mcgrew's Journal: Nobots Chapter Twenty One

Online now.

Rority loaned me his timeship. He's flabbergasted that a protohuman could drive one, but it's easy. It might be hard if my brain was normally three times as big and got reduced by two thirds... anyway, lets go back fifteen years.

Um... hmmm... what were we doing? Damned stratodoober. Oh! OK, I remember now. Here we go.

Long URL can't escape short URL's bfg
        I hope it's not a bad omen - Yesterday was the first day in a month the Fragfest had fewer visitors than its average, and GamePlex sent login information. I hope it's because so many of you surf in here from school and work, and a good portion of the U.S. was shut down (fingers crossed). Maybe some of the inet was shut down too; my counter's in Canada, and sometimes they get hosed, eh?
        I'm still in the middle of Illinois. I'll have a mirror on my ISP's space for a while, at least until I get everything copied over to Gameplex.
        The only three changes you should see here are a banner at the bottom of the page (which they tell me is a rotational banner that sometimes tells people over on that StarCraft, etc. page about the Fragfest); a shorter URL; and hopefully MORE STUFF. The Game Complex is very generous with server space. I just uploaded the Quake 1 demo, and the Quake 2 demo is coming shortly. If you have some killer skins, maps, mods, etc., send 'em in! I'd especially like a John Lennon skin, a Jimi Hendrix skin, and a Janice Joplin skin. And an Illinois State Capitol complex map so we can all jump on a server and kill some bureaucrats. That's an order, Sarge. Hop to it. Doubletime, dammit, before I give you an article XV!
        My ISP never let me know what my spece limits are here, and I constantly worry about something I've promised being bounced. With Gameplex, I know the limits, and it will be a long time before I come anywhere near filling it up. They're very generous with their space.
        If any other of you hosting services wonder why I chose the Game Complex, it's because they offered. Think WarZone will be pissed at me again like they were when I used Planet Quake's IRC instead of theirs last Halloween?
        To my link buddies; I'll be writing you all shortly, before I replace the mirror here with a "gone fission (boom)" sign. I'll leave a forwarding page here just for you that don't want the hassle of changing the link code, those I don't know are linking, and those of you who don't come by very often. Not to mention the damned search engines! Crap, I've g ot a lot of work to do, by the time I get to play some Quake again I'll be so rusty the newbies will be kicking my ass! I don't know when I'll get to a new Real Audio show.
        Oh, I almost forgot the most important thing- the new URL is [now quite dead and partly at the archive.org graveyard]

Tex Frags LOL Storm
        The last laugh.
        "ION Storm appears to have all it needs for success - top talent, plenty of money, and legions of anxious fans. So why is its future so cloudy?"
        This is a headline from the Dallas Observer. A friend pointed me to this URL via email. "For a number of reasons, the poison pens are already warming up", the article reads. Later in the article, "Porter quickly revealed, however, that his true talent lay not in design but in arrogating [sic] power."
        More quotes from the article: "Porter, especially, had a genius for rubbing others wrong. In one early e-mail exchange, he throws a fit because the company's accountants haven't prepared tax returns quickly enough, and conjectures it's because Wright and Hall owe the government. Hall replies succinctly: 'Yeah, I called Bob up and asked him to delay it...Piss somewhere else, angry boy."
        Mike Wilson is quoted as saying to Porter, ""Pretty much all I've heard from you since I've been here are the reasons why you can't work...you couldn't do a design document without the engine, and then you couldn't do it without art time. Then, all I hear about at our meetings about how to structure the company are concerns about 'what happens to me' when this place all goes to shit...You seem to be focused on meltdown strategies, and protecting the individuals [owners], not the company.
        "[W]e had to wait for a deposition to discover that you've never actually finished much of anything. You bark orders at people like they're a bunch of fucking construction workers...even those not on your team...You consistently try to elevate yourself above the other non-partner, or even 'junior partner' members of this company."
        The article mentions Bitch-X several times. I was wondering why it never mentioned Flamethrower. Perhaps Bitch-X is a Texan? Maybe the Bitch works for the Observer?
        At any rate, to Steve Bauman (who scribbles for some second-rate games magazine in the U.K.) and all the other elitists who were sneering at Flamethrower and all the rest of us with game web pages in the "Flamethrower page pulled" thread at Planet Crap- Read the Fraggin' article! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! 1/15/1999

No nooze frags good nooze
        So far today the closest thing I've found to Quake nooze is an editorial over on Planet Quake, Never Touch the Core.
        The gist of the "balanced" (wishy-washy) article is that you can't have a game that newbies ("casual gamers") and hard core gamers will both like. Actually, it's a pretty good article, and it's well written. Part if its gist seems to me to be inaccurate, at best. The article maintains that hard core gamers play their games forever (Doom, Quake 1) while casual gamers play them for a month or two and then quit. This seems kind of ass-backwards to me.
        I have a three 1/2 year stack of PC Gamer demo CD's, and a whole shelf of full game CD's. Some of the older ones, like Total Distortion, that I bought on a reviewer's word before I wised up and stopped buying games I hadn't demoed onlt got played a few times.
        The casual gamer isn't likely to buy as many games as the hard core gamer, so it seems more likely (s)he'll play what few (s)he has longer.
        That is only a small part of the article, of course, but it seemed to stick out to me.
        What stuck out more is something not touched on in the article, which was written in response to Brian Hook's plan file. That is, the casual gamer doesn't have enough hardware to play cutting edge games like Quake 3! Hell, I can't keep up. My wife won't let me. The casual gamer is Joe Sixpack and his son/daughter, who bought that thing so his kids could keep up at school. There's no way he's going to replace it for Quake 3, let alone tear the damned thing open and put in a new motherboard like I plan to do to mine. I wish Brian and company would make it easier for the casuals- easier to install, better tested (fewer patches), and runable on less than state of the art hardware (while giving those with the cash a reason to have that hardware), like they did with Screamer.
        Too bad it ain't gonna happen. Every time I try to make these points over at Planet Crap, the developers who also haunt that place refuse the clues I offer ("but we have to").
        *sigh* 1/16/1999

Immy Died
        "Captain Immy" has stopped his Pointless Audio show!
        The poor kid couldn't handle the pressure. Hell, I know I wouldn't have been able to handle it at his age; I never knew how he managed to produce so many shows. He has talent (even if part of it is a talent for pissing people off). He's posted hs reasons at his page.
        A few things he things he didn't mention but I've guessed (and don't know if they are, in fact, true)-
        He's probably got a solid D- in school and a lot of "detention"
        He's probably grounded a lot (he's called both his parents "stupid dicks" on the show, and he mentions ego on the page). Far all I know, his parents may have thrown his PC away (or threatened to)
        His girlfriend probably told him "It's me or that damned show"
        Long time Fragfest readers know that my wife, Becky, hates computers ("get off that demned thing!"), but she LIKED Immy's show, and said he sounded like a cross between Second City and Firesign Theatre. Immy WAS funny. Kevin, if you're reading this, I urge you to get those grades up, go to college, and major in broadcasting. You have a talent; don't waste it!
        Here's a fond farewell to the Captain! 1/18/1999