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Originally posted by ares1: Dash Riprock was not only a name in the game, but a story by sparks. The very first ev serial novel, and the very best in my opinion. Sadly, it was never completed. Also, the only site it is on (which I was going to link to) just now went down.
1.)Very, very close. Dash Riprock was writen by Sparks2002, and it was one of the first novels based on EV. It was hosted at EV Weekly, and for a time, the EV Weekly WWWboard was the backup board for the EV.com one (It was constantly down). HOWEVER, the story is still on the web: http://www.evula.com/stories/
** I actually don't remember the animal on top of the board. **
2.) It was infact the green spider mentioned before... it will return.. someday..
** I remember HHunter being the queen of lesbians (heheh), and constant topics about who was a "veteran" or not, and #ev on efnet, and a whole lot of other crazy crap that went on.
Laer (jos delbar) was the admin of EV.com for a while. Then he was replaced by captain something, and then it went down. Skyhawk was the board admin, and lost the position to hhunter, just as I joined the boards. Skyhawk was writing some ev-based game called Xenocide, but I think that was cancelled. **
3.)There is actually a history even before all of these people, but I'll let someone who knows it a little better fill it in. When I found EV.com, Skyhawk was the wwwboard admin and he was loved by most. The Xenocide that you spoke of actually was Final Battle 2: Xenocide, and it started out as being a plugin. Over time, the dev team decided to write their own engine, which became known as Epsilon. Whether or not the project is cancelled, who knows.. Sky's kinda vanished from the public light. Skywawk didn't lose the position.. he left he position to pursue Epsilon. That is when you can enter in HellHunter and later Jos. Jos of course ended up losing his adminship because of pirating Ambrosia games, and Captain Scurvy took over.
(b) What ever happened to ev.com? When I left the discboards, it was around, and when I came back a few months ago it was gone. It was a great site with a lot of useful information on it. Oh well.
A History Lesson (From someone who was around and lucid Back In The Day) (Some links courtesy of the Wayback Machine)
Vorinth was one of the first large plugins to be created, authored by a fellow named Jay Tingely. It was the contemporary as such works as The Visitor (which was cancelled and whose graphics survive on (url="http://"http://www.connect.ab.ca/~bsommerf/ships.html")Adam's Shipyard(/url), The Seed, (url="http://"http://www.ambrosiasw.com/cgi-bin/vftp/dl-redirect.pl/FoundationPackage14.sit.hqx?path=ev/plugins&file;=FoundationPackage14.sit.hqx")Foundation(/url), and The Gap. He released a test flight, and excerpted a few dรซscs from it onto his website, which became near-canon before they were forgotten about. He also had a killer website that he never updated and was at the top of my bookmarks list for many months. He even acquired the shipyard/hail graphics of the original EV alien ships for the project from Matt Burch himself (he was more intractable in those days, and getting an e-mail back from him actually meant something).
It died twice, actually. The first time he got fed up with being flamed and pestered by a large fanbase, but he eventually picked it back up again. The second time it died, it died for good. He instructed all the beta testers (of whom Matthew Daily was one) to destroy their copies of it. A few leaked into circulation on Hotline and Carracho since then. I have a copy of b6, in addition to the Test Flight. The latest beta I ever heard about was b8, which was the first one with actual missions.
Having seen the thing in person for myself, I've got to confess that it would hardly be spectacular if it were released now. It was only really impressive back in the context of EV 1.0.0.
-----
This provides a convenient segue into the history of EV-site administration. To expound:
Jay Tingely created the "Unoficial Escape Velocity Web Site" at around the same time we worked on Vorinth. In fact, he advertised the plugin on there now and then, as a search through the Google archives of alt.games.mac.excape-velocity and comp.sys.mac.games.action will attest to. In those days, it competed with a rather uglier site called EV Central, which was never very good in my humble opinion (then again, history always favors with winners. But I get ahead of myself). As a historical footnote, Jay's site was hosted sequentially on Sasknet and then Globalnet.
Shortly after the release of EV 1.0.1, which I pulled off of a very early MacAddict CD, Jay put something up on his site called a "Web Board". When I was younger and in general more of a troll, I used to claim that I had made the first post to it, ever. This was a blatant lie, although I'm sure I saw Jay's original Welcome message. EV Central caught onto the trend and put their own up as well, but it was moderated poorly and declined into spam-babble much more quickly than Jay's. Eventually it died a quiet and unmourned death.
Towards the end of 1996, Ambrosia selected the two best fan sites for their latest games at the time, Avara and EV, and designated them the official sites. Jay's EV site move from globalnet.ca/ev to escape-velocity.com, where it stayed for the next four years or so. For the first while, there was some DNS confusion between escape-velocity.com and avara.com, but it eventually sorted itself out. The Wayback Machine can provide the first correctly archived escape-velocity.com page from 4 July 1998 (url="http://"http://www.escape-velocity.com/archives/search.html")here(/url).
After Jay quit Vorinth the second time, he pretty much lost interest in EV and found a successor. Public consensus seems to be that his name was Geoff, and that he did exactly one update before being replaced yet again, although I confess to not remembering him half as well as his successor, Mason Sims, a.k.a. "Ice" of Ice's Plugin Review Page.
In gentle words, Mason was posessed of a rather healthy sized ego. He was also on a power trip, and had a bit of Mom complex. I also happened to hate and fear him, but that was because I got into a flame war with him a few months before he ascended to the throne (give me a break, I was 12.) He ruled the board with what I considered to be an iron fist at the time, but in hindsight realize was just him trying to do his damned job in spite of us idiots (a lesson taught to me by my brief stint as grand poobah of Mark Loganbach's (url="http://"http://www.uevorpg.f2s.com/index2.htm")uEVO RPG(/url) but once again, I digress). Mason had a habit of deleting literally any post that was not directly related to EV itself. Since we didn't have a separate board for friendly spam like "Banter & Brawl" in those days, you can imagine that this was a bit of an issue. He eventually saw the need to isolate himself from the masses, who had grown to loathe him, and elected to delegate.
He selected three sub-admins. Charlie Grover was the mail admin, and certainly the most durable of the three (He lasted through at least three different leaderships). Oren Kwiatek was a fool who fancied himself a graphics designer, and had responsibilty for keeping the site updated, which he didn't take very seriously as far as any of us could tell. The most notable of the gaggle was a guy named Evan Priestley (or Skyhawk, or Mithril Echo, or whatever he's calling himself these days). At the time, Evan had just released his masterpiece, Final Battle, which had some pretty bitching graphics from the time, but was absolutely bug-filled. The current version is 4.1, maintained by WickedDyno (formerly Scienta Claus, the Lord of Lemmings), and it's still got issues. He had much better rapport with the board community than Mason could ever have dreamed of, and was very well liked for the majority of his tenure.
I found myself working on FBII after I met him in an HTML chat hangout we had called the Galaxy Bar (this is where I got the "Suluger" variation on my handle, where I met Gareth Sparks who wrote Dash Riprock, and where Kevin M. Boots, author of the eternally damned and/or in limbo project New Republic and later host of the Hotline Server "Starlight", found love and lost it for the first time with a 26 year old girl who went by "Mouse".) We held our "top-secret" development meetings there, back when the team was small, but eventually we got too many ideas, too many people, our heads swelled, we decided the EV plotline was a hindrance (thus the project severed its roots with the EV aliens, invented a crappy plot device involving oil wars and bio-mechanical foot soliders and was rechristened "Xenocide") and that we were too good for the EV/O engine (at which point we decided, in a fit of pomposity, to write our own because obviously EV3 was never going to happen, thus spawning Project psilon, which is spelled with a Sigma because it looked nifty and we didn't know Greek. Eventually Evan found other projects (I believe he's currently working on an RPG called Aeon, although he may have quit that) and his team lost interest. The plot sucked, anyway, and I was responsible for half of it. You try writing something coherent while a hairbrained egotist is micromanaging you. My other project that will never see the light of day, "Future's End" was always much better.
Back to the main plotline: Eventually Mason decided to pull rank again because he was feeling marginalized (which he was) and wanted power back (which he'd given up) so he changed all the administrative passwords and left on a vacation. Evan was the only really active admin left at that point (Oren was a flake and Charlie was terribly proactive), so he and a few higher-ups in EV mailed Ambrosia and clicked the metaphorical "request assistance" button in the comm dialogue (I think the metaphor police are probably going to shoot me for that one.) We got "Cajun" David Richards to intervene for us, who manned the site for a short period of time while Ambrosia went Admin hunting. They settled on a little known guy named Jos Delbar, a.k.a. laer.
Jos was a veteran from long ago, having worked on the afforementioned Visitor plug (he was story, Adam was graphics. Jos was the one who bailed, causing Adam to offer up the graphics in his shipyard) and been a bit of a lurker for some time. He retained Charlie Grover and Evan has his subordinates, and for a good long while, all was nice. Jos wrote new webboard scripts with login features and IP tracking, and life was good. Evan sort of stopped adminning around this point, but nobody really cared. What caused him to leave eventually wasn't FB2, or Xenocide, or Project psilon. It was far more petty than that. When EVO came out, Jos and Ambrosia set up a new webboard for the new game. Instead of delegating the adminstration of it to Evan, he handled it directly himself. Evan felt cut out and redundant, and eventually decided to quit.
We held elections for a new WebBoard admin. Erik Sogn, a.k.a. HellHunter, won handily, and gained a reputation as the most sex-crazy adminstrator ever. I was good friends with him for most of my Freshman year, and can attest to this with some regret. Talking to him was like getting your "plugin" anal raped by Ben Chess' delightful EV-Edit, in the worst possible way. He was also well liked, but wasn't much of an adminstrator. Jos co-officiated with him on matters Boardwise.
Jos was caught pirating Mars Rising some time after this. Andrew Welch was not pleased and revoked his administrative priveleges. Most of us were incenced, and Erik campaigned vigorously for him, but it was to no avail. David Dunham, having replaced Cajun by this point, stepped in and arbitrated while Andrew hunted for a new Admin again, the same way he had immediatly before Jos' tenure. They eventually settled on Mark Loganbach, or Captain Scurvy, who led the site through a drastic redesign that was actually very good, although it destroyed the last vestiges of Jay's original plan. The whole thing was rendered moot, though, when the sites were merged into Ambrosia Software's website a few month's later and Jos' discboards were replaced by the Infopop UBB we all know and love.
----
As far as Dash Riprock goes, I remain good friends with Gareth Sparks, after meeting him on the Galaxy Bar a few years back. We met in person last summer under somewhat strange conditions (what I was doing in the suburbs of Washington D.C. instead of my native land of the ever-rainy Pacific Northwest, I'll leave to your imaginations). I always admired his stories, but I've caught up to him in terms of writing ability since the, and he looks back on Dash Riprock with no small degree of embarassment these days. It was comparativly good when it was written, but I think most of that can be attributed to the fact that Gareth was the only person writing EV serials who seemed to have any real grasp of the English language.
Footnote: Adam Sommerfield, who worked with Jos Delbar on The Visitor, as mentioned a few times above, also collaborated with Kristoffer "toffe" Andsen of the Escape Velocity Game Expander in the very first failed attempt at a sort of massivly multiplayer version of EV. It fizzled, of course, but I still have the old development documents (ie, daydreams) from Ambassador/Arkon software lying around on my hard drive.
-reg
Thanks a lot Reg. It was nice to read what happened behind the scenes during the earlier years (I joined just before the big 'change-the-passwords-and-then-go-on-holiday' fiasco), particularly as, being about 12 at the time, I was more interested in making myself look good on the boards than finding out who did what.
------------------ { MAZCA } {(url="http://"http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/cgi-bin/ubb/forumdisplay.cgi?action=topics&number;=9&SUBMIT;=Go")ev dev corner(/url)} Thunder: I don't see how a pig or a tie fighter is part of the female body
Wow, some interesting reading in here. I remember being really excited about playing Vorinth way back when, and the website was (at the time) very cool. I also really wanted to play "The Gap", as I am a big fan of the books by Stephen Donaldson that that one was based on (The Gap Series, read them).
I came across a copy of a Vorinth beta on Hotline about two years ago, and tried it out. The graphics were good, but there wasn't much in the way of missions or ship/outfit descriptions in place, so that didn't last long. I may still have it somewhere.
------------------ ----- cut here to destroy monitor -----8<-----
This really brings back memories. I remember the first time I played EV, I got it off a MacAddict CD and it was version 1.0.1. I jumped into the Vulcan system and was immediately destroyed by pirates, so from then on I became afraid to go into unexplored systems (I thought there was some sort of ship-eating monster. Kind of like in the Middle Ages.) Once I mustered up enough courage to make my money without gambling and venture into the Sea of Worms, I actually loved the game. I still play it fairly often.
I do remember very well when the EV website was Jay Tingley's Unofficial EV Site, at globalnet.com/ca/ev or whatever it was. I remember being excited about Vornith, and Final Battle (which I checked every single day to see if it was up). I also recall an annoying fellow going by the name "Alexandar the Great" who couldn't stop flaming everyone on the board, and naturally everyone angrily responded instead of staying out of it.
I was pretty quiet, and I only posted once in a while. Anyone here remember me? I distinctly remember such names as Regulus (you're still here), Skyhawk, HellHunter, EVula (he's still around too), G@rret (anyone remember him?), The Old Professor, The Lord of Lemmings, and a bunch more. A lot of the oldest members, including many I don't see anymore, are in Soul's plug-in Pale (which is, by the way, my favorite).
Thanks for the recap on the history. I didn't tend to pay much attention to stuff like what was described; I was more into the game.
------------------ Luca Rescigno How are you gentlemen!! All your base are belong to us. You are on the way to destruction. You have no chance to survive make your time. HA HA HA HA
Originally posted by Luca Rescigno: ...Final Battle (which I checked every single day to see if it was up).
He set himself a deadline in August wayyy too soon, and managed to let it slip to September before releasing 1.0, which was basically a very buggy public beta. It gradually incremented to 3.0 (which was marginally better) before the Lord of Lemmings took over and put 4.0 and 4.1 out.
I also recall an annoying fellow going by the name "Alexandar the Great" who couldn't stop flaming everyone on the board, and naturally everyone angrily responded instead of staying out of it.
There were a lot of people like that, but I don't remember him. Does "D-Evil" ring a bell? He impostered us a lot before we had a registration system or IP tracking.
I distinctly remember such names as Regulus (you're still here)
A little crusty and bitter, but yes.
Skyhawk
Quit the board admin job which HellHunter got, quit work on Final Battle 2 for the project it mutated into (mostly my fault there) "Xenocide", quit that to work on the new game engine with laer, "Project Epsilon", quit that to work on an RPG thing called "Aeon", gained 200 pounds (according to Sparks) and dropped out of highschool after teaching himself trigonometry for the hell of it. How messed is that?
HellHunter
I see him around - he likes to sexually harass me online. His IM is "He11Hunter". Chat him up, if you dare.
EVula (he's still around too)
Doing quite well for himself, as well.
G@rret (anyone remember him?)
Yes.
The Old Professor
I miss him.
The Lord of Lemmings
Still posts. Goes by "WickedDyno" these days.
A lot of the oldest members, including many I don't see anymore, are in Soul's plug-in Pale (which is, by the way, my favorite).
Pale is absolutely the best thing I've ever played for EV. The writing is sublime, the game balance is perfect, it's innovative and wonderful and limit-pushing without being kludgy (my projects always turn into kludges when I push the limits too hard). He doesn't post anymore, but he was... wow. Words fail me.
Hacks open the plug to look for pรซrs resources
Holy sh*t! I'm in there! I'm a pรซrs in my favorite plugin, and I didn't even know it! That's ยucking wild! Battleship with a pair of Plasma-Fusion guns, 200% shielding and half a million the bank. Wiiiiiiierd.
The game got boring fast. The social interactions were what kept me engaged. shrug
See you around,
Originally posted by Luca Rescigno: I was pretty quiet, and I only posted once in a while. Anyone here remember me?
Originally posted by Luca Rescigno: EVula
Still here and rising.
Originally posted by Luca Rescigno: The Old Professor
Showed up briefly a few months ago.
Originally posted by Luca Rescigno: The Lord of Lemmings
Shows up on occasion as WickedDyno, as Regulus said.
Originally posted by Luca Rescigno: Soul's plug-in Pale (which is, by the way, my favorite)
Mine too.
Originally posted by Luca Rescigno: Thanks for the recap on the history. I didn't tend to pay much attention to stuff like what was described; I was more into the game.
A fair bit of that history was rather hard to understand at the time unless you were one of those who knew the people involved.
------------------ David Arthur (url="http://"http://davidarthur.evula.net/")davidarthur.evula.net(/url): MissionComputer and the Talon plug-in for the original Escape Velocity
Originally posted by David Arthur: A fair bit of that history was rather hard to understand at the time unless you were one of those who knew the people involved.
Stream of consciousness. Forgive me. (How much of that were you around for?)
(My account isn't working. Strange.)
Originally posted by Luca Rescigno: I also recall an annoying fellow going by the name "Alexandar the Great" who couldn't stop flaming everyone on the board, and naturally everyone angrily responded instead of staying out of it.
I remember him, as well as several other lamers... shrug oh well.
Of course I do, you're a contributor for (url="http://"http://www.evula.com/")the Lair!(/url)
------------------ (url="http://"http://www.evula.com/")EVula,(/url) your friendly (url="http://"http://www.evula.com/")self-promoting(/url) EV & EVO Boards/Addon/Newswire/Chronicles moderator (url="http://"http://www.evula.com/")EVula.com(/url) | (url="http://"http://www.evula.net/")evula.net(/url) (url="http://"http://pftn.evula.net")pftn.evula.net(/url) | (url="http://"http://plugs3.evula.net")plugs3.evula.net(/url) | (url="http://"http://saberstudios.evula.net")saberstudios.evula.net(/url) | (url="http://"http://davidarthur.evula.net")davidarthur.evula.net(/url) | (url="http://"http://ucplugs.evula.net")ucplugs.evula.net(/url)
Originally posted by `Regulus: Stream of consciousness. Forgive me.
I meant that the history was hard to understand at the time. Your account is perfectly clear.
Originally posted by `Regulus: How much of that were you around for?
Well, I came to the official site in, I believe, early 1997. Escape Velocity 1.0.4 was the first version I downloaded. I was there when Jay Tingley persuaded Matt Burch to give him shipyard and comm pictures of the alien ships, and I read 'Dash Riprock' as it was first being posted.
When I arrived at the boards the first time, the administrator's name was, I believe, Geoff Kinnel or something of the sort, and I was there when Mason 'Ice' 'The Empire Has A Good Dental Plan' Sims took over and cracked down on everything he saw as 'spam'. I think at one point he even had IP tracking on the WWWBoard. When I left for the first time, it had been quite some time since the last update, but it was before the apperance of Skyhawk and the others.
I returned maybe a few months later, after the release of Final Battle, but before Final Battle 2 became Xenocide. At that point, Jos Delbar was the site administrator, and Skyhawk was the board moderator. I was there when Jos implemented the Override WWWBoard (making himself, not Skyhawk, its administrator; I remember discussion about that), and there when the boards were moved over to DiscBoard. I saw the chaos that occasionally occurred during that period, including the time when someone got the board passwords and posted fake 'State of the Web Board' announcements, and I was even impersonated once. I voted for HellHunter in the moderator election, but left before I got a chance to see him really moderate. For that reason, I missed the implementation of user accounts on the DiscBoard, Jos's expulsion, Captain Scurvy's tenure, and the death of the DiscBoards. I returned in August 2000 after seeing an 'EV3' sneak peek on (url="http://"http://www.macnn.com/")MacNN(/url).
Well, that was certainly long.
Nice recap on the history of EV.com Reg.. Few notes and Corrections:
Vorinth og way way way past the flight test stage. And I'm happy to see no one is circulating the later betas since Jay T. asked all of us who tested it to toss it.
Geoff, who took over after Jay, updated the site a few times and then lost interest in the site and the game (As most of us did at some point) I contacted Andrew and we talked for some period and he offered my the job as EV Admin. I kept the site for some time and eventually invited Jay back and we did a major renovation on the site (Yeah it was a glowing, green, tarachula (sp?) at the top of the WWWBoard. Jay eventually got finished with what he wanted to complete updating the site and went back to working on his own projects and I was left to finish her and maintain her.
Keeping the site updated with new plugins, as well as trying to maintain my plugin review page was easy to do, but as many of you have heard the WWWBoard became my 'big thing' I ruled with an 'iron fist' and I did nail anyything not EV related. I generally tried to email the person to say why, but bleh I didn't have time to email all of you 60 times a day grin I then decided to breakup the job into 4 positions. EV Admin, WWWBoard Admin, Site Admin, Email Admin. I got myself seme volenteers and got everything setup.. a while after that i discovered things weren't getting done fast enough or not at all and locked out the lower admins. I have Skyhawk control of th WWWBoard when I was away, and after I got back I found what I considered to be 'massive ammounts of spam' and locked him out until I could talk at him.
shorty after it came down to a flame war between myself and people on the board. And I decided I needed to step down. I mailed Andrew with a list of folks I thought would be good admins, inculding skyhawk, and gave up the site.
That's more description on my tour of duity. Since then I've stopping in from time to time to see what's going on.. I came around about the time the whole Jos thing went down... And when I talked to Andrew at that point in time I was told they were planning on moving the EV.com site onto their own site, Ambrosia.com, because it had gotten to be too much effort to maintain the seperate sites (EV.com/Arava.com) and the rest of the story is what you see today..
Most of the EV alternatives posted here are accurate.. Missing the big one though... "Void" If you don't know what that is dun ask grin
Well anyway Nice to stop in and see some old faces around... Maybe I'll see more when the new EV comes out..
Laters
Simsu - A.K.A. Ice, A.K.A. Mason Sims
------------------
Heya Simsu, long time no see.
Originally posted by Simsu1: it was a glowing, green, tarachula (sp?) at the top of the WWWBoard.
Woohoo! I loved the spider.
Originally posted by Simsu1: I generally tried to email the person to say why, but bleh I didn't have time to email all of you 60 times a day
Woohoo, I feel blessed that I was one of the people who DID get an email from you about their posting habits.
Course you can tell how little good it did.. the last 20 posts are all spam grin
Simsu
Originally posted by Simsu1:
Jeeze,I had no idea you were still urking around here. waves
And speaking of waves, do you remember that project I failed to work on back when I was in fifth grade, resetting EV in the American Revolutionary War as a naval campaign? Jeeeze. How many people have come up with that idea since then and failed? Meowx even wanted to make it into a land based RPG, and it's just now starting to be possible with EVN (though gods know why you'd want to)
Yeah, I looked for b8, but never found a copy. I sort of wish now that he'd released it ot the public domain, like he said he was considering the first time it died. It was a gorgeous plugin - I don't think anybody's seriously redone that much of the game since then - at least, I've never seen a revamped menu screen, even for EVO. It's clear that he'd have benefited from an intf or a couple of chars, but it was very impressive and ambitious for its time.
Since it's been so long, do you think you might tell us what the plot was about? It seemed to me like a second great war, the aliens looking to settle the score, but I also got the impression that time travel was involved.
it was a glowing, green, tarachula (sp?) at the top the WWWBoard.
VIva araignee! That was an awesome logo. We should dig it back up and suggest Andrew use it for the B&B; board - it needs a good logo.
I ruled with an 'iron fist' and I did nail anyything not EV related.
In hindsight, I can understand where you were coming from - it being hosted on ambrosia's servers and everything - but we'd already formed a rather tight community for a while, so your efforts weren't really appreciated that well.
after I got back I found what I considered to be 'massive ammounts of spam'
Which was, after all, why we liked Skyhawk so much.
and locked him out until I could talk at him.
SO that was it. Never got that part.
shorty after it came down to a flame war between myself and people on the board.
I think I've got a medal of valor for that war hanging around here somewhere...
I mailed Andrew with a list of folks I thought would be good admins, inculding skyhawk, and gave up the site
I think Jos was probably the best webmaster we ever had in terms of paying attention to the community (his custom discboard scripts rocked, for everyone excep tthe moderators who had to use their reportedly piss poor date sorting), but you and Jay got the user contributions and services wanted/offered sections updated about a million times more often than he did.
Most of the EV alternatives posted here are accurate.. Missing the big one, though... "Void" If you don't know what that is dun ask grin
Jay's old project doesn't really count, since he never hyped it enough to officially classify as EV-ripoff/inspired vaporware - I think I played one dev release of it once, when he showed up at Skyhawk's HL server. It was a networkable top-down space shooter with chat in those days, but it eventually seemed to mutate into a 3D space game, a la Exobattle.
Also, I didn't mention the EVMP project (which had a 20:1 ratio of kids with ideas to competant programmers, much like Nova (in the eloquent words of Matt Burch, from an interview he held on IRC with Gareth Sparks for EV Weekly a little while after Override came out)) or kBerg's project from a while ago (which never really pretended it was going to be the next EV, to be fair.)
the last 20 posts are all spam grin
It's a discussion forum. We are having a discussion. Get over it, it's been five years
(This message has been edited by Regulus (edited 01-29-2002).)
Originally posted by Regulus: **it's been five years **
Crap! That scared me. I can't believe it's been that long...
------------------ (url="http://"http://mailto:mazca@mazca.com")Mazca(/url) Te aurdire no possum. Musa sapienum fixa est in aura.
Five years... Yah. That's a long time. I guess I should stand up and give a New Republic update right about now. Okay. Limbo, I suppose, is a great way to describe it. Kevin handed the project down to me almost a year and a half ago for completion. For the delay, I am truely sorry. Life jumped up and lit a fire under my rear about 14 months ago. I was kicked out of my house, moved into an apartment. Moved out of my Apartment with 2 roomates into a really nice 4br San Diego home. Got kicked out of there when my roomate got married to a Morman girl he met at a local grocery store 2 weeks prior to their engagement. Moved back in with Mom and Pop for a time. Eventually moved into a tiny 1br townhouse with 3 other people in Downtown San Diego. Stayed there until last December when the four of us found a big 3br house within 2 miles of our previous residence. Through it all, I've had an internet connection for 3 months total. I'm sure you can understand how hard it is to work on a plugin without online access. Right? I'm working on having a new connection installed into my current house as we speak. With any luck, I'll be able to pull the most recent version of NR from what's left of Kev's hotline server (Great place a year ago and even before that), and see if I can debug and modify it enough to get something cranked out to feed the vultures with. Unfortunatly, I think most of them have lost interest. This plugin is YEARS old and programmed for a game that is almost in it's 3rd release. I highly doubt that anybody but the most die-hard players from the days of EV 1.0 will download it, much less actually play it, but it's the principal of the matter. I'll have a chat with Kevin and see if we can set a deadline for the completion of the project. If it's not done by that date, maybe he'll agree to release it, as-is to the public.
On to happier topics.
There are a few incidents that stand out in my mind from the past. One of them involved the death of a member of the EV community (I'm sure somebody can remember his name) which was followed up by several Hoax deaths from various trolls. Glares at Luke My memory is getting shaky after being hammered with 2 years of Calculus so I'm not entirely clear on all the details concerning that time-period.
I remember showing up in the EV community shortly after Escape-Velocity.com became the official site of the EV community. It couldn't have been longer than a week. Like you, Reg, I pulled 1.0 off of the first (Correct me if I'm wrong) MacAddict disk. Too bad the bulk-freighter space-conversion bug got zapped. I happened to like my Kestrel and it's 1500 tons of space. I also remember reading documents on what I would assume was the first hacking of 1.0, pre-ev-bible, that indicated that plugins were possible. To the best of my knowlege, it was a couple of guys who patched in a millenium falcon during a slow day at the workplace. Once again, correct me if I'm wrong and if anyone has more details, I'd love to have a refresher course.
Dash Riprock. Did that kick toosh (We allowed to use the A word? it's been a while since I've been here) back in the day or what? Ahh the Ev Weekly. Simple, quickly loading black text on white pages, minimal graphics, and a flair that screamed old-school Gareth Sparks. I seem to remember him becoming much like hell hunter in that sex-crazed sense... Especially in the days when we hung out on Sky's server discussing Xenocide all day long. I still have most/some (I'll have to check) of the graphics I created for the project. (Yes, I was one of those notorious graphics artists) I've signed on for dozens of projects in my history but I don't think many were completed. I did some work for a cab-driving plugin, a little humor plug called Pyro!, MacGP's ill-fated plugin Great War (?), Final Battle II, Xenocide, New Republic, and about 10 other tiny-projects. Speaking of projects, I still owe Weepul a few graphics that we won. I feel like not shelling 'em out is like this big splotch on an otherwise... uhh.. well, actually, it kind of fits in with the rest of the splotches. He must be pretty pissed anyways. If you read this weepul, just send your stuff to triknives@hotmail.com, add a note, and I PROMISE I'll actually do the work. Honest.
Now, to the subject at hand. Vornith. I do remember Vornith rather well. I believe I had/have (Again, I'll have to check) a copy of b6 I pulled off a hotline server long ago. I remember sitting there thinking, why didn't he finish this masterpiece?? What can I say? I was a sucker for pretty graphics and back then, and Vornith made EV look sickly in comparison. If I do have a copy, it's burned onto a CD best forgotten and will not ever see the light of day again unless Jay annouces that it's alright for what's left of his plugin to be released to the masses (which will happen when I have a beard like the guys in ZZ-Top.)
Simsu - Nice to see you again. Can't remember, was that you that kicked the living stuffing out of me at WarCraft II a long time ago? I honestly can't remember. I can just recall being totally stompped by someone who showed up on a hotline server I was frequenting at the time.
Anyone remember Midgar and Chad? Quite a character. Wasn't he Sky's mortal enemy?
The big breakdown of Sky's web-board moderating days... I happened to get caught up right in the middle of that mess. Sky handed the password info, URL, and login name to me right after his privelages were revoked and asked me to help him figure out what had happened. I think he made a similar request to several others here. Needless to say, it did nothing what so ever.
As for the big Sims vs. the Board flame-war, I guess I slept through that one.
Thanks for the History lesson Reg. Nice to see that you still hang around. Same to the rest of you who actually remember me. I still remember all of you. We had some good times.
-AJ ----------- Forgot my PW, deactivated the E-Mail account that AmbrosiaSW was linked to (I'm working on fixing it)
Originally posted by Regulus: VIva araignee! That was an awesome logo. We should dig it back up and suggest Andrew use it for the B &B; board - it needs a good logo.
Heh, funny you should mention that, as it WILL be making a comeback, of a sorts, soon enough... <cryptic grin>
Originally posted by AJ: Anyone remember Midgar and Chad? Quite a character. Wasn't he Sky's mortal enemy?
Hehe, I sure do (and yes, to a degree, although it was the other way around, Sky was Chad's mortal enemy). Chad is one more reason that I say that Tennessee has the highest concentration of EV players.
Man, it's good to see some real oldies hanging around again.
Originally posted by `AJ: **...I guess I should stand up and give a New Republic update right about now. Okay. Limbo, I suppose, is a great way to describe it...With any luck, I'll be able to pull the most recent version of NR from what's left of Kev's hotline server.. and see if I can debug and modify it enough to get something cranked out to feed the vultures with...
-AJ **
Hey, AJ, if you have trouble getting the New Republic files from Starlight, I've still got them. Please e-mail me and lets see what we can do with the old plug.
------------------ Joe Burnette "I find that humans can be divided into only two meaningful categories: Decent Humans and Sonsofbitches; both types appear to be evenly distributed among all shapes, colors, sizes, and nationalities." -- Keith Laumer
Originally posted by `AJ: ...what's left of Kev's hotline server (Great place a year ago and even before that)
Starlight. How I miss it. Such a nicer attitude than IRC.
I highly doubt that anybody but the most die-hard players from the days of EV 1.0 will download it, much less actually play it, but it's the principal of the matter.
Untrue. A big plugin will be attractive no matter how old it is, provided it's well-written and bugless.
Dash Riprock. Did that kick toosh (We allowed to use the A word? it's been a while since I've been here) back in the day or what?
He doesn't think so.
Ahh the Ev Weekly. Simple, quickly loading black text on white pages, minimal graphics, and a flair that screamed old-school Gareth Sparks.
As opposed to his current endeavours?
I seem to remember him becoming much like hell hunter in that sex-crazed sense...
Not exactly. They were friends, and for a while back in summer '00 it looked like they might hook up or something (blech on long-distance relationships), but I think we all got sick of Erik (Hellhunter) after his continual anal rape jokes and disgustingly smarmy/desperate/trite (not to mention futile) relationship with Ashley (Nytehawk). That, and the time he photoshopped a pic of himself cutting his arm with an X-acto just to freak me out.
Especially in the days when we hung out on Sky's server discussing Xenocide all day long.
God we were sad.
I still have most/some (I'll have to check) of the graphics I created for the project.
I have a rather large folder full of development builds (Hazard and Epsilon) and chat logs/documents somewhere on my HD. I never throw anything out
I believe I had/have ... a copy of b6 I pulled off a hotline server long ago. I remember sitting there thinking, why didn't he finish this masterpiece?? What can I say? I was a sucker for pretty graphics and back then, and Vornith made EV look sickly in comparison.
Well, EVula, it's too bad I cant rename the topic
------------------ Some people say I'm a crazy kind of fool, be that as it may... I don't suffer from my insanity.