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Fourteenth Highest Shelf Vittles: 7.6.99-8.14.99
Back to Stale Vittles
Saturday 8/14/99
A Petition for the Petition
The Outlaws Sequel Petition needs
help. Your help. Sure you've probably already signed it yerself.
But there ain't no "one entry per household" rule here or
anything folks. What I'm sayin' is, if you have friends or
family who you know would be partial to LEC producin' another
fine Outlaws game, send 'em along! (If they're sick of you
playin' so much OL err you might want to ask real nicely. ;)
This petition takes all comers, so get out there an' beat th'
trail a bit.
Signatures are still comin' in, I've got about 30 this past
week—as you can see that's down from the rate of 300 in the
first week. The initial rush of folks to sign up has been
spent, it's time to get resourceful here people! Leave no
potential signee unasked! When I get mebbe a couple hundred
more signatures I'll do what I can (not much :p) to get some
coverage on a few of the larger gaming news sites.
Cool Maps for a Hot Summer
Martone released his
Tahoe map today.
I think it's safe to say that this alpine map is one of the
best looking Outlaws levels around, Martone really went all
out on custom textures that really shine through and give the
map a really beautiful, unique look. As for how it plays,
here's what Martone has to say:
The area is an abandoned sivler mine near Lake Tahoe. Notice I say
abandoned. That allowed me to create the broken bridge leading from the lake
itself that gives the effect that you at one time could acutally get to the
place. Therefore, no lighting sources in the buildings. Believe me I sure
thought long and hard about that one. But I figured if it was abandoned why
would there be lit lanterns anywhere?
I wanted the map to have a "washed out, overcast look" That was done on
purpose. Because, as I said, it's sposed to be abandoned and the sky is
overcast. That is why the ambients aren't as gradated as I might otherwise
have done.
I kinda knew from my time playing OL that most folk are gonna wanna just
stay in the middle area and duel it out. That is why the basement area under
the bunkhouse (with the sniper slots). Also it was meant to give an effect
of defending the area from outside attack when the mine was occupied. I have
a certain style of play (or at least try to) which is sneaky to say the
least (I tried with and without the slots and fps didn't change). That is
probably why this map is constructed as it is. During beta test, I would sit
under the bunkhouse and just take folks out till they realized where they
were being shot from. I am kinda hoping that the map itself will force a
certain type of play. Which may be a bit egotistic but I have always felt
that you need to adjust to surroundings and not vice versa.
I wasn't going to put a Gat in the map, but I did. It is hopefully placed
such that it doesn't overpower the play. It's not that hard to get. But to
get it and set up with it without being killed is the tricky part.
I put very few docbags in the map but did put some strategically placed
elixers. And it must work ok cuz every time I tested they were always there
when I needed em :-). No heavy or medium plates because to be honest, I
think they detract from playing skill. I did put in some well placed light
plates tho.
So, there's a main area with a tunnelly mine area on the side.
I'm not sure how much action will carry over to the mine but it
is indeed a good place to hide out if you need to. The view
of lake Tahoe is extraordinary, don't miss it.
There are a couple small problems in this gorgeous wilderness.
First framerates do get a bit low in a couple areas. Second the
custom textures were made to look their best on a 3dfx card and
well don't look so good in software mode. If you don't have a 3dfx
card you definitely won't be able to appreciate the map as
Martone intended. :(
Finally I have a small beef with the filenames which, like
Martone's otherwise excellent "Prison Yard" map, are titled in
such a way that Tahoe shows up at the top of the list of maps
to host instead of under "T" where it belongs. I feel that this
is pretty cheap and if it were just about anyone other than
Martone (who has his own popular levels site anyhow) I would have
renamed the files myself.
Anyhow if you do have a 3dfx card I recommend taking a look at
the map, mebbe snap a screenshot
or two to hang on yer wall.
Our second wintery map would be
Frost Bite
from Chet_R1. Now I haven't been a great fan of most of
his early maps but this one really shows how far Chet has come,
frankly I really dig it. He could still stand to stitch his
stairway textures (blarg) but the choice of textures here is
nice, as is the creative layout which has you going in and around
a large tower of earth enshrouded under a thick blanket of snow.
The map seems to flow very well from one spot to another. A word
of warning to strict ML folks, there is a sawed-off shotgun in
the map. Run for the hills! :P Also a frozen waterfall slide,
check out the screenshot. All
in all a fast, fun looking map. Hmm okay so the treetops come
out black in software like they do Tahoe too, oh well.
Back from Big Sky
Okay so I got back more'n a week ago, but I never really
told y'all 'bout my trip to Montana. As you know my brother
Slack Jawed Pete an' I loaded up his car for a four
day trip from Seattle to western Montana and back again.
The occasion was the 50th wedding anniversary of my
great aunt and uncle who live in Great Falls. The reunion itself
was held at a pretty swank resort/motel at a hot spring just
outside of Anaconda, a lil' town near Butte (pronounced like
"beaut" ;). Well Uncle "Hoot" (that's his real nickname—he's
a genuine man of the west, a retired doctor and even now a
rugged outdoorsman, during WWII he was shoot I forget the
name of the service but essentially a ranger in charge of
maintaining order and a lookout in a huge tract of the
western wilderness) has
four siblings and eight children of his own, most of them also
having their own kids by now, so it was quite a gathering.
Pete an' I met a ton of relatives we'd never met including
what seemed like dozens of second cousins (I know what yer
thinkin' an' you kin jus' keep it to yerself mister :p). We
had a blast.
Since we left a day early and didn't have reservations for that
night at the resort we spent the first night in the small town
of Deer Lodge about 30 miles from Anaconda. The drive in got
real interesting right at the end—western Montana is high
mountain country and as I-90 winds through the mountain passes
you find that each one is sort of its own weather zone. So
it'd be thundershowers in one pass, sun in the next and then
you could see lightning up ahead over the next hill. Wild
stuff. Once on a straightaway I could see a wall of water
charging up the highway to meet the car, it hit with a crash
that came near to dislodging Pete's bike off the back of the
car. Yow!
But you really do see why it's called "Big Sky" up there. You're
at several thousand feet above sea level and it seems like the
elements, sun, clouds and stars, are right above your head.
Awe-inspiring stuff. The last night as I stood outside the
anniversary wedding reception hall I could look out across a
huge mountain-walled valley speckled with small lights and roofed
by tumbled, sunset-lit thunderclouds illuminated here and there
in the distance by quick stabs of lightning. Amazing. I've been
to Montana three times in the 90's but this was the first that
I had a chance to stop and take a look at the landscape and man
I am not going to forget it. Tell you the truth if I could
telecommute to work from there I'd probably move.
Anyhow, the first night in Deer Lodge was uneventful apart from
some interesting moments in the restaurant adjoining our motel.
For one thing, and this was a constant throughout the trip, they
know how to EAT in Montana. You don't leave a table hungry,
brother. Example: steak three times a day. When I ordered a
glass of milk with dinner at the restaurant (which caused a bit
of a stir, a Bud would have been more low-profile) the waitress
asked "Large or extra large?" Now that's what I'm talkin' about.
This waitress was, by the way, one of the few non-blond women
we encountered, but as it turned out that was okay because she
was from Tacoma, Washington.
She and her husband had decided to move out after a young
gang member pulled a submachinegun on her husband in his car.
He pulled his .44, the gangster fled, but they decided they'd
had enough of big city life. I couldn't say I blamed
him.
The restaurant was closing early. On the way out Pete and I
fell into conversation with the young (blond) woman at the
register. Seems there was a big party out "in the hills"
with the visiting German high-school wrestling team as the
guests of honor. Pete will never forgive me for not having
us invited along but somehow something in that scenario just
didn't appeal to me. ;)
The next day we toured the main attraction of Deer Lodge since
1871, the old Montana Territorial Prison. From the outside the
bulky rock walls with round guard towers (constructed with
convict labor in 1893) make place look just like an Outlaws
level—with very nice texturing. The open design may lead to
a few low fps spots though... Anyhow an interesting history
there what with two deputy wardens killed by inmates, damage
from a National Guard bazooka blast and so forth.
Pete took some pictures from
outside which he promised to send me when they're developed.
That evening was a hayride with the reunion party up to a horse
ranch in the hills nearby. A huge barbecue with real cowboys
singing good ol' western songs. I didn't know many of 'em but
had a dandy time nonetheless.
But one of the highlights of the trip for me didn't come until
the next day, when some of us went back to the ranch to do some
horseback riding. Now I hadn't ridden since I was a kid at the
YMCA, and that didn't really count. Mounting went okay, there
was a bit of fuss over whether my stirrups fit (beats me) and
then we were off. Now, I was happy as punch, ridin' easy in
the saddle... and then the horse started trotting.
When you get into a trot the rider is supposed to stand up in
the stirrups and absorb the bouncing with their legs, which is
why you are told to keep the balls of your feet in the stirrups
and not your heels. A trotting horse goes up and a down a lot
as I quickly discovered my butt bouncing hard off of my saddle.
Yeeow. So I tried standing up. I tried it each time, but darned
if I could get the trick of staying upright. So my
modus operandi came to be standing up for a second before
beginning to lose my balance and reverting to holding onto the
saddle with both hands as I fumbled for the reins. Yes, quite
an imposing site I'm sure I was. I'm confident I could get the
hang of it given a couple days and carefully adjusted stirrups
(boots would help too, come to think of it—the stirrup strap
rubs on your shin and ankle otherwise, especially if your sneaker
keep slipping in the stirrup) but this first encounter was a bit
touch and go. ;)
So my horse and I came to a quick agreement. He wouldn't throw
me as he knew he so easily could and I for my part wouldn't
make him do anything too irritating and would give him a fair
amount of slack in the reins. We got along swell. Now I want
to go back and really learn to ride, I mean get good and
bowlegged.
Oh I almost forgot the spooky scene that ended the hayride the
night before—well I don't think I'll ever really forget it
actually, it was something I'd never seen or expected to see.
One of the cart horses collapsed in its traces. It was a dark,
cloudy night with a chilly breeze coming up off the valley.
Two of the ranch hands quickly took the horse in hand—if a horse
remains for too long on its side it can become terminally ill,
so they had to get it to its feet. The ranch owner, a kindhearted man
who with his family had gone to all the trouble to prepare and
host our reunion barbecue, had to kick the horse, yell at it,
curse it and haul at it with all his might. It seemed brutal
and uncaring but he was doing it to save its life. It was
an eerie scene in the cold darkness, quiet except for the
ranch owner's yells and the horse's labored breathing,
lit only by a flashlight
held unsteadily by an uncle who, like the rest of us, wanted
to help but didn't know how. It was a great relief when
they finally managed to haul the horse up
and thankfully the next day he seemed to be all right.
A heck of a thing. Well the last night was the big 50th
anniversary wedding reception, I actually had to wear a tie!
Of course there was twice as much food as everyone could eat,
two courses of dessert and dancing afterwards. I'm lucky enough
to have, as it turns out, a great-aunt whose three lovely
granddaughters (yes they're second cousins okay) have inherited
her patience and grace on the dance floor. Although I know squat
about proper dancing I was not about to pass this up—I tell you
it does wonders for a young man's confidence to have the
opportunity to cut a rug with three kind young women who haven't
a prayer of politely declining. :) No toes were broken,
my ankles were rubbed raw by my new dress shoes and we were out
there until the music stopped so I consider the enterprise
to have been something of a success.
Well that was about it. The trip back was hot—I don't recommend
crossing eastern Washington on a sunny summer day in a
car with no air conditioning—but we made up for it by averaging
about 90 mph as Pete had a little rendezvous back in town
that evening that could not be missed, apparently. It was
quite a time, western Montana in the summer is gorgeous and
I can't wait to go back. Someday.
Shoot. That took me a bit longer than I figgered (:p). More
Outlaws web site news stuff but that'll have to wait 'til
tomorrow.
* * *
Friday 8/13/99
Three Lil' Maps
Chet_R1 sent me
2 Towers
by FECA. A two-forts facing each other with a hill
in between type of CTF map, very simple layout should work
well except for framerates being quite low when looking out
from one of the forts. Hmm wonder if that gives one side the
advantage? :P
Grifter is in the mood to take out some of his old
maps, dust 'em off, polish 'em up, an' set 'em out into the world
again as new versions. He's startin' with
Distillery
2.0. In his words:
This was my first map that I released and we used to play it in IRC a lot last summer. There aren't many
visible changes, but I had a lot of unneeded sectors that were doing nothing but ruining fps. I did a little bit with the texturing where I forgot and some of the furniture
proportions. I also swaped around some item placement to make it a bit more balanced, but that's about it. This is a fun level, used to play this for hours in many
late-night-DM's and by the way...that green water is the alcohol.
Hey, nobody under 21 allowed in there. ;) Hmm actually I wonder
when legal drinking ages were invented? Anyhow, good revisions
to a good map, here's a
screenshot of that "green
water."
From OGB I snagged
Pesach, I
think this is the third or fourth map in as many days from
Grumpy Grandma (who seems to have changed "her" name to
"Dr Moose"). Now let's be frank, folks: good maps take longer
than a day to make, okay? Not sayin' you couldn't make a good
one in a day but chances are against it. The basic CTF "two
fortified ends of a canyon at war" arena-type layout here is actually
pretty solid, if simple, but the complete lack of texture
stitching and a 3dfx error or two manage to sabotage the works.
Playtesting folks, take the time to do some real playtesting
on your maps before you unleash them on the
public. Best face forward, and all that...
Outlaws Web Doin's
News from around the Outlaws web... Martone has some
stupendous screenshots of his upcoming "Tahoe" map over at
the abovementioned OGB site. Talk about texturing to die
for, in a wintery kind of way—yummy!
Gaskar has added a ridiculously addictive game of
Outlaws Hangman to
his site
which I think is shaping up into a real nice place. Good choice
of Outlaws stick-figures there... ;)
EasyTarget found out that some ALI motherboards have
problems with AGP video cards, which is why his new V3 was
stuttering and such. On a PCI V3 2000 he's hunky-dory, but
might be a reason to avoid getting an ALI MB...
Danger sent me a link to
Deadlyshot's
html help page. I don't think it's all there yet, but some
of it is, may be helpful to those getting into learning
HTML.
Doses tells me that you can find some notes on the
breakup of the SYN posse over at
his old SYN page.
Actually that's not really new but I didn't post it at first
because I figgered it was stuff everyone who cared already
knew about, but apparently that is not the case. :P So head
over there for a bit of a postmortem on the long-lived
Syndicate gang.
Leader tells me he's updated the
Metalliplasty's Metal
Militia Outlaws page, now much easier to read. Yay! If you
like Half-Life you might also want to check out their main
page.
Web-surfin' salmoides (much cooler than last year's
Super-play-action salmoides) sent me a link to an
article on
Gamers Extreme about why women shouldn't shun men who
are addicted to video games. Rather humorous stuff though
guys, if you're reading it and taking notes, that's a bad
sign. :p
Just as it's probably a bad sign that I'm up late Friday
night typing up all these tidbits of dribble. Lalala.
* * *
Thursday 8/12/99
Mapple Schnapple
So call me irreverent... four new maps t'day. Oh wait no make
that three I found a problem in one. :P
Wynchester sent me his latest,
Tonopah.
Whoa, is this a bruiser of a map or what? One of the good ol'
big rumble in the desert type maps, tons of twisty canyons,
dark caves and soaring buttes to keep you busy exploring. Item
placement is quite conservative which will make this one mean
mother to play in. I think I like it. Framerates overall are
quite good, getting just a hair low in the main canyon due to
all the branching tunnels, caves and rock formations. This one
will keep you busy for a looooong time. :) Here's a
shot looking into the main
canyon.
T'other two maps I snooked from the always excellent
OGB Headquarters.
GrumpyGrandma struck yet again, her latest deviltry
being Highrise.
The readme says "with chickens to annoy you!" Gah. Some nice
gradated lighting effects underground but on the whole too big
and bare except for oh say about three dozen chickens. Hello Lag
City? Jeez... and has it ever occurred to folks that the more
items you have spawning in, the more bandwidth and CPU power
the game takes and thus you get greater chance of lag? I mean
I really hate entering a map and just sitting there listening to
a steady rattle of items spawning, and spawning... argh. Oh yah
of course there's a terminal lack of texture stitching to boot.
Sheesh.
Ice_Hock
wins major points for originality but err not so sure about
playability. Set in an ice rink complete with goals, line
markings and team boxes on either side, the ice has been made
in such a way that your controls get turned around, ie forwards
is back, left is right and vice versa. Talk about frustration!
Couple that with rebounding walls that send you careening off
at the slightest touch (I didn't really even move, just let
myself drift and found myself bouncing around madly, finally
had to use olairhead just to get time to snap a picture) and
I think you may be reaching for your air sickness bag after
a few minutes. Looks kinda nice though, here's
a shot.
Ahh, nice to get maps that weren't sent to me, gives me an
excuse to really let loose hehe...
Other Site Stuph
Man I'm suffering through a period of bad headlines, please
bear with me. EasyTarget sent me a
link
to an old Outlaws review, well it looked kinda new which is why
he sent it but the copyright says 1997. Anyhow always nice to
go back and see what was thought of the game at the time, this
here review is unusual in that they have a lot of nifty screenshots
and best of all, under a "TIPS" link at the top, a long page
with extensive weapons guides, playing tips and a lenthy
walkthrough of all the original multiplayer and single-player maps.
Nifto!
I owe continued thanks to Danger for helping me out
with a ton of posse names for my list. :) In his latest batch
he also had the following URL:
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The BSO Homepage
Nice layout but almost terminally hard to read due to the
high-contrast background. Not a whole lot here other than
a bit of info on the gang and a handful of levels for
download, plus a smattering of utilities.
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Man, I've been about a day or two behind on email all week long
what with all the catchin' up I've been doin'... an' heck I jus'
realized I haven't told y'all how my Montana trip went. DSL
goin' down late last night didn't exactly help, either. :P Well shoot
hopefully the weekend will solve these and other problems...
* * *
Wednesday 8/11/99
New Sitez
Hmm well that was my attempt to be cool and "l33t" there. I think
that's out of my system now. :p Anyhow Desperado sent
me his posse's URL, which he is currently working away on,
and there I found another site so that maketh 2 new pages:
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La Muerte Posse
LMP page is still very much in the construction process.
They do have a pretty long member list up though.
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The Doc Clan Web Page
Okay, they're not a posse, they're a clan, got that? Means
they're all related or somethin' I dunno. Decent site with
fair amount of info on the group, a news page and tips on
gameplay and the different multiplayer characters.
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In other site-related news,
Simon may not be updating
his site too much as he's announced his retirement from Outlaws.
Now I think I've seen enough of this to note a bit of a pattern
in this type of thing. Fine folks like Simon come along, full
of energy and excitement, and channel it into the game in a very
intense fashion. That kind of thing is very draining and just
can't continue indefinitely. Eventually they either burn out
their own interest in the game and move on to other things or
they sort of burn themselves out and have to quit suddenly.
Well folks I may not be the best person to say this but balance,
you need to have balance in life. :) If something is stressing
you out, cut back before you have to cut it off altogether. For
a lot of folks playing a game every day may just be plain
unhealthy. Outlaws is a leisure time thing, do it when you want
to have a bit of fun.
Anyhow, Simon hints that he may be back one day. I have a feeling
he'll find he enjoys a lil' Outlaws here and there.
Outlaws Soundtrack in MP3
Now this may or may be be strictly legal... but I'm not doin'
it so I ain't gonna sweat it too much. Anyhow BTJustice
tipped me off to the fact that you can snag the Outlaws soundtrack
in mp3 format
off the fserve at the #outlaws_players Undernet IRC channel.
For those
of you who don't know much 'bout the mighty world of IRC
(Internet Relay Chat) well you kin learn all about it over on
BT's page.
New Maparoos
Hmm that's what I get for reading cheerful Australian sites. ;)
But yes there are new maps. Oh and I think I figgered out why
the shots lately were darker, most recent version of Hypersnap
handles gamma a bit differently than before. Should be back to
normal today. :)
Chet_R1 told me he had a new map idea a couple days
ago... and here the map is already,
Forgotten
Shrine. The map does a great job of really making you feel
like you're exploring the hidden canyons around a long-lost
pyramid. The layout feels a bit linear, not too many spots
to have big shootout, and item placement is a bit heavy for
my tastes but the look and texturing here is very well done.
He's also got some switches and secret tunnel doors that
open and such, nice touches for a pyramid setting though
such things may not work so well in very laggy matches. But
again the look and feel is really spot on, neato. Check out
the screenshot.
Got two maps from
Outlaws Gang Busters,
FourDuel
and HighFire,
both by GrumpyGrandma. FourDuel is pretty solid and basic,
if not for the chickens which add to lag I'd say it was a pretty
decent arena-style map. Here's the
shot. HighFire thankfully does
away with troublesome poultry, another big, squarish arena type
offering, more spacious this time up above with big pits for the
unwary to plunge into.
And from the new "Doc" clan site I snagged
Doc's Maze
by oh whoever was writing the news page there. Yes it's a big,
single-level subterranean maze with wooden walls. Why are there
plants growing in rocky cave floors? Not one to my liking but
someone must like underground maze levels, they keep getting
made. :P
Tim-berrrrr!
Well you'll recall a couple days ago my "Pale's Place" game
wasn't really up much of the day. It crashed each time I set
it up, usually didn't take very long. Seems to have been
specific to the map I was trying to host that day,
"Timber Ho." I got no idea how the map could crash Outlaws
but that seems to be the inescapable conclusion, I tried it
four or five times and crashed each time. Poo.
Just thought I'd mention that. I'd like to thank the jolly
folks who drop by the game and help make it a happy place to
do a lil' friendly shootin', seein' folks dukin' it out there
jus' makes me *sniff* so darn proud *sob*... =}
* * *
Monday 8/9/99
An Outlaws Screensaver
Red Baron let me know about his site recently. The
special ticket here is his own custom made Outlaws screensaver.
It's really just a slideshow of Outlaws graphics with nifty
wipes in between but hey, it can even play Outlaws music if
you want it to. Not too shabby. Here's the site, you have to
copy the link out of his source code because the actual page
link to download the screensaver is a bit screwed up. :P
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The ACS Headquarters
A sort of rough-and-tumble site, design is pretty much
a mixed bag but fortunately the menu is consistent. Some
interesting info on the history of the ACS gang and the
game of Outlaws. Home of an Outlaws screensaver.
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Beta Zones and Kalis
Seems there are beta versions of both
Kali and Microsoft's
Internet Gaming Zone floating
around. Mallard has
a bunch of info on the new version of the Zone software.
Karrde sent me a
screenshot of the new Kali which
apparently lets you configure its appearance in just about every
way you could think of. Pretty sharp. You can download the
beta Kali (v1.99a) from
here.
I just installed it an' tried it out a bit myself, takes some
gettin' used to but I think it's growin' on me already, I may
hafta try gettin' outta my own hosted game an' back into th'
swing of things one of these days ... ;)
Gaskar's Outlaws Site
Yep, another new site comes along:
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Gaskar's Outlaws Page
Consistent, attactive layouts are good. Selected map
archives with commentary on individual maps are better.
It would be nice to have some more original stuff but
I have a feeling that will come in time...
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Down the Drain
Savior sent me his very first map,
Sewers.
It's pretty dark and wet and easy to get lost, just like
a real sewer system I guess? Hard to say. Well if you like
to get down and dirty this may be the map for you. Check the
shot.
Hmm my screenshots are coming out darker on the Voodoo3. I
tried messin' with gamma a bit but I don't really like having
to do that... oh well I'll fiddle with it a bit mebbe. :P
Other stuff to squeeze in here. Danger reminded me
that you can get into a sort of Posse tournament ladder over
at Tuff Texan's site.
Them posses is always a fussin' an' a feudin'... Also
EasyTarget is havin' trouble with his brand new
Voodoo3 3500, seems that Outlaws is playing very choppy for
him. Tribes plays fine and OL was fine on his old Banshee card,
so he's a bit short of ideas on what the trouble could be. Oh
yah another clue is that this only really happens when he's
playin' multiplayer with at least one other person. Any ideas
folks? Email EasyTarget.
My server was crashing repeatedly today. :P Before I blame the
map I'm gonna try a different map for a day... weird.
* * *
Sunday 8/8/99
New Maps and Policies
Yep "policies" isn't a very fun word but I'm coming to realize
that I've got to lay down some boundaries for my map collection
unless I want to run out of server space pretty quickly, what
with all the huge maps coming out lately. So here it is:
Map Archive Policies
- Older versions of maps over 100k get removed. That shouldn't
really bother anyone since they're old versions anyhow. :P
- Maps over 450k go into the "temp" directory instead of the
"map" directory and get deleted after three or four days UNLESS
I think that they are worth keeping. This is an arbitrary
judgement on my part.
So this means I won't have quite all the maps in existence on
my ftp server. Doh. On the up side this has let me clear up
over 5 megabytes of space so far. I've put the 17 older maps
that are being removed into the
temp directory on my
ftp server so you kin snag 'em before I remove them later
this week.
Okay now that that's out of the way, on to the new maps. I was
sitting on two new "WW2" maps for a couple of days hoping that
Slaters_dog might be able to come up with a scheme
whereby his new weapons wouldn't have to be in each map which
would reduce the maps file sizes tremendously. Unfortunately
there doesn't seem to be a tidy solution so looks like we're
stuck with big map files. Ah by the way I should note that
the Guadalcanal
text file says that you can feel free to use the new
weapons in your maps, no need to ask permission first as long
as you credit Slater and Raptor in your own text file.
Oh and as my own idea, I think it would be nice if mapmakers
using the WW2 weapons could put "WW2" on the front of their
map file name, just would make it easier for people to know
what it was right away.
Pretender and Hawk whipped out a WW2 map
called NewPath.
While it has the new WW2 weapons I can't otherwise recommend
it, the framerates are incredibly poor. Check out the
screenshot: 17 render passes
there, clocking in 29 fps on my P2 333 V3 machine. Yick.
RAF sent in the second WW2 map,
Old Raven's
Rock. Set in a fort high up on a mountain precipice this
reminds me of some of those old WWII movies whose names escape
me just now. You know the ones. :P Framerates here are a tad
on the low side but the fort has an interesting layout with
lots of neat little twists and good use of shadows. Here's the
screenshot.
Pie finally finished up his careful conversion of the
"Wharf" level from the 2.0 Historical Missions, dubbed
Multiplayer
Wharf. He's done a pretty good job with it, folks who like
"Orleans" should also like this one as it features the same
warm palette and lots of water. Framerates are a bit low but
Pie was working from the original level which is kinda slow.
Some minor 3dfx glitches here and there, none too serious. Pie
has added in a bunch of his own touches like a couple underground
tunnels and a nifty pile of sand in the factory. Check out the
screenshot.
Lastly, Hoss just finished up his newest multiplayer map,
Stagecoach.
Hoss really put a lot of time into this one, meticulously
creating a very realistic stagecoach and a huge amount of really
sharp looking new textures and objects to dress up the small
town which looks smashing. There are a few drawbacks, however.
Some of the texturing doesn't work well in DirectDraw mode, in
fact it's pretty darn ugly. And even on a Voodoo card the
framerates here are very low, there's just so much stuff out in
the open. It's just too sluggish in spots for my taste, but
Hoss tells me that in testing people seemed okay
with the performance so I guess you ought to try it yourself.
Here's a screenshot.
New Version of the Outlaws Level Manager
Genius Outlaws programmer Raptor has just come out with
a new version of his utility that lets you keep all yer Outlaws
maps tidy, Outlaws
Level Manager v1.1 (207k). Here's what's new (taken from
the readme):
- Can now sort lists by either file or map name
- Can hide LEC maps from OL list
- Can have OLman exit when you laucnh OL
- Can 'test' a map like Lawmaker does
Whoa actually that last feature is a godsend for me: the
Outlaws 2d menus run incredibly slowly in NT with the current
Voodoo3 drivers but now with OLMan's new feature I can skip
past all that and get right into the level. Phew! Not to mention
that I can tidy up my map collection with it. I just made a
Start Menu shortcut for this baby, I'm going to be using it
a lot. :)
Changin' Sites
A bunch of Outlaws site moves and such lately. The
Central Coast Cowboys has a new URL. The
Official
CBO Home Page has a new address and a new webmaster,
Smac, who tells me that it's a bit bare now 'cause
he's still working on it. This is not to be confused with
the other
CBO
Homepage. Well okay I'm confused.
The
StATiC Outlaws site has been updated and revamped.
And SilverZ has added yet another page to the
Vodka 4 Ever
posse site, a page with a lot of err pointers for succeeding
in multiplayer Outlaws. Hmm crosshairs help, eh? Ah well
I still think they're ugly, who needs 'em? :P
More Women than Men Playing on the Internet?
salmoides pointed me over to
this
article on womengamers.com that has a lot of interesting
statistics. Hard to get real stats on who is doing what on
the internet these days but according to the studies they
cite, there are more women than men playing games online (53%).
Whoa, that's awesome. I guess the days are past when you just had
to assume that anyone with a female nickname was actually
a weird guy. ;P Woohoo!
Mr. Pink First With Sequel Petition
Whoops, neglected to mention with all this petition stuff lately
that Mr. Pink actually has had an Outlaws sequel petition
going for quite some time. He's been patiently collecting names
via email to compile into a list to show to LEC. All you gotta
do ta get in on it is to
email Mr. Pink with
your name (first and last or whatever), country, state and
postcode. Pretty simple!
My own petition effort is going fairly well, signatures are
still coming in though more slowly now (link is in left column
of this page). Now I've got to get going on adding the signatures
I have to the petition page, 300 sigs will probably help convince
people that this is a petition that is going somewhere. :) So
hopefully I'll get some of that done tonight.
Update: Well I got all th' signatures added, 296 total
thus far. Had to shorten a few comments, seems some people just sort
of ignored where it says that long comment would be cut. :P
* * *
Thursday 8/5/99
Sequel Petition Progress
Well howdy, nice to be back after a fun trip to Montana. :)
I returned to find several hundred sequel petition signatures
in my inbox and will be steadily adding them in the order
in which I got them as time allows, though I have lots
of news to catch up on so may not get many done today. I've
added a shortcut link to the petition to the left column of
this page so that it's easier to find and you don't have
to go through the file section to
find it.
Some folks seem to have made longer comments than I said
I would allow and those will get cut down a bit. Hmm might
as well mention here that I'm not one of those folks who
feels that we "need" a sequel, but if the same fellas
who made Outlaws (Stinnett, Shaw, Fife and the gang)
get together fer another Western shooter I can't think how
it wouldn't be a darn fine game. :)
New Maps Galore
Yes new maps to stuff the inbox along with the petition stuff.
Just to note that I have a few based on the WW2 themed total
weapons mod by Slaters_dog and Raptor but I'm
holding off on posting them while I check on something with
those fellas that could make downloading them much easier.
So err if you have a WW2 level coming up, don't send it to
me just yet 'cause there may be a way to reduce the file size
significantly. Well, I hope so anyhow. :P
On to the maps. Oh yeah I've got the new
Hypersnap-DX that has
special filtering for my new Voodoo3 so hmm mebbe my screenshots
will look a bit nicer. Mebbe not. Anyhow th' V3 does make OL
look darn fine indeed, and the 2000 runs smooth as silk clocked
up to 170 mHz. Heck the 2000 board doesn't say "2000" on it
anywhere, I'm pretty sure that the 2000 and 3000 boards are
exactly the same, the ones that go in V3 3000 boxes just do a
smidge better in factory heat tests or something. :P
Okay now really on to the maps. DeadlyShot sent me his
latest, Drop-In.
A big CTF arena-style map with two sunken
forts separated by a taller tower. Thus the "drop in" part, I
guess. Lots of open structures lower the framerate some, stitching
would have been nice for the textures but not too bad. Here's
the shot.
Flopur sent along
Launch
Pad, a merry trip with LawMaker indeed. He's modified almost
all of the normal weapons, making things like a laser rifle
and an "IM Mine" to replace dynamite that kills everything in
the level. There's also low gravity and some AI squirrels to
get yer undies in a bunch. New sound effects and prop graphics
make things a little interesting, but this is more of a "try
it for fun" type of thing than a serious map. Check the
screenshot.
Gas handed over
Omerta,
a small map with an interesting design. Two small buildings
face each other from different elevations but other than that
it's a bit hard to describe, I'll just settle for a
screenshot. Looks interesting
though.
Truffle and Slimshady conspired on
SBD Hideout,
a map set in a medium-sized town. Actually there are an impressive
number of small buildings here, though the amount of buildings
holds the framerate down a tad. Here's the
screenshot.
Dupe sent along
TNT Fight,
an arena type map with a focus on giving you lots of TNT and
lots of ways to use it. Design isn't particularly framerate
or texture friendly, but you know I have a hard time totally
resisting TNT arena maps. Call it a character flaw. Here's
a screenshot. Oh yes there
are also new graphics for all 6 characters, which explains
why the map is over 600k. :P
Well shoot, I have lots more to get through but no time, wrestling
with the Voodoo3 NT drivers slowed me down somewhat—they run
slow as molasses in the Outlaws menu screens. Argh. May have
to start taking level screenshots in '95. :P Doh, didn't
get any petition signatures added yet either. Oh well, more
tomorrow or Saturday at the latest (I hope!).
* * *
Sunday 8/1/99
The Outlaws Sequel Petition
Yeah that's right, an Outlaws sequel. Lots of folks have
wanted one, have tried to organize petitions and so forth
in the past to try to persuade Lucasarts to make another
Outlaws game. None of them got anywhere as far as we know,
'cause we never heard anything from Lucasarts.
Well DrDeath2 wasn't letting this stop him from trying
again. He posted far and wide trying to get people organized.
Well he seems to have made an impression. There are indications
that a large fan petition delivered early next year to the
right people at Lucasarts may help their producers decide to
make an Outlaws sequel. That sounds like a long time but is
the earliest LEC would have time to look for new titles after
their current glut of Star Wars related games. Most of the
original Outlaws team is still at Lucasarts and getting this
thing done is very possible. With your help.
If you would like to see another Outlaws game from Lucasarts
go sign in on the
Outlaws Sequel Petition. The sooner
you sign up (through a handy dandy little form which sends the
info to me through email, all correctly formatted and ready for
me to paste into the page) the higher your name will appear on
the list when I start updating it. :) DrDeath2 has already gotten first dibs because he's
the one who got this ball rolling. Let's keep it going, all
the way into next year and the hands of the Lucasarts
producers.
Real names are more persuasive but you may use your player
nickname if you need to. Feel free to send in a short comment
as well but keep it clean or I won't post it. :P And don't
stop with just you: you can get your friends and relatives on
it too, as long as they really would like another Outlaws
game (I'd like to discourage coercion here ;). Judging from the
fact that nearly a dozen of you already filled it out before I posted
that it was here (linked through my file
page) I feel pretty sure that we're going to have a good
turnout. ;) I figger my inbox will pretty much explode when
I check it after I get back...
Off to Big Sky Country
Yep, me an' Slack Jawed Pete are packin' up an' headin'
off to Montana for a rare family reunion. Should be a blast as
long as we survive Pete's idea of a first-night campout before
arriving at the reunion proper. I expect I'll get eaten by a
bear. :d
By the time you read this we'll probably be on the road.
I'll be back Thursday, hopefully with time for an update of
some of the news that I'm sure will have accumulated in my
inbox by then. :)
Oo by the way the Voodoo3 is working out nicely so far.
The V3 2000 defaults to 143 mHz but can run perfectly smoothly
all the way up at 170 mHz, faster than the 166 mHz V3 3000 and
darn close to the 183 mHz V3 3500. Not too shabby. So far I've
seen about a 70% speed increase on average, though I still
slow down in spots because my P2 333 can't always keep up. Oh
darn. Nice to know my video card is pushing my system to its
limits. Oh and yes it works perfectly in Outlaws, looks
gorgeous with the "high quality" setting enabled.
I'm leaving my hosted game (see the "Pale's Place" link in the
left-hand column on this page) up on a large CTF map, haven't
tried that yet so we'll see how it goes. I guess it'll be a
record of some sort if the game is still running by the time
I get back and I think I'll be a bit disappointed if you folks
haven't managed to crash it by then. ;)
Don't worry about missing a news fix, there are a bunch of
sites doing regular updates these days. Check my
link page and go visit some of those
sites you haven't seen before. Heck, you won't even need
sunscreen. :)
* * *
Saturday 7/31/99
Outlaws Hit the Trenches
Two new maps today, both with modified weapons for some real
gritty gunfights.
Truffle's maps
OLTown
sports yet another take on the popular "Concussion Rifle"
idea, a huge, single-shot weapon that packs a propulsive
punch. I like that he's used the gatling gun graphic for it,
gives it an impressive feeling of size though you can still
move while holding it. The level itself is a large CTF style
setup with two sprawling bases, one being a heavily modified
Sanctuary. Sanc and Truffle's buildings don't really match
in terms of design style so the two sides feel quite a bit
different from each other, which could be a good thing (you
probably won't forget which base you're in in the heat of
combat :P). Here's a
shot of me straddling the fence
in no man's land with my trust concussion rifle.
If you don't like mixing in modified weapons with the standard
Outlaws arsenal then how about a map with ALL new weapons?
That's the idea behind Slaters Dog's latest creation,
Guadalcanal,
a WWII weapon total conversion. The new weapons have their own
brand new (to Outlaws, at any rate) graphics and sounds and I
must say they are extremely well done and a whole heck of a lot
of fun to shoot off. The weapons are a Colt .45 semi-automatic
pistol, Springfield 30-06 bolt-action rifle, a .45 Thompson
sub-machinegun, hand grenades and a stop-and-fire .50 Browning
machinegun. The guns feel great, heck you could make an entirely
new game out of these babies! There's a lot to this so I'll let
Slater tell it:
I have another level here , was originally intended to be a WW2 conversion of OL , can all be done but the zip would have been rather beefy with the
character nwx files in the LAB , so I just put some of the new weapons I made for it in a map I knocked up & left the characters out , which I haven't even started
yet , lack of time & it 'aint worth the work involved really , the novelty is sure to wear thin pretty quickly ;)
Had all kinds of ideas for a map , from a Normandy landing to a bombed out French village , but I really don't have much time on my hands anymore &
without the characters it 'aint really worth it so this lil' bunkers style map does the trick . Myself & Raptor had a laugh a minute for two hours testing it out for
the first time just now , seems ta play great , not bad I suppose since I only started on it last Saturday night , the weapons took about 2 months on & off I
suppose . Played Voodoo Pix when I first made the Thompson at Abandoned all day , we just had Thompsons & the health & plates , was great fun smashin'
winders n' stuff with em,
Anyhow the guns are fun , I wanted to convert the TNT into grenades , so I asked Raptor just 2 weeks ago if he had any idea on making 3do's , he says , "
hmm dunno Slater's , I'll look into it " 24 hours later I find a hangrenade 3do in my inbox ! Nothin' that guy can't work out . ya gotta see the Math in it ,
whew !
Anyhow for the grenade to work the GGREN.3do file , as I named it , has to be in your OL dir along with the usuall level LAB & RCM files , unlike other new
weapons weve seen in other maps these never jam , as I found the problem was a conflict with the LEC guns if you had a mod. weapon & picked another of the
same up , the answer , start with no weapons at all , but don't worry , I hated the idea at first too , but there's no way around it , I 've made them fast
generating & near all the start positions .
Anyhow the readme says it all , please enjoy
Well if you didn't already know it there's no denying it now,
Raptor is a genius. His hand grenade model is perfect!
You play with these weapons around a medium-sized sandbag bunker.
The texturing and lighting is as you would expect from Slater
absolutely top-notch, but you can tell he didn't have much time
to spend on the design as the framerates looking across the
bunker are on the low side, a result of the centralized layout with
multiple walls to look over. Sort of a bummer though I don't
think it'll stop me from playing the level at least once as the
weapons look like an absolute blast.
Now here's where I get nosy. I think it could be a great thing
if someone were to get in touch with
Slater and see about
getting permission to use his weapons and use them to make the
kind of map Slater would've made if he had the time. Well okay
nobody can do it like he can but I could see some really fun
WWII maps coming out of this. This is truly a great achievement by
Slaters_dog. Oh man can't believe I almost forgot the screenshots,
check these out:
shot 1,
shot 2,
shot 3 and
shot 4.
New Sites Sites Sites
Even more new sites to dig on. The Jojo link came from
Wildbill's,
as did the news that the infamouse SyN posse has broken up
after a very long reign as one of the top OL gangs around.
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SIO Outlaws
The design is scattered and heavy on the multimedia,
though if you HAVE to embed music I guess you'd do well
to choose tunes like theirs. Lots of maps, game tips
and tweaks and info on the gang.
|
|
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Jojo's RifleShop
Attractive frames layout, easy to read analysis of
Outlaws characters and weapons as well as tips on
setting up your system and a lil' info on the AR posse.
Java applet on the first page hurt my poor ol' Netscape 3. :P
|
|
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Born To Kill
A bit of form over function, very attractive graphics
but the info on the BTK gang is a bit hard to read because
of the stylized text. Pretty much just a list of the
posse members.
|
Your Lag is Showing ;)
I run my "Pale's Place" game in a window so that I can also
have a bandwidth meter onscreen at the same time. Watching
the upload and download traffic as games play has been pretty
educational. The upload traffic the game sends surprised me
the most. For instance, when a player joins the host sends them
a pretty big chunk of data, to catch them up on the game in
progress I guess. This means that people joining during an
ongoing game are the most likely cause of other players lagging
up, although of course too many players in a game for your
internet connection to handle will lag you out every time.
The other interesting upload thing is that I can see when
players are lagging so bad that they are losing packets. See,
because my host doesn't do anything other than sit in the lobby
there really isn't much upload traffic during the normal course
of things aside from when players join as I just mentioned.
But when players start losing data, or "dropping packets," the
host and I'd think all the other players have to re-send that
lost data. So players lagging badly shows up as sharp upload
spikes in the dataflow, more spikes showing more people dropping
more packets. Or at least that's my theory. Kind of soothing to
watch the bandwidth meter tick along... ;)
Voodoo4 Later This Year
Yep, lots of buzz going around about the Voodoo4 or whatever
they're going to call it being slated to come out later this
year, reports have ranged from October to Christmas time. Lots
of links to various articles can be found on
VoodooExtreme.
Well. I knew that the next-gen graphics cards from both nVidia
and 3dfx were going to be targetting the X-Mas rush but I didn't
think as early as October (though that was only one report and
probably a bit optimistic). Y'all know that I've been waiting
for the Voodoo3 3500 to come out, even after 3dfx delayed it
two months to stick in a TV tuner. :P Well the V4 announcement
came on Thursday, and the V3s began to hit the street on Friday.
So the 3500 would have a 2-4 month life-span. Pretty slim for
a $250 card, esp. when I don't need a TV-tuner...
...And Overclock the **** Out of It!
So here's what I'm going to do. Checking around a bit turned up
that the much cheaper Voodoo3 2000 can be overclocked to almost
as fast as a 3500, and fairly reliably at that
(SharkyExtreme has
a good V3 OC guide). So I ran out today and plunked down a little
cash for a 2000, and as soon as I finish this update I'm gonna
rip out my Banshee, throw in the 2000 and overclock it until it
cries for Mommy. Perhaps I'm just taking out my frustration
with today's short product cycles on an inanimate slab of silicon
but it should be fun. ;D
Note that I do NOT recommend overclocking if you value your
graphic card investment, it can damage your card. But for my
2000 I say the heck with it, let's see what we can do. If it
melts down I can always slap my Banshee back in and wait until
a good Voodoo4 comes along (though I may have some trouble getting
the Banshee back after I let Slack Jawed Pete borry it
;). Now hold still little card, this won't hurt a bit...
* * *
Wednesday 7/28/99
Waddy Now 3dfx-Ready
Bigdogch's huge "Waddy Gang" single-player adventure
is now redone in a 3dfx-compatible version,
Waddy
Gang 3D. BigD tells me there are a couple very minor 3dfx
glitches left that couldn't really be fixed, of course now
that he has a Voodoo card he'll be able to avoid this sort
of problem completely in the future. There's also a little
glitch in software (DirectDraw) mode in this version so if
you aren't using a Voodoo card you're better off with the
previously released version of
Waddy
Gang. Make sense? Just to remind y'all of how gosh darn
big and downright awesome this 10 level single-player bonanza
is here's a shot from the
first level. And that's jus' gettin' warmed up! Now I haven't
had the time to play through the thing past level 2 yet but
you kin bet yer britches I'll be blastin' away at it when I
get some (hmm make that a whole lot of ;) free time. :)
Two Maps and a Site
Dupe (aka Meegs) sent me a new map and his web page
URL where I found a large Outlaws section and another map of
his that I didn't have. Here goes:
Gangsta
is his latest map, featuring a small urban setting with three
skyscrapers on a large street stocked with a lot of weapons.
Construction is a bit on the big and square side, and I noticed
a 3dfx "mirror" problem in the small sewer (?) area across the
street, but this is an original setting for an Outlaws map, that's
fer sure. Check out the screenshot.
Wtf: A Space Adventure
is a highly unusual single-player adventure in er space. Or
a space station or something. Very weird, antigravity stuff,
intangible walls, impromptu spacewalks and getting yer head
caught in a antigrav lift are all in the order of the day here.
Not for those who like to think of the universe as a tidy place.
Check the screenshot. Also
shows up as a multiplayer map for co-op action if you have the
bandwidth for it.
And yes there's his web site. The main thing is bigger but not
Outlaws related so I've just linked to the Outlaws section:
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The Outlaws Zone
Very funky site by Dupe (aka Meegs), mostly valuable as
the home of his very funky Outlaws maps. Much weirdness
now!
|
More on the "Outlaws Look Back"
Tim Krupinski, th' guy from
3D Gaming.net who wrote
the Look
Back at Outlaws article earlier this week, wrote me a very
thoughtful letter concerning the whole thing. I may have gone
off a big about how it was a shame that the article
referred to Outlaws in the past tense as if it were over and
done with, but all-in-all it was an interesting read. It seems
that Tim has gotten some feedback on the article, here's
what he wrote:
Wow! I must say that I had no idea the Outlaws community is still so
big and going strong. Really cool, if I must say. The reason i'm
emailing you is because I think there has been a
mixup in how I was referring to Outlaws in my Look Back article.
Look Back's are there for 3DGN writers to throw together a short
article on a favorite game of theirs that they (the writers)
used to play. While I had no idea the OL community was still so big,
I didn't intend to insinuate that the game was dead and nobody played
it anymore. It was just my thoughts on how
the game was for me when I used to play it non-stop.
With that out of the way, i've been looking at a lot of Outlaws sites
lately, and as soon as I get all updated and stuff with the maps,
patches, and other things, i'll be on some servers for
you guys to put bullets in :)
Well there you go, Tim's a convert already. I never did think
he meant the article as a means to "bury" Outlaws or anything
like that, and in fact the reason I found it interesting was
because I think it reflects the view of the "mainstream" gamers
who never really took Outlaws seriously as a real multiplayer
contender when it came out. Tim, in fact, should be commended
for taking a "look back" to see what he's been missing. :)
Gas and Higster's Sites
Higster and Gas sent me their new site URLs:
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Natural Born Killers
Higster's NBK posse page is a tad heavy on the
multimedia but makes up for it with extensive tips on how
to maneuver in Outlaws, going from the simple (running)
to the advanced (strafing+ducking+shooting). Makes you
want to grow a couple more fingers to hit all them keys
at once like that.
|
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The G-Files
Very slick green-on-black site by level man Gas. The place
to go to find his maps and information on them as well.
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* * *
Tuesday 7/27/99
A Home Down Under
Raptor finally tipped me off to the location of
the OZ posse's wiley web page. Here you is:
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The OZ Bushrangers Posse
The official home page of these lovable Australian Outlaws
sports a warm earthy tone and lots of highly-accented
info on the gang and its many members and even a very
interesting essay on the infamous bushranger Ned Kelly,
whose picture the OZs use in their logo.
|
News Blitz
The new server setting seemed to work well so far, at least,
Pale's Place didn't crash under a tidal wave of mass lagups.
Yay! And that was hosting "Tenpaces," a darn popular
map. :)
Wildbill
has come up with a neat new idea, he's got a new feature
on his news page called "Headline News" with headline-style
links to that latest bits of juicy gossip in the Outlaws web
world. Dang handy I must say.
bigdogch tells me that he's pretty much finished up
the 3dfx-compatible version of his huge "Waddy Gang"
single-player extravaganza. The Waddy boys are currently going
to town makin' sure there aren't any kinks left and if all goes
well the map should be out before you know it. :)
I'm a bit put out b'cause I hafta go into work two hours
early tomorrow. Just thought I'd complain a bit. Yeeargh. ;P
* * *
Monday 7/26/99
A New Outlaws Webring
Cowpoke is looking to start up a new Outlaws webring.
Now most of you probably know about the original OL webring
run by Roger.
Roger isn't all that active in OL parts these days but his
ring still is. Anyhow no real reason there couldn't be another
one, here's what Cowpoke has to say:
I have started a Webring for Outlaws. The purpose is to link
all those interested in a circle of
sites that will be clickable from each individual site that will randomly
toss you to a site that is in the ring.
I have revamped my webpage and the ring is now active. Those interested can
obtain the code and graphic
from me by emailing [removed].
Or they can visit my new URL www.window.to/outlaws. The old one works as
well, http://www.angelfire.com/pa2/outlaws.
Future plans are to make an Outlaws Messaging system which I will call
Outlaws Chatter. Again all it is is a
Webring for messages between Outlaws Players rather than sites, working off
your Email. This will be open to ALL
Outlaws players. A forum for all interested in sharing ideas, Newbies News
Station, General Chitchat etc...
I am starting to take requests for those that wish to join this also by
using the same contact email address.
Well there you have it, another webring for those folks who like
to browse in circles. :)
The "Place" Too Popular?
Have had two instances the past two days where my "Pale's Place"
Outlaws game host pretty much stopped responding and had to be
shut down via CTRL-ALT-TAB. Yick. Now my theory as to why this
is happening is as follows. We already know that OL sometimes
doesn't handle things very well when players lag out, and will
occassionally leave a player slot occupied even though the
player lagged out. That's why I set my player limit at 16, 'cause
I was getting up to 5 or 6 slots filled with bogus players
after the server had been running all day. I think what's happening
now is that too many folks are jumping on at once, I've seen
as many as 12 in there recently at once. No modem connection
can handle that much Outlaws goodness for long and so almost
everyone lags up nearly simultaneously. My guess is that this
"mass lagup" is really throwing the server for a loop, it doesn't
have a clue as to what is going on and basically faints dead
away. :P
So to combat this I've lowered the player limit to 12. Hopefully
that won't really make any difference to you the player... but
instead of not being able to join because the server has been
lag-spammed to death (as happened today) you may find that the
game is temporarily full. I don't think that will happen too
often but obviously I really need to avoid getting the server
crashed, so that's that.
Don't get me wrong, nothin' makes me happier than to see a bunch
of Outlaws shootin' it out in ol' Pale's Place. This is just
a step that needs to be taken fer th' sake of stability so it
can run non-stop as intended. If you find that it's full jus' try
again a lil' while later. :j
* * *
Sunday 7/25/99
Looking Back(?) at Outlaws
I always find it rather curious when gaming web sites talk
about games in the past sense. Okay I can see talking about
a game on an obsolete system as "was," like perhaps a C64
game or something (although I bet you there are still plenty
of people playing games on C64s) but I must take issue with
referring to PC games in the past tense. Where are we to
suppose the game has gone off to? Is there some sort of time
lock in the game that shuts it off after, say, a year? :P
Oh well anyhow
3d Gaming Net has posted
a Look
Back at Outlaws article where one of their writers talks
about how cool Outlaws "was" and so forth. He doesn't say a whole
lot about multiplayer except to diss on the Zone briefly and to
note that it "was" neat to choose different characters. I guess
we can't choose different characters anymore? Well shoot now they
tell me.
So even though written in ignorance of the Outlaws community
and on a relatively low-class gaming site, you might find it
interesting to see what "mainstream" gamers "thought" of OL.
Thanks to the Doominator and my buddy Ryan for pointing
it out. :)
Marshall Adventure #2, the Second Time
DrDeath2 has
re-released his second single-player maps,
Marshall Adventure
#2. Lots of small errors fixed according to Doc. Fun
single-player action, if you've played the first version well
have a go again and see if you can spot what he's changed!
Other Sites Do Stuff
Yes, lots of other Outlaws sites are umm doin' stuff lately
an' lettin' me know.
Like SilverZ has updated the
Vodka 4 Ever site
with photos of some of the V4E lowlifes. Of course I mean that
in a nice way. Is that pink toilet paper? :P
Gryphon dialed in to let me know that he's been on
a summer love tour or something, and he switched ISPs, all of
which is meant to explain why his infamous "Outlaws Surf Shack"
sort of went offline a lil' while back. But he insists that the
Shack will make its triumphant return someday, not "when it's
done" but "when I get around to it :)." Cool.
PeaceMaker gave me the URL for his "Texas Rangers"
posse site:
|
|
TxR: Texas Rangers Gang
Modest site by PeaceMaker with member details, news and
so forth. Still mostly under construction.
|
And of course I need to get in a big thanks to all those who
continue to help me out by sending me names and abbreviations
of posses, current and inactive, to add to the
posse page list. Thanks!
* * *
Friday 7/23/99
Castle of Death
Now if you saw that on a map, you probably wouldn't want to
go there, would you? I mean, Castle of Fun, count me in,
Castle of Laughs, I'm with ya, but th' death thing... oo.
Well luckily in Outlaws you can just respawn after death
so this won't really be a problem, and it might be fun.
'Cause PistolMomma (who just did "Fox") has come out
with her second map,
Castle
of Death. I like the large scale of the place, big stony
wall raise up into the shadows above your head to create
this really big, cavernous feeling. Lighting is really well
done on the big stairways so as you decend to the lower areas
it gets darker, and darker... neat. The place is really screaming
for some texture stitching, and can be tough to navigate—lots
of large drops and stairs that take a lil' hop to get over. But
you know it still has a certain FEEL of something to it. Oh
check the screenshot.
The Update Dilemna
If I'm home Friday nights it seems like I always have this
dilmna, do I update tonight or just kick back an' mebbe update
earlier on Saturday? Hmm oh well I elected to do it tonight.
Who knows when I'll get caught up on email though... anyhow
in other news:
Wildbill
has been updating his site a lot lately, and with more than
just a swanky new logo. He's got tons of news and map and stuff
that you'll enjoy (if not, that's your problem :P).
Bill tells me that Lone Wolf has recently redone
the James
Gang site, lookin' good over there—well okay that moose
may be a bit played out but oh well. Speakin' of site updates
Mallard has been
updatin' a lot lately despite the summer weather, he's also
startin' up a new, rather high-concept gang called "The" although
it's not really a posse... well see his page, sounds
interesting.
Speakin' of new posses, Simon sent word that
Mental, who just recently shed
his Saintly stripes, has started up a new posse, the "Zz" gang,
and has recruited an amazing bunch of top Outlaws including
three I know as deadly as they come: Vader, Zeus
and Wildarms. Well the others are probably deadly too,
I jus' haven't met 'em myself. :P Vader said that he doesn't
think he and Zeus will be quite as dominant as they once were
as their hardware is falling behind the times but ya know,
I wouldn't count on that makin' much difference fer all intents
and purposes.
Oo fergot this a couple days ago but
Red Dragon has updated
his site
with a bit of a new look and especially some info on Marshal
Law, trying to straighten out some folks who seem to be under
the impression that ML includes no Marys or gats or whatever.
So two posses with no-names in one day, must be a record or
somethin'.
Pale's Place is on the Left
Some folks seem to have been havin' some trouble findin' my
server info... well I did move the page earlier this week but
the link is still, and always will be, on this very page below
the main menu on the left there. See? Ooo. Yep mebbe some folks
didn't think it would last but I'm still runnin' my Outlaws
game 24-hours a day. If all goes as planned I'll be hostin'
up some recent maps that I want to try out tomorrow and/or
Sunday, feel free to stop on by sometime. :)
Man, do I have dorky banner ads lately or what? Gah. That nose
one is really beginning to irritate me. ;P
* * *
Thursday 7/22/99
Cabin Fever
Outlaw sent along the latest level from him and
MikeDaKid.
Palerider's
Cabin is based on the real life cabin of their fellow
Death Rider
Palerider. At first glance it looks like a really big
level with this two-story cabin at the top of a big slope
with a lake below but then you realize that you can't go
wandering off into the wilderness and it's actually a pretty
tiny map, just the cabin and the small flat plateau around
it.
But of course classic maps have been made from less and this
is a very well done cabin, though that crate of TNT in the
fireplace makes me a touch nervous. ;) Anyhow if yer idea of
fun is bein' cooped up in a cabin with folks dyin' ta shoot
yer eyes out then this is the map you have been waitin' for!
Here's a screenshot.
Posse Shenanigans
Dicky let me know that he's pretty much retiring from
Outlaws and his "Saints" posse is effectively disbanding.
Well nuts, Dicky's one of the greats. Good luck to ya Dicky!
Anyhow his Saints site is goin' down soon, check it while you
can right here.
Turned out KAP stood fer "Kick Ass Posse." Ahh yah that was
it, thanks to Hoss and Quigs fer that reminder.
Hoss still had KAP_Tribal's page URL, used to be a very popular
Outlaws map site. Tribal's kind of into other games these days
though he's still got some Outlaws stuff lingering around, you
can go visit his site
here. Oh gee come
to think of it I still have Tribal's Outlaws link on my link
list too. Ah memory.
An' now I see that
Wildcat's
site is back up, with his big lists of posses though the site
hasn't been updated all year. So I'm kind of tempted to just
go copy all his posse listings onto my posse page... doh...
must... resist... anyhow I'm still lookin' to get more posses
on my list so remember to email me any that you remember and
don't see on my page!
Huju sent me the listing fer his TNT posse, as well
as the URL fer their site which I didn't have:
|
|
TNT's Place
A site made almost entirely in Macromedia Flash, doesn't
work in Netscape. In Internet Explorer you get an
extremely flashy posse site but, being all flash, it's
a bit hard to navigate and a rather scanty on in-depth
data. But groove to that music, baby!
|
Oh man this has been a crazy week. 3 and a half days behind
on replying to my emails now. Oh this is gonna suck...
* * *
Wednesday 7/21/99
Newso Compacto
Gosh. Didn't get much non-posse related stuff today so let
me run through that first. Let's see here...
DrDeath2
wants folks to email Lucasarts at
store@lucasarts.com
and petition them to make an Outlaws sequel. He says he's
already mailed and got a response saying "Check
the Website for Upcoming releases. And We Can Not give out info on future
releases" which isn't too surprising. Anyhow his idea is that if
they get a lot of OL2 requests there they'll mebbe give some
serious thought to the matter. DrD2 added that one reason
he'd like a sequel is that he's afraid that many Outlaws players
will gradually wander away to newer, shinier games. Well ya
know a year or so ago I was worried that was going to happen.
Now I ain't worried. Heck it's two years since the game came
out and you can go on the Zone and find over 100 people there
sometimes, not to mention cowpokes in Kali, IRC and who knows
where else. Outlaws remains popular, heck even seems to have
gained popularity in the last 6 months, because it is a great
game and people enjoy playing it.
Ah yes the other news items were that
Simon has updated his
site with a files page and a maps page, and he's only really
just getting started. I like reading his stuff because it's
very different, to say the least. And heck while I'm at it
I'll just mention that Outlaw has been puttin' in a
lot of work in daily news updates at
www.deathriders.org,
mostly DR posse related stuff (there's a tourney an' stuff
comin' up) but anyway a good place to get a regular OL news
fix. :)
Out-Fox-ed
Doh here I thought I was in the clear as far as news went
when Hoss goes an' puts up a new map at
OGB Headquarters.
Pistolmomma's
Fox Seems
like a small map at first but then you find tunnels and secret
areas all over the place and next thing you know it's a pretty
big level. Sort of hard to navigate, though it does have an
interesting night-time theme to it. Got a
screenshot of it.
The Eye Has It
Whoa okay my inbox is going crazy, Karrde just dropped in
with a map he's been working on for quite some time,
The Eye.
Not to be confused with the old
Eye arena map,
this sucker weighs in at 900K but it is chock fully of new
sights and sounds. What for? Well as you may have guessed,
"The Eye" takes place in the center of a tornado. Yah. Here
you are stuck in a low ranch house in the middle of a raging
maelstrom of death, liable to be (literally) plucked up and
flung about like a ping-pong ball by the mad elements. Just
look at what's happened to a few of the cows... Good thing
the place has a spacious storm shelter underneath. Of course,
you may have to fight off other folks who want to use it. :P
Darn neat level and tremendously original. Just check out the
smoke from the chimney (smoke signals courtesy of GoJo
I believe). The interior of the house is tremendously detailed
down to careful renderings of kitchen, bedrooms, bathroom and
living room, among other areas. But the thing this map really
gets spot-on is just the feeling of being in the middle of
a huge tempest with things blowing around and the rushing wind
in your ears and this weird sort of twilight all around. Cool
stuff indeed. Got a shot of the
living room and
outdoors. Don't fergit yer
windbreaker in this one. Oh yah and because of the unique nature
of this level you are well advised to peruse the
readme
before playing. Oh yah and (again hehe) Karrde has updated
his
web site too.
Posses a Plenty
Got some posse name and abbreviation emails so I've gone ahead
and started up the new posse page
thing. I think for now I'm just going to add in ones that
people send me. 'Course I could dig up more with some research
(the OGBs also
have a good posse directory, didn't mention that one yesterday)
but heck it's nice to get mail from people, and research is
boring. So if you want yer posse or ex-posses listed, jus'
send along a lil' email with "Posse" as the subject. Actually
I'm especially looking for old posse stuff. For instance, what
in heck did "KAP" stand for?
Thanks to all those who have mailed in, I'm now officially
3 days behind on my email. Argh. :P Think I'll leave the
current Pale's Place map up for another day, it darn well
deserves it if ya ask me.
* * *
Tuesday 7/20/99
The Big Posse Roundup
I mentioned a couple days ago that I had plans for my
posse page but that I would need
help from a lot of folks. Here's the deal. I long ago gave
up trying to stay current with posse memberships and such,
just impossible fer someone like me who doesn't get into
the Zone too often (that seems to be where most posses are
born and perhaps where they die). So, what to do with the
page? Well for a long time Wildcat had a great site
that among many other things had a huge list of all the posse
names and abbreviations. That's what I wanted to do on my
page but there would have been no point with him doin' it
better (he also listed posse members, somethin' I wouldn't have
been able to do at all).
Well yesterday I noticed that his site hadn't been updated
since December. And today it seems to be gone entirely, it
was here.
Quite a bummer, he had a huge collection of info there.
:(
Anyhow, that leaves me something to do with my own posse
page. I know that there are a couple sites that list posses
and such (Hagen's fine site, for instance—see below) but my
list will be a little different: just a list of posse
abbreviations and full names so that you can look and find
the name of any funny prefix you see someone sporting. I'm
not going to list members or anything else, just changes too
much to keep up with. I'm also going to list posses that
aren't around any longer b'cause they should be remembered
and folks should avoid taking prefixes that have been used
before.
So what I need is for you folks to send me posse abbreviations
and full names. Obviously I know some, but I want to start
this out right. I would prefer it if you only send in the
abbreviation and name of the posse to which you belong and/or
to which you have belonged, if the posse is no longer active.
Try to put "posse" or something in the email title, that'll
make it easier fer me ta pick 'em out—I'd be most obliged if
you could get the posse abbreviation and name in the title
too, come to think of it. :)
So I hope you folks kin help me out here, I want to have a
good list. Old posse info will be especially valuable if you
kin recollect some of those gangs that aren't around no more,
we can have somewhere to remember them by.
Vader and Zeus are Dashed
Old master Outlaw Vader wrote me the other day. Seems that
his equally deadly partner Zeus recently returned to
the Zone and discovered that the Zone must recycle member names
if they are not used for some time because some varmits are going
by their old nicks, "CAN_ZEUS" and "CAN_VADER." Both Vader and
Zeus now use nicks with a dash at the end (ie "CAN_Zeus_") so
if you see non-dashed Zeus and Vaders, you've found
frauds.
This is a bit funny to me, I mean what two guys would be the
HARDEST to imitate? I can't imagine any two-bit imposters even
beginning to live up to the level of play that Zeus and Vader
achieved. So if you find non-dashed Zeus and Vaders, and yer
smackin' 'em down, you kin be SURE they aren't the real deals.
:P
Hagen Akimbo
Hagen has been hard at work lately on both his excellent
Aussie
Outlaws Site and on some tantilizing and ingenious ways to
make your Outlaws lives even more exciting. And he wants your
feedback, for instance, on things like this
two simultaneous pistols weapon
mod. He's got more great stuff in the big beefy down-under
updates he's been makin' on his site, like a shot of what looks
like a character modified to ride a—hmm well you jus' better
head on over there an' check things out fer yerself!
The Longwar Continues, and Continues, and...
No actually it stops there. Gas came out with two quick
updated versions of his "Longwar Continues" map which just came
out err I think yesterday. ;) Here's the latest:
The Longwar
Continues v1.2. Looks like he fixed some problem with things
falling through a bridge and a little texture glitch, should be
darn near perfect now I recon. :P
Voodoo3 for $69
Whoops! When I posted yesterday that salmoides told me
you kin find Voodoo3 2000 cards for just $99, I didn't catch
that that's the price BEFORE the new $30 rebate. So WITH rebate
that means you can scrounge up a Voodoo3 2000 for just $69 (at
the Best Buys in Northern California, anyhow). Now
if that ain't a bargain I dunno what is, hopefully this means
that the V3 3500s will be a bit less pricey when they come out,
I'm not really extremely looking forward to shelling out $250
for one. :P
Well Gee
Looks like I made it through the news and it's only a little
past when I should have been asleep already. ":) Well I guess
I'll now be about two days behind on my emails, doh. Oh yah
Doominator has updated his various Outlaws-inspired
MIDI tunes, check 'em out at his mp3 page
www.lancelot.amp3.net.
Gee it was kind of hot today, think I'll set up Pale's Place
to host a nice cool map for tomorrow. :)
Pale Meets a Mole
Okay I can't finish up without telling this story. At lunch
on this fine sunny day I zipped out to the park enjoy the
weather. This is a sort of forest-primeval type park, you know
a spot that's never been developed and they didn't do much more
with it than run some trails through and plop down a "Park"
sign. :)
So here I am trundling down this path towards the stream in
the lower area of the park when I see these black ruts in the
soft earth on the side of the path. I keep going but then I
see one of the ruts kind of ripple. Stopped now I peer down
and see this little tiny dark grey, velvet furred creature
snuffling around in it, can't be more'n 4 inches long... well
mebbe 5 counting white furless tail and snout.
This little roly-poly chap has no visible facial features other
than the snout which he waves this way and that as he snuffs
through the loosened dirt. Instead of normal front legs he's
got two big white claw-tipped paddles that would seem to branch off
the sides of his head except he doesn't really have much of a
head to speak of, his body just sort of tapers from soft midsection
to that delicate little snout.
It's a mole! Never saw one real life and close up like that,
not to mention one so small. He didn't seem aware of me at
all even when I whistled, walked back and forth, leaned over
him and eventually picked a sticky little root off his back.
Then again he was pretty busy; he spent almost
my whole lunchtime rooting up the patch of thick green moss on
the side of the trail. The neighboring worms didn't like that,
pink crawlers could be seen scattering from his blind burrowing
in every direction. One big worm (seven inches or so) got
a bit muddled and ended up coming right back at the mole and
running right into his rump. The mole didn't seem to notice
but the worm quickly thought better of it and squiggled away
along a perpendicular path. I'm not sure what the mole was looking
for in this big excavation but a
few times he would seem to stop and knaw on something, maybe
roots. Often he would be completely hidden by loosened moss
clods and I could just see the shaking of the spongy pile as
he rooted around below.
His paws seemed perfectly suited to burrowing. He would just
sort of squirm himself along with his body and long hind feet
until his nose found a likely spot where he would gather himself,
brace his feet and shove his nose as far as he could into
the earth. Held there his shovel-like front feet came into play,
scooping the earth away to the sides of his head in strong
short strokes. What a dynamo! At times he would stop and rest,
sitting there twitching his snout, his whole rounded body
and short grey fur rippling with his breathing.
Eventually, having thoroughly scattered the moss and worms
he retired, or rolled, a bit down off the trailbank and into
the undergrowth where I could see him curl up into a little
black ball. He squirmed around for a little while in his new
nest but eventually quieted down for a nap and so I left him.
On the way out of the park, I kicked a squirrel. Kidding!
Anyway, I thought the mole was pretty cool.
* * *
Monday 7/19/99
Three New Maps
Oo gotta make this quick, up late seeing "American Pie"
with Slack-Jawed Pete. Okay flick I guess, very cheesy
but some amusing parts to it... though I was a tad disappointed that
the exchange student got sent back home right
after her big introductory scene. :p Was kind of flattered
to get carded buying a ticket too... I jus' look too darn
clean an' wholesome, I guess, Pete was laughing his a$$ off.
:P
Back on topic. Gas sent in his followup to a popular
teamplay type map, called fittingly enough
The Longwar
Continues. Very large and complex CTF map with
many, did I say many paths between between the two bases.
This thing is so hardcore CTF/Teams that deathmatch isn't
even an option, whew! Visually striking with a different
style for each fort and very high framerates throughout. If
you likum big team maps, consider this chowtime. Took two
shots: one and
two.
Flopur sent in a map that he says he started nearly
half a year ago but only went in and finished up just recently,
name of Muddy
Ditches.
Well I for one am glad he dug it out, very striking arena-style
map, square 4-sided/fort canyon with a large pyramidal thingy
in the middle. Hmm mebbe you jus' better see the
screenshot. Framerates are
higher than you would think considering all the fenestration.
Interesting one.
Mullyvan sent in his very first map called
Outpost.
Pretty good job for a first time map, though some object placement
is a bit clumpy and I'm not sure about the
decision to include some AI characters, but then again you can
always kill them off so they won't take up bandwidth. :P Here's
a shot, don't fall in that
there pit...
Oh yes extra bonus today,
DrDeath2 passed
along a tip for his "Vulture Canyon" map released yesterday.
You can type "knife.wav" to hear a Clint Eastwood quote
appropriate for when faced by a knife-wielding opponent. He
also mentioned that, having played in it yesterday, he now
feels pretty good about having made it. Ahh, Outlaws as therapy. :)
Simon Strikes Again
Simon just recently closed down his "Simon & Garfunkel"
Outlaws site but I guess once yer bit hard by th' webmaster
bug it stays with ya, 'cause he's got a new site now:
|
|
Simon's Outlaws Place
Fast, readable design with good use of fonts. Not much
there at the moment besides a tip or two and Simon's
usual cheerful bad grammar but knowing Simon he's got
a good deal of stuff up his sleeve.
|
Voodoo3s Dirt Cheap
Perhaps to ready the market fer th' soon to be released Voodoo
3 3500, or somethin', 3dfx just announced a $30 rebate coupon
for their Voodoo 3 2000 and 3000 cards. Needless to say these
cards both run Outlaws like greased lightnin' (or so I hear,
and they should) an' now with this coupon you kin pick up a
V3 2000 fer 'round $99. Whoa! Thanks to salmoides fer
th' tip and the link to the
3dfx Voodoo3
coupon page.
Ahh Tuesday coming up, usually worse for me than Monday because
then I've had TWO nights of not enough sleep. ;) Har. Oh as
soon as I get a lil' more time I've got plans fer th' posse
page finally (it's been sort of stagnating fer a long time
now) that I'm gonna need a lot of folks ta help me out with,
so stay tuned (and thanks to Barefoot for inadvertently
providing the inspiration :). Oh dear, looks like I'm goin'ta
be behind on my email fer a day or two again...
* * *
Sunday 7/18/99
New Maps and Stuff
I guess you know it's your lucky night when you think you have
a flush and then realize that you didn't but it's okay because
everyone else already folded. :)
Barefoot sent me his second map,
Homeland.
Big wide valley map, I like the texturing here—check the rim
around the top of one of those low buildings, for instance.
Framerates are a bit lower than you would expect mainly because
of a big sinkhole at one end of the map—it's a nice lookin'
hole though. Here's a
shot.
DrDeath2 has
a new map for us,
Vulture
Canyon. Doc himself seems ta think it's okay but nothin'
special. I dunno, looks like a pretty good CTF-style map in
sandy canyons. Well put together. Watch out fer them buzzards!
Of course there's a screenshot.
PaleServ is Dead! Long Live "Pale's Place!"
Well I got tired of the name of my "server" so I done changed
it to the cozier "Pale's Place." Woohoo. Played a good deal on
it in the last couple of days, checkin' out new maps and
whut-not. I even managed to blow up the host in the lobby
(seemed everyone else was able to do it, finally got lucky
myself :). Whee. It's been a lot more popular than I figgered
it'd be, seems like there are folks there most any time of day.
Heck even Slack-Jawed Pete likes it, said when he was
on it today with me and 4 other players (plus the host) he
didn't have a scratch of lag which is pretty impressive
considering the quality of his 33.6 connection (more like 31.4
or somethin', you know how that is). Of course he does live
just a few miles from me so that could help. :P
Oh yah a couple people seem to have missed why I set it to
16 players. No, I don't except people to be able to handle
16 player games on their modems. It's just that there's this
bug in Outlaws where if you leave the game hosted for a long
time and people come in and get disconnected unexpectedly the
host doesn't always free up a player slot when it removes
their name from the list. For instance when I had it at 9
players I checked it once and 6 of those slots were "filled"
by phantom players. Gack. So far it looks like 16 openings should
be able to handle play just fine for a day or two of heavy
traffic though if I get a chance I reset the thing a couple times
a day.
Cowpoke's Site
Cowpoke just finished up a new site, here it is:
|
|
Cowpoke's Outlaws Page
Nice graphics may take a lil' while to download. Cheats,
taunts, links and maps in an attractive layout.
|
Notorious Notoriety
Notorious sent me a mail sayin' that there's somebody
goin' around posin' as him, signin' guestbooks an' generally
causin' a stir. Well sir from what I know of Notorious he
wouldn't stoop to such tomfoolery. Remember that anyone can
sign their name on a guestbook, message board or email. Heck
the mail I got COULD have come from fake Notorious but then
again why would he warn me of himself? ;) Anyway it was a nice
mail and sounded like the real deal, so there you go.
And now I've confused myself yet again. 8P
* * *
Friday 7/16/99
Crosshairs from PlasticSquirrel
Hmm now this is tricky... PlasticSquirrel sent me some
nice custom crosshairs he's made. Now I don't want to become
a huge crosshair repository—gee that'd be an interesting basis
for web site though—so I'm just going to post these
in my ftp site's "temp" folder where they'll lurk for a week
or so, grab 'em soon if ya want 'em. There are two:
Regular and
Winchester.
He also made .gif versions so you can preview 'em:
Reg prev and
Win prev.
If yer searchin' fer some nice 'hairs you might find these
fit th' bill. Remember that because they are single-pixel
width they will get blurred in 512x384, so only get if yer
gonna be running in 640x480.
Return of the Dragon, OldStyle ML
RedDragon just let me knowthat he and his veteran
HSS posse cohorts are back in action in Outlaws after a long
stint in Ultima Online. Cool to have the boys back, in the old
days they were the power to reckon with in Kali. :)
'Course Red always has somethin' on his mind, currently it's
returning to what he sez were the original Marshall Law
rules. I'll just copy what he wrote:
I know I've only been back for a few weeks but I really feel that
this issue of Marshal Law needs to be straightened out once and for all.
Seems alot of players feel that Marshal Law restricts the use of the
following objects:
- Sawed Off Shotgun
- Invisibility Cream
- Badge
- Gatling Gun
Well I have news for them. I've had and always will have the 1st rules for
ML ever made for Outlaws back when the game was 1st released. The site that
posted these rules went down long ago but I managed to save the website and
I now include it at my website so all can see. I have to make a new link to
it since my ladder rules no longer exist but the page can still be viewed by
typing in the following URL:
http://users.erols.com/wesbarthlow/mlaw.html
.
As you will see these rules state that only 2 of those 4 items are banned
and a 3rd can or cannot be agreed upon by the duelers while in the lobby.
Well this could cause a big ruckus, I guess. I confess that
I remember seeing that page (SinnKatt's, I think it was)
a long time ago but I'll be dog
if I don't recollect that the Sawed-Off wasn't prohibited in
Marshall Law rules. I think what happened was that I came into
the OL multiplayer scene four or five months after the game came
out and by that time folks had got used to banning the use of
the sawed-off in ML games. Personally I'd much rather get shot
by someone with Invisibility Cream than with a Sawed-Off...
:P
But that's really neither here nor there. People will play what
they want to play. I hate badges, but I like the cream in matches
that are just for fun (those are the only kind I play I suppose ;).
Sawed-off in the hands of someone bent on racking up a high
score gets to be a bit of a downer, if you ask me—the damage that
thing does is just way too high.
Fortunately everyone has their own opinions and also fortunately
we have enough multiplayer maps that people can restrict items
based on what is in (or NOT in) a map rather than by trying to
make rules and have people stick to them, which is never easy.
Heh I guess I could confuse things further by getting into really
picky semantics. Is it "Marshall" or "Marshal?" Current usage
is generally Marshal, while the "original" rules as reposted by
Red use Marshall. So mebbe Marshal came along after Marshall,
adding the prohibition on the sawed-off? [here's a hint: I pulled
that out of my @$$] Har. ;) The important thing is that it's
more stuff for stick-in-the-mud's to argue about. Me, I just
don't sweat it much if someone keeps using "prohibited" stuff
on me. They're being cheap, we both know it. Play or leave.
What's there to argue about?
Denim and Dynamite
sshep sent me a new map of his named
Blue
Jeans. A small DM map in a deep canyon, got a nice
river, outhouse, tall washhouse and a lil' cabin ta sleep in.
Looks like a darn fun map, I like the series of tough jumps
up to the top of the canyon—perfect place to chuck TNT down
on folks' heads. ;D Only thing missin' is texture stitching,
dogggonit. Think I'll hafta try this one out anyhow. Here's a
nice clean screen (shot, that
is).
Actually I have a bunch of recent maps to catch up on, mebbe I'll be
hostin' some on PaleServ this weekend. :)
Here, There nor Anywhere
DrDeath2 has a couple sneak peaks of a level he's
making, to be called "Vulture Canyon," over in the news section of
his web site.
Looks nifty except oh no, more unstitched textures. Well this
is still work-in-progress, I'm sure he'll have it all smoothed
out when it's released. ;)
Krueger pointed me to the second Quake 2 "Western" mod
that I've seen,
Gunslinger.
Use Old West weapons in Quake 2 and all that, ooo double pistols.
It's no Outlaws of course but perhaps a way to easy your
Quake-addicted friends into it?
SilverZ has done more updating to his always edgy
Vodka 4 Ever gang
site. Seems these crazy Outlawsaholics are now branching out
into art and French err "existentialist" poetry. Yeeow.
* * *
Wednesday 7/14/99
I Need a "Character Manager" Utility
We've got the excellent Level Manager and Configuration Manager
Utilities from Raptor, Karefree and Cia_Bpi
but it's becoming more and more evident to me that in these days
of mass level and character file editing we really could use
a "Character Manager" utility.
Why. Well you know that LawMakers can switch what the characters
look like in specific maps by putting .nwx files in the map
datafile (.lab) that replace the standard James, Mary, Doc etc
character sprite files. The problem is that these .nwx files
take up a heck of a lot of room. We've been getting more and more
maps that weigh in the hundreds of Kilobytes and are starting
to see multi-megabyte maps. Nobody is going to have the server
space to distribute these maps or the patience to download them
all, especially if all they are doing is taking an old map and
swapping some different character files in just for the sake
of a little variety.
So here's what I propose, and I think as utilities go it would
be fairly simple (then again what do I know from programming :p).
First of all we get a standard collection of all the publicly
available character files, optimized and individually named:
for instance all the Main Game baddies that people may want to
use in multiplayer. You download only the characters you want
to use, and only once. You put them in a directory in your
Outlaws folder, let's call it "chars." Here's where the
utility would come in.
It would just be a little program to automate renaming character
files and swapping them into the Outlaws directory to over-rule
the default characters. Say you wanted to use Dynamite Dick
in place of Sanchez: you indicate your preference in the utility
and it goes and copies the dynadick.nwx from your chars directory
into the Outlaws directory, renaming it to sanchez.nwx. Bingo,
it's that simple.
I can see wanting a couple bells and whistles. The first would
be giving the utility the ability to show a cell from the .nwx
files so that you could tell at a glance which character was in
which .nwx file (ie a thumbnail browser).
The second would be a bit more optional but
also handy: the ability to process a script written into a level
by a LawMaker to automatically set up your characters as the
LawMaker intends them to appear in their level. This could be
done by adding a new section to the level's .rcm file perhaps,
or in a completely separate text file if need be. Anyway so
you would just select "load script," point the utility's load
dialogue to your Outlaws directory and pick the script file
you want to use. The script would just be something like:
James=bobby.nwx
DrDeath=ralph.nwx
Mary=cletus.nwx
Bob=chicken.nwx
Sanchez=pepper.nwx
TwoFeathers=twiggy.nwx
So a LawMaker could still set custom characters for their
level without having to bloat the level file itself. People
would be free to swap and mix characters as they liked or to
use a level's script to set the characters as the map author
envisioned them. More freedom, less downloading. Please some
humanitarian soul make this utility!
New Sites
Two new sites for today.
Wildbill
had a link up to a new posse site:
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TFOKs Page
"The Fanatic Outlaws Killers'" site has generally
nice layout but goes way overboard on the high-bandwidth
multimedia, particularly at the site entrance. But the
really unforgivable thing they do is stealing map links
from Outlaws Gang Busters. Map rustlers, pure and simple. ;P
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Hmm whoops can't seem to access the other site just now, that'll
have to wait I guess. By the way does anyone know if Gryphon
has moved his
Outlaws
Surf Shack somewhere or is it just gone for good? Hope not,
I like the darn thing.
PaleServ Has No Rules
Hmm seems I have a couple more little things to clear up about
PaleServ. I hope this will nip
bickering in the bud:
There are no rules on my server. Thus cheating is impossible
unless somebody has a hacked version of the game, something
I have never seen and do not expect to see. Maps have their own rules depending on what is in them, and a
host can enable or disable cheat codes. But there is no way in
which a player can choose to "cheat" on their own. "Bobbing" in water
or using a sawed-off shotgun is not cheating. It is lame,
but it is not cheating. There is no cheating. I do not want to
see any accusations of cheating, because it is just not
possible.
Nobody on PaleServ has or needs special dispensation or status.
You do not have to ask permission of anyone to join the game.
There is nobody there with some kind of special rank that
gives them the right to tell others what to do, or to act like
a jerk. The only reason I would boot somebody (aside from an
undeniable hack job, which I have yet to see) is if they
insisted on continuing to disrespect other players. And I think
that's all I have to say about that.
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