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Eleventh Highest Shelf Vittles: 2.14.99-3.28.99
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Sunday 3/28/99
Visit GoJo's "Pearl River Plantation"
"Yessiree at GoJo's dee-lux new
Pearl River
Plantation we got our own plantation
house, an exquisite grand maison in the classic colonial
style complete with luxurious firelit
parlors sporting custom, 100% authentic wallpaper and
upholstery an' spacious accomodations
for th' most discriminatin' visitor with breathtaking
views of Mississippi's languid
Pearl River. Oh erm my boy Jesse is gonna fix that busted window
up right away --"Jesse! Git yo' lazy butt in here an' fix this
durned winder!"-- where was I? Ah yes th' house has a grand
entryway with a dazzling orchard. You'll enjoy peaceful sunny
afternoons in the shade of the old
barn, soaking in the rich scent of fresh-cut hay. And err
fer those with more adventurous noses you'll enjoy getting up
close to nature in our lovely pasture.
Of course you'll meet lots of friendly
locals too. For a genuine historic
trip, drop by th' plantation's old
slave quarters, preserved in
their original condition, real monuments to our nation's sad
history. Yes, it truly is all here folks. I could go on about
the great fishing in the Pearl River (watch the strong current),
the cookhouse with its roaring fires, the billiard room, the
crystal clear creek with its old-fashioned, naturally refrigerated
cooling house... but face it, you'll really have to drop by in
person to take in this once in a lifetime experience. And of
course, its Free! Maybe a bit of a trip, but we think you'll find
Pearl River Plantation is well worth the wait."
Okay so I was one of the lucky folks who got to test this
level and watch its final development. GoJo's done an amazing
job, there really are many many innovative and incredible touches
in this map. Playing in the barn, the orchard and most of all
the big mansion is a real blast. :) It's a big map but can be
very fun even with just a few people -- creeping through the
wooded paths and sneaking around the upstairs bedrooms in the
mansion is great fun. Wellll, I like it. Oh yah there's also
a voodoo doll hidden away in the level that I made, a bit rough
but it's my first custom .itm, my own misshapen baby if you will.
;) You have my permission to use it on your own maps if you should
want to for some strange reason, as long as you give me a lil'
credit of course (common courtesy folks :).
ShotgunMC contributed some better .itms of his own,
like the lovely fish and some breakable household objects; there's
a great amount of expensive-looking stuff to smash. =D GoJo's
really outdone himself on this one -- heck he's outdone just
about everyone. If you don't like this map face it, there IS
something wrong with you.
New Sites
If there's one thing we're seeing even more of than new maps
these days, it's new Outlaws sites. Check out these two:
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Doc Dead's Home Page
Really not much here aside from some links, high-bandwidth
animations and a few cheat codes but somehow I can't get
too upset with this one. Mebbe it's that nice peaceful
swirly blue background or something, but this small site
seems a bit more pleasant than the usual first-time site.
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Strobe's Gaming Room & Chat
He may mean well, but the broken images and the multiplying
xoom.com frames at the top just don't do the Java chatroom
any favors. Frankly I thought we'd seen the last of these
java chats quite some time ago -- all the sites that had them
are gone... mebbe it's because they just aren't that
convenient? Well Strobe's got one here for all who want one.
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Cheats, Mods and Servers (Oh My!)
A reliable source tells me that there is in fact a device that
people (sad, pathetic people with no pride) can use to cheat
in multiplayer Outlaws. Given the fact that this device costs
around $50 and most losers sorry enough to buy it would be
using it for other games, I'm not too concerned about it... it's
just kind of regrettable that anyone would be that desperate
to win at an online game. Of course in Outlaws you can tell
right away who's actually good and who isn't so I imagine anyone
using something like this would stand out like a sore thumb...
not to mention the fact that news of cheaters travels like
wildfire in the chatty Outlaws community.
VoodooExtreme had
a blurb up about a Western mod for Quake II. You can find out
all about it on the official "Wanted"
site. It's gonna be a commercial release (ie costing $) but they
do have a demo and a movie that you can download to check it
out. Actually looked pretty well done though still quite
Quakish -- dark with stodgy-looking character models. Some nice
sound effects in the movie though.
Got a lot of feedback about the dedicated Outlaws host idea,
thanks a lot to everyone who wrote in! I got a lot of postitive
responses so I'm pretty sure I'm going to give it a try, though
it will take some doing so be patient with me... Killercraig
pointed out that I should be sure to reiterate that it is just
an idea, it might not work out too well but hey, it'll be fun
to try. Frankly part of this is just an excuse to set up my own
little LAN here. ;) ForkTongue had a rather unique
perspective on the whole Outlaws hosting issue:
The way the zone handles the networking
seems to even the games a bit more by poorly handling the data exchange.
(Lag can be yer friend) :P You see what makes the zone so bad is what
makes it more fair I think. because it acts like a buffer between host
and client. Although I still notice a clear advantage when hosting and
even more exaggerated in Ip games. I came to me hypothesis or misguided
assumptions if you prefer, by comparing very many games to the same
people.............So in theory your server would give a fair shooting
grounds by acting as host and absorbing that advantage. Assuming that
the clients have pretty equal ping to your connection then that would
make it about the most even game you could have.
Well you know I just hadn't thought of that at all. Of course
being peer-to-peer Outlaws' networking
handles difference in ping more fairly than your regular
client-server type of game (Fork had an amusing story of how
he finally got fed up with poor Half-Life pings and set up his
own server, but there his ping was so low compared to everyone
else that he whupped 'em all
easily and nobody wanted to stick around too long) but I've always thought
that yes the host does have a very slight advantage in most
cases simply 'cause they respawn and see items respawn a bit
faster'n everyone else, though in a small game like a one-on-one
the difference really is virtually nonexistent unless the two
players just have an extremely poor connection to each other.
Some testing yesterday with Gryphon and GoJo as
victims showed pretty plainly that an NT server isn't going
to work (two crashes in two attempts, ouch) so it'll have to
be Win95. Fork also pointed out that it might be possible,
either with scripts or some kind of macro program, to get the
server to reboot or switch maps automatically. If I can avoid
having to reset the server a lot I'll be happy but perhaps those
things could help if there does indeed turn out to be some
sort of problem with lag accumulating the longer a game is
hosted.
Oh just dropped by Mallard's
an' noticed he worked up a pretty neat Flash splash page for
his site -- pretty impressive stuff ("Ahh! Big Outlaws logo
coming straight for me!" =).
* * *
Friday 3/26/99
The Eternal Game
Vague, momentous-sounding titles are fun.
So I had an idea this morning. This in itself was quite
unusual, not because I don't get ideas now and then but
because I usually get my ideas at night just before I go
to bed, as if my subconscious plots to rob me of sleep
by storing these things up all day and releasing them only
when it senses an impending relaxation of mental energies.
Anyhow even though it came at an irregular time I thought it
was a pretty good ideas, as far as mine go. It was this: I could
get an old computer, network it with my current one off my DSL
Internet connection and set it up to do one thing: host
Outlaws games.
Now you know I've been the first to point out in the past that
Outlaws, a peer-to-peer networking game, doesn't really benefit
from a "dedicated" server. This is because in an Outlaws match
each computer shares information equally with all the other
computers, with the slight exception of the hosting computer
which also keeps track of respawns and the frag count. So all
a dedicated server is is a host that doesn't actually join in
the action and just sits in the Lobby while players come and
go and kill each other (and maybe even kill the host with a
lucky TNT shot near the invisible Lobby location ;). The server
just makes one more computer that all the other computers have
to send information to and get information from, increasing
required bandwidth with no real benefit.
Well I thought about that some more. Yes, a server will increase
bandwidth -- sort of. Since they aren't moving, they won't send
state updates to the other computers, so other players won't
have an increase in data they have to download -- in that respect
it would be as if the host weren't actually there at all. The
bandwidth increase would only come for other clients in the
upload, as they would have one more computer to which they would have
to upload their own position/action data. BUT after many
sessions of Outlaws where I kept a close eye on my network
bandwidth meter (thanks to
DUCMeter which you can get in
files) I have learned
that Outlaws downloads much more data than it transmits, so
a little addition to upload size should not significantly impact
your gaming bandwidth.
As for latency, or lag, which can also be cause by just slow
internet connections, my DSL link has pretty darn fast ping times
to nearly everyone in th' whole darn world. So that shouldn't
be much of a problem. Most people would have faster ping times
to me than to most other hosts. The one fella who tried this
idea b'fore, th' Doominator, did run into some latency
issues 'cause his server was in Hong Kong. Doominator also
had just a 64k leased line, whereas I have a
256k-download/640k-upload DSL connection. I guess I'd do a bit
better to most folks if I were on the East Coast, but I should still be a
pretty good ping. ;) Also, because the host wouldn't be in the
game processing graphics and sounds (I'd disable sound) it would
be free to concentrate all CPU power on making sure items and
players respawned quickly.
Doominator also ran into an issue with memory or something
getting filled up as the game went on, producing more and more
lag as the hours and bodies mounted. That could be a problem
but I think I could combat it pretty effectively in several
ways. First, I could reboot the machine at least once a day,
probably twice a day. Second, I could make sure I had at least
64 MB of RAM onboard. And third, I could run the game in Windows
NT, which has better memory handling than Windows9x. I'm pretty
sure there wouldn't be any lag trouble specific to NT, I've hosted
an NT match before (which did lag, but that was on my modem so
was pretty much business as usual for me then :P) but of course
if there was a problem I could always just go back to Win95.
So anyhow I think this could work pretty well. I could set up
a special mail address
to which you folks could mail map/game requests -- though I
don't think I'd have too much trouble finding some good maps
to host. ;) The server's IP address would be pretty stable, though
technically subject to change but I'd keep the IP posted on this
page so you could always check here to track it down if it
did switch. So if th' Zone was out an' Kali was out an' th'
#Outlaws_players IRC channel was out, well you'd always have
somewhere to go to find a game, anytime.
I think I'll be able to get a decent system pretty cheap in the
form of an old, throw-away system from work. I was talking with
the Tech Support guy today and when he asked what I would be
hosting with it, and I said Outlaws, he went over to this
medium-sized cardboard box on a shelf, rooted around for about
one second and came up with the OEM version of Outlaws. I'd
never seen that before and was suitably impressed -- the CD's
come in those little paper slip-covers, and are sort of light
maroon colored with the yellow Outlaws logo on them. But what
really impressed me was that box which turned out to be filled
entirely with OEM versions of games in slip-covers -- probably
virtually every game that has had an OEM version in the past
two years. Ahh, a box of wonders....
But I've been digressing again. I would you folks to let me
know what you think of this idea -- basically, is it something
you think you would like? I could probably get this set up
within a week... well mebbe a lil' longer 'cause I'll need
help from Big Nose Kate to help set up the LAN (she's
a positive wiz with this type o'thing). Anyhow, gimme feedback
on this! Now! Personally I jus' think I'd sleep easier knowing
that there would always be a game of Outlaws running somewhere...
forever and ever... or until I can't pay my utility
bills any more. ;)
Daily Doses
Doses sent me a mail about revamping his site a couple
days ago and I feel pretty lame for not getting to it 'til
now, 'specially since it's such a great lil' site:
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The Syndicate Outlaws Posse
Excellent "Newz" page by man-in-the-trenches Doses. Keep
those daily updates coming and I'll keep coming back!
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* * *
Thursday 3/25/99
Argh and Stuff
Argh. I'm trying to get some sort of human sleeping schedule
so I've got to get used to my days being about an hour shorter.
This makes me a much more pleasant and cheerful person to
be around but on nights like this where I'm also beta testing
some cool upcoming Outlaws stuff (not tellin', nyah nyah :P)
the news kind of gets shanked.
Well let's do what we can. Karrde says that was indeed
a new map of his pictured in the LawMaker editor that he sent
a shot of the other day. In fact he's kind of run into LawMaker's
block and would appreciate some help. He's trying to make a
flour mill with a water wheel, but isn't sure what exactly
a mill looks like on the inside. So if anyone has the inside
scoop, send him a mail at [removed]..
Oh yah he also has some very very early screenshots up at
his
web page.
Sleepy has been trying to get that custom .itm fix thing
to work, you know the one Karrde reported from Templar about
fixing it so custom .itms appear to all players, not just the
host. He can't seem to get it to take, if you have any ideas
mail him at [removed].
Also he sent a few screenshots of his map in progress, check
out that lush custom grass texture by gosh Karrde himself:
shot 1 and
shot 2.
Dang dang dang. There's one more thing I haven't gotten to,
not to mention all my email. Well nuts that's what the weekend
is for I guess (and to think I used to think weekends were for
chillin' out :P).
* * *
Wednesday 3/24/99
Another One from WalkerTR
WalkerTR
came up with another map making it five straight
maps that I've gotten from the same fella, that has
got to be a record! His latest is
DaHood,
sort of an urban environment type of thing with three blocks
of low buildings and a part-like area. Pretty much in the same
mold as his last four with wide open, flat spaces, maze-like
buildings and a profusion of items scattered throughout. Here
be the screenshot.
Outlaws A3D Sound and Vortex 2 Cards: Bad News and Maybe
Some Good
Okay so you know that folks with Vortex 2 sound cards like
Diamond's MX300 have discovered that you lose a big chunk of
framerate in noisy multiplayer games where the card runs out
of 3D sound channels. The latest Aureal reference drivers still
support only 16 simultaneous 3D sound streams.
I wrote to Lucasarts, Diamond and Aureal about this problem.
The brief reply from Wes at Lucasarts basically stated that
Vortex 2 cards were new and they could not guarantee
compatibility. My followup question as to whether there might
be a command to switch sound providers (back to DirectSound)
when a match became too noisy met with an emphatic No. So
if you're in a match with A3D enabled and it gets crowded and
your framerate goes downhill you have to quit out, switch
to DirectSound and rejoin, or just suffer. :P
Tony at Diamond Multimedia told be that they were not aware
of any instances where the MX300 drivers could cause a loss of
framerate. I guess he didn't read my email very carefully
'cause if he had he would have been aware of an instance.
Well let us just say that I "put his a$$ in the know." ;P
Still it looks like Diamond is going to do their best to
ignore the issue and hope it will go away.
Well, maybe it will. I haven't heard back from Aureal yet, but
some poking around the net brought to light a good many articles
mentioning that although the Vortex 2 drivers currently support
just 16 3D sound channels in hardware, the next driver release
will support 76. Now THAT should be enough for even the noisiest
Outlaws match. ;) The only concern I have now is that Outlaws'
A3D implementation may limit the game to just 16 channels, but
I don't really see why they would have to do that in software.
So let's keep our fingers crossed and look forward to the next
reference driver release from Aureal.
Meanwhile you might pass the time by educating yerself by
perusing the wonderful
Unofficial
Vortex 2 FAQ at 3DSoundSurge.com.
My Mind is on the Blink
...as the Beatles did say when they were So Tired. I've got
lots more news piled up in my inbox which actually got an
unprecedented influx of mail today. However, I am pooped
so I will have to try to get to that stuff tomorrow.
Well okay let's get through some short stuff right now.
GoJo pointed out to me that the OLPOLYS cheat,
while more useful for giving LawMakers feedback on their
map's performance than
OLFPS, also drops framerates a bit below those shown by
OLFPS. Just something to keep in mind when comparing
framerates on multiplayer maps.
Karrde wants to be clear that th' tip he passed on
about LawMaker settings for custom .itms to keep them visible
for all players (see yesterday's Vittles) came from the great
mind of master Templar, Karrde was just passing it along.
Actually I got an email from Templar, except if wasn't from
Templar but Nighty who is in the US now (woohoo) and
wanted to let me know that she has moved her Outlaws "House
of Style," otherwise known as the wonderful
Women of Outlaws
site.
Of course you know you want to check it out guys so I suggest
you bookmark it now in case you forget to write down the URL
in all the excitement. ;j She's given the page a smashing
revamping and tells me she will have plenty of time to work
on it now. Geez, I need a gig like that!
* * *
Tuesday 3/23/99
Disappearing Custom .ITM Fix from Karrde
Karrde (hope Creative sends you that new Banshee soon,
man!) came up with a very simple LawMaker fix for a common
problem in Outlaws maps that use custom items (.itm files)
where the item only shows up for the host. This has been
a problem with those sequoia trees for instance. Anyhow all
you have to do is check a few property boxes in LawMaker,
Karrde sent this screenshot
to show which ones. Hurray, glad that's cleared up. :) And
hey, izzat an unreleased map in that screenshot?
Interview with "High Noon" Producer
Found a link on VoodooExtreme
to a interview
on 3DNews.net with Nathan Dennis, president of
Six-Shooter Studios,
six guys who have announced their intention to do a Western
shooter with the LithTech engine. You should go check it out,
it brings to mind a lot of the reasons why Outlaws is so
great (note the very first question mentions Outlaws). Here's
Q and A regarding the multiplayer concept:
Now for multi-player. Will we have all the standard modes: DM, CTF etc? Also will there be any coop modes?
As we mentioned in the PC Accelerator piece the multi-player will be a key selling point. There will be two key portions. The massively multi-player persistant universe (ala Everquest, UO) and the straight team-based (ala Tribes). The persistant world will involve gangs of goods and bads, lone soldiers, and scripted events like Indian attacks. The team mode will be very much in the Rainbow Six mold, where the goal will be robbing a bank (or defending it) and so on for all the different level types (for a complete list of levels check out the piece in PC Accelerator, it has all the info we can give out at this time and would take me too long to go through right now)
Hmm well that's interesting, and very ambitious. I'm a bit
concerned that in the current rush to "mission-based multiplayer"
as in Tribes, Team Fortress, Rainbow Six and so forth that the
pure multiplayer mayhem known as simple Deathmatch may be
tossed aside. I mean sure mission-based play is interesting,
Outlaws has that in simple form with Capture the Flag. But
you know, while CTF is a nice change now and then, I just
don't see it replacing Deathmatch as my meat and potatoes.
There are a few things that would get on my nerves. For the
most part I wouldn't like having to do some sort of task
aside from staying alive. I mean you have to defend the base,
capture a flag, etc etc. One of my coworkers plays Tribes
after hours and I watch him spend all his time purchasing
his inventory, repairing base components and placing portable
defense turrets. Ohhh boy the fun. Don't get me wrong, there's
a thrill to be had from taking a guy out just as he's about
to round a corner with your flag, or capturing a flag yourself,
but man if I want menial tasks I can get enough of those
during the day. :P And then we have Valve's upcoming Team Fortress
featuring WWII squad-based combat complete with realistic
armed forces guys like medics. Well that's cool and all but
come on, WHO really wants to play the medic?
I play Outlaws because for the most part it's simple. It
satiates my lingering, carnivore need for conquest and
slaughter with its pure mano-a-mano gunfights. You stay alive
and you kill those who try to kill you. I don't want to have
to waste time repairing, guarding, figuring out what's expected
of you or trying to explain to your dumbass teammates what
they are supposed to be doing.
Mission-based play has its place, but not at the front of
my table. ;P That's not to say that the standard deathmatch
play cannot be improved upon (and it should be) but doing away
with it altogether is not the way to go (not that Six-Shooter
is going to do that, I dunno, I just needed an excuse to go
off about this okay?).
Oh yeah btw the interview asks about 3D sound, saying
"Nothing would be cooler than hearing bullets ricochet around you in those old wooden
buildings or hearing boards creak above you." Well there
you have it, Outlaws supports A3D so yet again we see there
is nothing cooler than Outlaws. :P Actually as you know I
posted a couple days ago some probs with the A3D sound on
Vortex 2 cards like Diamond's MX300, well I think there may
be some good news about this, stay tuned.
* * *
Monday 3/22/99
The Outlandish Worlds of Walkertr
Today's spotlight goes to Walkertr who directed me
to his new web site and his four multiplayer maps therein.
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DTG_Walkertr's Outlaws Page
Home of this Outlaw, his wife Ms. Kitty and his multiplayer
maps. Straight, bold layout, great pic of the couple in
period dress, and easy to download maps.
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Okay I'm going to take the maps alphabetically 'cause I dunno
which came first chronologically. ;)
Confused
puts you deep inside a pretty large, mostly linear maze. You
can get outside the maze in a few spots to get your bearings,
though using the map the maze isn't too hard to navigate. It
could be frustrating to go through repeatedly though I imagine
it might be fun to drop dynamite on people lost inside once you
get out. Here's a screenshot from
the vantage overlooking the maze.
Durango
is a bit of an odd one, again built on a very large, rather
abstract scale. Big with two different elevations and big
ramps between as well as an "antigravity" area that lets you
get up to rooftops. Here's a shot
of me going up a bit TOO high -- theoretically you could get
down safely from this high up by weaving in and out of the
antigravity well to slow your descent, but I didn't quite
manage it. Ouch.
Egypt, my
favorite of the bunch, puts you waaaay down in jolly old
Egypt-land. Walkertr's built some really BIG pyramids to cavort
about on and explore: here's an
outside shot and one showing a pyramid from the
inside. So THAT'S what they
look like inside, gosh. Didn't know they had antigravity wells
either. Again a bit in the big'n'simple mode but the original
(for an Outlaws map) setting makes this one interesting --
but be sure to pack your rifle and TNT for fighting in those
huge open spaces... not to worry too much if you forget, Walkertr
seems to like leaving lots of things laying about including
a rather forward dinosaur and wacked-out squirrel.
Rebel
rounds out the quartet. Big and flat this one is, with yes
at least one antigravity area. Probably the least memorable
of the four. Though they remain on the simplistic (and BIG)
side the other three still have elements of creative design.
Time will tell how this new LawMaker refines his technique
though even these early maps are noticeably solid
from a technical point of view with generally high framerates
throughout as you can see in this
screenshot. Oh okay no you
can't b'cause I crashed fer some reason an' fergot ta type OLPOLYS
after reloading but trust me fps was pretty good here. :p
"The Dalton Gang" Site
"If you want to join, you need to be swedish and
fight me (Emmett)" reads the subtext on the front page
of "The Dalton Gang" site, URL sent to me by Emmett
hisself. Now I ain't Swedish, an' I'm not gonna fight Emmett
'cause he's my pal fer sendin' me his URL, so I guess I can't
be in th' gang but what th' heck here's th' link anyhow:
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The Dalton Gang
Visually strong site for this all-Swedish posse featuring
info on the members and a lively news section. Also the
host site for the SVLadder
which seems to be an Outlaws ladder for Swedish players
but of course it's all in Swedish so I can't be sure. ;)
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Now time was when both of today's new sites would have gotten
a lil "+" icon from me but what with all th' sites out there
nowadays I've hadda become a bit stingier with th' old plus
sign. :P But they're both good sites, check 'em over.
* * *
Sunday 3/21/99
A3D Sound Problems in Outlaws
I've been saying for a while now that I was going to get
around to writing an article on the amazing benefits of
using an A3D compatible soundcard in Outlaws. Well I'm
glad I held off because I've encountered a rather serious
problem with it, one I hope that Lucasarts will address.
I've got a Diamond MX300, one of the first soundcards based
on Aureal's new Vortex 2
chipset. These babies can process 3D sound in games, and their
big advantage over previous (Vortex 1) cards is that they can
do it all with the soundcard's processor so that your CPU doesn't
have to to do it and you get great 3D sound without losing any
performance.
Well it does that. And it's great. With a quad speaker/subwoofer
setup Outlaws sounds simply amazing. You can hear footsteps all
around you: you could be in the top floor of a building and
listen as someone ran across the dusty street, stepped up onto
the wooden porch, snuck around the back and rushed up the rear
stairs -- to find you waiting for them because you heard them
coming all the way. In one-on-one matches 3D sound is an
incredible advantage, and it SOUNDS great too.
Note that I specified one-on-one. In games with more than three
players in your average-sized map the advantage is much less
because there's always sound going on all around you and it's
difficult to sort out individual movements. But that's just
the nature of sound and the human ear; Outlaws has a much more
serious problem of its own with A3D sound in multiplayer games.
Vortex 2 cards handle up to 16 simultaneous 3D sound streams.
A stream is any noise: your walking sound is one stream, your
opponent's another, a bullet ricochet, an item respawn sound,
almost everything takes up a new stream. So you can see how
16 streams gets maxed out pretty quickly in noisy multiplayer
matches. Over the past couple of days I've found that 4 players
in a gunfight will hit 16 streams pretty easily. That's where
things go bad.
With normal DirectSound in Outlaws you can limit the voices to
as little as 4 simultaneous stereo streams; any sounds over that
limit simply won't play and thus won't slow down your system.
Well it doesn't quite seem to work so smoothly when the 3D sound
streams max out -- you start to lose framerate. Maybe the
additional 3D sounds are still playing, but being passed to the
main CPU for rendering... whatever it is, it makes things very
unpleasant.
After playing for a while in a noisy match I will notice my
framerate start to decrease. After 15 minutes or so I have seen
my framerate cut in half. In one long 200 kill match in a small
level with 4-6 players I ended up with about 30 fps where I
should have been averaging 100. Not a good thing.
None of the available Vortex 2 drivers seem to help. Other players
with MX300 cards have told me they run into the same problem
(there's another more obvious problem of not being able to hear
your own gun firing sometimes but that's more quirky
than problematic). So as things are now I'm going
to have to switch to DirectSound for large matches. :(
I've
contacted Lucasarts tech support about the problem and I
strongly encourage
everyone who has encountered it to do the same
-- you can mail them through the form on
this
page. Be sure to fill out all the info about your system
specs and to describe your problem as thoroughly and coherently
as possible. Hopefully they will be able to address this
rather frustrating issue.
IE5 = Bad Outlaws Connections?
Mallard took the
plunge and installed the new IE 5.0. Damned if I'll ever do
that -- and I wonder what is up with that horrible striped
red ball? ;P Anyhow he seems to think that installing IE 5
has made connecting to Outlaws games as difficult for him
on Win95 as it is for people with Win98, and goes on to
speculate on IE 5 installing an updated Winsock. Well I've been
using Winsock 2.0 for a while now without trouble... but
they could always have come up with a new version of Winsock
without telling anyone. Anyhow fly off to Mallard's to read
that and a lot of other good stuff too (okay I think he went
off the deep end with that diamond/duck story but hey I guess
he'd know).
Another German Outlaws Site
Well jeez whaddaya know? Another German Outlaws fan site, thanks
to Badger fer pointin' me to:
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Dartagnan's Outlaws Site
All-German site with general tips and info on weapons
and characters, maps to download and info on the other
members of Dartagnan's "MKB" posse. Pretty solid layout,
only trick is you have to translate it from German.
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And of course you can get a translation of that through
babelfish.altavista.com. And hey it's free! Whee! Well I'd
better get some shut-eye, another Monday comin' up bright
(well mebbe not so bright, this is Seattle in spring after
all) and early (too early, you know :p).
* * *
Saturday 3/20/99
Gryphon Tells All
Gryphon has gotten back into writing his excellent
Outlaws columns, always a great read. In his latest, "The Staying
Power of Outlaws," he talks about why he still prefers Outlaws
to all of the new multiplayer games that are coming out faster
than ever these days. He presents a pretty well-rounded essay
on this and apparently he felt (rightly enough) so encouraged
with his writing talents that he even went on to tackle the
age old "chicken or the egg" question. ;) Pop on over to his
Outlaws Surf Shack an' check it out.
Whoops, was going ta do a lil' more news but looks like
I'm out of time, catch me tomorrow. Hmm I'm kind of scoring
low on the "staying power" meter tonight. ;)
* * *
Thursday 3/18/99
Defenders of Marshal Law site
Frisk took his "Frisky One" site down to concentrate
on his DMS posse's site. Here's the skinny:
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DML Headquarters
Nice menu, quickloading pages make th' "Defenders
of Marshal Law" site a pleasant read. A couple rough
spots an' not much content as yet, should be a good
one when it's done.
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New Map: Old Orchard
Law_BC_Red (I usually try to leave off posse prefixes
but I jus' can't tell where posse ends an' name begins here ;)
sent me a copy of his very first map,
Old
Orchard. You can kind of tell this is a first map what
with the lack of run sounds and stitching and the one-level
design that relies a lot on placed objects. So well it's a funny
one-story house with treestumps around it. Here's
a screenshot.
Beta testing LawMaker's levels (it's funny, I test games all day,
then come home and test Outlaws maps ;) and covering e-mail
is taking up a good chunk of my time. SOMEday I'll get that MX300
A3D sound article written (I tell myself I'm still testing it
hehe). Can't think of a clever way to sign off today so let's
just do it with asterixes (asterii?)...
* * *
Wednesday 3/17/99
OLPOLYS for LawMaker Fun and Profit
Most of you know about the olfps
cheat code (just type it
in anytime in the game) which shows you your framerate as well
as a bunch of other variables that actually never seem to change.
Well olfps works just fine for players wanting to judge their
system's performance, but mebbe isn't all that informative for
LawMakers looking to keep their level fast. Well, there's another
code that I don't think many people know about: olpolys.
OLPOLYS shows not only framerate but other stuff that may
even be more useful in figgerin' out what's laggin' up yer
map. You can see it in action in
this screenshot. Notice the line
after framerate: "RENDER PASSES." This seems to show how many
sectors or whatever the engine is having to process to generate
the current picture. I've found that up to 5 render passes seems
to translate into good framerates, whereas going over that to
6 or the dreaded 7 render passes will give you very low fps areas.
Actually yesterday's "Birdhouse" level went up to 8 which
would explain why I got some record low fps in there.
I think render passes may be a more useful meter for LawMakers
than fps because they aren't hardware dependent (cpu, graphics
card) and actually measure a tangible aspect of the map structure.
The other variables displayed are probably less directly
useful. VERTICES and TRIANGLES may be nice to know but don't
necessarily translate directly into framerates. PIXELS I think
shows the total amount of square pixels contained in all of the
currently displayed textures. OVERDRAW I'm not quite sure about,
I think it may show the % of the screen area behind which the
game engine has to draw unseen areas -- areas behind walls and
so forth. NEW TEXTURES is a nice one, you can find custom textures
with this one and even their size in square pixels. :)
WALL, PLANE and SKY TRIS has to do with model faces showing
or something, I think. I dunno. :P Also not sure about the
figures in the right column, they seem to be some kind of
average over time?
Yet another code that may be of some value is olmemory
which shows exactly how much RAM textures, sounds and stuff
are taking up as well as some specific coordinate and
sector data.
By the way for those who were paying attention, that screenshot
just might be from a certain "Pearl River Plantation" level
currently in progress by Gojo. Or it might not be. Who
knows?
Outlaws in German
Seems Outlaws is a hit in Germany. Most of you probably know at
least one member of the "Stormtroopers of Deutschland" (SOD)
posse. Well there's also the apparently all-German "Don" posse.
I already had some of their members' sites on my
links page, here are a couple more:
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Dons Ramoses' Lawmakers & Levels Page
Pretty much all in German but the very colorful icons
make it pretty clear what's going on: this is a site
meant to help folks use LawMaker, the Outlaws level
editor utility. Downloadable files and tutorials plus
a messageboard and useful links. So you don't speak
German? Well that's why you use the babelfish.altavista.com
translation service. Great to see people wanting to
help others get started in LawMaker.
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Dons Winz & Outlaws & Die Don Gang
Yet another site by a German "Don" posse member, this
being the most visually delightful of the bunch. Nice
layouts and lush graphics abound in these playful
pages about the "Don" gang and its various members.
Yeah it's in German but you can always to translate it
with babelfish.altavista.com.
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Hooray for the international love of Outlaws. It's kind of
interesting that this "Western" game has caught on so much
in Europe, but then again the Spaghetti Westerns that inspired
the game came from Italy -- even the "Dollars" trilogy seems
to have been more popular in Europe than in the US, making
Clint Eastwood an international star. Perhaps this is another
example of the way in which it often takes an outside viewpoint
to really get to the essence of something -- Europeans could see
from afar what we in "The West" took for granted. Well why
don't I just shut up now.
* * *
Tuesday 3/16/99
Birds and Pies and Pearls, Oh My!
More new levels today. Sorta -- got that map from
Darlin's that I couldn't download yesterday,
Pie Land
v1.1. This is just an updated version of that map by
Pie that I put up yesterday, still has the 3dfx problems
and such. On top of that he's thrown in AI characters which
will lag the game down. Feels like he's just sort of toying
around with LawMaker, not a "real" map.
007 sent me
Birdhouse in which the idea is that you are sort of bird
sized yourself, running around in a small little model house
thing. Or something. It's an ambitious design with a huge interior
cavern, bridges and rooms overhead, a moat and island in the
middle. Unfortunately the Outlaws engine doesn't do that stuff
very well and I hit some record low framerates here. Eep.
Here's a screenshot of the main
area and a small side area that
I actually kind of liked, even if it is just a little cave --
framerates are high, and I don't feel like a bird in a trap. :P
And as a special treat,
a sneak preview from an early version
of Gojo's work in progress, "Pearl River Plantation."
Nice front area don'tcha think? This is shaping up to be a truly
original, period map in charming style, I think you'll like it
when it's done. :)
Squirrel Cuts Power Supply To 5,000
Those rodents are pretty nefarious aren't they? With their
little beady eyes and twitchy little noses... oh where was I?
DrDeath2 wants me to make sure everyone downloads his
Mr. Burns taunt pack so when you die you can hear soothing
words of wisdom from that rich guy in the Simpsons. Not a bad
idea. Hmm I had some other scrap of info.. oh yeah 3dfx has
changed their name: they were "3Dfx," now it's just
"3dfx." Aha. They also have a new logo which makes them look
like an athletic shoe company, though it is better than the old
one with always did suck. You can see it over on
their site which now looks
like complete and utter crap in Netscape 3.0. Hooray for
progress.
* * *
Monday 3/15/99
Monday Level-O-Rama
Why not kick the week off with some new maps? Seems some
LawMakers were busy over th' weekend...
Templar was jus' doin' final beta testing of his
new map Stone
when I was in Kali yesterday -- things seem to have gone well
'cause th' map was released right there a little while later.
And I can see why things went so quickly, this is a very smooth
map.
Interestingly Templar, known for his highly realistic Old West
environments, shows his versatility by changing direction completely
The readme says this is a "temple." Hmm... I'd say that's a
little stretch. It's a big, twisty, unpredictable, surprising,
inspiring place coated everywhere with some of the most amazing
new textures you've ever seen in an Outlaws map. Templar has
been doin' his own textures fer a while now but he's really
showin' off in this map; it's called Stone an' rightly so, there's
a showcase of stone texturework on display here.
It looks trippy. It looks exotic. It looks incredible. I was
afraid that he'd have irregularly sized textures that get hashed
in non-3Dfx modes, but thankfully there's only one room here
with that problem so it's not a real big issue. Here's
a screenshot of that room in DirectDraw
and in Glide.
Of course there's a lot more to Stone than incredible textures.
This thing will, I think, play as smooth as it looks. Framerates
are high, environments are varied. Oh yes and there's a great
innovation: ladders! Not just high-angled ramps with ladder
textures either -- these babies go straight up, and you have
to climb them by holding the jump button. Wow! Oh these also
look funny in DirectDraw, I guess that ladder rung texture isn't
quite a kosher size. Here's a Glide
ladder screenshot.
So wow what can you say? An offbeat classic, I think. I've got
more screenshots:
nice stone interiors and
a particularly funkadelic staircase.
Templar is the man, he can do anything. Okay, I don't dig
too much on those ugly pools of acid that burn you. Otherwise,
very smooth sailing indeed!
Well that was a long review. But there's more!
Darling
had 3 new maps on her page but I could only grab two of them. :P
Two were from Pie but only the first one,
Pie's Level
worked. This is actually Pie's very first level and it shows
a lot of innovative thinking. He's got some rather obvious
3Dfx texturing glitches (seeing through the floor) but also
interesting stuff like extensive use of two-level hallways and
shallow pools of water with pitfalls. Here are a couple
screenshots, look closely at the floor in the second one:
shot 1 and
shot 2.
Then we've got another LawMaker's first map,
Lookout
(down below) by ACE_340. This one also has some
interesting ideas, mainly seen in the huge floating platforms
and the highdive into a muddy pool. Platforms remind me
of Wiper
but this map doesn't really have the careful balance of that one.
Here's a screenshot that shows
what's up.
Goodies from DrDeath2
DrDeath2 has some fun things over at
his site
which you should probably go check out: a Mr. Burns taunt pack
and "CTF Classics," a compilation archive of his six
favorite CTF maps. I checked out his taunt pack 'cause I love
th' Simpsons, an interesting collection he's put together
(not ones you'd expect, that's for sure!). DrD2's also got a
new consolidated site design (ow, yellow font on white background
hurts!) that makes things easier to find. Yay!
Ladder, Hosting Thoughts
There's been a _lot_ of Outlaws ladder activity lately. I
don't tend to go for those myself (not competitive enough or
too weenie, take yer pick :p) but lots of folks do... I can
see how they can be fun, but often people take 'em a bit
too seriously. DUG (aka Dilbert) had some thoughts on
his recent ladder experience:
Outlaws is a great game. It's multiplayer is unsurpassed by even the most stunning visuals of todays newest games. With the vast number of user created "worlds" to battle in, and the
ability to have anyone host a game, you could play for years and never get board.
Many people play the game just for the fun of it. Others feel the need to be the best. Some form posse's to better enhance their gaming experiance. Some participate in tournaments to
prove there skill.
This all sounds good, until you take a close look at some of the mechanics of the game and the tournament setup and rules.
First the game. The game needs a host. There can be only one host. The game can never be less "lagged" than the host. The person that host should have the best online connection and
a fairly fast PC. This does, however, give the host a slight advantage. Second, there are over 500 available levels to choose from. The levels differ in color, cover, depth, and so on. The
host selects the level as part of the game setup. This too can give the host a slight advantage. Lag also is a part of the game. If you are playing against someone that is physically very far
away, there will be some lag. Lag can do odd things. I have seen sanchez that would take an entire rifle or more to kill. I have seen DOC unable to use his med kit (hearts all go in one fell
swoop). Don't take this wrong. I am not whining, just stating the nature of the game and lag.
Now for the tournement structure. Ladders are ment to show who is first, second, third, and so on. The theory is that after all players have played several games, they will move up or
down to aquire there real skill status. This rarley works. Most often, the ladder dies before enough games have been played to show any kind of realistic structure. The whole lag thing
comes into play here too. For example: I am currently rated as the #5 player. I may only challenge the #3 and #4 players. I must beat one or the other of them before I can challenge the #2
player (basic ladder rules). If #3 and #4 are both in the UK, and I am in the USA, I know I will have a hard time killing them. On the other hand, I have played against #2 before and feel I
could beat him.
I closing, I have been told that "lag is always a two way street", but I just don't belive it is so. Those lagged out sanchez that took me out before I could med up and took four shotgun
blasts show that there is more too it. Until we can all play on a lag free LAN, I will not be playing any more tournaments. That is, except for just the fun of it.
That's true, I think th' host usually does has a slight
advantage... particularly in games with muchos lag. And lag
can do weird things certainly.
Actually I have something that's
been irritating me a bit lately. I host games off of my
DSL connection with my p2 333 and Banshee. Most of the time
it's very smooth sailing indeed for all concerned. However,
I've noticed a few times that if someone in th' game lags out,
MY framerate goes straight down th' tubes. Like yesterday in
Gravedigger!,
a small, simple map where my framerate should easly be in th'
mid-100 range, two people lagged out about a minute into the
game. That kind'a ticked me off, especially b'cause when someone
lags out while moving they hit a wall and keep running against
it, producing a quickly repeating sound. On my MX300 in A3D this
sound is almost unbearably annoying. ;P Anyhow, when they lagged
up my framerate when from ~140 fps to 30-40 fps. And it felt
even worse than that. Finally they disappeared from th' game
an' th' framerate went back to normal, but gradually as the
game wore on and more people came and went my framerate started
goin' south again until by the end of th' game I could only kind
of stand in place and wave my pistol around hoping to hit someone.
Now this _could_ be some kind of problem with my A3D sound maxing
out with too many sounds going on at once, but I don't think so.
I had this trouble before I got the MX300. It doesn't happen
most of the time... I dunno, it sucks. If anyone has any
experience with this, lemme know 'cause it bugs me.
* * *
Sunday 3/14/99
500 Frames per Second
Gosh. I think it was Swifty sent me a screenshot a
while back showing him at 500 fps in Outlaws. Well I actually
just hit that myself.
This was in a new map by Gas,
Ol' Train
Station. A very nice lookin' level, using that "no horizon"
style but taking things in a new direction with a train track
running through the center of the small town. Check'm these
shots:
shot 1,
shot 2 and
shot 3. As I said a nice looking
map (okay except for Gas' big blue name on the side of th'
tickethouse), though that traintrack or something else seems
to rough framerates up a bit when they try to cross the street.
Oh yeah that 500 fps thing. Well I decided on a new policy of
leaving my framerate display on for review screenshots so people
can see how fast a map is. As a reference, 90 fps at 512x384 is
pretty low for my system. Anything lower than that is really
bad, and I hit a few sub-90 areas on this map. Anyhow I remembered
that screenshot of Swifty's an' tried looking at the sky like
he did. My framerate went from 75 fps to 333. Nice improvement,
I think I'll look at the sky all the time so if you want to
fight me you'll have to jump (people who duck will get booted ;).
Anyhow then I noticed that every second or so the framerate
would jump suddenly to, you guessed it, 500 fps. Woo! So it
took me like 20 screenshots to catch it, but
here it is. H'ray!
Sleepy sent in a new map as well, a little job he likes
to call Do
Or Die! Simple little arena, strangely enough he says it's
kind of fun for CTF matches. That'd be some crazy ctf. This
screenshot is basically the
whole map. D-oh nuts I forgot my framerate counter. Well fps
was good, darnit, it's a one-room map!
Movin' Sites
Think my move triggered a trend. First, Mr. Slack
announced that he'd taken down his "Dsylixec Cobwoys" site
basically 'cause he was tired of it. If you never saw it,
well it was sorta funny so I guess you missed out. :P
Then Banjo let me know that he's moved the
Outlaws
Knights Who Say Ni! (better know as the KWSN gang) site.
If you've never seen that one, you really oughtta go visit,
hilarity abounds. For instance, to kick off th' move Banjo's
slapped together
The Ohara Dance Page. This is one of those "dancing" pages,
I think I saw a heretical Jesus one a few weeks ago. But this
one's about KWSN member Ohara. Those synced, animated gifs
take a while to load, but it's really that funky looping
background music that makes this page as addicting as ummm
addictive stuff. It's addictive, I mean. 8P
New Western Composition by the Doominator
Doominator has really been goin' crazy with Ennio
Morricone-esque Western MIDI tracks lately. He's got a new
one now called umm okay this is embarrassing: "Paleface
the Ghost Rider." It's even got a story, here's the first
part:
Back in the days of wild west, there were rumors around
everywhere. The most famous and the most haunting one was
the rumor about a ghost rider with paleface. No one really
knew his name, not to mention his history. For he only
appeared once in a while, usually in a desert at high noon of
a windy day.
Whew fer a minute there I thought he was talkin' about me,
but you'd never catch me out at high noon in the desert on
a windy day -- I don't like getting hot sand in my eyes. :P
You can check out the whole story and download the .mp3 of
this composition at
The Doominator's
site. He's even got some vocals in this, "Yah!" and stuff
like that. Check it out.
I Want to Play
Man, spent all day yesterday doing taxes and other stuff. Tell
you what, if you ever go self-employed in the United States,
be sure you salt away 15% of your income for tax time. I didn't
think to do that really... ouch. Oh well at least it's over
with. ;P
There's a new beta version of that internet voice communication
program "Roger Wilco" at
Resounding.com. Has some nice improvements in it, though
apparently a lot of people are getting system crashes with
this version. Of course the old version expires tomorrow, so
I hope this one works for you -- seemed okay for me.
I'm trying to wrap this up quick 'cause I really want to
play, haven't had a good game fer like nearly two weeks now
I think. Dah! Anyhow you kin check my IP address (below the
left menu) fer a game, or try trackin' me down in Kali.
Shoot ya later.
Oo in my rush I almost fergot
this article scan that salmoides sent me. This's
that editorial from the February "PC Accelerator" magazine
that sort of asks why more games can't be as cool as Outlaws.
A good read, scan's a bit lowres so you might try lowering
yer screen resolution to see it better. Thanks to
redrider and wife Tammy fer scannin' this. :)
* * *
Friday 3/12/99
Oh What a Feeling
Hey I dunno it's Friday an' I'm beat, lookin' forward to th'
weekend (but not to doing my taxes, argh!). Not much news
today, I think everyone else was havin' a hard time
concentrating today as well. So this'll be quick and easy.
StanJr wants everyone to know that he's been havin'
computer trouble an' hasn't been able to get out an' shoot
people fer a while, but he'll be back tomorrow lookin' ta
work off some aggression in
Templar's Kali Tourney.
Techno of the
Crazy Outlaws Clan
has a page
up on th' CO site where you kin pre-order a Voodoo3 card from
Chips & Bits. I still think th' V3 is gonna be a good card
even though after reading reviews on
Tom's Hardware Guide
and SharkyExtreme
it looks like th' Nvidia's TNT2 is really gonna give V3 a run
fer it's money. Well this is good 'cause th' competition means
that 3Dfx will prob'ly hafta lower their prices a bit ta stay
competitive.
Big
Sexy (man did he have some weird parents or what? ;) is
hostin' a page for his bird, LMS_Nikita. Here's th'
scoop:
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LMS_Nikita's Outlaws Page
"Big Sexy" hosts his girl LMS_Nikita's page on his own
site, izzat sweet or what? Aww... learn all ya ever
dreamed an' more here ("I'm female and a Canadian") about
this self-confessed Outlaws addict. Warning to insecure
men: contains "girly" purple font that you will be
extremely embarrassed to be caught looking at!
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Let's see, I feel that overwhelming urge to close by relating
some things from my day that nobody else should have the
slightest interest in. :P Yesterday at work I swapped monitors
with another computer when nobody was lookin', 'cause this
other one had higher refresh rates that meant my eyes wouldn't
hurt at th' end of th' day. It's a lil' 15" MaxTech monitor.
Well I was messin' around with it and
Powerstrip ta get
th' refresh rates as high as I could, an I managed ta somehow
coax it up to a stunning 1920 by (whatever) resolution! Whoa... that
was pretty crazy. Hard to read stuff too. ;) And all that on a
mere 4 MB Riva 128 card (only 256 colors at that size, but jeez!).
Oh, the excitement. What was the other thing? Oh yeah th' people
at work have been watching that latest
Star Wars trailer
obsessively, somebody this afternoon was looping the music or something
and much as I like John Williams I had to fight down the urge
to throw something heavy in their direction. Anyhow it does look
pretty neat, should be a good movie if they don't go totally
overboard on special effects. ;)
* * *
Thursday 3/11/99
New One-on-One Outlaws Ladder
Err actually it's not quite new anymore 'cause I fergot
ta get this on yesterday. :p Killer (not Killercraig,
I think I've made that mistake b'fore without knowin' it)
sent me his URL:
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Savior's Outlaws Ladder
Very nicely done, attractive home of a one-on-one
Outlaws ladder. Lots of top Outlaws are signed up, should
be one heck of a shootout fer th' top spot!
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Now personally I'm too weenie ta try gettin' involved in
a ladder, but lots of folks seem ta like th' fierce competition
they inspire. If that sounds like you, go sign up!
Find My File Not Found File
Ohh yeah Telnet access to yer web account is kinda fun.
I got th' site set ta give ya
this custom error page when
you try goin' to some file that don't exist on this server.
Yes I am having too much fun with this stuff... =D Of course,
I hope this is the first and last time you ever see that page. ;)
* * *
Wednesday 3/10/99
ALERT: "Happy99.exe" is a VIRUS
Hey folks, was gonna play Outlaws fer a bit but found I'd
gotten the "Ska" virus. ;P This comes to you through an email
attachment from someone already infected -- the virus sends
the attachment without the victim's knowledge. The attachment
is usually called "Happy99.exe" but it could be under a
different name. My "happy99" ran a little firework show in
a DOS window. After that, I was infected.
The virus spreads through email so if you've run a firework
show from an email attachment recently, everyone you've emailed
has gotten a virus installer from you. I got mine from an Outlaw
player so this is probably loose in the Outlaws community.
Fortunately, it's pretty easy to fix:
this
page has full instructions for diagnosing and removing the
Ska virus (or "worm"). If you've gotten a happy99.exe attachment
from anyone recently first make sure you're clean, then
mail that person and let them know they've been infected, ASAP!
Luckily fer me I sent all my mails recently from NT which
doesn't spread the virus. Whew.
New Map from LadyOhara
Okay so actually this is again not quite a new map, but an
edit of an old one. Snagged
Dusted,
an edited version of LaggyLuke's
DeadTown,
by LadyOhara off'a Beignet's
Wit and Wisdom Web-Zine. Whew!
Looks like a good map. For those who haven't played DeadTown,
it's sort of a section of the town of Sanctuary from the
single-player game. Looks like Ohara has taken out the annoying
invisible sniping spots (well, I can't see 'em anyway, hehe)
an' put a lil' rocky terrace partway along th' surrounding
canyon walls. Oughtta be a fun one, here's
a screenshot ta get ya started.
First Full Day on the New Server
So it seems th' first day on my new server has gone pretty
well, got a heck of a lot of email an'
it was all pretty positive, server speed seems ta be makin'
people pretty happy. (yay!)
I went ahead an' got my "files" directory moved over to
ftp.paleface.net, my anonymous
ftp server (where you kin also find my map archive :). Had
someone ask me if it would be okay to download all th' maps
at once. Well heck, that's what an anonymous ftp server is
for, ain't it? =P My webhosting account allows me up to 400
MB transfer off this site PER DAY, so I think I'll be able
ta handle it. As a comparison, th' most I ever transferred
off my old site at Gamer's Alliance was 120MB in a day.
Actually somebody else kind of asked me about my hit counter...
so here's some details from th' old server. I was at
outlaws.gagames.com
fer 185 days. Durin' that time we all (it was a group effort,
you know) transferred roughly 7 gigabytes of info off'a
th' server. That's a lotta Outlaws goin' over th' internet. ;)
At its peak, before th' map archive got rendered inaccessible an'
th' server in general started goin' downhill, it was averaging
close to 600 hits on my first page each day, which seemed like
a pretty darn good number to me.
Hmm I kin dig up some more stats too... which were my mos'
popular pages? Th' character
pages went in this order from most to least hits: Mary, Doc,
Anderson, Two Feathers, Sanchez, Bob.
Weapons, from most to
least hits: gatling, pistol, rifle, double-barrel shotgun,
shotgun, sawed-off, fist, knife, tnt.
Maps, 10 most
downloaded, most to least: Sniper, Bourbon Street, Apache,
Mud Land, Forgotten Depot, Old Mexico, CTF Circle, Abandoned,
Gutter, Gringo Pass 2. Interesting... oh that reminds me I
gotta go get my access log program set up here, hehe.
Well hopefully that won't take too long, may have time fer
a quick game tonight... Doominator mentioned that
AGN3D had this news item recently:
Southpeak Goes West - 2:00:PM - Jeremy Allford
Southpeak Interactive announced today that they will be publishing
a PC game based upon the upcoming summer movie, The Wild
Wild West. Here is the info:
The PC game based on WILD, WILD WEST - THE
MOVIE is an action-adventure title that will take game
players on a brand new quest beyond the film. Gamers
will embark on missions as James T. West and
Artemus Gordon as they battle the conspirators behind
the Lincoln assassination who plan to murder another
President, Ulysses S. Grant. Faced with a series of
puzzles and gun-toting enemies, players will be
challenged to use both a keen mind and a quick
trigger-finger in a race against time to save President
Grant.
Hmm well that's all fine an' dandy, I guess. Second western
game ta be announced in jus' about as many days. Of course,
how many good movie-license PC games can you name? Yeah, that's
what I thought. :P
* * *
Tuesday 3/9/99
Where Am I?!?
Now don't you fret, I know we're still experiencin' some
movin' pains an' that's perfectly natural. Anyway, this's
my new home. :) Should be much faster an' more reliable than
th' old one, only downside fer me izzat it ain't free. :I
Oh well, what am I saving up for retirement? You'll notice
I don't have any ad banners up yet, but I will, hopefully,
ta help pay fer th' costs a bit.
This site is hosted by pair.com,
a good outfit, or so it seems. I now have anonymous ftp access
set up fer th' map archive, an' will soon fer th' file archive,
at ftp.paleface.net. Try
it out, lemme know what ya think. I got tons of download bandwidth
so go ahead an' download ta yer heart's content. :)
Wheee this is fun. Oh yeah please note my new e-mail
address.
Oh an' by th' way you don't even need "www" ta access this site,
jus' paleface.net. Hope that's
easy to remember. :)
So folks let me know what you think of th' new home, if it
seems faster or whatever. Especially let me know if there are
any broken links, I'm pretty sure there are a few loose ends that
I'll be tying up over the next couple of days.
Thanks to all th' people who wrote in lettin' me know
there was a problem with that "Silvercreek" level, I'm pretty
sure th' author knows by now -- anyhow it crashes pretty badly
so I took it out of my map archive. If ya know how ta fix it,
mail the author Jonny
Quest (aka QOT_Doc) but be kind, he's new ta th' mapmakin'
biz.
I messed around with ReconDroid a little, can't seem
ta get it ta show any active servers. Hmm.... well keep in mind
it's only at version 0.2. Still, it is good fer postin' an
IP game number on, even if it isn't yet detecting which games
are still active.
Doominator tells me Outlaws got mentioned
here
in an article on "realistic" games at cdmag.com. I don't much
like cdmag 'cause they took OGR.com an' made it really lame
now, boo! :P
Well gotta go fer today. Again, lemme know (new mail address,
remember!) what you think of th' new digs. Oh an' you kin'
thank MrPink fer th' idea of havin' .txt files along
with th' maps in th' ftp archive. :) Now some maps don't have
.txt files, why is that? 'Cause they didn't come with 'em, that's
why! ;P Also, it took me a good long time ta go through all th'
maps that had 'em an' rename th' .txt files that didn't have
th' same filename as th' .zip they come in. How irksome!
LawMakers, I'm jus' lettin' ya know now (an' th' top lawmakin'
dudes already do this :), getcher .txt files straight in future
maps or they might not get posted as fast as usual. :P
* * *
Monday 3/8/99
Outlaws Internet Game Utility from Alexei Novikov
Swiped this news from Mallard's
excellent Outlaws news page.
Wow. Alexei Novikov, creator of th' LawMaker Outlaws
level editing program, has blessed us again, this time with
ReconDroid v0.2. What th' heck is that yer askin'?
Well it's a utility that lists game servers an' lets you
join 'em, kind'a like Kali's tcp/ip game browser and GameSpy.
ReconDroid of course began as a utility for JediKnight, but
th' latest version adds support fer Outlaws!
So what does it do? Well keep in mind I haven't had a chance ta
run a game through it yet, but here goes. People hosting a game
can (and will, darnit!) load up RD and select "Host Game," then select Outlaws,
Winsock, and enter in a game title that people will see. You
choose how long you want the listing to appear, and then click
Host an' away you go as Outlaws loads up automatically.
Yer IP address an' game title appear in RD's Outlaws server
list, so folks comin' inta RD kin find yer game. :) Simple as
that. Now Kali's tcp/ip game browser can do all that, but it
can't run WINSOCK Outlaws games. RD can! And it's _free_. :)
Cool innit? Now I like I said I haven't had a chance ta try
joinin' a game through it, can't actually find any active
servers. But this looks very, very cool indeed. :) Won't take
th' place of th' reg'lar Outlaws chat venues of course, but
a fantastic and easy way to find or host an Outlaws session.
You kin get it off th'
DarkJedi.com site
here.
Get it now an' try it out! Oh an' if anyone happens ta
have Mr. Novikov's e-mail address, I'd like ta get in touch
with him. :)
New Western Game "High Noon" Announced
Wow again. A group of six people in California named
Six-Shooter Studios
have announced their intentions to make a Western shooter to
be named "High Noon." Their description of th' concept boils
down to "the action of Half-Life with Zelda-style adventure
elements" for single-player and "massively multiplayer... groups
that fight..." for multiplayer.
Zelda meets Half-Life in a Wild West shooter. Hmm... well, I'm
intrigued as to how that would work! And a massively multiplayer
action game would be an unprecedented feat, especially considering
that th' only major current massively multiplayer game,
Ultima Online, which is hardly what you would call an action
game, suffers from rather horrendous lag issues. So well this
should be mighty interesting. They haven't got much now besides
an engine license (Lithtech), some mocked-up level screenshots,
a need for a publisher and a fancy Javascripted web site,
which you should all go take a look at. Thanks to both
Outlaw Moon and whispa fer th' tip on this one!
Me Sleep Now
Gotta cut th' news short today as I'm outta time, spent most
of th' evening doin' a much-needed batch of laundry over at
Slack-Jawed Pete's luxury condo. Not only does this
place sport a washer/dryer set but a industrial-sized TV as
well on which I saw that this week is "Outlaws Week" on TNN.
Well I sat through some commercials an' then got an eyefull
of a really lousy lookin', non-Western old movie. Hmm... d-oh
well I guess it was a bit past prime-time. TNN, by th' way, is
owned by CBS, who also happen ta own Outlaws.com.
Darnit! :P
On a possibly related note that final thinger I was waitin'
fer has got done so's I kin go ahead with my big surprise...
hopefully get that done in th' next day or so. :) Ah yes
well to keep ya busy here's a new map from
Jonny Quest,
SilverCreek. Haven't got
a chance ta look at it yet but it sounds nice, don't it?
* * *
Sunday 3/7/99
Gravediggin' with ShotgunMc
ShotgunMc has been comin' out with a lotta great
maps lately an' it looks like he's got another one with
Gravedigger!, an unusual
map with a real twist: a story! That's right, things are
a bit weird in here an' you'd better read th' .txt file
included ta get a clue as ta what's goin' on. Basically
yer dead, nothin' is as it seems an' you shoot people.
Sounds good ta me! A good deal of custom graphics in this
one, including some rather eerie gravestones... OooOoOOoo!
Here's a screenshot
of this neat lil' level.
Weekend News Roundup
Let's see what's still left in here...
Mad_Matt, creator
of th' garish an' top-notch Home
of Jack Sanchez want's people ta know he's now got
his own personal
site. Well so do a lot of folks... but it's a slow news day
an' he's got a good tribute to Stanley Kubrick.
Beignet
has been tryin' really hard ta get my attention, which she
doesn't really need ta do 'cause I visit her site ev'ry day.
Mebbe she wants me ta tell y'all ta do th' same (I'm so easily
manipulated it's almost sickening :P).
Techno has moved his
Crazy Outlaws Clan
Web Page an' added some new stuff in as well, go check that
out too.
And yes darnit I do know my level section is still not lettin'
people in, I am doing somethin' about it, it will be fixed jus'
as soon as can be. In fact it'll be better'n ever... hopefully
sometime _this_ week, sheesh.
Let's close with the following tragic story from tileman:
Blacksmith's Lament
An old blacksmith realized he was soon going to
quit working so hard. He picked out a strong young man
to become his apprentice. The old fellow was
crabby and exacting. "Don't ask me a lot of dumb questions,"
he told the boy. "Just do what I tell you to do."
One day the old blacksmith took an iron out of the
forge and laid it on the anvil. "Go over there and get that
big hammer," he said. "When I nod my head, hit it
real good and hard."
The following day an ad in the opportunity section
of the town's newspaper read, "BLACKSMITH
WANTED".
*sniff* What a beautiful story. Let that be a lesson to us all.
* * *
Saturday 3/6/99
New Map *Explosion*
Got so many new maps slung my way in th' past two days that
it's a wonder I've survived th' deluge. :P I'm gonna try ta take
these in th' order they came in.
Well okay th' first isn't
exactly new, but DrDeath2 has come out with a new version
of his "Marshall Adventures Part One: Bank Robbery!" single-player
Historical Mission. This has fixes for a lot of those nasty little
3Dfx errors and such that didn't quite keep th' first from bein'
fun, but made it a lil' frustrating. Well now they're gone an'
it's jus' fun. :) Not as great as his recently released
third episode but still worth gettin'
especially fer you single-player fans, snag it over on
DrDeath2's Outlaws
Site. Fer those with bad memories, here's
a screenshot ta remind ya what
this map looked like.
Darlin'
sent me a new map by Runaway_Jim,
Rope's End. Wow. If you thought
Jim's "Gringo Trilogy" maps were complex and tricky, well...
prepare to re-evaluate yer definitions. This one is huge, probably
as big as th' entire Gringo Trilogy put together -- an' those
were pretty big maps themselves! You'd need a heck of a lotta
folks ta fill this map up but if you had 'em MAN you'd have one
great time of Capture the Flag. Huge cliffs abound, cut by a
twisty river at th' bottom of a deep gorge. Small houses and
buildings cling to broken plateaus -- and you will too, if you
don't wanna plunge ta yer death. Grab this one, even if jus' ta
look at it (in case you don't have enough friends :P). Th'
screenshots:
shot 1,
shot 2 and
shot 3.
Badger sent me another new map -- well actually he
found it at Darlin's, you really oughtta go there if ya need new
maps right away 'cause she gets 'em first all th' time --
Lostland by two boys from Darlin's
GDO posse, Evil_One and Rebel. I really like th'
idea behind this one, a bright, sandy isle in th' middle of th'
ocean. A word of warning -- beware the "No Swimming" sign. In
fact there are a couple custom textures evident here, as well
as some great engine-uity; just check out those 3D palm trees.
Unfortunately th' Outlaws engine isn't really good at open
structures like that an' you'll hit some really nasty framerates
on this lil' island. But th' idea certainly has potential (I
ought to point out that we've seen it mebbe a few times before,
most notably in Frenchie's cute Pirates!).
Check out some shots of Lostland:
shot 1 and
shot 2.
Tileman sent me his new one,
Sunset. Actually I think this
one takes place a while after sunset 'cause it's
pretty dark. :j Like his recent Trainstop,
this's a very nicely done, squarish town map filled with
multistory buildings and nice texuture work. Also like Trainstop
framerates go down a slight bit in th' corners but are otherwise
quite high. Good map, check th'
screenshot (kind of hard ta
make out but it is nighttime, remember).
sshep sent me his fourth map,
Slaughter House. Among all th'
recent BIG maps I'm happy to see a nice small one like this,
taking place in a dingy little meat processing plant. A couple
conveyor belts cross above the factory floor to whisk th' poor
bessies ta their doom *sniff.* Mmm... hamburger. :d Th' upper
office an' a very clever stack of boxes in th' opposite corner
serve as makeshift bunkers fer some close-in, strategic gunplay.
An' in a nice touch if you run against th' motion of one of th'
belts you kin go visit some of th' hamburgers-to-be outside.
Of course should someone see ya go out there an' follow you up
with a stick of TNT, you'll be hamburger -- an' th' cows won't
'cause they're jus' static sprites, silly! Check out
shot 1 and
shot 2.
A bit on th' dark side but at least ya kin go out in th' sun
fer a bit.
Self-promotional Sticky sent his latest oeuvre, the
Sticky Pack. Hmm... sounds
like one you wouldn't want ta get yer hands into, don't it?
But you'd be missin' out on some nice maps as there are two of
'em squished in here.
"Mexican Villa 2" is of course a remake of Taco's weird,
classic map. Sticky's conversion sticks (hehe) with th' basic
layout of a low square building with a pool and a dead tree
surrounded by a low rock wall an' throws in a couple lil'
pavilions an' a cave fer good measure. Pretty good stuff, with
decent framerates an' a very nice warm wood texture on th' rooftops
though I don't care so much fer th' texture inside th' villa.
But I do miss th' high diving platform that Taco had soaring
over th' roof of his villa -- that was basically th' whole fun
of th' old map, fer me. Doh well, this one has a few little
perks of its own.
shot 1 |
shot 2 |
shot 3
"Sticky Town," on th' other hand, is an all new map which looks
like classic Sticky: odd architecture, a few crazy textures and
lots of good clean twisty fun. In fact I really like th'
use of textures here, both inside and out. Jus' one or two
snipin' spots here among a lot of close-quarters action, so get
that pistol or shotgun handy 'cause they're gonna see a lot
of action here!
shot 1 |
shot 2 |
shot 3
One protest I do have about th' Sticky Pack izzat like some of
Sticky's older maps, these use a lil' cheat in th' filenames to
appears at th' top of yer map list, out of alphabetical order.
I REALLY don't like that --> makes maps harder to find, especially
when a lot of other LawMakers are usin' similar cheap tricks.
Fie on you! Also (I know I said I had one protest, so sue me)
I'm not too keen on folks stickin' multiple maps together in one .zip
file, seems like forcin' 'em ta get a map they might not want
'cause it's sort of welded to th' one they do want. ;P
Finally, Stryker
sent along his Full Tanks version 2.
This one fixes th' graphics fer those without 3Dfx cards. Heh
Stryker also has this note in his readme:
To hades with FPS and who can shoot the fastest at close range... I could
care less if my fps is 80 and a decent looking map then 200fps and the
average shot is 2 ft...Sorry guys...I don't see any skill or strategy
there :)
You go on with yer bad self, Stryke! You know he may
have a bit of a point there.
Whew, that's all th' maps. Jeez! I've been a bit behind updatin' my
lil' favorite maps listing on th'
level page, but I got some more added
in there now. I might even catch up someday unless people keep
churnin' out new maps like they have th' past two days! :P
* * *
Thursday 3/4/99
I Rant About Web Browsers Some More
Recently I came across a web site where th' author stated
flatly that they couldn't care less about pople who don't
access their site using the latest browsers, ie Netscape 4
or IE 4 (or is it 5 beta?). I couldn't disagree more with
this position, though of course everyone is free to run their
web site however they like.
Think about this -- even someone who does their best to keep
up with the latest browser software may not have access to
that browser all the time. What if they're at work or at school
and want to access your site through a UNIX machine? I feel
that unless you definitely need additional functionality,
sticking with normal HTML will ensure that your site can reach
your full potential audience. Why include proprietary code
if you don't need to?
I guess I'm going off on this mostly because I th' other day at
work I got switched to a different computer fer a while an'
I wanted to browse th' web a bit during lunch. This computer had
Win98 with its uninstallable IE 4.0 (well there are some hacks
that claim to do it, not sure if they work). So oh well I can
cope fer a while until I get my regular machine back on which
I've installed my trusty old NS 3.
Well I start browsin' away an' I find javascript console ads
and animated buttons popping up everywhere. With NS 3 I turn
javascript off by default. Th' two most annoying things to me
on sites are pop-up console ads that get in yer way an' take
time to load, and blinking buttons that take twice as long to
load as normal buttons and don't add one jot to helping browse
a site. These are both javascript functions, and by disabling
javascript support in NS 3 I don't have to deal with them at
all. Some poorly-designed sites will require javascript support
to get to the information I want, but in that event I just
re-enable javascript until I'm done with that site.
Well behold an' lo, seems there's no way ta disable Javascript
in Internet Explorer. Thanks to those who wrote in, but unchecking
th' boxes under Java in th' advanced options and rebooting simply
doesn't do th' trick. Thus browsing my regular sites with IE
becomes much more time consuming and frustrating.
I browse th' web for information, not multimedia productions --
if I need that I'll turn on MTV, thank you very much. People
always ask me why I still use NS 3, and I usually tell them
it's because it takes less memory, processor time and hard-drive
space then the newer browsers, and it handles HTML, CGI and
Java junk just as well. Now I have an additional reason for
preferring it. Damn javascript. ;P
New Banshee Drivers
3Dfx has come out with new
Banshee reference drivers fer th' second time in a week. Doesn't seem
there's much more ta these than actual 3DNow! support -- looks
like they "accidentally" "forgot" to stick that in th' previous
release. Hehe. Anyhow like th' previous drivers these work
great in Outlaws, ya don't need that Banshee hack I came up
on my Outlaws Video Configuration
page. Huzzah!
We're gettin' close to th' first Voodoo3s, though th' higher
speed ones still won't be out fer a couple months. 3Dfx is
even alluding to a still faster V3 after those, the 4000...
they're really stringing us along, aren't they? Doh.
On another relatively unrelated hardware note I got a good look
at a Dreamcast today. I'd seen it before briefly but hadn't watched
fer more than a minute. Fer those who don't know th' Dreamcast
is Sega's latest console machine. Looked very nice and fast in
3D. Consoles have always been much better than PCs in terms of
character animation and full-screen special effects, an' th'
3D fighting game I saw was quite amazing to behold -- even if
it was pretty bizarre. ;) Anyhow, it's a shame that you hardly
ever (maybe never, or only in console ports) see animation
and effects of the same bold quality in PC games. Maybe more
PC designers should pay attention... after all, Console games
do outsell PC games at least 10 to 1.
Browser Wars Continue in New Outlaws Site
Actually it's not a new site, jus' renamed. Th'
Outlaws 2000 Bounty System
(used to be "Outlaws International Bounty System") has gotten
a massive redesign, seems they've also cleared th' records to
start again from scratch. Thanks ta
Loke fer th' tipoff there --
perhaps not coincidentally he's also th' top gun there at th'
moment. ;)
Th' O2BS lets ya sign up on an automated ladder an' record
yer results in realtime. Neat stuff. Of course, with all I said
earlier about NS 3... it doesn't work right in NS 3. Now as
far as I'm concerned that's a lack of robustness in th' site
coding, but th' fact remains... worked fine in IE 3.0. :P
New Western Music from Doominator
Th' everlovin' Doominator has come up with some new
versions of his computer-generated Spaghetti Western compositions
over at his site.
Very cool sounding stuff, reminiscent of Ennio Morricone's work
in the "Dollars" trilogy but with a definite scent of Doominator's
native Hong Kong. Check 'em out, they're in mp3 format fer yer
lissn'in pleasure.
Darrr... th' longest floating bridge in th' world (no joke)
happens to support my daily commute to work on Seattle's east
side -- and also happens to have been shut down for th' last
two days due to damage from high winds. What kind of bridge
gets damaged by wind?? Guess this is why floating bridges aren't
all that popular... an' traffic on it always blows anyhow, but
usually not from air currents. Damn. Doubled my commute time,
haven't got ta work on th' big surprise as much as I wanted
to but then again one of th' features isn't ready yet anyhow
an' that's out of my hands... so still hope ta have it ready
fer ya folks sometime this weekend.
* * *
Wednesday 3/3/99
A New Cariboo for You, Too
It's been a while (5 months, by his count) but Cutter
has jus' released a new version of his "Cariboo" map,
New Cariboo. Notice how he's
cleverly sidestepped th' issue of map version numbers hehe.
But actually this map is a real reworking, sharing very little
in common with th' original other than the overall atmosphere
and horseshoe shape of th' small town nestled in a deep valley,
open at one end (see screenshot).
The interiors here are just gorgeous! From th' jail, to th'
warehouse, th' hotel, th' church
and th' theatre, each building
has its own real feeling of purpose and construction. Most
striking to me is the feeling of human scale and space inside,
something really lacking in almost all Outlaws maps. These
buildings make you feel like you _fit_ inside them.
Th' overall texturing is fabulous, I'd swear there are a bunch
or new textures here but I can't really pick 'em out, they
blend in so well with th' rest of th' Outlaws textures. Combined
with th' thick, lightning-charged atmosphere and good use of
ambient sounds, this is one
gorgeous map.
I think I picked on th' original a bit fer low framerates an'
dead-ends in th' layout. New Cariboo don't really suffer from
either of those problems -- I only found one noticeably slow
spot -- of course I have a Banshee now so it's harder ta see
these things hehe. There's only one thing I kin think ta pick
at, an' that's th' "invisible barrier" blocking off th' rest
of th' canyon which ya kin see stretching away in th' distance.
It's a tricky issue, but I don't really like how a space that
looks big jus' has this great invisible wall right in th' middle
of it -- kind'a spoils th' immersion, ya know?
Anyhow, a great map, you'd better give it a try if ya know what's
good fer ya! Hmm that gat might dominate a bit from th' rooftop
there, I'll hafta give that a try heeheee. ;) Ooo plus a few
of th' characters jus' may look diff'rent than usual -- makes
fer a bit of a large download, boohoo cry me a river, it's
worth it. ;P A great big thanks
ta
Darlin' fer sendin' this one my way. =)
As fer that big change I've alluded to, looks like jus' a
couple more days 'fore it's ready... :)
Desperately Seeking Mr. Burrito!
Yep, Dusty is on th' lookout fer old levelmaker
Mr. Burrito, if ya know how ta get in touch with 'im
give Dusty a shout at th' email address below:
Hey all you guys out there in outlaws land! This is Dusty-DR, famous
level maker, (no autographs please) pie eater, and controversy maker.
I'm trying to reach the master lawmaker once known as Mr. Burrito, who
has now seemingly disappeared off the face of the earth. Mr. Burrito, i
need your permission to release a modified version of your classic
level, ten-paces. i've sent a letter to the address you put in the text
file, including the level with all my modifications. In two weeks ill
assume that 1) you don't care about it or 2) that you've disappeared
completely from outlaws land and wouldn't ever know about my changing
your level. in which case ill go ahead and publish it. Please, all you
die hard fans of ten paces, quiet down your hissings and booing, the
level lay-out is barely different, most of my changes were in the
textures. Special thanks to paleface for posting this so that the word
will spread around and hopefully mr. burrito will be find out. if he
does hear of this he can
mail Dusty_DR at hotmail.com.
* * *
Tuesday 3/2/99
News Melange, Stupid Windows Tricks
Not much in th' news today (at least as far as I know :P).
Picked up a new map at Outlaws
Gang Busters, SanXtuary.
Yes as you kin prob'ly guess it's yet another reworking of
Sanctuary, mostly adding a taller wall around th' town an'
a gatling gun in th' street. Can't say as I'm too excited about
this one, dunno know did it either. Here's
a screenshot.
That's it fer th' real news. Now I gots'ta make some stuff up
ta fill space... hmm... well I didn't get flamed like I thought
I might fer yesterday's Color Game Boy post, hehe. In fact I
got a few encouraging mails from some Game Boy fans who are
still "in the closet" as it were. ;)
Oh I also've been meanin' ta tell ya about this bug in Win98
that I found. Sure we all know there are lots of bugs in '98,
but this one is actually kind of neat. Here's what you do.
Open a window with some files in it. Copy one of th' files, then
send th' copy to th' Recycle Bin. Be sure ta leave the window
open. Now open up yer Recycle Bin window, empty th' Bin and quick
as you can select th' drag bar of th' Bin window and drag it
around yer desktop. If you've got Windows set to show window
contents while dragging you should see th' screen get filled up
with images of th' window yer draggin. They'll go away if you
select th' other window. Neat eh?
Ah yes an' I'm also wonderin' about this: is there a way to
disable Javascript in EI 4.0? I can do it easily in Netscape 3,
my browser at home, but at work all th' systems have IE 4 an'
darned if I kin see how ya kin turn off javascript in it. I
usually browse with JS off so I don't hafta wait fer animated
buttons an' console window ads to load. :P
I'll close with a teaser -- you'll be seein' a BIG change in
th' site in a few days -- stay tuned, I think you'll like it. :)
* * *
Monday 3/1/99
Outlaws Party in Vegas?
Beig sent me this:
Here's an excerpt from
TJG_LoneWolf's excellent site...
Party!!!! Party!!!! Party!!!!
That's right a Party. We would like to see if we can set up an Outlaws Convention (party) in Las Vegas. We
need to know if people would be interested in attending something like that.
Where better to hold an Outlaws party but in a Western town like Las Vegas! We need
your support to try and convince Lucas Arts to back it. We hope bringing attention to one of their games will be
enough incentive for them to get involved.
We are looking at possible sites here in Las Vegas to hold it at. (More to follow as we go) So if the
idea sounds good to you let (TJG_Msvegas,
Waw Timestalker, or Waw Beignet know) This could be a great time, Outlaws from all over the world in one place
what a idea!
Hmm ya know I was in Vegas once -- they had cheap food, cheap
booze and cheap hotels, and gambling houses to take yer money.
What better place could there be? :P Har!
Tons of New Sites
Well, a lot anyhow. Frisk 04 sent me his URL, an' I
found a bunch more over at
Mallard's.
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Frisky One's Outlaws Site
Colorful menu looks promising, nothin' much there yet
except fer his first news update with a promise to
bring more on a daily basis.
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Cowboys from Hell
Jus' about th' mos' disgusting, juvenile Outlaws
site I have ever had th' misfortune ta see. These
guys are gonna run out of people ta play with pretty
quick. Then maybe they'll grow up a little. ;P
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The Four Horsemen
Not th' easiest page ta browse but th' gorgeous western
graphics an' thoughtful commentary will keep ya movin'
through it. Doesn't look too good on a small screen.
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Hmm okay so maybe that was only three. Still that's a lot in
one day. Oh an' folks, if yer not visitin'
Gryphon's Outlaws Surf Shack you are missin' out on some
of th' greatest, zaniest daily Outlaws news around. I mean,
what more can you say about such brilliant bits as the
"Picante Fan Club," or news posts that start out with
"Since not much happened today, I think I'll tell you what
I had for breakfast..." Genius, sheer genius folks! :D
New Maps (Kinda)
It's an odd map day today. Well not odd but umm... ahh hell
where am I tryin' ta go with these lead-ins anyhow? :P
007 sent me a new version of his single-player map,
Powder River 1.1. As you may
remember from my initial review, this one looks kind of dull
at first but gradually improves as you go along. He jus'
basically straightened out th' filenames in this minor update.
Dug_Devil_D (what an odd name:) sent me a lil'
map, Rex. He made this all out of
one sector an' uses it ta check his maximum in-game framerates.
Not really a fun lookin' map otherwise, but an interesting
feat of construction (an' a fast map fer those with slow
systems). Here's
a shot.
I Learn a Bit More About Roger Wilco
Spent a lil' time gettin'
Roger Wilco workin' with my brother Slack Jawed Pete.
Like me he hadda get new sound drivers fer his soundcard ta
get it to record his voice right. An' actually I discovered
that I had mine set up wrong -- I use voice activation so that
it only broadcasts when I talk and while I had carefully balanced
th' activation sensitivity so that Outlaws sounds wouldn't
trigger it while I was playin', it hadn't occurred ta me that
th' sounds of other people talkin' through my speakers with
it would activate th' recording.
Sheesh! So that's why at first Pete was gettin' an echo of his
own voice over his own speakers when he talked: 'cause his voice
comin' through my speakers would activate my microphone which
would record his voice an' play it back to him. 8P I think that
also was th' case with an Outlaw I tried this with online
(sorry 'bout that Fork!). Doh! Well now I know -- th' way ta
fix this is ta jus' turn down th' speaker volume in Roger
Wilco itself, under the "Adjust" tab. So if people yer talkin'
to are always gettin' an echo it's prob'ly yer fault.
Mugged By a Colorful Game Boy
Well this is a bit embarrassing but I jus' hafta share. See,
almost ten years ago I was one'a th' many who picked up this
new lil' gizmo called a Game Boy that let ya play video games
on th' road. You've probably heard of 'em, Nintendo's only sold
about 75 million of them! Geez. Anyhow sure it was blurry
and gobbled batteries and sounded like a crazed rodent's death
agonies but it was kind of fun, too, jus' ta have this lil'
bleepin' game thinger you could carry around.
So years pass an' I hadn't thought about my Game Boy fer most
of 'em when I hear they're now in color.
Whoa! So while a part of my brain is telling me "Now look, don't
be dumb; you didn't actually have that much use for your old
Game Boy, and when you actually could have used it to stave off
boredom you usually hadn't thought to bring it with you. And when
you had, you felt like an idiot for playing with it in public
so you didn't even use it then" another part is saying "But...
it's in CoLoR!"
So of course I ran out an' got one today. ;) An' actually
even though I had resigned myself ta tossin' away ~$100 fer
th' sake of nostalgia ($70 fer th' system, $30 fer a GBC game)
I was actually pleasantly surprised. Fer one thing it's a _lot_
slimmer than my bulky old 1989 Game Boy -- you can actually
fit these in yer pocket without bustin' a seam. It only takes
two AA batteries rather than four. It's got four times as much
RAM as th' old one (a whopping 32K! ;) an' runs twice as fast
(powered by that lightning-quick 2.10mHz 8-bit processor :P).
But yes, it gets even cooler. It can play all yer old GB games
-- I braved dinner at my parent's ta dig 'em up outta storage
-- an' it kin colorize 'em in various tones, even reversing th'
values fer some trippy gaming. Thanks to th' faster processor
they run better'n ever -- they're not all as crappy as you
thought they'd be when th' nostalgia value wore off! :j An'
th' screen is pretty crisp, not that nasty blurry yellow-green.
Th' sound doesn't sound quite
like a rabid rodent anymore. And some of th' new full-color games
actually look okay, graphics-wise.
Okay okay I know I'm losin' any respect ya had fer me th' longer
I go on but damnit, I like my Game Boy Color! You got
a problem with that, mister? Do you? DO you?!? Yeah, I didn't
think so. ;P So I'm gonna log off an' get back ta playin'
this newfangled SuperWariowhatsit2 or whatever. Damned if I
know where th' regular Mario got off to or what this Wario
dude's beef is but you kin bet yer butt I'm gonna find out,
an' quick. Heck someday we'll have GameBoy3D an' then we'll have
an Outlaws port on it with Mario an' that Luigi guy an' that'll
be appropriate, Italian plumbers in a portable Spaghetti
Western....
* * *
Sunday 2/28/99
New Maps from Sleepy and StanJr
Sleepy sent me a new map called
Death Pit. This one's very
well put together, a rather large arena where Outlaws kin do
battle. Now th' arena theme isn't always that compelling, but
looks like a good time could be had here, even Capture the
Flag. At first I thought that with all th' walls an' stuff in th'
open arena framerates would suffer I didn't find any real slow
points anywhere. Here's
a screenshot. The texturing
doesn't really do anything for me, but overall a good arena map
especially with the nice touches of the closed gate at one end
and the stands on either side. Oh geez I almost forgot it's also
got these tricky pits that seem to either suck you in (ouch) or
spit you out (whee!). Makes for some interesting movement.
StanJr handed me a new one of his in Kali,
Coyote Flat. He pointed out
a small texture blurring problem, but most people won't really
see it. The name seems kind of odd to me because it had me
expecting a large open plain of some sort, whereas this maps
seems pretty claustrophobic, packed as it is with all kinds of
narrow ravines and trees and waterholes and a couple small
buildings. Th' whole thing seemed a bit cramped and confusing,
in marked contrast to his wide open, symmetric
Ski. Some people might like this
kind of map for CTF. Here are a few screenshots:
shot 1 and
shot 2.
Help With Crashes in Zone
Neander2 is having trouble with crashing in the Zone.
Now Zone crashes are fairly common but he's getting them
_every_ time he leaves a game. Doh! So if'n anyone out there
knows what th' problem could be, do be kind enough to send
him an email at [removed].
Well that's all th' news for today... I may be movin' my site
soon. Th' host I have now is nice (free) but sometimes th' site
is slow or inaccessible, and th' problem with th' map archive
lately is really irritating. Anyhow if I get my own domain an'
such I'd be on a _much_ faster server, with anonymous ftp
access, lots of bandwidth and other cool stuff. Plus a shorter
URL. :) I could also have ad banners that would actually pay
_me_, helping to defray the cost of the site. But jus' to let
some of my more rabid supporters know, you shouldn't click th'
banners constantly if I do get my own -- I could get busted!
2 or 3 times a week would be great, hopefully I'd have ads
that don't completely suck and you might want to click on them
anyway...
I'd also be able ta do somethin' neat with th' map archive
that Mr. Pink suggested. But fer this ta work you
LawMaker types'll hafta pay attention ta how you name yer
readme files. I still see a lotta maps (like the two today)
that include .txt files with different names than the map
.zip file. That's prob'ly not a great idea, folks. If yer
map is "gunrange.zip" then yer readme should be "gunrange.txt."
Jus' so we kin start bein' a bit regular about this.
* * *
Saturday 2/27/99
Map Archive Still Hard to Access, What to Do?
You prob'ly noticed my map archive is still not lettin' you
see th' files inside. Dohhhhh.... haven't heard back from
gagames.com on this, I'm gettin' a tad peeved. I mean, I can
deal with a slow server, occassional downtimes and banner ads
but _this_ is really irritating. Jeez I should prob'ly jus'
get my own domain with a good webhost. If I had my own banner
ads on it y'all would click 'em an' help support me, right? :)
Map Goodies
007 sent along a lil' tip about his latest
Sewer Plant map:
In the main pond,
if you skim along the top of the water instead of wading right through,
you will barely lose any health. As a matter of fact, I can go all the
way around the pond without losing a heart when I use this method. Just
thought this might make the map a little more fun. :)
Yes, I can say I go skimming through sewage without any ill
effects on a regular basis. ;) Whether that qualifies as th'
dreaded "bobbing" technique or not I dunno but it's his map
so he can say whatever he wants about it. :P
Karrde has a lil' site with some screenshots, mostly
showing his screwed up Banshee card (good news is that Creative
is sendin' him a new one, hooray!) but th' site logo is kind'a
cute and he jus' may have a few screenshots of stuff you haven't
seen before hidden in there, so:
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GS_Karrde's Web Page
He's got a funny little animated logo and some mysterious
screenshots. What more do you want??
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More Fun With Aliases
Deadly IRC Outlaw and ex-fantasticwebslinger Sling had
this to say about using multiple online nicknames:
I just thought it sort of funny how one day (many months ago), as a test I entered the zone under
an alias.... it's amazing how differently people treat you if they think you're 'just another newbie' as opposed to if you're a 'well-known gunslinger'. Many of the reputed 'elite' players
flat-out refused to play a game with me, and were downright rude. Hehe, one personal friend of mine was quite rude to me as well. It seems aliases don't always have an advantage:> Just
thought I'd pass this along, I found it a bit interesting personally.
What a sneak! ;) I did that once to go undercover and log Outlaws
chats, worked like a charm -- well except for those smart guys
in IRC who read my user info an' figgered out who I was. :P
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