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Twentieth Highest Shelf Vittles: 5.9.01-1.6.02

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Sunday 1/6/02

Maps Marching 2 by 2, Hurrah, Hurrah!
     mausie snipe (shot) by maus2_Co: Tighly-wound canyon DM level with plenty of sniping windows and modified rifles. In other words if you just wander around out in the open you're going to be doing a Swiss cheese impression mighty quick. Solid aside from a couple small gaps you can see the sky through near the stairs. Could use a good deal of texture alignment and maybe some variety in 'em, the use of shadow and ambient sounds spruces things up a good deal though. Very high framerates throughout and pretty good item placement, should be a reliable DM level if you're into the whole hardcore sniping thing.
     c0d (shot) by KiL_Ler_: Impressive little sandy valley with CTF-style mirrored layout. Th' problem comes in that the OL engine can't really handle some impressive things, like the little puddles in the dry crick, very fast, so the framerate chugs a good deal out in the open—relatively speaking of course. And I'm not sure why there's a sky texture on a hut ceiling—otherwise the level sure is nice to look at.

Other Western Games, How Odd
     three_fingers found a page with cheat codes for Westbang, that cute little Western freeware game I posted a link to a while back. Actually its not so much cheats as directions for editing the game config file, by which you can achieve some cool customizations, I bet.
     The not-so-invisible Mr Baggins found yet another new freeware Western game, "Billy the Kid" which you can download from the developer's page here; be warned that it was developed as an ad for a Danish food products company, so things are a bit... odd, but otherwise it plays kind of like Pac-Man with "Western" graphics, clunky control and stupid AI. Did I mention that it's free?

Of Drivers and Bagginses
     Mr Baggins has updated his Outlaws site yet again (watch out: only madmen update their site this often, take it from someone who knows) with two spiffy changes: he's converted the site to English (spiffy for English-speakin' people, anyway) and he's gathered together all the single-player levels into one handy download page, each one being accompanied by a story summary, author info and so forth, and made "special editions" of some of them in which he cleaned up the files so they behave a little better. Messin' about with the files isn't exactly permitted by the usual distribution clause in the readme, so if you made one of these and don't want it cleaned up he invites you to let him know.
     Baggins also mentioned that the latest Nvidia reference drivers work fine for OL as far as he's aware, and I should make clear that the links I posted a little while ago for the 12.41 drivers should only be examined if you are experiencing trouble with nvidia's latest reference drivers, which you can of course download from nvidia.com.
     Funny thing, at work the latest (23.11) run fine on a GeForce 2 in D3D, but slow as molasses (much slower than before) on a TNT2. I guess this can't be a global problem or else they'd have caught it before releasing the drivers; I've heard slightly more complaining about these drivers than usual though.

A Message from Rambo
     Rambo (aka Maximus) of the YG posse has a brief message for his crew:

I haven't played outlaws like in 7 months and all the YG's think i have left or what not. The truth is my computer is so slow it can not even play outlaws anymore. I want to play outlaws again so bad but i need some help from some people in YG so i need to talk to them. If you could just post a message for all of the YG's to email plz @ [removed], lol dont ask about the email name.

I'm not askin': some things are better left unexplored. Anyway if you're a YG why don't you go ahead and drop yer long-lost confrere a line.

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Wednesday 1/2/02

First Maps of the Year
     The Island of Death (shot) by DarthDoctor: Whopping big red rocky island with more caves, ledges, fissures, gulleys, dead-drops, caverns and pitfalls than you can shake a stick at. Oh and there's a big stash of crates in one spot that ain't exactly small shakes, neither. It all feels like you wound up in a mad scientist's dream, sorta; for instance, if you fall into the water, which ends neatly against an invisible barrier, and swim to the edge of the cube world you're in, you fall down to a dry border at the bottom of the sea. And if you look up from here, half the sky is water. Very trippy. Many parts of the caves and ledges (and there are many, many parts of these) feel brilliant as you run and jump and frolic. Too many, though, look alike, and its hard to tell what's what with that blotchy pink/red texture over everything. Textures in many spots could use some alignment, and item placement, though solid, may have a few too many badges for oldtimers' tastes. Framerate throughout tends to the low side of the spectrum. Still, if you want a real wild and crazy adventure, haul off to the Island. Just take along some dramamine or something.
     Oh, I almost fergot, the Doc called this one a "beta," so there may be updates in store. Err also, it didn't have a .rcm file so I hadda fiddle around a bit and make one (usually I'd just send it back, but I got impatient) so if it doesn't load or something, you kin probably blame my hack job. Ahh and as an extra help there's a piratey-like map of the island in the .zip file, in case you get lost.
     Western Soccer (shot) by maus2_Co: Smallish DM/CTF map, sort've an arena actually. May overdo the wood panelling a bit, and leave it a bit ajar in some areas, but at least we've got pleasant use of light and shadow here, along with high framerates. The hall of mirrors effects (3dfx) in the goals actually serve to spice things up a bit, since the wooden hallways around the arena get a bit dull.

New Old GeForce Driver Links
     Krueger says the links he gave for old GeForce drivers that seem to work well in Outlaws (driver version 12.41) just died, so he gave me some new ones: Win 9x, Win 2k.
     Hmm, those don't seem to be working at the moment. Maybe they will when you read this. If not, I'm sure someone will have another set of links sooner or later.

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Sunday 12/30/01

Last Maps of the Year
     Ft_Blood (shot) by Snot_E_Noze: Innovative single-player mission here. Snot_E wanted special messages for stuff in the level so he's set the map up to install itself and rename some game files when run so that Outlaws sees it as a game patch and makes custom adjustments accordingly. Then when you quit out the file names are changed back and everything is normal again. Pretty darn slick. So's the level itself, puttin' you through yer paces as you gradually unlock section after dastardly section of a villain-infested old fort, with plenty of secrets and surprises to boot. Very nice indeed.
     Stinch (shot) by Chaabo: Says it may be his last OL map--let's hope not! Very inventive small town level with thunder in the distance, rain dripping off the eaves, life-giving mushrooms (don't try this at home) and Mary showing her knickers as she boogies down to Sanchez and the rest of the "Ramones." Not to mention the nice open layout with plenty of custom texture touches and great attention to light and dark.
     Joe (shot) by Listerine: Little desert town around a small pond. Some of the buildings are a bit boxy and the texturing occassionally a bit weird but overall the level has a fast, clean look which is never a bad thing and the use of interior vs exterior light and shadow breaks things up nicely. Framerate quite high in most areas, slightly lower in the central part but not bad. A couple spots to look out for: a deadly dark pit back in the caves (why do I always fall into those? :p) and a spot between a couple horses where I managed to pop into the "outside" desert area and couldn't get back in to the level proper. Still and all Joe comes off as a solid, good-sized level.
     Sniper's Hideout (shot) by OL_Sniper: The author's first map is a decent one. Now I know that, in the event I become a sniper on the lam, I'll want to hunt up a secret hideout on a little island surrounded by deadly lava. Come get me coppers! Nyahaha! Good framerates and decent looks though there isn't a whole lot to distinguish one narrow flat rocky passage from the next. I've got a soft spot for that nasty lava moat though.

Happy Christmas!
     Didja know that in England they apparently say "Happy Christmas" rather than "Merry Christmas"? Well that's what I'm told by credulous sources anyway. :P
     I'm a bit late in posting this but hey, it isn't too late for some holiday spirit, is it? Outlaw sent a link to the DR Merry Christmas page where you can enjoy a little holiday jingle, OL-style. Outlaw's father passed away recently but left this happy page behind for all to enjoy. 'Tis still the season!

GeForce Fiddling Fun
     Krueger has noticed that many Outlaws with GeForce cards keep getting lockups and nasty stuff like that. He says that these things apparently don't happen with nVidia's 12.41 drivers. These are pretty old by now and may not work too great with recent games but if you're an OL diehard, 12.41 may be just the thing. He passed on these download links for the drivers: Win9x, Win2k. He also mentioned that if you want to disable V-sync (which will allow your framerate to exceed your monitor's vertical refresh rate, which may be something like 60, 85, 100 or 120 Hz) you'll need a separate utility such as the one found here.

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Wednesday 12/19/01

CTF This X-Mas
     A CTF Christmas 2001 (shot) by Truffle: Truffle delivers a sequel to last year's holiday-themed map right on schedule. You got here one snow-laden mirrored battlefield with plenty of obstacles and cover across the no-man's-land, as well as side passages, underground tunnels, a couple waterfalls and some cute snowmen. There's gonna be a lot of strategy here as there are many ways to approach the flag—defenders have their work cut out for them, that's for sure! The only possible downside is slightly lower than usual framerates due to all the stuff visible at once but of course if you have anything like a modern system you probably won't notice the difference between 800 fps and 700 fps. :P
     Truffle's also got a "December Map Pack" over at his olhideout.net site, containing 12 winter-themed maps: Polar, Polar2, A CTF Christmas, A CTF Christmas 2000, A CTF Christmas 2001, Winter Wars, Ski Free, River Side, Snowman, Winter Repair, Winter Wars and Xmas Ranch. He didn't make all of those himself, of course, he's just providing a nice handy download for gettin' yer fix of holiday cheer, Outlaws-style.
     Untitled (shot) by Listerine: Whoops, I think the name of this map threw me 'cause its been sittin' in the innards of my inbox for nearly a month. Doh! Anyway, you play a renegade cop bent on revenge who—wait, sorry, getting my wires crossed here. This here's a small-to-mediumish DM level of a tiny town. The framerate's a bit low and the texturing could use some love but you know you can still run around and shoot people perfectly fine, no problems there. And the title makes it post-modern art, so there.

Frodo Lives
     I saw that phrase on a banner draped over a freeway overpass near the local public university. Would you say that Lord of the Rings fever has gotten to some people? It's a completely pointless thing to say, which is of course why I made it the title here.
     Oh also because this news is from dear old Mr. Baggins, who relates that he's added some custom weapons and characters to his Outlaws site which he's gathered from various permitting sources. He's also added yet another Western game to his "Klassiker" section and wouldn't you know it, this one's called "Outlaws." I smell a lawsuit a-brewin'!
     While you're there stop by his forum as well, he's holding a poll on whether he should keep the site in his native German or convert it all to English. All I can say is, we Americans are darn lucky that the rest of the world isn't as lazy as we are when it comes to learning foreign languages (I have a feeling that at some point in the future this will change and we'll all just have to sit around without any foreign relations, and take up inbreeding).
     On that happy thought, I bid ye Merry Christmas! I mean, normally I'd get in an update over the weekend but what with Kate in town and the Holiday Spirit (tm) in the air, it's looking unlikely. So take that extra time you'll have and finish your Christmas shopping a day early, for Pete's sake! =P

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Wednesday 12/12/01

Unreal Outlaws, Boothill Online, Unreal Badlands
soulstripper sent me a mail to say that his group is close to releasing a beta version of their Unreal-based Old West mod which has had the various names in the title of this post at one time or another. The official site is supposed to be here though it isn't loading for me at the moment (probably some sort of screw-up at tripod.com) :p.

Zone Requires Passport
The Crow mailed to tell me of difficulties logging in to the Zone today (well okay yesterday). I ran across this article URL at BluesNews.com which may reveal the source of the problem: playing at the Microsoft Gaming Zone (wait now its the MSN Gaming Zone) now requires that you register a Microsoft Passport account, apparently one of the first volleys in their bid to take over Internet commerce with their ".NET" strategy or whatever. The Passport requirement is confirmed at this Zone signup page. Look, just do it okay? Resistance to assimilation is illogical. =P

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Sunday 12/09/01

As Time Goes By™
     XMas Ranch (shot) by Hooter: A simply charming snowbound ranch with plenty of Christmas trees decked out in all sorts of styles and even a star shining down over the barn. Just lovely and a nice layout for some DMing too. The only thing that would bug me would be the invisible walls you run into around the sides of the ranch—I hate running into those things when I'm trying to dodge hot lead. That's how they got Billy the Kid, you know: ran him smack into an invisible wall that wasn't on his map.
     SILVER_GUN1 (shot) by EL_Cobra1: Named after the author's 3 1/2 year-old grandson: just think, the kid is playing a game older than himself! The dark red hue of the stony canyon here contrasts nicely with the clear blue waters of the pools connecting the canyon with the large irregular building next to it. The ledge above the canyon makes an ideal platform for launching dynamite down on those below except for the slight dip in framerate up there. If you don't mind modified rifles (use key #1—there's no regular pistol or rifle ammo here) and a little swimming from time to time, this looks like a good small DM level.

Newsy Bits
     Kali lost their "tracker" master server recently and are currently looking for a new host for their Internet gaming service. They're on a temporary server currently though I logged in to the Outlaws chat room with no trouble—not that there was anyone there, of course. Folks in the Duke Nukem channel were saying that normally there'd be three times as many folks there as there are now, so possible some are having trouble connecting.
     The current tracker can be found at 65.185.174.249 (my Kali seemed to find it automatically, somehow). Also, if you visit the web site link above you'll find a free public serial number—now that's a handy little item.
     According to posters on this thread at the temporary Kali.net discussion boards, Kali creator Jay Cotton, needing money to keep the service going, sold the rights to a Korean company named Be Tech. They involved a subsidiary Japanese company, Commondea, and now Jay isn't even sure who owns Kali, technically, but it definitely appears that he's the only one who cares about it—Kali lost its ISP because Be Tech stopped paying the bills. Let's hope Jay finds a good host soon.
     More on "Wanted: Dead or Alive": there's an interview with Zombie Studios on GameSpot about their in-the-works first-person Western shooter. "In-the-works" is a bit premature though since currently they're just shopping their Lithtech-based prototype around looking for a publisher. Good luck to 'em. When asked where they got the idea of doing a Western shooter, the reply is

The idea came about because we simply wanted to play another cowboy first-person shooter. While there have been a few mods for Quake and Half-Life, there hasn't been anything commercial since Lucas' Outlaws. The characters, weapons, story, and environments just make such a compelling case that this theme would make a great game.

Yeah, they might be right about that.

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Wednesday 12/05/01

More F-Prot Options
BTJustice pointed out that the Freeware version of F-Prot is DOS-based and thus might not work that swell on Microsoft operating systems that have taken out genuine DOS support, like WinXP (it seems to work fine on WinNT though), and doesn't offer real-time scanning of files opened on your system. Fortunately it comes in regular Windows versions as well and, though these aren't free, they go for $25 for a single user and $40 for a 20-system license, which compared to other virus software like Norton is dirt cheap. More on F-Prot for Windows at their page here.

Wanted: More Western Games
Zombie Studios (located right here in Seattle, as it happens—and no, I don't know them) put up some more screenshots of their "western adventure FPS" in development called "Wanted: Dead or Alive." Very nice looking screenshots indeed, though they look very preliminary (no bad guys, numbers in HUD display don't quite fit the art layout) and the first page indicates that they're still looking for a publisher. Link found on Blue's News.

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Sunday 12/02/01

Reality with a Twist
     Hackz (shot) by TheOutlawDad and Kid Macoo: Did you ever go in a building, make a U-turn and come out on a totally different planet? Well no, you didn't, not even that time in San Francisco. So this map will be something of a new experience—you go in a building, turn around and go out through an exit that should go to nearly same place and... it doesn't. You're elsewhere. Very odd. Please don't try to explain to me how it works because it will make my head hurt and spoil the magic. The building itself is slightly hallucinogenic, with oddly-angled walls, boxes in suspicious formations and a basement that keeps popping up where you least expect it. Looks-wise it ain't especially memorable aside from that two-planet thing but that's kind of enough, and specifically designed for CTF play. You'll find me sucking my thumb in a fetal position in one of the crates.
     Accordin' to the readme there are also a ton of modified weapons, special ones for each character. I noticed that Anderson's rifle ammo display was kinda funky. The readme has more details on the weapons. Some tips from Dad: "If you are standing in the water tank you become invincible. But there is no ammo in the water."

Bangs for the Memories
     MrBaggins has found a Commodore 64 game that probably served as a great deal of the inspiration of the "Westbang" game I blathered on about in the last update. You'll find good ol' "West Bank" on MrBaggin's site, available for download thanks to the illegal wonders of software emulation. He's also got a rather amazing variety of past Western and Lucasarts games. The site is still in German, of course, so for those who don't "sprechen zie Deutsch" (that means "have a clue," I think ;) like myself you'll find it by clicking on the "Downloads" link and then on the "Klassiker (I)" link which opens beneath it.

Viruses, ISPs and uhh Viruses
     I've been getting quite a few virus-laden emails lately, many from various Outlaws who must have me in their Outlook address books. These come for the most part in messages with a blank topic and have attached files with ".pif" and ".scr" extensions, the kind that Outlook loves to run automatically and thus infect your system. Luckily I don't have Outlook but for those who do, I recommend getting a darn good antivirus program. There's a freeware program, F-Prot, which is pretty good linked on my useful files page if you're too cheap or stubborn (like me :) to shell out the dough for a supery-duper automated one like Norton. Everyone at work had to install Norton recently due to some nasty worms that liked to infest shared drives on the local network. Eww.
     I have, or had, Excite@Home, and if you've been following online news you may have noticed they're in dire straights. I'm one of the folks whom AT&T went and converted over to their own broadband network—this all happened Saturday and was an amazingly smooth affair. Shockingly smooth, in fact; I'm really surprised that AT&T had their own backup network in place. So far it's been smooth sailing, I guess we'll see how it holds up when more people get their settings switched over to the new lines.
     Oh, so the real reason for mentioning this was that the Pale's Place pseudo-server has a new IP address, so make a note of that if you're one of the folks who like to drop in now and then and blow yourself up (that seems to be fairly popular, judging by what I see when I glance over at the lobby chat window). I'm not sure if this new one is static like the old one was—I suspect it isn't, so you may want to check it from time to time if you're having trouble connecting, since the IP might change if I have to reboot the system.

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Wednesday 11/28/01

Bang it for Free
     I finally got around to playing the now-freeware game Westbang by Czech developer Cascade, mentioned in my last update, and wow, I love it! Not quite Spaghetti Western in flavor, more like [Czech Republic food staple] Western, with hard-edged yet slightly ramshackle pen and ink lines, salty and grammatically amusing language and just plain fun first-person shooting action.
     As sheriff in a rough town you stand in the bank watching the three doors. Is this a customer coming in to deposit money, or are they going to plant you six feet under? A twitch-player's dream. The gameplay is completely stolen from at least one old arcade game whose name I can't recall in the least but they did a great job with it and the whole atmosphere here. The interface is a joy, the mouse control customizable and super smooth.
     I can't get enough of it and it's free! Get the 7.2 MB download from the link above, and don't worry that the web page is in Czech because the game is all in (sometimes shaky) English. Huzzah! Oh, here's a screenshot. Pretty simple stuff. If you shoot someone who doesn't have a gun aimed at you, you lose a badge—lose all yer badges and they'll get fed up and string you up for murder. Of course if you get shot too much it's curtains. Do well (ie get a lot of safe deposits in the bank while taking out the quota of villains) and you graduate on up to a busier (and more dangerous) bank. Great details like being able to break things in the bank with stray shots, and solid sound effect with even clever musical pieces. This is the best Western game I've played after Outlaws. :) A hearty thanks to duckandcover7 for the tip!

Trade in Your 3dfx for Peanuts
     The 3dfx web site has an announcement that it will be going permanently offline on February 19, 2002. And actually there's really nothing there now, not even drivers—the drivers link directs you to the VoodooFiles.com 3rd-party site. There is an offer to trade in your old 3dfx card and get $10-$30 off the purchase of a GeForce 3 but this isn't really a great deal unless maybe you have an old Voodoo Graphics 4 MB card laying around somewhere that you wouldn't mind parting with (and the card brand you trade in for isn't one of the better known ones).
     Hmm interesting there are "x-3dfx" drivers for Voodoo 4 and 5 on voodoofiles.com dated just a few days ago, version 1.08.04. They're "beta" and possibly third-party of course, but I guess I'll give 'em a shot when I get a chance since I'm already running older "x-3dfx" drivers already. :)

The Crow Does Windows
     I probably shouldn't encourage him, but ahh why not. The Crow seems to have conducted a whirlwind Outlaws tour of the various flavors of the Windows operating system, here's his report:

I would first like to say yes, I have encountered those MGL problems before with using windows XP, but I never did mention them, "Oh my," but also during multiplay in the MSN Gaming Zone, I noticed that after a few min. in killing that the other person would disappear! Many other people I have talked with have encountered these problems, It seem that the only good OuTLaWz you can play is just the single player missions =P other problems I have "heard about"- "Personally I haven't experienced these problems, but other Outlaws players have," is when your game is finished, your screen can go completely black, and you may have to ctrl + alt + del to get out of it. Well one day I got curious thinking about which system outlaws would run on best, so, I turned on my 5 computers and on my first test I tried Outlaws on windows 95, and I had no errors on it, the game ran perfectly, then I tried Windows 98, The game was ok but, it seemed slower to me, and when I played with it on multiplayer it can only play up to 4 players, and only on specific maps, so I guess my test varied with that one =P then I tried using Windows M.E. The game ran PERFECTLY; and It was awsome on multiplayer like usual hehe, then I tried Windows N.T., the game ran somewhat ok but it wasen't all that good for multiplayer and MGL woulden't run =( Then finaly I tried Windows XP =~I The game sucked on most parts, single was ok I guess, but multiplayer, bah it sucked, -- also mentioning my regular fps of 600-700 went to 320- 450 -- guess thats a PC problem, I dunno =P -- So it seems that the best windows systms to use on Outlaws is its Windows 95, followed by my favorite M.E. then 98, and N.T. then X.P. I hope this might have answerd a question or thought you had! Thanks for your time, The Crow =0)

I'm not too sure about some of the individual findings (that is, how many would apply to the OS as a whole vs his specific system's configuration) but of course many of these are known, and I agree with his conclusion about Windows 95. :) Too bad Win95 is no longer supported by DirectX. ;P Grr.

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Sunday 11/25/01

XP Activation—Actual Info
     David Ferstat sent me some handy links about XP "Product Activation," that thing you have to do in order to use XP, and which prevents you from installing it on multiple machines (you're supposed to buy separate copies for separate computers, of course).
     This article in Australian Personal Computer goes pretty in-depth, talking about the actual steps in the activation process, how much stuff you can change on your system before it asks you to reactivate, and so forth. It's quite positive and they said they didn't have any problems with it, so I guess that's a good sign. They also point out that most OEM machines that come with XP will probably have it already pre-activated for you. Of course, none of this solves what may happen if you're without an internet connection and you don't have the 800 number handy and you just swapped your video card and now XP won't run until you contact Microsoft somehow and it's 2:00am and your paper is due the next day. Of course in that case some might say that you deserve what you get, you procrastinating git. It still smacks of Big Brotherism to me but I guess I can't complain until it bites me, which will hopefully be never.
     Oops, tangent! The second link David sent is from an XP Review on Computer Games Online which has a bit about the product activation stuff. A very positive review of the OS overall, though they note that it isn't quite as up to speed gamewise yet as '98 is.
     Okay! No more XP articles for a while, I hope! :P

MGL and XP
     See, I went a whole paragraph break before mentioning XP again!
     A reader wrote in with a problem: when he tries to select the MGL drivers in the Outlaws video configuration program under Windows XP he gets an error message (something like "an error has occurred and this program will shut down") and then the program, err, shuts down. Not fun!
     I gave it a shot in WinNT (first copying the files from the "Support" folder on disc 1, of course—see the link above for more on running with MGL video drivers) and got an error message when choosing the MGL drivers in the olcfg.exe utility, though my error was "Unable to register window class!" And then it closed. So yeah, MGL doesn't work in WinNT either.
     Probably because, reading through that old MGL page of mine, I now recall that MGL actually opens and DOS window and runs OL in VESA mode. Since NT and XP don't have a true DOS support in the first place, there's really no reason, not to mention probably no way, for the folks writing the video card drivers to get VESA mode compatibility in there, at least not in a form OL can handle. I wouldn't be too surprised if there are a couple cards out there with drivers that can pull it off somehow but for the most part, if you have NT or XP, don't bet the farm on being able to run OL in MGL mode.

More Bang for Your West
     duckandcover7 sends glad tidings of fun little Western game that you can download for free thanks to the miracle of the Internet and the kind folks at the Cascade software company in the Czech Republic. Just a 7.2 MB download from the official Westbang download page, though it seems to download real slow even over broadband. Yes the page is in Czech but the docs, duck tells me, are in English. He also mentions that as recently as six months ago Westbang was a shareware title but has now made the happy transition to freeware. Woo! So start downloadin', take a nap and hopefully you'll be able to enjoy some simple Western shootin' fun when you wake up. As you've probably guessed I still have to do that so I don't have gameplay impressions for you, but you can at least check out the tiny screenshots on the web site. And don't go tryin' ta blame me if it turns out to make your monitor explode or give you hairy palms or something. ;)

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Wednesday 11/21/01

Christmas Preview
Just a little something to get you in that holiday mood, in case stuffing yourself with turkey isn't enough: Truffle has a preview of his upcoming "A CTF Christmas 2k1" map up at The Outlaws Hideout.

XP the Legend Continues
Thanks to scaved for providing some more info on Windows XP product registration:

Just to inform you, activating XP can be done over the Internet (quickest way) or you can call Microsoft, tell them your product key and another number generated by your XP (this number includes a "checksum" of your hardware configuration and remember that MS actually can't find out through this number what hardware you own). When MS has this two IDs, they can then you give your Activation ID over the phone, which you have to enter manually to activate XP. This process must not be done immediately after the installation of XP, I think you have some 30 days (could be 2 months, I'm not sure on this one) to activate xp or your xp installation won't run anymore. Actually it will boot after this deadline, but you won't be able to login anymore...

     Truffle, such a busy lad, has a very interesting Windows XP "preview" right here on his aforementioned OLHideout site. He goes over some of the features and, what I like particularly, has a bunch of screenshots of various interface configurations. Well done!
     Some thoughts occurred to me while reading his article. For one thing, the new fat blue-bar XP look was largely inspired by the interface in The Sims. That's not really a bad thing as The Sims' interface worked quite well in the game, but it seems a bit overdone for an operating system interface. I'm sure youngsters will like the pretty colors though.
     Second, a couple points that I think Truffle may not have known. The System Restore and .zip support aren't new to XP, they were in Microsoft OS's at least as early as Win98SE. I got a bit of a shock a week or so ago when I rebooted my Win98SE machine at work and it told me that the system registry was invalid and it was reverting to the most recent backup. Well that's great except that I'd done absolutely nothing that should have broken it to begin with, and now all my drivers were out of date and scrambled up. :P
     Finally, XP continues the process of accumulating new features previously sold separately by other software companies, as revealed by several quotes from Truffle.
    "[The new Windows Media Player is] Real Player and Real Jukebox combined." Well I'm sure Real will be real pleased to hear that, eh?
     "Viewing pictures is much easier in XP than in previous versions. It has built in support rather than relying and 3rd party tools." Well thank goodness, those dirty 3rd party companies can now jolly well rot for all we care.
     "No need for WinZIP. XP supports compressed archives already." Of course, their .zip interface is pretty sucky, but that doesn't really matter now does it? Screw WinZip, we all just used unlicensed or pirated versions of their utility anyway and now we don't have to feel guilty about it anymore, those bloodsuckers.
     Okay so I'm embellishing a bit. Go check Truffle's article, especially for the screenshots if you've never seen XP in action before.

* * *

Sunday 11/18/01

Deadlands Preview
Whew, slow news day. 007 saves me with news of a preview of Deadlands at GameSpot. Seems to be some kind of first and third-person RPG in the works by a UK team, Headworks Productions. Some sort of funky alternate history kind of thing, there are some nice background renders along with the article.

On WinXP Product Activation
I was wondering how WinXP product activation works, here's what BTJustice tells me:

You get a license number similar to that of Windows '98 and above. You enter your license number just like you would during the install of the OS. THEN, near the end of the install it asks you to register with Microsoft so you get your activation code. They give you a 100+ number and letter ID that uniquely identifies your system. The problem with this is if you upgrade or replace any hardware, you have to get a new activation code.

I still wonder how you go about registering if you don't have Internet access, though BT added that there are corporate editions that don't require activation. Oh and Truffle suggested that there may be an 800 number to call in if you don't have internet access, which sounds like a reasonable way of handling it.

* * *

Wednesday 11/14/01

Die Web Site

Mr. Baggins' Outlaws Site
An unusual and lively color scheme, kinda spiffy Javascript menu (requires Javascript browser, of course), useful editing files and tips plus screenshots of an upcoming single-player adventure make this site well worth a visit, even if you can't read German (well okay the tips won't be that handy if you can't read them but he does have some nice illustrations of operations in LawMaker). Be sure to drop by the Downloads>Klassiker page where you'll find some great old C64 Western games.

XP Trick?
The Crow seems to have been getting disconnected during Outlaws matches with WinXP, or something, but says he seems to have found a solution:

Heyas! I have figuard out a way to stop mesing up in games with WIndows XP, when you instal the game, dont hit the Pentium 120+ or ect. hit the one above it, and you will notice in single or multiplayer that, you can stay connected! Also getting the NO cd crack helped me also, --- im not to sure if it actully "Helped" but I think it did ; )--- But also you shouldent dis-connect or lagg to bad with the 120 or lower, Also the FPS could change some, but Mine dident change all that much, But if it changes a lot, try Running the MGL Drivers in your "support" folder contained with the Outlaws cd1, Just Copy the MGL crap in t then pastre it where your Outlaws files-maps, Hacks, ect. are in there, thenLoad Up outlaws and hit "Select Video Mode" then try the MGL on 640 X ??? <-- cant remember the number :) or the 600 X 800, personely I use the 240 X 380 and Im getting 538 FPS on it so the Framerate isent all that bad, also to get higher FPS shrink your screen with the " - " during the game, that will also give u atleast + 40 FPS

     I'm not quite sure what to make of all that but hey, if it fixed some problem for someone, well that's super!

Cleanup
     Tha Zeurdoos pointed me to the utility Reg Cleaner for cleaning out old stuff from your system, basically it gives you a handy graphical interface for the software entries in your system registry so that you can delete old ones. Of course you should ALWAYS back up your registry before mucking with it, since deleting the wrong thing could prevent Windows from booting up.

WinOL
     I got some interesting responses to the Win95/DirectX post in my last update. Some people like XP (I never said it wasn't stable / user friendly, of course). Some people regard Microsoft as pure evil. I can understand both of these viewpoints. I guess that my main beef with Microsoft's operating systems is just that the system requirements double with each new version, for little apparent gain. My Win95 OSR2 does everything I need an operating system to do, and it runs on 16 MB of RAM and about 250 MB hard drive space. WinXP, on the other hand, requires 128 MB RAM for full functionality and 1.5 GB hard drive space. To me, that's just daffy. Of course for a little perspective I came from using the Amiga, whose early OS did everything I needed (window GUI, command-line, configurable startup scripts, install and run 3rd party programs via hard drive and floppy) and THAT ran on 0.5 MB RAM (I think dad splurged on the 1 MB version though) and a ~600K floppy disk. And it multitasked far better than Windows ever will. :P Ah, those were the days. Well no, not really. But at least operating systems weren't massive resource hogs back then.
     All this makes me wish I had |337 Linux h@x0r skillz. Mr. Baggins pointed out that recent versions of WINE (an implementation of the Windows environment in Linux, or something like that; all I really know is that Linux geeks hate it when you call WINE an emulator :p) let you run OL single-player just fine under Linux, which is mighty cool.
     Back to XP, Hoss raised the spectre of potential security holes in XP, mostly based on reports from Steve Gibson's GRC.com which detail potential denial-of-service attacks which can be launched from WinXP machines due to XP's "Raw Sockets" support, or something like that. Now, there are rebuttals to this from the Register and Microsoft but it sounds like there's a point to be had there somewhere.
     Nowhere_Man brought up the much-hyped product activation code stuff in XP which sends a unique ID of your system to Microsoft and will let them shut down your OS over the internet if they want to. That doesn't sound too fun. According to Gibson, of course, WinXP has already been cracked. So maybe that isn't such a problem after all. ;P
     Say, I'm a bit unclear about this product activation code anyway. I've read that you have to punch this code in to activate the OS, and then it goes online and sends the security info to Microsoft. So my question is, what happens if you don't have internet access? Does the OS just not start? That doesn't sound right, and a friend of mine with XP says that it isn't, but wasn't really clear on how its all supposed to work if you *don't* have internet access. If someone has a link to info on that, hook me up. Currently I'm thinkin' that if I do have to update my OS (probably round about the time I get a new system) I'll just pick up an OEM Win98SE or something.

* * *

Monday 11/12/01

No More DirectX for Win95
     The new version of DirectX, 8.1, does not support Windows 95 (A or B). When you run the self-extracting DX81eng.exe, a warning message appears which says "This version of DirectX is not compatible with the version of Windows currently installed. Press OK to exit.
     Most of you already knew that and don't care because you updated to a more recent version of Windows long ago. As you know I'm a Win95 holdout since Microsoft hasn't added anything I need since they came out with '95 and have in fact made their operating systems gradually less desirable by doubling the system requirements with each new release.
     Now this wouldn't really bug me that much, I mean MS makes Windows and DirectX and they're perfectly within their rights to stop supporting their own past products, except that in this case an effort had to be made by them to actually restrict support. That is, they must have coded something in to the DirectX 8.1 installer which specifically prevents it from proceeding when it checks and finds that the local OS is Win95. For all intents and purposes Win95B (OSR 2.1), with Internet Explorer 4+ installed, is the same darn thing as Windows 98.
     Now, it still wouldn't have been that bad if Microsoft had just said well, we just don't want to bother supporting '95 anymore. But they didn't just say that. They came up with this stupendously preposterous excuse instead:

Why won't DirectX 8.1 install on Windows 95?

With very few exceptions game titles that require DirectX 8.1 will also require a computer new enough that it was built with Windows 98 or a more recent version installed. This is because modern games require processor speeds in excess of the fastest processors used by Windows 95.
Microsoft DirectX FAQ

     "...a computer new enough that it was build with Windows 98... installed." Well, now that the Feds have slapped our wrists, we can just come right out and say that we're a monopoly, can't we? Well dig this, baby. My current computer, a Athlon 533 w/ 384MB RAM and Voodoo 5, didn't come with Windows 98. It began life as a 233 w/ 64 MB RAM and Riva 128 w/ Voodoo 1, and I've upgraded steadily ever since. It runs current games just fine, thanks. I guess I'm a rare exception. I feel special now. No mention of the thought that some people just might be crazy enough to prefer older, less bloated versions of the operating system. Heaven forefend.
     Ah, but even better is "modern games require processor speeds in excess of the fastest processors used by Windows 95." Huh? Come again? Since when do operating systems have a maximum clock speed? What's the max speed we can run Windows XP at then? Since I'm running it on a 533, does this mean my installation of Windows 95 is dangerously overclocked and could melt down at any moment? Good gravy man, why wasn't I warned of those precarious state of affairs in the Win95 user manual?!?
     Well. Now that I've got that little rant out of my system, what does this mean for Win95 gamers? It means if you want to have tech support for any new games you'll have to install a more recent version of Windows. Because you can bet your biscuits that any new game that uses DirectX is not going to claim to support Windows 95. Try calling tech support with any problem and they'll drop you like a rock as soon as they hear your OS. Sure you could buy games and just hope they'll still work, if you like risking your money. Go for it.
     As for me, this brings that "someday when I need to" view of when I'll finally get a new system into sharper focus. Clears things up. 'Cause I'll need to for the next new game I buy. Why a new system? 'Cause I'll set my hazardously overclocked Win95 system aside for Outlaws, patty cake.

* * *

Sunday 11/11/01

Today's Date
     Check out today's date. Yessir, not every day you get a quality binary date like that. Won't see the likes for another nine years, I reckon.

New Maps Reported, Sir!
     Whistle Stop 2.0 (shot) by Cutter: This tough ol' LawMaker comes out of retirement for one more classic OL showdown. A train track runs from one side of the horizon to the other, cutting through a little collection of small buildings, a water, tower and two nearby buttes. The place looks fabulously ramshackle... reminds me of the beginning of Once Upon a Time in the West, actually. The custom textures (and almost all of them look like custom jobs) are fantastically realistic, as is the use of environmental sound—love that train whistle! (And yep, Cutter's got a couple of his signature Western soundbites hidden around these dusty old buildings.) Heck even the sky is a custom job, and even the scrub plants dotting the desert look great. The buildings appear deceptively simple but each offers a large variety of crawlspaces, entryways, windows and so forth to keep gameplay interesting. The attention to detail in the construction is amazing: I counted three levels of shade in the entryway to one building, and even the small sign on the front roof of the other has a small wedge-shaped board behind it to provide support. If you want some space you can go off into the desert a piece with your rifle—a real far piece, actually. On your way you might want to pick up the Sheriff's Badge on one of the slopes. Yep, a Badge. That'll keep things interesting, eh? Incidentally, the readme in the first version (which was updated within just a few days to this readme-less version) noted that the textures won't render correctly without 3D acceleration, probably 'cause Cutter used unusual texture sizes to get just the look he wanted.
     Winter War (shot) by WaRRioR: Nice seasonal CTF map with three buildings in a snow-covered landscape. The two end buildings house the flags, the middle serves as an important control point for either side. Each base seems rather tiny until you notice the elevator in the back wall, which takes you down to a whole second level of the map. The above-ground stuff looks good and provides enough tactical layout that I'd prefer to do without the rather clanky, dark and bland underground bit—but maybe I just have childhood trauma of being stuck in Underground Seattle or something. Who knows how reliable the elevators will be in a laggy game, though they worked perfectly fine when I was just running through by myself: slick operation really, you just run in and up (or down) they go.
     Sanctuary CTF by WaRRioR: It's Sanctuary with flags (I gather) for those who just can't get enough of the place. It's funny, looking at Sanctuary makes you appreciate the work of longtime LawMakers like Cutter—there are quite a few custom maps now that completely blow away the old LEC levels. If anyone at Lucasarts is watching they ought to be darn proud.

Where Warriors Wroam

The Four Horsemen
Beginnings of a decent-looking T4H posse site by WaRRioR. Not much here yet but the fast tidy layout, updated news page and downloads for his maps are a promising start.

Are You Ad-aware?
     three_fingers passed along the link to the Lavasoft website. Who cares, you ask? Well, they make this utility called "AD-aware" that promises to scan your system and get rid of any spyware junk that may have been installed by those "cool" little downloads your friends like to mail to you. The utility itself has a very slick interface and appeared to scan my whole system in about a minute. I say "appeared" because it didn't find any spyware so I can't be sure it worked but it appears to be legit. And that progress meter is just so slick looking it was well worth the quick download and install just to see it go. :p
     I'm sure one of the first things it checks is the "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run" registry key, where a lot of boot-time software likes to hide itself. If you know how to use the Regedit system tool that's a good place to look once in a while to make sure that nothing you don't want is running itself when Windows loads up—viruses like to hang out there too. If you don't know how to use Regedit then hey, just try AD-aware or something.
     Speaking of viruses we've been having a fun one at work lately, the Nimda virus. It searches your local network for shared (writable) drives and just copies itself over. Nasty bugger, the shared folder on one of my machines had it—fortunately I'd actually taken that system offline because the power source fan had died. Mahaha! Take that, Nimda! It was a pain to get rid of too because, since it had managed to infect some WinMe system files, Windows' own anti-moron protection prevented me (and Norton Antivirus) from deleting the infected stuff. And with spiffy WinMe I couldn't seem to boot into a geniune DOS mode where those files would be removable. Grr! Good thing I was able to make a Win98 boot disk, although even then it wasn't quite easy to delete the bugger because WinMe had made the folder it was in a special "hidden" folder. Whoo! Just about too much excitement in one week for me, let me tell ya. =P

* * *

Wednesday 11/7/01

One Freakin' Map
     FReaK (shot) by Listerine: Flat and dark are generally not two things you'd really be on the lookout for in a new map. This map has them in spades so, if you happen into a game in it, you'll be forced to deal with this. Okay it's flat, so you don't have to worry about ambushes from above or below—but you also can't ambush people that way yourself. Straightup run and gun here. And dark, so at least it'll be a little tough for snipers shooting all the way across the flat ground to spot ya. Also the darkness hides some rough parts of the texture job. Framerate could be better. Item placement seems decent. So not really a bad map here, once you get past the first impression.

Maps Travelling in Packs
     Truffle is serving up map packs over at www.olhideout.net. Basically just collections of maps picked by him for some reason (I think he likes them :p), the first weighs in at a healthy 900K and includes Longwar 1, 2 and 3, Guadalcanal, tehC and The Hood. If you don't have most of these, here's a nice simple way to pick 'em up. Truff says the next pack will have a nice seasonal holiday theme, so if Santa brings you coal again this year at least you'll have a nice little bundle of goods from Truffle.

BT Tech Tips
     I'm all thumbs when it comes to certain computer tech stuff, like installing new OS's and motherboards. BTJustice pointed out (in response to Aaron Sawyer's recent upgrade woes) that if you happen to install a new motherboard in your system, it's not a bad idea to reinstall your OS, since Windows tends to try to configure itself to your motherboard when you run Windows setup.

* * *

Sunday 11/4/01

Two New Maps
     TwoFeather's Hideout (shot) by Toxic: It'd be tempting to call this a simple arena-style map but the gorgeous texturing and details such as the broken floor in the central tower really make it seem like a place of some sort only you can't quite identify it so its kind of exotic. Beautiful lighting effects, smart use of ambient sound, clever item placement, smooth flow of interlocking loops—what's not to like here, really? Superb small to medium DM map.
     Night Raid (shot) by LMT: A CTF map long in development by the gang at LMT, just now finished up and sent in by Truffle. Your standard two-bases-across-bridge type of thing but with a nice ambiance, thoughtful fort layout and a really wide bridge. You can also take the low route through tunnels and wading across the river of course (and fortunately for you the sticks of TNT floating in the water aren't too damp to use ;). Framerate drops some when looking across the bridge in spots, the texturing could use a bit of tweaks here and there and the unbroken twilight can get a bit gloomy but this remains a solid CTF map with just enough differences to make it worth your while.

Truffling
     Truffle's long-running "Outlaws Hideout" site now has a domain: olhideout.net. Swank! And the Outlaws Message Board has a new address to go along with it:

The Outlaws Message Board
General Outlaws message board, has been around for some time in various incarnations, currently overseen by Truffle. Good place to go for general Outlaws chit-chat, plus a few additional boards such as a LawMaker board and a board about the OL Mod for Half-Life.

Truffle wrote up a little mini-review of his first impressions of Windows XP on the board (he likes it), though it does have the old '98 and 'NT bugs in Outlaws. He promises some more stuff like screenshots later this week. He's also planning on mailing Lucasarts and urging them to put out a patch to fix these issues with recent Windows operating systems, there's more about that on the main page of the site if you're interested in helping out.

Athlon Troubles
Though things like this should probably go on message boards like the fine one linked above... they get mailed to me. I guess I'm interested in the answer as well, so here goes—this was sent in by Aaron Sawyer (aka "Blackhawk3d"):

I just got an upgrade from a 450mhz cpu to a 1.2 ghz AMD Athlon! There are problems, though. I am using the newest version of Windows95, and I can't go online, it crashes, and it won't detect my logitech wingman digital extreme 3d joystick. I have installed the "amd-k62 update". Of course, I know you might not know what the heck is wrong, I am just asking if you can post this to find out if anybody else has ideas. Will I have to upgrade to win98? thanks

You can mail Aaron at [removed] and this will probably be the last time he wants me to post that, since it seems that any email addresses posted here get a little share of the regular spam that comes my way. ;) (In a vain attempt to mitigate the flood I've added a little junk to the beginning of his address if you click that link, so be sure to remove the "remove" bit there if you're mailing him).

Run! It's PBS!
Though they probably just got it from the BBC... Anyway I came across a "pale" quotation that is just too clever not to share--so there!

All through one summer, when we were in the country, and I but sixteen, I was made to sit opposite him in his study at ten o'clock each morning and smoke a cigar under threat of a beating from my English tutor should I but turn a paler shade of pale.
Paul Scott, The Day of the Scorpion

* * *

Wednesday 10/31/01

A Treat!
     How convenient! Huju sent along this URL which is a little web-based Western game in which you duel a handful of rather colorful opponents. It takes some pretty sharp timing to prevail and is actually fairly amusing, so if you're hyped up on Halloween candy overload, try this out on that itchy trigger finger.

Half-Life Mod Update
     TonToE mentioned in a mail that his Outlaws Mod for Half-Life site has been updated in recent weeks with screenshots of some new map conversions they're working on, and mentions that they're working on finishing up team and CTF modes at the moment. When I checked the mod out three months ago (jeez, has it been that long? heh these last few months have been a blur ;) it was looking most impressive to say the least, I can hardly imagine how much cooler it must be getting nowadays. Anyway, check the new pics on the mod site. Oh, there's also mention in the news of another Western mod they're working on, "Boot Hill Online" which uses the Tribes 2 engine.

Crowing over XP
     The ever loquacious Crow had these tips for those happy enough to have installed Microsoft's latest barn-burner, Windows XP:

I looked at the text below that was dealin' with the Windows XP probs, and I gotta say that most of your problems are who you choose too play with ;p I have XP on one of my pc's and I only have trouble with pings above 500, so the best thing to do if your playing with XP, is to look for pings BELOW 500, and stay away from those taunts so ya don't lagg yourself up to lockin' up ;p I seem to find that when playing with more 6 or more players I will lock up aswell, and when playing some very low FPS maps in CTF may affect aswell, but if ya want a good game to play in ctf or ect. ;p look for people with Cable Modems, DSL's, and 56k Masters, because that away you wont have a greater chance of lockin' up! If your probs continue entertain yourself with 2-3 players @ these good 3 maps ;0) and they are Repair, Paperbag, and Olympia. If you think you might have some troubles with FPS as well check out pals' http://www.paleface.net/filemgl.html <<< FASTER and BETTER framerate section, It really helped me, I went from 50 - 60 FPS too about 350-420 fps in almost every map, If you have continuing troubles with XP or NT e-mail me @ [removed] or [removed] I have some really neat files that may help ya out!

     Well it sounds like the usual Win98 thing, where you have trouble joining games with pings above 400ms, plus the NT random crashing in multiplayer issue. How swell to have an operating system that combines them together for us. :)

A Confession
     I have to get something off my chest here. It's rather disturbing and has been going on for quite some time and I just can't keep it shut up anymore.
     When I make a post here it starts with orange text. As I type the HTML code I consistently type "ornage" instead of "orange" by mistake. I don't know why, my fingers just punch it out that way.
     Whew. Okay thanks for listening, I feel a bit better now.

Fangs for the Maps
     Losyaya2 (shot) by ELCobra1: Update of this canyon map with one large one-room building, the readme says "Updated map A few more hidey holes, changed the canyon walls and added more ambiant to see better changed some weapons that wouldn't regenerate added some windows to cabin in canyon."
     Jo (shot) by ELCobra1: Pyramid in middle of a small square valley with ledges along two sides, plus modified rifles (large magazines, different firing sound, likely high damage) in fair abundance. The framerate is quite good which is something many maps with this kind of layout don't manage to pull off. Nice how there are little low interior rooms in the pyramid so that it becomes bunker-like. You'll need it to survive those rifles! Simple but effective use of lighting and textures.

* * *

Sunday 10/28/01

Bobbin' for Maps
     still (shot) by Listerine: Three low, rather non-descript and dark buildings in a wide low valley. Pretty much a rifley type of map, I'd think. Nothing here that really stands out but the framerate is pretty good throughout.
     Ghost House (shot) by ShiftyTuco: ShiftyT serves up a nice Halloween treat and a new LawMaker trick or two to go along with it. The old boarded-up house (nice board sprites) is suitably old, abandoned, dark and, of course haunted. The cute lil' ghosties won't last long in the face of some good hot lead but jeepers, shooting these little fellas would be like shooting Casper. Some nifty lighting effects, not to mention some creepy props (and a very special "chicken") put the finishing touches on this festively spooky map.

Crow Zone
     The Crow seems to be having trouble since a recent Zone update and could use a bit of help. Quoth the raven:

With the new Zone (Updates) my gaming has been cut in half, (most of you can tell because im not in there bitching about cndyman46_9) and whenever im in a game I lagg like crazy, well I have a Cable modem and this diden't happen before the updates, I was wondering if anyone else is having troubles with the new zone besides me, the troubles mostly are, --- > None loading, web pages, trouble with signing in, Errors, and having ZClient Freezing-(Not responding). I know a good amount of people that has had more trouble than I have had, DIngo,Uboo77,_CrowsPartner_, Xx_LivingDaylights_xX ect. Now if someone good e-mail my happy ass @ [removed] or [removed] and tell me how to load this M 0 f 0, I'd really appreciate it : ) Thx. for ya Time ---The Crow

* * *

Wednesday 10/24/01

Old Gas
Mountaineer (shot) by Gas: Old map by Gas sent in by J-P. Unusual CTF map with canyon walls, mountains and enclosures laid out in large hollow cylindrical shapes. Plus if you jump up on the outer rim you can see that you're surrounded on all sides by water, a kinda neat effect. Nice texture work throughout. There's gonna be a lot of sprained ankles from falls here since the bases are up on these mountain thingies, which also lower the framerate a tad. Definitely something new for CTF fans though. Err wait it isn't new, it's kinda old.

* * *

Friday 10/19/01

Mommy!
     Ohhh boy is my inbox large right now. Well it looks like I'll finally have some time to do some work so I might as well start this mother of all updates off with the "new" maps.
     HellNo (shot) by UnDerTaKer: The author seems to have a special keenness for those fellers who refuse to play by ML rules. Tons of non-ML items in these little box rooms, plus an unpleasant little surprise of sorts. More of a gag than a serious map.
     Trailer Trash 2 (shot) by Chaabo: Minor update to his trailer park level with a few small cosmetic changes and some bugfixes.
     Mountain (shot) by Who_000: A sort of king-of-the-hill type of stack seemingly floating way up above a desert. Watch out for a pit-trap or two. Framerate is rather low with this open, circular layout. No pickup items around to speak of and maybe not much point in getting to the top where you'll just present an easy target for anyone else. Curious.
     Confusing Clearing (shot) by Who_000: Are you too happy? Do you just feel like tormenting yourself? Or perhaps you dream of wandering for hours in a lush hedge-maze? Well look no further, this is the Historical Mission for you! Three levels of really tough mazes--not tough in complexity really since they're all pretty much squarishly constructed, its just that every area looks the same as all the others in the level, so you get disoriented very quickly and tend to run in circles. I got down to the third level where it was pitch black and I feel into a pit and died. Umm... that was probably the end. Yeah, that's the ticket. I beat the maze! Woohoo!
     3dfort (shot) by Chaabo: A sort of "speed" version of the old Lucasarts fort with changes that make it easier to get around, open up new areas (look ma, I'm on the roof!) and improve performance in many locations. Neat stuff.
     WW1 (shot) by sound_and_fury: Very nice-looking no-man's-land CTF-style map. Dead soldiers and barbed wire abound and the ruined houses look very nice. Framerate is a bit low with all this detail out in the open, but I've seen worse. The tunnels below are a little tight and claustrophobic but hey I guess that's tunnels for you, eh? A couple odd minor flickering polys here and there but on the whole this map looks very spiffy.
     D.E.A. (shot) by Chaabo: Ah the little blue back-woods, site of a feud between "the law" and "the Hippies." Looks good with tight little buildings and a zippy framerate. "Dude, I smoked our flag, man!"
     La Trampa (shot) by PahPah: Did you ever just wish you could run amuck in a giant round of cheese? C'mon, sure you did. Live that dream here as you chase your buddies around these yellow hallways. The rind texture looks quite nice, I must admit. Somewhat disorienting inside. Two custom weapons here, though they've been seen before ("Buffalo" rifle and repeating pistol).
     Hoeville 2 (shot) by PahPah: Don't worry, no hookers were injured in the making of this map. In fact its just dedicated to the "Hoe" gang, quite harmless you see--so don't have any qualms about checking in to the "Hoetel" in this small valley town. Nice little buildings and a few custom weapons, including the "Qbomb" which ticks like a clock and freezes you in place like the gat, until you throw it.
     Lonach (shot) by Pilgrim: Several large buildings in a valley. They're fairly non-descript but nice and roomy and the framerate is pretty good. Item placement is pretty heavy, also this isn't an ML map for those who care. A rising tunnel around one side of the valley gives things a nice flow.
     Hummm (shot) by sound_and_fury: It's updated again... I think? Now if only I could figure out why there are road signs scattered all over the cave...
     Sandflea (shot) by Chaabo: Gee if you stick Sanchez in a turban he looks almost like one of those darned militant types from the Middle East, doesn't he? Let's get 'im! Sure that doesn't sound very nice, maybe, but its amazing how quickly stuff like Political Correctness goes right out the window when the US gets mad at some third world country. Anyway, here the Osama Bin Sanchez's have taken over Dry Gulch and guess whose job it is to root them out? Works quite well as a single-player mission, actually. If you just want the custom character sprite you can get it right here for a limited time.
     Lonach 2 (shot) by Pilgrim: Lonach at night, with wolf howls and thunder and stuff. Will overwrite the files from the first version.
     Volcano (shot) by Hooter: What would you do if a volcano sprung up and bathed your small quiet town in lava? Why, you'd get out yer trusty rifle and shoot hell out of everyone, that's what you'd do. Trust me on this one. Fortunately most of the lava here has cooled so it won't burn through your boots, but the smooth gameplay keeps this small DM level piping hot!
     Rattles (shot) by Chaabo: Cool rocky ridges surround a small barn and provide a nice circular flow to this little DM map. Looks mighty fine too with good framerates from most angles. And remember, if you hear a rattle in a dark hole, don't stick your hand in...
     Box Mill (shot) by Snot_E_Noze: Awesome single-player adventure, very carefully plotted. It reminds me a lot of the first level in the retail game: open layout to the ranch but you have to take it building-by-building in a certain order. Quite well done and extremely challenging, even in "Good" difficulty, thanks to Snot twiddling with the AI attributes. The buildings are quite well done and very detailed, with lots of stuff to break (joy! :). Really makes you feel like part of a story, and a good one at that. Be prudent with your ammo--even being fairly careful with mine I had to bum rush the wounded boss... good thing my left is so devastating. ;)
     three-in-one (shot) by JohnSixGun: Small DM map, rather nice general concentric layout and different use of textures, as well as high framerates. Some flickering wall/sky issues on 3dfx cards, and a bit lacking in detail.
     Gun (shot) by Sam & Grace Pemberton: Okay, the name of this map is pure genius. Genius I say! How can it be that nobody else had thought of it so far?!? Err anyway the map itself isn't quite as impressive as the name, being a sort of narrow wooden maze affair with a larger central room above and massive ammo stashes on two sides, as if for a team play type of thing. The large room has severe poly dropout problems on a 3dfx card, unfortunately.
     Bridge (shot) by PahPah: CTF two-bases-across-canyon map with a very special twist: the joining bridge goes up and down when hit by TNT. Since its the only way across and heavily guarded by two slit bunkers on both sides its gonna be really hard to get across, much less coordinate your rush with having the bridge up. CTF nuts should dig it I'd think as it definitely opens up new strategies. Nice looking map too with good framerates.
     Beginnin (shot) by Hooter: Hah I go and compare Box Mill to the first single-player level and what's lurking down in my inbox but a MP conversion of that very level by Hooter! By opening up some new doorways on the second floors, removing the basement areas and adjusting existing doors, etc, he's made it into a very nice looking and very large DM map. Rifles will probably dominate the long lanes around the barn, though there are plenty of good indoor areas too. The overall flow is still a bit more linear than the usual DM map but this means that you'll be able to have plenty of people in here at once without feeling crowded, or you could get in some really strategic one on one if you have a mind to it (I'm not that patient, personally ;).
     Dry Wharf (shot) by Chaabo: MP conversion of the Wharf Town Historical Mission, with the water removed and replaced by dried mud. Now, Wharf Town is one of the largest single-player LEC levels... and to me it feels too big for a multiplayer map, even CTF, unless you were gonna cut it down quite a bit. That hasn't been done here... I got lost at first in this level in single-player and I think the same will happen in multiplayer (well, it would happen to me, anyway ;). I dunno though, I guess if you're looking for a huge, really nice looking map, just go ahead and call this one Daddy. I like the mushrooms growing in the mud, and the trees look nice but don't quite fit with the rest of the very reddish palette.
     Rifle Heaven (shot) by Drake: Argh! Rifle Heaven... and Hell for everything else. I don't think immensely long, cover-free canyons, endless stairways or massive lakes are going to be really fun to play in. Sure you'll be able to snipe people (if you can find them) but that's about it. And the framerate is really, really bad, for no apparent reason.
     Prisoner (shot) by David Holzwasser: This is one of those levels that crashes from time to time in Windows NT, so after a couple frustrating restarts I gave up on trying to complete it--shouldn't be a problem in other versions of Windows though, or at least crashes like this haven't happened in Win95 for me in the past. Anyway, the level starts out in a very packed jail and you have to escape. Somehow, all the prisoners have guns. So do you though so that's all right. Tons of shooting here and its pretty slow going with constant crossfires in very close quarters--so close its rather hard to manuever around. Probably easier once you get outside the cell block. For some reason you have to have Disk 1 in though I don't remember hearing music. Anyway from the looks of it there's lots of action here, although the layout (initially) is a bit cramped.
     Abode (shot) by Hooter: Snagged this one from OGB. Nice conversion of the "Villa" Historical Mission into a large multiplayer map. Looks great, good framerates, lots of places to go.

Me and XP
     Like BigDogCH, CowboyDrew reports being unable to load levels while running Outlaws in Windows Me. three_fingers and BearPapa seem to have no trouble in Me. Hugo von Hus suggests those using WinMe set up a dual boot system and keep 95 or 98 as well.
     Just for more OS news, PsYcHo420 says that OL crashes every time when running multiplayer in Windows XP. This doesn't surprise me greatly as I've encountered that problem in WinNT. Unfortunate, but did you really need yet another reason to steer clear of XP? :P

Garbo: Zone Hack Attacks and Tourneys End in IRC
     Garbo warns those gaming in the Internet Gaming Zone that hackers can break into your system and use it to log in to the Zone under your name. Might be a good time to look into some firewall protection, or at the very least don't leave your networked system powered on while unattended if you frequently give out your IP address online.
     Garbo also announced the end of tourney's in the #outlaws_players IRC channel, due to low participation. Garbo did a great job hosting these, often in the face of cheaters, hackers and general lamers, so if you ever had the pleasure of enjoying an IRC tourney, why dontcha say Thanks to good ol' Garbo. You can find the full details on the #OP site.

Mary Dressed to Kill
     Chaabo serves up what you always dreamed of but were too chicken to ask for: Mary in a miniskirt. To use, just extract the mary.nwx to your Outlaws directory. Shake it, baby! It'll only be here for a short time so go ahead and click... I promise I won't keep a list of IP addresses which access this file. Honest! ;)

2 Wunderbare Croshairs
     Reimar Große-Bölting sends along "2 wunderbare croshairs von mir erstellt" or, translated, "2 pretty croshairs made by me." We've got Grey Dot, just what it sounds like, and Rifle Croshair, a black circle with lines going in from the top, bottom and sides for precise shootin'. Git 'em here for a limited time, or from the "BrOC" site below.

Take My Link--Please!

	WSE: We Slaughter Everybody Not much here right now aside from that old dripping blood horizontal rule and a little bio on the gang's leader, a self-confessed ghoul and demon lover. You know, those ghouls could probably use a big hug every now and then.
	BrOC-house Well this site is all in German so I can't tell exactly what's in it but it looks like it has a good many hints, tips and files, plus info on the Brakeler Outlaws Clans and some LawMaker info, all in a fast, easy to use layout.
	MS-Discoveries: Outlaws An odd sort of German mirror of LEC's official Outlaws site, with some other stuff like level walkthroughs and single-player downloads thrown in (in German, of course).
	The Smokin' Barrel -- An Outlaws Site Excellent general purpose OL info site chock full of info, opinions, tips, custom goodies to download (crosshairs and desktop themes, for starters), an extensive list of "Easter Eggs" in the game, and more yet to come, all in a spiffy layout (requires a semi-modern browser to show up in all its glory).

Whew!
Wellll I hope that kept you busy for a lil' while 'cause I'm pooped. =P Hopefully updates (and my life in general) will resume semi-regularity for a while now. Of course in my first couple of days off in several months I managed to catch a tiny cold—that'll learn me to sit in Safeco Field in October without gloves and a warm coat.
I'm listening to the soundtrack for "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" as I write this. Kind of a mixed-bag for me—some of the tracks are brilliant moody Morricone, some are a bit repetitive and high-key (darn horns :P). Not quite as nice as the "Fistful of Dollars" soundtrack but hey, what is. I'd really like to find the "Once Upon a Time in the West" soundtrack... gee I suppose I could just order it online couldn't I? That isn't as fun as finding it in some gosh-forsaken hole of a music store though.

* * *

Wednesday 9/19/01

Warning: Apparent Virus in Map "sol.zip"
     TheOutlawDad mailed me to say the the file "sol.zip" in my "new" directory carried the TROJ_SIRCAM.A virus. I'm still not too clear on how a .zip can be a virus but better safe than sorry, I suppose, so I deleted it. If you downloaded it from me go get the Trend Micro SIRCAM remover utility from Dad's site.
     Of course, in my ignorance that utility itself could be a virus, what the heck do I know. Well, I scanned with the F-Prot anti-virus software (link on my other useful files page) and that didn't find any viruses after Dad's was done... but of course it didn't find any in the first place. Sheesh. Anyhow if someone wants to explain to me how an .zip file is a virus (maybe it didn't get me because I have Win95 without Outlook or IE 4+? Or maybe this is all just a bunch of hooey?), please feel free to drop me an email. Thanks ever so.
     Ohhh hehe I see. The original mail from "chip" had the file named "sol.zip.com." I must've just automatically deleted the .com part when saving it to my hard drive, which effectively neutered it, I think. Anyway, please run that utility of Dad's for my sake just in case. I guess I'm glad I use good ol' Netscape 3 for email rather than Outlook. :P

* * *

Sunday 9/9/01

This Post Will Self-Destruct in 10... 9...
This sorry state of my having no time looks like it will probably continue for at least another two weeks. So for the meantime I'm going to plop new maps, sight unseen, into this directory on my ftp. I'll do my usual little previewlets and stuff when I quit my job. Ta!

* * *

Sunday 8/26/01

Two Maps in Two Weeks
     What the heck? Maybe people thought I was slackin'... Just as fair warning, the slacking (ie, living at work) is going to continue for at least another month, it looks like. GraAaaah. Quiet, you! On the with show.
     XWPRIP (shot) by UnDerTaKer: Dedicated to his defunct XWP posse, this graveyard sports a superb framerate and decent looks. I like the movement of the passages around the graveyard but had a hard time getting into the open graves—but seeing as how they're stocked with items (item placement is otherwise somewhat clumpy) maybe that's the point.
     Falling Angels (shot) by Chaabo: A really cute concept here, flying amongst the clouds. The look is right and the framerate suitably light but I just can't seem to get the hang of the low friction and tough jumps from cloud to cloud. Then again, there's a reason this is called *Falling* Angels. Falling is something of a pain as you fall real slow and often won't be killed instantly but have to wait to slide slowly into some sort of hot mud. Still for looks alone this is a nice novelty map.
     Number1_KidEver tells me that his map "Pit Fall" (definite gravity theme going on here) actually does have an escape from the pit, contrary to what I posted last time. Paleface.net regrets the error.
     Xx_Crow_xX asked me to post the following; since it's a slow map time, what the heck: "This is Xx_Crow_xX MY new map is out its called "Taco Hut" its a large Desrt with cactuses with only a shotgun, Double barrel, and sawed of shotguns! please try my new map! oh and Hackers......hehe you wont be able to connect it will say "You Suck" if you try and hit the number of your gun :) This map will be given too Pale's place in a day or two so please Zone Message me for any questions ......Thanks the Crow : )"

Sitez

	Blood Thirsty Outlaws A moonfruit site so you can expect the usual all-flash interface. Runs slow on my machine, as do they all, and pickings here are slender but the news section is nice to see and the tourney calendar rather slick.
	ExO_trailblazer An empty Flash framework of a site aside from a download section rather aped from the ExO posse site (or maybe all these moonfruit sites just look the same). The OL music on the first page is a nice touch but cuts off as soon as you go anywhere. And look, a direct un-labelled link into my map archive. Hurrah!

OLWinMe?
BigDogCH is coming back to OL after some time off and is having trouble loading OL levels on his shiny new Windows Me operating system. So somebody refresh my memory: does OL work on Me, or what? I thought it did (pretty similar to '98) but maybe I'm forgetting something.

* * *

Sunday 8/11/01

KaBoom!
     That's the sound of my inbox exploding...
     HummmDTG by Dtg_Trigger_Hapy: Modified version of "Hummm" with more ammo and props, as well as a CTF mode. Sent by TheOutlawDad.
     Blood Sport (shot) by Chaabo: Cage-match with sharp knives. Nice lighting effect around the arena. Can't get out once you enter the cage until (apparently) you die or you win the match. Interesting effect where you kind of rebound off the cage walls. Two men enter...
     Warrior's Village (shot) by WaRRioR: Solid looking CTF map in a V-shaped canyon, you can go along the canyon floor or take the high road along the upper ledge. Bright and sunny with lots of room to run and clear firing lines. The buildings are a bit on the big and plain side of things. Rather nifty touch with music playing from the second CD.
     Hummm (shot) by DTG_TriGr_HapY and Number1_KidEver: Updated version from Number1_KidEver, I've kind of lost track of what's new. There's a new sound file in there, at least! Map looks pretty much the same as before.
     Pit Fall (shot) by Number1_KidEver & AKO_Sureshot: CTF with two bases facing off directly across a deep canyon crossed by two narrow beams. Powerups are everywhere—no running out of ammo allowed! Should be a pretty frenetic map, though if you fall into the pit and live you're kind of screwed until someone is nice and drops some TNT on you. And if you fall down there with the flag, you're really screwed. ;)
     Rose's (shot) by Chaabo: A cow in a cat house... now that's trouble. Or is trouble the guy who gets to the gat on the rocky ledge overlooking the ranch? Handsome valley ranch, nice and roomy, some good jumps to the upper areas. Don't let the cow scare you.
     GatTag (shot) by skalawag: Updated version, quite a bit more cleaned up. Only modified gats about now, these babies let you move while in use and have effectively infinite range, all part of skalawag's scheme to make it harder for cheaters to get away with sneaky hacks. Still a cut up version of Wilderness but looks much nicer now, with textures polished up by Hooter. Grab a gat, run an' gun. Looks... fun!

Links

	SBD: Silent But Deadly My poor old browser had a few issues with the Java navigation on this posse site. You've got your list of members, news (yay!), a list of people that piss pff webmaster PorkandBeans, and some screenshots (?). P&B promises more to come. Layout is currently a little scattered, though maybe that was just my browser rebelling against the Java thingy.
	OLM_ShiftyTuco's Lair It's got cartoon monkeys, cheesy music and a weirdly distorted background. But if you want to find Shifty's levels and stuff, you go here. And I kind of like the monkeys...

     Speaking of Shifty's stuff, he sent along this custom crosshair with sort of a patriotic red white and blue, high visibility look (extract croshair.nwx to your Outlaws folder). You can grab it at his site, of course.
     Gratuitous link: www.gatlinggun.net. Bruce asked me to post it and hey, if a guy who makes black-powder guns that shoot 200rpm asks me to do something, I do it. It's a commercial site but there's lots of info on gatling guns in general as well.

Playing on Black Ice
     OutlawsOldGun is using the anti-hack program Black Ice Defender (no, it isn't a road salt :p) and noticed that it cuts his framerate in OL, from 375 to 322 in one spot for instance. Well that makes sense I guess seeing as how the program must take some CPU cycles to monitor your ports and so forth. But just in case some people didn't know: yes, running other programs while playing Outlaws will tend to slow the game down... though 12% from Black Ice is perhaps unusually hefty. Then again, can you really tell the difference between 375 and 322 fps?

* * *

Sunday 8/5/01

Let's Do This
     Citadel (shot) by Hooter: Hooter's edit of LEC's "Thud Tower" strips out the death pit and adds bunkers to the quartered yards around the tower. Plus the framerate seems to have improved of the LEC version. All changes for the better. The stone wall/floor textures sort of blend together and flatten things out, making it tricky to see where you're going, but this is a better Thud than the original.
     Hummm (shot) by DTG_TriGr_HapY and Number1_KidEver: A long time back I bought a disc of user-made add-ons maps for Duke Nukem 3D (yeah "bought": I didn't know much about the internet back then :p). Hummm reminds me a lot of those maps: big flat caves in odd shapes with rather pointless tunnels, hidden walls, and tons of items strewn about. So if you liked those maps back in the day, you'll dig this I suppose. Features street signs and a modified rifle, among other things.
     Rail Road Falls (shot) by Number1_KidEver (with help from Doc_Cyber_Tiger and Truffle): Bright, attractive texturing job in this canyon with multiple waterfalls and a bridge across a small lake. The framerate downright blows which is a shame because the screenshots look so nice. The meandering tunnels get a little tiresome.
     WAWHouse (shot) by Hooter: This time LEC's "Granary" gets the Hooter treatment. I always felt that Granary was a little rambling and lacking in focus (maybe that's why I felt a connection with it eheh) and Hooter solves this by cutting out a large portion of the map, leaving us the main two large rooms and adding a nice grassy, almost Buckshotvillesque alley outside. Good deal.
     GatTag (shot) by skalawag: Somewhat messily rearranged Wilderness with spawn points in cages equipped with piles of modified weapons. A lot of untextured areas, as if the author took a buzz-saw to LEC's maps and didn't cauterize the wounds. Still if the idea of running around while weilding a gat (without using a cheat code) sounds good to you then give this a shot.
     Dool (shot) by Hooter: Hooter adjusts Dool so that it can launch through OLMan, and all is right with the world.

A Favorite Old-Timer
     DrDeath2 noticed the following in the transcript of the recent chat session with LEC president or whatever Simon Jeffrey:

daysofouroutaws: Outlaws is one of the best games on the zone. Are you considering updating the game?

Simon Jeffery: We just posted a patch to Outlaws on our website, and it seems to be getting some good download activity! Outlaws is one of our favorite old-timers. We have no firm plans for a sequel right now, but would like to think that there will be something in the future.

Well skip to my shoe. This means of course that if you haven't visited their download page to grab the D3D patch, might as well do it now while they're watching. Dunno quite where that transcript is, probably somewhere on lucasarts.com (gee, really Pale? :p).

Sites For You

	Outlaws, der 3D-Shooter von LucasArts German site focussing on single-player OL with copies of Roger's walkthroughs, lots of single-player maps to download, cheat codes and a forum, all in a handsome design copped from LEC's OL site.
	Extreme Outlaws All Flash, all the time. You'll need a beefy system with a fast connection to navigate this splashy site smoothly. It was kind of slow for me and the buttons work funny. Lots of stuff here though like useful utilities, play tips, tons of info on the ExO gang members, etc.

Excuse me Sir, is that your Cam?
     rant_2 got the popular yet destructive SirCam virus from an altered version of the "map" file "thehood." So watch out for that. Apparrently the file link was posted on the Outlaws Message Board. rant found that McAfee killed the virus on his system, and adds that you should be sure to read the McAfee readme, and make sure whatever virus scanner you use scans the Recycle Bin since the SirCam virus attaches to the bin on each drive. Nasty bugger.

Assorteds
     Truffle pointed me to the long and, yes, rambling "New OL Story" on the Outlaws Message Board (click the "Forum" link on Truffle's Outlaws Hideout). Go add your own 2.5 sentences!
     There's a German 3D western RTS in development called "Far West." The screenshots look decent, check out the preview here (in German, naturally).
     Cutting through the boonies while taking the long route to work this weekend I ended up stuck on a detour route (the first of two) behind a circus truck loaded with beefy guys in "cowboy" outfits, whooping and hollering to enthusiastic people sitting in chairs along the sidewalks. The world is a very strange place... especially the suburbs.

* * *

Sunday 7/29/01

Map Crunch!
     GarboVille 2.1 (shot) by WaRRioR: Small update to the big-shouldered small town, now with more flag locations and larger basements.
     The Weaponry (shot) by WaRRioR: Single building in a medium-sized valley with a stash of one weapon type per floor. Seems a bit repetitive. Framerates are high. Nice flags and cacti.
     Gladiator (shot) by Rebellady: Handsome wooden Romanesque arena at night with bonfires lighting the field. Framerates are good especially for an open arena layout. Curiously, all the pickup items are in the rather dull passageways underground, so chances are you won't have that much time to admire the stadium. Note: I renamed the .zip to avoid conflicting with a previous map.
     Dool (shot) by Hooter: Remake of the old map "Duel," a tiny little DM with a house and some crates and low brick walls. Cute. Note: I had to rename a few files and things to get the map to load, so if you got this map from another source then it'll probably be incompatible (though if the other one didn't work anyway I guess this wouldn't be much more of an inconvenience).
     TwainStation (shot) by Sam Clements: Long train station building in a just slightly longer valley with this cool undulating rock thing going on with the valley walls—but look out 'cause the undulations have bunkers in 'em. The building interior is a little drab and the tunnel network around the valley walls somewhat mechanical but the overall layout is solid and the framerate quite good. With bunkers, narrow tunnels, long outdoor shots and medium-sized indoor rooms, there's a nice balance of areas here.
     Last Stop (shot) by Chaabo: Nice open valley look around this lone watering hole, and good use of natural props for obstacles (well maybe there are a few many crates, but who's counting? ;). The abandoned wagons and have lot of detail yet surprisingly the framerate is quite high. Nice attention to lighting and textures as well. Good looking medium DM map.

Viruses Viruses Everywhere
     Seems to be a popular season for computer viruses. There's a lot of rampant paranoia... Just don't open unexpected email attachments and you should be covered. If you think you may have caught something, I recommend the freeware "F-Prot" antivirus program from Frisk Software International.
     Blackyolero found what he's guessing is a "Trojan" virus in what was claimed by "Doctor Darth" on the code-alliance.com LawMaker forum to be a beta test of an Outlaws map. The readme calls the map "The Island of Death" and starts off with "** I am not responsible for ANY damage caused by my level ** So there ;->." Hmm. Might want to skip this particular "map." Blacky says the file with the virus was "FULL.lab."
     Truffle caught the popular "SIRCAM.A" email virus. He offered this link as a place you can go to get a free scan if you think you might have opened an infected email.

Web Do'ins
     Savior relates that his appropriately titled Savior's Outlaws Ladder is currently on hold due to difficulty in getting players to cooperate and, like, play matches and stuff. He's interested in passing it on to someone who may have more time manage the ladder than he has at the moment—interested parties should mail him at [removed].
     Aaron Sawyer (aka Blackhawk3d) has a kinda new index thing on his site so, if you want more of his stuff beyond his excellent custom weapon sounds, you'll find he's got goodies for other LEC games as well. Don't be scared off by the dancing .gif. Aaron also would like to mention that though the Voodoo4 is generally maligned as being even slower than a Voodoo5 (compared to other cards these days) it runs Outlaws wicked fast, so there.
     Truffle tells me The Outlaws Message Board is back online at a new server and accessible from his The Outlaws Hideout site—which I can't get to load up at the moment, so I'll take his word for it.

What's My Name Again?
     It's that magical time of year again—"Crunch Time." Currently I'm fighting hard to maintain my "slacker" schedule of about 60-65 hours per week, rather than the 70-80 I pulled last summer (and which I'm trying not to think about). The most conservative forecast (ie, the project schedule :p) calls for this period of long uncompensated hours to last for the next seven weeks. I sure hope we can stick to the schedule... for once. Gack. Anyway, all this is my excuse for site updates being even more irregular than usual.
     I seem to have vague memories of relaxing and enjoying the nice weather in summers long ago. I can only surmise that these "memories" are in fact subversive impulses implanted by evil space aliens bent on undermining my productivity.

* * *

Sunday 7/22/01

Three Maps and Three Kings
     PineyCreek (shot) by MikeDaKid: Nice small U-shaped CTF map. The trench down the "U" canyon will see some pretty rough action but then again so will the tunnel around the back of the little shack "bases." Tremendous framerates. Lighting and texturing won't jump out at you, and I mean that in both the good and bad sense. :) Looks fun.
     BUM-F^%$-EGYPT (shot) by Warwolf: No, I don't know what that title means. ;) Although it sounds low-brow, this is actually one of those "concept" maps; the author says he "made it to find out just how far the rifle would shot" (sic). So you've got a nice flat desert to try it out in... like those dry salt beds where they try to break land-speed records, I guess! This'll probably be fun for a round or two. I like the color of the sky, though there's a visible "box" at the edges—would've been neat to have the limitless horizon type of thing here.
     The Charlie & Larry Express (shot) by Graham: Hey, a single-player train level! (Use CD #1 to get in-game music.) Very well-done level with a wide array of neat touches packed into one tough train. I could have sworn that I was playing on Easy but got killed twice in one or two shots... And fell off the train more times than I care to remember—darn that TNT guy! Yowch. Say, did I mention detail? I mean, even the roofs of the train cars look awesome. Inventive gameplay too. If you aren't afraid to fall off a moving train (shot), you'll enjoy this one. Wish it had an endstory text. :) More shots: bang bang.
     Comments by one of The Three Kings made me think that there may be some confusion about what my little ratings of web sites indicate. They're pretty much meant to indicate how rewarding I found the Outlaws stuff there.

means that I didn't find much of interest on the site,

means that I thought the site was decent (not necessarily in terms of language, of course ;) and

means that I enjoyed the site immensely and recommend that anyone remotely interested in the content pay it a visit. Navigability can modify the score: if it's fun and easy to get around the pages then I'm much more inclined to lean toward a "higher" score.
But it's mostly the content, especially unique content. So if T3K can keep updating their site as time goes on I'll probably feel obliged to raise my evaluation of the site. And of course, everything they had to say about me was 100% true.
And yeah, I realize my little bullet icons aren't the most immediately intuitive. Like what the heck do these mean:

Wednesday 7/18/01

Choo Choo!
     Iron Horse (shot) by Chaabo: A railroad trestle crosses a spectacular river in this somewhat-CTF-style map. The texturing and lighting look super here, that's one of the coolest looking bridges I've seen in Outlaws. However, the coolness comes at a pretty fair framerate price—still playable but a noticeable drop. Oh, speaking of cool, the railroad running off into the forest in forced perspective is an awesome effect (and doesn't cause framerate loss at all :). Try not to get yer feet too wet as the river's strong current will sweep you over the cliff lickety-split. I don't generally go for swept-by-current-over-ledge gameplay but it's done just about as well as can be here. Definitely worth trying, especially if you have a decent machine (ie one that's less than four years old ;).

Made it back to the lobby still alive!
     Ben mailed to ask if I knew of a key that can return you to the multiplayer lobby, as he noticed that there's a message string for "___made it back to the lobby still alive!" listed under "user messages" in LawMaker.
     Well, not as far as I know. Anyone?

Glide Still Does 800x600
     Reminded by a question from reader Michele, I thought I'd point out that, lest we forget it in the face of the insane 1600x1200 resolution allowed by the just-release beta D3D patch, 3dfx users can enjoy 800x600 in super-smooth Glide mode by using the Outlaws Banshee/Voodoo2 Setup utility by Mark Lütkefend. Very simple to use, will have you up and running in 800x600 in a jiff (not advised for users of Voodoo Graphics (that is, the card before Voodoo 2 :p) cards). The link normally resides on my Outlaws Video Comparison page... which come to think of it should have comparisons between Glide and D3D... nahhh, wouldn't be much of a fight on a Voodoo 5 (ie, would take me too much time :P).

LMT Map Winner is a Hoot
     Hooter passed along the happy news that his "Oklahoma City" map took the field in Truffle's map-making contest on the Law Makin' Team site. Hooray for Hooter! Hooray for Truffle! Hooray for everyone who makes Outlaws maps and web sites and stuff! :)
     Speaking of crazy Western people, it's "Southwestern" days at my local grocery store so they have John Wayne banners everywhere and the checkout girls wear straw "cowboy" hats. Yep, that's about as Southwestern as we get in Seattle. Yee-haw.

@ @ @

Sunday 7/15/01

SunWarfareTrenchDown!
     Sundown City (shot) by Nowhere_Man and Spikerama: A very lovely sunset town CTF map with a twist, as any map with Spikerama involved will have: there are buttons operating doors which control access to the flag areas. If the other team is quick enough, they can cut off your scoring run by getting to the button. It's a great looking map with surprisingly high framerates and super lighting. The button-pressing action sounds intruiging and the authors note in the readme that they're very much interested in getting feedback, so give it a whirl and let 'em know what you think.
     Trench WarFare (shot) by Number1_KidEver: A replacement of the initial version which was, according to the author, "extremely laggy." So not only should this version play smoother, he's also thrown in lots of dead bodies and barbed wire fences (the sprites sorta turn funny) to enhance the delicate WWI ambiance. "watch out for the guy in the tub!" notes the readme... *shudder*. Sandbag sprites and deep trenches make it hard to navigate but also make it easier for the smart guy in the tower above to drop TNT on people, which may be the point?

Secure Your Own Zone
     In regards to Old_Gun's security warning in the last update, Pirate_forty mentioned that ZoneLabs' shareware "ZoneAlarm" utility is pretty good at keeping unwanted intruders out of your system. Now, if you recall several months ago, I found that ZoneAlarm was so good, nobody could join my Outlaws game while it was running. Still, you could always turn it off when you go to jump in a game, then turn it on again when the game is over. Or maybe it'll work for you during the game too, who knows? Anyway it's free and seems pretty reliable from what I've been told.

Sitings

T3k: The Three Kings
Posse site featuring a very nice and fast layout embellished with trash-talkin' "l33t"-speak. Aw jeah.

Truffle passes on word that his Outlaws Hideout site has info on an upcoming transition for the ever-popular Outlaws Message Board (ie "OLMB") as well as some gimcrackery new ".php" scripting in his online poll and stuff. I dunno what php stands for but it seems slick and I think you pronounce it "fffup" so that part's fun anyway.

Fiddle With Drivers for Fun and Profit
Cusholero relates that he picked up some tweaked "Omega" Voodoo drivers over at Voodoofiles.com and they improved his top framerate in Sanctuary from a woebegone 714 fps to a quicksilver 763 on his Athlon 900 with Voodoo 5. Now, if that sounded sarcastic it's mostly because I have framerate envy, though I'd also be wary (or is it lazy?) about switching to 3rd-party drivers for just a 7% performance boost (and who knows what kind of visual quality change, etc). But hey if you've got the time and temperment to tinker with your stuff, this sounds like a fine project. And I suppose I shouldn't sound all driver-puristy seeing as how I'm running "bootleg" x3dfx drivers on my own V5.

ƒ ƒ ƒ

Thursday 7/12/01

Official Outlaws D3D Patch Released
     Ho-lee cats. Would you believe it, a new Outlaws patch after all these years? LEC just released a "Beta" "Outlaws D3D Update" which you can snag off their Outlaws patch page. It looks pretty much just like the leaked one I've had on my other helpful files page for several months now, except that it says version "1.0.0" instead of "1.1.1," the lecd3d.dll file it uses is twice as big, and you can choose resolutions all the way up to a whopping 1600x1200, if your card and monitor support it. Which mine do... can't... resist... must... take... screenshot...
     Hah! Okay take a gander here. And 44fps with 4x anti-aliasing, not too shabby. :) I'll get around to taking down that leaked version when I do a proper update this weekend (so get that now if you want a collector's item or something weird :p).
     Thanks to OL programmer Rich Fife, salmoides and Travis Howell for sending the news (in that order :) though I confess that I spotted it on Blue's News before checking my inbox. ;)
     Update: Did some quick performance comparisons. The new version is faster in Sanc at 640x480 (73 fps vs 70). In fact, the old version seems to have had a nasty performance leak as the framerate gradually went down while I stood still. ;) Fixed in this new version. There are still what you might call graphical glitches (painting in the bar appears twice, black lines around crosshair) and LEC's own patch page warns of a crash, but it looks like this version is quite a nice improvement over the leaked one. Nowhere near as fast as Glide mode on my Voodoo5 of course (103 fps) but still quite respectable.

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Wednesday 7/11/01

Simon Says Chat
daysofouroutlaws sent me the following notice:

Chat with LucasArts President, Simon Jeffery
Join us Wednesday, July 25th, at 6 pm (PST) and spend some time with LucasArts President, Simon Jeffery. Simon will be on hand to answer your questions and bring you up-to-date on our recently announced titles and future activities at LucasArts. The chat room will open at 5 pm (PST), so stop by early and spend some time with other LucasArts fans! Please pass the word and get your questions ready!

If yer innerested in participating, go here to sign up! And remember to ask Simon if they have plans for another Outlaws game while you're there.

Got Protection?
Old_Gun sent this warning along:

Zone is the place to be, hacking is not the life for me. Well, I just installed the latest in firewall protection I did not think it was as bad as all that. In doing some research I have found that the most common place for a computer intrusion is on a gaming site such as the zone, They are right, if you could just see my intruder log for the last twenty four hours I have had one probe or scan from the same source 723 times have had 5 attempts to locate a Trojan horse on my system or place one on it I really don't know. but one of the sources is from Sam Houston University in Texas I've sent an email with the name and IP's to the university and asked them to look into it. Some pecker head might just be in trouble. I also noticed I got several attempts to probe my computer while on the zone for just 2 minutes and really wonder how much of it is random from outside sources and if some are from our Outlaws players? Well, I don't know why they would scan you, your fellow players that is. But are they messing with your settings? IM not the brightest in this world but, I also hear from a few source they caught virus from links being posted on the zone. Some good advice is if you don't know the person who puts up the link do click on to the link. Be on the safe side. I suggest everyone with Cable are DSL even modem to obtain a protection program.

Not a bad idea at all...

Good n Bad Arrive
Notorious sent along the link to his new posse site:

GNB Outlaws Clan
Mildly trash-talkin' site of a small but veteran posse. Not the most informative site though attractive in a Heavy Metal kind of way. Those who can't handle the Flash intro (you should at least see it once, it's pretty darn nifty) can jump directly to the main page here.

$ $ $

Sunday 7/8/01

Our Man Clements
ClementsCanyon (shot) by SamClements: A symmetrical CTF map with two small base buildings separated by a squiggly snakey canyon. The construction, texturing, light effects and especially framerate optimization are very well done, and the buttes or whatever you call ums in the canyon are nifty. It's all really good as far as CTF maps go except that there are no footstep sounds to be heard; a small thing, I guess, but a pet peeve of mine.

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Wednesday 7/4/01

Find Gold!
     Bob Graham's Gold (shot) (shot) by Spikerama: As single-player map. The story comes with a clever clue—which would probably help more if the in-game automap worked in the level but for the most part it doesn't. Part of the ground is missing (3dfx glitch) in one area. Lots of shooting, which is good, parts are a bit too flat-canyonish to really grab you but there's at least one town area (I didn't finish it... NT tends to crash in single-player levels, this solved my problem of being unable to access an apparent hidden room hehe) that gets a bit more interesting, though enemy placement still seems sporadic at times. The level is taken from several previous sources so you'll recognize some of it.

Play Hasselt Outside Hasselt
     Thanks to Blackyolero, you can now play this map outside of the OL Bash in Hasselt, Belgium. It's Hasselt in the good ol' US-of-A! *waves flag for Independence Day... after being stuck in traffic for a large part of the evening*
     Hasselt (shot) by Blackyolero: Verrry nicely done two-bit town in a round desert canyon. The textures here seem unusually rich in combination—nice selection, with good lighting. Deceptively simple layout has lots of back ways, trick jumps and strategically placed powerups. Top stuff.

Possible Brief Downtime
     Erm well this is embarrassing... and it probably won't happen but in case it does, don't freak. :) The short of it is that I seem to have misplaced the replacement for my expiring credit card, thus being credit-card-less just when my ISP wanted to bill me for the site. The replacement card is supposedly on its way but until they get the payment they could shut the site down if they really wanted to. Don't think they will... but if they do, don't you worry, it'll be back up as soon as my new credit card arrives. :p

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Sunday 7/1/01

Play Hasselt in Hasselt
     The Outlaws Bash in Belgium is only days away (July 5th - 9th) and Blackyolero is gonna have a custom map for their LAN tournament, named "Hasselt" after the town where the bash is held. Says Blacky: "Leccy (the host of the Bash) has gone to a great deal of trouble to set up a couple of first rate terminals for the LAN party he has planned, and was keen to host a map that none of the attendees had seen before, and the rest is history, so to speak...."
     You kin catch a preview with some nice lookin' screenshots on Blacky's page here. But if you want first crack at it, better getcher self a ticket to Belgium!

Maps You Can Play Now
     Now for some maps you can actually download. :)
     Psycho (shot) by BamBam: Outlaws do the Bates hotel from the Hitchcock thriller. The vertical reach of the structure is impressive—the rooms feel nice and... roomy. The central lobby may be a little too roomy, as everything is open and the framerate rather low, but things look pretty nice. And as you can see from the screenshot, they're well stocked on engines.
     Big Head (shot) by Chaabo: This is the first map in a while [*WARNING* potty-mouth language ahead] that's actually made me say "Oh, crap!" [end *WARNING* :p] Ya'see, I stepped into the outhouse next to the cliff ledge and then—well, I'll let you find that out for yourself. Let's just say this is an unusual map. It kinda looks like two-base CTF, with a little wood hut facing some kind of Inca cliff dwelling across a huge gorge but it's actually Team/DM only and (and I might've missed something) it looks like the only way between the two is a really tiny tunnel that requires a precise leap (felt like a low gravity zone there too) to make it across, else you fall into the gorge. But you could always blame that on the single-fingered curse of the angry Big Head idol. Actually, go ahead and blame anything on him, he looks like he can take it.
     Garbo's Beach (shot) by ShiftyTuco: IRC-based LawMaker's are slowly building a realm dedicated to moderator Garbo, this here would be the seaside section. And while the boarded-up cabin has seen better days, the lighthouse and scenic cliff view are definite attractions. Made for tourney play so item placement is quite frugal, which is good. Great sniping balance between the cliff and the lighthouse, with the cabin in no-man's land between. Framerates are good except up in the lighthouse but if you're up there you're probably a dirty sniper anyway and deserve what you get. And yes, you *can* smash those 360 degree windows up there. Ahh bliss. The lighting is a little dim but it keeps the touristy crouds away. Nice one.

Savior's Ladder Returns
     Savior's Outlaws Ladder is back in business after considerable down-time. He's got over 20 gunslingers signed up and from the looks of things the shooting has already started. Outlaws ladders are notoriously tough to keep going, Savior says "it will be just like old times except I can update it much more easily now" so here's hoping this ladder keeps climbing.

Outlaws Half-Life Mod Hits Alpha
     The Outlaws Mod for Half-Life has hit alpha, I was lucky enough to get in a little one-on-one with modder TonToE this afternoon (yep, the mod works with the retail version of Counter-Strike, yay!). We hadn't planned it, I just hosted my own game to check it out and a little while later, he dropped right in—gotta love in-game server lists, eh?
     First off, even at alpha the mod looks very professional. The interface, while not finalized, is quite functional, and all the weapons and characters work pretty much like you'd hope. The maps, hand-converted from the LEC retail maps, look absolutely great with real lighting and 3d modelling. As a bonus, Chet converted his "Venture Ridge" OL map for the mod and it's never looked better, with beautifully shaded rolling hills and caves, plus a gorgeous waterfall. Neat stuff.
     Those expecting that the mod will just be Outlaws with updated graphics are in for a bit of a shock. Converting the game from a 2.5D to 3D engine, things are just gonna be different. Yer framerate isn't gonna be anywhere as good, for instance—if you thought it would be, well there's just no hope for ya. This is still Half-Life though so as far as framerates in 3d shooters go, it's quite good.
     The characters and weapons are 3d now too and look better "in person" than they did in early screenshots. Mary and Doc are gonna be re-worked still; Anderson and Bob looked awesome. They animate pretty well too. Ah, also worth mentioning is that instead of certain characters losing less hearts (health) for the same amount of damage, in the mod characters start with varying amounts of health, but lose equal amounts for equal damage (ie Bob or someone started with 120, while Sanchez started with 90, but both would lose say 25 if they were the same distance from a stick of TNT).
     The weapons are all here (Marshall Law types will be happy to know there's a checkbox for enforcing the rules in the server-setup) and they're coming along quite well. The sounds are, or course, top-notch, and the models are looking pretty good. Individual hands and weapons for the different characters (Mary's pistol, etc) aren't in yet but are planned, woohoo!
     Again though this isn't just Outlaws in another engine, it's its own beast. TonToE has a few changes in mind, most of which I think are very much for the better. There's location-specific damage, for instance, so head shots are quite deadly. As if that wasn't enough, the rifle is much more powerful when used with the scope (which is toggled with alt-fire, huzzah!!). Now, the versions of the maps I played were scaled-down, so the rifle won't be as dominating as it might sound. By scaled-down, I mean for instance that the wide area around the town in Sanctuary has been pulled in, and Buckshotville is all there but the buildings aren't quite as long. This was probably done for framerate reasons as much as anything else.
     Oh, getting back to the weapons, I flat-out love what they've done with the gatling gun: it spins up to full speed gradually, starting with a steady pock-pock-pock and going up to a giddy rate of fire with shell casings cascading out all over the place. Really neat. The weapon effects all look great, particularly dynamite explosions. The pistol alt-fire seems a little slow right now, hopefully they'll be able to speed that up a bit. The shotguns are nice and beefy.
     The run speed is quite fast, maybe just a hair short of OL's speed. The jump is currently the short Half-Life jump rather than the rather floaty OL jump—TonToE seems to prefer it that way and, though I have my own preference, it worked okay in our match. He's added steps and things in the maps where necessary to accomodate this.
     Oh almost forgot, you can switch characters during play! :) You lose a frag for doing so but it's nice to have the option.
     All-in-all I was very impressed, especially for an alpha this is a really polished-looking production and should be truly professional-level at release. Anal OL die-hards will nit-pick the small changes but let's face it, the real target audience for this mod are the dedicated server masses who flock to Half-Life and Counter-Strike. It ain't yer daddy's Outlaws but taken on it's own terms, it's gonna shine. And thousands of folks who've never heard of Outlaws will get a very nice introduction to the gameplay we've been enjoying all these years.
     Some shots of the action:
     TonToE riding the wave of my TNT explosion. The TNT seems to kind of pick people up into the air more than OL's does. Purty explosions, too. Notice the large scorch marks they leave—the villa will never look the same!
     Knee-high view of Dr. Death. Gee, people look pretty monumental when they have 3D perspective! This model is due for a re-work, doesn't look too shabby here though. That's quite the rod he's packing.
     Bob charges Mary. TonToE declares "we promise Bob won't suck so bad" and initial results are promising for the Bobster. Notice the ejecting shotgun shell casing, and the plume of white dust kicking up in the distance. All the weapon effects look super.
     The gat rules Buckshotville. I looove the mod's gat. Once spun up to full throttle it made short work of TonToE (note my trademark cheap typing kill here :). The stream of ejected shell casings is glorious (they all tinkle when they hit the ground) and the muzzle flash is gorgeous. As in Counter-Strike, kill messages display in the upper right corner, showing the killer, the weapon used, and the victim. Ooo by the way breaking windows is awesome in the mod: they take several shots to break completely, before they do you can see the individual bullet holes, then they shatter in a really satisfying crash.

* * *

Wednesday 6/27/01

A Triumvirate of Tasty Treats
     Hoeville (shot) by PahPah: An unusual mix here: a small town with a bunch of AI Marys and a few bystanders, plus some modified weapons, plus a decent deathmatch layout. Personally I'd prefer just the third without the first two but I suppose once you kill all the AIs (which doesn't take long) and get over the novelty of modified weapons, you can get down to a decent deathmatch. The street is muddy and slows you/makes you skid, which kind of dampens brawling in the street. A few very minor 3dfx gaps in doors.
     Slide (shot) by PahPah: Gravity and friction are fun things. Buuut they're missing... I dunno... a little OOMph. How about some TNT? Voila! Welcome to Slide, a bowl slippery bowl with TNT at the bottom, should make for a nice tossed Outlaws salad. May not last that long but should be good for a hoot or two.
     1876 (shot) by Kid Macoo: It looks as though two things were popular in 1876: mining and shooting. Yessir, history comes to life in this fine CTF two-bases-across-No-Man's-Land style map with a very attractive visual theme. Mighty fine job on the texturing, lighting and object placement here. Nothing mind-blowingly innovative in terms of gameplay, just classic stuff really well done... which is often better than innovation, n'est-ce pas?

#O_P Tourneys Are Back
     Garbotalk, queen of the #Outlaws_players IRC channel, decrees:

Tournaments in #outlaws_players are back. Why you ask? Come on, admit it, you've missed em. Well, I have too. And apparently lots have. Ok, we all know there are some cheats out there, but now that we know, SO WHAT! Cheaters cheat themselves. I won't have a tourney of champions again, or prizes, but shooting for fun will resume. So, if you are a cheater and you play in a tourney, we'll either humiliate you or ignore you or ban you, or maybe all three. The rest of us will have a good time! So come one come all to MIRC for tourneys on Sundays AGAIN! OUTLAWS LIVES!

There you go, your reason to get up on Sunday mornings, at least until football season starts (actually I think it's more afternoonish, but whatever). Actual information and useful stuff is on the #Outlaws_Players site.

* * *

Sunday 6/24/01

Evil ATI Drivers
Another Voodoo video tip, this one from TheRock:

When i first got my new comp I had an ATI Rage card.Then I got my Voodoo 5 and installed it, but my Voodoo 5 wasn't putting out like it should. It would go up to 300 fps and come down to 60 really quick, so it made stuff really jumpy. So I finally ctrl+alt+deleted and ended an ATI rage task and everything was real smooth. Then I ran a system search for all ATI files and deleted all of them. That seemed to fix my problems.

    And I can add, having installed numerous ATI cards at work, that ATI's drivers suck. :P

Map Map
     HiTMe (shot) by Rambo: A tiny low-gravity yard on a starry night, some explosives and shotguns, and thou. Jump, shoot, explode, ponder the mysteries of the universe as you soar gracefully through the heavens. Yup yup.
     Raider (shot) by leader2: A two-base CTF-style map with long grassy canyons and some long underwater tunnels connecting the two. Texturing is fairly monotonous, also uses that grass with the red spots, ack. Construction is on the blocky side though to be fair there are a number of clever stairways and underwater passages--but also a lot of nonsolid walls hiding things. 3dfx card users will want to avoid as there are numerous, unavoidable graphical glitches throughout the map.

* * *

Sunday 6/17/01

A Big Sexy Blast From the Past
While there were probably a few who hoped he'd dropped off the face of the Earth, the ever-outspoken Big Sexy is still around and just as feisty as ever. Just so people wouldn't forget, he's reposted his old site—so now I can re-post my old review. ;)

Big Sexy's Canadian Outlaws Site
So it sounds, and even looks, a bit like a renegade ex-Chippendale's site. Well "Big Sexy" may have had "issues"—scratch that, he certainly did an' he had no problem lettin' everyone know! Fortunately besides th' often amusing, always scathing tirades you'll also find lots of old, admittedly biased news, info on the game, plenty of tips, and some old links and stuff, besides a naughty word or picture or three, all in a—dare I say it—sexy site design. No longer updated.

You kin also catch him undercover at his old SIN EATER's Outlaws Site which has been online all this time even though he never really finished it. As for BS himself, you kin find him on the message board at his UT site www.clanmack.com, or channel #MACK on irc.enterthegame.com, under the handle "MACK-Angelus."

Untangle Your Voodoo Drivers
Michele Rimmer is the happy owner of a shiny new Voodoo 5. Getting it up and running wasn't the smoothest process though, turns out she had conflicts with older drivers. Sound familiar? Then maybe her findings will help ya:

After the card was installed, when I tried to open Display in Control Panel, I had a little message pop up saying "CoCreateInstance Failed - Class Not Registered". Hunted around for a solution and to cut a long story short, it turned out I still had some old files hidden in my Windows and Windows/System folders from the unsuccessful installation last year of my Voodoo 2, which I had totally forgotten about. All I had to do was search for *mnstr*.* files ... delete them, and problem fixed!! Also, one other little thing ... at first I was still unable to see underwater in Outlaws ... then remembered I had installed the Glide Wrapper ... oops!! So I got the glide2x.dll file from my V5 installation and copied it into my Outlaws folder ... Problem Fixed !! Maybe this info will be helpful to somebody down the track.

Outlaws, Day Two
Days of Our Outlaws has been updated with more raw Zone chat, starting off with DonMaximo doing a rousing rendition of my fellow Seattlite Sir Mix-A-Lot and going jouncing downhill from there. ;)
If ya click on the Krusty the Clown picture on DooO you'll come across a similar, new site:

AllMyOutlaws
Another Zone chat transcript site, author InSaNeKlOwNe having been inspired by "Day of Our Outlaws." Tons of text reading here, plus an archive section. Currently the selections aren't quite as choice as DooO and the format is slightly harder to read, but still a good solution for your wacky chat voyeurism fix.

Wanted: An Updater
     In anticipation of the upcoming Outlaws Mod for Half-Life I dropped by the local EB to grab a copy of the game. Wouldn't you know they didn't have it, just a bunch of copies of Half-Life: Blue Shift (which requires the original so you'd have thought they'd have it around in one of its bajillion combinations :p) and one copy of the retail Half-Life: Counter-Strike. So I bought CS, guess we'll see if it can take new mods as well as playing the old ones it comes with.
     It comes with multiplayer Wanted!, a western mod, but apparently there's no way to update the CD version to the most recent version, so that's pretty much useless. :P
     It also comes with Counter-Strike of course, so I played that for a bit for the first time. I think the enemy snipers must have loved me. ;) Time really flies when you're "playing" CS, at least for me, 'cause I die within the first 10 seconds of the round and then have to wait a couple minutes while the people who know what they're doing battle it out. I can see why it's so addictive, think I prefer the non-stop action and wild gunfights of OL a bit more. The guns in CS are really well done though—the stars of the show, in fact, since there really aren't any characters. Probably the coolest implementation of real-world weaponry I've seen, aside from Outlaws of course. :)

* * *

Wednesday 6/13/01

To Boom Or Not To Boom?
Boom2 (shot) by Chief_Big_Cloud: The bad part of this map is the rather slipshod texturing and the total absence of lighting which together can make it a little hard to see where you're going as space is flattened and kind of shoved in odd directions. The good part is that running it actually feels nice and smooth, with a very good multi-circular flow and fast framerates throughout. Item placement could have used a little more planning but isn't distractingly bad. Boom to you!

A Family Affair

SoL: Sh*t outa Luck
Another SoL site, this time done "Mafia style" which seems to mean wacky fonts in bright primary colors on a black background. Surprisingly, it doesn't come off too bad, and actually feels somewhat stylish although some of the fonts are a little hard to read. Style sheets are used heavily so the layout looked a bit weird on my old browser. There's a fair amount of info on the gang and past and present members, plus a message board and news blurb.

I Like to Read

Days Of Our Outlaws
Get a hefty dose of net chat voyeurism with transcripts from Zone chat sessions. Sheer brilliance: it's much more fun to read a juvenile rank-a-thon at your leisure than it is to be stuck in the middle of it and rabid gamers unwittingly provide timelessly classic lines, all captured here in a wonderfully minimalist, readable format. This is the kind of good, hot true-life stuff that ticks people off (and contains horrendous language, of course, so don't bother if you're easily offended by that sort of thing) and ruffles feathers right and left but keeps people coming back like vultures for more, waiting to see who gets roasted this time. The single (long) transcript there is well worth the visit by itself; if the webmaster can keep this up, which will be no easy task, this is gonna be the most infamous (and I mean that in a good way ;) site in Outlaws history.

* * *

Sunday 6/10/01

Wanted! Western Mod for Half-Life Released
Thanks to those who mailed in about the Wanted! The Half-Life Western Pack mod being released (Zeurdoos getting the nod for being the first mail about it to drop into my inbox, after my own hehe), the mod brings single and multiplayer "Western" gunfighting to Half-Life blah blah blah. You can catch screenshots and the download itself at the site. Looks like they have an odd thing for picking up critters and using them as weapons...

Wanted! A Voodoo Fix
If ya visit the "Download" page at the site above you'll see a "Special note to Voodoo Graphic card users" which says something about reading the readme. Well, TonToE, leader (or at least, the guy who always mails me :) of the Outlaws Mod for Half-Life project (check out the site for new shot of all six characters in a multiplayer pose), sent along what he says is a fix for the problem:

...there is this bug they have with voodoo cards when you come across these messages left behind they come up on your screen to let you read them. If you play in openGL mode it will crash to your desktop when you come across one of these. there is 6 of them total. Now Maverick dev. says if you have a voodoo just play it in direct3d. say huh? that was not a good enough answer to me so I decided to fix what they F&#*ed up. The problem lies in the fact that the messages exceed the maximum texture size for Voodoo which is of course 256x256 . And I'm sure there are plenty of OL players out there that will want to check this out for themselves, and we know how many OL players have voodoo.
...in the attached zip is the six reworked images with an added tontoe headress just to remind you how much TonToE loves you! all you have to do is replace the images of the same name with these. they reside in the half-life\wantedhl\gfx\vgui folder.

So here's the file. It's kinda big (824K) and not directly Outlaws-related so it'll only be up for a few days, or until I remember to delete it, so grab now it if ya want it. And don't bother askin' me anything about it, I don't have Half-Life so I can't help ya. :P

A New RIP

Rest In Peace
Site for the two-man gang who've named themselves after an old posse (they didn't let RIP rest, haw haw) has a nice clean wood'n'guns look, a little news and bio stuff on the two fellers and the usual links, message board, etc.

Turkeyshoot
Oh man... just as I was about to power down and hit the sack, what should pop down the old email chute bu-u-t: a new level!
Turkeyshoot (shot) by Red-Eyed Pete: Dunno if Pete had been hitting the hot sauce a little too hard or just really likes turkey, but I didn't spot any of those big birds in this map. You've got a kinda barn thing (reminds me of the building from Sniper, I guess it must be where the "turkeys" go to get shot) in the middle of a small canyon which has a path looping most of the way around, and a lot of bunkers in the rocky canyon walls. Kinda heavy on the bunkerage for me (how do you slow down a map? Just add bunkers!) and the central building has some major framerate / Voodoo graphics issues. Aside from that it's a decent looking medium-sized DM level. Can't recommend to 3dfx users though.

* * *

Wednesday 6/6/01

The Domains They Are A-Changin'
TheOutlawDad has a completely revamped site at theoutlawdad.com. Gone is the old green slime theme, in is the new Western theme and lots of assorted Outlaws goodies.
Red Dragon let me know that the High Speed Steel site is movin' to highspeedsteel.org. There really isn't anything there yet except for a really busy layout and a rather spiffing Outlaws-esque logo—but maybe there will be by the time you read this, who knows?

* * *

Sunday 6/3/01

Rock Me Like a Hurricane
Rock's Place (shot) by TheRock & Hardnox_3_: This map will look familiar to some as it's based fairly closely on TheRock's earlier "Lawtown" maps. The map seems to be improving with each new version, however: the framerate here is quite steady with good lighting and texturing. It's laid out in symmetrical CTF style with sniping cliff bunkers at either end, and features custom made "sniper rifles" (read "really powerful rifles"). So um there you have it, a polished small CTF map with mod'ed weapons.

ExO Site

Extreme Outlaws
You want extreme? The Homestead site-making utility is extremely lame. That's not to say you can't make a decent site with it, just that you're fighting a tough battle... and that many browsers won't be able to view it. Anyhoo, the ExO site has a decent amount of info, including posse news and bios on the members, as well as links to patch files, a selection of maps, an external message board and so forth. The menus tend to vary from page to page which makes navigation a trifle confusing, and some of the graphic and font selection isn't the most attractive.

Report on OL in Win XP
Dontknow has some good news for those considering "upgrading" to Microsoft's latest repackaging of their old OS, Windows XP, as well as those currently using Win2k:

Not that many people use it but for those that do, Microsoft has finally fixed (most) of the multiplayer problems in Windows 2000 with the Service Pack 2 and the compatibility pack. Outlaws needs to be set in "Windows 95/98 compatibility mode." This is a taste of Windows XP which has even superior compatibility with Win9x programs. (yes, even Outlaws works on XP). Singleplayer has always worked in W2K, but now so does multiplayer. Backspace and shift-key functions don't work but that is still an inherent flaw in Outlaws only supporting the w9x keyboard setups. (a silly little patch from Lucasarts would have fixed that but would they spare the 10secs of programming for it? Noooooo...)

V3, V5 Incompatible with Intel P4 Motherboards
Michele Rimmer pointed me to this article on The Register which says that 3dfx's Voodoo 3 and Voodoo 5 cards do not work on Intel P4 motherboards as those boards don't support the 3.3V connection those Voodoo cards use. Note, however, that the article is dated last year, so that could have changed... also, it would still only apply to Intel-made motherboards—third party P4 boards from companies like Asus and ABit probably wouldn't have the same problem, especially since according to Intel's own P4 motherboard spec (according to The Register), 3.3V AGP port compatibility should be included. I haven't heard any reports of Voodoo owners having trouble with Intel P4 motherboards, let me know if you've encountered this problem.

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Wednesday 5/30/01

Tripping the Light Gravity
Shayna's Shootout (shot) by Blacky & The Mescaleros: I love the squiggly wriggly canyon here with the tiny bases at either end half-covered in sand, a great effect; the construction and texturing is truly top-notch. It would seem to lend itself to CTF though I wonder how well the single path layout (there's a side path between bases but it seems to kill you?—I may be missing something there) and the single-entrance bunkers are gonna make it tough going, though maybe 2-on-2 CTF would have more action here than in most CTF maps. The gravity wells in the two-room bases are kind of odd, and maybe it's just my sound card on crack but there doesn't seem to be a sound when you pick up most items, though there's a fair load of digitized voices triggered here and there.
Blackthorn asked if I could post the following regarding the map; normally I wouldn't (that's what map readme's are for ;) but heck , it's a slow news day:

Well, we had all sorts of elaborate plans for this one at first, including an inf script that would turn the map from day to night over a 30 minute period (which can be done, but the effect on lag would probably render it unplayable). We even had a Dr Death who was able to heal his team-mates with a syringe at one point, but opted in the end for a version that was easy on the frame-rates. It started out as fast-paced deathmatch type of thing, but gradually turned into more of a CTF map as time went on, which is ironic since, as anyone who knows me will attest, I can't stand CTF! Anyway, it's survived some thorough beta-testing and should be a fun map to play. A big thanks to all who helped out and put up with me over the last six weeks or so!

This is My Brain on Moth Balls
Man, it really is a slow news day—I thought I had something else but I seem to have misplaced it in the cluttered mess passing for my brain. So I'll fill in here with a literary quotation, since it's been a while (and you thought I'd grown out of this phase, didn't you? ;).

She was a long-faced, long-toothed creature, with pale eyes set in a pale face, and with an invariable expression that was a mixture of melancholy, worry, and fear. She always wore a grey dress and a grey shawl, which smelt of moth balls.
— Ivan Turgenev, Clara Milich

Brain Corruption
Yoiks! I do have something! Silly me!

The CoRruption
Made with that Homestead.com tool that gives my old browser fits, the CoR site has a smidge of posse news, CoR member bios, some links and a small selection of maps with nifty thumbnail pictures.

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Sunday 5/27/01

Super Update!
     Err well since I didn't get in an update during the week, today's is extra-meaty, with lots of gristle. Woo!

Want to be a Half-Life Outlaws Server?
     TonToE let me know of a minor update to the screenshots section of the Outlaws Mod for Half-Life site, the new shots show Mary (who's slimmed down a bit for 3d ;) and the interface which is looking swell. The update notice on the front page also indicates that they're getting close to the testing phase and are looking for folks who can host servers. Check it out!

Gnuu Map 4 Yuu!
     Mag_7 (shot) by Chaabo: Where's Yul Brynner? A circular canyon cut by a dry riverbed is the site for a little symmetrical two-base action. Two tiers of ledges extend up and around but there's only really one way up so the flow isn't as easy as it looks. The framerate is toward the lower side of things since everything takes place in the same area. Watch for snipers around the sides too! Nifty elixir placement requires some fancy footwork (and nerves of steel) to get the goods.

Linksys Link-Up?
     Bob is on an internet connection behind a Linksys router and is having trouble getting folks to be able to connect to his game. Probably something to do with ports and whatchmadoo. I get all confused when it comes to messing with port numbers (I tried it briefly after my old DSL switched to static IPs, boy did that suck) so if you have any helpful advice for Bob, send him an email (this is more of a message board type of post but what the heck).

Mail Virus Alert
     GoJo, always newsworthy ;), fears a mail virus may have sent itself out from his inbox. Says he: "Anyway, if you get a message with HAHAHA and an attachment about dwarf4u.exe, delete it. Hopefully, I caught it in time again. If by chance you got it, opened it, and are now infected, there is good info at: http://vil.mcafee.com/dispVirus.asp?virus_k=98873& If you don't have McAfee, I think just doing the SFC restore of C:\windows\system\wsock32.dll and dumping the most recent 6 added files from C:\windows\system would do it. Unfortunately, the files are named rather randomly."

OL Belgium Bash
     Leccy is hosting an Outlaws "Bash" in July in Hasselt, Belgium. They'll have an LAN party, paintball and lots of fine dining. :d Find out all about the upcoming hootenanny at Leccy's Place.
     Why should you go to Belgium? Well aside from die-hard Outlaws fans they also have awesome bands like Hooverphonic. Heck, even Hasselt's official web page has some kickin' tunes. Shazow!

Tourny Insecure
     TheOutlawsDad tells me that the recent map "Tourny" is not secure and that there's hacked version floating around that gives Doc extra health and speed (even more than the extra health and speed he has normally, that is :p). So be on the lookout for that, I guess.

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Sunday 5/20/01

Warwolf Saves the Day!
Whew, it was looking like there'd be no news for this update and then, just before zero-hour struck, what should appear in my inbox but:
Tourny (shot) by Warwolf: This map has something of the spirit of a formal jousting ground with a carefully measured wooden arena, items regimentally arrayed and so forth. And of course the framerates are high--they insisted on that back in ye olde days too, you know: if they woke up and went to the field and framerates were too low, the joust was cancelled. :p I'm not quite sure what the rules of the special sports to be played here may be but this probably means you should feel free to make up your own. Orf wif 'is 'ead!

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Wednesday 5/16/01

Truffle Dials In
Truffle dropped me a note to say that he is going into semi-retirement, which seems to mean that he won't be seen around quite as much anymore, and will be scaling his Outlaws Hideout site down gradually, though he will maintain it for the release of what he calls the "Outlaws Masterpiece Collection," namely a collection of top-notch maps, and as a portal to the Outlaws Message Board which he will continue to help moderate. He also leaves the door open (you can catch all this on the front page of the Hideout, incidentally) for perhaps doing a little LawMaking now and then, which is good news.
The OLMB itself is currently arife with people up in arms about NWX hackers and such with the usual accusations, remonstrations and fingerpointing. I think Moose said it well in a post there: if you find people using hacks "THEN DONT PLAY WITH THEM... How hard is that??" Exactly. Same as you'd do with people who are just plain jerks without even needing hacks—which takes a little more strength of character, I might add. ;)

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Sunday 5/13/01

Look A Map!
H20AreNa (shot) by Rambo: Says Rambo: "This idea was quite simple it came to mind when i thought of water polo." This is immediately apparent in the map as you have simply a large rectangle of fairly deep water separating two huts, with narrow runways along the sides. Nice idea, will be interesting to see how it plays... probably a lot of swimming up to the huts and fighting at close quarters, I would think. Framerate is pretty low considering the simple layout, maybe the water slows it down or something.

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Wednesday 5/9/01

Three for the Road
     KillShot (shot) by Rambo: Rambo warned me that this map is CTF only, even though other modes of play are listed (he didn't realize this until after he released it). So don't try to host in in DM or Team or whatever, 'cause apparently it won't work. The map itself has a symmetrical CTF-style layout, though unusual in that there are no side routes between the bases, just one big wide flat valley with galleries filled with rifles and gatling guns along the sides. Ouch. Better partner up with some roughnecks who can shoot straight. Very simple layout so framerates are nice and high.
     Chief's Revenge (shot) by chief_OJ: Something about files with apostrophes and spaces in the name scares me but what the heck... Oh I had to rename the .lab file in this one so it would work, so if you see a different version somewhere, that's why (and also note that the .lvt is named "22" so this shows up near the top of your host list). This is a kinda arena-style little canyon DM level with a nifty ledge running in a C shape around three sides, the ledge is separate from the canyon walls and has cut-throughs and overpasses and stuff. There's also a nifty trick (or unintentional bug? you decide) with a badge which it looks like you can pick up but vanishes when you get close to it. That crazy AI squirrel is in here, kill him fast so he won't waste bandwidth.
     Firezone (shot) by Kbyrne: This time his old Fort Knocks gets the retro revamp treatment, and in a major way. The broiling new palette makes you feel like a briquette on a smoldering fire and the severely cut-down fort positively glows. A new classic polished to a firey glow!

Garbo Walks
     Garbotalk, groovy dominatrix of the #outlaws_players IRC channel, announced that she's shelving her regular tourneys and ladder. Why? She discovered irrefutable evidence that the contests were being compromised by cheaters with "nwx hacks" and other such devices. Read her lengthy report on the #o_p site right here.
     Predictably, I'll say it's just sad that there are still losers out there who feel the need to cheat at this game to try to make themselves feel good. I mean jeez. Go hack a Quake server or something. :P

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