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Twenty-Second Highest Shelf Vittles: 10.20.02-3.14.04
Back to Stale Vittles
Sunday 3/14/04
Fluffy Godzilla
First an update about Molycoat's "Goldcanyon"
that I covered in the last update--Moly tells me that
the explosive barrels do in fact respawn, they just
have long respawn times so as not to make the map
too explosive. Paleface.net apologizes for the
error!
Godzilla! CTKMD
(shot)
by Shifty Tuco and Molycoat: You've played a
128-bit gunslinger for quite some time now--how about
moving up to a 200-foot city-wrecker? Awesome mod job
here to transform Outlaws into a modern city complete
with little (relative to your formidable size) tanker
trucks, helicopters, suspension bridge, boats, artillery,
helpless civilians, Godzilla and, of course, skyscrapers.
You can even climb up to the top of the tallest
skyscraper with some careful jumping and poke your head
through the sky--now that's high up, man! All the normal
OL pickups have been transformed into appropriate objects
(the shotgun is an artillery piece, for instance) that
you snap up as you stomp around the city--a little
confusing at first, but I'm sure even GZ had awkward
moments in his early days.
Fluffy's Meadow CKMD
(shot)
by Shifty Tuco: Like something right out of an
old Bugs Bunny cartoon complete with blue skies,
butterflies, giant carrots in a field, a big puffy
tree, and lots of rabbit holes. All players even look
like different colors of what Shifty calls
"badly drawn rabbits,"
but I think they're rather cute.
The multi-layered burrows beneath
the meadow are a bit confusing (in contrast with the
meadow itself, which is a single circular area), but
don't you just want to play with those cute little
bunnies? It is rumored that the squirrel is a double-barrel
shotgun.
X_Villa CTKMD
(shot)
by Xaviar: Swiped this one from
Mr. Bone's HQ.
One of those high-concept maps, in the shape of a big
X, with forts at the end of the legs and in the middle.
It's an interesting configuration for team play, and
although the buildings are on the plain and simple
side, the texture work is nice. Molycoat helped out
on this one (the dude is everywhere!)--you'll spot his
explosive barrels standing around, for instance.
Other Western Games
Lanky pointed me to Polish developer Teleplan's
page for Gun
Warrior, a multi-angle Western shooter in which, in
their own words, "The major Player's activity is
eliminating hundreds enemies passing through mission-based
bloody journey as well as during the duels." Elsewhere
on their site they show their actual
development
schedule, a rather unusual thing to show to the
public and which inclines me to think that they're still
shopping for a publishing
partner.
It seems the once-derailed Western console title
"Red Dead Revolver" is back
on track and picking up steam now that the developer,
Angel Studios, has been bought by Rockstar. Apparently
you get to play third-person as a bunch of different
characters with different play styles, and you even get
to
ride
bison, if you have a PS2 or Xbox of course.
Truffle 2.0
Truffle is working on
Gunslinger
2.0, an upgraded version of his all-in-one
Outlaws utility program. According to his preview
page 2.0 will have lots of nice GUI tweaks, additional
functions such as tokenizing maps, and can even take
custom skins.
Legends of Pale
Her hair was falling loose
and now seemed to rise on her head, above her
ashen-pale face, like Medusa's serpent-coils.
Alexandre Dumas,
The Three Musketeers
translated by Lord Sudley
* * *
Sunday 3/7/04
Gold in Them Thar Canyons
Gold Canyon TKMD
(shot)
by Molycoat: Adoptation of part of the ice
caves Historical Mission thing, except now in bright
daylight. The canyon texture got a little blown out
in the time-of-day switch, but the water looks nifty.
Other custom graphical touches abound, including
plentiful whisky bottle canteens, explosive 3D powderkegs
(these don't respawn, darn) and even what Moly says is
a 3D model for the gatling gun that he dug out of the
game resources. It looks kind of like an alien
spacecraft eheh. Oh and the rope ladder, that's neat.
The level layout is kind of long and linear with lots
of little dead-ends, but exploring it should be
fun.
Out|@Wz i|\| 7i|\|Ux OMG!!
I ought to apologize for that headline, but really
I get a kick out of writing like that. Anyway,
Truffle has been experimenting in ways likely
not approved of by the DirectX compatibility verification
team at Microsoft, and sent me the following interesting
missive:I
was able to get Outlaws to run in linux (mandrake 9.1)
I used a DirectX emulator called WineX which is based off
the popular Windows Emulator WINE. Anyway, surprisingly the
game ran as fast as it does in Windows. Direct3D didnt work.
Im guessing this is because Linux didnt install any 3D drivers
for my video card, it told me i had to download them from
nvidia's website. The only problem i had with it was the same
problems that we all get in Windows XP. The backspace key
didnt work. Now
if that ain't fascinating, I don't know what is.
I really should try to figure out that Lin00x
thing one of these days.
Impassively Pale
But,
astute as she was in reading the minds of those
whose secrets she wished to discover, this time she
found her victim so impassive that her scrutiny
revealed nothing. The officer was about twenty-five,
pale, and with light-blue, rather deep-set eyes. His
mouth was sensitive and well-formed, his jaw
determined, his forehead the high forehead of poets
and visionaries, his hair close-cropped and, like his
beard and moustache, chestnut-coloured.
Alexandre Dumas,
The Three Musketeers
translated by Lord Sudley
* * *
Sunday 2/15/04
Which Way to Go
4 Way CTKMD
(shot)
by GravEs: A neat little geometric level of
four houses in tiny box canyons branching off from
a similar central canyon, with some secret passages
and bunkers in the canyon walls. Textures could use
a little tweaking and item placement is clumpy in
a few spots, but otherwise this is a very solid
DM map so long as you don't get lost between
the similar-looking canyons.
Note: I've renamed the map to "4way_graves.zip" because
there's already a "4way.zip" map.
Deathly Cheeky
'Fiend!' she shrieked. 'You've played a vile trick on
me and you know my secret! You shall die!'
She ran over to her dressing-table, half naked as she
was, and with trembling hands opened a marquetry
jewel-case, took out a little gold-hilted dagger with
a thin, pointed blade and with one bound was back at
d'Artagnan's side.
Brave as he was the young man flinched and shrank back at
the sight of her. Her face was transformed. The pupils of
her eyes were horribly dilated, her cheeks deathly
pale, her teeth bared in a snarl. He backed away from her
as far as the alcove, eyeing her warily like a wild
beast, and when his hand, damp with sweat, accidentally
touched his sword he clutched hold of it and drew it
from its scabbard.
Alexandre Dumas,
The Three Musketeers
translated by Lord Sudley
* * *
Sunday 2/8/04
Maps That Are Out There
Spacewar D
(shot)
by Molycoat: The master of map customization
outdoes himself again by converting the dusty old
trails and six-guns of Outlaws into the glistening
laser-riddled spaceways of the far future. It's essentially
a low-grav circular arena with mod weapons and character
sprites, not to mention brilliant space sounds (love the
thruster when you run-- er, jet forward). The
space feel is very vivid (as is the nebulous background)
and man, the whole affair is quite impressive. The
composite screenshot comes from Moly, who wanted to make
sure you could get a preview of some of the ship/player
sprites. Here's a bonus
one for you.
Mt.Mod CTKMD
(shot)
by GravEs: A long CTF-ish trench valley map
with a number of crafty bunkers, and ledges around the
top. Good framerate, sorta shaky construction on the
ramps and side bunkers, wish it had footstep sounds.
TheRing CKMD
(shot)
by GravEs: Lots of massive rendering glitches
in 3dfx mode make it a bit hard to evaluate this
large-ish map of several rambling buildings in a wide
flat area. The buildings are rather plain and blocky,
although the boxing ring is a nice idea, unfortunately
plagued by some of the aforementioned rendering glitches.
Also missing running sounds.
"Wild West Goldhunter" Released
Spikerama, aka "Larry," maker of many creative
OL maps in days of yore, has turned his creative game
ideas in a new direction and gone and made his own
entire game! Called "Wild West Goldhunter," it's a
Western-based first-person-shooter with a heavy
emphasis on solving mind-bending riddles, as well as
prospecting for gold. The official web site for the
game is
right
over here, and good ol' Spikerama is selling the
fruits of his labor for less than what it costs to get
in to a movie these days. He was kind enough to send me
an early beta version some months ago and although it
didn't run well on my machine (my old box is about at
his minimum spec in processor speed, so no wonder), I
sure ran into some head-banging puzzles! There are a few
crafty riddles/hints on the web site, as well as some
representative screenshots, so go check it out.
TKM's New Digs
Those Killing MachinE rascals seem to be modifying
their name somewhat and moving over to
this
address, and it's actually an entirely new site,
though somewhat reminiscent of the now-obsolete one that
I just posted a few weeks ago.
Wild and Pale
'I've got that ring, dear heart. You see it was I who
was here on Thursday night . . . not de
Wardes!'
The rash young fellow expected nothing more from his
mistress than surprise and mortification, a petulant
storm which would resolve itself in tears. But he was
very much mistaken and was soon to discover his
mistake.
Milady started up wild and pale. She forced d'Artagnan
away with all her strength and sprang out of
bed.
It was now almost daylight.
D'Artagnan caught hold of her flimsy crèpe-de-Chine
nightdress and held her back, meaning to coax her into
forgiving him. As she tried to jerk herself free the
cambric of the dress tore, leaving her beautiful white
shoulders bare. And on her left shoulder d'Artagnan
saw to his horror the fleur-de-lis, the mark of the
criminal. Milady was branded!
The young man let go of her nightdress and lay there
motionless, paralyzed with fear.
'God in Heaven!' he whispered.
Alexandre Dumas,
The Three Musketeers
translated by Lord Sudley
* * *
Sunday 2/1/04
Wild Down Under
Spikerama sent me
this
link to an Australian site showing what they say
is a Western real-time strategy game called
"Tombstone: Wild West 1882." Let's hope it's Y2K-compatible!
Haha. Er, sorry. It isn't clear if you can actually buy
the game directly through their site, in fact it kind
of looks like they deal with selling in bulk to retailers,
but I could be wrong.
Dead Men Have Good Poker Faces
Continuing the theme of 'games that want to be cool
like Outlaws,'
Pancho Villa pointed me over to
the official site
for Human Head Software's new western FPS, "Dead
Man's Hand," due out at the beginning of March for
PC and Xbox. Looks pretty neat from the screenshots,
and Pancho says that he's heard it will have multiplayer.
The official site has links to a lot of previews and
such which, one would hope, have even more screenshots
and stuff.
Excuses for Paleness
Having reached the man he had two courses open to
him: either to search him on the spot or to carry him
back, making a shield of his body, and search him in
the trench. D'Artagnan chose the second course. He had
just lifted the man on to his back when the enemy
opened fire. D'Artagnan felt the man's body jolt against
his shoulder, heard him scream and give a final shudder
of agony. The man had achieved the very opposite of
what he had intended; he had shielded his victim and
instead of killing him had saved his life. D'Artagnan
jumped back into the trench and threw the corpse down
beside the wounded man, who was almost as pale as his
dead comrade.
Alexandre Dumas,
The Three Musketeers
translated by Lord Sudley
* * *
Sunday 1/25/04
Curses!
I stumbled across a preview of an upcoming PS2/Xbox
game called "Darkwatch: Curse of the West." I mention
it because it is self-described as
"A cinematic FPS with explosive action and great gameplay
variety framed by a story and visual design that delivers a
frightening re-imagination of the Wild West." The whole
horror/western combination seems a little overdone
to me (I mean that it seems nearly every Western game announced
has to have some kind of dark Gothic side to it for
some reason) but you never know, it could turn out
all right. The preview, with screenshots and so forth,
can be found
here.
Side-Scrollin' Outlaws-Style
Truffle is working on a PC game he calls "Dr.
Death's Shootout." It's a 2D side-scroller in which you,
playing as Dr. Death, jump over crates and gun down
varmits with a variety of weapons. It looks almost
exactly like Outlaws, only fully 2D, which is pretty
impressive. He's still working away at it but if you
visit
his
page on the game you can see screenshots and even
download a rough but quite playable version of the game.
I found it really challenging, but the shotgun makes a
nice little equalizer. Overall it's an impressive
testament to Truffle's abilities with a computer and it
will be fun to play the finished version when he's got
it all done.
TKM Site Goes Live
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TKM's HomeBase
The "Team Killing Machines'" site by TheClown
sports details on each member of the posse, a few
pertinent links, some handy utilities for OL players,
info on the gang and a few screenshots, all in a
large, fast, flaming goth style (those offended by
an animated burning cross had best avoid).
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* * *
Sunday 1/11/04
What's GoJo Cooking?
GoJo is whipping up a new map and you can watch
him do it! Well, in screenshots, at least. Check
GoJo's
Current Project page for the goodies.
Snipers Have More Fun
Clown sent me some info on his Snipers posse.
Look, they've got a web site!
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Snipers HeadQuarters
Fast site of the Snipers posse has info on the
members, how to join, a few handy links, and so forth.
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What's So Happy About It, Anyway?
Hope everyone survived the holidays more or less
intact! I had a nice long break but the last two
vacations I've taken now I've ended up with a cold,
so maybe I shouldn't take time off anymore—seems to
be bad for my health. Too bad
this place
wasn't open New Year's Eve... Who says Seattle
doesn't have cowboys? Hm, tryouts today—looks like
this is my chance to live my old dream of being a
cattle-rustlin' cocktail waitress.
'Impossible,' said Milady. 'No gentleman would write
a woman a letter like that.'
Then she suddenly cried out:
'Good God! Could he have seen . . .?'
She stopped. Her teeth were chattering, her face ashen
pale. She now turned and tried to walk over to the
window to get air, but could only raise her arms;
her legs gave way under her and she collapsed into an
armchair.
Alexandre Dumas,
The Three Musketeers
translated by Lord Sudley
* * *
Sunday 12/21/03
We Three Maps
Deerhunt CTKMD
(shot)
by Molycoat: Lovely dry brushland/pine-forest
with a gently curving road running through the middle
and plentiful wildlife, including the titular deer
who have some very impressive animations and even
(in one case) the sound of hooves matching their
progress. A really gorgeous job of blending what
appear to be custom textures here, the autumnal palette
and sprites making up the open woodland are just
smashing. The whole area has a natural, organic
feel to it, helped of course by Molycoat's customary
attention to intricate wildlife details. You'll
probably get lost at first in the rambling wooded
paths but just sit back and enjoy the scenery
for a while and you'll soon get your bearings. I can still
hear that crow cawing somewhere in the distance.
Should make for a nice big stealthy kind of match.
The Ponderosa CTKMD
(shot)
by Vin_Egar: Impressive re-creation of the
Cartright's house and barn from Bonanza—well, I never
caught the show, but I'm told it's a recreation, and
even I can see that it's impressive. Custom textures
captured from photos were used (I'm told) to recreate
the interiors with the closest possible fidelity,
and they certainly look detailed and distinct.
The map was finished up by Molycoat, and I think
maybe I see some of his custom touches here and there,
like the unique breakable windows. My favorite aspect
is the generous scale of the interiors--you really feel
like you've got room to stand up and stretch in this
big, bright house. Framerate dips very slightly in just
a few spots due to all the detail included, but those
running any kind of halfway decent machine won't notice
a thing.
Snowtown CTKMD
(shot)
by Molycoat: Moly gets in the holiday spirit
and you know it's going to be something special.
Santa has scattered a generous number of wrapped
presents throughout this small snowed-in
enclave. What did they ask for for Christmas? Well,
shotguns, apparently, and TNT, pistols... you get
the picture, perhaps. The custom sounds when picking
up items --er, I mean unwrapping presents, are particularly
nice. It's quite the festive little DM level,
and if you're feeling a bit under the weather, why,
have a spicy egg-nog! This time Moly put his
obsession with detail in to the animating Xmas
decorations, with colorful lights strung up everywhere
and just check out the lovely star on top of the
big tree. And maybe do some sniping while you're up
there.
OL Mod for Half-Life Wants YOU!
Well, Chet figured that maybe some folks who
haven't been there before would like to know about
The
Outlaws Mod for Half-Life, which is just what the
name says. It's been around for a while now and has
got a good deal of polish, and Chet mentions that there
are openings for modelers, skinners, mappers, and of
course crazy players such as yourselves! Also,
coincidentally enough you'll find a few nice-lookin'
screenshots of a map Chet's made for 'em on the
front page of the site.
Golf Season Ends for GoJo
It's that time of year when GoJo gets the urge
to bust new ground with LawMaker, and I don't know if
he wanted me to post this in particular but I figure
he knows by now that I pretty much post everything
that won't obviously get me in trouble, so if you
travel to this
thread on TheOutlawDad's message board, you'll
find GoJo gathering the pieces of a map he's drawing
up, so far the plan as I know it is for two small towns
separated by a ridge, with some of the buildings in the
towns to be named by or after certain OL
players.
That GoJo... always stirrin' up trouble!
It's No Good Questioning Pale People
The shutter swung back again slowly on its hinges
and the old man's head and shoulders appeared in the
opening; he was very pale and seemed panic-stricken.
He stood in silence in the window while d'Artagnan
explained to him what he had come for, what he
had discovered and what he suspected. The old man
listened attentively, nodding his head from time to time
to corroborate certain details in d'Artagnan's narrative.
when the young man had finished his tale the old man
remained standing in the window, saying nothing but
shaking his head lugubriously.
'Why are you shaking your head like that?' cried
d'Artagnan. 'For Heaven's sake speak! Tell me what's been
happening here!'
'Don't question me, Sir, please,' answered the old
man. 'If I told you what I'd seen no good would come of
it.'
Alexandre Dumas,
The Three Musketeers
translated by Lord Sudley
* * *
Sunday 12/14/03
A Slue of New Maps
The holidays are in full swing and you're probably
wondering to yourself "Good gravy, how'm I gonna pass
the time 'til Christmas?" Well fret ye no longer,
little sprite, for today you have nine, count 'em
nine, new maps with which to play.
Foto CMD
(shot)
by Hooter: Readme says it's a reworking of
his map "OKC," which means a small ranch/town in a
valley with some good buildings and rooftop accesses
and things, and now sporting custom textures that he
captured from some of his favorite movies (thus the
title). Framerate is good, there are no obvious glitches
and the town for the most part has a nice open
layout.
TexasCajun TKMD
(shot)
by The 3 Amigos: Collaborative effort by Hooter,
Dog_Holliday and Molycoat puts you in a mid-size desert
town with some impressive two-story buildings at the
main crossroads--really impressive considering the
framerate even with all these buildings in view.
Molycoat-esque custom touches abound to delight the
senses, and the interiors do full justice to the
impressive exteriors, and feel like real unique
places--check the tool shop in the screenshot.
The town, though, is not as big as it seems at first,
as a nasty case of Invisible Wall Syndrome confines you
to a square section in the center of town--the boundary
is indicated by a slight change in shading on the ground,
but still, it distracts from the otherwise immersive feel
of the highly detailed playable area.
Slue CKMD
(shot)
by M_A_R_S: Mirrored CTF-style map with
two identical houses faced off across a bit of
water with a high embankment in the middle, all
enclosed in a narrow box canyon. There are a couple
very minor Glide artifacts but otherwise the map
looks quite nice, with the two houses thoughtfully
textured differently to help you remember which side
if yours. You can only really get into the houses
from the front of the ground floor, and there are no
side routes (unless I missed 'em, which is entirely
possible) so the action is going to be pretty hot and
heavy in a straight line between the two bases.
Town Bar CKMD
(shot)
by GravEs: When GravEs sent me this big bunch
of maps he warned that some may not be very good. This
would be one of those, I suppose--pretty nasty 3dfx
glitches, a clearly visible untextured pillar standing
a little way outside of the four-building "town," and
nothing really worth mentioning going on inside the
block buildings, except maybe for the civilian bartender
who will help lag up low-bandwidth users.
Blood Thirsty CTKMD
(shot)
by GravEs: Small and nasty little deathmatch
map where you spawn in little "legs" around a small
circular clearing, "Spider" style, and with an
underground boxing ring thrown in for the heck of it.
CTFTown2 CKMD
(shot)
by GravEs: Woo, this small canyon map has a
big 3dfx-glitch-surrounded hole in it, and if you happen
to stumble through it you get stranded out in limbo.
The three bartenders and mobs of seemingly endlessly
respawning stacked bottles probably won't help network
performance, and the sky sometimes looks like a wood
plank, but you'll have plenty of time to ponder the deep
meaning of these portents while wandering around in
a groundless limbo.
Stars Room KMD
(shot)
by GravEs: Float across a huge empty low
gravity square canyon or wander through the
interminable tunnels underneath it while marvelling
at the repeating alien face texture. And yes, some
visual glitches when you jump too high and poke your
head through the sky, or something. But that's, like,
your opinion, man.
Warmup TKMD
(shot)
by GravEs: Rather neat arena-style layout here
with two bunkered armories facing off across a
no-man's-land obstacle course of crates in a big
wood panelled room. Odd that it doesn't support
CTF, since it seems designed for it.
Xmas CTKMD
(shot)
by GravEs: The obligatory seasonal map with
snowmen, Christmas trees and a casual Santa next to
the chimney in a CTF-style cavern with several low
wall obstacles between the bases and very large and
plain passages running around the back and sides.
How does it snow in a cave, anyway?
Wassail, and all that!
Truffle's Toolbar
Truffle has a customized Outlaws Hideout IE
Toolbar available for download
at his "Outlaws Hideout" site,
right here.
You download it and it installs as a custom menu bar
in Internet Explorer, I gather. You'll also find information
on how to offer a donation for his efforts if you are in
the giving mood ('tis the season!).
Climbing the Ladder
DonMaximo sent me an update to let me know that
the BaD Ladder
Outlaws competition now has over 30 players duking it out
for fun, glory, bragging rights, and free beer (BYOB).
Okay so I just made up that last item.
Remember, you go the ladder board over at the
BaD Ass Mofos
message board nexus to sign up for the action.
MaD Page
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Team MaD
Sort of a visual patchwork but fast and sporting
consistent navigation, the MaD posse site offers
posse news, a message board, member list, info
on joining the team, downloads of member-made maps
and some handy links and files. I'm not sure
why there's a big banner/logo link to my site
at the top of the page layouts, but I guess I'm
not one to complain.
|
Paling People for Fun and Profit
The answer was indeed a shattering one. Anne of Austria
imagined that the King knew everything and that the
Cardinal had persuaded him to feign ignorance during
the past week, in order to lull her into a false sense
of security. This was one of his favourite tricks.
She went very pale, leant her lovely hand, now
waxen-coloured, against a little table to support
herself, and stood staring at the King, speechless
with terror.
'I hope you heard what I said, Ma'am,' repeated the
King.
He stood watching the Queen, thoroughly enjoying her
discomfiture, without, of course, guessing the reason
for it.
'Yes, Sire, I heard you,' stammered the
Queen.
'You'll come to the ball?'
'Yes.'
'Wearing the diamonds?'
'Yes.'
Her Majesty was now so deathly white that she
appeared about to faint. The King noticed her perturbation
and rejoiced at it. There was a streak of cruelty
deep down in him, which sometimes came uppermost.
Alexandre Dumas,
The Three Musketeers
translated by Lord Sudley
* * *
Sunday 12/7/03
When a BaD Ladder is a Good Ladder
DonMaximo wrote to tell me about his BaD posse's
new Outlaws ladder which, for those of you that haven't
seen one before, is kind of an open, ongoing series of
one-on-one duels, like you have a lot of the time in
OL anyway, except that they track wins and losses and
you can see your rank along with everyone
else's. Interested? If so, then you'll want to check
the following sites:
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BaD Ass Mofos
Feisty message boards run by the BaD posse, including
a board for sign ups and challenges in their
Outlaws Ladder.
|
|
BaD Ladder
Standings in the ladder run by the BaD posse.
See their "BaD Ass Mofos" posse site for sign-ups.
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Queen Pale
Anne of Austria backed away in horror. Her face was
deathly pale and she was trembling so much that she
had to rest her left arm against a table to support
herself. With her right hand she took the letter out of her
dress and handed it to the Keeper of the
Seals.
'Here's your letter, Sir!' she cried, her voice harsh
with rage. 'Take it and remove your odious presence from
my sight.'
Alexandre Dumas,
The Three Musketeers
translated by Lord Sudley
* * *
Sunday 11/30/03
New Gunfighter Shots
Mr.Ferstat sent me news that 3D Gamers has
some new screenshots
right
here of Gunfighter, a Western action game
from Polish development house Nawar. You can also find
the shots (very dark and moody) on
Nawar's
Gunfighter page, as well as a lot of details about
the game, with heavy emphasis placed on the claim that
it will have "maximal level of realism." They say the
game is coming to Xbox, PS2 and mobile phones (hm) as
well as PC, and I don't see a date other than a
"playable demo" being due "first quarter 2004." Also
no mention of a North American publisher.
After Scarlet
It is almost impossible to describe the effect produced
on Louis XIII by the Cardinal's words. First he flushed
scarlet, then he went very pale, and the Cardinal saw at
a glance that with one stroke he had regained all the
territory he had lost.
Alexandre Dumas,
The Three Musketeers
translated by Lord Sudley
* * *
Sunday 11/23/03
The Redneck Hoots at Midnight
Redneck CMD
(shot)
by Hooter: Another re-release by Hooter,
this time of one of his own maps, Redneck. He
removed the evil robots and poodle, laggers that
they are, and "fixed some textures and added a
few things." This version replaces the old one,
so get it if you want to stay up with the
latest.
In-Game Editor Guide
Hooter fell to reflecting that the average
Outlaws player probably has no idea of the existence
of the in-game level-editing tools hidden just
under their fingertips. To bring them to light
and empower the citizenry, he's written up this
In-Game
Editor Guide for your perusal. It's in
MS Word .doc format,
and I don't really have a place here for LawMaker
tutorials (since I don't know a thing about it and
couldn't tell a good tutorial from a bad one) but I'll
have it on the ol' ftp site for the time
being. If you're interested in giving it a real proper
home, you might just mention it to Hooter if you happen
to run into him.
Bountiful Banners
A couple more banners arrived this week and you'll see
'em at the top of pages as you browse around the
site. Heck, you might see one of 'em up there right NOW,
since it's random. You could also just sit there
refreshing this page over and over until you've seen
them all—I got enough bandwidth, so go right ahead.
And of course if you have your own OL site and would
like a banner link, all you gotta do is trot on over
here to see how to go
about it.
Even Paler Than Before
Aramis, seeing that
Monsieur de Tréville was calming down and wishing
to put in a plea for his friend, said: 'Please,
Sir, don't let it get around that Athos has been
wounded. It would break his heart if the King got to
hear of it. And his wound's really very serious; he was
run through the shoulder and the point of the blade
went into his chest.
We're afraid...'
At that moment the curtain of the door was drawn aside
and a man appeared. He was strikingly handsome but
desperately pale.
'Athos!' cried the two musketeers in
chorus.
'Athos!' echoed Monsieur de
Tréville.
'You sent for me, Sir,' said Athos to his officer in
a calm but rather weak voice. 'The fellows outside told
me you wanted me. So I've come to report. At your service,
Sir, now as always!'
With these words the musketeer stepped smartly into
the room. He was, as usual, faultlessly turned out and
showed no sign of having been in the wars. Monsieur
de Tréville, moved by this soldierly display of
courage, rushed towards him.
'I was just telling these gentlemen,' said he, 'that I
won't have my musketeers risking their lives
unnecessarily. The King rates courage very high and he
knows his musketeers are the bravest fellows in the
world. Athos, give me your
hand!'
And before Athos had time to reply to this affectionate
welcome Monsieur de Tréville took hold of his right hand
and gripped it hard, not noticing the pain he was
causing the young man, who, for all his self-control,
winced a little and grew, if possible, even paler
than before.
Alexandre Dumas,
The Three Musketeers
translated by Lord Sudley
8-8-8
Sunday 11/16/03
Support Your Local Gunslinger
Truffle has a new handy-dandy utility for
nearly all of your Outlaws needs:
Gunslinger.
What's it do? Well let's see now: lets you set up
your multiplayer settings, gives you a central location
for launching OL, LawMaker, and a bunch of the most
popular OL utilities, plus it has built-in links to
Truffle's selection of top OL sites and message boards.
How's that for service? And it all comes in a lovely
little automatic install program.
Gunslinger supports custom "skins" and Truffle says he'll
be working up some for release on his
Outlaws Hideout site in the
next few weeks.
Win9x users may get a "comdlg32.ocx" message when running
the program. Not to worry, if you follow the instructions
in
this
zip file Truff put together, you should be up and
running in just a click or two with an updated version
of that system file. Note: this modifies a system
file (replacing it with a newer version, in most cases),
so I'd advise that you only do this if you know how to
fix things in the very unlikely event that something
goes awry.
Doctor Banner
You'll notice that the first link banners are now up and
running, thanks to GraveZ DawG and Ch@llenger
for being the first to contribute! As I discussed last
week I'll be more than happy to host your own Outlaws-related
link banner, go
here for the details.
Head and Shoulders
Only this lady's head and shoulders were visible through
the coach window. She was between twenty and twenty-two
years old. We have already stated d'Artagnan's capacity
to take in at a glance every detail of a person's appearance.
He therefore noticed at once that the woman was young and
beautiful. And her looks struck him more forcibly because
they were of a kind entirely foreign to the southern
provinces where he was born and bred. The lady was fair and
pale, with long, golden ringlets which fell to her shoulders,
large, blue, languishing eyes, rose-red lips and hands as
white as alabaster. She was talking eagerly to the stranger.
Alexandre Dumas,
The Three Musketeers
translated by Lord Sudley
& & &
Sunday 11/9/03
I Need Banners
So... while messing around with my various email
accounts in a drive to reduce spam, I came across
an unforwarded mail from my banner hosts, ValueClick, which
they'd sent me a few months ago, in which they declared,
basically, that they're going upscale and dropping me
like the cheap tart I am. So that explains why the
banners had stopped showing up and why their tech support
only sent me meaningless auto-replies. Although I can
still log in to the secure section of their site. Oh
well.
Now what's a site without banners, I ask you? I was
perplexed. But then I remembered something I'd wanted
to do way back when, and realized that I now know enough
Perl tricks to make it happen, more or less.
I mean, of course, replacing those boring old commercial
banners with banners for other OL sites!
YAY!
Of course, I can't do this by myself—I'm not going
to make those banners, after all: you are! That's right,
you, Mr. Lurking-Outlaws-Webmaster-Person you! So if
you're at all interested in having your OL site linked
in a banner "ad" at the top of my site pages (which
banner appears on a given page is random, mind you),
check out the details
(linked from the main "link" page, for future reference)
and break out those mad .gif editing
skillz!
While updating all the pages with the new banner stuff
I figured I might as well do some tidying up of a few
non-standard layout things, so let me know if you find
anything newly-broken.
Every Map Old is New Again
Moantana MD
(shot)
by Hooter: A remake of Metallica's "Montana,"
I don't really remember the original much but it's
a house in a valley with a pretty waterfall. There
are some snipery-type ledges and things, all in all
a nice little DM level. Oh, I think he took out
the original's "NUKE" modified TNT, but I'm not
certain of that.
X Sanctuary CKTMD
(shot)
by GoJo: Fresh off the links and back on
the anti-hack warpath, GoJo arrives with his latest,
more powerful anti-hack technology. He calls this
map "sort of a BETA" and he'd really appreciate it
if those who know about OL hacking could see if they
can break it, and let him know how it goes. The main
difference for players now is that you don't have to
switch characters in the lobby, yay! You start out
with no weapons, and the weapons are given to you
after you take a step from the spawn point (but they
aren't automatically armed, so you have to select
one to switch from fists). Sounds pretty good to me.
All For Pale
But d'Artagnan decided first to take stock of this
insolent stranger's appearance. He looked at him
haughtily and observed that he was a man of forty
to forty-five, with shrewd dark eyes, a pale skin,
a pronounced nose and a well-trimmed, black moustache,
and that he wore a violet doublet and hose with
auguillettes of the same colour, with no trimmings
except the usual slashes through which his shirt
appeared. The doublet and hose, though new, appeared
creased, like travelling clothes which had long been
carried about in a valise. D'Artagnan took in all these
details with the speed of an acute observer, and his
instincts told him that the stranger was destined to
play a big part in his life.
Alexandre Dumas,
The Three Musketeers
translated by Lord Sudley
* * *
Sunday 11/2/03
Bushels of Maps
Dementia CTKMD
(shot)
by Dog_Holliday: Perhaps the trippiest
setting for a OL map ever: an upside-down house
inside a whiskey bottle. Tha's right. Quite literally
disorienting inside as you try navigate a house
where all the lamps are on the floor, the furniture
is on the ceiling, and you have to jump through
doorways--clever, but it really *is* disorienting,
a little light variation might have helped. Don't
forget to use the low gravity to jump up the chimney.
I really like the outside, with the cacti dangling
down above you, whiskey around your ankles, the
bottle making bottle sounds when you hit it, and the
massive room beyond the glass.
Juarez2 CTKMD
(shot)
by Dog_Holliday: Re-release of the nifty
night-time town centered on a colorful Spanish
Mission. Dog took out the scripted lights
that he thinks may have been causing some lag and
lowered the jail's roof to make for better jumping.
Oldmine CMD
(shot)
by Hooter: Re-release of the multiplayer
map based on the single-player mine level from the
main game, this version overwrites the old one and
replaces the brown rock texture with a grey one so
as not to give Anderson undue camouflage. The grey
texture isn't as easy on the eyes maybe, and may
give Doc a little camouflage, but darn those
malevolent Andersons.
Ricochet TKMD
(shot)
by Molycoat: Dynamite Dick's Dry Gulch
saloon gets the Molymedia treatment with lots of
custom props and sounds. Some good roomy areas
for fighting, and some cramped ones too. I don't
like hitting the forcefield beyond the gate (just
close the gate!) but the view is nice. The nifty
custom windows, I'm told, look funny in D3D until
broken--as if outlaws needed any more incentive to
break the windows out of a place.
More Arms
No! Know the gallant monarch is in arms,
And like an eagle o'er his aery tow'rs,
To souse annoyance that comes near his nest;
And you degenerate, you ingrate revolts,
You bloody Neroes, ripping up the womb
Of your dear mother England, blush for shame;
For your own ladies and pale-visag'd maids
Like Amazons come tripping after drums,
Their thimbles into armed gauntlets change,
Their needl's to lances, and their gentle hearts
To fierce and bloody inclination.
William Shakespeare,
King John
from "The Riverside Shakespeare"
* * *
Sunday 10/26/03
Maps I've Been Saving
Well thank goodness for the end of Daylight Savings
Time, I finally get an hour to sit down and update
the site.
Crevasse CTKMD
(shot)
by Molycoat: Icy but unslippery maze-like
level. Good framerate, lots of little hiding nooks,
should be good for an old fashioned chaotic deathmatch.
Uses a sound file from
Cap'n
Sawyer's, hopefully since I haven't heard anyone
complaining yet, Sawyer is okay with it. Generally though
it's a big burr in my bonnet when folks include files
that haven't been publicly declared free for re-use
by their authors, so for my sake, do try to avoid that kind
of thing.
CTFTown CTKMD
(shot)
by Graves: Very tiny, squarish town map. Doors
may open funny in laggy games, etc. High framerate,
naturally. Graves credits Moly with lots of help.
Underground CTKMD
(shot)
by Graves: Sorta tiny valley map except you
can sneak off down some tiny side-branches into
some funky house things with elevator-accessed
bombshelter things. Another side-credit to Moly
on this one. NOTE: I renamed the file from "underground.zip"
as there's already a map by that name.
Under Ground 2 CKMD
(shot)
by Graves: The bomb-shelters now have bigger
brickey basements.
MaD Town CTKMD
(shot)
by Graves: Tiny town (and when I say town, I
mean two little cottages and an outhouse or something)
in a squarish valley with a tunnel and an elevator
in the tunnel. The houses are a bit on the plain and
blocky side, but framerates are quite high.
Classic High Noon
Dirty O'Lero tells me that Microsoft has
moved Outlaws' "High Noon" matchmaking page into
their "Classics" section, which starts
here.
Hopefully you can find it from there--I don't have one
of their .NET Passport things, so I can't take you any
further.
Web Stuffs
|
Gravez Domain
Gravez' maps and info on the MaD posse. Shocking
color scheme but loads quickly and has consistent
navigation. Also links to a forum.
|
The "New Outlaws Message Board" has been redubbed
The 2003
Outlaws Message Board. Which I guess gives it
a little over two months to live? It looks like there's
chat goin' on in the camo-draped interface, but you
have to register before you can even see the post
listing.
Dont Know found a Western FPS entitled
"Western Outlaw" at
Groove Games
and shortly thereafter found it wasn't worth bothering
about, with "bad interface," and short play length,
not to mention no multiplayer. Thanks for taking one
for the team, DK!
RAF sent me a link to the
Lawdogs
site, where you can find out all about this upcoming
Western mod for Unreal Tournament 2003, currently in
some kind of open beta. Some of the screenshots look
fairly promising—nice mood in a couple of them. The
web site is pretty too, go take a gander.
Shorely
Upon this cheek lay I this zealous kiss
As seal to this indenture of my love:
That to my home I will no more return
Till Angiers, and the right thou hast in France,
Together with that pale, that white-fac'd shore,
Whose foot spurs back the ocean's roaring tides
And coops from other lands her islanders,
Even till that England, hedg'd in with the main,
That water-walled bulwark, still secure
And confident from foreign purposes,
Even till that utmost corner of the west
Salute thee for her king; till then, fair boy,
Will I not think of home, but follow arms.
William Shakespeare,
King John
from "The Riverside Shakespeare"
* * *
Sunday 10/05/03
El Loco Molycoato
Nacho Loco CTKMD
(shot)
by Molycoat: Stylish little cantina complete
with mariachi band. Little custom graphics,
combined with the band's music, give it the flavor of a real
location, and darn me if that lighting isn't just
brilliant. He even put correct shadows on the cacti for
goodness' sake. Gor blimey.
The Rectory Strikes Back
Dog_Holliday went through several releases of
his new "Devil's Rectory" map this past week, raising
the light level so that it's easier to see where you're
going and tweaking various technical things in his
perfectionist way. So
here
is the latest version, which he promises is the last—but
I won't hold him to it.
It's Me Noggin
Kuz'ma pale and dishevelled had his feet firmly planted
on the ground, and being deprived of the use of his
arms, butted at his adversaries with his large head.
Anton Chekhov,
The Shooting Party
translated by A. E. Chamot
* * *
Sunday 9/28/03
Sacrilicious
Devil's Rectory CTKMD
(shot)
by BuffaloFred and Dog_Holliday: A rather striking
bolt of lighting welcomes you to the haunted precinct
of Devil's Rectory, a church that seems to have gone
way downhill of late. The general theme and layout remind
me a lot of Zeurdoos' "RIP." Good flow and an
excellently creepy setting with very spiff sounds and
visual effects, not to mention super texturing--that
burned-out outbuilding is a masterpiece of
Lawmakering.
Outlaws Hideout Back, Evil
Truffle's
The Outlaws
Hideout site is back online, but with a twist:
not satisfied with the humdrum march of regular OL news
like the rest of us, Truff has turned to the dark
side: makin' stuff up! Happily, like the best yellow
journalism it at least makes for an amusing
read.
Regarding the current headlines, all I can say is that
he's got me all wrong: I came here to steal your
women.
Recipe for Overnight Paleness
The perplexing and ambiguous situation in which they
found themselves
in a strange house in which a corpse was lying, the
uncertainty as to when they could get away, and the damp
melancholy weather had driven the gipsies, both men and
women, into such a state of distress that in one
night they had become thin and pale.
Anton Chekhov,
The Shooting Party
translated by A. E. Chamot
¥ ¥ ¥
Sunday 9/21/03
Father Outlaw
TheOutlawDad
sent me a bunch of screenshots from that goth/horror/western
Korean MMORPG, "Priest," which is heading Stateside one
of these days (see post in my last update). Seems to be
a lot of voodoo weirdness going on in the badlands.
Here are some of the more interesting ones:
shot 1,
shot 2,
shot 3,
shot 4,
shot 5,
shot 6,
shot 7.
Ka-ray-zy, eh?
From Purple to Pale
It was Pëtr Egorych Urbenin, the Count's former bailiff
and Olga's husband. At first the company heard heavy
footsteps and the cracking of brushwood. . . . It seemed
as if a bear was making his way from the forest to the
clearing. Then the heavy form of the unfortunate Pëtr
Egorych came in sight. When he came out of the forest
and saw the company assembled on the clearing, he
stepped back and stopped as if her were rooted to the
ground. For some while he remained silent and motionless,
and in this way gave people time to examine him properly.
He had his usual grey jacket on and trousers that were
already well worn. He was without a hat, and his matted
hair stuck to his sweaty brown and temples. . . . His
face, which was usually purple and often almost blue, was
now quite pale. . . . His eyes looked around senselessly,
staring wildly. . . . His hands and lips trembled. . . .
Anton Chekhov,
The Shooting Party
translated by A. E. Chamot
~ ~ ~
Sunday 9/14/03
Yah Mule!
Horses4 CTKMD
(shot)
by Molycoat: Moly continues to almost singlehandedly
keep me in business with another just-add-horses map, this
time Hooter's "Hooter's" gets the honor. He's also
reduced the weapons to gats and TNT, and the dynamite
is a clever custom model.
E.C. KMD
(shot)
by Master_X11: Swiped this one from
TheOutlawDad,
it's a rather unique map (though many games have similar
puzzle platform rooms) in a square canyon, where sections
of the floor continually rise and fall in offset patterns,
so one moment you could be on a high spot and the next
thing you know you're surrounded by 30-foot high ledges.
I can't speak for how well this might work in laggy
internet conditions (I suspect that it may be possible for
players to get out of sync regarding what they see as the
current state of the platforms) but it's definitely
a startling and dizzying effect on its own. Some technical
issues remain (a couple periodically-floating pickup items,
and the way the side textures don't move with the platforms,
so they seem to "grow" and shrink rather than moving) but
it's worth a look for the novelty of the effect--not that
moving platforms is new, but I don't recall them being
thrown together in this way in an OL map before.
The Father of All Games
RAF pointed me over to the official site for
Priest,
some kind of comic-based Western/horror action MMORPG that's
being brought over from Korea. The screenshots and movies
on the English site seem to be broken, unfortunately, but
if you click the "Korean" link at the top you can see that
things are certainly hopping
overseas, where it appears to
have been online for some time now.
Vinegar: The Cure for Unsightly Paleness
It goes without saying that I found the Count with
entirely shattered nerves. This puny and flabby man looked
thinner and more dejected than ever. . . . He was pale,
and his lips trembled as if with ague. His head was tied
up in a white pocket-handkerchief, which exhaled a strong
odour of vinegar that filled the whole room. When I
entered the room he jumped up from the sofa, on which he
was lying, and rushed towards me wrapped up in the folds
of his dressing-gown.
Anton Chekhov,
The Shooting Party
translated by A. E. Chamot
* * *
Sunday 9/7/03
Molycoat Goes to the Movies
Eyehop KMD
(shot)
by Molycoat: Movie theater-based maps have been
done before but with an actual movie showing? Nah. So
in this sorta oddly textured building you can sneak away
from the noise and bustle of the firefight and grab a
front-row seat to a little animated feature. Of course
the animation probably makes the map file a bit bigger than
normal (along with Moly's typical array of startlingly
unique textures, and an animal or two) but it's cute.
I'm not so hot on the rest of the level, simply because
the textures used in the house don't really go together
in a visually pleasing way, and although the
custom windows are neat and you can bust them and jump
up to the awning over the porch and then to the rooftop,
the framerate outside the
house is pretty low.
Paleful Sleep
"How sweetly and tranquilly he sleeps! When one gazes on
this pale, tired face, on this childishly innocent smile,
and listens to this regular breathing, one might think that
it is not a magistrate who is lying here, but the
personification of a quiet conscience! One might think
that Count Karnéev had not yet arrived, that there had
been neither drunkenness nor gipsies, nor trips on the
lake. . . . Get up, you wretched man! You don't deserve
such a blessing as peaceful sleep! Get up!"
Anton Chekhov,
The Shooting Party
translated by A. E. Chamot
* * *
Monday 9/1/03
The Sounds of Sawyer
Captain
Sawyer has put up his latest custom Outlaws weapon
sound pack, "Lorde 7." It's been a while since his last
one and with the upgraded tools he has now he's able to
make the rifle and double-barrel shotgun sound even more
Spaghetti-Western-like than ever. You can almost hear
the smoke curling out of the barrel.
Not Eastern Outlaw
Doc points out a page for a new Western PC
game:
Western
Outlaw, from "Groove Publishing." The tiny screenshots
look decent and heck, even my old rig almost meets the
recommended system specs. I get that "budget game" feel
from the presentation but hey, you never know. No
specific release date, unfortunately.
* * *
Sunday 8/24/03
Leveling Off
Bonetown CTKMD
(shot)
by Molycoat: A one-room arena-style map
with lots of objects (particularly health items) and
platform jumping. I'm not sure how fun having a stick
of TNT whose explosive radius
covers the entire level is going to be, but at least
it makes it easy to break the chandelier.
Old Mine CMD
(shot)
by Hooter: A cut of the old mine level from
single-player that makes for a pretty twisty tunnel
map with very nice framerate. The frequent dead-ends
and branching corridors may make for something of a
slower game than you'll find in most DM maps, and
ambushes could be a viable strategy.
Paradigm CKMD
(shot)
by Dog_Holliday: Hah! Great twist, literally,
by Dog_Holliday as he's found a way to make hallways
between buildings that pretty much don't exist outside--so
you can have a hallway that crosses a street, and the
people in the street are none the wiser! I can see this
leading to some very odd maps. I like the look of
the little town here, though the all-of-a-level rooftops
may seem a bit odd, and even though the framerate is
pretty good it somehow feels a bit choppy to me on the
roofs. Maybe I'm just gettin' too old to handle
space warps.
Picksburgh CKMD
(shot)
by Captain Picky: I like the nice roomy feel
of the streets and high ceilings in this little
sandy town, and the high sniping window in the
barn that slews across one end of the main street
is a neat construction. Framerate is a bit low
in spots and parts of the map have a sort of grid-like
robotic feel, in a small way. But more maps with ceilings
like these would be most welcome.
WMDHEEVE CKMD
(shot)
by Vin_Egar: Two-mirrored-house CTF-style
thing in a largish canyon. The interiors are a bit
big and bare, and the doors, though attractively
textured, may behave unpredictably
in laggy games. I like all the windows to smash though. ;)
You'll notice the extensive use of custom textures right
off the bat: a little overly bold in their juxtaposition,
some might say, but you definitely won't be confusing
this map with one that uses the regular old boring
textures.
Board to the Bone
Not one to be found lagging behind the Tom, Dick
and Joneses, Mr. Bone now has a swanky new
message board on his OL site,
Mr. Bone's
Headquarters.
Swedish Guns
Big Nose Kate and RAF pointed me over
to
Wanted Guns,
an Old West game in the works by Swedish developers
Iridon. The graphic design looks a bit plain,
the gameplay sounds like a bit of a hodge-podge
("Combining third person action, horse-riding
and sneak’em up assassination with a cinematography
inspired rail shooter FPS mode") and the writing is
dubious:
One eye short, Reverend Devlin was not exactly what you’d
expect from your regular kind of preacher. The years had not
been his friend; wrinkles creased his scarred face and cracked
his pale skin alongside his hard grey eyes. Most people would
have mistaken him for the devil himself, were it not for the
white priest collar encompassing his neck while adding
credibility to his appearance.
Wait, now just how many hard
grey eyes does a one-eyed man have?
Anyway, the site is kind of nice looking and you can
see some screenshots. Maybe they'll have a demo or something
one of these days.
Pale Rambles
Tina stands there, pale as death,
but proud and determined; she has pressed her lips
tightly together so as not to betray by a single sound
the fear she feels. We fly ever higher and higher, and.
. . I can't remember how it ended. Then there follows
a walk with Tina in a distant avenue of the park, with
green vaults above that protect it from the sun. A
poetical twilight, black tresses, luscious lips,
whispers. . . . Then the little contralto is
walking beside me, a fair-haired girl with a sharp little
nose, childlike eyes and a small waist. I walk about with
her until Tina, having followed us, makes a scene. . . .
The gipsy is pale and furious. . . . She calls me
'accursed', and, much offended, prepares to return to town.
The Count, also pale and with trembling hands, runs
along beside us, and, as usual, can't find the proper
words to persuade Tina to remain. . . . In the end she
boxes my ears. . . . Strange!
Anton Chekhov,
The Shooting Party
translated by A. E. Chamot
* * *
Sunday 8/10/03
Farming for Bones
Mr. Bone's Farm CTKMD
(shot)
by Molycoat: Mr. Bone, having given me the
updated URL to his fine OL site,
Mr. Bone's
Headquarters, unwittingly tipped me off to a
new map from Moly that Bone started hosting earlier
in the week. It's a much smaller file size than we
usually see from Moly, and indeed the map doesn't
overwhelm you with custom sights and sounds as many
of his previous ones have. The view around the top of
the lowered ranch is just lovely, however, and in
addition to Moly's natural touch with wildlife scenes
and layout, we have GoJo to thank for some truly
gorgeous autumn woods textures. In fact the view around
the ranch is so nice that I took
an extra screenshot
just to brighten your day. And Moly slipped in some
spiffy effects in the form of custom smokey window
glass and a shattering door. The map itself is on the
small side, with the buildings taking up a good deal
of the space in the little open yard--good pickin's for
a dynamite chucker. The flow in moving around the map
isn't quite as effortless as could be, and the framerate
overall is lower than you'd want to run on your old,
say, 60mHz machine ;), but it's a charming little farm
complete with intimidating portrait of Mr. Bone.
El Yooars
|
Outlaws real Msg Board
Well-trafficked board run Mista featuring all the
usual bells and whistles of modern mass-hosted
message boards, plus discussions about weird OL
stuff. I couldn't find any actual MSG, however.
|
Being as how it's right next door, I might as well slip
in a mention that TheRock wanted me to point out
that he isn't the only guy running the show at
The New
Outlaws Message Board, you also have BearTracker
and AuStIn to blame for whatever sort of message
boarding mayhem goes on there.
Speaking of hitting the boards,
old-timer RAF pointed me over to
Carrion City,
a pleasant-sounding western mod in the works for UT2003,
although you'll have to do some digging through their
message boarding interface to find screenshots and
things of what looks like may be a promising mod.
Big Nose Kate sent me a link for a western game
in the works but I foolishly left the email at the office,
so I'll have to look that up and get it in the next
update.
Paleness as a Sign of Non-Cowardice
'Consequently, you will not honour
me with your conversation?' I continued to worry him
as I emptied another glass and laughed.
'Do you know my real reason
for coming here?' the Count broke in, desirous of
changing the conversation. 'I haven't told you as yet?
In Petersburg I went to the doctor who has always treated
me, to consult him about my health. He listened to my chest,
knocked and pressed me everywhere, and said: "You're
not a coward!" Well, you know, though I'm no coward, I
grew pale. "I'm not a coward," I replied.'
'Cut it short, brother. . . . This is tiresome.'
Anton Chekhov,
The Shooting Party
translated by A. E. Chamot
* * *
Sunday 7/27/03
Horsies!
Taos Ruin CKMD
(shot)
by Green_Horn_Slim: Clever CTF mirrored-layout
map with a three-story pueblo building in a small
canyon, with two small fort houses at either end connected
by tunnels running around the sides. You can't jump up
from the canyon floor to the ledge of the forts so to get
up there you either have to find your way up a ramp in the
little maze of side tunnels or jump off from the first
level of the pueblo building, and you only get up there
by means of two tiny staircases tucked away inside the
small rooms, getting to which probably involves crawling
through little holes at the base of the walls. Whew!
Attractive texturing and good framerate despite the
complicated building in the middle and the smooth curved
path running around the canyon.
Horses CTKMD
(shot)
by Molycoat: Moly embraces his animalish leanings
by planting the player on horseback complete with
added velocity, clopping hooves and snorting horse
breath! Then you go rampage around this rocky valley
and jump around the ledges. Sports Molycoat's calling
card of little wildlife touches everywhere. Good framerate
and I like the jumps and paths around the rocks, although
some of the item placement doesn't feel quite natural.
Horses2 KMD
(shot)
by Molycoat: The author takes his equine show
on the road to JZombie's "JZ's Dynamite Shack."
I'd have thought that it was too steep for horses
but that just goes to show how little I know about such
things.
Horses3 TCKMD
(shot)
by Molycoat: The riders strike at Hooter's
"Chasm" along with the usual Molycoat gaggle of animal
life. Moly pointed out after sending this that if you go
for "the medbag in a crack in the rock you get
crushed" which wasn't intended, and that he made the map
a little too dark. I love jumping in the deep pool in
all the versions of this map that I've played and as
I was jumping my horsie back out onto the path, I somehow
shot several hundred feet straight up the cliff face! And
of course fell back down to my death, but it was
cool. I couldn't get it to happen again though, I guess
my horse got discouraged.
Meanwhile, Back in 2172...
Molycoat was certainly a busy feller this week
and wasn't done yet even after all that horsing around.
He sent me a
fix
for 2172
(2172
being his grand sci-fi single-player adventure) which
consists of a little batch file that will allow
those who have a modified LOCAL.MSG file in their
OL directory (some
maps come with them--they let the LawMaker modify the
text messages you get in the game) to launch 2172 and
still see Molycoat's proper custom text in the level,
or something technical like that.
Getting the Message
|
The New Outlaws Message Board
Various message boards in the past have held the
quasi-official-sounding title of "The Outlaws
Message Board." This new one from TheRock seems
to work well enough (registration required) and
has some additional specialty boards such as
a Troubleshooting board and a Tips and Tricks
board.
|
A Moustache is Very Becoming
He was
dressed in the same many-coloured dressing-gown
in which I had seen him two years before, and he wore
a straw hat. His face had a troubled, concentrated
expression, and it was very wrinkled, so that a man
not acquianted with him might have imagined he was
troubled at that moment by some serious thought or
anxiety.... The Count had not changed at all in
appearance during the two years since last we met.
He had the same small thin body, as frail and
wizened as the body of a corncrake. He had the same
narrow, consumptive shoulders, surmounted by a small
red-haired head. His small nose was as red as formerly,
and his cheeks were flabby and hanging like rags, as
they had been two years before. On his face there was
nothing of boldness, strength or manliness.... All was
weak, apathetic and languid. The only imposing thing
about him was his long, drooping moustache. Somebody had
told my friend that a long moustache was very becoming
to him. He believed it, and every morning since then he
had measured how much longer the growth on his pale
lips had become. With this moustache he reminded you of
a moustached but very young and puny kitten.
Anton Chekhov,
The Shooting Party
translated by A. E. Chamot
* * *
Sunday 7/20/03
Let's Do Some Maps
CTF Factory CKMD
(shot)
by Captain Picky and The Crow:
The official release from Picky, this one has the readme
in it. It also isn't compatible with the one released
early by The Crow, and note that it doesn't
overwrite the files from that release as those were
spelled "ctffacs" without the second "t."
Mexican Villa 3 CKMD
(shot)
by Warrior: New map inspired by Sticky's "Mexican
Villa 2," which was in turn inspired by Taco's "Mexican
Villa." Don't you people know that you're not supposed
to sequelize someone else's map? Oh well, I guess Taco is
free to show up and complain. This one has the single-floor
villa, the wall around it, the weird dead tree stump,
the mine/cave bit and the pool, as well as a bunch of
little outlying tower things. But no high-dive? Rats,
that was my favorite part.
Small Town CKMD
(shot)
by Warrior: A little town in a valley where the
buildings have their backs against the cliff walls. A
little river runs along a crevass through the middle of
town (don't go stumbling around drunk at night in
this town, brother) and there's a cave
bit too. Good framerate, decent setting, might have
benefitted from being able to get up on the roofs more or
something but I guess this way you can't hide as much.
Spider CKMD
(shot)
by Kat and Dusty_Old_Cop: Arena-style
cave map shaped sorta like a really squat, fat spider,
where the players spawn in the "legs" and then fight for
powerups around collections of crates in the central
"body" cave. Good framerate of course what with there
being just one real room, and good, if simple, texturing
and lighting.
Station Pit CKMD
(shot)
by Warrior: Combine a subterranean train station
with a pit and you've got Station Pit! Yessir. Real
linear layout seems intended for CTF with one team (I
presume) starting in the tunnel and one at the top of
the pit. The underground part could use a little spot
lighting to liven it up, and I don't like the invisible
wall blocking off the far end of the train tunnel, but
it's a solid map with high framerate and an
unusual layout.
Be Brave, Young |3370R
Phil Marsh, in his musical guise of
"Flip Martian," found Sergio Morricone's western
soundtracks inspiring a soundtrack of his own.
Be
Brave, Young Soldier introduces the hero, sends him
off to battle and wraps things up, a whole imaginary
movie soundtrack in just over five minutes of top notch
synthesized Spaghetti-Western-style tunes. Impressively
done and well worth a listen if you like the style of
the music in Outlaws.
To the Death!
DrDeath2 has his good ol' site back on the
interweb at a new
URL. He didn't really add anything new to it
after all these years and some of the file links are
now defunct but you should go visit it anyway.
Ooh hey it looks like Outlaw and the gang have
DeathRiders.org
back online, with some interesting news about an upcoming
message board and a new map based on a song with a weird
name.
When is a Pudding Not a Pudding
I had a fun couple of weeks careening around
insanely tiny back roads in Scotland and Ireland.
The driving and shifting on the left thing isn't so
bad, you get used to it after a day or so, but man
I dunno how those folks in southern Ireland in particular
nerve themselves up to drive around every day on two-way
roads that are narrower than most American cars. Maybe
with a pint of Guinness. It's particularly
cheering how each county or shire or whatever posts
a big sign with the number of local vehicular fatalities
in the last four years (Cork was leading the pack as
far as we saw...). They have good breakfasts though,
even without pancakes, and each farmer has an ancient
prehistoric Standing Stone or two which he
definitely did not stand up himself a couple years
ago to attract tourists.
Help,
hold his brows, he'll sound! Why look you pale? Sea-sick
I think, coming from Muscovy.
William Shakespeare,
Love's Labor's Lost
from "The Riverside Shakespeare"
* * *
Sunday 6/22/03
Sequel Petition Updated
Finally got off my buns and updated the
Outlaws Sequel Petition,
adding nearly 300 new signatures to bring us up to
over 2600 signatures in all. Have there been any
rumblings of sequel possibilities from LEC lately?
Nope. But we do what we can and hope for the best;
who knows what could happen?
Frothy Summer Fun
This may be my last update 'til mid-July as I'll
be takin' a lil' trip overseas for fun and
"relaxation," though from the looks of things it's
going to involve a lot of walking and driving and
carrying and sleeping in strange beds, so I'm not
counting on that second part. I'll be taking
the Pale's Place game
down while I'm gone since I like to unplug all electrical
things when I go away for an extended trip, just to
make it that much more difficult for the gremlins to
have their parties while I'm out.
You may
have your wish: my will is even this,
That presently you hie you home to bed.
Thou subtile, perjur'd, false, disloyal man,
Think'st thou that I am so shallow, so conceitless,
To be seduced by thy flattery,
That has deceiv'd so many with thy vows?
Return, return, and make thy love amends.
For me (by this pale queen of night I swear),
I am so far from granting thy request,
That I despise thee for thy wrongful suit,
And by and by intend to chide myself
Even for this time I spend in talking to thee.
William Shakespeare,
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
from "The Riverside Shakespeare"
* * *
Sunday 6/15/03
I, Molycoat
Robots TMD
(shot)
by Molycoat: All-mod weapon futuristic map
based on his single-player adventure
2172.
You're a robot so you clank around and drink motor oil
and shoot lasers and good stuff like that. I love the
sound effects--it sounds like a good pinball game (he's
replaced just about every sound effect in the game with
zippy futuristic zapping sounds). The
map has a rather unique layout of jagged ledges and rocky
outcroppings around a sort of starburst center ledge,
so it's all one big arena. This lowers the framerate a
bit but it also means that you can see (and throw photon
sticks, nasty) all the way across the map. It's a bit
dark and some areas are a little murky on my monitor,
I could have done with a bit of spot lighting but I
suppose it's extra-creepy this way. Watch you don't
fall in the lava, poof!
Linkz
|
Santa Monica Airlines
Nothing much Outlaws-specific on this multi-game
posse site by NotUsCopeUs
but at least it's got some nice flash
and the Beach Boys to keep you entertained.
|
|
Quiet Killers HQ
Another style-over-substance posse site
design by NotUsCopeUs,
but it's SUPAH STYLISH 2 TEH MAXXX! Yep.
|
Outlaw wants folks to know that although the
deathriders.org
site is currently down due to a dead power supply, it'll
be back up as soon as they get the machine fixed so don't
delete your bookmark just yet.
A big thanks to R_E_LEE for wading through my
links page and letting me know
about some deceased sites.
A Bad pSector... I Suspected As Much
Huh, I went to check my little
Outlaws hosted game and
found that Outlaws had crashed while running the level
"Last Stand." Not something that
happens very often there. And more interestingly still,
well okay at least for me, is that it asserted with
some debug
info! Ready? Here it is:
Assertion failed!
Program: D:\OUTLAWS\OLWIN.EXE
File: C:\proj\db\src\actor.c
Line: 1241
Expression: (((INT)(pSector) & 0xffff) + 0x0002000) ==
((pSector)->address)
WOW! Uh okay not really but hey. Curious that the
local file was in a project directory called "db"—that's
not really an Outlaws-ish name.
The Last One(gin)
No—every
minute to see you;
follow you everywhere;
the smile of your lips, movement of your eyes,
to try to capture with enamored eyes;
to hearken long to you, to comprehend
all your perfection with one's soul;
to melt in agonies before you,
grow pale and waste away... that's bliss!
Aleksandr Pushkin,
Eugene Onegin
translated by Vladimir Nabokov
* * *
Sunday 6/8/03
Didn't You Bring a Map?
Longhorn Palace CTKMD
(shot)
by Dog_Holliday: Amazing use of custom sounds
and graphics bring this old bawdy house to life, complete
with horses galloping away outside, upstairs casino,
Can-Can dancer, a rowdy crowd (from the sound of it),
and an ornate colonnaded staircase which may qualify
as the single most stunning piece of architecture
ever pulled off with the Outlaws engine. And it goes
without saying that the map has great flow, effortless
weapon placement and high framerates. A real keeper.
CTF Factory CKMD
(shot)
by Captain Picky and The Crow: Reworking of
the Captain's "TNT Factory" map, taking out the TNT-launching
cannons, putting in some water, and tightening up the layout
a bit as near as I can remember. Still doesn't have running
sounds and the framerate still drops a good deal in
certain spots outside, but that bombed-out building
still looks keen. Here's
the shot of TNT
Factory for comparison purposes.
HalfPint's Revenge CKMD
(shot)
by Outlaw and MikeDaKid: Night-time canyon
map with a tall house. The layout has a nice looping
aspect to it, particularly around the house,
and the bright house interiors contrast
well with the dark blues outside. A couple cave areas
are on the dark and dead-endish side but I suppose that's
pretty much what a cave is like now isn't it. Turns out
that "The Chicken" is the name of HalfPint's kitten,
so watch out for that bouncing bundle of joy in KFC mode,
and then there's something about finding her coloring
book in CTF. That kitty is a cutey.
Web Doin's
|
Mr. Bone's Headquarters
Active site with spiffy buttons and news, a great
map collection, a cool "featured map" page, and more
yet to come by the resurgent Mr. Bone.
|
Vin_Egar has a preview of Molycoat's
upcoming map "Robots" on his
Outlaws
Game Players site. Looks like a swanky futuristic
affair along the line's of Moly's epic
2172
single-player map, complete with laser guns, photon
bombs, and suchlike.
& & &
Sunday 6/1/03
The Truth About Zombies
|
Master_X11's Outlaws Page
Simple, highly-readable and fast-loading page from
this LawMaker with downloads of his maps, a choice
selection of a few other maps, and a couple
map-related linkies. Special bonus: don't miss
the Outlaws-unrelated "Zombie Threat Analysis."
|
As the Crow Lags
The Crow sent me an interesting
screenshot showing
some crazy lag-induced special fx, or so I gather.
When I start to see four left-hands is when I call
it a day.
Sure Proof That Paleness Leads to Phthisis
She does
not notice him,
no matter how he strives—even to death;
receives him freely at her house;
elsewhere two or three words with him exchanges;
sometimes welcomes with a mere bow,
sometimes does not take any notice:
there's not a drop of coquetry in her,
the high world does not tolerate it.
Onegin is beginning to grow pale;
she does not see or does not care;
Onegin droops—and almost,
in fact, is phthisical.
All send Onegin to physicians;
in chorus these send him to spas.
Aleksandr Pushkin,
Eugene Onegin
translated by Vladimir Nabokov
* * *
Sunday 5/25/03
An Old Eastern
This is kind of a thin lead, but it's a slow news
week so what the heck. Oldfighter pointed me to
this
thread on a Serious Sam fan site forum, in which
a fella going by the name "Damjam" says he is from
Croatia and has a dev team starting a Western first-person
shooter. Oh and he's asking for a good name for the
game.
To Serve or Not to Serve
Vin_Egar has a new web site (see below)
and is contemplating hosting two Outlaws game "servers"
kind of like my little
Pale's Place game. I think
he'd be happy to get feedback about the interest level in
this enterprise, so if you're interested why don't you
check his site and give him a buzz.
|
Outlaws Game Players
Page by Vin_Egar which may become the home base
for two regular Outlaws game "servers." He's currently
investigating network setup and interest level.
|
Death Rides Again
DR posse member Mike Da Kid wrote to tell
me that the
Death Riders'
web site is back online, after being down for
about a year following what appears to have been
a nasty hard drive failure on the old server.
Hurrah!
Darn That Monde
Tatiana
wishes to make out
the colloquies, the general conversation;
but there engages everybody in the drawing room
such incoherent, banal rot;
all about them is so pale, neutral;
they even slander dully.
In this sterile aridity of speeches,
interrogations, talebearing, and news,
not once does thought flash forth in a whole day and night,
even by chance, even at random;
the languid mind won't smile,
the heart won't start even in jest,
and even some droll foolishness
in you one will not meet with, hollow monde!
Aleksandr Pushkin,
Eugene Onegin
translated by Vladimir Nabokov
* * *
Sunday 5/18/03
One Map Forward, Two Maps Back
Sin City CKMD
(shot)
by Kat Eyes & Dusty Old Cop: Rambling sort of
layout makes this map seem rather small at first but
then you come to realize that it's made up of at least
three sorta separate sections with all kinds of passages
and things in between. Nice use of spot sound effects.
You may be a bit confused by the layout at first but
once you get into the sorta circular flow of things it's
nice and solid, with some good roof jumps and floating
cow skulls. Thanks to overseer GoJo for sendin'
it my way (twice, darn inbox eheh).
Lilhouse KMD
(shot)
by Molycoat: Re-release by Moly, removing the
birds an' other critters to minimize lag. Aw, I'll miss
those lil' guys. *sniff* But it remains a mighty-fine
map, and you can still see some animals in my old
screenshot. ;)
Sandbar KMD
(shot)
by Molycoat: Ditto the above, another animal-removing
re-release. You know if you run out to the pirate
ship you find that you've also grown to about 50 feet
tall, wow!
A Pale for All Seasons
Her walks
last longer.
At present, here a hillock, there a brook,
cannot help stopping
Tatiana with their charm.
She, as with ancient friends,
with her groves, meadows,
still hastens to converse.
But the fast summer flies.
The golden autumn has arrived.
Nature, tremulous, pale,
is like a victim sumptuously decked....
Now, driving clouds along, the North
has blown, has howled, and now herself
Winter the sorceress comes.
Aleksandr Pushkin,
Eugene Onegin
translated by Vladimir Nabokov
* * *
Sunday 5/11/03
Anna's Mix
Neil D. dropped me a mail to point me to
Anna's
Theme (Midnight Mix), a remix of the "Anna's Theme"
from the OL soundtrack by Bart Klepka, giving the
Morricone orchestral stuff an infusion of moody drum and
bass, as well as sound samples from the game. It works
pretty well as far as these things go, I suppose, in
fact I've just been listening to it looping while
writing this whole update, kind of soothing. Of
course, if you like the OL music the best thing you can
do is go pick up some of Ennio Morricone's old spaghetti
western soundtracks.
BT's High Speed News
B. T. Justice has been quite the busy fellow
of late. He quite rightly pointed out that the
alt.games.outlaws
OL newsgroup is still running, which is a pretty |337
way of spreadin' news related to the game (and reading
a little spam to liven up your day).
Now see, if you'd been followin' the newsgroup, you'd
have already seen this feature list of BT's custom
OL version of mIRC which he posted there, and of course
the program itself is available from his very own
High Speed Pursuit
web site. Without more ado, BT's custom mIRC feature list!
- Automatically connects to Undernet and goes to #outlaws_players.
- Automatically opens WinZip, if you already have it installed, after receiving .ZIP files such as Outlaws Maps.
- Has BT's mIRC MEDIA PLAYER so you can play .WAVS, .MP3s, .MIDs, & .WMAs within mIRC.
- Has lindow's OUTNET which helps you easily join any hosted games using WINSOCKETS. OUTNET will support DIRECTPLAY soon!
- Has Vesuvio's CHANNEL MODE POPUP which lets you see currently available games, post new games to topic, and remove games you posted.
- Has a script I made which tells how long your computer has been on, how long you have been on mIRC, how long you have been on an IRC server and what the server's name is, and what your current IP address is.
- Has a few more Undernet servers than the default mIRC has so hopefully there is one that is closer & faster for you to use.
- All you have to do is open the file with WinZip and extract all the files directly to your C:\ drive. It will make a folder called "C:\mIRC". mIRC runs from this folder so there is nothing installed onto your computer hence there are no hidden files or folders or registry entries.
Common Symptoms of Pale Face
Thanks to BT and Molycoat for pointing out a
few goofs made in the frenzy of the news fallout last
week! I dedicate the following quote to them (I'm such
an old softy!).
Alas,
Tatiana fades away,
grows pale, is wasting, and is silent!
Nothing interests her
or stirs her soul.
Shaking gravely their heads,
among themselves the neighbors whisper:
Time, time she married!...
But that will do. I must make haste
to cheer up the imagination
with the picture of happy love.
Involuntarily, my dears,
pity constrains me;
forgive me: I do love so much
my dear Tatiana!
Aleksandr Pushkin,
Eugene Onegin
translated by Vladimir Nabokov
* * *
Sunday 5/4/03
High Noon Rides Again
Many people wrote in with these tidings but The
Crow beat you all to it. Here's the email he
forwarded me:
Greetings Zone.com Member,
Thank you for contacting MSN Games by Zone.com.
Based on the feedback from players like you and the responses from the game lobbies, we have decided to create an Outlaws lobby in our directplay area. Here is where you can find the lobby:
URL: http://zone.msn.com/directplay
Lobby: Outlaws - High Noon
This lobby is not a standard DPlay lobby, but is a recreation of the lobby that existed on the Outlaws game page so it will support the game the same as before.
Thank you for your feedback and playing on the Zone. Have a good day and we hope you enjoy the Outlaws lobby.
Regards,
ZoneMaster
So thanks to all the old-timers who bitched ;), High
Noon is back in the saddle. Kind of in a little hidden
backwoods now (witness the
screenshot
from Crow; I'm not sure how you'd get there from
the Zone's front page) but I suppose now that they've
got it tucked away, the Zone folks won't much care if
it stays there 'til Doomsday. So, cheers to the new
High Noon--may your shadow
never grow long!
Hmm, and now I get to eat crow (metaphorically speaking,
of course :d) and go change my Zone info back again,
whoops!
New Maps
dark twins single-player
(shot)
by ElBrando: Just my kind of mission: shoot
everyone in site, then go find more baddies to shoot,
and shoot them. Don't go thinkin' this is gonna be easy
though, this canyon complex is packed to bursting with
all kinds of bad guys, some of them custom jobs.
All the twists and turns of the canyons provide
quite a few fun shootouts. There are a few technical issues,
such as missing footstep sounds and a canyon wall that
seems to like to disappear if you get too close to it,
but there's quite a bit of single-player fun to be had
here.
Juarez CTKMD
(shot)
by Dog_Holliday: Darned fine little twilight
town here, I love the custom touches in the church.
Super use of lighting effects and nice texture
selection--the whole place just sparkles in the warm
torchlight. The free layout of the town coupled with
the many multi-level areas should keep things
hopping all through the wee hours. And check out how
the author handles the map border--the city wall makes
for a realistic and unobtrusive, yet effective, barrier,
and the way you can see out into the plains beyond just
gives the level a real sense of belonging in a larger
world. Great stuff.
While High Noon Slept
A lot of stuff happened before High Noon unexpectedly
returned. It's good to see that there are so many options
out there for playing Outlaws multiplayer. To take them
in order:
Garbotalk, moderator at the
#Outlaws_Players
Undernet IRC channel, hinted that tournaments may be
returning to the channel, that many new faces have
been appearing lately, and that they now shoot for having
both a Winsock and a DirectPlay game hosted (since
DirectPlay is sometimes a necessity for folks playing
over a home LAN).
Buford T. Justice announced the happy
re-appearance of his
High Speed Pursuit
site featuring
some very handy Outlaws links and info and his very
own modified version of the mIRC chat client, with special
scripts and stuff to make Outlaws gaming on IRC all that
much more fun and powerful.
BT also passed along word that
Kali.net is back in
action, with, as always, support of Outlaws over their
unique internet LAN simulation thingymabob, as well
as hundreds of other games. Kali is a pretty cool program,
and although it is shareware you can pretty much do
everything you need to with the free unregistered
version.
Long-time Lawmaker Cutter set up a very nice-looking
Outlaws-themed message board that he's dubbed
High
Noon II. Not that he expects it to replace the Zone
as a place to set up games, but a well-run message board
is a valuable thing.
HighWater and Newbie reminded me that
Outlaws can be played through
GameSpy Arcade,
along with bunches of other games. Newbie pointed out that
the interface allows you to watch the Outlaws channel
while you're doing other gaming, and pop in if you see
any old guns log on, which is pretty slick. GameSpy
Arcade is ad-supported shareware, which means that you
can register and use it for free, with ads (like the Zone
and hey, my site! :p),
or you can pay a small monthly fee to get the full service
ad-free.
Pale in the Shade
But the
day lapsed, and no reply.
Another came up; nothing yet.
Pale as a shade, since morning dressed,
Tatiana waits: when is it coming, the reply?
Olga's adorer drove up.
"Tell me, where's your companion?"
was the chatelaine's question to him;
"He seems to have forgotten us entirely."
Tatiana, flushing, quivered.
"He promised he would be today,"
Lenski replied to the old dame,
"but evidently the mail has detained him."
Tatiana dropped her gaze
as if hearing an unkind rebuke.
Aleksandr Pushkin,
Eugene Onegin
translated by Vladimir Nabokov
* * *
Sunday 4/26/03
High Noon for High Noon
What was not so long ago mere rumor has apparently
become fact, as many people emailed to say that
Zone.com is shutting down their "High Noon" Outlaws
game hosting and chat forum. Dirtyolero sent
me the following screen capture of the
message which announced the closure:
Outlaws is no longer listed even under
the Zone's "All Games" link, and according to
James Emerson all remaining Outlaws service will
end on the 29th of this month.
Well, that's a shame. Although playing OL through the
Zone had its own stability and latency issues, it has
been far and away the most populated place for meeting
folks to shoot it out with. The Microsoft folks running
the Zone really deserve a hand for hosting the service
for all these years.
Some folks have asked me, in effect, is this the end
of OL on the Internet? Well I sure hope not. There's
always the free hills of IRC, and what with the handy
mIRC scripts that
OL fans have come up with over the years, there's no
reason that hosting and joining OL games should be any
more difficult in the future than it has been in the
past.
Now, I know there are OLers out there who know IRC
like the back of their hand. I am not one of these
people, at least not these days. What is needed is for
one or more of these brave souls to come forward and
undertake the responsibility of hosting an IRC chat
channel for Outlaws games.
From what I understand, hosting a channel isn't all
that complicated if you know what you're doing (managing
player egos, now, that's the tricky part :p). As a
reminder for those who may be a bit rusty, the old
and once quite mighty
#Outlaws_Players
site still has instructions for installing and using
lindow's Outnet
OL match-making utility in mIRC.
Those of you who are interested in or perhaps already doing
this, I'll be more than happy to spread the word about
your OL channel in my semi-regular news updates. And
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