mcgrew's Journal: Nobots Chapter Seventeen

Now online.

I'm on vacation, so it's still the New Year holiday for me. So I thought I'd post some stuff that was fifteen years old last month from my old Quake site.

Inner City can't escape Redneck's shotgun
Them folks frum Xactriks- ya know, the ones thet made Redneck Rampage, wall, they're makin' a new game with the Quake 2 injun. I caint remember what its called, but my cousin Billy Bob sez It's a Ghetto game whar ya shoot "gangstas". Hell, sounds like a hoot to me. My only quastion is, why didn't they call it- oh, that's right, them ghetto boyz has thick skins, an' aint got the sense 'o hoomer us country folk got. YEEE HAA! Saddle up, boys, we're gonna go Quakin' in the city!

Mouselook can't escape John Baase's railgun
When I first started playing Quake, I wanted to use the joystick, like I did in Doom. I thought at first it was my old joystick, which works fine in DOS but not too good in Windows was the problem. When I got Quake 2, I decided the way to go was look up and down with the mouse, and move with the stick. No amount of control fiddling seemed to work, so I started my quest for console commands. I found tons on the internet, and a large portion of them were incorrect, wrong, and some downright dangerous. So, I made a list and tested them one by one, and eventually made the Console pages.

I never did find out how to look with the mouse and move with the stick, until late last month when I got an email from a reader, John Baase. I've been testing his configuration in single player, and it works!

With a little tweaking, I've even got the joystick to move acceptably. The drawback is, I'm not used to mousing left handed, so the first few times I try it in deathmatch I'm sure to get trounced royally. For a while at least, you can call me "Kenny".

I'll have the answer in the Newbies page in a week or so. I imagine I'm not the only one who was looking for this since he was a newbie!

Planet Quake frags Springfield Fragfest
Gestalt (who has seen the Fragfest) has renamed part of the Planet Quake Mailbag's "Shut the F* up" section "The Asylum".

The sincerest form of flattery! John- I'm honored!

And there's ANOTHER "noo" site called 'UGN 3D' that's got an asylum, too. I'm NOT honored. Hey, Planet Quake let me use one of the "shut the f* up" letters; published something I sent them; and Flamethrower, hosted by them, pimped the Fragfest on his RA show. Besides that, PQ is an old, very good, respectable and well respected site. UGN3D is an upstart, and have ripped off trademarked and copyrighted cartoons from Fox and South Park. It's obvious from the writing style that they've been here before (hint- listen to your English teacher, not me). UGN guys- I'm glad you've been to the Fragfest, now acknowledge it.

In return, I'm ripping off some of their bandwidth. That illegal Eric picture is sitting on their server. :p

Hard drive can't escape spy's BFG
Microsoft has patched the Internet Explorer hole that lets Big Brother (and little sister) peek into your hard drive- again.

The hard part is probably coming up with a patch that keeps the Justice Department out while letting Bill Gates' spys in.

Changes frag Quake
It's been reported by Blues, Planet Quake, and Scary's, among other places, that the 3.20 patch is the final patch. Maybe now I'll get past the fifteenth level without having to start over! At any rate, true or not, we can be pretty sure that once Quake 3 comes out there won't be any more Quake 2 upgrades. Speculation is it will be Spring when it comes out, maybe I'll get it and a new motherboard and Voodoo to run it for my birthday (hint, hint).

I've uploaded the full "newbie patch" along with the "short" (not so short any more) patch, and I'll probably delete the short patch sometime next month. Those needing the short patch will surely have gotten it by then, and at any rate, you could probably download the full patch from here faster than the short patch from Id or CDROM.

Speaking of hints, the one thing that would make me want to get the Fragfest hosted would be to get more visitors. I'd have to quadruple the count to make it worth an ad banner, and I'm not sure any host could do that. If you're hosting and think you can offer a win/win situation, drop me a line and let me know what you have to offer. Weakly Web

Other Quake changes: The final (?) Evil Avatar "patch" was released; I guess that brown paint was just primer. At any rate, the Weakly Web's redesign looks killer; it has my Stamp of Approval(tm). His new logo is downright wicked, I'd like to shake the artist's hand.

After painting Spew, Desatio has announced over there that he's moving. Four good reasons for moving- first, a "URL from Hell", as Flamethrower put it referring to the Fragfest, even worse than mine; a slow connection, making the Real Audio choppy; that "refreshes every two minutes" window; and a 10 meg limit on content. No word to where. Unlike the Quaker Refuge move, I don't have any inside info, so I'll speculate- Sgt. Hulka's is my first guess, as "Part of the Hulka Army" is pasted next to his link there, but Hulka has his own RA show. It could be over at the Weakly Web Apartment complex (renovation recently completed), but again, Flamethrower's there already, but he hasn't done a Real Audio show in a while. I doubt he's going to Warzone, since they already have Immortal and their server is slow as hell, and I doubt he wants to move somewhere almost as slow as GeoCities. Planet Quake has recently gained bandwidth and lost Real Audio, so he could be moving over there. We'll have to wait and see.

Now watch, he'll announce before I can get this posted.

UPDATE: I fraggen' KNEW it, he sent an email just as I was posting. He's going to Hulka's.

Springfield Fragfest can't escape Planet Quake's BFG
PQ fragged the Fragfest Monday and I somehow didn't see it, I must have looked right through it. I wondered why there were about 20% more of you; That explains it! A thanks to John over at the Planet for posting the item I sent, and an asterisk next to the Planet Quake link in the Fragfest Links section (even though I doubt it will have much effect on their hit counter). And to you new folks he sent by, thanks for visiting!

I may not affect Planet Quake's hit counter much, but there's a young fellow over at 5assedmonkey with a site named The Heap. He runs a "classified ads for Quake". This guy is doing a service for the Quake community, even though not many people have discovered it yet. Drop by and tell him Steve from the Springfield Fragfest sent you. If you're trying to get rid of that old shambler that keeps chewing up your shoes and crapping on the floor, maybe you can place a free ad and get rid of the beast.

Kenny Died
Those Bastards! I finally pried myself away from Quake long enough to look at PC Gamer's South Park game article. I was all set to write "All Right! Quake in South Park! Kick ass!"

Instead, I'm PISSED (folks in the U.K., that's "very angry" over here in the U.S., not "drunk"). All I can say is, WTF?!! PC Gamer's article says that it should be "acceptable" on a 266 with a first generation Voodoo card. They take a deliberately cheesy 2d cartoon and make a game out of it. The "artists" complain that the creators want them to stay with 16 colors so it remains true to the show. So we have a 16 color 2d game stuffed into the third dimension ("perspective", for those of you that get it) that needs twice the hardware as Quake 2, which was bleeding edge just a year ago!

I've been searching for more info all over the net, and can't find any. Shiploads are written about the game, but PC Gamer's hardcopy article (written in October and published this month) has the only info about requirements, and it's possibly only speculation.

"Godammit" (as Cartman would say), this is CRAP. This stupid game should run on a 286 in EGA. If ever there was proof that game developers were stupid and game programmers lazy, this is it.

I may be writing "Steve does a back flip into the lava" tomorrow if it turns out the PC Gamer article was wrong.

Webmeisters disconnected
Flamethrower is still "twisting in the wind" (Chubby Checker after beans?) Tikki God's Quake Beach House has been out of tequila since November, and Quaker Refuge hasn't updated since earlier this month; its webmaster, in the U.S. Navy, is probably lugging a BFG to Iraq to kick Saddam's ass with.

This means the "no post" contest is back on. Last one to post wins. The winner receives- First prize: A vacation to beautiful downtown nowhere. No expenses are spared- or paid. Second prize: A brand new cherry red 1999 convertible swift kick in the ass! Third prize: a rasperry ;p. Fourth prize, provided we get another entry: Absolutely nothing!

Crash, Slipgate, and other permanently dead sites are ineligible. Void where prohibited or otherwise inconvenient. Taxes, shipping, and all other costs are the responsibilities of the winners. Keep out of reach of children. Close cover before striking. Contents under pressure.

So root for your favorite non-posted site today; you may win a pound of fresh content!

If you own one of the abovementioned sites, tomorrow's poll is "how often should the Fragfest be updated"; 'cause I'm thinking about sitting on my ass for awhile; why should you have all the fun?

Update: Quaker Refuge updated 12/18. So far Tikki's winning; no update in over a fraggin' month. And- Nacho couldn't get the RA going, so that new RA show won't be. There are a few other new shows linked, though.

PMS Frags Real
Evil frags Christmas Rocks
If you've been wondering since Halloween when Aurora was going to do that RA show, wonder no longer; it's in the links section. The last one got Paul Steed (my last interview got "some guy from Geocoties"; see the Humor section)

Meanwhile, Evil Avatar has decked his page in red and mostly green... and a download of Asteroids. Drop by the links page and pay him a visit!

And bug Pile, now in the contest, to update his page.

UPDATE and speaking of Quake ladies, according to an article on Game Girlz, some of you boyz have been acting like total morons. Oh, you weren't acting?