30 September 1998
And the winner is...
Desert sky
Dream beneath a desert sky
The rivers run
But soon run dry
We need new dreams tonight
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- Arctos, Master of the Map -
Is this just freaking beautiful or what? Coming soon to the Sheep Cloning Facility.
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- World War III said to be pending over A Small War Zone -
(um....who the fuck cares?)
- You knew I was going to tell you about my roots sooner or later. -
I was thinking yesterday about the levels I made for The Ancient Art of War and Lode Runner and whether or not there is a chance in hell that I could get them off of the rotten 5.25" floppy disks they are (or were) on, when it occurred to me that player editing of levels really goes back much further than that, to Atari Adventure. I'm not just mentioning this to brag that I was the world's first level editor though ;) but to see if anyone else out there did it. If you have not played Adventure, it was the first-ever overhead view adventure game. If you can imagine The Legend of Zelda but with a square cursor for your character (this is not a joke) and only five sound effects (six if you include the buzzing that sufficed for music on the Atari 2600). There were three dragons, a bat and a castle. Wait, I know, here's a screenshot. :)
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Anyway, like nearly all games for the Atari 2600, Adventure had multiple games to choose from within the game. Game 1 had only 13 rooms, two castles, and two dragons, and was for sissies. :) Game 2 had the hardcore 31 room map, an extra, harder dragon as well as an additional castle, and a bat that liked to steal stuff from you at the worst possible moment. Game 3 was the same as Game 2, but with all the objects (yes, all seven of them) starting in random positions on the map, as well as the dragons.
So here's the catch. By hitting Reset (actually it was a toggle switch; sigh), as opposed to just turning the game off and on again, you restarted the game as-is. By this I mean that when you died you didn't have to start over, but rather you returned to the start position with all the items where you left them and the dragons resurrected...and thus the Atari Mapmakers Guild was born! No, you couldn't mess with the map, but what you did was kill the dragons, hide all the items, lock the castles and hide the keys, then move the dragons around by grabbing the bat and coaxing him into picking them up. (Yes, he did have to be coaxed.) Then you did something nasty like lock the bat in the yellow castle with the sword so that immediately upon reset he would fly away with it.
That all took quite a while, especially since everyone sucked hard at Atari for some reason.
Now, you let your friend or little sister back in the room, hit reset, and sit back and watch while they try to figure out how your savage, diabolical mind works.
Adventure would rank with the all time greats anyway, but this little trick is why it remains, in my opinion, among the top five while the rest of the pre-Zelda nonsense went straight to hell. Adventure is in fact still fun to play. I'm sure there must be a few other games where you did this, Back In The Day. If you have war stories please send em in. :)
Always the one to start an uproar, allow me to be the first Vangel to publicly offer pirated software on the Web. >:) Craig Pell made this knock-off for the game a few years ago, and Atari's lawyers actually kept him waiting for two years without giving him permission to put it out. (These were, um, simpler times.) Eventually he renamed his version Indenture and released it freeware. As a bonus, it includes a special 300-room version with a few extra items, a new dragon, and two new castles. Craig Pell is a minor deity; send him a dollar one of these days when you're locked out of your house and bored.
Indenture, so sue me!
And of course, you know the Minefield is always on the cutting edge of the emulator scene, so here is the rom.
Adventure. Keepin' it real!
It's a no-no to distribute roms with emulator programs so I won't post one here, but you can probably find a good one at Dave's Video Game Classics.
All hail Warren Robinette.
- World War III said to be pending over A Small War Zone -
(um....who the fuck cares?)
- The new PJ Harvey album is out. -
About a week ago, I was waxing poetic about the single A Perfect Day Elise. Well, the album came out today (erm, Tuesday), and like a good little fanboy I was there at 10:00am for my copy. (I might have been there at the stroke of midnight if I hadn't been too tired.) Well guess what? it SUCKS! They ruined A Perfect Day Elise and the album is otherwise about 70% horrendous, songless mess. I am very disappointed and a little shocked. There are four or five good songs out of twelve.
- Stupid Crap Part I -
One of several reasons we don't usually let forvrin go outside of Eblana.
- Stupid Crap Part II -
(courtesy of and thanks to jimbobwey)
1) Start with the given:
CUTE PURPLE DINOSAUR
2) Change all U's to V's (which is proper Latin anyway):
CVTE PVRPLE DINOSAVR
3) Extract all Roman Numerals:
C V V L D I V
4) Convert into Arabic values:
100 5 5 50 500 1 5
5) Add all the numbers:
666
Thus, Barney is the Anti-Christ.
SEND IT ALONG!!! hahahahaha
27 September 1998
Beware wolves...
Where the land falls to an end, this hidden tale begins.
Take a walk with me, down by the sea...
- Subspace? Huh? -
Sorry I've been a bit out of the loop lately and not updating. I've been getting more and more hooked on Quake II. The other day I was talking with jimbobwey, mighty Subspacer and friend to all sheep, and we were talking about the intensity of some of the battles in Turf, and I realized why it is that I don't play a lot of Subspace anymore: All Subspace games fail in comparison to Turf. When that game is in full swing and you have a good team and are fighting a good team in a great map, there is no match for it, even among the finest fights War Zone has to offer.
The nonstop action, the close-knit teamwork, the length and breadth of the fights and the opportunities this generates for flanking, sneakiness, and siege scenarios where you are pinned down for minutes at a time by a superior force, awaiting backup, biding your time while the flanking party rounds a huge map detail and swings in to snadwich your enemies...THAT is Subspace. C5 of the old VIE map, and the entire bottom section. C3 of the General Rage map, and countless sections of GiGaKiLLeR's level. These are classic, hardcore fights, the best that Subspace has ever offered. Call it a simple game, call it too biased towards tunnel ratting, but have you ever experienced a thirty or forty-five minute battle in War or Running or Chaos? I think not. And who knows what amazement might come out of Chakotay's Circle Turf in a large arena, or Giga's new map.
As I lose interest in Chaos and the other zones, and find myself completely numb to the fact of War Zone's move to a sever where I am not constantly forced into spectator mode, I realize that no game will likely ever match the excitement, suspense, surprise, and drama of a good Turf Zone freq war.
I must thank jimbobwey for causing me to realize this, and it may actually lead to my playing Subspace on a regular basis again. I plan to be more active in Turf now than I have been, so look for an update to the FAQ and maybe a gude to the game in the near future. Who knows, I may even try my hand at a map. Talks are commencing between Turf Classic and the Sheep Cloning Facility with the end goal being a funky scenario in a small map. Giga's new one is of course favored, but I am hearing tell of a small Arctos map in the works...hmm! :) As always, keep ur eyes peeled...
- Return of Oldschool, Part III -
Well, perhaps it's wishful thinking on my part, but while it seems the zone will be by nature fairly progressive, Mine GO BOOM's new server at VIE looks to me like the return of Philosophy Club.
What's this? Blackie gave someone ownership and actually told them about it first?? ;) It's true. Head on over to Shanky and check out the preliminary plans for the Sheep Cloning Facility's new nemesis...and be sure while you are there to VOTE PHILOSOPHY CLUB!
The Form ov the Hoof wills it and commandeth ewe.
- oops -
I left my gay template stuff at the bottom of a story. Sorry. :)
- This might come in handy. -
I'm the best mix tape maker ever, but I'm kind of retired from the business. :P However, since I've owed someone a tape for a while I had to break out the ol' tools. This may seem a bit obsessive compulsive to some people, but if you're the kind of person to whom song order matters and cutting something off at the end of a side is a crime, you might find this to be helpful. :)
Finally, a use for Excel
23 September 1998
It's not easy being 1337.
sunlight sunlight fills my room
it's sharp and it's clear
but nothing at all like the moon...
- MMG Updated Again! -
It's been quite a struggle through the process and formalities, but Shanoyu (ov the might Space Police!) has finally joined the Mapmakers Guild. For the full story check the MMG. Shanoyu's newest map is currently up in War Zone East.
- WSL -
It's probably too late to remind you, but don't forget that the WSL event is tonight. :) Check here for the rules, or look at my news archive a couple days ago.
stuff
- Tomorrow? -
Tomorrow. I'll update tomorrow. It's only a page, anyway.
22 September 1998
Please click my banners!
This is something; why don't you come in?
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- MMG Updated -
By me, no less. :) Not a whole lotta update, but a bit about General Rage rejoining, and The Romulans has been spicing up the Vault areas.
Mapmakers Guild
- Xirphoid returns...sort of. -
Xirphoid, trapped semi-offline for a while due to computer troubles, just contacted me and let me know he has got ICQ up and running on the machine he's been using at school. Hopefully this will allow him to be a little better tuned in to what's happening around Subspace. He hasn't got access to his old ICQ list, so you will need to re-add him and resend anything you might have mentioned to him over the last few weeks. Keep it brief if you can, as he usually seems pretty short on time when he is on.
- Trench Wars III -
This has already been widely reported, of course, and I think I wrote about it a little here. SilentDragon's scenario ran very nicely on Saturday although half the signups didn't show for it. We replaced them readily with people who wandered in. ;) As I mentioned before, the current trench wars game is loosely based on what we did in that scenario, but one aspect of the scenario has not been included, because it could not be; it required manual flag resetting because there is no "victory" in a Turf game. We'll definitely be playing with this more in future scenarios, though: The goal of controlling all the flags in a map. With proper balancing of the bases, this isn't quite as unviable as it may sound. Bases with heavy defensive advantage, but requiring much in the way of personnel to hold, create the problem of when do you weaken your defense in favor of a strong attack? This has of course always been a problem in War Zone, but with this game style it is the only problem. I can see it being a lot of fun given the right amount of people and the right map. Anyone want to give it a shot? :)
- Music? What's that? -
Picked up some great new stuff yesterday. First good day at the record store in quite a while, frankly.
Incredible new single by PJ Harvey, A Perfect Day Elise. Probably you've heard this already if you are lucky enough to live near a decent station, but what's encouraging about the singles (despite there being two of them, kind of a ripoff) is that the b-sides are pretty strong. I'm expecting the new album, released next Tuesday, to be amazing. Flood, a favorite producer of mine who also worked on her last album, has returned for this one and you can definitely tell from the style of the single. Abrasive yet beautiful.
In a Doghouse, a new compilation from Throwing Muses. For all the clout, corporate support, and alleged artistic integrity of 4AD, they never had the sense to bring the first Muses album out in the US. This 2CD compilation on Ryko does that and much more, making available again for the first time in a decade their acclaimed Chains Changed ep. Also included are their original self-released cassette and five very early (1983) songs recorded in 1996. A gem, really, and only $18.
Form and Function by the incredible Photek, a pioneer of drum-n-bass music with a classy, clever style that has not been successfully imitated. This is a compilation of remixes, old singles, and a couple of new tracks. If you like listening to music while Subspacing and have never heard Photek, I must give this stuff my highest recommendation. Fast beats, mellow but sinister atmosphere, and moments of harshness rising up out of the dark, funky and spacey at the same time. A better known track I would compare his music to is the Graham Massey remix of Björk's "Cover Me" off of her Telegram compilation. (This, incidentally, is the best Subspacing track EVER.) If you want a whole album of that sort of thing pick up any Photek release; it is all very solid.
20 September 1998
Click me, I'm a little news page!
He got burned by the sun, his face so pale and his hands so worn.
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- Impersonal Spam -
No time to rant, gotta run. :)
The WSL Special Event presents
This Wednesday Sept. 23rd, 1998 at 10pm ET
The Grim Reaper!
Rules:
Like Only1, but with a Twist...
Each pilot gets on a different freq
Unlimited Deaths
15 minute games
Most Points Wins
No SCs
Drops may reenter, but lose all their points
Bring your Big Guns and
Kill Kill Kill!!!
20 September 1998
Fall sucks.
O Fall'n Star / Pierce the Bosom of the Earth / And wash away /
the Repelln't Man-Childe Elijah Woode / and his dismall Chicke
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- Pop Quiz -
einexile wasted his entire summer...
a) shooting 90% of a movie he no longer wishes to complete.
b) participating in fruitless discussions on Subspace message boards.
c) not getting enough sun or caffeine.
d) seeing 20th Century Fox's movies in a theatres instead of on TV where they belong.
Oh well, maybe next time. :P
- Trench Wars III -
Yup, that's what we're calling it. New map by SilentDragon, designer of the original Trench Wars Castle you know and love. Settings that encourage longevity and greening and more specials than you can shake a stick at. :) Only in the Sheep Cloning Facility. SilentDragon is zone owner for the duration and will be tweaking it to perfection throughout the week. Be sure and head in there when the zone is active as it is a very fun fight.
- Eblana News -
I've left the Space Police as squad captain. m0us3 will be taking my place, and SoSD (Slayer of Small Dogs, a.k.a Puppykiller) will be maintaining the new page.
We're doing sort of a recruiting drive right now. If you think you may be Space Police material, have a look at the Pocket Guide to Space Law.
Most importantly, there is now an eblana.com, proving that we, like everyone else with a vanity domain, are extremely important. ;) Thanks to Scoochie, who does not play Subspace, for setting this up. For those who dare ask, "What the hell is Eblana?", now's yer chance.
Oh yeah, and we're now the official most popular channel on irc.dal.net because we cheat at javascript voting more effectively and more passionately than both #square and #SStrax...whatever the hell those are. ;)
And finally some good news...the immortal Prophet Murasame has updated the Official Home Page of the CCCP. This actually happened a while ago but since he updates monthly I'm not that late in reporting on it. ;)
- Rod/Jolly -
Turns out this map was not a labor of love or sign of respect at all, but just a matter of "shaving off the rough edges". That map had no rough edges, Jolly. You did something great and don't even realize what it was. Oh well.
Play in this map while you can because it is going down SOON. The Battle Drone may be going back up as I write this, for all I know. The Rod/Jolly map has the finest set of tunnel systems in the entire game, so if you are a tunnel rat definitely don't miss it.
18 September 1998
We'll always have Practice Offline.
Just give me an easy life and a peaceful death.
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- Happy Birthday! -
To my evil friend Pl0k, who doesn't play Subspace cuz he's in Australia and addicted to chess, but reads my rotten pages anyway.
- Speaking the Unspeakable -
I'm a day late on this, but not if you consider that the rant in question was long, long overdue: a shout out to SubSpecies at DS98 for telling it like it is about League. It's about time someone had the balls to state the bleeding obvious, and I am behind you 100% bro.
- Mapfoilio Update -
For those who are interested, I updated my mapfolio, adding a couple of small maps, changing one, and rewriting a bit. Only for the hardcore, of course.
- Really Old Map Up in Chaos East -
In a related story....well, as the saying goes, if you don't have anything nice to say...
16 September 1998
And then there were none.
Hey creepos, I'm talking to you. I've got a message to give to you.
You've got a problem, we know, but there is something you ought to know.
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- Sabbatical -
You know what they say. If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all, so I deleted most of this story and you will never read it. :P I'm going to be taking a little break for maybe the next week or so. If I play or update, it's going to be because I want to, not because I feel like I have to. That's been my main reason for the last two weeks, and I don't need that kind of negative energy floating between me and this game. When I finally retire from this game, I'm going to be the Friendly Jaded Vet. It will be me playing Alpha Zone all day long and writing here about what I did that day. Think of the next week or so as a sneak preview.
- Applause -
My congratulations and admiration to Chakotay for giving his rotten Vangels their walking papers. No offense meant to anyone here, but it's about time. Funny, four months ago an election for a fifth Vangel of Turf Zone was called off because it sparked such a huge flame war on the messageboard there. Where did all that energy go? I don't know who I'm quoting here, or if I'm just paraphrasing about a dozen people or so who I've spoken to or read, but it all sounds pretty much the same. "The Vangel thing didn't quite turn out the way it was supposed to." Well, why not? What changed? Did someone stop us from running our zones? Did someone punish us for helping new players and writing FAQs and changing maps?
Hell no. The Vangel thing worked out fine. What didn't work out was our fuzzy little imagined ideals of what Vangels were going to be. All this time you were hearing "worries" about Vangels getting harrassed, we secretly wanted it. It makes us hopping mad that after Blackie knighted us we were still just normal everyday players with no power whatsoever.
Why didn't the Vangels work out the way they were supposed to? Frankly, because they didn't do their job. With the possible exception of the people running War Zone, the best Vangels in this game work for me--and they cause me so much grief I want to pull my hair out. It's a lot of fun most of the time, trying to organize a group of people to work for a cause. It's like pulling teeth but it's a bit of fun. Does the Vangel system have to fail? Hell no. And I'm going to prove it to you.
- THIS ZONE SUX -
I'm pretty glad that the 8:00 Rabbit Chase games didn't work out in Sheep Cloning Facility, because I hated them. I think that's what caused me to become so pissed off at this game over the weekend. I spent between five and ten hours playing a game I have grown to hate, in a map I used to love but which is now a shell of its former self. I'm talking about the Rod Humble Chaos West, known in some forms as Rod/Jolly. My favorite map ever--when it was full of people. In an arena of ten or twenty players it is a corpse.
The front runners for the next Chaos East map appear to be mine and Shanoyu's. I'll be alternating these throughout the week. Game time is still 8:00pm Eastern. Don't come early and burn out on the game please. Mine goes up first because right now I never want to see another set of walls joined at right angles for as long as I live. ;) It'll be straight Running style flags--no timer, no upgrade. There will be a hell of a jackpot though, as usual.
- A scenario in Sheep Cloning? You jest! -
That's right. While I've been bellyaching about the other scenarios and pushing dates back, Silent Dragon up and put together a Trench Wars scenario which will be running this Saturday. We are getting a hell of a lot of signups on short notice, and very few of them from the player zone quarter just yet. Right now there is no player limit, but there's going to be, and it may be a sudden decision. Sign up now and get on board before Silent Dragon closes the singups.
Trench Wars Scenario
- REPEAT -
Game time in Sheep Cloning is 8:00pm Eastern. If you are in a Vangel position here, please note that my admiration of Chakotay is at an all time high today. See story above.
12 September 1998
I'm lazy. :)
Come, let's take flight; let's quit this scene tonight,
Whilst they sleep on endless, in their wrecked designs.
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- Xirphoid Stranded on Earth. -
Apparently he's got about $600 worth of repairs to make to his computer or has to build an entirely new one. Until then he is limited to a few minutes worth of mail a day on a school's machine and not much else. If anyone needs to get a message through to him, please contact me.
- Murasame is God. -
Even though he's not much of a squadmate anymore. ;P
I've been wanting to post this for a long time but always ended up feeling like it would be stuck in a huge update. Today, a tiny Minefield update, and Mura's killer article. This was written for the second issue of The Minefield Weekly, which was never put out. I will be posting other such submissions soon in the future. Please note that this was written a while ago and is in no way a parody of Baudchaser's superb article posted yesterday at subspace.inet.fi. (Details in next story.)
If you don't fall out of your chair reading this, you have no soul. ;)
Subspace: A Retrospective by Murasame
- Baudchaser is up there too. -
This has been widely linked to by now, but I wanted to mention it here because I consider it a major document in the history and politics of this game, and it is also just a plain good piece of writing. Don't miss it.
- Events for Saturday -
6:00pm EST - Turf Classic game.
The matches have been moved to a weekly time for a greater focusing of the player base. This should be big and fun, so be sure to show up.
8:00pm EST - Rabbit Chase in Sheep Cloning Facility.
As always. Hopefully won't lag so bad today. Everyone is blaming the Starr Report for a net-wide lag; let's hope this is the problem and it's not a new problem with VIE GWest. The game is really fun in the old Chaos map. Please don't leave the Turf game for this unless you are genuinely bored, as I don't like the idea of the SCF having any negative effects on other Vangel-run VIE zones...also Turf kicks the shit out of Running games. ;)
11 September 1998
News of the Day
Don't let the bastards grind you down.
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- The Cult Is Alive -
The page is finally up for the Cult of the Final Call. If you'd like to take an active and long term part in preserving and lengthening the life of Subspace, even after the thrill of being in a cult wears off, then get involved and head on over to the CFC page. I'm sure after reading the literature half of you will pull out. We'll deal with you punks later. ;)
The first CFC project goes into full effect today. As I said in my last Minefield update: We are going to reinvent Alpha Zone. It might even be fun! :o My thanks to Cybrid, QA Man, and SubSpecies for the early pimping before I even asked for it. :)
This is who we are.
- The Return of General Rage -
No, not to the game. He has more or less retired from Subspace, but he has returned to the Mapmakers Guild. I kind of talked him into rejoining as a matter of principle. Let it be known that the MMG treats its retirees and sabbaticalists well. ;) For those who arrived late, General Rage is the author of the first ever player-designed Turf Zone map, which I still consider to be the finest of its kind. I believe it was also the first map to sport a custom border. Welcome back man; it's an honor to have you.
Meanwhile, keep ur eyes peeled for our eleventh member, coming soon.
- Rabbit Chase, 8:00pm Eastern, VIE Sheep Cloning GWest -
Proudly featuring the classic original Rod Humble map for Chaos Zone. Nuff said. Be there.
- Gommy Rules -
I was just about to try and start something like this when Gommy posts a reminder on his page that it already exists! The Subspace Calendar at Destruction 98 is a kick ass idea. It's an experiment at this stage; please don't abuse it, but do post your events. I've already posted two. :)
A few responses to Gommy's recent posts, while I'm at it. Magazines belong in plastic wrap. It's the newstand's responsibility to see that there is an open copy available for browsing! As for Shanoyu's recent WZ map, I would like to contest the assertion that the errors which plagued it last Sunday had to do with Shan's "innocence as a player". While I don't take offense at this remark, I must point out that I spent several hours helping Shanoyu with the map and didn't catch the mistakes either. More interestingly, Arctos' first map contained, in its earliest version (which I consider the finest War Zone map ever made), contained three closed rooms large enough to be used as bases. The point being that type of thing is an uncommon problem that really occurs only in the course of untraditional mapping styles, and I've never seen the same mistake made the same way twice.
Lastly, I should mention that these closed rooms were not the only problem with Shanoyu's map, and that I have seen it in other maps as well. In War Zone, you cannot have a one-tile gap that a ship can't fly up against. Players need to be able to get within one tile of the flag, or it is impossible to pick up. If you have a three tile long vulching hole, there is of course only (in theory) about a 1/900,000 chance that a flag will drop there...but if you have a lot of them and some are near a flag chamber, you are asking for trouble.
Oh yeah, the punk updated his page again. See?
Oh yeah! Wait, I have to mention this. Something screwy about his host causes me to never see his updated unless I reload the page once. I have no idea why this happens, but as long as he has no hit counter I won't suspect anything. ;)
- League and me are like THIS! -
Saturn thinks I need a link to Pro League. What do you think? 8)
10 September 1998
Shit, I missed 9/8/98.
Time is a train--makes the future the past.
Leaves you standing in the station with your face pressed up against the glass.
-
- Welcome to the CFC -
The Cult of the Final Call is in effect. If you are already a member, you probably know it. Details of the First Phase will be made known within the next few days.
For those not yet enlightened: The Cult of the Final Call is a society of Subspace players sworn to be present at the last Subspace game ever--and to work at preventing that game from ever happening. If you are interested, please contact me. Be warned that this is not a Fun Club; it is work. First Phase involves the reinventing of Alpha Zone. Stay tuned.
- Chaos Zone West, Rest in Peace -
Not the original Chaos West, I hasten to point out. The original Chaos West died early this year. The former name of the zone that was taken down yesterday was none other than Chaos Nevada. Yup, we killed both Chaos West *and* Chaos Nevada.
Hadar put up a sad but positive post at The Wormhole, in which he was especially nice to me (which I appreciate) and Xirphoid, who I must say very much deserved it. While Hadar often took my recommendations for map and settings changes, and was kind enough to run my map for a month or so, the zone was propped up by him and Xirphoid, who with the exceptions of Chakotay and Peasant's Paladin are probably the hardest working Vangels in the game. I hope very much that they are given ownership of other zones. Chaos West was one of the most progressive and well handled zones in Subspace, and was in my opinion largely the victim of circumstances beyond its control. In some small part, it was the victim of its own stubbornness. Hadar and Xirphoid have a right to be disappointed in this game and its players; I hope they won't let it get to them as is sometimes the case where unsuccessful zones are concerned.
In honor of Chaos West I've put up the original CZW map in Sheep Cloning, as it originally appeared before Jolly Roger's changes. If anyone would rather see the altered map put up in its place, just holler. (See story below.)
- Sheep Cloning Plans -
In the wake of the CZW massacre, I am a bit unsettled and have decided on a slightly more conservative approach for Sheep Cloning Facility, at least until we've managed to build back enough of a player base to get decent participation in the message board and so forth.
Scenarios are still going to run. It will always be on a Saturday evening at 8pm Eastern. Other than those scenarios, the SCF will be running a Rabbit Chase game with more or less traditional VIE settings (except for the Shark).
I will be changing the map on a weekly basis to keep things interesting, but nothing too radical. Next up is the Arctos RZ map which hasn't yet been hosted at VIE, then I may go back to my own Chaos map, which was fairly popular back whenever.
Game time from this day forth is 8pm Eastern, every day.
All scenarios will run Saturday at 8pm Eastern.
Also, don't forget Turf Classic at 6pm Eastern, Saturday and Sunday...
...and WSL Special Events on Wednesdays at 10pm Eastern.
- Quake Sucks -
I've been playing Quake for a few days and have basically found it to be totally unsatisfying. Imagine Subspace with no greening, where all you did was fight over T20/J12 style safe zones with a flag in them.....oh wait, that's Trench Wars. ;) Sorry guys, no offense, but thank GOD this game gets deeper than that. I know Quake goes a little deeper also, if you look hard enough, but so far I've not found a single reason to feel I have something invested in my character. If he dies, there is no consequence, and you are playing against a whole lot of people who also know there is no real consequence associated with dying. It's not even a little bit scary. I'm an old Doom player. I play Quake at hardest level with the lights off and never cheat. I'm not all that good; it takes me an hour to get through a new level, but 4 times out of 5 I'll have done it without dying. It's the suspense I love about that game, and being scared shitless, backed up against a corner for five minutes because you don't know what's down which hall. This is totally incompatible with the multiplayer experience, and I am getting jaded pretty fast.
Mind you, I don't feel I am being unkind to Quake when I say these things, really. A few months back I read a Game Fan review of the Saturn port of Quake, and was overjoyed to see someone defend it in its single player incarnation. In single player game, Quake is in fact my second favorite computer game, so I don't think I am out of line in saying that multiplayer Quake, in my experience,.is extremely overrated.
I still love it though. }:) Just wanted to reassure whoever cares that I haven't left y'all for the gayass 3D-shooter scene.
- Gay Lame Facts About Me ! -
Since I have nothing better to do and I'm babbling already.
band: U2
formerly: Fields of the Nephilim, The Cure, Slowdive
albums: The Nephilim, Achtung Baby
movie: Aliens
other:
book: Winterlong by Elizabeth Hand
console games: The Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy IV, Wipeout XL
television: Millennium, Sifl n' Olly, Robotech
composer: Ralph Vaughan Williams
living composer: Gavin Bryars
people I don't know: Kate Moss, James Cameron, The Edge, Elizabeth Hand, Andrew Blake, Walter Williams
other: Don't let the Bat get ur svvord.
- The Gommy Home Page? -
Gommy is thinking of giving his SCF page a real name--a pretty good idea in my opinion since it's not really about the SCF too often. ;) This is of course largely my fault since the SCF has been kind of boring recently. He has a voting script up and stuff, and a suggestions box. Personally I'd like to see him keep a personal page with little side pages for SCF and mapping and so forth. Did you know he actually has four pages? Bet you can't find em!
Gommy, name ur page after that box in Hellraiser, since all your maps look like it. ;)
8 September 1998
Welcome back!
When I am king you will be fast against the wall
with your opinion which is of no consequence at all.
-
- Doh -
I forgot to mention that I was lelaving for the weekend and some change. I hope I didn't lose my audience. :( More frequent updating from now on, I promise!
- Neo Mapper God Shanoyu -
As the first order of business I want to congratulate my badass squadmate Shanoyu on getting his new map up in War Zone--never an easy task, and all the more difficult because of some last minute technical changes that needed to be taken care of. My thanks to Peasant's Paladin for putting up with the mess and to all the players in WZ who have been supportive of the new map. I only hope I have a chance to really play in it before some jizz eating Terrier pilot edits it and sticks a bunch of L3 force gates in the bases.
- Chaos What? -
Smitty74 stuck a new/old map up for testing yesterday in Chaos East. This is actually a remixed version of the old Battle Drone, partly the work of Jolly Roger, though he had two interns work on it too, since he is getting kind of rusty. ;) Since I just got home I haven't had a chance to play in it, but since I am a War Zone player I am blessed with the rare ability to judge a map's play value just by looking at an image of it! Well....maybe not, but I will say that I am pretty pissed about what was done to the block of tunnels along the northern wall, in service to a new structure that could easily have been placed elsewhere. Also, the horizontal running tunnels in the lower left have been replaced with....dots? This is not Chaos; this is totally in service to the kind of players who panic when they fall into a tunnel. Let's get real here; open space is NOT neutral or the default environment in this game; the proper terrain for Chaos especially is variety. Tunnel rats don't like spawning in open space any more than swarmers and stat junkies like to warp into a tunnel. The enemies of Chaos tunnel systems really need to grow up and learn to play ALL of this game.
- WSL Event -
Lately there is no better place to be on Wednesday nights than in VIE WS League MEast. This week's event looks like it may be the best yet--Team Rumble, which will start out as a one on one match and escalate into a full fledged brawl. This is going to be a lot of fun. See you there, right? RIGHT? :) Check out the WSL Special Events page for rules and times.
- Linkage -
All the dates are wrong in the links table below. Sorry. I'll fix em tonite.
2 September 1998
not much
I don't need to sell my soul; he's already in me.
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- Chaos East Update -
I missed the beginning of the meeting, but the plan seems to be that each of the challenger maps will get a week's worth of testing in the zone. This was agreed upon last night at the CZE Vangel meeting, but the map apparently won't be chosen until Monday. It will be decided on by a Vangel vote. Maps in the running include new work my Shanoyu, Xirphoid, and myself, my old map, a remix by FusionGT, and a collaborative remix by Jolly Roger, Map Maker, and Paintshop. It's possible that Slappy's remix map will be considered also, since it is far better than anything even the best team of mappers is likely to come up with in the space of a week.
One thing I find very disturbing is that, for some reason, the CZE Vangels are still talking about whatever map "wins" after all these tests becoming the permanent map for the zone. Not only is this flat-out silly, but it seems designed to stack favor towards the Battle Drone map, since no one in their right mind would want to be rid of it forever.
If the Vangels are willing to consider changing the map forever, why else shy away from changing it occasionally?
At any rate, look for a new map to go up in Chaos East on Monday or Tuesday. I'm predicting it will be Shanoyu's level, with the old Rod/Jolly remix in a close second place. I frankly wouldn't mind seeing mine up either, tho. ;)
- WSL Reminder -
Remember that cool All the King's Men event is happening tonight in VIE WS League MEast. The zone is open to the public, the event is casual (no signups or anything), all you have to do is read the rules and then show up. 10:00pm Eastern.
- Sifl and Olly! -
I love this program! Was there some conspiracy to not tell me about this show? I was sure I must be very square and arriving on the scene far too late. In fact, the show has been running for quite some time now with few people seeming to know about it--the same weird word-of-mouth strategy MTV tried with AMP a couple years ago, I guess. This show is the funniest thing I have seen in years. Yeah, they're sock puppets. Surprisingly, they aren't anywhere near as rude as you might expect from sock puppets that have their own show on MTV. In fact, they're quite friendly, and they're cute as hell. Everyone on the show is cute as hell, actually--simply the best acting by sock puppets in recent memory. You'll see what I mean. ;)
Sifl & Olly is on MTV, Monday through Friday (or Tuesday through Saturday, if you want to get picky) at 12:30am ET/PT (11:30 pm Central)
Look at this page!
1 September 1998
Do you practice safe mapping?
It don't matter where you bury me; I'll be home and I'll be free.
It don't matter where I lay; all my tears be washed away.
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- A Warning to Map Makers -
I submitted the following article to Warstrike as news in response to Reaps' complaints at having overwritten a map-in-progress by entering Witch Race, whose map is called local.lvl and thus downloaded over his own work. The article was never posted, and since I consider these important issues that a lot of people--especially new mappers and zone owners--aren't aware of, I am posting it here. Please feel free to repost it in any form you see fit. People lose work all the time because of these easily avoided mistakes.
After reading Reaps' August 9th article about Witch Race, I thought I ought
to chime in with something that actually should have been said a long time
ago. NEVER save your maps as local.lvl or they will be overwritten. Not
might be; WILL BE. The problem with Witch Race is extremely common.
On a similar note, any simple filenames like level.lvl, castle.lvl, wzmap.lvl,
and so forth are very, very likely to be destroyed sooner or later. Give your
map a proper name--a LONG name--and use that as the filename, even it
it's i-dunno-what-to-call-this.lvl; put your name and the date in it if you can't
think of anything else.
As for those of you running servers, please be courteous in the names you
choose for your maps. Those mapmakers new enough to the trade to
overlook the local.lvl pitfall are exactly the people who might spend dozens
of hours to get only a few quadrants designed. Losing that much work can
be devastating. I'd also like to point out to zone owners at VIE (and possibly
other server groups) that the ?setlevel command causes your local file to
overwrite onto whatever the server is using. That is, it uses the same name.
When I uploaded my Chaos map, I overwrote VectorBoy's St. Patty's Day
map--in turn, anyone who entered the zone downloaded my map over St.
Patty's Day. All copies of this map could potentially have been lost.
(Fortunately, Silent Dragon had a copy.)
If you have lost a published map for any of these reasons, get in touch with
me. I have a huge collection of player zone maps and may be able to help.
For anyone who loses an unpublished local.lvl to the Witch Race demon,
I strongly recommend Norton Utilities, which can sometimes recover files
that have been completely overwritten.
And if $70 seems like too much to pay for recovering a lost level, you need
to spend more time making maps. ;)
Since I wrote that, something else has come to my attention. It is very important that mapmakers back up their work on a frequent basis, even if they are taking precautions against all of these hazards. It isn't enough to just have the last version before you made changes; one should try, as much is reasonably convenient, to keep two good current copies of a work in progress. Never mind the fact that files can become corrupt anyway. With Subspace maps, you are dealing with tilesets that frequently become corrupted through one process or another. Loading in a tileset that is a pixel too small or too many colors will DESTROY your map. The damage will be permanent and you will never recover that level file. A few simple but important rules to follow.
Don't open a tileset in your graphics editor directly out of a .lvl file unless you are certain that the file isn't corrupt. Open it in SSME first to make sure it is a good file.
Each time you save your tileset, make a quick check of its statistics. Make sure it is 304x160 pixels and 256 colors.
Make a habit of saving an extra copy into local.lvl every time you are done working. This will save your ass more times than you might expect.
Remember what operating system we're using and how cheap 200k of hard drive space is. Save your map as einexile-chaos02-19980901-01.lvl or whatever. Keep organized and have that security of those recent versions to go back to. Even if you do absolutely nothing wrong, you will find your map files irreparably corrupted from time time time.
The up side of all this is that good mapmakers don't have to use a condom. ;)
- War Zone, Land of Cretins and Philistines -
While all hell was breaking loose on the Chaos East boards, a quiet minority was busy ramming a weird remix of T2-17's map through the WZ Vangels' feeble defenses. From what I understand, a few pseudo-elites approached Peasant's Paladin after the last Vangel meeting and, claiming some kind of membership (unofficial or assumed at best) in the SSSG, somehow convinced him to put up a revised version of the map.
This revision was not retooled by T2-17 or even with his permission but by someone who had not made a map before, and the result was a map in War Zone which contained poor base designs and a boatload of tiling errors. An even newer version has since been put up, correcting a few of these problems, but it will never be up to the caliber of T2-17's work. Yet another lesson in the long, ugly history of map tinkering by people who don't understand maps.
I haven't named the person responsible for the current map becaause he has agreed to ask its original author for permission.
The WZ Vangels are getting back on track from a fairly light summer of few issues and classic maps, so all this is understandable, even if the insult paid to the original work--and more importantly the stigma it will probably wear forever, preventing it from being used again--is about as close to unforgivable as you're likely to find a video game.
A more well organized group of Vangels, with a stricter voting and implementation system, would not have let this come about. Where there is confusion, there are people who will prey on it for their own means. The folks who run these zones are doing you a favor, and do NOT deserve this kind of disrespect. Please think twice next time before making life hell for the people who keep this game running.
And say goodbye to the second best War Zone map of all time. It's gone forever.
- Behold ! My New Links List -
I put this together for my own convenience and it's turned out to be a handy startup page, fast loading with no java or images, and reuses the same spawn window of ur browser. I'll be expanding both versions and probably adding a couple of longer types with non-Subspace junk on em. Requests and suggestions are welcome. Available in Verbose and Brief. Enjoy. :)
- Peasant's Paladin updated his Scribbles. -
This was a few days ago but I forgot to mention it. ;) Most notable here is the reappearance of the infamous How to Hack Password Protected Web Pages, a tutorial in many parts which caused a minor uproar at Maxig a few months back. It's interesting in that it doesn't actually give you any of the solutions. You learn by doing, so to speak, with only very subtle clues to help you along.
PP's Scribbles
- Scenarios and the Billing Server -
It turned out to be lucky indeed that I called off FlippMode's Kill the President scenario for this weekend and postponed it a couple of weeks. As I had feared (thought this wasn't my reason for postponing), the billing server was down while the scenario would have been running! If this keeps up and the SCF doesn't get some reasonable reassurance from VIE that it isn't a permanent thing, we're going to have to rethink our scenario plans. If I'm not mistaken, this is the third weekend in a row that there have been problems with the billing server.
If any server out there would be willing to furnish itself as a backup venue for SCF scenarios, so we have an alternative in the event that we come down to zero hour and can't run the scen I would really appreciate it. This would mean a couple hours of standby every other weekend, hopefully used rarely. Please contact me if you can help.
- The Battle Drone Question -
After much arguing over the fate of the Chaos East level, the CZE messageboards seem to have toned down some. We are left with a tangle of new maps and reworked old maps, and a lot of people who are pissed off that things either are going to change or aren't going to change. I got angrier and meaner than most, and took a few days off from the boards to get my head together. I've come up with a proposal I think might seem reasonable to everyone. If you're concerned about the future of Chaos East, please have a look and let's try to work something out.
Chaos East Message Board
- Yet Another New Gommy Map! -
Gommy has posted an image of his new level, a scenario design for FlippMode's upcoming Alien Resurrection. If you're too lame to read his awesome page on a regular basis, at least check out the map itself. This scenatio is going to kick ass. }:)
- All the King's Men -
After missing last weeks WSL event but sticking around long enough to see the huge turnout, I am convinced that hallucination's special events in World Subspace League are the best thing this game has seen in quite some time. This kind of exciting, friendly and casual competition is exactly what Subspace needs.
For those not familiar with League stuff, I sympathize, because I've only been there a few times myself and barely have an idea of how it works, but don't lose interest that fast, because the zone is open on Wednesdays, and at night the special events are run. These are open to everyone; the only requirement is that you make yourself aware of the rules and respect them while the game is going on.
This week's event is called All the King's Men. It sounds like a lot of fun; if you have a problem with me and want to mine repel me a few times, you know where I'll be this Wednesday night. ;)
From the WSL Special Events page:
-
The WSL Special Event presents
This Wednesday September 2nd at 10pm ET
All the King's Men!
Protect your 'King' while trying to kill the others!
Rules
8 Pilots per freq
1 King (Flag Carrier) per freq with 'extras'
- More energy/recharge
- Slight speed downgrade
- Slight firing upgrade
- 5x points for kills!!
If a freq's King is killed, the freq is out!
Unlimited deaths for the other players
15 minute games
4 Freqs per game
If not all freqs are eliminated, most points wins
Protect your King or DIE!!!
- Sorry Again -
I got a 3Dfx card on Saturday and in an unrelated story finally got around to installing Independence War. Somehow I managed not to play Subspace for a few days. ;) Mother of God is this thing amazing... watching the Earth and Moon zoom by as you approach relativistic speeds, with your wingman disappearing ahead of you and reappearing from behind you. The way the ships look is phenomenal; this is the first space battle game I've seen that really looks good enough to be a movie. Oh, and this screenshot below is from the software emulated version. Voodoo enhanced looks even sweeter. I'll get into the insane complexity of the game play as soon as I actually understand it.
-
- Oh yeah! -
Today is this page's 3/4 year birthday. ;)
