically part of Maxgaming and it back up and running after some problems yesterday. If you still get an error message, it may be that your browser is an older version and you need to load the frames separately.

- PS -
Please don't update your links to me just yet. I have forwarding pages set up over at Maxgaming which I can alter if and when I find new hosting. I'm trying hard to keep everything smooth and to clean up after myself but there is no point in changing links around twice. Thanks.

April 1998

4/30/98
Overground, watch this space. I'm open to falling from grace.
- Maxig Broken -
Due to a server message all you're likely to see at the moment is an error message. The problem will be taken care of soon or else someone is going to get his ass beat. ;P

- Cheating Rant -
Pardon me while I wax radical left again. VIE has a moral obligation to combat cheating in this game. Because it is not sufficiently staffed to take care of the problem themselves, they must trust the players to combat the problem. The only way to do this is to give full mod status to the zone owners. There is never one simple solution to a problem like this; it requires a creative response to the specifics of the situation at hand. I agree with Hadar about his inability to act. Where we differ is in the fact that I think he should be requesting moderator status straight up instead of just hinting at it. There has been a lot of paranoia about the potential Vangels abusing mod abilities.
  So let's say VIE gives Vangels such abilities and they abuse it. Does anyone really think that this abuse would be as blatant, disrespectful, and destructive to the game as what is happening now?
  The answer is no. Nobody in this game truly expects that. I submit that such alleged suspicions are patently dishonest. They are leveled at people we supposedly trust, in the name of some broad-based policy of caution. I think they represent a certain amount of ass kissing and an even bigger amount of pseudo-intellectual hooey.
  Personally, I'm more inclined to distrust those who claim to worry that Chakotay, Hadar, et al are raring to abuse power and ruin the game. Where in the hell are you people coming from?
  Meanwhile, the far more legitimate and rational cries for action against cheaters and other abusive players are utterly ignored.
  Welcome to the Self Sustaining Subspace Community, beta version 0.1 and slowly, slowly counting.

- SubArena Alive? -
Cybrid pointed me to the new location of Bobby D's web provider, GamesNet. No sign yet of SubArena but we can hope he missed the move because of his preoccupation with making Shockwave for his page.

- KA List -
Sorry this is late, and kind of random because I haven't been playing a lot lately. Scenarios of Irony has been dominating my time, but these are still the zones that have most impressed me lately. Silent Dragon is helping me with my imagemaps. :) So maybe those will work soon.

- Moving -
There is a chance that this page might move to maxig.com sometime in the nexxt week or two. Just thought I would mention this now so that as few people as possible are confused and lost when it happens.
4/29/98
News for the People
All in all it's just another brick in the wall.
- Let's kill all the lawyers. -
Another fucking lawsuit. Blizzard has violated your sacred privacy by forcing your computer to send registry information to them. Stolen from OGR; thanks to Shanoyu for the tip. Read all about it.

- Another Shameless TC Plug for Chak -
Chaokotay has put up a home page for the Turf Classic zone, with a news section, a voting area, and full disclosure of the zone settings. It's under construction and some of the links are bad but keep checking.

Zone Links
I finally added a separate links table for zone pages. Well, maybe not a table but it's a thingy at any rate. I think I'm missing someone. Who? Please tell me.

- Shameless TC Plug for Chak -

    put this on the Minefield:

    EN: play VIE Turf Classic GEast! now!
    NL: speel VIE Turf Classic GEast! now!
    D: spielen Sie VIE Turf Classic GEast! jetzt!
    F: jouez VIE Turf Classic GEast! ce moment!
    KL: VIE Turf Classic GEast yIQuj! DaH!

    :-)

- !Extreme Games! -
TI have just confirmed (unofficially) that this is indeed Mafia's creepy map. Best damned tileset ever. Giant version of  his famed castle, plus--this just added--a nifty new structure in the northwest area where you can take the powerball and keep it all to yourself. >:) Paintball-style settings, awesome black-tile border so it looks like the zone goes on forever. Very cool. More on this later.

- CZE Home Page -
numpf put up a home page for Chaos East which can be found here. The link is a router but best to keep it that way for now because the page may move. Nothing there now but keep your eyes peeled.

- Map Wars -
Three days left until a winner is announced in the Chaos Nevada contest and a new map is chosen. I am given pause and then some by the fact of my map finally passing up Mafia's by one vote. Mafia designed the map that caused me to get into mapping in the first place, in fact the first map that made me notice maps could be artful and clever and pretty. Without his encouragement earlier this year I might have given up on getting into the Mapmakers Guild. He spent hours in my test zone helping me tweak out the problems in my map, and it would certainly have been a far weaker finished product but for that. I'm flattered that my map received so many votes and want to thank everyone who asked the CZN Vangels to give it a chance.
  Jolly's map is the clear cut winner, with 108 votes as opposed to the 45 and 46 mine and Mafia's have garnered. If you count the votes for its original incarnation--and you should,  because they are very much alike and Jolly's version represents a moderate and respectful tweaking rather than a full reworking--the map really has 139 votes, nearly half of the total. This may in large part be owed to CZWers' resentment at the slow death their (our) zone experienced earlier this year. There certainly was an organized effort to have this map voted in. Nevertheless, I think the driving force behind the map's victory is much simpler: It is hands down the best level ever made for this game. Congrats are in order for Jolly, whose changes did add substantive and hella fun details to the landscape, not least among them the unique, quirky M10 safe zone and the most diabolical tunnel design we've seen yet...but also to Rod Humble, the map's original designer. It's cool to see him live on in this capacity after leaving VIE. His few maps are sophisticated and immortal. I think the guy understood this game in its early stages better than most of us will for years to come.
  And I do mean years and years...and it's this depth of complexity which will make it so.

- Map Endgame -
It may look as though the vote is over. It is not. Head over to The Wormhole and vote. :) I mention this not entirely for my own sake but because I'd rather play on a new (or long-disused, as the case may be) map than one which has been up for a year or more. If the votes for a new map outnumber those for an old map, maybe an argument can be made for a runoff. Pie in the sky? With the old maps enjoying a 20% lead in total, sure it's pie in the sky. I'm still compelled to bring it up. Vote for me, vote for Mafia, vote for The Romulans...but vote for a new map and just *maybe* we'll get one...

 - It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue. -
Nothing to do with Infocom, but I couldn't think of how else to get your attention. If anyone can point me in the direction of working versions or emulations of the games Universe II and Portal, I would really appreciate it. These games came out around 1987.
  Universe II was a text and graph based game of interstellar exploration and battle with a coordinates based battle system that is closer to legit science fiction than I've seen anywhere since. I remember receiving a message that an enemy ship had launched a missile which would arrive in several minutes. I believe the space was actually three dimensional. You never saw it, although i do think there was a simple engine for boarding enemy vessels and maybe attacking planetary colonies. My memory escapes me. It was on three 5" floppies and came with an indecipherable 100 page manual. My disks are alas ruined. As far as I know the game only came out for PC.
  Portal was a truly visionary game for its time. You have your standard scenario where the guy comes back to Earth and finds that everyone has vanished, then sets about to figure out how and why. What's incredible about this game is that all your detective work is done at a computer terminal--the sole interface for the game. Using this, you search for clues by navigating...you guessed it...a global hypertext network. I actually have the Apple II files for this, but I don't think any emulator supports it. It was also released for PC and Commodore 64. Activision was going to release it in a C64 compilation but that product appears never to have seen release.
  Anyway, send them to me and I'll kiss your ass or something. :)

- Wither SubArena? -

    Netscape is unable tolocate the server:
      www.gamesnet.com
    The server does not have a DNS entry.

    *** Looking up www.gamesnet.com
    -
    *** Unable to resolve www.gamesnet.com

- M.I.A. -
Has anyone seen The Romulans lately?
4/28/98
- Out of Loop -
I know. I'm a bleeding liar. Well, if it's any consolation I haven't played either, not have I played StarCraft. I don't know how to play other games anymore. No, I have not been Cheating on Subspace. Just had a busy weekend and plus I'm a damn lazy ass liar. Gotta do the stuff I promised the other day, gotta put up the KA list for the week...all in good time. Bear with us while we locate our wits.

- TC Update -
Problems continue to plague the ever-cursed Turf Classic. Received the following ICQ from Chakotay, that zone's new owner and auteur...

    if anybody could give me any info about the Territory award system I'd greatly appreciate it.

    especially:
    a) how do I get it to work? (I got it to work, but suddenly it stopped working without having made any changes to the cfg)
    b) what is the formula? (I got the general idea, but if anybody knows the exact formula...)

    (sorry for the mass messages, but I need this info asap)

That said, Let me second Cybrid's plea at the news.txt a few days ago: Be sure to play in TC so that it can attract the population it deserves. If you haven't already, add the server VIE Turf Classic GEast to your favorites list. Chakotay is setting a precedent here, and a good one. Support from the players would not only aid in the debugging of this zone but also send a message to the Vangels and Blackie in support of the solid and conscientious work Chak is doing.
  But even if that were not an issue, this is a great zone to play in. Those who have only been playing since last Summer or later may be surprised by the settings. Turf Arizona suffered from inappropriate settings which encouraged non-turf playing and ignorance of the game style. The map, although a personal favorite of mine, was criticized by many for its tight hallways, Terrier traps, and the neg vulch game popular at its floating center structure.
  Turf Classic may come as a surprise to you if this is what you are used to. The settings make it such that you must play the flag game in order to gain points. A flag player without kills will easily gain hundreds of time the score of a player who spends an equal length of time just killing in open space. The classic Turf map here is less cramped and in many locations more easily protected, allowing small teams to section off large areas by defense fronts. There is a Stupid Neg Game but it is embedded in the outer base-ring; as a result, predatory behavior against flagging negs is usually at a minimum. Perhaps most importantly, the team limit is 20 rather than 10. This might seem to present a huge advantage, but your team membership is a score divider and often you will want a smaller team. Meanwhile, those players unable to get on a private frequency but wishing to play flags should have no trouble putting together a formidable Turfing posse from a 20 man team, even if half the team doesn't know where they are.
  As a rule you will find nice open spaces throughout the base area. Being something of a tunnel rat myself, I understand the imbalance of the General Rage map that occupied Turf Arizona since its inception. You may find that drawing my kind out into those open spaces presents you with an advantage. Lastly, the bases are a little bit less linear, so you always have to watch your ass lest an enemy make his way to a position behind you and set up a crossfire. This is not my favorite Turf map, but it is a damned good one and should appeal to a greater variety of players.
  I've blabbered enough. Get your squaddies rounded up and head to TC. If the zone is empty you can still play the Stupid Neg Game at the G11 cross. >:)

- Chaos East Page -
I'm not sure if this is a new update or if Hadar changed his link at The Wormhole, but I thought I ought to report on it anyway. Titos Burritos is pissed off at the flag zone vangels, and he probably ought to be. Have a look at the CZE Vangel Info page.
  In related news, I nuked SubScene off the links list and added The Wormhole in its place. Too bad...SubScene was the best page out there for a while. It appears to just be dormant and not dead at this point, however, so there may still be hope.

- Double Spiral -
Silent Dragon has mirrored his page at Warzone as some sort of peace treaty / arranged marriage. This would appear to be the first time someone has been hosted by both of the major competing Subspace sites. Peace in our time? Not bloody likely, but it's a start. I'll be damned if I'm going to link to it, though. ;)

- *YAWN* -
I promise to talk about brick cycling soon. It's something that has been getting on my nerves in certain zones, not much but some, and I do have some junk to say about it but I'm tired at the moment. Also gotta do the kick ass whatsit. (falls forward, hits head on keyboard)
4/25/98
Precious Little News Today
- More 1.35 Fantasy -
Xidus of Leviathan fame posted a list of suggestions for the next update, all more or less reasonable IMHO except for the evil safezone-antiwarp bit which I will go into tomorrow. ;) Except for that silly suggestion, chime in and give your support here.
  The Leviathan has been updated as well, and it's even better than last time. Have a gander.

- Wormhole Updated -
For a fairly simple and zone-specific Vangel page, this site, run by Hadar, is showing a lot more energy than most of the rest of the SS community these days. It's going in the links table tomorrow; third prize is a set of steak knives, guys. ;) The Lev might go up there too, come to think of it...

- Upcoming -
I had a lame and time-consuming Friday evening but watch the skies today for a rant on brick wars and ship cycling, some zone news, this week's KA List, and maybe a tiny bit of otherwise.
4/23/98
- Chakotay needs our help! -
Received late this afternoon...

    does anybody know how to fix the following problem?

    somehow nobody can send public messages in TCE... well, they can send them,
    they just aren't received by anybody. seems like the server just isn't sending them on...

    please respond asap... it's kind of annoying...

As if TC didn't already have enough problems. If you know someone who might be able to help, please forward this to them. Meanwhile I suggest that players set ?chat=vtc so that some form or public chat is possible on there, and this should be put in the news.txt if at all possible.

- !Extreme Games! -
Interesting game going on here, and one of the more popular zones right now. Is thie Mafia's map? It fits a loose description he gave me a few weeks ago of a map he was working on but which I never saw. Down in the corner is the telltale Castle Mafia, finally given a proper name and sporting a weird new look thanks to retiling. This could simply be a tribute of some sort. Someone clue me in. :)
  The map is largely occupied by a huge structure made of rock and steel beams and rock. Yes, this is the tileset from hell--one of the nicest tilesets I've ever seen, in fact--and for the first time in Subspace we can finally relive the old Jetman games and fly through caves. Thank you to whoever did this. In the days when I was learning about maps, I was somewhat naïve about certain issues and tried to make a cave...of course, the frame rate went down the sewer, as I'm sure a number of people have tried and failed. Somehow this tileset actually works. It's really not all that laggy.
  The inner chamber of the main structure is a huge arena with a safe zone at its center and a buffer zone of open rooms around its perimeter. Surrounding this is a cave network which leads to exits in the corners. Outside of that you have open space and a few floating bases, including Castle Mafia and two I haven't seen before, as well as a few bits of space junk.
  The settings are fairly interesting. One bomb will kill you; several bullets will. You need full energy to fire, but bullets don't take up energy. Because of this, bombs become a choice you make for a long range hit at the risk of opening yourself up to gunfire, which has limited range. There is no prox to speak of, so you had better be a good shot. The bullet rapidfire is a little crazy so you have some silly up-close fights, but this is kind of irrelevant; the zone doesn't seem to be about score or anything for that matter. It's a good zone in that respect, and very much based around a philosophy I agree with--fighting for its own sake, or for pride of ownership or something along those lines. My only complaint is that it's very hard to get around, so Mafia's castle is again disused and not a lot interesting goes on in the caves. That hardly matters, however, when the atmosphere is so thick and the primary fight is quick and weird. Those needing long term stimuli will find a 10 minute powerball. There's no goal but there sure is a powerball alright. :) So if you're looking for me, follow the red dot around...

- Another ICQ Spoof -
I didn't want to say anything about this until it was confirmed, but I got a message supposedly from Woop @$$$ (of SubStation fame) the other day...

    To everyone on my contact list:  Since so many people ask me if
    I am gay I'll tell you the truth.  Yes I am gay and I am proud of it!
    please foward this message to everyone on your contact lists so it
    clears the confusion.  Thanks - Woop @$$

This was a fake. Frankly I didn't think it was an obvious fake since Woop had been acting pretty weird about the whole SubStation thing. At any rate, woop did not send it out. Some idiot has taken advantage of a free service in order to carry out a personal grudge and in the process compromised it for everyone else. Well excuse Mirabilis for not being perfect or good enough for you, but some of us have better things to worry about without wondering who our damned correspondence is coming from. Thanks a lot, assholes. 
  Trust no one.

- More 1.35 Wish List -
* Suicide.  Reenable the point-blank suicide. I dislike it personally and don't want to ever see it in the major VIE zones, but there's no sound reason to keep it out of the game entirely. Players should be able to use it on their servers. I'm sure we'd get a few interesting dynamics out of this.
* Small Map Support.  It's reasonable that the preference among many zone owners for small maps was overlooked by VIE. It was, after all, over looked by everyone else as well. By now it's become clear that this is the best and sometimes necessary way to run a game with a small player base or on an older computer. Allow us to designate coordinates outside of which empty tiles have safe zone characteristics, so that flags will not drop there and reds traveling outside the game border will have their flags scattered.

- Blacklisting -
I have to take exception to the recent panic over the banning of crack users (laugh) from the VIE zones, as reported yesterday by Omicron at Maxig..Who cares? These aren't sitebans we're talking about, and none of this amounts to the kind of shocking gestapo tactics both Maxig and VIE have implied they might be. Turnabout is fair play, violators know what they are doing, and no one anywhere has earned the right to a warning. Let VIE ban the crack users if that's what they want to do. Sure, it's not going to work, and sure, it will mainly serve to piss off paying customers (including myself), but that's reality. In theory it's not a bad idea, and in principle I find it neither evil nor shocking.

- Elsewhere -
The winner of this year's Link Wh0re Sweepstakes is Shahab's SS Vault. Please get your entries to me early for next year's contest! Or you can just wait and hope that I put you in the links table below. ;)
  It is very very important to PP that everyone know Maxig has put up the second half of the TTL epic. I'll have to take his word for it because I haven't read it yet. ;)
4/22/98
- Turf Classic Returns -
Now that all the momentum has been safely removed from any hope of revitalizing TC, the server is back up. It appears that all is intact. Now let's get this show on the road, shall we? ;)

- Dammit! -
I've had the wrong image up for my revised Chaos map for nearly a month, because I stupidly uploaded the newest version of the page to my old webserver instead of Maxgaming. If you were even considering voting for it, or if you've just seen my map and think it sucks because it's too cramped, well, it DID suck because it WAS too cramped. It's gone through lotsof playtesting and is substantially more fun now.
  There are still a few messed up links around here because of that mistake. I need to hunt them down when I am not so tired. Anyway, the new page is here. Please don't link directly to the image directly because the black is transparent and I have no idea how to fix this. :)

- Read the news.txt -
Very important information about ICQ spoofing from Tyrsis, ripped from the news.txt message board. Not to pat myself too hard on the back about this but it looks like I may have been right. With that in mind, I want to make clear that I was as suckered as any else was and my earlier post is not meant to be in any way critical of Cybrid for reporting the fake Blackie news, since I would have done the exact same thing.

- Playlist Updated -
I added some realaudio and mp3 links of interests. I figure probably no one has heard of practically anyone in this section and fewer people probably read it, so I might as well give some examples without dumping megs of mp3 onto Maxgaming's hard drives. This is all extremely good music. A lot of it is nice and creepy. Check some of it out. Trust me. 0:)
4/21/98
- Wish List for 1.35 -
Since we're on our way to 1.35 I figured maybe someone will see this and not overlook the problems this time. Most of these range, in my mind, from reasonable to necessary, with a few pie-in-the-sky ideas thrown in for the hell of it.

  1. Get rid of that damned white dot on the waiting screen. It makes us all look second rate.
  2. Allow us to stop out to windows while a map is downloading--or better yet get the map while still in windows. On a modem server the download can take a very long time.
  3. For one month eliminate the demo naming and the CD check, to see if this might reinvigorate the game. What harm could it do? I suspect that these are enforced largely out of spite at this point.
  4. Work out a way to have transparent map tiles, so we can get rid of those "black staircases" you see silhouetted when diagonals cross planets, etc.
  5. Let us build configuration lines from in-game variables, e.g. AttachBounty=Bomb_Level*Team_Size
  6. Waste absolutely no time or energy responding to security cracks. You are spoiling the game for paying customers and you will never beat the crack authors.
  7. Let us define our own maximum size for the Favorite Servers list, and do something about Download Server List's penchant for crashing the client when interrupted.
  8. Make the Shark appear three dimensional on the front-end program. Consider removing all references to it so that it regains some of its mystery.
  9. Prevent overwriting of map files by automatically renaming old levels. That an idiot zone owner can cause someone's rare lvl files to be erased is totally unacceptable.
10. Allow optional appending of news.txt instead of overwrite, and personalization of that file per zone. Duh.
11. Support embedded txt and cfg information for maps. There are a hundred maps out there with unknown authors, some of which had server.cfg files written especially for them. Someone other than myself should be keeping track of this stuff.
12. Allow saving of server.cfg by players at the zone owner's option.
13. Implement automatic startup and date-based naming for chat logs. Duh.
13½. PLEASE FIX SPEED ZONE.

- Subspace on a LAN -
Perhaps this information is already up on another page, but I wouldn't know if it was. Someone asked me about it, so I asked someone else and figured why not put it here. I can't verify anything, and additions or corrections are more than welcome. Thanks to my friend and squaddie Skie for the help, here. Edited from a chat log; any poor grammar is my own.

    What you need to do is to assign the LAN a class C network. Just a set of 3 numbers between 1 and 254 to use as the first three numbers of the IP addresses. Then, you need to assign each computer a number between 1 and 254 and have that as the last number of the IP address. For instance, if the network is 123.51.47.0 then you'd have IP addresses like 123.51.47.1, 123.51.47.2, etc.

    Go to the windows configuration thingie and add TCP/IP network and bind it to the ethernet or whatever card. Set up the IP address, and use 255.255.255.0 as the subnet address. The broadcast address would be the first three numbers and then 255 for the last one. Click no for using DNS and WINS.

    That's about it....you've got a quick and dirty small TCP/IP network. It won't work on the internet or as part of a large entwork, because then you need to organize the IP addies and such, but for just playing subspace on a small LAN (assuming the server is also on the LAN).

- Thank You -
Shouts out to Hadar for fixing up my logo. He even caught problems with the left and right menus that I didn't see. Thanks dude. :) He also linked to me from The Wormhole without my knowledge. This is *not* because I don't go to the page; I have it bookmarked but it goes directly to the voting page so I can check on my map. ;)
  For those not yet in the know, The Wormhole is the official site for the Chaos Nevada Vangels. There you will find an active message board and a voting page for map and settings issues involving the zone. There should be more pages like this one.

- The Fate of Moolie. -
RatMan wrote me yesterday morning about the demise of the great Moolie Zone. It is indeed a demise. In his own words:

    I took moolie down.
    Too Many fucking complainers.. Not worth my time..

All I've got to say is shame on you punks. This was a damned good zone. It's one thing to look a gift horse in the mouth; another thing entirely to look a gift horse in the mouth when the stakes are a $20 computer game.
  Silent Dragon reported yesterday on another aspect of this at the Spiral.

- Tunnels -
According to KrashRun, his zone was taken down against his wishes. This may have been a mistake and hopefully the zone will be back soon in some form or other. Meanwhile, check out his Subspace page,  GammaZone. Not to complain, but the frames gave me some trouble so save your work before heading over there just in case. Other than that it is a pretty good page.

- Thanks Again -
To the folks who sent me links and info for MP3s. Very much appreciated. :)
4/20/98
- Irresponsible Speculation or Something -
I am not suggesting anything in particular, but I do want to say this much. I'm not so sure that ICQ is secure right now. The misinformation about Blackie originated somewhere along a chain of ICQ messages from very reputable people, and last night I got what appeared to be a forged "coming out" mass-message from another person. I suggest everyone take their ICQ with a grain of salt for at least the next few days in case something is up. For my part, I want to make clear that I do not intend to say anything important over ICQ. If you receive any Earth shattering revelations from me that way, it's forged.

- Clean up my logo please. -
Probably this isn't detectable to everyone, but in certain configs the logo probably looks like shit. Clean up the purple fog for me without damaging the blurry diagonal thing and I'll give you a dollar. :)
4/19/98
- New Mafia Map -
Mafia posted a new map to the Suggboard. It's weird as hell, like nothing I've ever seen, really, but it looks as though it might be pretty interesting to try out. I don't yet quite understand it and have run into problems with it crashing my map editors, but from the image it looks like a totally new kind of fight, not to mention damned lonely. Someone host it please. :) Have a look.

- Chakotay ICQbombed -
Chak had received hundreds (I think he means this literally) of ICQ messages from people he doesn't even recognize. It crashed Windows on him a few times and he was forced to change his uin and use a backup several months old. Consequently he may have lost your uin or a lot of messages. My suggestion is everyone leave him alone for a few days so he can sort through all the messages and adds he's likely to get.

- Turf Classic Down -
In hopefully unrelated news, Turf Classic is gone, only days after its triumphant return. This has got to be the most cursed zone in the history of Subspace. When I started playing it had been taken down to retooling and was gone for several months; the map was turned upside-down and backwards for a Test Zone that ranks as perhaps the most badly neglected zone in the game's history

- Zero Annihilation is alive! -
Annihilation is not dead and will probably be back in a week or two. Many thanks to my arch-enemy Omicron von Maxig for this information. ;)  Zero Annihilation has been the most popular player zone for months, almost since Subspace was first released in retail. It was only recently passed up on a semi-regular basis by Gold's awesome Paintball zone. While Annihilation is a super-zone with a patchwork map, it's been very well maintained and is a fun zone to play because everyone flags there. The war games last a really long time, and there is a nifty fight at the center where all the green appears. Usually the base wars degenerate into bricking contests, but I always sort of wanted there to be more of that stuff somewhere anyway. Watch this space for news of Zero's return.

- Tunnels -
I added this to the second Kicking Ass list yesterday and neglected to mention what it is. It is down at the moment. Ther way things are going it will probably be down forever. If not, check it out. It's got a few problems but it's experimental and weird and fun. It has all that super-settings fast bullets and bombs with infinite bounce, etc. It works because the map is divided into huge areas by narrow tunnels. At the junctures of these tunnels you have weird little j12-ish fighting areas. Flags are placed in specific "shrine" areas. (I have never seen this before. Someone tell me how it's done in a non-Turf flag game?) They give you more or less worthless Rabbit powerups but are fun to gloat over.
  What really makes the zone special is the drastic disparities in recharge and energy levels. Usually you can take a whole lot of bomb damage before dying, but sometimes all it takes is one hit. One bullet always kills. The walls in the zone are set very sticky. This might be good to play with in some circumstances, but not in an already experimental map with tunnels so narrow they are difficult to negotiate without the stick. I frankly don't see the point. That said, it's a fun zone to play and if it comes back up I suggest checking it out.

- Irony Map -
Looking at the news file again, it appears that the zone's owner, A Clove, is largely responsible for the map but borrowed some structures from elsewhere. If I can ever get the punk to write back to me maybe you will find out where. ;P

- Anyway -
Could someone help me find an mp3 of the Cole Porter song "Night and Day" covered by U2? I'd buy the CD it's on but I don't think it's in print any longer. Failing that, a nice page for search engines would be nice. Why the hell do people take down search engines so often?
4/18/98
- Damn -
It took me four days again?? Time flies when you're miserable. The miserable business classes I was forced to take as part of a film curriculum are over now, thank God. I put everything off until the last minute as usual and suffered for it at the end. :(

- Scenarios of Irony! -
I added it a while ago and never got around to checking into it. Amazing! This is the most fun I've had in this game in months. The best small map I have ever played, nice settings for the ships, fun tunnel systems and mazes but nice open space as well. Good bases that are fairly roomy. This is both a War Zone map and a Chaos Zone map of the highest caliber. It's got a ring around it, sort of, insofar as the middle few coords are enclosed in a box about the size of a typical "small warzone" level, but with a few exits to the outside where the really exceptional bases are. There is a nice jackpot, a king game, bonus points and bounty for kills depending on the number of players present. What's amazing is you can have twenty people here without things getting cluttered, but it's still possible to play a nice two-on-two game or even to go solo. The flag timer is two minutes. Bombs and guns are a tad fast but not alarmingly so, and you don't have the kind of horrible lag from shrap and bullets that you see in most player zones. Speed and other powerups are all very reasonable. You start with a brick but no one cycles for them because they have a short life. Bursts are common but lesser in damage. There's a Rabbit Chase bonus for flag carries.
  But I cannot stress enough: the map, the map, the map. This is one of the best maps I have ever played in. Someone tell me who made it! Click here to see an image of this awesome piece of work. For those not hip to the small zone experience, the green border is a means of preventing people from dropping flags outside the map border, since the map is only runs from D5 to P15. This should be done with black tiles, which is my only complaint about this zone because the visible tiles make this damned hard on your framerate and eyes. It bears mentioning also that there is a new tileset to this map, and a pretty nice one at that. It's not really textured or anything fancy like that, but it serves the purpose, fits the needs of the map, and is a refreshing change.

- Player Zone Massacre -
In sadder news, there have been some major changes in the lay of the land as far as the non-VIE zones are concerned. The last few days have seen the unexplained disappearances of Moolie, Anarchy, and ZERO Annihilation. Any information on the fate of these zones would be way out appreciated. Actually, considering that I plugged all those zones more than anyone on the net, they might have bothered to tell me they were shutting down and maybe offer an explanation, but hey....I'm not bitter or anything. :P More players for Irony, Paintball, et al.

- Map Change to Paintball -
When did this happen? I hadn't been there for a while. Gold has changed the map in his mucho popular Paintball server to a quadrant-style setup. It is very nice. While the old one was pretty random and had a lot of wasted space (mind you, it did have many nice features and should be used again) this is more ordered, and designed as a series of paths to the goals so that you basically cover a lot of ground and fight in most of the map. Moreover, there is an awesome tileset for this map, the best I've seen since General Rage released his (much-underrated) Turf Zone map. It's fuzzy and looks like it's made out of wood and foliage, at least in places. Best of all, there's paint splattered all over the place. :) Very cool.

- Cybrid's Scenarios -
I'm not really up to speed on this. Never was much of a scenario person, really, though I certainly mean to figure out what the hell Cybrid is talking about now that I hae some spare time. This is just to inform anyone not already aware of it that Cybrid is getting worked up about scenarios and has posed a few really nicely written teaser bits to the board. Head over to the News.Txt and get informed. This sort of thing is very much what the game needs and has been lacking.

- Omicron is NOT the man. -
I want to make it damn clear that I asked him to change the link at maxig to "Asshole's Minefield" and not what it is now. :P This in response to Woop's unkind words to me over the renaming of my page to "SubStation". What's that? You have no earthly idea what I'm talking about? Probably that's for the best, anyway. Oh well...

- My Imagemaps -
I can't get em to work how I wanted, so I got rid of the links for now. Maybe I'l fix it up later.
4/13/98
- C'thak'otay ist our Lvrd and Saviovr -
Turf Classic is back. Classic settings, a killer reward system, and still the much loved classic Turfing map. A slight change was made to the portals. Don't blame me. ;) This is Turf the way it should be. The zone saw its player count climb from 1 to 15 in the space of only a couple of hours. Consider this a plug if you like, but let it be known that VTC is alive and well and kicking ass. Thank you Blackie and thank you Chakotay.
  Oh yeah. If you see Chak, tell him you want ten mines. (If you are a Lev, tell him you want fifteen.)

- Addendo -
More about the WZ and Chaos vangel situation at Maxig.

- Zone Ownership? -
Chakotay is now God Emperpor ov Turf Classic. Ph34r. The Great One spake unto his peeps thus:

    got an e-mail from blackie:
    "you are now the owner of TCE. feel free to make any changes you like"
    I ... must ... be ... dreaming ...

My first reaction, though I'm happy for Chak and think he'll do a great job with the zone, was that if this is a Vangel issue Blackie would have been more...careful, let's say, to consult with the other Vangels first, or at least to bring it up. We're all in this together, and we're trying to build a community and so forth.
  That reaction was wrong. It's about bloody time someone followed the War Zone vangels' lead and made real changes to this game without fearing other people's inevitable opinions. If the game stagnates it will continue to die. By definition the only way to keep something dynamic is to allow it to change and grow--and to be active in its changing and growing. That involves risk and chance. All hail Blackie for taking a chance. Congratulations and good luck to Chakotay. Can we please have a week's moratorium on bitching and moaning and give the guy a chance? Thank you. :)
  Word is that War West and Chaos East may receive similar treatment very soon. The dark side of all this, really? I'm wondering if Blackie might be under pressure to wrap up his involvement in Subspace so he can move on to other projects. Surely his work on Subspace represents wasted money to VIE, which may care about the game but no longer seems to consider it much of a worthwhile investment. Blackie has said several that the Vangels will be this games means of keeping itself alive and in perpetual motion, that VIE can't be running the whole show forever. This is certainly the beginning of that--and I consider it a good beginning--but let's hope that Blackie is wrapping this up on his own terms and not in a hurried way brought on by pressure from elsewhere.

- Chaos Nevada needs a new map. -
We're voting on a new map for a reason. The zone has been hosting the Battle Drone map for its whole life and the time has come for a change. Almost everyone agrees on this. The current map is redundant to Chaos East, it has lost the voting by a landslide, and the voting itself has ground to a halt. The clear winner is the Jolly Roger map that was so popular last year in Chaos West. It is arguably the finest map ever made for this game, I have neither heard nor read one single complaint about its design since I started playing the game, it is named as a favorite by the overwhelming majority of the MMG, and most importantly it is winning the vote by a huge margin, towering over the combined total of the next two closest challengers. Even if the voting is to continue until the end of the month, the Jolly Roger map should be put up now.
  If you are interested in voting for the next Chaos Nevada map and have not yet been to the page, here is a link.
Chaos Nevada Map Vote

- Help? -
I've put this off for too long and I deserve to fail miserably, yet I still have this unfortunate instinct to try. I need an interview with someone working in the motion picture industry, preferably a film editor or a continuity person, or perhaps a casting director. Almost anything would be really helpful at this point, as I am down to the wire. Do me a favor and win your spot on the Minefield Hallf ov Fame. :D

- The Minefield Returns! -
Thank to both of the people who voted (does the word "asshole" count as a vote?), EinExile's MineField is back and better than ever! Since that vote was so successful, we will now have another. Please vote if you think I should leave Maxgaming and then come back.

- Yay, maybe -
I actually have some free time today for a change, so expect more MineField MayHem soon!@@#%
4/13/98
- Substation Substation Lameness Lameness. -
As reported by Maxig, the SubStation is ded ded ded ded, thus ending the longest, most agonizing soap opera in the history of online gaming. As if that weren't bad enough, Woop @$$$ has invoked a little known ancient internet rule which states that everyone must ask his permission for everything. More specifically, "no one is allowed to use the name so matter what." Woop is rumored to be inking a deal with Fox Entertainment and the Church of Scientology for enforcement of this rule. For the time being, I suggest we all heed his warnings. "I just wanted to let you know, so if you find a link to SubStation and see it's not mine, never visit it again, as it is not allowed to be on the internet."
  In a related story, I am no longer permitting the use by other pages of red and blue CG Omega 14 type against a white background, nor any reference to L3 mines or other copyrights of this page. Because of this, The Leviathan will have to be shut down. Until such time, none of you may visit it. We at Minefield Internet Trademark Control Services apologize for the inconvenience.
  Also, please VOTE on whether or not you would like me to change this page's name back to Einexile's MineField. I may do this, but only if you VOTE!

- Silent Dragon Moves to MaxGaming -
SD's nifty new page has hopped on the Maxgaming wagon. :) Welcome aboard, SD. I linked the page in the page table below. Don't disappoint me, son. >;)

- Oh my God, they killed Cybrid!.-
This transmission received late last night, believed to originate from Cybrid's silly little Terrier, crash landed behind enemy lines.

        Can't update with relevent info, must play StarCraft . . . disgregard
        all responsibility. StarCraft good, keeping site up to date bad.

Hopes are down and the situation is grim. Rescue team missing for several days, believed to have fallen to the same mysterious foe. We will keep you apprised of he situation with up-to-the-minute news as the Great Crisis unfolds. Cybrid, we are all praying for your safe return.

- 7K -
Bah, I'm my own 7000th hit. How utterly unsatisfying. :P
4/12/98
- Here I am! -
I feel very out of the loop these days. School has been a pain in my ass lately and in my free time I've been playing StarCraft. I can't help it. I feel like one of those disloyal whores who abandons Subspace and runs off to play Tanarus or Diablo or something. StarCraft is actually not as much fun as Subspace most of the time, but it is never as frustrating as Subspace can be and there is some strange quality about the game that makes it even more addictive. I'm gearing up to review the game in earnest, but let me at least explain the appeal here. What's unique about StarCraft is all the new design elements--in the same way that Dune II was revolutionary in its organization and upgrades and the way you would lay out your bases, put up new ones, build walls and turrets, etc. StarCraft makes turrets necessary to see cloakers. Some of your buildings can take off and fly to new locations--very slowly and thus vulnerable to attack unless escorted. Seige tanks take a moment to bolt themselves to the ground, increasing their range and the damage they do but compromising mobility; i.e. if you need to move them, they need a while to change out of seige mode. This also opens them to close range attacks. The more powerful ground units can't hit air units. Air units require an upgrade to fire at ground targets. This game is full of wonderful quirks and is just bloody amazing.
  I promise to play Subspace again soon. :)

- WZW -
What the hell did they do to the Castle map? It hasn't been changed in any substantive way I can make out, but it's been carelessly retiled into an ugly, random mess over about half the map. The tileset is even incomplete and crashes SSME. They did a better job on the castle in Zero Annihilation. Was there a reason for this? Is there not a cood copy of the map around or something, or is the retiling a work in progress?

- WZE -
By contrast, Happenstance's map is looking pretty damned nice. I haven't had opportunity to play seriously in it, but I mean to. Anyway it's about time we had a brand new map in any zone, and anew WZ map is always kind of a treat.

- Silent Dragon's Spiral -
New page just started up by my pal Silent Dragon, master of Moolie and small-map designer extraordinaire. Ph34r. This is going to be a rocking page. Have a gander.

- 1.34 Sucks -
I'm sorry, I guess I'm being a bit rude in restating the obvious, but come on guys. There is no excuse for just forgetting one of the cracks, and that annoying white dot is still on the wait screen. And when the hell are we going to be able to download the map while still in Windows? Does our civilization not yet possess the technology to make this possible? Well at least they finished rendering the Shark, or something, which is nice because it looked like a paper airplane before.
4/10/98
- Damn lagger.. -
Ugh. Apologies for not updating. That's what happens when you put off six weeks of work until the last minute. I'll maybe be back on later to spew a little. Right now I have to go and read Guerrilla Marketing Attack. o_O
4/7/98
- Sorry. -
Been a lousy few days, kind of. Apologies for the boring page. It's boring today too, I'm afraid. I'll get my act together soon. :P

- Gommy's WZ Map Updated -
See it here, and chime in with your comments and suggestions. He is updating it very frequently now, and in fact I meant to put this up on Sunday but he's already updated it again since. It's looking really nice, but a bit more of a Turf map than a War map. This might make play out interestingly, but are those flags he has laid out there? This might be a cool WZ but for a Turf zone it's going to be heavily base-oriented. Not that this would necessarily be bad. If Turf needs one thing it's experimentation. At any rate, Gommy has some really diabolical and intricate structures here. I hope he'll start testing it at some point soon.

- New Version of Mafia Speed -
With Mafia's permission, Baudchaser cut down the famous Speed West map for play in a smaller zone. It's essentially the same map but with a smaller frame, and the castle base moved inwards so it would fit in. Now it's just to the left of the central arena. I haven't played in this much yet but it looks just fine, there should be some nice new fights where the free floating stuff now meets a border wall, and bestof all maybe people will actually play in that castle where it is now located. ;)

- VRGN Servers are Dead -
And let me tell you, I cried my little eyes out when I heard the news. Sure, those League zones are still up, so that's some comfort, but we may never again be able to play War Zone flags in a Running map, or have three copies of Starseed's map on the same server. What were they thinking taking those down? And let's not forget that zone where you could go and get negged by The Ghost Ship. Tsk.
  We'll always have Witch Doom, though, and they can't take that away!

- Racing Maps -
I'd been meaning to tour the various racing zones and only found one, Witch Race, which has a hella fun map to play in and a pretty good racing dynamic. I'm told that Shiner's race map is better, but I can't seem to find a copy. If someone can send it to me or give me a zone to find it in, I'd appreciate it.

- My map test is over. -
No need for it anymore, really. Many thanks to TimeTrip for hosting it while I needed it, and of course to all the people who came in and helped me with playtesting. You know who you are and you helped greatly with the evolution of the map into something that is now, I think, a hell of a lot more fun for just about every taste than it was a month or so ago.

- StarCraft rules. -
This game is bloody amazing. I've been a huge fan of Dune II ever since it came out, and all the followups and copies were a constant disappointment to me. Sure, C&C is a fun fight and WarCraft was sleek, but both had their problems. I kind of drifted away from the genre after a while, after the developers stopped even claiming to offer any new substantial element to the genre. Never mind the fact od Dune II's atmosphere, which remains unbeatable to this day, and I'm not even a Dune fan.
  StarCraft is the shining exception and the model for what these games ought to be like. The design is nice, the story and presentation are smooth as hell, the play is variable in its intensity, it has a nice spacey atmosphere without the cheeze that permeates most such games, and best of all it's full of new game elements and different considerations that come up while building your base and prganizing your attacks. I haven't played enough to fully comment, but I'm having a boatload of fun with this game and finding it extremely addictive. Multiplayer games have been great (when my opponent didn't skip out on me, pfffth) and from what I'm hearing, online games against the computer opponent are extremely difficult and the AI is very clever. The characters are computer animated the the voice acting is the best I can remember seeing in a game. Five stars or something. It aint Subspace but it beats the hell out of everything else.

- And then there's FireTeam. Heh. -
By contrast, this game is a terrible disappointment. I just started playing, and sure it's a beta test and not all beta tests are alike, but I became bored and annoyed by this game very quickly. The game premises are a little bit silly, most of the chat is by way of voice (do people still listen to music while playing games?), the maps are incredibly small, the team sizes are almost as small, and the control is a bit of a pain. There are some nice game elements, like an increase in your accuracy if you let your target cursor linger on an enemy. I know it wouldn't be fair to really judge this game at this point, but I will say it's got a long way to go. The first order of business is for the game to own its 2D nature and get rid of the ugly Postal-esque maps. Ifit's to remain in a 3/4 perspective, the players ought to be made smaller and the maps bigger, so we can stand on balconies and snipe at each other.
  I'm sure other things about this game are getting to me as well. Right now all I know is it's not much fun at all.
4/5/98
- Happy Birthday! -
It's my one year Subspace anniversary today. I was going to do all this cool stuff but I've been so damned busy and in such a bad mood I didn't get any of it done. Plus I've been playing entirely too much StarCraft for my own good. Anyway, allow me to start a tiny tradition here. The Minefield has always been sort of based around the philosophy that Subspace is more than just a game but also kind of a freaky subculture and a state of mind to go with it. I never understood how people could get bored of the game, because there is so much to do in Subspace other than actually play it. With that in mind, this page's primary concern (and this goes hand in hand with my attitude about good personal pages in general) has always been simply to give people something interesting and good to read, as often as possible.
  Anyway, for Week 53 of my Subspace experience I'm going to try to complete and put up as much of that Other Stuff as I can, as my way of saying thanks to all the people who have remained faithful to and positive about this game and who have spent their non-playing hours reading about it, writing about it, and remaining otherwise active and productive in the community.
  So I guess I've reached the infamous Hump where everyone gets sick of this game or afraid of it or retires. I'm sick of it and afraid of it too, but I aint retiring because I love it to death.
4/?/98
- StarCraft is out. -
Go get it.

- Got you. -
Hehehe....a lot of people are mildly irked at me now. :)
  Funny that not a single person who messaged me cared about the asteroid...

- Immortal Battle Drone -
Would you believe that after almost a year of playing in Chaos East/Nevada I found something new to do there tonight? It involves that little box near the top, to the right of the asteroid belt. I saw some people get badly massacred in there when I was little so I've had kind of this mental block about the place. Anyway I did not get badly massacred. >:) In fact I think I killed four people outside before they finally got me. Now I know where this game got the name Sniper. I hereby declare that little box my own personal property, since no one else seems to care for it much. I sure as hell piqued some people's interest tho....see, under my soft candy shell I am a War Zone player, so I was makin this line of floaty bombs from there over to the asteroid belt...never was there a better way to piss people off. ;) So there are like 6 holes into the base for people to shoot through, only they can't really line up easily there with so much activity. If you've mastered the crucial skill of firing through those little holes from far away, you can pop 'em in the eye while they're getting ready and wasting bullets. You see, this is my secret passion: shooting Warbird pilots through the eye. I was finally killed only because I am a fool who cannot subtract 700 from 200 unless I have total silence and a cup of coffee.
  Oh, and did I mention there are nice places outside to bounce people off of and back into your mines? But you probably figured that out by now...

- VOTE -
All this notwithstanding, let's change the map please.

- iNet Chaos Zone -
Please play here so Baudchaser doesn't take it down. As I mentioned before, this is Mafia's kickass old Speed Zone map. There is unfortunately a Jackpot game running here, but it's kind of like Speed, and it's a great map to fight in. Be sure to try it out.
4/2/98
News of the Day
- Sorry about not updating. -
What with the war breaking out and the news about the new asteroid, I've been watching a lot of TV and was trying all last night to find information on the web about that psycho Chinese guy who ordered the attack, plus also crashing my browser trying to get onto the NASA and JPL pages. If anyone manages to connect, please tell me what the hell is going on with the asteroid because the people on the news really don't know what they're talking about. It can't possibly be that close or it would surely have been spotted by now.

- Wasp sighted in Alpha Zone? -
Several people reported seeing the old Wasp kicking ass through both of the Alpha Zones late last night, apparently armed with a super-cloak device and some sort of unidentified weapon described as a "slime cannon"?? This news was actually stolen from yesterday's News.Txt , and the story also appeared on Maxig, but strangely both of the srticles seem to have been removed without explanation. Please mail me if you know anything about this. Blackie denied that VIE is trying to orchestrate a cover up. Actually, his exact words to me were "I don't think you'll want to be bringing this up again, if you know what's good for you." (What does that mean?) Anyway, you can read the original post here.

- Shakin' Things Up in Dueling Zone! -
A shockwave was felt throughout the Subspace community upon news that Tyrsis has added a new safe zone to the main hallway of his map, and rounded the corners of the dueling boxes. "I'm trying to challenge people's ideas about how Dueling Zone should be run," Tyrsis said in an exclusive interview with the Minefield late Tuesday afternoon. "I know I'll probably take a lot of heat for this, but I'm going to stand my ground." Initial responses were mixed. "This is great," remarked Moby, a well known Warbird pilot. "I don't like getting stuck in the corner. Now that there is no corner, I don't have to worry about getting stuck there. It's awesome!" Other players disagreed, however. "It takes all skill out of the game and makes it nothing but a vulch war," commented another Warbird pilot who asked to remain anonymous."Dueling Zone is supposed to be about skill u know, not cheap tricks like watching other people get killed while ur are sitting in a safe zone! Next thing u know ur ship will have repel and burst. How am I supposed to get away from burst when there is a hallway????? This zone sucks now, I'm leaving!"

- E-mail from Cybrid. -
I'm not going to try and start a fight here, but I really don't understand why I'd be treated like this all of a sudden.

    At 07:48 PM 3/31/98 -700, Cybrid (cybrid@warzone.com) wrote:
    >
    > Einexile, I don't know what the hell you're trying to prove with that
    > nonsense about the Wasp, I guess you just have no idea how big your
    > foot is before you stick it in your mouth, eh? Maybe you think you're
    > going to be the one to stir things up and change the way things work
    > around here, but that's not how things are going to turn out in the end.
    > You keep sticking that foot in your mouth and it might just get cut off,
    > so why don't you just drop this crusade of yours and shut the hell up
    > before it gets out of hand and someone gets hurt, if you know what I
    > mean? Then we can all be friends again like before.

- WTF? -
In an unrelated story, someone just threw a brick through my window?? I don't believe this. I moved out here to the countryside to get away from that random sort of behavior. If T2-17 heard about this I bet he would have a fit.

- New Staff Members! -
The Minefield is proud to welcome Trixter, Blackie, and Mr. Savoy!!! onto the news staff here. That's right, we had to fight SubStation for him, but we got Mr. Savoy!!! to head up the new pages about VIE score resets and the hot new VRGN zones.. Eat that, Maxig!

- Apology -
I would like to apologize for the earlier story about the Wasp sightings in Alpha Zone. They did not occur, and seem to have been vicious rumors started by ignorant newbies who don't really know how things work in Alpha Zone. I was actually very foolish to fall for this trick; after all, there are already eight ships in this game. Don't you remember? The Wasp was taken out to make room for the Lancaster. Therefore, since there are already eight ships in the game, there cannot be another ship because that would be nine ships and they can't make games with nine ships yet. I shouldn't have to explain this to you again.