vittles

nineteenth highest

Stuff on th' shelves.

Nineteenth Highest Shelf Vittles: 11.19.00-5.5.01

Back to Stale Vittles

Sunday 5/5/01

A Newsome Twosome
     AKO Headquarters (shot) by Gambit: A simple quasi-arena-style map dedicated to his posse, AKO HQ features a boxing arena building in a valley with uh another building. Not the bestest looking place but nothing really wrong with it, especially (I should think) if you're a member of the posse whose name is emblazoned on the walls. The actual filename is "pistol" so this level will show up in the P section of your map hosting list.
     WRM_80 (shot) by El_Torro: Thanks to Prowler for sending this one in. No idea what the name means / stands for. Your basic generic building in valley with sniping caves type of deal, with the apparent twist that you can't get back into the two long side caves once you (I assume?) spawn in and leave them. Item distribution is handled pretty well, textures sure could use a stich or two on the stairs.

Desperados = Fun
     The Infogrames-published "Desperados" real-time strategy Western adventure game thingy has been out for a little while now, Badger reports that not only is it out, it's actually fun! Always good to hear. As he puts it: "those who liked Commandos will LOVE Desperados. The gameplay, the graphics, everything is simply at it´s best."
     If this sounds fun, you might wanna check out the 60MB demo of the game.

OL Fan Site Screensaver
     The enterprising Redeyed Pete has made a screensaver of Outlaw fan site graphics which you can download from his site linked above. It's about 4MB and displays a slideshow of Outlaw site logos to the accompaniment of Outlaws music. Kinda neat, of course probably violating all kinds of copyrights and such, though I'd be surprised if anyone was stingy enough to actually protest. This will probably baffle anyone who isn't involved in the OL internet "scene" but that's part of the fun, eh?

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Wednesday 5/2/01

Mapzzzzzzzzzz!
     Sorry, started to nod off there. Not because of these new maps here, of course, it was just a long day. And now my cable internet connection is down for the second time this evening... I sure hope... it comes back online... soon... arghh...
     ¡Viva La Rebelión! (shot) by Runaway_Jim: Gosh I love those upside-down exclamation marks. I wish I could write in all upside-down letters. *sigh* Well back in the real world good ol' map-maker Runaway_Jim has another fine map on his hands. It's a remake of Simms at Night, but now it's in daytime, with lots of nifty new places to explore like basements with flickering lanterns and rooftops (see Jim's trademark water-tower? hmm framerate in that shot was a little low, elsewhere in the fort it is nice and smooth though) and you can even go miles out into the canyon around the fort... I ran straight out for a while but didn't get close to the end of the canyon and started to get thirsty so I had to turn back. Well actually I cheated and flew back, 'cause I was tired and had a little too much sun. Where am I? What named is me? Uh... Oh yes so Viva! Viva! that rebelion, I say! ¡Viva! ¡Undale! ¡Hecho en Mexico! ¡Agua! Stand Up Sit Down Fight Fight Fight!
     TheEar (shot) by leader1: TheEar! Comin' back'atcha! Woo! This replacement version fixes that darn 3dfx problem so you've just got one nice smooth sandy ear-shaped basin with shotguns, shotguns, shotguns. I mean man, that's a lotta shotguns! There really isn't anywhere to go (that tunnel entrance in the screenshot is a ¡dead-end!) so you'd better like shooting, and getting shot by, shotguns. But who doesn't!?¡?

Cheat Codes of the Stars Revealed!
     Now I could have sworn, SWORN I had OLREDLITE on the cheats list but dang, it just wasn't there. Well what it does is freezes AI characters in their tracks so you can run up to them and tickle their belly-buttons. I was reminded of that code while perusing GameFAQs.com so thanks to webmaster CJayC and Vegetaman or whoever it was who it said (my internet connection is down still :p) posted that code there.
     Also, I figgered out what that OLBOUNCE cheat does! You have to hack your registry and get the "Very Fast" key bound to something (see the tips and tricks page for how to do that), then you enter this code and press the X key to jump while moving Very Fast and you uh jump farther and stuff. ¡¡¡¡moM (That was "Wow!!!" in upside-down talk, see?)

My Internet Connection = Still $@!# Down
     Oop, sorry about that little outburst. *sigh* That's about all the news I can come up with while my internet access is cut off though. Looks like I won't get this uploaded until tomorrow, and won't get through any of the email... gahhh. ¡Viva!

It's Back Up, Yay!
     Upload little pages, upload with all your might!

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Sunday 4/29/01

Retro Load
     Warped CTF (shot) by Shotgun Joe: The author returns from an absense with a pretty nifty effect up his sleeve. The "warp" shuttles you quickly through a flashing white and black tunnel—it's a fun, disorienting rush complete with very appropriate whooshing sound effect. An effect does not a map make, of course and fortunately the rest of the map is sturdily made with nice defensive positions at the simple bases. The lighting and texturing are quite plain. Framerates are good. Don't even think about going for that badge, neither. Don't say I didn't warn ya.
     OldWest (shot) by Kbyrne: One of the real old-time mappers returns with what feels like a fresh take on Sanctuary, with four small buildings arranged in a roughly circular canyon around a Dry Gulch-like town square. Good frames, handsome design with good flow and some nice jumps. The AI shopkeeper will add a bit of network traffic but I suppose that will go away as soon as someone knocks him off. The rooftops open up another level to the playing field, don't jump too high though or you'll poke your head through the sky.
     Mother Lode (shot) by Cutter: Pair the old mining building from his "Mining Co" map with another old weather-bitten building across a dry river bed and you have one awesome looking deathmatch/teamplay map. The framerate isn't the highest but you're well rewarded in realistic scenery to play in. Sports some great custom textures—dig the rusting sheet metal roof on the new building fer instance.
     (No)More Whiskey (shot) by Cutter: Adds Team play to his fantabulous "More Whiskey" map. Since they're both darn near 1MB and this one has everything the earlier had with one more option I'm gonna remove More Whiskey and just keep this one. Swiped this from the good ol' boys at OGB HQ.
     river (shot) by Werner Grund: Very sound construction in the author's first map, two groups of buildings (one impressive stone tower) separated by a wide curving river. Object placement is clumpy in spots as is the framerate (in fewer spots though) but nothing terrible by any means. The bridge over the river is neat.
     illcity (shot) by Werner Grund: You'll probably get ill (catch cold or something, that is) if you hang too long in the damp caverns and tunnels around this map... unfortunately that's hard to avoid since they're rather on the dark and maze-like side. Item placement is better here if you can stand the badge (it takes a little jumping to get to, at least).
     LEC Marshal Law Maps by Martone: Sure we had sporadic ML versions of most of the LEC maps (most notably from Saxster) but nobody ever set about doing them in a comprehensive fashion until now. Martone presents all the LEC maps with Marshal Law enforced (he swapped out the badges, vanishing creams and sawed-off shotgun for more balanced items) all in one handy download pack. If you'd like to download them separately you can do that over at Martone's OBG HQ. Great work by Martone, I have a feeling this is gonna be one of the most-used map downloads.

Desperate for Desperados?
     Stryker passed along word that you can snag a demo of the real-time Western strategy game "Desperados: Wanted Dead or Alive" from Happy Puppy. It's a big one, clocking in just under 100 MB. If you're on a slow connection you might settle for reading some reviews, I think... hmm dang I forget where I saw those. They weren't overwhelmingly positive but heck neither were Outlaws' so just set ye olde modem on overnight download if real-time strategy appeals to ya.

Search Works
     Ehh the site Search function is working again... it had been screwy for a while, not because the script changed but because some cut'n'pasted HTML in one of my news updates was screwing up the results printout. This was actually a shortcoming in the original script from Matt's Script Archive... anyway that sounds better than blaming it on my own willy-nilly HTML pasting. :P At any rate I've made that part of the script (the part that finds the page title) more robust and the Search function should be working again for the 0.5 people aside from me who use it every month.

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Wednesday 4/25/01

Triple Dose!
     TheEar (shot) by leader1: A tiered sandy basin with gently curving walls, possibly ear-shaped. Looks like a nice hardcore small DM map, perhaps slightly overstocked with powerups. A rather unsightly 3dfx glitch mars the level on Voodoo cards.
     DeathO (shot) by KiL_Ler_: No two ways about it, this one is completely overstocked. Unless you like nonstop frantic fighting with none of that running and hiding and looking for stuff business, in which case this map should be right up your alley.
     Stairway (shot) by Prowler: You might be thinking this map involves a stairway. That's where you're wrong, sucka! It involves eight stairways, all inexplicably converging at the top. What is it? What strange ancient civilization built it, and to what purpose? Did they like to exercise—perhaps this is the Stone Age version of the StairMaster? It is quite likely that we shall never know.

Petition for Permanent Ignore in Zone
     As you all know I don't hang in the Zone so I don't know first-hand what this is all about, but Fratricide let me know he's started a Petition for a Permanent Ignore Feature on the MSN Gaming Zone, presumably to give channel users some defense against onslaughts of chat spam and general stupidity. If you're thinking to yourself right now "you know, it might be nice if the Zone had some sort of defense against onslaughts of chat spam and general stupidity, like a Permanent Ignore Feature or something" then Fratricide is already way ahead of you and you might as well go sign this petition.

Mystery Posse Site

Home of MVG
Not incredibly informative (I still don't know that MVG stands for) but this rather colorful site has a small selection of the posse's favorite maps for download, a list of cheats and a couple polls. Layout requires Javascript.

Wanted: First Person Western Shooter
Rather out of the blue, Stomped.com has an interview with Zombie Studios designer John Williamson regarding "Wanted: Dead or Alive", the working title of a first-person Western shooter they've got in development using the Lithtech engine. The game is still in the early stages but they've got some nice looking screenshots (pretty horsies) and a good deal of info about the game including the basic plot (guy returning home finds family dead, tracks down killer—gee what does that kinda sound like?), details on the weapons (branding iron?), transportation (horses, train), multiplayer options (DM, team DM, CTF variant, Jailbreak variant) and "more." They don't have a publisher yet (uh oh) but the screenshots look real purty.

Monkey vs Robot
I don't usually post links to random weird stuff but I'm in a random weird mood so may I introduce you to the carnage that is Monkey vs Robot. Windows Media Player required, unfortunately. :P

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Sunday 4/22/01

Mailbag Rummage
     Well what's in the ol' mail inbox today? Let's see here... Well waddaya know, some new levels!
     Recried (shot) by Prowler: Remake of the old map "Cry" (neither Prowler nor I can recall who the original author was). Fixes stuff for 3dfx cards so now it'll look like a proper multi-story building rather than some fifth-dimensional funhouse.
     2LifeS (shot) by Rambo: Speakin' of 5D funhouses... this map has some 3dfx funkiness in the jail area. Otherwise it's an all-indoor affair with sorta plain funny-shaped rooms and lots of hidden nooks. Pretty small, high framerates.
     Trench WarFare (shot) by Number1_KidEver: Unusual layout here with a tiny battlefield in a square canyon. Two trenches zig-zag across it. You can't jump up out of the trenches, in fact all you can really do is run into the bunker, up some stairs and out into a gatling gun turret overlooking the battlefield, though from here you can drop (it hurts!) down to ground level. Quite vertical, definitely different.

Invite > To Start Outlaws
     BTJustice noticed that "If you use the MSN Messenger Service and have Outlaws installed, you can get buddies on your list that also have Outlaws. When they come online, you can right-click once on their name and left-click on INVITE > TO START OUTLAWS." He hasn't tried it out himself so if you use IM and you're bored...
     Speaking of uhh internet Outlaws stuff, a big thanks to Blackthorn for rooting around the links page and finding the dead ones for me. That takes a lot of time and patience which I why I'm really bad at it, so I'm quite grateful for his help. :)

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Wednesday 4/18/01

Boot This Hill
     SoulStripper was kind enough to drop me a Boot Hill Online screenshot from the upcoming Unreal Tournament western mod. There are more shots and development details on the official site, the counter there estimates that the mod is about 30% complete.
     Mod team member Anthony Potamitis also dropped me a line with a little summary of the project: "We are making a total conversion for UT set in the wild west. We are making it most historically acurate game ever made, with levels set in different times ei Civil war levels where you can only use weapons that were available for certain ppl at those times. This stops eveyone using the same weapons and has ppl using the correct guns for the type of character they have chosen. Also we have a list of character types that should cover every type you can think of :)"
     Anthony also happened to mention that they are shopping for modelers to help make some of those historically accurate weapons come to life, if you got some 3D Max skillz (or Maya or Lightwave or whatever) and a hankerin' for six-shooters and the like, go check 'em out.

Lonesome and Nekkid
     Lonesome (shot) by Prowler: In the flat, jagged and single-textured category, Prowler's latest is pretty dull to look at but uh at least it loads and runs fast and with the piles of powerups everywhere you certainly won't have to worry about running out of ammunition.
     Naked City (shot) by Kid Macoo and TheOutlawDad: This map wins the dubious honor of being the first "adult" Outlaws map though as with most products labelled "mature" or "adult" the content is actually completely juvenile: let's just say it starts with South Park taunts and goes down from there. Waaaay down. And then it twists around, comes back and squirts you in the eye. Not even the powerups or, goodness me, the crosshair is safe. Much less the characters themselves. You know how geeks everywhere beg for "nude skin" patches for games like Tomb Raider so they can see Lara run around in the altogether? Well, I don't recall ever seeing anyone ask for a Bloody Mary nude patch. And now I know why. *shudder* The tragic part is that the map itself is actually pretty good aside from some slowdown looking across the map from the corners. Err. Anyway, the map can be found on TheOutlawDad's site. But look, if you don't think you'd enjoy seeing poorly-drawn, low-res male cartoon genitalia, there really ain't much reason to download this thing. :PP

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Sunday 4/15/01

Bang Bang Bang
     Blackhawk3d (aka Aaron Sawyer) has three new rifle sounds which you can use for Outlaws available in the "Lorde5" file on his site. Lots of report and blowback here, though in fact the three sounds are pretty much alike. Of course real picky fellers may prefer one over the other, they all sound pretty good to me.

Everything Old is New Again
     Lots of new maps! Or... are they?
     Minisimm (shot) by Prowler: Update of his cut-down version of the night-time LEC level takes out the TNT which was causing some lag, apparently.
     Repapered (shot) by Rambo: Reworking of Gojo's joke map "Paperbag" tosses in a surprising number of secret rooms in this tiny little brown level. Something is pretty screwy with the sky here, there are probably too many powerups and the civilian AIs will add to lag.
     151 (shot) by YsidroMtBSki: Scratch "Saratoga," this map of the author's very large, very odd house is now definitely called "151." And the chickens are gone, woohoo! Still some minor 3dfx flashes, nothing blinding. Hey, there's a hole in the roof that shoots you up into the air, allowing you to fall to your death in the spot of your choosing in the yard. Woo!
     SeaDogs (shot) by chaabo: A bugfix update, doesn't way what the change is but maybe a fix for that one where you could pop outside the playable area. I found another where, if you swim up and down below the phantom square rafts behind one of the boats, you kinda fall into a blue-greenish limbo. Pretty trippy. Got a screenshot. :)
     lilgulch (shot) by chaabo: Modified version of LEC's "Dry Gulch" squeezes the buildings together a bit, lowers the surrounding cliffs and adds rooftops for another level of action. Looks good, though some of the underground tunnels have been cut. Should be kinda fun and a nice change of pace for Dry Gulch veterans.

Happy Easter
     On a definitely non-canonical note...

GoD's HeaVeN
Trash-talkin' posse site lookin' fer trouble. Nice color scheme and layout has a few rough spots but overall is looking pretty slick. Not much here yet aside from profanity-laden posse member rants which pretty much look guaranteed to amuse some and anger others. Well hey at least the site is being updated.

If you skipped the above let me summarize: if you are easily offended, do yourself a favor and don't visit the site.

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Wednesday 4/11/01

Left Lane: What's It For?
     Bahaha! Well it's been a while since my last update, I've been keeping myself far too busy. Not much time left tonight so I doubt I'll get through it all but we'll see.
     Just have to say this, I know MY regular readers aren't clueless enough to need it and it probably won't help me but maybe it'll help some people, somewhere: the left lane on multi-lane roads is for passing. So if you're in the left lane and there are people behind you who look a little miffed and may be a tad closer to your rear bumper than you would like, CHANGE LANES!!!! Gah. Sorry. People in Montana, Idaho and eastern Washington know this, I can testify to that personally. But half the people in Seattle apparently took a discount driver's ed. course where they didn't mention that handy little rule of the road. :P

Getcher Hot ReOutlawed News
     Well not like piping hot, but JacO (used to be "Oze") alerted me to the fact that he's updated the ReOutlawed user-sequel site with a fancy new logo and uh a progress report on the project and stuff. GoJo plays golf?!?

SWE Where?
     The Team SWE site has been moving around, I got confused but Lefty helped me nail it down to it's current location. Here's the goods:

Team SWE
Latest incarnation of this Swedish posse's homepage, now by Lefty, sports a bright look and fast organized layout. Lots of info in team members, news, play tips, favorite maps, favorite players, message board and email services and more.

Levels You Can Download
     SeaDogs (shot) by chaabo: Nice looking seabourne map of two galleons facing off, with boxes and things floating in the water allowing you to jump from one to other. Framerates on the slightly low side and chaabo says he couldn't figure out a few of the weird blippy things where shadows shift around underwater if you have transparent water enabled, but it isn't grotesquely aweful by any means. I did manage to get outside the map somehow underwater and couldn't get back in but I was kinda looking for trouble. The boats look really spiffing.
     Saratoga (shot) by YsidroMtBSki: The author's first map, took the popular route of making his house. Now this dude has a big house. I mean I've seen hotels way smaller than this. Anyway the size is impressive and I love all the windows you can break, can't go wrong there. The textures are a mixed bag, some are downright ugly and others, though nicely chosen, could use some alignment. Framerates are good and there are some nice tricky ledges and jumps in the house's five levels. I like the altitude you reach on the rooftop. The flock of chickens in the yard will slow it down on the internet though, and if you only have a few players you'll probably be hard pressed to locate anyone in the large, somewhat mazelike manse.
     Oh by the way Saratoga shows up as "151" in the level list. Umm it's like a secret code or somethin', yeah.

All Your Babes--Oh Nevermind
     Base sent a cell from a new character he's working on, a purty gal in a blue dress. Lookin' good so far! He wants feedback on this character, and any suggestions you have for other characters, so feel free to mail him at [removed].
     Oop, didn't get through everything, gotta hit the sack. More next update.

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Wednesday 4/4/01

Armageddon Round Two
     Armageddon Secure (shot) by PahPah: Armageddon is supposed to be the end of everything. In this case it wasn't and that's a good thing because Armageddon "Secure," the second version of PahPah's massive CTF map with modified weapons, is a whole lot more polished than the first. Mainly the framerates are now quite playable, you'll notice that he removed a lot of incidental details and closed off the middle area, among other things. Also fixes to popping and stuff like that, and stairsteps instead of a sloped hillside. Anyway it's all a lot tidier so if you thought the first was kinda cool you'll definitely appreciate this update.
     The .zip contains a "local.msg" file. No it isn't monosodium glutamate, it's a text file that puts in custom messages for stuff in the game, so it can say you picked up "Buffalo Rifle" when you pick up the gosh darn Buffalo rifle. It's too bad it can't go in the .lab file or something but I tried that and it didn't work so oh well... I've got a feelin' there's some way to do it but I'm all thumbs when it comes to that kind of thing. So anyhoo don't worry about it, it won't make you fat or give you cancer or whatever.*
*Paleface does not guarantee that this file will not adversely affect your health, use at your own risk. And don't forget to floss. :P

Now That's a Gun
     A Mr. Guilmette referred me to The Gatling Gun Company, "Manufacturers of fine Gatling guns, suitable for display, reenactments, or actual use." They say their live-fire Gatling gun reproductions ("authentic replicas") can fire up to 600 rounds per minute but in their movie (which fires smoke into the screen for half of it) they can't really be getting more than maybe 300, and half sound like misfires. ;) Anyway it's kinda fun stuff and they look good so that's all that really matters. They also have an interesting history of the Gatling gun article.

Ooo... Shadows
     TonToE let me know that he's updated the Outlaws Mod for Half-Life site with a bunch of really keen looking screenshots—I think it's safe to say that Bunkers and Buckshotville have never looked so good. For those who missed this before, the OLMod4HL is about taking the Outlaws sounds and textures and recreating the characters, guns, weapons and levels in full 3d. Pretty keen stuff, they seem to be doing a bang up job. Word is it's getting close to play-testing time...

Sites for Sore Eyes

	Rockdawg's Dawghouse Kinda multimedia-intense minisite for the DawgPack posse. Definitely colorful however. NOTE: The webmaster wanted to point you to the link in the lower right corner of the first page to a site with a ton of very ... colorful... Redneck Rampage .wav files for your taunting pleasure.
	Fugitive Recovery Agents Very slick Flash intro and menus and stuff, not a ton of content but a kinda neat layout (if you've got a modern browser) and some good files for download.

     The Outlaw once known as QOT_Doc wants folks to know there's a CounterStrike clan of old Outlaws players, name of "sLOw" (Silently Lethal Outlaws from the West). Their site be here.
     Moose and Newbie are planning on starting up a ladder over at The Outlaws Center, Moose's summary is "Posses' select players to take part in dm, tms, ctf games, then arrange games themselves, and email me the results." Well that doesn't sound so hard now does it? Sounds like they're taking signups now so head on over.
     Truffle has been updating The Outlaws Hideout a bunch lately (he scooped me on the OLMod4HL news, f'r'instance), his latest big feature is a preview section currently sporting previews of the OLMod4HL and ReOutlawed, the project making their own OL sequel with the OL engine.

Heretical
     ShiftyTuco ripped some spiffy textures from the game Heretic using the "Game File Explorer" utility from Code Alliance (they make other stuff besides LawMaker, go figure). Here's a screenshot he took of a sample level using some of the textures (he's quick to point out that it looks crappy 'cause it's running in software mode) and here's the texture pack with 15 textures in it (and under 50K to boot!). This is an extra super bonus file in my temp directory so if you're interested you'd better download it now.

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Sunday 4/1/01

Gimme My Hour Back!
     You know it's bad news when you only find out about the Daylight Savings Time adjustment when you're at work at 3:00am thinking hey, it could be later when BING your computer pops up a window telling you the clock has been updated for DST and now it's 4:00am. :PP Anyhow this is my way of making excuses for the fact that I won't get all the updates updated tonight, so if you sent somethin' in and don't see it here well hold your horses, it'll get in later this week.
     Actually nobody ever complains about me taking a little time to get their update in... I just like to bitch about Daylight Savings in spring.

Take My Maps... Please!
     Los Inkas MOD (shot) by Bamz: Large arena-like area with grass-covered stair-stepped grey pyramids with little sniping bunkers at the top. And two sniping bunkers overlooking the whole area from the side walls (looked kinda like Jai Ali goals or something... well heck what do I know). Kinda blocky and the tunnels are on the long/narrow/dark side of things but there are some clever twists hidden below the surface. Also, the framerate is quite impressive considering the detail in the arena (not to mention that this is the author's first map. The MOD part of the title gives away the fact that there's a "buffalo gun" modied heavy rifle in here, Bamz promises to follow up with a mod-free version of the map as well.
     Spirits (shot) by chaabo: Conversion of LEC's single-player "Cliffs" level for multiplayer. It's been done before but I don't remember it looking this good—could just be my Voodoo 5 but I'll give chaabo the benefit of the doubt. Item placement looks well done and hey, there's a roof on the joint now (and you don't fall through it as in his Sanctuary conversion, happily :). The vertical switches in this level are just insane with all kinds of surprising jumps thrown around. Looks like just the thing for large-scale deathmatchin'.
     Huckswar (shot) by WarWolf: Alternate version of his "Warzone" map made for his pal Huckleberry, some of the modified weapons and hidden doors are removed. Other'n that you can just take what I said for Warzone, or just don't worry about that and download the darn thing.
[11/14/01 correction: "Warzone" was made by ELCobra1, not WarWolf. Thanks to ELCobra1 for the correction.]
     JacK (shot) by KiL_Ler: Compact valley in nice reddish tones, I like the wooden spars jutting out of the corner towers. Feels a little over-bunkered though with four really nasty bunkers lording it over this relatively small area. I guess that could make for some really strategic (or "cheap") play.
     More Whiskey (shot) by Cutter: The readme for his nearly two year-old map Little Whiskey says "My last map." And in a way it still is, as this is a remake of it. But whatta remake. This small little desert town is now bristling with even more sounds, billboards, props, windows and tunnels than before. In fact the sheer detail makes it feel a little crowded sometimes but then you run off into the desert and run, and run, and... get impatient and zoom the automap out and gape at the size of the area. Then you start on back to town. ;) I loved Little Whiskey and this pretty much outdoes it in every way. That detail doesn't come cheap though: be prepared for a large download. Also Cutter states unapologetically that the new detail carries a framerate hit; well maybe it does but y'know the level is still faster than most. So c'mon back to Whiskey, pardner. Say hello to the dimestore Indian, and the fella swingin' from a rope behind the jail. Oh and here's fun, see if you catch the name of the map in a sound clip in one of the buildings.

Heeeeere's... Wally?
     Base sent in a custom character file, Wally. I'm gonna go ahead and stick a link to Wally at the bottom of the character page just because he's a top-quality example of how you can create a standalone custom character sprite. Base is an old hand at this: though the name has changed he's the guy who made that old Batman character sprite in the "Gotham" map as well as a Punisher character that I had up for download a long time ago. Base had some help from Oze on this guy and he's really nicely done. Never saw an Outlaw with a red and white polka-dot bandanna before? Say hi to Wally. Just don't point at him. He hates that.
     The readme says Wally can be used for anything folks might like, so hopefully we'll be seeing him popping up in some other folks' upcoming levels (one nice thing about Wally is his trim size: while most custom characters in the past have added about 100k to a zipped map, Wally's archive weighs in at a slim 51K. That's 'cause he lives on what he kin catch with his knife, of course.

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Wednesday 3/28/01

Two for the Road
     ourtown (shot) by chaabo: Conversion of the full town of Sanctuary from the single-player game (not just the side street from LEC's "Sanctuary" multiplayer map) with the addition of being able to run across rooftops, which is pretty cool. Somehow I fell through one on top of the bar though and ended up in this weird alternate dimension with no ground textures and screwed up physics (see screenshot). So I guess if you can avoid whatever that was this should be a fun, big multiplayer map; not the highest framerate but a darn fine level layout as everyone already knows. Update: just ran into the rooftop thing a second time, use rooftops at your own risk. :P
     grabgold (shot) by Spikeramas: His levels are always not just a new level but a new game to play. This is a team deathmatch level where you have to escape a valley with a bag of gold. To do it you'll need a crowbar to get past a certain large rock. Once you get out you shoot a bottle of your team color to register the point, then fall to your death to return the items to the point where they can get captured again. Or at least that's what the readme says, this kinda thing is kinda hard for me to try out in my little review run. Sounds pretty cool if you can get a cooperative teammate along. The map itself, or what I saw of it, is a little on the monotone side with large steps that you have to jump up and which really tire you out quickly, which is kind of frustrating. High framerates though. Nice body prop in there too...

One Cheek in the Sack
     If this update seems a little half-assed (pardone mon francais) it's because I'm short on midnight oil. Got more stuff but it'll hafta wait 'til next time. C'mon back now, y'hear?

* * *

Sunday 3/25/01

Sequel Petition Updated
Believe it or not the Outlaws Sequel Petition still gets a steady flow of new signatures each week. Been a while since I updated but it's now got all 2337 signatures to date on it. Always fun to read through these and see what folks have to say about getting more Outlaws action.

WildBill Strikes Again

SBD: Silent But Deadly Outlaws Killers
Posse site by WildBill. Decent speed and layout though other than the SBD members list, the site's other features (Outlaws feature summary, player photo gallery and a very handy archive of pretty much every map every released) are identical to those found at WildBill's Outlaws Bar.

Serious Single-Player
You all know I'm a pretty critical cuss when it comes to games. In fact I haven't bought a first-person shooter since Outlaws. Yeah that's right. Sure I played demos and stuff but nothing has grabbed me for years. Until now. I bought "Serious Sam" a few days ago and am insufferably wildly giddy about it. In fact I wrote out a whole long review here but deleted it because it's pretty off-topic. The multiplayer doesn't grab me (DM is a cheap Quake rip and co-op, while briefly fun in an insane kind of way, runs slow even on high end systems with broadband connections and there's so much going on that you don't have time to really interact with other players: it screams "LAN party" though ;) but the single-player... well... I'll just say that this is the most fun I have ever had with a first-person shooter in single-player. A'yup. It costs $20 and it would still be a treasure at twice the price.
Enough outta me. Gamespy has a review of it here with lots of screenshots and good descriptions of the major features (much as I detest their cut'n'paste "Planet" sites and their constant hawking of GameSpyArcade, their mother site still has very well-written and thorough reviews). Developer Croteam has a downloadable demo. And here's a little screenshot I took showing some hot double-six-shooter action (also the main standby weapon is a double-barrel shotgun, and there's a cowboy character model for multiplayer; oh and the final boss is over six times the size of that dinky little 45-foot demon in the picture ;).

* * *

Wednesday 3/21/01

Oh Hey, Outlaws!
     I always find it amusing when folks stumble across Outlaws and think they've rediscovered a miracle that nobody else knows about. ;) Such seems to have happened to a fellow over at 3dactionplanet.com (the closest they came to doing a PlanetOutlaws.com I suppose) as he wrote up this article discussing why Outlaws should be considered a classic. It isn't amazingly well written or informative but it's kind of cute. Doesn't mention multiplayer of course. :P Thanks to Blue's for the URL and Lefty for reminding me.

#Outlaws_Players Moves to DALnet
     Garbotalk wrote to tell me that the most-loved Outlaws IRC channel, #Outlaws_Players, has moved from the Undernet to DALnet, naming unreliable Undernet servers as the main reason for the switch. You can catch the full scoop in the news at the #outlaws players site.

There's Gotta Be One Here Somewhere...
     Loophole (shot) by SgtGemini: Rather in the big and flat mold of things, nothing terribly wrong with it though and framerates are high since there isn't much to render. Object placement isn't very creative. Map may get frustrating if people keep sniping you from the bunkers hidden behind intangible wall sections... But if you like sniping people from behind intangible wall sections, especially when there's no cover available to them, you'll pretty much love this map.

* * *

Sunday 3/18/01

Holy New Levels, Batman!
     Stage Express (shot) by sunset_rider: Short but fun two-level Historical Mission. You get to fight let's see I think three boss characters but the placement of two of them makes 'em pretty easy to pick off from long range. Very linear adventure through some canyons and caves, nothing too spectacular but about the right mix of shooting and moving for me. sunset adds that this is the last map he plans to make, he'll still be doin' his share of shootin' online though.
     Garboville 2 (shot) by WaRRioR: Nice broad-shouldered frontier feeling to the three wide buildings in this canyon. Very nice sky as well. Not too many places to hide out though and tons of items so this will be a very fast DM indeed. The shading work with several holes that break down into a basement is very nice, that area is about the only loop in the place though. Framerates are good.
     Oklahoma City (shot) by Hooter: A sequel of sorts to his "Love Hurts" map, what you've got here is a nice bright sunny town with lots of buildings, a train track running through some tunnels, and a nice lakeside view. Size of the town is impressive and so is the framerate which only dips if you look over the city from one of several second-story balconies. Item placement is good and the fighting on rooftops, in alleyways and through buildings should keep things mixed nicely. Texturing and construction are on the whole quite attractive.
     LawTown2 (shot) by TheRock: Kinda small but longish canyon with two buildings facing each other the narrow way across a hole which has tunnels leading around the backs. Sniping bunkers at the far ends of the canyons have a clear shot at anything moving outdoors. You can get on the rooftops which is a nice touch though if you jump while you're up there your head goes through the sky and parts of the world disappear. I hate when that happens. :P Framerate is solid. There's a funny thing with the ground plane popping through one of the houses, probably a Glide (and now D3D?) thing.

Son of a-!

SoB: Sorry Ole Bastards
Somewhat bland graphically but fast and sporting a nice easy layout, this posse site by Pacoloco has a members list, handy files for downloadin', a well-written history of the gang, a few links a message board and a nifty poll type thingy where you can see just how your opinions on Outlaws matters meet up with everyone elses'.

The current poll asks you to choose your favorite CTF map, go ring in your vote!
I guess this kinda fits under the title here... lindow, longtime player, OutNet creator and occasional map maker, dropped me a note to say he's retiring from active service, as it were, and that he'll miss all you lovable Outlaws folks. He plans to drop by and chat in the #outlaws_players IRC channel once in a while, however, so he won't be completely out of touch. :)

* * *

Wednesday 3/14/01

LEC OL D3D Driver
     Years ago there were rumors that Lucasarts was working on a Direct3D patch for Outlaws—I think this was fueled by a posting on the official LEC Outlaws web site. Well, turns out that they really were working on an OL D3D driver back in '97. Thanks to Truffle, who obtained it from parts unknown, you can get it here (25k). For future reference the download link will be on my useful files page.
     So to explain briefly, this file, extracted to your Outlaws directory, will bring up a listing for "Direct3D" in your olcfg.exe Outlaws configuration utility. Select it and you have access to an Advanced window where you can toggle various settings such as texture filtering, transparency effects, etc—basically the same ones the Glide driver has, plus a few extra thrown in that didn't seem to have much effect in my tests. Anyway, just run the game and there you are playing Outlaws with hardware acceleration on a non-Glide card.
     Big hairy deal you say, we already have the XGl200 Glide wrapper that can do that (see the usefile files page for that too). What's so special about this? Well, on a P3 700 w/ GeForce 2 the D3D driver was 10-20% faster than the Glide wrapper and was able to do transparent water which I never seemed to be able to do with the wrapper. Transparent water seems a bit of a tricky spot though: I crashed three times looking at the well in Sanctuary on the GeForce 2, the times it didn't crash it really killed the framerate. On a G200 it was stable but quite slow.
     In sum, this is a good alternative to the Glide wrapper for those with non-Glide D3D cards. Generally speaking it seems a bit faster and less stable though the precise difference will depend on your card's drivers. And even for those who won't use it 'cause they already have a 3dfx card, isn't it kinda nice to get in effect an unsupported Outlaws patch four years after the fact?

Load Screen Crash on WinMe
     I have WinMe on one machine at work and so far it's been quite frustrating. Trying to get a Radeon working on it was half a day spent rebooting, fiddling with different driver sets and motherboard settings. The classic moment came when the motherboard BIOS update utility, which requires DOS, wouldn't run from a WinMe boot disc. Finally convinced it to go with some finagling, never did get the bloody Radeon working on that machine though. Doesn't help that ATI's drivers still blow chunks after all these years.
     Anyway, reader Rodney Lloyd is stuck with WinMe also and unfortunately for him, it's all he's got to run Outlaws on. I say unfortunately because he locks up on the level loading screen every time. He's tried all the display drivers (not the D3D one yet, obviously) and reinstallations and fiddling with game patches, desktop resolutions, ripping out cards and so forth with no luck at all. I haven't been able to come up with any solutions for him so I'm posting this here in the hopes that some of you will have an idea or two to send him. His system specs:
    PIII 450
    Windows ME
    128 RAM
    12 Gig HD
    Direct X 8.0
    VooDoo2 - with latest drivers (3dfxV2.drv)
    Riva TNT - with latest drivers (nvdisp.drv)
    Soundblaster AudioPCI 128 card
    Logitech Wingman Mouse USB
If you have any clues for Rodney, mail him at [removed].

HRC Creep Back
     Creeper threw me a mail that the Hot Rod Cowboys (HRC) posse is back in town, presumably to shoot the place up in true Outlaws fashion. There's a mention of this on Blondie's page... uh, that's about it though.

* * *

Sunday 3/11/01

Maps from PahPah
Anguaish (shot) by PahPah: Small central bunker with four identical forts in separate canyons all around it. Framerate is good. Textures could use some stitching here and there. Fairly basic construction, can't fault anything about it though unless I wanted to get picky and mention that the moving doors may become difficult in a laggy game. Music plays from CD 2 while you're in the level, I guess that might annoy some but I thought it was a nice touch here.
Armageddon (shot) by PahPah: Very very large CTF map with two bases divided by a large sandy hill with a swift river traversing the top. When I say swift, I mean it: you fall in and the current quickly sweeps you off to your death. The safer route is a covered bridge crossing the river or through a tunnel and cave route cutting under the river, where you'll encounter some nice ambient sounds of rushing water. Framerates range from quite low to really bad in a lot of areas above-ground which may do a bit to foil snipers taking advantage of the long open views... probably not much though. A whole slew of custom weapons may be fired at you from every direction. The readme lists five including cannon, bazooka and Buffalo rifle, most of these you've seen before in other maps. They're a pretty deadly bunch so plan to do a lot of running, dying and maybe a little drowning.

ReLinked

ReOutlawed
Oze's site for this very ambitious Outlaws "sequel" in which you play Anderson's daughter features a Flashy navigation menu and some tantilizing screenshots and details on this large work in progress.

* * *

Wednesday 3/7/01

Bottles and Cans, Just Clap Your Hands
     Bottles (shot) by Spikerama: Spikerama's works aren't just maps, they're inventions. This time he's inventored up a two-player CTF game involving custom team-colored bottles. Never thought you'd see th' day didja, pops? Well basically you shoot the bottles that are your team's color, your opponent shoots their bottles. Only when all your color bottles are broken can you go after the other flag, which isn't too far away from your own. There are a couple gats in tough-to-reach spots so if yer a gambler or bad aim with a rifle you can try to grab one of them to break your bottles with. You can also try TNT but you may get some unwanted friendly-bottle fire with that. ;) The bottles don't respawn though so you'll have to re-host the level to play more than one capture.
     Two Sofas (shot) by Flaming_Pinto: It's "Honey I Shrunk the Outlaws." Not an incredibly original theme but pulled off here quite smartly, you have just got to love those blue and green sofa patterns. There's a fun confusion of scale you see tiny little rifles sitting like toys on a mammoth end-table. The bright wallpaper is a little tough on my tired eyes but this is a clever medium-sized DM/Team level.

A Real Man's FPS
     You know how I said I didn't want any more "my framerate is higher than your framerate" type of screenshots? Well you have to tack on "unless it's funny" to the end of phrases like that coming from me. :P
     Blackthorn has this to say about his amazingly unimpeachable screenshot: "Allow me to submit what I believe will be the final word on this subject. I afforded myself the liberty of choosing a map which I believe caters towards optimal frame-rates, and I hereby scoff at the notion that the screenshot enclosed has been 'altered' in any way whatsoever." Big words but as you can see the proof is in the pudding. I understand that sometimes they put valuable rings in puddings, so watch out or you may chip a tooth.

Site Seein'
     Truffle is havin' a level contest over at the the LMT site: whoever sends in the best map each month, as hand-picked by grizzled experts of the LMT, will get it hosted up permanent like on the LMT site with a page all it's own with screenshots and a gushing review and suchlike. What mroe could an honest map ask for, I ask ya?
     Pistolero has the old WAC: Whoop Ass Crew posse site back online. When I say old, I mean ollllld. But I mean that in a very good way. :) Pistolero mentions that he plans to add a few drops of extra shine to the old home page, also that it'll stay online until OL is gone or Geocities starts charging money... our equivalent of "hell or high water" I suppose. ;)

Goody Goody
     Well the minnit I post it, he makes an update, how do you like that? If you're like me, you like it a lot. :) Blackhawk3d has a new version of the "Good Rifle" custom rifle sound on his site. This version is sharper, accordin' to him. It also comes with a long sound clip from "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly," from whence the sound itself originates. Lots of other shootin' sounds in there may provide inspiration for future OL rifle sounds... Speakin' of good sounds, Ennio Morricone's trademark "wah-WAH-wahhh" makes it in there a few times.

* * *

Sunday 3/4/01

ElCobra-Lalalalalala!
Deadwood Canyon (shot) by ElCobra1: Smallish deathmatch canyon with lots of ledges on the edges, where you'll also get some framerate drop as you can see the entire canyon at once. I like the texture choices here though they could use stitching. The three interlinked wells or pools are neat, bit of a hit in the framerate though. Lots of items, probably a bit much for me but the action definitely won't slow down in here.

LinkyDinks

	KDA Posse: Kill Dem All Fast-loading posse site by JoeyTheKid. The drop-down menu and popup loading navigation system seem a little more complicated than needed, you gotta love the background music though. Not much here yet aside from short member bios.
	WAC's Profiles Page Site by XaviarOlero with a page for each member of the Whoop Ass Crew posse. Not complete yet, also suffers from a bit of multimedia overload in a non-Western vein to boot. Handy thumbnail index on the main page.

Well Cross My Hairs
     Uh-oh, this may be the beginnings of a crosshair frenzy. Someone really oughtta make an Outlaws crosshair site. Anyone? Help! ;) As you know, I only post them temporarily.
     Anyhow, th' crosshair of th' day comes from Tuff_Mike, grab it here. Mike's got a tiny central red dot-cross with larger grey bars around it, an interesting combination. As usual, just extract the "croshair.nwx" file into the same folder as you olwin.exe and run the game.

Now That's-a Good Rifle
     Blackhawk3d, aka Aaron Sawyer, has a new custom Outlaws rifle sound posted on his site. He got "Good Rifle" from "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly"... which may indicate that he's got a few more rifle sounds planned. ;) Anyhow, "Good" is of course Clint's rifle sound, starting with a stuttery report which releases into a big reverberating who0osh. So if you want a lil' more Goodness in yer rifle shots, go grab that. You'll also find a ton of other custom gun sounds for OL at the site, have fun!

Framerate 2500
     Okay like I said a week or so ago, we're pretty much past the point where there's much point in comparing your four-digit Outlaws framerate numbers. I just had to post this though, I was kind of wondering if someone would try this. ;) TheRock scrunched his DirectDraw screen size down as low as it goes and managed to glimpse 2500 fps on his 866 mHz machine with Voodoo5 in Pattern Repair. Of course you have to weigh the image quality vs quantity, mebbe. ;)
     Okay that's it though, I don't want anymore look-how-big-my-fps-is screenshots! They just make me feel inadequate. :P

* * *

Wednesday 2/28/01

A Newsome Twosome
     Gladiator (shot) by sunset_rider: Inspired by last year's blockbuster movie, sunset_rider's first multiplayer map brings high framerates and a dark stone look to the table. I'm not sure how much fun folks will have stumbling into that dark lava-filled pit in the catacombs below... hey! That wasn't in the movie! Plain but solid arena-style layout.
     Headache #9 (shot) by chaabo: Two wagons that have seen better days flank an old tavern in the middle of a desert valley. The naturally undulating valley walls are impressive though the lack of texture stitching gives them something of an unfinished look. chaabo said said the framerates weren't sky-high but they aren't really that bad. Check out the shadows under the wagon poles—nice detail! Not too bad for map the author just had "laying around the hard drive." And he can certainly be excused if he says he's taking a bit of a break from LawMaking, considering his recent massive output!
     Oh, chaabo says to make sure you have "Maintain all sprite directions" checked in the olcfg.exe's "Advanced" 3dfx Glide options window or things won't look quite right—horses will rotate funny in their traces and stuff like that, I imagine. If you're running on a 3dfx card (or D3D card w/ Glide wrapper) with more than 4 MB of video memory you should just keep that checked all the time anyway.

New SoL
     Angel sent me the URL for the new SoL posse site he just put up, the old one is no longer online:

SoL House
I always cringe when I see a site that has been made with homestead.com's web-creation utility. Don't expect fantastic design, watch out for some high-bandwidth multimedia but if you dig around you'll find pretty much everything you could expect to learn about the SoL posse from a web site, plus a few of their favorite maps for download.

A Portrait of the Outlaw as a Young Man
Aha just as you were saying to yourself "thank goodness he hasn't cursed us with another darn fool literary quotation lately" I ran across another one and hey, this could even apply to Outlaws kinda if you read it in a certain way. So there.

There were pale strange faces there, great eyes like carriagelamps. They were the ghosts of murderers, the figures of marshals who had received their deathwounds on battlefields far away over the sea. What did they wish to say that their faces were so strange?

— James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

* * *

Sunday 2/25/01

Livin' in the Past
Haha! I knew I'd do it sooner or later—my last two updates were dated last year. :P Luckily nobody noticed, whew!

Newbie 0wNz Links Page
Newbie was home sick a couple days ago and did me a huge, unexpected favor by going through my links page and checking each and every one to make sure it was current. Wow! That is a huge load off my mind. So, a lotta dead wood has been cleaned out of the links page, all links should be workin' now. If not, blame Newbie. Hahaha joke, joke! If you run into Newbie tell him he's the Man. Even came up with a new site (or an old site that's been converted to a new one):

InV: InVincible
A little cursing and misspelling here, otherwise a nifty little minimalist posse site.

     Heh I was just thinkin' about some of those old sites. Patti's site, fer instance: all in German, slow as heck, very little content. But it hung on for years! Gone now... dust in the electronic wind. *sniff* But man Roger's site is still up, wow. That dude was definitely thinking ahead when he made his news page format: doesn't list the year at all so you can't tell his page is that out of date. Wish I'd thought'a that...

Cross Your Hairs
     Oze was playing around with a paint program and whoa, a little Outlaws crosshair popped out. What are the odds? You stick that there file in the same directory as your olwin.exe, by the way, and remember of course that it will overwrite any other custom crosshair you've got in there.

1896 Was a Good Year... and Framerate
     You remember last week I posted a screenshot from NeOCrOmBiE showing him getting 1896 fps at 800x600. I was pretty sceptical 'cause he hadn't provided any other real information. He got back to me though so let's see just how possible that fps might be (those with super fast systems can probably verify this themselves, I suppose).
     He says his CPU is an AMD [Athlon?] 1.1 gHz, overclocked to 1.3. He overclocked his V3 to 260mHz by hacking his overclocking tool to allow speeds that high (I forgot to ask what V3 it was, they ranged from 143 for the 2000 to 183 for the 3500.) 260mHz is a ridiculously high number, more than I would have thought possible. Indeed, NeOCrOmBiE says that he had trouble booting up and that he had to take the shot somewhat hastily since he figured the card wouldn't last long at that speed, which it didn't.
     The ground in the shot is all pixelly because he chose the minimal detail setting when using Mark Lütkefend's utility that allows you to push your 3dfx resolution to 800x600. I had assumed that he would have gotten a higher framerate in that position if looking at the sky but actually I just tried it on my Celeron 533 w/ Voodoo 5 and noticed that ground/sky is the same framerate there.
     Now if you compare his framerate with the one on an old shot that Notorious sent in a long time ago, showing uhh I think it was 625fps on a P450 or something like that, you can do some math and discover that 1896 on a 1.3 gHz machine seems well within reason at that rate. Of course, Noto was taking advantage of how Outlaws will spike up to a much higher value for a frame sometimes if you're looking at nothing at all—I'm hard pressed to find somewhere where I can even get anywhere close to 625 on my machine. I have found spots where I've seen 500 on my old P333 though (or was it 233? can't remember) so 625 isn't that unbelievable.
     So anyhow there you go. I'm willing to grant that 1896 is theoretically possible. Actually, with CPU speeds so darn high these days it really is becoming pointless to compare top framerates on 3dfx-powered systems. Running non-3dfx on a Glide wrapper is a different story... I tried OL on my P3 700 w/ GeForce 2 at work and I think my max was 83 fps at 640x480. 512x384 was actually slower and 800x600 was a crawl. Funny how GeForce's run the Glide wrapper so much worse than TNTs. One slight benefit though is that you can run with anti-aliasing and though it doesn't look as good as a V5's, you're already running the game so slow that it incurs no framerate hit whatsoever.

New and No-So-New Maps
     Hostage (shot) by sunset_rider: You saw this one last week as "Hostages." The original file sent me was hostages.zip, I noticed this conflicted with Gas' map of the same name and changed it to hostages_sr.zip. But Dirty O'Lero pointed out that some of the contained files over-wrote Gas', so with the author's permission (though I was hopin' he'd do it himself hehe) I h@x0r3d the map, renamed everything "Hostage" and it seems to work. I didn't play through the whole thing to the end buuuuut I'll just cross my fingers and figger it's all good unless I hear different.
     Jasper (shot) by Spidy: Small town DM just like mom used to make. Framerates are good and there's some lively roof-jumpin' action to be had. Interiors could use a little more texture and lighting detail—enough Outlaws, of course, can provide that in the form of muzzle flashes and bullet holes. ;)
     Dead Horse (shot) by chaabo: Delightfully atmospheric moonlit plains environment with super-high framerates. An irregular plains area surrounds a low hill crowned with a small shack. A tunnel runs from the shack to a small building at the base of the hill, there's also a bunker under one side of the hill. Aside from very minor texture stitching issues the level looks great, the distant low moon (credited to Danger_) is a wonderful touch. If you were to stop and think about it sure, the place is probably brighter than it should be but this ensures that visibility isn't hampered: the pitch-black sky with that great tiny moon pulls off the look all by itself.

* * *

Wednesday 2/21/01

Oze LAN Trouble and a Map
     Regarding his mysterious freezes detailed in the last update, Oze relates that he has discovered it has something to do with his LAN; if he connects on his own he's fine. If anyone has a clue as to what that could be all about, mail him at [removed].
     Despite his networking worries he's decided to give out his first, heretofore unreleased map:
     Navajo (shot) by Oze: This whopper (259k) is goin' in my temp folder so get it while it's there... An ambitious CTF map, probably tries to pack too much into the middle to do the framerate much good. Lots of custom props and stuff (I think I see GoJo's candlesticks, for one) Oze says to just thank everyone for their contributions. ;) Hope this doesn't ruffle any feathers. :P The drip in the tunnel below the lake is a nice touch though as with footsteps it is missing any sound. Parts of the cliffs disappear when you jump in the lake in the middle of the map but that little lakehouse fort is kinda cool, dig the custom breakable windows.

Links

	OQP's Outlaws Levels Tiny section of his full site, you can get sunset_rider's maps here. The page itself has a really bland layout and doesn't load in some old browsers but hey, any site where people post the fruits of their honest Outlaws labor definitely has something going for it.
	DUT's Web Page Simple layout with big colors for the Clan Dutchy site. Navigation isn't the smoothest but you'll find info on the posse members, a few very handy files for download and map-specific gameplay tips in a fairly quick-loading format.

* * *

Monday 2/19/01

Maps For Download
     Hostages (shot) by sunset_rider: Single-player map gets it right in a really important category: lots of guys to shoot. The level layout is a bit on the simple side but largely effective with some nice tunnels and stuff. Plot involves saving hostages from Sanchez or something... try not to let that get in the way of the shooting. I was playing through on GOOD and a bad guy killed me so I'd say the challenge factor is pretty good (he was just lucky with that TNT stick though... :P).
     Survivor (shot) by Spikerama: No tribal councils or anything here, just four Outlaws who enter a map (based off of Walker's Cavarly Town) simultaneously, the winner being the one who doesn't end up dead—'cause if you respawn, you can't get back in to town. As with many of Spike's new games you hafta have a cooperative bunch to work this right, but it will make for a definite change of pace from the usual OL shootout. The town has very little left in the way of weapons and ammo, you've only one life... so make every shot count. Cav Town always had kinda dumpy framerates and they aren't entirely gone here but the old layout (slightly modified and compacted) holds up well.
     Trailer Trash (shot) by chaabo: If you've always wanted to shoot it out in a trailer park, this here's the map fer you. For the rest of us, it's a bit cramped in the trailers, the framerate isn't too high and lighting and texturing aren't what you would call gorgeous... but no real problems here either. Good place to bust out those redneck taunt .wav files you've been saving up.
     Tunnels (shot) by TOWER: Texture stitching and a realistic layout are completely lacking in this arena level and framerates in spots are mediocre. But I'll tell you one thing it does have in spades and that's flow: movement around this squarish medium-sized DM map is smooth as butter, with perfectly spaced jumps on multiple levels and nice transitions between. The gorgeous warm clay texture set complements the buttery navigation quite nicely though more light/dark contrast would help depth perception. This map reminds me of classics like Ten Paces and Junction. The framerate may be a bit low in spots—I'll have to play a match here to be sure—but this map has a great old time deathmatch feel to it. Thanks to WildBill for sending it in.

Sitings

Outlaws Mod for Half-Life
Home of an OL mod for the ridiculously popular Half-Life. Authors TonToE and Trigger are trying to be as faithful to OL as possible while moving it into a true 3D engine complete with polygonal characters and weapons not to mention client-server-based networking. Sounds and textures are taken straight from the game—yeah so who cares about copyright infringement, this is non-commercial stuff for die-hard gamers, durnit. Is this the future of Outlaws? If so, it ain't lookin' half-bad.

Team SWE
Latest incarnation of this Swedish posse's homepage, now by Lefty, sports a bright look and fast organized layout. Lots of info in team members, recent and favorite maps for download, a page highlighting certain players as well as a message board, mail service and select links page. Nice production.

Unfreeze Oze
Help a fellow Outlaw in distress! I don't have direct experience with this problem or with his system model, could be you know something that would help. Here's what he wrote me:

Hello Paleface, OGB_Oze here. Lately I've been having tons of problems with my Compaq Presario. Most of the time its fine but when I play Outlaws I freeze. There will be no lag and BLAH im frozen. It usually happens when I am shooting or picking up an object and I will hear the .wav over and over again. Not only does the game freeze but I can't do anything about it. I can't just close OL I have to reboot. If you know anything about why this might be doing this can you please tell me. If you could please put something onto your site a bout it and ask anyone who knows the problem to please email me at this address [removed]. Thank You !!!

Sounds to me like some kind of sound card/driver issue...

Sky-High Framerate
Hmm well this is kinda funny, if maybe a bit hard to prove. NeOCrOmBiE writes that he had a spare Voodoo 3 laying around so he decided to pop it into his system and overclock the bejeezus out of it. According to him the card is now melted and useless but fortunately he managed to snap a screenshot of his framerate in Outlaws before it turned to goo... Now certain pessimistic types may think you can pick out a few suspicious looking aspects of this screenshot but in any case you can say that NeOCrOmBiE has definitely managed to pull a fast something or other.

* * *

Wednesday 2/14/01

A Map for Mid-Week
Warzone (shot) by ElCobra1: Big canyon map, at first you'll think it's pretty flat and just kinda big, with narrow twisty canyons along the sides. Then you might discover the hidden tunnels (masked by permeable walls) leading up to the cliff-tops above, which literally opens up a whole second level. Probably going to be a lot of sniping here and frustration on the part of those who don't know the secret entrances. Object placement is rather thick and clumpy for my tastes and there are a couple floating signs near the crates next to the single building but otherwise construction is fairly sound and framerates are high. Nice use of ambient wind sounds too.

* * *

Monday 2/12/01

New Voodoo Drivers
     Well well well. Here you were with yer Voodoo 3, 4 or 5, thinkin' that you'd never again get another driver update for the poor thing now that 3dfx has been bought by Nvidia. Oh woe is me! you cried, your bitter tears wetting the tech support supplement of that new game that just wouldn't run right on your beloved card.
     Okay okay I'll get to the point. Apparently some ex-3dfx employees, from the Belfast branch specifically, put together a site a www.x3dfx.com (clever, eh?) and released heretofore unreleased beta Voodoo 3, 4 and 5 drivers for Windows 95, 98, Me and 2000. Whoa Nelly. And they're still there, so I suggest you get them while you can, even if you don't think you need them—you just might be kicking yourself later if you don't.
     The site's main page says they took it down but pay no heed and click through to the "drivers" page to find that familiar 3dfx Javascript driver selector, then download away. I've installed them and the installation was about as trouble-free as all V5 drivers have been on my Win95 system (a few blue screens, freezes and various reboots later, plus repeated messing with tweaking utilities to restore overclocking and refresh rates, not to mention resetting all advanced options again and Voila! back in action :P). And Outlaws runs just fine with them which is of course the important thing. Well okay I locked up but I think that's 'cause I'm overclocking my board mercilessly. :)
     No release notes with these drivers and no support. Browsing the nutty message boards at the site it looks like some are complaining that they can't use FSAA in D3D now. I didn't try it so I can say, but these beta drivers are definitely love 'em or leave 'em... and probably the last things we'll see from 3dfx.

Oopers Troopers
     Ooops! Thanks for the couple of gentle reminders I got that Trooper founded the original TOC site, with Robond, Newbie and Moose as his hardworking reporters. Hope that straightens things out. Don't flame me, I mean well, honest Injun! :P

* * *

Sunday 2/11/01

Websy-Daisy
Lotta Outlaws web-stuff happnin' lately:

	The Outlaws Center Moose and Newbie have resurrected Robond's old Outlaws interview and news site to good effect with a nice clean design, entertaining map reviews and interviews, some handy files and more.
	Warwolf's Outlaws Site Clear layout, some nice play tips and character analysis plus maps by Warwolf and other members of his Wolf Pack Tribe posse who also get an informational page of their own here.

Truffle has got a fancy new bulletin board system in place on the LawMakin' Team site, with a discussion board for just about any Outlaws-related talkifyin' you may want to do. And if you bother to register (you don't have to to post) you can choose an Outlaws character pic to appear by your name. Now fess up, you've always wanted to be able to do that.

How to Make a Faster Wrapper
TheOutlawDad started mailing me an article about how to squeeze a higher framerate out of OL using the Glide Wrapper (for those who have a D3D, non-3dfx video card)... and kept emailing me updates for several days. Here then is TOD's comprehensive Outlaws Wrappery Screen Refresh Tips thingy, as laid out in his final unified email:

Ok, Seams you know your way around the computer. But for the ones that don't, I will write this in detail. Trust me this will get you the Highest FPS you can get With a Voodoo Card or The Glide Rapper.(We will use dc for double clik and cl for clik, if it doesn't say right it is a left cl)1st Step:Right cl my computer,cl property's,cl device manager,dc Monitor,cl the type of monitor listed,cl Property's Tab,cl Drivers tab,cl update driver,cl specify location of driver,cl next,cl display a list of all drivers,cl next,cl show all hardware,Pick your monitor from the list,cl next, cl next ,cl finished,cl close ,cl close. If your monitor was not on that list you must use the have disk feature, get the drivers from the net put them on a floppy and use that feature.2nd Step:dc my computer,dc control panel,dc display,cl settings tab,cl Advanced,cl Adapter,click the small arrow on the window that says refresh rate,cl Optimal,cl apply,cl ok on small window that comes up,cl yes on next small window,cl ok, cl ok on the last window so it will close,3rd step:dc my computer,dc C Drive,right cl AUTOEXC.BAT,cl Edit,cl mouse at the end of the last line written in there. If there is not a line in there just click the mouse,cl enter on your keyboard,Now you are ready to type,Type the following just as it is written here:SET FX_GLIDE_SWAPINTERVAL=0 Then cl enter on your keyboard,Then Type this: SET SST_SWAP_EN_WAIT_ON_VSYNC=0 ( Yes I Hit The SPACE BAR Between SET and SST)cl X at the top of the screen, cl yes on do you want to save window, cl X on Local Disk Window, Reboot your computer and go kill in the game, type olfps on your keyboard when you are in the game to check your FPS Rate. Now go to http://theoutlawdad.com Sign the guessbook and say thanks for the info. Part 2: Getting back to the article I wrote. If you check the directions you will see I have them set there monitor to Optimal, This is as fast as it will run. And will also keep them from setting it to high and getting the black screen that everyone use to get at 120, when they only had 75 monitors. So Screen Refresh code is not needed.As for the FX Glide setting I have them set it to 0 This will Swap backbuffers/frontbuffers ASAP as fast as it can, No need to write in any other glide settings.When running in voodoo or wrapper Glide is on.The 2 Codes I wrote in the article will work on any Voodoo Card or the Glide Wrapper. I have run them on all the voodoo cards out there.Or at least a s--t load of them. I was just trying to make it simple for everyone to get the high FPS Rates and not damage there cards or have to over clock them or run at the speed of the Wrapper. As you can see the article doesn't say anything about over clocking. That would be a way to get a little more FPS but at the risk of your card. Not needed in Outlaws. Once anyone has gotten to this point they should just learn how to play the game. TheOutlawDad http://theoutlawdad.com All of the above was written by TheOutlawDad http://theoutlawdad.com Part3: Forgot to mention you have to have at least a 4mg video card in your machine to run the wrapper. Also I left out the Set SST_ SCREENFRESH= 60 or 75 or 85 or 120 code on purpose. This just to me adds to there troubles if they don't know what they are doing, Because any time you go above 60 you now have to add the SET SST_VIDEO_24BPP=1 Code to the AUTOEXE.BAT And sense I had them set the Monitor to Optimal, I think they will be good. We could get into different codes for ever but that wasn't the point of the article. Getting guys a Faster FPS in a very easy way was. I Hope this clears things up for the few people who have mentioned to me I left those codes out. Also they need to know at the end of the article I wrote if they need more then this they should learn how to play the game. Guys without 4mg Video Cards should try the MGL Drivers. They may help your game. TheOutlawDad http://theoutlawdad.com

     And just in case you missed the link to his web site, it's theoutlawdad.com.

Come Down From Your Fences
     There's a 36MB promo movie showing in-game cinematics and gameplay from the upcoming "Desperados," a Western-themed isometric RPG of some sort being developed by hmm lets see I think a Swiss team (well I forget) and published by Infogrames (too lazy to look it up to be sure). What? Oh! The download is right here on the German site gamesweb.com. Looks like pretty good production values. Gameplay is nothing like Outlaws of course but I get email from folks desperate fer any kind of new Old West action so here's hopin' that 36MB download keeps you busy fer a bit. ;)

End of the Line
     Trail's End (shot) by chaabo: At the rate he's going, chaabo is likely to get burned out, proclaim he's done with LawMaking, then realize he can't live without it and continue making maps that get better and better. Speakin' of which, check out this one. The author described it as "around a small church high up in the north woods." Now see, can you sense the atmosphere already? It ain't just any woods, or even east woods or something. No, it's in the north woods, by cracky! And the north woods are kinda dark, even on a clear day, and there's spooky sounds in dark corners and maybe even some bodies buried roundabout somewhere, long forgotten... Well, it all makes for a nice scenic smallish DM-style map. The skull on the church wall is a nice touch...

* * *

Wednesday 2/7/01

Quick! Maps!
     The Trade (shot) by Sunset_rider: Action packed, clean-limbed small/medium size single-player adventure with good mix of running, jumping and of course shooting. Only nit to pick is a couple 3dfx glitches but these hardly render the maps unplayable. Oh, and you can snipe Bill Morgan while out of his range, poor fella. Otherwise very solid stuff, nice emphasis on lots of guns. ;)
     Cross the Fort (shot) by LMT: Attractive gothic castle in a dark valley, the kicker here is that the map is different for different game types (can't stray outside the castle in KFC, get out into smallish valleys in DM, these are expanded into large valleys in CTF). Even the time of day changes! Very cool stuff, plus lots of love and care with custom objects, score screen, etc. Framerate gets a bit low looking across the parapets of the castle but the view is worth it, plus if you're up for a few tight jumps you can sail across the castle rooftops Errol Flynn style (he did that, right?). SnotENoze, GoJo and Lindow take authoring credits, with maybe some help from Truffle though he modestly denies it, as well as help from other LMT members and friends. Nice work boys!
     Blackrock (shot) by chaabo: Interesting white-walled enclosure around a nearly featureless building, feels like you're encarcerated in a government institution. Ahh, those were the days... What? Oh err well the building isn't too exciting but snipers tip-toeing along the top of the outer fence get things hopping for ya. Feels a little plain but framerates are high and navigation is smooth.

Ding-Dong Doors
     Outta time. Figures everyone clumps their stuff into two or three days of the week. :P Have web site news and other stuff, will have to wait for the next update... (which will be soon!) :P
     Wait ack one more thing! SnotENoze found a tiny bug in the sample door scripts he made earlier so he's giving out this updated version with the fix. These are templates for moving doors for single-player maps, sounds pretty handy.

* * *

Sunday 2/4/01

Wildbill's Bar Re-opens
Been a while (a year and a half to judge by the last date on the News page) but Wildbill is back to storming the Outlaws web scene with his mighty big site:

WildBill's Outlaws Bar
Huge collection of maps, gameplay and video tips and Outlaws-related files for download. Some non-Outlaws-specific stuff here as well but the menu makes it fairly easy to sort out. Secret Britney attack!

No More News Today, Move Along
Well that was a slow half-week, news-wise. In fact if it were not so very very slow I would not have been tempted to post this next bit, I swear! :P Manco dug up his very own "pale" quote. In the first chapter of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, the eight verse of the dwarves' sad song goes

The bells were ringing in the dale
And men looked up with faces pale;
The dragon's ire more fierce than fire
Laid low their towers and houses frail.

Quite the party animal, that Smaug, eh? My favorite song in that book though is the goblins' "Fifteen Birds in Five Firtrees." Anyone else looking forward to the upcoming live-action Lord of the Rings movie? Ooo!

Sudden Popularity?
What th? Browsing to ftp.paleface.net brings up the following:
FTP Error

FTP Error

Could not login to FTP server

There are already 300 users logged on.

Too many users; please try again later.

Whoa. Uhh... hopefully this won't last too long. Umm... let me know if it does. :P

Look Maw, Two Guns!
Hmm hope it wears off soon because this is going on the ftp site as well (which will make things worse hehe). This screenshot I mean. Can anyone guess what upcoming game this is from? Seriously, sam—I mean, can you? Well to give you a hint the shot came from a recent preview on pc.ign.com. The demo was fun, I'll probably buy it for some nostalgic Doom-style beastie blastin'. Those six-shooters look pretty sharp, too. Those probably aren't Old West gunslingers in the distance there but if'n you squint you kin kinda pretend.

* * *

Wednesday 1/31/01

One Mother of an Update
     Mother (shot) by chaabo: Update to this tiny single-player map, this time with scrolling intro text telling the very touching story of the abduction of your dear mother, and related concerns you have. As chaabo says, scrolling text "makes all the difference in the world." It also doubles the play time of the map! :D
     Wharf Rat 2.0 (shot) by Runaway Jim: Update to this tiny DM map fixes a few small things that probably bothered nobody except Jim, makes one jump a bit easier (but the others are still, as Kate would say, "hard as nuts" in the great RJ tradition) and adds CTF play. Sounds like a fine excuse for an update to me!

Another One...
     Okay I swear, just a quicky pale quote this time. From Twain's The Trials of Simon Erickson: "It was easy to see that he was a gentle creature and that his madness had nothing vicious in it. He looked pale, and a little worn, as if with perplexing thought and anxiety of mind." :P

* * *

Sunday 1/28/01

New Maps
     killctf (shot) by Kil_ler: I dunno 'bout killin' ctf but one thing this map'll kill is yer framerate. Big letters on the ground spelling names and rivers with islands in the middle of the map will do that, so will buildings with lots of windows facing each other (with the rivers and islands and letters in between, of course). Aside from the framerate it doesn't look too bad though there are a few blinky areas in the middle, around where my framerate went down into the 20's. Haven't been that low in the long long time. ;) Still if it weren't for the framerate and the blinking this'd be a decent if somewhat conventional cft map.
     Lynch'n (shot) by chaabo: Another ctf map with the river in the middle of two bases thing. This one's on a big flat wide valley rather than a narrow canyony valley and the framerate is better for the most part though still on the slow side in spots. I like the river, it has a nice natural winding look to it. The bases are simple though the couple of moving doors may be problematic in laggy games, especially since they block off the main clumpy stores of guns'n'ammo. One odd touch is a Sanchez AI character in one base... he'd cause lag too but I'm betting he won't last too long, poor feller.

Get Down Get Down
     Blackthorn sent the interesting and somewhat coincidental news that Ennio Morricone will be doing a UK gig alongside members of Portishead (a band we both enjoy), Asian Dub Foundation and others. Mr. Morricone of course did the soundtracks for the "Fistful" spaghetti Western trilogy which LEC straight ripped for Outlaws. He's no spring chicken these days so it's rather surprising that he's doing a show, especially alongside contemporary techno (or whatever) bands but hey, what a wonderfully wacky world we live in. Or Blackthorn does anyway, he's in England I mean. :) So if you're gonna be in London in March, go check the show. Here's the article scan he sent me from the New Musical Express with the details.

A Paleface at Niagra
     Boy are you lucky, not one but two "paleface" literary references in as many weeks. Now just calm down, I know it's something of a sensory overload. ;)
     To set the scene for this one, our tourist narrator, visiting Niagra sometime in the mid-1800's and interested in the Native Americans supposed to be producing the little carved statuettes found in the gift shop, has been attempting to converse with the "Children of the Forest" he finds outside. Two rebuffs in unexpected rough brogue have somewhat disheartened him but finding a large group he endeavors one more attempt at conversation, addressing them as follows:

"Noble Red Men, Braves, Grand Sachems, War Chiefs, Squaws, and High Muck-a-Mucks, the paleface from the land of the setting sun greets you! You, Beneficent Polecat—you, Devourer of Mountains—you, Roaring Thundergust—you, Bully Boy with a Glass eye—the paleface from beyond the great waters greets you all! War and pestilence have thinned your ranks and destroyed your once proud nation. Poker and seven-up, and a vain modern expense for soap, unknown to your glorious ancestors, have depleted your purses. Appropriating, in your simplicity, the property of others has gotten you into trouble. Misrepresenting facts, in your simple innocence, has damaged your reputation with the soulless usurper. Trading for forty-rod whisky, to enable you to get drunk and happy and tomahawk your families, has played the everlasting mischief with the picturesque pomp of your dress, and here you are, in the broad light of the nineteenth century, gotten up like a rag-tag and bobtail of the purlieus of New York. For shame! Remember your ancestors! Recall their mighty deeds! Remember Uncas!—and Red Jacket!—and Hole in the Day!—and Whoopdedoodledo! Emulate their achievements! Unfurl yourselves under my banner, noble savages, illustrious guttersnipes—"

— Mark Twain, "A Day at Niagra"

The cringing PC types among you will be happy to know that these "savages" turn out to be hardworking Irish immigrants who, not appreciating the narrator's high-flown speechifyin', quickly beat the tar out of him and fling him over the falls. But the peace-loving bleeding-hearts among you may take heart that the loudmouthed victim remains upbeat upon hearing the doctor's prognosis: "...thus far he thinks only sixteen of my wounds are fatal. I don't mind the others."

* * *

Wednesday 1/24/01

One Small Mother
Mother (shot) by chaabo: A tiny single-player map that would even be on the small side for a multiplayer map, "Mother" puts you on the assault against some Outlaws boss types shacked up in the middle of a desert canyon. So you assault the shack. Hey, it's fun in a brief way.

Truffle Teaches HTML
Truffle has put together his own HTML tutorial, dubbed Truffle's Black Book of HTML (163K) though as he points out in the introduction it is neither black nor a book but rather a handy Windows Help file with hyperlinks and wiz-bang stuff like that. And the guide shows you how to do hyperlinks and tables and frames and even a little dynamic HTML all in your very own HTML from scratch. How's that for service? So if you ever wanted to start learning HTML but were too lazy to get goin', download this baby. Just do it soon 'cause it's in my temp directory and won't stay here forever.

Web Clicks

	WildBill's Outlaws Essentials Page A brief but well-designed and thorough overview of Outlaws with system requirements, vital links and a shopping cart thingy. Sort of a bridge page between WildBill's large mp3 site and the Outlaws world. I bet Britney and the Backstreet Boys would like the game.
	Young Guns Not really compatible with Netscape, the YG gang site feels a bit scattered but you'll find comprehensive members lists as well as global maps on which to locate them.

* * *

Sunday 1/21/01

Oops!
     Thanks to Blackthorn for pointing out a typo in my post about the command line option for converting Outlaws maps to more compact binary form. The spelling is "/tokenize" rather than the last name of a popular fantasy author. Yeesh!

Hot Stuff
     Lava Bunker (shot) by SCH_007: Circular arena-like DM map converted from his single-player "Powder River 3" map, the cool round canyon with the lava moat in the middle. I really dig that animated lava texture but don't get too close, it'll burn ya to a crisp quicker'n... uh... quick. Circular maps tend to get low framerates looking in from the outside and this one is no exception though it could be worse. Sharp looking little place (gonna pretend I don't see that misaligned box top in that there screenshot *cough*) except that if you jump while on the outer ledge parts of the world turn invisible until you land.

Literary Dribblings
     Been a while since I stumbled across a good self-glorifyin' pale-faced quote but hooray the drought endeth :P:

"I perceive that we can keep no secrets from each other, even the Prime Secret. You have a Typhonic, or harvest-red, beard, you write left-handedly, your nose is hooked like an eagle's beak, your face is pale, your eyes are sea-green and luminous, the veins in your forehead branch in a blue Upsilon. But the seventh sign of royalty?"
Jesus answered: "Under this garment my right shoulder is white as ivory."

— Robert Graves, King Jesus

Well, three out of seven ain't too bad. There's also an eighth sign but I get the shivers just thinkin' about it.

* * *

Wednesday 1/17/01

Snotty Map Stuff
     SnotENoze has some more semi-technical map wisdom to share which is probably only really of interest to folks who use LawMaker but since we all benefit by their work I'm happy to print it here.
     First, maps won't launch in preview mode from the OLMan utility unless they have a PLAYER object in them. From what I understand the PLAYER object is the single-player start point and is in every map by default. So, no harm in just leaving it. Raptor deduced this and SnotE confirmed it.
     The second bit is SnotE's method for converting map data from text to binary and thus significantly reducing the amount of space that installed maps take up on your hard drive. This is a little involved so I'll just pull a big cut'n'paste:

Outlaws is capable of converting the .lvt and .obt files to binary using the "olwin.exe /tokenize" command. I got this information from the .rtf file included in a program named Laber. Laber is a DOS program available from the Code Alliance site. It is probably not worth bothering with for smaller MP and SP maps. I started using Laber last year when I was working on MAD_DOG. In text format the 95 files in MAD_DOG took 5.08 meg in the OL directory ready to play. Converting to binary reduced the size to 2.71 meg. That's a 2.37 meg reduction in file size. The difference between the zipped versions of the files was only 84 KB, 623 KB compared to 539 KB.

     To expand upon this, you don't need Laber or any other program to wreak this thrifty compression upon your map. Just stick your .lvt and .obt files into the same directory as your olwin.exe. Then open a DOS Command Prompt and type the path to olwin.exe followed by the "/tokenize" option followed by the name of the file to convert.
     For instance, if my level was pale.lvt and Outlaws was installed in c:\games\outlaws, to convert it to binary I'd enter "c:\games\outlaws\olwin.exe /tokenize pale.lvt" at the command prompt. If I now have a pale.lvb file in my Outlaws directory (which will need to go into my pale.lab file, naturally) then it worked! Same thing for .obt files, they convert to .obb files—from "t" for "text" to "b" for "binary," get it?
     So there you have it, I hope we'll soon be seein' every new map make use of this space-saving technique!

Mmmmm... Beta
     Well it's a slow news day and I haven't had a mail from him for a long time so I figger I'll post the bit of "news" DirtyDon mailed me. The Western Quake 3 site, which I've mentioned here before, has some new shots up from their beta 2 including new models and level screenshots. They look pretty nice... it's funny though that with all the shine and shadows the Quake 3 engine gives them, they almost look more fake and toy-like than regular Outlaws levels.

* * *

Saturday 1/13/01

Two New Maps
     HenHouse (shot) by Snot_E_Noze: A section of a single-player map that Snot_E is workin' on yields a multiplayer map which doesn't seem extremely focussed in layout but boasts very solid construction and good looks. Four farmhouse buildings dapple a valley done in the "horizon" style with gently rising hills around the sides. The texture work on the buildings is particularly well done as is the performance considering that you have all these buildings in a single open area. A few bits of the construction feel a little odd, for instance the stairways are very steep and narrow and you can't crawl into the henhouse through the little chicken-hole on the side (just a little too small) but honestly these only stand out because the rest of the construction is top-notch.
     On a side note, I'm late in posting this map because it wouldn't run through OLMan's "preview" launch mode which is generally how I look at maps. I should have tried loading it the regular way (which works fine) but in a way I'm glad I went to Snot_E with my problem because in trying to help me figure it out he mentioned that he's "been converting the .lvt and .obt text files into .lvb and .obb binary files because the size is reduced by one half and seem to load and play a little faster." The file sizes are definitely quite a bit smaller when uncompressed, a very nifty trick that I hope other LawMakers will take a look at. (The files being binary is not the reason why the map doesn't launch straight from OLMan; a text version Snot_E was kind enough to send has the same issue.)
     DieNow (shot) by flaming_pinto: Nice construction of angles and crawlspaces in this partly-adobe desert canyon. If anything the design is just a bit ambitious since all the open gaps mean low framerates in the canyon center. Not ML, though these days that should be a nice change of pace.

Outlaws Best Buy
     Moshe happened across Outlaws in the CD-only section of his local Best Buy electronics store for only $10.00. Quite a steal if you're lookin' for another copy of the game (or if you're just a cheap bastard who never wanted to plunk down full price).

Win2k Outlaws Update?
     Dontknow tells me that Microsoft just released a January update that fixes issues running several games, including Outlaws, under Win2k, though I couldn't seem to find it on what looks like Microsoft's Windows 2000 page but I suppose if you're a Win2k user you probably know where to go. Dontknow says he can't see any difference in performance (single-player fine, multiplayer doesn't really work) but ehh well if you're usin' Win2k for Outlaws play yer probably desperate fer any type of download so good luck.
     On another OS-related note, I just got a mail from someone indicating that they're experiencing what sounds like the same issues in Zone games using Windows Me as have always plagued Windows98 (details of that on the demos and patches page).

Unreal:Outlawed Hosted
     Unreal mod author SoulStripper tells me that Unreal:Outlawed, his Outlaws mod for Unreal Tournament, now has a spiffy-keen web site at www.planetunreal.com/outlawed. Some very nice looking screenshots of maps, weapons and character models on display as well as a web forum and news page. If playin' Western-style with UT gets yer mouth a-waterin', well head on over and pay them a visit. SoulStripper even mentioned that they're lookin' fer help with the mod so if you've got some skillz and the willz you could very well land yourself a position on the UT:OL team.

* * *

Sunday 1/7/01

Happy New Maps
     The new year is off to a roaring start with plenty of new Outlaws maps to get you through the cold winter months!
     kfcHole (shot) by Spikerama: Get the chicken, run down into the middle of the valley and see how long you can hold out. That's how you play kfcHole which, like most of Spikerama's maps, is not just a map so much as a completely new game mode. The map itself is pretty well made, lots of ledges around the outskirts for sniping down at the poor chicken fool.
     The Abyss (shot) by Krummwaffe: Updated version of this just-released map with fixes for two spawn points that were too high off the ground. Replaces earlier version.
     USMarshal's Guild House (shot) by Alex: Updated version of this small deathmatch map, looks like texturing and lighting has been changed for the better, though the layout looks pretty much the same as before.
     Frag Hill (shot) by Krummwaffe: A "quickie" map for Krumwaffe is still a dandy. A cross-shaped canyon with four little storehouses in the corners, a hill rising in the center to cut off the view to the other corners. There's a ledge around the outside and a bunker in the middle. Nice smooth desert look, love the painted-on sky.
     Redemption (shot) by smac1979 and Manco: Large CTF map in a wide U-shape with plenty of bridges, ravines and tough jumps to make things interesting. Multiple paths between forts by tunnel, bridge or ledge, you'll definitely have to watch your back. Great-looking map with good framerates despite the size.
     Turny Map (shot) by FLoPuR: Little desert canyon DM map with a unique yellow sand and dark building color scheme. A succession of natural jumps will get you from the sandy floor to the upper ledges where you can snipe down on your foe—unless he's already followed you up. Not too many places to hide, a real hopper here.
     ThunderFort (shot) by Lagga and TheRock: Sharp U-shaped CTF map with good framerates but fairly simple construction and ugly texturing despite some decent lighting effects. Each base has a sniping bunker in good defensive position accessible only by a long tunnel, which necessitates a bit of strategy.
     Granny's (shot) by GoJo: Based on the farm of the author's grandmother, this little country home with barn, small corral and chicken coop lays on brightly-colored charm. Designed with CTF in mind but small and open enough for all play types. Well up to GoJo's usual standard of dashing good looks, and check out those nifty fences. The house is a little cramped but hey, Granny was a small woman. Framerates not high at the ends but quite playable.

Sitings
     Bad_Aim pointed out the home page for that curious-looking German-made Western RTS, America: No Peace Beyond the Line. There's a demo for download and according to the page itself the game should be hitting shelves this month.

SCH_007's Outlaws Levels
Fast, bold layout presents this LawMaker's levels in an easily accessed format, with screenshots.

Computer Faster, Pale Slower
Upgraded the old P2 333 to a Celeron 533—my P2L97 motherboard's latest BIOS update enabled the use of faster processors via a Slot1-to-Socket370 adapter so I figured this $80 upgrade would let me stave off getting a whole new system for another six months or so. Curiously my Outlaws framerates didn't go up much at all, though my screen saver now runs really fast. ;) Ordered from EdgeMicro.com; their site has some of the worst browser compatibility I have ever seen and it took them I think four days to mail off my order but they have a good range of products and, most importantly, low prices.
Bah well my arm is tingly on-and-off (pinched nerve?) so it looks as if I'll have to take it easy the rest of the day and uh I dunno read a book or something. But there are so many games to play, and so little time... rats.

* * *

Monday 1/1/01

What Year Is It, Anyway?
     Well here it is, '01. The holidays are pretty much over now and we're left with hangovers, spare tires and unreturnable gifts. Hope your new year is off to a good start. By the way, if "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" comes to your town, go see it. It's got a great warm and lazy Old South feel to it; probably the best work the Coen brothers have done, which is saying a lot. And I never thought much of George Clooney as an actor until this movie but his Everett Ulysses McGill is a wonderfully entertaining character and this is, in fact, the best new movie I have seen in quite some time.
     Oh! Almost forgot, I am now on the AT&T @Home cable internet thingymabobber. Qwest.net's DSL is just way too expensive considering the extras you have to get if you mean to use it for just about anything beyond email and websurfing: @Home is half the price and two to three times faster. Plus, thanks to a crusading cable installer and a friendly gamer/internet user who sold me an upscan converter cheap, I can now watch free cable TV on my 19" monitor. Merrrrry Christmas! :)
     By the way, to test my cable modem's speed the cable installer woman pointed my browser to the little Javascript Bandwidth Meter at 2wire.com, which measures your connection speed by sending your computer a sizeable chunk of data and timing how long it takes to upload.

Truffles
     No you've probably had too much candy already, this is stuff from Truffle the Outlaw player.
     His LawMakin' Team site shows off so great-lookin' screenshots from their mysterious "Project 1," helmed by GoJo.
     Meanwhile over at his Outlaws Hideout site he's starting his own Outlaws map archive but instead of just swiping maps from other sites as is the usual practice *cough oh beg pardon* he's just posting those that the authors send to him. So if yer a map-makin' fool and want yer stuff on a good site, send it to Truffle and he'll be happy to host it up for ya.

Millennial Map
     The Abyss (shot) by KrummWaffe: Gorgeous custom-textured, almost Doom-like CTF map consisting of two gothic forts connected by a bridge over a grey lake, with towers and a cross-bridge in the middle. Not going to be easy to get across the bridge and back again in one piece. Framerates are on the low side since this is all in one large area.

End It All
     This is not a millenium-ending doomsday prophecy, rather a helpful utility pointed out by salmoides. End It All claims to shut down everything except for essential operating system processes at the touch of a single button. This is useful for clearing up system resources for game playing, etc.

* * *

Friday 12/22/00

Download Christmas Goodies
     Lookin' fer jus' th' right map to send to that special Outlaws fan in your life? Want to get 'em one a little of the beaten path maybe but don't know where to look? Try my new Map Archive Search! This handy form lets you search paleface.net's massive ftp file archive by keywords in the maps' readme files. For instance, type in the author's name, or maybe yer lookin' fer all maps with "Christmas" involved? Did you know that there are five? Try it out! The search results include handy links to the map's readme file and to download the map itself.
     Of course, if the map's author didn't see fit to include a readme file... well, their map jus' isn't gonna get found. :P Fer future reference you kin get to the archive search page through the link to the "level" section on the main menu: check it out, the whole section has been reorganized for easier browsing. :) Ho ho ho!

Stocking Stuffers
     (Since I got me a Voodoo5 now I'll be takin' screenshots at 640x480 with 4x anti-aliasing from now on. Ooo, pretty. :) Tons of levels today, even some single-player!
     Justice Jones (shot) by Spikerama: This one is pretty much the author's treacherous "Obstacle" multiplayer map with AI badguys sprinkled around liberally for a challenging single-player game. The linear nature of the level layout, going in two loops around a large canyon, lends itself well to single-player. Lots of tricky footwork and long-distance snipe shots.
     Bungle in the Jungle (shot) by Krummwaffe: Unique modern jungle setting for a small two-base CTF style layout of verdant greenery bristling with 20th century firepower including usable M16s and bazookas. The art for the weapons isn't the greatest but it does the job and the theme as a whole is very well done and the jungle is stunning. Check out those tanks! Wonderful mod map.
     The Pit (shot) by Shotgun Joe: Large square valley with a base in each corner and a big pit in the middle with tunnels that branch out in four directions underground. Big and open and maybe somewhat bare, framerates are high. Not much in the way of lighting effects but overall look is decent. The large bunkers definitely favor rifles.
     A CTF Christmas 2000 (shot) by Truffle: Second annual X-mas CTF map from Truffle has a lovely snow and dark wood look with icy blue pools of water guarding each base. Nice U-shaped layout and cute seasonal sprites make this a fun one to run around in. Overall look reminds me a lot of DrDeath2's "Klondike."
     Elevator (shot) by Oze: Another two-base canyon CTF layout but with something new: to massive elevators in the middle to carry you between canyon halves, since one end is much higher than the other. The elevators are automatic and pretty trippy to ride—and make sure you don't try to step down onto one that another player has just called down, it's a good drop. The elevator-shy can travel by sloped passage or well waterway instead. As always, moving sectors may behave somewhat erratically in laggy games, but with a good connection this should be good clean CTF fun with a people-mover twist.
     Powder River 3 (shot) by SCH_007: Long and low like the previous two episodes, this map appears to still provide a good deal of single-player running and gunning. The texture work is sound and baddie placement is thick and fast. I got to a pretty cool area with tons of bad guys and a lava moat or something but kept crashing—could be due to trying to run it under NT with beta video drivers. Anyhow, when I wasn't crashing it was fun.
     CreepeR PounD (shot) by _ReJecT_: Nifty looking design with massive curved wooden bridges over intricate waterways between two bases. Unfortunately, the Outlaws engine does not handle detailed open architecture very efficiently and it's no surprise that framerates are pretty low in this map. If you've got a beefy machine you may not mind but slower CPUs will not be able to enjoy this map a whole lot.

Drop the WWW
     A lot of people seem to think my URL is "www.paleface.net." Well that will work but hey, save yourself and your W key some wear and tear and just use "paleface.net." It works, just try it!

New #outlaws_players Site
     Garbotalk, along with Goliath, has created a huge new #outlaws_players site here. There's tons of stuff there including tourney and ladder info, IRC info, tons of files (maps and wavs yet to come) and frequent news updates. The Jan 7 tournament is even going to have cash prizes, jeepers; soon we'll have a Professional Outlaws Gamers league and all that stuff. ;) Anyhow check out the new site, it's a doozy. Best wishes to Kohna, longtime OP and webmaster of the old #o_p site, not to mention good ol' fashioned darn fine player, wherever he may be these days.

Boost Your Rifle Bass
     Aaron Sawyer, aka Blackhawk3d, has a ripping new "Winchester" rifle sound available on his site. Like all his other custom gun sounds you can of course get them to replace your old Outlaws sounds by simply naming the file "rifle.wav" for instance and sticking it in your Outlaws directory. "Winchester" packs a real punch. The second version is already out and what's new? "Bass boost." Oh yeah, baby. Can you ever get enough bass? I don't think so.

Christmas Sitings
     In the spirit of the season, Outlaw has put the Death Riders Merry Christmas page up again this year. Enjoy a western-style seasonal tune with some java snow, you know you want to.
     Redeyed Pete has been "mix & matching" drivers for his V3 2000 lately and has some screenshots to show of the framerate he can get now, apparently, though no word on what exactly to do to get there. The color looks a little funny but maybe that's just the tinting from his Eye.

Oh yeah and...
     Since I probably won't get in another update before the big day, Merry Christmas everyone! =)

* * *

Sunday 12/17/00

3dfx Bought By Nvidia
     Friday afternoon 3dfx announced (thanks to salmoides for the link) that they were selling most of their assets to Nvidia and that once that sale was done they would dissolve whatever was left. What this amounts to is that 3dfx is done. Finito. No more generations of Voodoo cards which, of course, is kind of a downer for Outlaws players since Outlaws really only supports Voodoo Glide video acceleration.
     So of course I figgered it was now or never and ran out and bought a V5 5500, then spent the rest of that day and most of Saturday reformatting my hard drive three times and reinstalling Windows four time because the latest drivers (or "Tools" to be exact) seemed to enjoy corrupting my files and system registry. Not a fun time. :P Though I confess the last reformat was my fault: I finally had everything running, then imported some incorrect registry files and blew up my registry again. Yay for me!
     But it is running great now and I can say I am glad I got one before 3dfx's cards disappear forever. And there's another certain collector's item that I want to filch from work... more on that later if I am successful. ;)
     What will this mean for Outlaws players? Well, get ready to get used to a Glide wrapper (like XGL200 on my helpful files page or keep a Voodoo 2 or two and a pass-through cable handy so you'll always have 'em for Glide acceleration no matter what latest Nvidia graphics card you have—and let's face it, it will be Nvidia for the foreseeable future because there's no other major player out there right now. Which is not a good situation for consumers, drat it. Anyhoo, on with my Voodoo 5 eval which has been added to the video comparison page.

Voodoo5

The Voodoo5, last of the Voodoo series, is thus the ultimate Outlaws-accelerating machine. I got a Voodoo 5 5500 and put it through its paces. In short: it works flawlessly with Outlaws and the anti-aliasing puts a fantastic polished look on Outlaws' old-school graphics. You will not get higher framerates or better image quality with any other video card.
     First things first of course. Installing the card is funky as you have to hook up a power cable, like the one that goes to your hard drive. Simple to do though. Two fans on the card keep it cool and are very quite, so don't worry about noise.
     Installing the drivers was a huge pain for me as the latest released drivers (beta and non-beta) crash when installing in my Windows 95, which corrupts the registry and various system files; in all I formatted my hard drive three times and reinstalled Windows four times trying to get it running. Actually on the first install the board was running slower than my Voodoo 3 which was really depressing so I formatted my hard drive in despair.
     The drivers require three software thingies actually: the card drivers themselves, the "Tools" that let you change options like anti-aliasing and stuff and Internet Explorer 4 or higher. Why is a web browser required to install video card drivers? Good question. 3dfx tech support has told me that Microsoft insisted on it before they would give the drivers their stamp of approval. Well isn't that what any self-respecting monopoly would do?
     Anyway this gets into boring hair pulling on my part. Got the board running with a mix of the Tools from the CD that came with the card and the latest beta drivers (but not their Tools!). Ah and once it's running the first step is what? Overclock! Default clock speed is 166, mine runs fairly stable (ie occassional lockups in Outlaws so I'll probably lower it a few ticks sometime) at 180 mHz. 3dfx themselves provided the overclocker this time, bless 'em. Actually it is in the Tools, just hidden until you run this executable (which just changes a single registry flag to reveal the overclocking display panel).

Voodoo 5 Overclocker
by 3dfx, (60k)

Now what? Well besides being faster the big deal with the Voodoo 5 is the anti-aliasing, which does two main things for Outlaws: smoothes jagged edges on polygons and smoothes textures on polygons that are set at an angle from your point of view.
Screenshots will illustrate this nicely: these were taken in Thud Tower at 640x480: compare no AA, 2x AA and 4x AA. The "x" part refers to the number of additional samples the card takes and blends together to smooth out the picture. Notice how the stick of TNT in the distance under the crosshair gets a smooth shape and how the sign to the right evolves from a bunch of contrasting pixels to a smooth image. Also notice how the brown and black wood texture on the maze wall tops gets nicely smoothed and flattened out, especially in the distance. With AA, especially the 4x AA, you don't see distance surfaces like those "shimmer" with constrasting pixels as you do without AA. And you know those bright pixels you see where walls meet sometimes? Gone with 4x AA. And yes jaggy polygon edges are gone as well. There is, of course, a performance hit however. Check the following graph of framerates taken on my p2 333: reference points are the same ones from Thud Tower where A is a highly detailed scene, B is medium detail and C is low detail (largely sky).

4x, 2x and No AA

Outlaws video frames per second

512
x
384

(AA disabled at this resolution)

200

238

640
x
480

135

208

106

212

244

800
x
600

170

141

243

A few main things to take from those numbers.
     Number one, my Voodoo 5 is really held back by my CPU, which is only a 333: this is noticeable in A, the high detail scene, where you get the same framerate at just about any resolution and anti-aliasing setting. And in fact 800x600 runs faster than 512x384 in the low-detail scene. If I had a much faster CPU (like 800 mHz or faster) we'd get numbers that would decrease as resolution rose, I think. My 333 is not pushing the Voodoo 5 at all.
     Number two, as just mentioned you might as well run at the highest resolution on a V5; even if you had a really fast processor which would allow the V5 to up the pace as resolution decreased, you'd still be getting so many frames per second that the savings to be had by lowering resolution wouldn't really matter.
     Number three, the last note may not apply if you want to throw AA into the mix. Notice how the framerate decreases much more rapidly at 800x600 than 640x480 (AA doesn't work at 512x384). The falloff at 8x6 is in fact what you would expect (aside from in the CPU-limited high-detail scene A): each time you double the AA sampling, your framerate is chopped in half. At 640x480 the falloff is not so steep, so with my CPU speed, if I want AA I would go with 640x480, probably at 2x since 4x is just getting a little slow for my tastes. At 2x though you have the same speed as you did with no AA on a Voodoo 3. Not too shabby. :)
     So at the end of the day, when you balance the books, is a Voodoo 5 worth it? Unless you're a die-hard Outlaws fan and play it constantly, I would say no. 3dfx is going away and there won't be further driver support for the cards. This will really hurt their longevity and they were behind Nvidia's latest crop of cards already. Best solution for most folks will be to keep a Voodoo 2 or two and a pass-through VGA cable handy so that you'll always have a Glide accelerator on-hand for Outlaws no matter what fancy-schmancy 2d/3d card you've got in there.
     But for the diehards, ohh man does Outlaws taste sweet on the Voodoo 5. Be sure to get yourself a fast CPU if you really want to milk the card for all it is worth: 800x600 with 4x AA at hundreds of frames per second, ie pure darn close to pure Outlaws video nirvana, is well within reach with this baby.

Happy Whatever
     Well I'm spent. Before I run off, special thanks to cobra, Krummwaffe, the Doominator, Quiet Sam, K_Rodelo, Hooter, Jim Feger and perhaps several others my blurred eyes are overlooking right now for helping me try to get a port-blocking program running on the Pale's Place server. Well I got it running with good security settings with their feedback but the darn program crashes after a while; probably doesn't help that I'm trying to run it along with Outlaws and a few other lil' programs on a P120 w/ 32MB RAM. The program itself, "Zone Alarm," seems pretty slick and is freeware for non-commercial use, if you're on the internet a lot and have valuable stuff you don't want hackers to be able to find, check it out at Zone Labs.
     I got more stuff but of course no time: the Voodoo 5 swallowed what Christmas shopping, card writing and tree-hunting did not this weekend. Big Nose Kate is gonna be in town and I'll be off work later this week... will try to squeeze in a proper update at some point however. If I don't manage it, please think charitably of me in light of the season. :P And if it isn't any special season for you wherever you are in the world, just have a nice day. :)

* * *

Wednesday 12/13/00

Moose Returns
AnonaMoose (shot) by Moose: Been a while since the once oft-seen Moose released a new map but here he is, antlers and all. AnonaMoose puts you in a weird kinda house thing with an unusual checkered archway/cupola thing dominating the central room. Stairs, ramps and holes branch off this room but all come back eventually, making for pretty nice flow. Actually one doesn't come back and that's my favorite part of the level because it seems to lead to an exit to the outside—you can see out the door but a strong wind blows you back and there's a nice use of a custom texture to give shading effects on the dark stairway. The central room could'a used a little lovin' like that as the checkered, flat-lit cupola thing is kinda mmm what a friend of mine would call "phugly" and I'm not going to explain what that means. It also hurts framerates, along with the stairway railings and such all in the central area. Still as you can see I've had a lot to say about it and it isn't something you'll soon forget, so hey check it out.

King of the Hole?
After checkin' out the latest "King of the Hill" map (see below), Spikerama, that hopelessly inventive game designing dude, had an idea on how to do a map in Outlaws where you actually would win by staying on top of the hill the longest... or how about at the bottom of the hole? Here goes:

    This is an idea you can send to Bad A and Warwolf, or distribute freely, or print it off and throw it in the trash. [I'll take option #2 Pat.]
     They could use the kfc format for an actual koth. They could put a structure on top of the hill that you can enter but not exit. Place the chicken inside. Everyone spawns on the outer edge and tries to get to the chicken. It will keep time to see who is in there the longest. The reason for not being able to exit the structure is because then it would be no different than kfc.
     Actually, koth or "king of the hole" may work better. The center is a shallow pit you can't jump out of. But, the pit has things to get behind and shoot from. The pit also has the chicken. You would spawn on the upper edges and try to get to the pit and stay the longest.

     So there you have it, a freely given game idea for an Outlaws map. Take it, love it, put it in your pocket and name it George. Or make a map with it, that might work best.
     Actually, come to think of it, GoJo and lindow's King of the Hill (see a few news bits down) kept you at the top, on your throne as it were. No hole though. At least, I don't think there was. Man my memory is getting bad.

Outlaws Hideout Rides Again
     After flirting with domain names and different hostin' type stuff Truffle has settled his "Outlaws Hideout" down at olhideout.cjb.net. He's still gettin' it warmed back up but he's already up to his usual shenanigans on his news page, go have a look.

I'll Pay You Money?
     sillysally wants some more single-player Outlaws maps. Real bad. How bad? So bad that sal is thinkin' that even shellin' out a bit of cold hard cash for a map would be worth it. Now, I'm not sure that this is financially realistic, especially considering the shall we say porous nature of the internet and the cozy size of the online single-player Outlaws fanbase but at the very least it should show some of ya LawMakin' types just how much someone would appreciate a good single-player mission now an' then:

    While everyone is waiting for an Outlaws sequel I have another Idea. As a avid player not always able to get online single player maps are what I am always looking for.
     I have an offer to make any map makers out there. If any of these map makers want to make some extra cash why not make the maps and sell them through your site. I know I would be the first to pay for some quality maps and maybe this would be the incentive needed to get these map makers out there to work on some single player maps. I know I'm not the first to come up with this however I am probably the most desperate ...hehehehe
     Well if you could post this with my e-mail address: [removed] and if any interested people want to consider this please contact me via e-mail and lets discuss this in greater detail.

     Now by "through your site" I take it sal means the LawMaker's own site 'cause gosh knows I couldn't handle th' worry involved in running a commercial endeavor through this here site. Heck, my banner ads cause me enough strain as it is (not that I worry they'll make money, because they don't, but I get sick of seeing those lame online casino ones... then again there've been some nice cartoony Christmas ones lately. But have you ever noticed that banner ads always just take you to a lame page with a form to fill out? Bleh).

This'n'That
     Lots of folks pointed out that lindow and GoJo have had a level out called King of the Hill for a while now. Nuts, I forgot that was the name. I had, at least, checked to make sure that the filename was not the same as bad_a_ss and warwolf's King of the Hill. Confused? Welcome to my world.
     Speakin' of which, I could still use more feedback on whether or not you can still join the Pale's Place game. I've only had one reply (could see game but couldn't join) since raising my lil' security program's setting to "Medium" and I stupidly forgot to look at what the latest text in the chat log was when I did so, so I dunno if the people it shows joining in the log joined before or after I made that change. So lemme know if you can/can't get in.

* * *

Tuesday 12/12/00

More Security Fun
Thanks everyone who responded about the results of my security experiments with the Pale's Place hosted game. "High" security didn't allow people to join ("Game not found"), "Low" security works. Now I'm gonna try "Medium" security and if that doesn't work, I'll set it back to Low. Again though please email me if you can't get into the game. Thanks!
On a slightly related note I ordered cable modem service from AT&T@Home today. Why? 'Cause I totted up my Qwest DSL bill from last month and it is now costing me over $90/month. Eep! And that's the minimum it costs me to be able to play tcp/ip games. On top of that they also charged me $25 for the effort it took them to start my static IP service. Grr! So forget that. With @Home I get download speeds up to twice the DSL (upload speed is half though) at half the cost. Installation is on the 27th, woohoo. Wanna bet it goes off without a hitch? Didn't think so hehe.

* * *

Sunday 12/10/00

In-Security?
     I'm experimenting with an internet security program on my Pale's Place server and I'm not entirely sure it's working, or actually I think it may be working too well since while I can join, nobody else has joined since I installed it last night. So what I need is for someone to try joining and if you can't (if it says No Games Found, for instance), email me. Then I can try the lower security setting and if that don't work either, well I'll just chuck the idea. :P

Half-Life OL Character Shots
     One of the authors of the in-progress Outlaws mod for Half-Life sent along three shots of the new character models, check out Two Feathers, James Anderson and Bob Graham. You'll probably also recognize a few of the areas behind them... Keep in mind again that this is still a work in progress, I'm told it will probably be a few more months before it is finished. But it is looking better and better with each batch of screenshots they send me. Send feeback to [removed].

Two Maps For You
     King of the Hill (shot) by bad_a_ss and warwolf: This is the kind of map that makes you almost feel like smacking the heel of your hand against your forehead and saying "Why the heck didn't anyone think of this before?" Actually hmm now I can think of at least two maps centered around a single hill but none of them have had this kind of straightforward approach. The hill is kind of low and broken into low shelves that you can jump up, at the top of course you're rewarded with a gat and some other goodies. Long bunker-like rock formations around the base make good spots to try to knock the king off the top. Framerates hold very high all around. Darn nice job here.
     My Nature v2.15 (shot) by Tha Zeurdoos: Update to "My Nature," that little canyon with the green sky. According to the author the update includes "more corridors, some areas where you will be crushed when you don't move fast enough, more items, some ambient changes and a lot of new, better start positions." Texture stitching hasn't been done yet, may make it into a future update. And although I think two gatling guns side-by-side in a narrow tunnel may be overdoing things a tad, this is still a decent small DM map with a nifty sky (did I mention that it's green?)

GoJo Will Have You in Stitches
     Speakin' of texture stitching, when Zeurdoos gets the time he may want to tune in to GoJo's House as this veteran LawMaker has just updated the texture stitching section of his "LawMaker School" with an even more in-depth tutorial than before in the insanely touchy art of beautiful texture stitching in Outlaws, featuring even the dreaded counter-clockwise stitch. All spelled out in nice illustrated screenshots though be warned, there is still some math involved. But it makes levels look oh so nice when it is done correctly. :)

* * *

Wednesday 12/6/00

Invasion of Other Games!
     Yep, weird half-week for this update: no real Outlaws stuff but a bunch of stuff concerning other related games. Hmm!
     Kid Macoo has written up his own review of Wanted!, the Western mod for Half-Life. It ain't no Outlaws but hey, what can you expect?
     salmoides pointed out new info on a few upcoming Western games: GA has four new shots of "Desperados", a Western adventure strategy game from Spellbound, while Daily Radar has a preview of "America: No Peace Beyond the Line!", a Western RTS in development at Data Becker. Funny how both development companies are European... and neither is Italian! Haw. Anyway if you dig the wacky looking A:NPBL, you can download the demo from Data Becker's site.
     Finally, I went an' updated the sequel petition with near 150 new signatures, bringing the total up to 2198 die-hard Outlaws fans. I think we can all agree with Tigger's sentiment, which is simply "YEEEE HAWWWW." Yes indeedy.
     Well I admit I also updated another section of the site today but I'm not gonna tell ya which one, especially since it is still way behind the times. :P

* * *

Sunday 12/3/00

New Maps
     Atown3 (shot) by HardknoX_3: Update of Kbyrne's old "Atown" map with a fix for that nasty black tower 3dfx users would get over the central muddy pool. There's still a little flicker on the pool wall edge but it's barely noticeable. Framerate still sucks in spots but hey, if you didn't mind it in Atown you won't mind it here.
     man2man (shot) by Manco: As the title implies this is a small 1-on-1 type map, a little barn/corral with a nifty feed shoot going from the hay loft to the feed trough outside. Very well done with excellent detail and some nice jumps. Framerate dips ever-slow-slightly looking through the length of the barn... I love Outlaws, I can call 90 fps a "dip." ;) Shoot the rope holding the hay bale outside for a bit of a surreal experience.

Clean Up After Your Voodoo
     From all reports voodoo parties can be messy affairs. As can uninstalling/reinstalling/updating your 3dfx Voodoo card drivers. Bare ran into trouble after getting the latest drivers for his Voodoo 3 from 3dfx; after a lengthy call to tech support he found it was a conflict with old driver files, or references to them, in his system. They gave him detailed instructions on cleaning old Voodoo files and references from your system (permanent link is in the V3 section of the video comparison page) which includes removing old keys from your system registry and deleting old driver files from your Windows directory. Fun stuff! But it got his system back on its feet and running Outlaws again. Sometimes you gotta perform a little surgery to get things working again; at those times it doesn't hurt to have a good step-by-step guide.

More Interview with LEC President
     Gamecenter's interview with Lucasart's president Simon Jeffrey has continued, the third and fourth episodes of the four-part interview have been posted starting here. Like the first two they focus mostly on adventure and Star Wars games but give hints as to where Mr. Jeffrey wants to take the company. At one point he talks about not wanting to be a "conveyor belt" churning out sequels, but later he also says they are in the process of "rebuilding our original product line--that is, the products that are not based on Lucasfilm's intellectual properties. Those games are what LucasArts founded itself on, and in part of the reinvention of what LucasArts is, we want to go back to building original, creative, sometimes "out there" games that really no one else in the market is thinking of building."
     So any hints on an Outlaws sequel? No, but he's very mum about upcoming projects. He shoots down a few though and Outlaws isn't among them so at least there's that, if you just have to cling to some hope for an Outlaws follow-up.

* * *

Wednesday 11/29/00

New Voodoo 3/4/5 Drivers
     They may be reorganizing their business model but 3dfx is still churnin' out driver updates fer their video cards. In the past day or so they put out Win9x drivers for various of their Voodoo 3, 4 and 5 lines. These latest, at least the V3 ones I tried out, add full DirectX 8 support. Well I can't say fer shure as to that but Outlaws still runs jest fine so hey, all is well.

All I Want For Christmas
     ...are some new maps? Well Christmas comes early this year, hotspur. Dig 'em:
     Abandoned Pony Express Stop (shot) by Lighthawk: Yes you've already seen this one before too. This version has a graphics fix (for DirectDraw? dunno) and adds a custom character sprite for Sanchez in addition to the first version's custom Anderson. Which helps explains why it weighs in at 531K. Puttin' this big girl in my temp directory so get 'er while she's hot.
     minisimm (shot) by Prowler: Modified "Simms at Night" with a higher outer wall and sealed front gate so you can't get out. No more snipers sittin' out there in th' dark waitin' fer ya ta show yer face in a lighted window, just tough close-quarters gunfightin'.
     LockDown (shot) by Prowler: Sort of a metally jail-based theme here I guess. Flat and plain with repeating textures. Got stuck in some sort of secret room I stumbled into some how, probably while hypnotized by the parallel lines running along the floor. :P
     Damit (shot) by Warwolf: Pretty keen lil' deathmatch valley here with some nicely varied areas, especially considering how small it is. The stair-steppy tunnels could be made a bit smoother to traverse (ie, ramps) but the dam and and sloped valley floor are nice touches. Watch out fer a very dark, deep hole at the end of a cave.

LEC in the News
     Gamecenter wrote up an interview with LEC President Simon Jeffery. A two-parter, part 1 has Simon playing down the ham-handed recent announcement by LEC PR that Obi-Wan was being cancelled for the PC and moved strictly to consoles. In part 2 he discusses the Star Wars MMORPG being developed by Verant. Not a whole lot here for Outlaws fans though Simon again stresses that he is interested in taking the company back to its roots, ie original games, and that they will announce a new PC game already under development in a few weeks. Thanks to newsie salmoides fer th' handy URL.
     Pie pointed me to the Lucasarts Screen of the Week, an image from the Outlaws intro movie. The sub-logo reads "Lucasarts Classic: Outlaws." Well, isn't that nice.

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Sunday 11/26/00

Back to Work
     Ah the Holidays. That time of year when by the sound of it you'd think you'd be enjoying life and taking it kind of easy, whereas we at least here in the States have managed to turn it into the most frenetic time of year. After a four-day weekend (if you were lucky) it can be especially tough to go back to the daily grind. :P Speakin' of which, I'd better get to work on this update since its already late and I got a lot of new maps for ya:
     Heck Direct and Heck Lite Direct by Krummwaffe: Modified with smaller file sizes (being more economical with custom textures) and full texture compatibility for DirectDraw users, these new versions of Heck and Heck Lite still feature the same great gameplay. You'll mostly want to get these if you play the game in DirectDraw or MGL renderer modes, or if you just want the maps to take up less space on your hard drive. Users with the "Direct" versions can still play those with older versions.
     SanQuEstES HiLL (shot) by Creek: Yeah, you saw this last time. Well this is an updated version that corrects a "minor eRRoR," whatever that might have been. Still has 3dfx errors around the jail cells.
     Dutval (shot 1, shot 2, shot 3) by Manco: The author claims that this is by far the largest Outlaws map in terms of raw physical size and I'm willing to take his word for it 'cause it is really darn big. Made for CTF with one base a small canyon town, the other a harbor, between 'em a large twisty lake and a stockade on an island. Nice looking though framerates drop in spots, especially in the harbor, though most of the map is very wide-open, pretty empty areas of water and canyon. There's a lot of swimming involved in getting from one base to the other, and only one real route to take as far as I could see. May also have bobbers in the water. Anyhoo, definitely a strategic rifle-oriented map. A speedboat would come in handy...
     Abandoned Pony Express Stop (shot) by Lighthawk: Looks to be based at least in part on his recently released "Pony Express Stop 54," but this time the two small buildings are in something of a canyon with a tunnel around the side, from which you can jump on top of or in to the buildings. Simple and fast, small areas could use a little texture stitching but overall decent looking. The author tells me that Anderson's sprite is replaced by Dick Farmer, and will show as "F" in the frag table.
     Dark Dungeon (shot) by ShiftyTuco: At first I thought gee this isn't a dark dungeon. Sure it's a jail and a little grey but actually rather on the sunny side, just look at those big windows. Then I fell through the hole into what is indeed a rather dark place. But it isn't so dark that you can't see anything at all, which is nice and not so easy to pull off. So lighting is used to good effect here and so is the transition between the floors, as you can either take the stairs or plunge though one of two holes, each of which lands you in a close but decidedly different area.

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Wednesday 11/22/00 "Turkey Eve"

Gobble Down New Maps!
     Crossroads (shot) by Lighthawk: Nice little map here of a three-building outpost in the wilderness. Very Sanctuary-like, sort of a mini-Sanc. Lighting and texturing aren't stunning but solid, framerates are very high.
     SanQuEstES HiLL (shot) by Creek: You know, if the artist formerly known as "Squiggle-thing" taught us anything, it is that names that people can't even read, much less pronounce, are a sure ticket to unpopularityville. Okay so maybe I'm exaggerating this mixed-caps thing but yeesh. This map deserves to have a decent name, like... uh... okay so I can't think of anything. Fred. Anyhow, this is a fairly solid CTF map with a hill between two large-ish forts. There's a little semi-fort on top of the hill and it is... no, I'm going to say it, it is gosh-darn nifty. The two end bases, on the other hand, have some uneven texturing and lighting, and there's some 3dfx-wonkiness in one room of one base. I like the scale of the map though: nice and roomy but not so much that rifles will rule unchallenged.

Two Site Updates from Jerky

The Wire
Site of the upcoming second run of the periodic Outlaws letter column / editorial page done this time around by Jerky. If it's anything like Blackthorn's original site, nearly every issue will be a darn good read.

     Jerky's also updated his own Jerky's Outlaws Hideout with a solid revamped look (still in nice warm wood grains though) so you kin go check that out too.

Sequel By Arlo
     Arlo rode into town with a lot of ideas fer an Outlaws sequel, or at least a Western first-person game, which have been duly added to the bottom of the Outlaws 2 Wish List. They outline a persistent online world with character customizations, simple economics and AI characters that remember you if you've met before. Which could, of course, be good or bad. ;)

Whatcha Lookin' At, Pilgrim?
     If yer American, have a Happy Thanksgiving! If yer not but ya still wanna have a Thanksgiving, it's easy: just eat as much as you can, making sure to get in at least one dish somehow related to turkey, while watching sports on TV and loosening your belt gradually. If you've gained at least five pounds by the end of the day, congratulations! You've experienced the essence of another fine, completely bastardized American tradition. =) If it sounds tricky don't worry, I predict that soon you'll just be able to head down to your local McDonalds for "Turkey McNuggets" or something of that sort. :d

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Monday 11/20/00

Pale's Place Returns
Whew. Finally got my static IPs hooked up and Pale's Place is now back online serving up 24-hour Outlaws goodness for those times when you just want to jump in a game. Try not to crash or hack it for a few hours, mmm-kay? :)

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Sunday 11/19/00

Last Minnit Maps
     You know it just figgers, here I am last night thinkin' "gee it'll be a pretty simple update tomorrow" and then WHAMMO, a whole mess of maps charge in at the last minute today. ;) Here goes:
     Mirc Station (shot) by Krummwaffe: Ah the simple things. A stagecoach. A shed. A hill. A tunnel. A couple caves. A pistol in your hand. What pure, sweet goodness.
     The Corral (shot) by Lighthawk and FTS_evil_7: It's you. In a corral. And it's dark. And there're guns all over the ground. Okay, maybe this one is a little too simple. Then again, a lot of people are simple so this could be really popular. :) Kinda weird how the stars are right up on top of the fence.
     The Caves (shot) by Lighthawk and FTS_evil_7: Flat twisty angular tunnels between two smallish caves. Hard to capture much in a screenshot so I took the liberty of leaving the map on for the above shot. If finding your way around that looks fun, go to it. This might actually be what you could call a Two Feathers map... maybe there's a reason why there aren't too many of them. Framerates are through the otherwise unbroken roof.
     The Valley (shot) by Lighthawk and FTS_evil_7: Small little two-building valley with caves in the walls. Textures and lighting could be more attractive but framerates are, again, sky-high (hi there sky, nice to see you in this map :). It's pretty easy to wedge yourself in one of the tunnels and get hopelessly stuck until some kind soul comes along and puts you out of your misery. Oo.
     Oh Yeah! (shot) by Lighthawk and FTS_evil_7: Reworked bar room from Sanctuary and to tell you the truth it's seen better days. Texturing is very rudimentary and there's no outdoors anymore. The building's simple layout is okay, except there isn't a whole lot of variety.
     Pony Express Stop 54 (shot) by Lighthawk: A square house and a square stable and a path down the middle. Geometry is very basic but hey it kinda gets the job done. High fps. Oh and there's a ramp so you can get on the rooftops—hey, gameplay! Nice texture set could use stitching.
     Garbo's House (shot) by WaRRioR: I worry about the sanity of anyone whose bedroom ceiling and floor sport matching brown checker patterns. Small indoor DM area, lots of bottle and wood textures and weapons in the middle.

Gun Slingin' Site

Warrior's Shootem Up Site
A bit hard to rate this site as it is still a work in progress which is to say that many of the pages don't load. But the front page has regular update notes from Warrior and he's got his own maps arranged neatly for download so that counts for something. Also the author goes hunting which implies that he has access to firearms. Kinda dig that leather-y background though it makes some fonts hard to read. Navigation buttons require Java.

In other site news, Truffle has given the already excellent LMT site a stylish new look with a funky Javascript top menubar that is kind of finicky in Netscape (3 and 4, anyway). (Whatever happened to 5? :P) There are lots of very interesting screenshots of maps in progress by the LMT bunch so go take a look if your browser can handle it.

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Back to Stale Vittles

vittles

nineteenth highest

Stuff on th' shelves.