Tag Archives: NT LAN

Netzwerk Terror LAN: A Look Back

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Holy shit, I must be coming down with an illness as I post back-to-back Gaming pieces on T6F. I happened upon our old LAN web site by mistake. I can’t even remember what I was looking for or how I stumbled upon it. But using the “way back machine” I was able to find much of our old LAN news from Netzwerk Terror.

This WAS a time when gaming was enjoyable and the games were still worth a shit, unlike now. Quakeworld, Quake and Quake 2, as well as some wonderful mods for Quake 2 including CTF, Rocket Arena, Action Quake and Chaos-Mod, just to name a few. Who can forget the hours of pre-LAN racing using the latest and greatest pirated software courtesy of dEucE or Dr. Frag.

I see my first LAN event was dated “11.21.98” and took a fourth place finish the next week in the 2nd (monthly) NT Quake II Tournament. Good friends. Good gaming. And good grog! Of course as things go, the LAN eventually moved out of the one bedroom apartment, where we crammed 24 games into the bedroom, living room and kitchen to Tony’s PC Parlor that could hold at least twice as many gamers and a $10 fee was introduced to help offset renting the room for the weekend. Although Mimi and dEucE would always accept donations on a weekly basis.

Things started to go downhill at this point. The gaming had moved on post-Quake 2 and Quake III: Arena was not all it was cracked up to bed. The game mods were not as enjoyable as their predecessors in Quake 2. Not sure why. Maybe it was just bound to change as newer technology and pretty graphics replaced solid game play. Sorry, but the game play for Quake III was shit. Q2 had much better playability.

Why dwell on the past? Oh yeah, that was when games had game play and were not just a fancy box with a hefty price tag and pretty graphics. Guess it was better I moved on and decided to retire from any sort of online gaming. Too many changes. I guess some things are better left unchanged.

Trackmania Nations!

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Checking out Clanbase as I regularly do, I ran across a news item about Trackmania Nations designed exclusively for ESWC and esports “is being offered free of charge to the players of the entire planet so they may commence training for the qualifiers due to take place in 53 countries on Friday 27th of January. The Grand Final of ESWC will be held in Paris from June 28th to July the 2nd , in front of 40,000 people, where the best players from each country will battle it out for a prize of 400,000 dollars.”

Now I am an online racing fan going back to the early days LAN days with Netzwerk Terror in SoCal when a few of us would arrive early and race our asses off until the “official” start of the LAN. So coming across a good racing game is a rare find. That is not to say there are not any good ones out there. The Need for Speed series has been solid for years, as has a personal favorite, Powerslide by RatBag.

After downloading, I make a comment about the possibility of covering this event at ESWC for Inside The Game, at which point I am informed that malware is present upon installation of Trackmania Nations. I was directed to an ESReality, “there is a copy protection tool called Starforce that is silently installed…the tool remains on your system when the game is uninstalled and can apparently cause permanent damage to your CD/DVD writers.”

After minor consideration I decided to let the malware issue fall by the wayside since I don’t burn CD/DVDs on my game rig, but still that is rather shitty when you install it. You can get more information at Boycott Starforce.

Clanbase is in the process of starting a ladder for the game, which I might actually take part in. Not that I expect to end up in the finals for ESWC in Paris, but the game is quite impressive sans the malware. Check it out!

Behind the Microphone

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At one time, years ago…well not that long ago, maybe 1998 I was like a sponge. I was soaking as much information as possible when it came to PC games. id Software‘s hit, Quake II had me mesmerized. From that point on, the snowball effect took control.Now, maybe it’s my age or my [lack of] attention span, or life priorities, but I am not much of a gamer now (maybe I will blame the crappy games out there). Damn skippy though, back in the day at the Netzwerk Terror LAN I would attend, I was as competitive as the next in the 1 v 1 tourney. Never did win, but I did take a third place. Once.

Since my “humble” beginnings I experienced many things, such as QuakeCon (a MUST for any gamer), software development with Urban Terror and on air commentary, previously with Team Sportscast Network and more recently with Inside The Game. To be honest, I get more pleasure talking to the gaming community, be it covering a game like Urban Terror, Medal of Honor or a plethora of other games. FIFA kicks some serious ass!I also produce two radio shows called Just Push Play, where we flashback to the 1980’s and check out movies, television, music, coin-op video games and nostalgia from a decade past. Also in support of Urban Terror I started Urban Radio, which focuses on news and notes from the community, along with some gaming action on a server provided by the community…basically it is my chance to give the community something other than a web site update.

I have all the previous Just Push Play shows now available on the site, linked to FileCloud. Currently I am putting the finishing touches on this week’s show, JPP #009 – Oswald Strikes back. The show debuts on Wednesday, January 4 at 12PST/20GMT on Inside The Game.

More recently I have agreed with start covering Medal of Honor: Allied Assault over on Clanbase with EuroCup (Obj Realism) and Nations Cup (Obj & Obj Realism). I do believe my enjoyment of casting shines in a game like MOHAA, mainly because of the what you can do with the game. The production value is extremely high and the game itself is full of atmosphere.

If you want an example of the production value of Medal of Honor, you can download this cast featuring Art of War versus [ =N3S=] I covered as a “test cast” last week. Just listen past he minor technical issues I had during the coverage that I failed to catch.

Waaaasabi!!!

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Greetings, again, the weekend is here and I am running behind. Spent about 8 hours yesterday with Netzwerk Terror, the local LAN in Redondo Beach, California. After the other games got some RA3 and Instagib out of the way, we got around to some Urban Terror goodness.

I introduced the maps Corn!! and ut-abbeybeta1-7 into the server this week. It was sink or swim. Abbey proved to be a great map. If you recall, this is the sequel level to Tub’s ut-village level. While there are a few annoyances in Abbey, Tub is aware of many of them, so by the time the map reaches Beta 2, it should be high quality and bug free. Corn!! was not as fortunate. Created by Pablo Gil “eXKalibuR” Fernández, the map is still visually impressive, but the game play was quite lacking. I think it lasted about 3 minutes and we moved onto a new level. Sorry eXKalibuR, maybe you should look into updating that level and providing a bit more in terms of game flow.

The main reason for the update tonight was to let you know I took my place atop the ‘Oswald Rant’ soapbox and pounded out an annoyance I see beginning to find its way in the Urban Terror community. While I would be blind to think that our community is perfect. For the most part gamers are good natured. But everyone once in awhile, the proverbial $#%@ hits the fan. Read the latest, Oswald Rant titled, Pass the Online Gaming, Please. If you feel different give me the bird and tell me to “STFU!!!”

By the way, did anyone happen to catch the inaugural kickoff of The XFL??? Just curious. I didn’t but would have liked to have seen some of its interesting rule changes from the NFL.

More Mapping

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Was a bit hectic this weekend. But many good things really came out of out on a positive note. Finally got the Netzwerk Terror LAN to install and play Urban Terror with only a little bit of whining and complaining from the CS crowd. They got theirs in the end, we played that other realism mod. Unfortunately NT will not be helping to testing the initial offering of Beta 2. Sorry guys.

Let’s see…I have received a few new maps which are either new or updated. The first is from KAZ and Devlin called Japanese Gardens. Hands down, this is the finest looking third party map in the Urban Terror community! This level has just begun beta testing and you should be seeing sometime in the future. The level is a few Japanese house connected together with a few small gardens and towering statures. Quite a bit of detail include, some of which come from the excellent textures! Check out some of these screen shots:

[Shot #1] | [Shot #2] | [Shot #3] | [Shot #4] | [Shot #5]
[Shot #6] | [Shot #7] | [Shot #8] | [Shot #9 | [Shot #10]
The other level is an updated version of Fortress by Off by One, which many gamers seem to like. This new version looks better than this original. Probably still a bit too large and I feel that some of the buildings still need a bit of work in terms of overall scale. Based on the size of the chairs and tables, the player model feels a bit small. Still it looks pretty good. Check out the updated screen shots:

[Shot #1] | [Shot #2] | [Shot #3] | [Shot #4] | [Shot #5] | [Shot #6] | [Shot #7] | [Shot #8]
There seems to be some misconceptions out there which some just don’t understand. For example, Steve over on the Reaction Quake 3 forums decided to chime in on The 6th Floor. “I don’t like it when Planetquake acts like Oswald is getting all these scoops at his “6th Floor” web site when he’s on the friggin team.” Hey Steve, no problems buddy, Pappy-R, Ash and previous PQ Monkey, Hellchick all know I am on the Silicon Ice Development Team. I never said I had “exclusive” information or even “scoops” on what’s going on. This is a place where I can more freely voice my opinion as it pertains to gaming. Of course I watch other mods like Reaction Quake 3, Navy-Seals and news on Counter-Strike. Lord knows we can never run out of topics to rant about when it comes to that mod. Even with all its success. Oh, and one more thing. If there is “breaking” Urban Terror news, I will post it on the SID web site, since we are hosted at PlanetQuake as well. By the way the new damage system is NOTHING like Counter-Strike. Our mod is nothing like Counter-Strike as well.

An interesting thread was started over at the Quake3World Forums which asked, “Why don’t people make realistic levels?” So in defense of realism mods everywhere and especially Urban Terror, I decided to introduce them to WetWired. Check out the thread.

Thinking about using those old textures from a now defunct game developer? You may wanna think twice. Here is Paul Jaquays take on using textures from fallen companies.

“I’ll start with a bold position statement: Abandonware is a myth created by people who want to rationalize the redistribution of copyrighted material. In truth, somebody still owns those games or the rights to the images in them.

Copyrights exist at least 50 years past the “death” of their creator these days (that may be the figure, I think). Other than any source material (old books or photos, etc.) used to create them, any textures created for computer games are not going to be in the public domain … except where the original creators have released them for redistribution.

I believe Crack.Com may have done this with their Golgotha art … but you would need to do some research into that.

What prompted this? Yet another person inquiring over at the Quake3World Forums. Check it out, who knows, maybe you will find that bit of information relevant. It really goes further than Just textures, but worth the read considering Paul’s opinions.

Are you ready? Revolution is coming.