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Thirteenth Highest Shelf Vittles: 5.12.99-7.5.99
Back to Stale Vittles
Monday 7/5/99
Outlaws on #EFnet
Yay what a cool day, it's Monday and I didn't have to go
to work. Woohoo! :) Slack-Jawed Pete was over here
last night playing in the Zone under my name err so if you
saw me, it wasn't me. :P I must say Pete is as stubborn as
they come, he kept trying to win a 2 on 3 CTF match in "Simms
at Dusk" for like an hour and a half. It was painful just
watching it! Ouch.
You've probably fired up an IRC client and headed over
to #outlaws_players on the Undernet at some point. Well there's
another Outlaws IRC channel these days that you could
check out too: #lucasarts_outlaws on EFnet. Heck if you have
any kind of decent IRC client (
mIRC is a good one) you can have
'em BOTH open at once. ;) Kohna pointed #l_o out to me
the other day and now Cowpoke has sent me a lil' bit on
what the new channel is all about:
Efnet #Lucasarts_Outlaws
Once upon a time... in a far away ghosttown dotted with rolling
tumbleweeds were 4 guys who loved to play outlaws. In the
beginning we played ip games amongst eachother, until one day
we heard about a group of people playing on Undernet in a
channel called, "Outlaws_Players". We decided to go there to see
how other people played the game and wanted to make a name for
ourselves. At that time there was very little game play during
the week, but we lived for the tournament on sundays. After a
few weekends of not having any games run, we decided to HOST
a tournament on #efnet. The channel name we picked was the same
as to not confuse anyone coming over to another net. Well,
needless to say, the tourney never happened for lack of people
to play. In the interim, we decided to keep the channel alive
for new/undernet people who wanted to play. One thing lead
to another and OLM_KidKolt had some words with someone on
the Undernet channel about the pilfering of their channel name.
Albeit, childish as it was, we changed the name. Currently there
are 5 OLM members, which stands for Outlaws Misfits, those members
are as follows:
OLM_Cow
OLM_Bare
OLM_Kidkolt <_Stryker_>
OLM_Scobe
OLM_Slinger
Right now, OLM has about 5 levels out, with more in the works. IP games
are played nightly along with undernet and Sir_Kohna who keeps the link
between nets alive. The right to keep Outlaws an american favorite
passtime is our strongest pledge. I hope to find some of you in the
future looking for a GREAT bunch of people who enjoy the same thing
you do.
Well that sounds pretty good, don't it? So now there are TWO
IRC channels you can look to hunt up an Outlaws match in. The
more the merrier, I hope. There may be those pessimists who'd
say that this will only fragment the relatively small IRC Outlaws
community but ya know I think diversity can be a good thing and
as I mentioned there's nothin' stoppin' ya from havin' both
channels open at once (unless one of them boots you, har ;) —that's
a joke, son, they're much too nice ta do that).
New Version of XGl200 Glide Wrapper
Thanks to both Clint Cartright (hope I spelled that
okay) and salmoides fer lettin' me know that Scott
Cutler has posted a new version of his "XGL200" Glide
wrapper (lets you run Outlaws on a Direct3D card) at the
GlideUnderground.
I've also got a local version you can grab right
here
(121k). Apparently the only change is support for auto-mipmapping
which should give a performance boost on some cards, not sure
if that'll do much for Outlaws but it shouldn't hurt, Clint
mentioned that it works great on his "cheesy" (his word, not
mine ;) ATI Rage Pro Turbo 8mb card. I know a lot of folks get
stuck with cheesy cards so this should bring great joy to
many. :)
* * *
Sunday 7/4/99
OL Picture-Perfect on Creative TNTs
Dude sends word that the latest beta version of
Creative Labs' TNT
video drivers seems to have fixed all the graphical glitches
previously seen running Outlaws in D3D Glide-emulated mode
with their "Unified" driver. He's put up a page
here
with lots of screenshots comparing image quality and performance
speed of the latest drivers in Outlaws. Great news indeed for
OL fans who might want to pick up a TNT2 or Matrox G400 instead
of a Voodoo3, though the V3 WILL still be better for Outlaws.
You can check Dude's framerates in the screenshots he's got
though he doesn't mention his system specs: a p2 350 with 128 MB
PC100 RAM and Creative TNT. For the sake of comparison, on my
P2 333 w/ 128 MB 66mHz RAM and Banshee card I get about 95
and 70 fps in those last two areas he shows as compared to his
85 and 32.
New Map Stuff: Gore and the Draft
Whoops! Just realized there was already a "duke.zip" map. I've
renamed Stryker's new "USMC Duke" map file to
usmcduke.zip
to keep them separate. Sheesh, hard to keep track of names these
days. :P
DrDeath2 has
done up a new version of his "Coarsegold" map, bringing this up
to Coarsegold
v 2.1. This weighs in at a hefty 637k due to the 5 edited
character. Everybody but Bob has a gory death now, here's a
sample from the descriptions on his news page:
"Mary : Head explodes." Ouch! Let's see
here's my screenshot from the
first version, if you'll recall I liked this map. Still haven't
gotten to play a match in it yet but now I'll get to see various
extremities blow off. Whoopee! Man, I'm so behind I still haven't
even played Pinball yet, sheesh! Darn real life. :P Actually
I got a Jury Duty summons in the mail which freaked me out
until I noticed that it was addressed to the former tenant here.
Phew! I'll pass on my $10/day, thank you very much.
O-tay back to maps. Oh actually I only have one more map
today, what a surprise compared to the map frenzy that hit this
past week.
WWII Barracks
came to me from the mysterious collective known only as
TELM. Who are they? What do they want? Do they like fish?
Only time will TELM. HAHAHAhahaa...ha...ah okay so that wasn't
funny at all. Actually TELM stands for "The Elite Law Makers."
Modesty modesty. But this is a neat theme for a multiplayer
map and well made, check out the little tower in
there. Neato. Hey jury duty,
the WWII draft, there's a tie-in! I swear!
"Crossed Identity" Single-Player Soon
Raf sent me a beta version of the
Outlaws
Editing Team's epic single-player adventure, "Crossed
Identity." Oh man actually this is just Part One and it took
me all day yesterday to get through, I suck at single-player. ;P
But heck it was a lot of fun, the OET guys are seriously going
all out to make this 4-level adventure a real hearty meal of
Outlaws goodness. Yummy! Let's see Raf is handling the first
and last levels with veterans Picante and ShotgunMC
taking care of the two levels of creamy filling in the middle.
I've already shown screenshots of the first level, I think (do
a site search, I'm too lazy) but I snapped a lot of big pics of
levels 2-4 so you'd better look at them:
shot 1,
shot 2,
shot 3,
shot 4,
shot 5 and
shot 6. Hmm normally the
badguys don't look quite that limp but they were so excited I had
to weigh them down with a bit of lead to get them to hold still
for the pictures. Now that'll
hafta hold YOU until this thing hits the streets, judging by the
high quality of the beta it won't be long now.
Ratz'in Fratz'in Ding Dong Dangit
Sorry for the language, I'm just a bit peefed (please note
that is not a real word) with myself
for misplacing this bit of news for nearly a week.
Rat_Filthy updated his
Orleans
Seafood House & Tavern site a lil' while back with a
captivating account of how Annie took the Orleans
crown in a tough match against Wildarms. A good read
as is the rest of Ratty's great site!
* * *
Friday 7/2/99
The Big Map Catch-Up
As you know if you tuned in yesterday I'm behind on my map
coverage, so here we go. I'll start with the four from
yesterday and finish up with today's two new ones.
Runaway Jim has created what may be the new standard
for large western towns in
Bucksnort.
It is BIG without seeming too big, one of those rare maps that
feels made at a natural scale. He has created a whole town
from scratch, pulled it up from the dry dusty desert floor
and laid it out for us to play in. Framerates are just what
you would expect—high—even pretty darn high in spots where you
can see all the way across the large town square, for instance.
But back to what I was saying about scale. This is the kind of
map that makes careful cross-town shootouts possible as well
as gunfights that spill in and out of multiple buildings. Just
running around the map is fun, it has such great flow to it as
to seem effortless, made just for you to run, jump and climb
in. And that's because it was. I like it, I say. Here are a few
screenshots that just scratch the surface:
shot 1,
shot 2 and
shot 3.
DrDeath2's
two level single-player adventure,
Zombie: Dead
Outlaws Walk Again!, reminds me a lot of the original
Blood: lots of zombies muttering loudly to themselves
and you with a double-barreled shotgun with which to send them
back to their not-so-eternal rest. As a sheer zombie-blasting
flesh-fest it is tons of fun, DrD isn't at all reluctant to give
you a roomfull of zombies to cut down to giblets.
The one crazy thing is the volume of the zombies—their incessant
and LOUD moaning nearly drove me crazy. I STRONGLY advise
using LawMaker to extract the .wav files from the zombie.lab
and lower the volume—Window's SoundRecorder program can do this,
I found that doing "Decrease Volume" eight times for each .wav
gave me an acceptable level of zombie sounds. Oy. Once you do
that it's a lot of fun. There's a customized sawed-off that can
load a dozen or so shells at once, seems rather weak though,
fer my money ya still can't beat th' good ol' double-barrel.
Oh yes just so y'all know this IS the first single-player
adventure with customized bad guys good job by DrD. Wish the
level textures were stitched but oh well. Check out some
zombies about to bite it: shot.
Busta
Nut Ville by BlastingBob has what almost all other
maps by new LawMakers don't have: texture stitching. Just look
at the texturing on those long walls, gorgeous! Level itself is
a bit big, flat and simple, but the wide buildings each have a bit
of natural variation that shows promise. Check the
screenshot.
Dead by
DupE puts us smack dab in... uhh... a big dark red hot
rocky place with a thick blood-red sky. Happyland? I think not.
No, we are in the eternal bowels of something or other and not
too happy about it, I should think. Very large and flat,
extremely so you might say. Some weird effects show the author
is still experimenting with LawMaker functions. Well hey
whatever, nobody's forcing you to play anything. Unless you die
and spawn in there, I suppose. Check the
screenshot.
DupE sent me another new one today,
Twofort.
Think the name pretty much says it, he's going for the straight
up fort vs fort approach here, apparently trying to get a
"Team Fortress" feel to the thing. Well I haven't seen a whole
lot of Team Fortress but as far as I can tell the maps are
big, blocky and pretty suck-ass. But tons of people still play it
like they've got nothing better to play. So err hmm. Here's a
shot.
Stryker sent along
Duke, a map which succeeded in
making my head hurt. Not to say that's a bad thing, that's just
what happened. Rugs, lamps, stairs, boxes and holes seem to
go every which way in this weird "house" that made me feel at
times that I was trapped in an Escher print. I think the
textures and lighting in particular made it tough for me to
distinquish depth which left me feeling rather disoriented. Or
maybe it's just been a long week. Here's a
screenshot. Thank goodness for
a three-day weekend; I swear it seems like everybody in Outlaws
is on summer break except for me. :P
Web Site News/Updates/Sex-Changes
Whoa I don't know how that last bit slipped in there... ahh too
late to head it off before it hits the press, oh darn. A good
deal of web-based stuff in the past few days.
Simon has decided to discontinue his nifty
"Simon and Garfunkel" site. In its place has arisen a new,
decidedly different Outlaws page:
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The Five Ravens
Combine Swedes, Outlaws, the movie "The Crow," shake
well and you get something pretty darn cool: a stylish
posse page. Well written, nice visual theme and that's
about it for now.
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Oh yeah Simon has also put up a little memorial to an old
Outlaws posse, "Guns 4 Hire," which you can check out
here.
Levelmaker Yoda has his own site at
http://members.tripod.com/~YodaBog.
Not gonna add it to the link list as it really isn't Outlaws-specific,
but you gotta love a news page that has the guts to post an
update that just says "I'm tired. More News tomorrow." Man,
that rocks! (I'm serious here!)
And before my head hits my keyboard with a hollow thunking
sound, got to get in that Silverwire (or SnakeSilver
or VodkaMan or whatever his name is today) has updated the
Vodka 4 Ever posse
site with ICQ contact info, remarks on the playing styles of
the members and a link to a page where he recounts episodes
of drunken debauchery, I'm sure that will be a big draw. Anyway
I've got to go fall over now...
* thunk *
Thursday 7/1/99
Women's World Cup
Okay so I spent the evening watching Women's World Cup
quarterfinals so all I've got time for right now is to
post the latest maps, hopefully I'll be able to give this
stuff (and all the other news that's come in) the proper
treatment in my next update. The new maps are:
Bucksnort
by Runaway Jim
Zombie: Dead
Outlaws Walk Again! single-player adventure by
DrDeath2
Busta
Nut Ville by BlastingBob
Dead by
DupE
Hurrah! Go get 'em—gosh I hope they all work, sight-unseen
posting like this almost always backfires on me somehow. ;)
And just to show everybody that I do still care, I'm just
out of time for today, check out the following cheap stunt!
* * *
Wednesday 6/30/99
625 Frames Per Second?!?
Notorious sent me a screenshot showing him getting
625 fps looking at the sky in 512x384. This is the same
shot posted by Wildbill
and I thought it looked a bit suspicious so I asked Notorious
about it... turns out Wildbill had edited it a bit to "fix"
the player name. Here's
a direct jpg of the original .bmp screenshot. Looks pretty
legit to me, of course these are easy to fake but hey, let's
give him the benefit of the doubt. His new system specs are:
"pentium 3 450mhz with 196mb ram a voodoo 3 3000 overclocked to
183mhz." As Jim C. might say, "Smmm-Okin'!" Wildbill has a bit
of an interview about it, check it out.
Fix for Win98: Dual Boot!
Hagen has experienced firsthand the dreaded Win98 join
game problem in Outlaws. He found a lil' way to take care of
his trouble. It may be a bit more trouble than most are willing
to go to, and you need a copy of Win95, but here it is:
i went and was
snoopin round www.winfiles.com to see if there was anything there that could
help me. Anyhow, i managed to find something that i thought may help me.
it's a nifty lil program called My Boot Manager. It allowed me to install
both win98 and win95 on one HD, and with no probs whatsoever. I know that
you and probably hundreds of other people have known about the ability to
install 2 or more operating systems onto a pc, but why noone has ever
offered this as a solution to the windows 98 join bug baffles me. The only
prob with this workaround to the join bug is that you gotta have access to
both the win95 and win98 cds. But in tihs age of friends everywhere, it
sholdn't be too hard to procure one :) Anyhow, the homepage URL of "My Boot
Manager" is as follows :
http://magicb.webjump.com
One Link Leads to Another
I'm gonna hafta think of something soon, my link page is really
getting out of control. Found the first link here on Wildbill's,
which led to more...
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The DTG Website
Title page is a bit multimedia heavy but otherwise a
very smooth, attractive posse site with a ton of info
on each of the members. Well done and really gives you
a good idea (seems to, anyway ;)
of what this group is all about.
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Bad Gunners Posse
Not much here yet, some maps, links and list of posse
members. Okay if you can take MIDI Western music and
Java applets.
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DTG LilAngel's Web Site
Very out of date but attractive small site for two Outlaws.
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MBH Homepage
Learn all about the MBH posse, a small collection of
German Outlaws from the village of Massenbachhausen.
Unlike the name the site itself is short and sweet.
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* * *
Tuesday 6/29/99
Two LawMakin' Veterans with Two New/Old Maps
Hmm that title is pretty confusing. What I meant was that
whereas yesterd'y we had lots of new maps from LawMakers relatively
new to the scene, today we've got two new versions of older
maps made by two very veteran Outlaws map makers.
ShotgunMc starts us off with
KJBD Hideout,
the fanciful results of the KJBD gang taking over Hargrove's
Pattern Repair. Yes it's yet another modified Repair but
the KJBDs have really remodeled the place, digging out a
large cellar and thoughtfully adding in a two-seat outhouse
to handle all those big parties. Emptied beer bottles abound
as well as a number of lighthearted jabs at other Zone posses.
But the gameplay is all serious stuff with the benches cleared
out of the main floor to add speed and the tunnel underneath
the building opening up many new strategic variations. All
done with nice twilight texturing and bright lighting
indoors. Very good stuff indeed if you can stand seeing all those
poor empty beer bottles around. Here's the
screenshot.
Now here's a real blast from the past. Does the name
MikeyJo ring a bell? How about MrBurrito? Yep,
the maker of the classic "Tenpaces" and "Clatsop" maps has
returned to LawMaking with
Longrun
(hmm, does it make more sense than "Clatsop?" ;), a combination
of his two popular old maps. Take Clatsop, stick Tenpaces
on the side and spread the Clatsop texturing all around, add
in a connecting tunnel or two and you've got Longrun. Now going
by Nacho, MrB still hasn't bothered to go back and
stitch his textures or anything. However the old maps were all
about pure deathmatch gameplay, so do two great-playing maps
add up to one supermap? Or an Übermap, if you will? Remains
to be seen. Very nice to have Nacho back in the saddle, he's
even saved his tacky old MrBurrito sign for us old-timers wax
nostalgic about. ;) Here's a memory-jerking
screenshot.
* * *
Monday 6/28/99
Too Many New Maps to Count
After all this time I should have suspected. Here I am
Saturday and Sunday, toddling around attending to other matters,
not taking time to update here because there really wasn't
enough news to warrant it. Then along comes Monday and BANG!
Actually it was a lot of BANGs today. Let's rip into 'em.
Over the weekend I found
BGP at
Outlaws Gang Busters.
This falls into the ever-popular big, flat and ugly category.
It takes nearly a minute just to cross the danged thing and
the buildings are so ugly you'll probably regret the effort of
getting to them. An entire building with floors that moan when
you walk on them. Oh, baby. ;P Here's a
screenshot.
Sleepy snuck into my inbox in the wee hours this morning
to drop off Do or
Die 2. A very small strictly arena map, perhaps a bit
artificial-looking but coming from
Sleepy you know it's just going to be tons of fun to play.
Check out the funky sloping floor in the
central area.
BigDogCH introduced himself and piled on a whole slew
of maps. Well okay only three, but the first is worth at least
a dozen slews all on its own. It's a ten level single-player
adventure called
The
Waddy Gang. It's mammoth. It's an amazing achievement. It's
a modern day Moby Dick. Yay it is all that and more, and I only
got through the first two levels (and that was running). See,
there's one bad thing...
It doesn't run in Glide accelerated graphics. Well okay it runs,
but it crashes. A lot. I finally hit a seemingly unavoidable
crash at the beginning of level 2 and had to switch to
software and if you have a crappy DirectDraw and MGL card like
my Banshee you'll be clawing your eyes out. Still I stuck it out
through 1 and a half levels and I'm glad I did because I hit one
of the most incredible single-player experiences I've had: there's
a train tunnel where you have to ride along a train car gunning
it out gatling-gun to gatling-gun with a horde of badguys. There
are lots of hordes. And I only got 15% through, if that, and
it took me all night (and mostly running through on "Good," albiet
hindered by lots of crashes). In-freakin'-credible. I can only pray that
somebody gets this guy a 3dfx card or takes the time to convert
it with his help (and stitch some of those textures).
Astounding, and o so close to being the best; for those w/o a
3dfx or Glide Wrapper compatible card it probably IS the best. (you run it through
the Main Game menu item, and have the first CD in for the music
to play)
BigDog's other two are multiplayer.
Waddy
Arena ML is another arena-style map but this one is
definately a place: a boxing ring, to be exact. Watch out for
the gat in the announcer's booth and critters in the ventilation
shaft. Very well done indeed and no 3dfx problems (a bit dark,
but that's being picky). Here's a shot.The other,
Waddy
Neigbors ML, I can't recommend as highly. It's got a very
original twist as you can shoot yourself up onto the roofs of
the two tall houses by TNT-blasting out of the adjacent wells,
to drop TNT on people from the relative safety of the rooftops
BUT there is a nasty 3dfx problem as well as moving doors which
could add to trouble in laggy games. Check the
screenshot.
Chet_R1 clocked me with another new map,
Boxes.
Yes it is a big warehouse with box-constructed mazes, not
original but done better than most of them with areas you can
tell were designed specifically to test your jumping and climbing
skills. Throw in a healthy dose of gunpowder (is that a
sawed-off hiding up there?) and you're bound to have fun.
Here's a boxy screenshot.
Sshep finishes us off with
New Park,
a replacement for his old "Park" map which did a great job of
modelling all the structures in a park/playground but had some
slow framerates. "New Park" spreads things out a bit, the map
is still one big circular area but framerates are acceptable,
even respectable for a centralized map with this much detail.
Climb the tree, coast down the slide, mosey through the picnic
area, play in the sandbox or fill your buddies full of lead,
it's up to you. A little dark but then again I guess they
don't permit gunplay during normal daylight operating hours. ;)
Check out the pre-dawn (or post-sunset)
screenshot.
That's it for the maps. Dude sent me a
screenshot of Scott Cutler's
XGL200
Glide wrapper running Outlaws in 3D acceleration on his TNT card.
Seems it has less graphical glitches than Creative's "Unified"
Glide wrapper but slightly lower image quality. Good to hear,
and let's keep fingers crossed for a new version in a week or
two. If somebody could keep an eye open on
GlideUnderground
for it I'd be much obliged (darn good 3dfx emulation site and
"official" home of the wrapper, btw).
Okay that's really it now, man my eyes are killing me and it's
past my bedtime. Darn that Waddy Gang, the non-accelerated
crafty bastards kept me up... Going to be behind on emails, don't
take it personal if you don't get a reply right away and, as
always, many thanks to those who continue to help by sending in
news items. :)
* * *
Friday 6/25/99
More Bundles from Chet_R1
Oh dear what has been unleashed? Chet_R1
has even more OL lovin' today, two new maps and another web
site. Sheesh!
Grave
Robbers sticks you in a graveyard amongst pilfered and
looted graves and tools lying about. Now who could have done
such an infernal thing? Hope they aren't hiding in that
bunker in the cliff there, that'd be trouble! Very nice work
on the graveyard details here with high framerates and lots
of detail of dirt, tools, graves, coffins and more. May bog down
a bit in some of the narrow tunnels below, and up-top is a
bit spoiled by a rather nasty 3dfx texturing problem. I asked
Chet about this and he can't really fix it as he doesn't have
a 3dfx card to check it with, so it's there to stay (at least
until he gets a 3dfx card—donations, anyone? ;). Here's a
screenshot.
Pyramid2
is the rapid-fire sequel to Pyramid which I just posted here
yesterday. Whereas the first takes you inside the tricksy
guts of the ancient pile this sequel, almost perfectly
symmetrical both east-west and north-south, has you running
and scurrying about the edges, sides and top of one of these
massive burial monuments. Pretty dwarfing I must say, though
a good rifle will as always cut things down to size. Here's
a screenshot; for
scale reference, that lil' smudge atop the pyramid (which is
a stylish domed shape rather than a strict 4-sided cone) is
a gatling gun. :P
And here's the latest URL from him hehe mebbe it bit
premature but of course I'll update the writeup ;):
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Red Eye
Beginnings of a site by Chet_R1. Front page layout
looks promising with buttons for levels, links, files,
cheats, gangs and info; let me know if there's more to it
when you check it!
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XGl200 News Blurb
Saw over at the
Glide Underground
that Scott Cutler, author of the great
XGl200
Glide wrapper that lets you play Outlaws in Direct3D by
emulating 3dfx Glide (a bit slower than a true Voodoo card, of
course), hopes to have an updated version in a week or two
with some speed improvements. He also confirms the rumor that
he is now working for
nVidia, quite a catch for
them if his wrapper is any gauge of his talents.
* * *
Thursday 6/24/99
Bundle of Goodies from Chet_R1
After some begging and pleading on my part Chet_R1
sent along three of his maps that I didn't yet have, as
well as his web site URL.
Phoenix
is basically a redo of "Buckshotville" with the same basic layout
but most of the detail redone. Still got that door that raises
and lowers when you press the button though. If you like
Buckshotville but mebbe want a little variety, this is your
map. Here's a screenshot.
Abandoned Village
is likewise a revamp of "Dry Gulch" though things are significantly
changed around this time and you may only recognize it once
you've run around it a bit. Some of the texturing is a little
tough on the eyes, but the underground passages look very nice.
Here's a shot.
Marsh
is all-original, a swampy pool in a small canyon with a big
tree in the middle and sniping rooms in the cliffs on two sides.
There are chickens on top of the tree, which is neat but may
slow down laggy games. In an interesting move on of the
bunkers has a sliding door that drops down after you enter
and can only be raised with a button on the inside. Now campers
don't have to worry about watching their behind, I guess. Hmm.
Tree in the middle puts a damper on the framerates though it
does look a bit neat. Here's the shot.
Here's his site URL, plus a second I found on his links page
and then another I found on THEIR links page (that's networking
for you, I guess ;):
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Unofficial SWL Site
Large site by Chet_S1 with lots of detail on the
"Shooters Without Law" posse members, a library of
his multiplayer maps and some interesting game tips.
Gratuitous backgrounds and animations slow things down
a tad but the site as a whole is pretty solid.
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SWL Posse
Colorful and eclectic, extremely high-bandwidth
presentation for the official SWL site. Lots of
info on posse members, game analysis, levels to
grab and so forth but those with slow net connections
may not have the patience to get all the way through it.
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Les Hors La Loi
Beginnings of a large all-French posse site. Most
of the menu items aren't in place yet but you will
find some very large graphics. Still the LHLL site
(roughly "Those Outside the Law" ie Outlaws) has to
get some kind of credit for pure Gallic pride.
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DrDeath2's "LawMaker's Peace" Award
DrDeath2 is having a vote for the best single-player
map ever made. Head over to his
LawMaker's Peace
page to ring in for your favorite. Haven't played some of
these single-player maps? Download 'em while yer there then!
* * *
Wednesday 6/23/99
Two New Maps
MikeDaKid made it into my inbox first today with
DeathRiver,
a smallish deathmatch river map with a twist. Literally. The
river has a kink in it. :) Also you'll want to heed the .txt
file's warning, "don't drink the water!" Bleh! A very nice
looking level, simple but different, solid framerates, lots
of shotguns, and that catwalk around the top is SO perfect
for dropping dynamite. ;) Yeppers here's a
screenshot. Also I want to note
that I like the filename he chose for this map. There seems
to be this silly convention of shortening the FIRST word in
maps, so most people would have done "driver.zip" or something
like that. But you know, that makes it pretty darn hard to find
the map alphabetically by filename. His "deathriv.zip" is so
much easier, don't you think?
Chet_R1 was hot on his heels with
Pyramid.
Not the first OL map with an Egyptian or archeological theme,
but I think the first to really take you in-depth inside one.
Conveniently enough it's brightly lit inside so you won't have
any trouble avoiding that huge pit now will you? ;) The outside
is particularly striking in a monolithic sort of way
(shot) though the inside is,
as you might expect, a bit on the cramped side of things with
low-ceilinged small rooms and long tunnels. Still
construction is very solid (they built them things to last, ya
know!) and there are some interesting touches such as the
trip switch in the floor that hides a gatling gun standing
on a pedestal (shot). Might
not work great in laggy matches but heck we all know that
already. If I were a pharoah I think I'd be pretty happy to
be sent to my eternal rest in this map. =)
* * *
Tuesday 6/22/99
A "New" Map and Four New Sites
Picked up a new map over at
Outlaws Gang Busters,
Sand Box 2
by Last1stndin. This is jus' basically a redo of th'
first one, he went back and gave it a little more attention.
Still no running sounds though. :P In case you don't remember
it here's the
screenshot of the first one
(and you wondered why I keep my old screenshots around ;).
Metalliplasty sent me the URL of his new gang site,
and I picked up another new site link at
Mallard's site...
then a new link from THAT site, then I remembered that Kali's
Outlaws server had more links listed recently, and so:
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Metalliplasty's Metal Militia
Hrm... umm... I'm thinkin' this is one of those love it
or hate it type of sites. If you like Heavy Metal MIDI,
blood-red backgrounds on black text and grab bags of
Outlaws web graphics and game taunt sounds, you will
love this site. If not, well... Hard to read, long to
load and loud but has good details on the gang members and
the aforementioned custom taunt sounds.
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Leccy's Place
Attractive, well put together individual Outlaws site.
Webmaster Le Caillou mixes in news, a map review forum, files, etiquette,
game info and more to make a one-of-a-kind original site
with opinions and info you just won't get anywhere else.
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Picante
Well there just ain't a lot here besides an old wood
background texture, a spinning skull, some MIDI
and Picante's maps. But then again this is I guess
the home base of said maps, so that's got to be worth
something.
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The PAL Headquarters
A decent selection of files and maps, some posse info and links
in a functional layout.
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* * *
Monday 6/21/99
Yeah, I Got a File For Ya
Just noticed that Scott Cutler's web site seems to have
been abandoned so I put up my own local copy of his
XGl2OO
Glide Wrapper which you can find normally on my
other helpful files page. Again,
this program lets you run Outlaws with hardware acceleration
on most Direct3D-compatible video cards, though not as speedily
as a genuine 3dfx board.
Yoda is the latest of a number of folks to tell me that
Internet Explorer 5.0 seems to make it difficult to get into
the Outlaws section of the Zone. But he found a work-around:
I recently downloaded Internet Explorer 5.0, (and
know I regret it for the bugs it has.)and it wouldn't
let me go into certain game rooms. I had to change
some settings that the zone told me to do, and it
still wouldn't work. I found that if you restart your
browser then goto the same webpage it will let you
into the game rooms.
Well that's good news. And if you've held off getting IE 5
already, well I'd keep holding until they come out with
a much more bug-free version. :P
* * *
Sunday 6/20/99
Two New Maps
Doh can't think of a zinger to lead in the news today... damn.
Finally saw "The Phantom Menace," found I actually enjoyed it.
Sure there are holes in the plot, little character development,
etc etc, doesn't equal "Star Wars," blah blah, but it's still
a darn fine piece of entertainment. Hurrah. I think I'm actually
looking forward to seeing cute young Anakin (darn hard-to-spell
Episode 1 names ;P) turn into evil Darth Vader
and crush all the hippie Jedi guys along with good old two-faced
Palpatine (darn them names!). ;D Actually though the one
touching scene in the film was when he had to leave his mom,
*sniff.* Why they didn't just send back and bring her along once
they got back and got some $, I just don't know—did I mention
plot holes?
Oop on with the show. Floppy sent me his map
Dogwood,
a largish two-forts-across-bent-canyon type of CTF layout. The
buildings are kind of Picasso-ish, the item layout on the
scattered/clumpy side of things but framerates are good,
construction is solid and it's nice and sunny. Here's a
screenshot for ya.
Drdeath2 just
came out with
Coarsegold.
I like the layout here: a small town surrounded by a deep river
gorge in the middle of a big plain. Scenic, nice wind effects,
high framerates esp. with the number of buildings he packs into
the place. Lots of stuff to do, looks pretty darn fun. Here's
a shot. There's a broken bridge
on the far side of the gorge, you can't jump there but I blew
myself over with some TNT. I think the ground over there kills
you instantly or something so I died but I noticed that the
surface of the bridge was wavy like the water below, as you
can mebbe see in this shot.
Not sure why I did that but it was kind of fun. :)
* * *
Saturday 6/19/99
So That's Where The New Maps Were...
I thought it was a bit of a slow week for maps, then
I stumbled across Hoss's latest update at
Outlaws Gang
Busters. So THAT's where they were hiding! ;)
Well okay I got one from Pretender (used to be known
as "Poison"). His
School
has a blackboard (except it's one of those green ones, you
know) and some desks and mebbe a shotgun layin' around (gee,
I didn't have any of those in school ;). Lack of running sounds
and the unusual scale of the buildings (makes me feel like I'm
in preschool) are kind of downers, but nothing terribly wrong
with this smallish map. Check the
screenshot.
On to the maps from OGB. MapleBar's
Repaired Repair
is, as the name implies, a modified "Hargrove's Pattern Repair."
Pretty much just some textures switched around, I'm not sure
I like the muddy ground but the rooftop area looks pretty good
as you can see in this shot.
Ah what a sneak, he's named the files "hhh" to appears right
after Hargrove's in the list. ;P
Don Winz's
Lowtown
looks a bit like a compact CTF map, with two houses in a narrow
canyon, separated by a sort of ramparted wall thing. There's
a lot laid out in the open which means framerates will be on
the pokey side of things. Not too bad, though I don't much care
for the lack of texture stitching or some of the object placement.
Here's a screenshot.
Caleb's Shout
isn't too easy on the eyes, what with extremely unstitched
texturing and blocky, unlikely buildings. Still again there's
nothing terribly wrong with this largish town map and you've
got to admire his moxie in the readme's Additional Credits:
"Thanks to me for making it." Har. Again I make with the
screenshot.
Same thing goes for his
Tomb though
it is a bit more elaborate and I like the layout better as it
leaves the central area open for fighting. Bet you didn't think
I'd have a screenshot, but I
do.
Winztown
(doesn't have an author indicated) puts a couple buildings in
a BIG valley with tunnels running through the surrounding
cliffs. The buildings themselves are pretty well made but the
construction doesn't seem to have had framerate optimization as
a big priority. FPS here isn't BAD, but just seems like it could
have been much better with some minor adjustments. And the
lack of texture stitching is really out of hand in the tunnels.
Think I'm being picky? Check this
out.
Last in alphabetical order comes
WWOGCity
by El_Quickjo, his first map. He doesn't buck today's
trend of big blocky unstitched towns in valleys and he's got
a couple small 3dfx problems to boot, but if it counts for
anything his town is the largest of the bunch and the interiors
are pretty good. What say I throw in a little
screenshot?
Get Frisky With It
Frisky advertised his new site on the OGB message board:
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Frisky's Outlaws Den
A fast, fresh site that is very easy and enjoyable to
read. News, maps and game info/tips as well as special
little features all his own make this one worth a browse.
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Hmm guess this means his old
DML Headquarters
isn't going to get much attention any more. ;) Let's hope he can
keep up the good work on this one.
salmoides had a helpful tip for those with Win98.
Apparently the standard Win98 disk defragmentation utility
doesn't tell you how fragged your hard drive is, like the old
Win95 one does. Well fear not, you can get the freeware
defragger Crackup
from ZDNet which apparently does all that and more.
Wildbill
let me know that he's added a massive Game Tips section to his
already juggernaut-caliber site. He's even got step-by-step
illustrations of how to install new maps, golly. Oh yeah and
he's been pilfering Outlaws player portraits right and left,
he's up to about 130 or so Outlaws mugs now. Quite a few people,
who knows who you'll find in there?
* * *
Thursday 6/17/99
A-Maze Your Friends
MikeDaKid whipped up another new map,
Maze.
You guessed right, it's a maze area designed for CTF, with
an underwater tunnel linking the two far ends to keep things
stirred up. I'm not too fond of the texturing here, seems a
bit more chunky than it could. Framerates are high. Err.
It's a maze. You try to find a flag. And shoot stuff. Oh
can it here's a screenshot.
Fort "Don't Call Me Hank" McHenry
Heavygear did announce a while back that he couldn't
run Outlaws anymore but he had a swell start of a map he
was calling "Fort McHenry." Well he's gotten a certain for-now
anonymous LawMaker to help him finish it up and to get yer
mouths waterin' he's sent me some screenshots of the work in
progress. These are a bit fuzzy b'cause I converted 'em from
fat .gifs to slimmer .jpgs but I think you'll agree they still
look right purty:
shot 1,
shot 2,
shot 3 and
shot 4. He also says that the
map is currently over 500 sectors and still growing, and will
include lots of new never-before-seen stuff that was too
top-secret to stick in the screenshots. Ooo I'm all a-tingle!
Bits and Bobs
Man the week goes fast, especially when the weather's nice. :)
But oo look there's some news stuff left! Klaxon Viper
(that's a weird name, but kind of catchy) let me know he's
updated the THEE gang
web site with more Outlaws stuff. Some new screenshots, game
info, tips for TCP/IP gaming and some links. And the delightful
Darlin'
sends word that Creative's
new TNT drivers with the Glide Wrapper built in run Outlaws
very well, with lovely picture quality and 80fps in Sanctuary
(fps will vary depending on CPU power but hey that's pretty darn
impressive for having no 3dfx card). So yes for all those who
want to ditch 3dfx there ARE options for Outlaws: they won't
ever be as fast as a native 3dfx graphics card but with
CPUs and graphics cards getting faster and faster soon it may
not matter all that much...
* * *
Wednesday 6/16/99
Dum Dee Dum
Nothin' much shakin' today, news wise anyhow. Think I'll take
the rare opportunity to get a bit more caught up on my
favorite level list. I tried out
Dude's numpad "always run" thing and yeah, I could
run without having to hold down a key but hehe I couldn't
stop. No brakes, no brakes! Well might work for you though,
as I've mentioned I have a funky ergonomic keyboard that looks
funny but ooo it feels so nice. :j Oh yes,
Wildbill
put up a new version of his logo, this one isn't blurry at all
and looks pretty darned good if I do say so myself.
* * *
Tuesday 6/15/99
New "Silent But Deadly" Site
Hmm when I was a kid we had certain things we referred to
as "silent but deadly" err... nevermind. Anyhow Truffle
has taken the new SBD posse site live, check it out (but mind
the warning, for goodness sake :p):
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Official WebPage of the SBD Clan
Looks pretty much like yer usual run of the mill posse
site, but the game info, news section and levels to download
pull the "Silent But Deadly" a bit higher than many even
if it is a bit tricky to navigate. If
you can't stand Western-style polka MIDI you will want
to avoid this one, however. ;)
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How to "Always Run" With the Numpad
I'm going to have to check this out when I get a chance, have
a feeling it may only work on certain keyboards (and my keyboard
has a funny numpad). BUT Dude
reports the following:
I don't know if it's anything new or not, but it's always kinda bugged me
that I had to hold the run key down all the time in OL, and it has been more
pronounced lately since I've been playing a lot of the newer games where you
can "always run" by default or by setting it that way in the setup. If I
played OL and then played Q3Test or HL I'd be all messed up trying to strafe
cuz my left strafe finger would always want to go to the run key for OL :)
Anyway, I figured out how to make OL "always run" using the numeric keypad.
It has to do with the fact that NumLock on the keypad is generally the same
as the Shift key. What you do is: after starting the game or respawning hold
the run key down that you've assigned on the keypad and hit the NumLock key
at the same time...and that's it. Now you're always running. Only thing is,
you'll have to change you keypad config to the inverse of the normal
settings, i.e. the "7" key now have to be the "Home" key, etc. because
you've turned off NumLock to get the effect.
Whoa shoot that's gonna be tricky, I'm not used to the numpad.
Actually I personally detest "always run" keys—people get so
used to using them that they can't move slowly and carefully
when it would be useful, not to mention the fact that if you
run constantly in OL you are going to be sucking wind pretty
quickly. Well off to bed, I'll have to try this out tomorrow
I guess...
Reviews, Framerates, What's It All Mean?
Raf found out this interesting morsel while ransacking
his old PCGAMER UK collection: Outlaws only got a 50% rating
from the mag when it came out, but later that year the readers
voted it the 73rd top game of the year. Hmm. That was in the
September 1997 PCGAMER UK.
Stryker has put up a
page all about
framerates wherein he tries to figger out just what framerates
mean for him. He's got a bunch of screenshots from his recent
Sunk City
map, with framerates ranging from 100 to 340 fps. Man, that's
pretty darn good. I get down into the 30's at certain spots on
the far side of the river, and let me tell you you definitely
can tell when that happens as moving and aiming just become
slower and more difficult. Anyhow Stryker has some things to
say about the whole fps thing, won't you listen in?
* * *
Monday 6/14/99
MikeDaKid's "Death in the Middle"
MikeDaKid sent me his latest,
Death
in the Middle, a small arena-style map with narrow ledges
criss-crossing over bubbly lava pits. Relatively simply layout,
I like the black ashy ground and actually I think the lava
effect, using brownish-red water, is one of the most convincing
I have seen. The stairs and caves set in the cliffs are a bit
on the rough-hewn side, however. Do you dare go for that elixer
in the middle? Well here's a
screenshot.
C the Site
DeadlyShot has made a new site for his CCC posse:
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Central Coast Cowboys
Extremely clean, distinctive design plus lots of
posse member info, files to download and game tips
make this an exemplary posse site. You can even learn
to tie knots by studying the background!
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It's probably also worth pointing out that while the CCC site
is using my screenshots, DeadlyShot asked me if he could well
before the site opened. Always nice when people are considerate. :)
More LawMakin' Hi-Jinks
Thanks to all th' smart fellers who filled me in on th'
mysterious color-changing textures I ran across yesterday:
turns out that it's a simple matter of having separate palettes
for two adjoining sectors. Pretty neat actually, I didn't know
Outlaws could sort of switch palettes on the fly like that: I'll
bet you could make all sorts of interesting effects with this
trick. Like... err... well okay none spring to mind yet, but
fer instance when I ran into this yesterday, going indoors and
having the textures turn all red I thought "oh-no I just walked
into a big oven and somebody turned it on!" :P Oh yes let's
see Raptor, Dusty, Hagen and GoJo
all had the answer for me, but since GoJo was the only one to
phrase his answer in the form of a question he gets the big
prize! (hmm not that I phrased my question in the form of an
answer, but oh well who's counting, there's no prize anyway ;)
Err let's see there was something else... oh yeah! Hagen posted
on the OGB message
board about a couple files you can get from
www.darkjedi.com to let
you adjust sector and wall properties in real-time while running
Outlaws in a window. Now I've never been too hot to use LawMaker
what with the arcane interface and not really being able to see
what you're doing (plus I'm lazy and math is hard) but this
"Sector Wall Adjuster" thingy is fun! Got a few error messages
when starting 'er up but it seemed to work okay and in no time
at all I was gleefully destroying a level by changing the
textures and sector heights and so forth. Whee! Well besides being
fun for me this is probably also a great tweaking tool for
serious LawMaker types, so get it if you ain't got it, foo!
My Cat's Breath Smells Like Cat Food
Well I don't have a cat but I bet if I did I
that
would be the case. Let's see there were a few things left.
Wildbill
made a new, more compact logo for his big site. A bit blurry
but fast and more interesting than the last one, I think. And
DirtyDon tells me that recently he found he was no
longer able to get into the Zone, turns out IE 5 was the
culprit. Actually I know a number of folks who have had trouble
with IE 5, but that's why it's still beta. Oh wait no it isn't
is it? Oh dear. :P
* * *
Suntag 6/13/99
Two New Maps and Lots of LuvTM
Okay so mebbe not so much Luv. But there ARE two new maps!
Hawk (as in BOK) sent in
Outdoors.
As the name implies this is very big and open though set beneath
a sicky green sky (I hear you get it green by using a sky that
isn't meant for that level palette). Two gatling guns but really
Doc and James will dominate here with rifles. Simple level so
framerates are high but there is one nasty 3dfx glitch that should
have been caught—somebody get that boy a 3dfx card! Here's the
obligatory screenshot.
Then, Hawk (he kicked ass in Buck Rogers) strikes again, this time teamed up with fellow posse
mate Poison to create
Land BOK 2.
Again sort of in the big'n'simple mode but if there's one thing
these maps have going for them, it's high framerate. This one's
a bit more complex and I must say I kind of dig the offbeat
texturing (yes I did just see The Spy Who Shagged Me ;). Sort
of a fight around a big fat block of a one-room building. I ran
into something here that I don't know that I've seen before,
however. When I crossed the threshold into the building the
textures would suddenly redden (is that a word? oh well it is
now). See, here's a shot
just outside and then one
just inside. Is this just my
Banshee going nutzoid or have the magnificent BOKmeisters hit
upon a trippy new effect? <insert Jeopardy music here>
* * *
Saturday 6/12/99
New Version of NWX Editor
As he promised earlier this week, Raptor has
released a shiny new version of his great Outlaws object
editing program,
NWX Editor v0.3 (181k).
A whole heap of improvements and new features in this release,
check out the
version
text for the full list. Some nice kinks worked out to make
it a lot easier to work with but the main improvement is
definitely the new file size reduction capabilities 0.3 sports.
Not only is there a handy "remove" feature for getting rid of
unused cells, you can also set frames that look the
same to use the same cell so that you only have to have the
image in there once no matter how many times it appears in
the object's animation. Smooth! This is definitely a must-have
for LawMakers and even for the casual nwx fiddler like myself.
Ah almost forgot, Raptor's included a guide for reducing nwx
file size in the .zip that even has specific frames to remove
for the six standard characters, check it out
here
while you download the full .zip. :)
Stryker Updates SunkCity
Stryker has updated
his recent map, coming out with
SunkCity2.
Still the same funky underwater parts where you can breathe
inside the buildings and shoot out into the water, but it looks
like he's fixed the 3dfx trouble spots (yay) and generally
toned up the map a bit. Framerates are still on the l-o-w side
in some spots, but if you liked the first version this update
will make you pretty happy. That water trick sure is interesting—I just
noticed that if I come out of the water through one of the tunnels
instead of the beach area, my breath bar remains in place of my
fatigue meter. I still get tired though, dang! :P
Take Vittles With a Big Grain of Salt
Apparently a couple folks out there have misunderstood the
purpose of my mini-reviews of new maps. When I get a new map I
just run through it, explore the whole thing to see what's
inside, try out any interesting features I find and snap a
screenshot or two if I find an inspiring view.
When I write about it afterwards I try to remain as faithful
to the impressions I got while running through it as I can.
Why do I write anything about it at all? Because I want to
share my views. I want people to try out maps that I like.
That's the main thing.
There are, of course, maps that I don't like. This is my opinion
and I know that my opinions differ from everyone else's. That's
as it should be. So why share a negative opinion? Well, since
I talk about positive aspects I think it would be hypocritical
of me to ignore the negatives, as I see them. I talk about things
I don't like ultimately in the hope of having people think about
them and perhaps, just perhaps, remedy them in the future.
I'm not going to whitewash things I see that could be better.
But again "better" is a subjective term. I never claimed to be
unbiased or that I can completely avoid hypocrisy. But I do try
to be fair and honest. I try to point out positive sides when
I can see them. Sometimes I can't, and more often then not that's
my problem. But people tell me they find what I write helpful
and if this site is going to have any value at all I think I've
got to keep telling things like I see them. That's what this
site has to offer: my opinion.
MY opinion. NOT YOURS. I am not an authority on what you like
and dislike. Just because I didn't like a map does not mean that
you won't and it certainly does not give anyone the right to
insult a LawMaker. Even trying a map for yourself does not give
you that right, but it will give you a basis for your own
constructive criticism. But anyone who takes what I say in a
map review as ammunition to use against a LawMaker is making
a baseless argument. Anyone who insults a LawMaker because of
an opinion I had about their map is insulting me as well.
I've never made a map. I admire those who do. My feelings about
a map have nothing to do with my feelings about the map maker.
My aim is constructive criticism and the last thing I want to
do is discourage LawMakers. I try very hard to avoid anything
resembling a personal attack in my reviews and if you see anything
of that nature you have every right to write me and demand an
apology. And I will thank you, my readers, to refrain from
attempting to use my map reviews to insult anyone. If I could
ban such people from viewing my site I would do it in an instant.
Just felt I ought to clear that up. :P
If You're Still With Me...
There're still a few news tidbits left on the plate. Dude
tells me that the recent 1.12 version of
Creative's "Unified"
driver which runs 3dfx Glide games on their TNT and TNT2 cards
doesn't have any Outlaws improvements, and that Creative's Bill
Ball has posted on their newsgroup that Outlaws is not
a priority for them. Well I can't blame them for that, anyways
the Unified wrapper does run Outlaws decently aside from a
few minor glitches, from what I hear. And remember this is
the driver that has earned Creative a big lawsuit from 3dfx
so they really have stuck their neck out on this one.
Scott Cutler's "XGL200" wrapper runs Outlaws pretty darn
well on lots of D3D cards, check the
other helpful files page for more
info and links.
Karrde is working on a VERY intruiging new Outlaws map.
I've seen a short "demo" of it and I can say that he is really
attempting some groundbreaking stuff with this one. But he can
already see that this innovation is going to come at the cost
of an unprecendented map file size. He doesn't want to release
something so large that you won't want to download it so he'd
REALLY appreciate it if you all could let him know if you think
he should go ahead, file size be darned, or just not bother.
Now personally I say go for it,
OZ_Hotel
showed that people are willing to wait on a download if it's
something really good, but remember you all have your opinions
too! Give him a hand by emailing him at
[removed]
and let him know where you stand. He hopes to have the map
done in about two weeks or so. He's going to be on vacation for
half that time so now is the crucial time for him to get your
feedback. Let him know!
Lastly but not leastly Rat_Filthy has posted his
bi-weekly ranking update for the deadliest Orleans fighter at
his great Orleans
Seafood House & Tavern. Annie gets the title this
time around because, in Rat's words, "not only
did she beat the livin' snot out of the RAT, but she did it
with......gulp......Bob friggin' Graham!" Hehe. Well I definitely
know what it is like to be humbled by a Bob—certainly gives you
something to think about. Well that's more'n enough outta me
today.
* * *
Thursday 6/10/99
Three New Maps with No Txt Files
Oh dear, never a good sign when the author hasn't even bothered
to sign their work. :P
Still I know who made th' first two, 'cause he sent 'em to
me. SwissChez sent along two of his own maps,
Shady
Acres and
Fair Play.
By his own description, "Shady Acres" contains some "weird
stuff." Well, the only weird stuff I found were some rather
large 3dfx holes in the ground and a lack of stitching in
the walls, otherwise this canyony ice-field is rather visually
pleasing, though a bit maze-like for my tastes. Check the
screenshot. "Fair Play" is
designed for CTF with two perfectly identical floors one
above the other. A somewhat new idea for a balanced CTF map,
on the plain side but serviceable, I should think. The sawed-off
in each base would certainly stir up some trouble. Here's
a screenshot.
Picked up the third map at
Outlaws Gang Busters.
GDO Home
by Sniper (okay so his name is in the map title line)
is the old theme of doing a house in a 3d game engine and
expecting your friends to enjoy running around in it. Hmm. Well
I enjoy 3dfx errors, no stitching and instant death floors
about as much as I enjoy traffic jams at the airport baggage
claim (don't ask :P). Here's a screenshot of one room that
actually had some visual flair. I suppose I really ought to get
a shot that better represents the map as a whole but who wants
to look at an ugly screenshot?
Web Stuffings
Besides the new map, also found a new site mentioned at OGB...
oh wait no I already had
Tuff Texan's
Outlaws Tournament Page on my link list. Just didn't
recognize it as it's grown somewhat. Ironic that the only
real Outlaws tourney permitted in the Zone is run mostly
through straight IP games to reduce lag. Hehe.
Simon is a finicky fellow, he's got the web design
bug pretty bad. Just let me know he's posted a third re-design
for the already sharp-looking
Simon &
Garfunkel Outlaws Site. Getting better all the time I'd say.
Beignet
has updated her site with more of her patented Outlaws
naughtiness. Geez, her new kitty died, too. *sniff* Still the
irrepressible Beig remains her ever bubbly bad self, you can
even catch some of her older cheesecake pictures still on the
news page. Sheesh. ;j
Lastly, Nintendo has posted a preview of an upcoming
Western game for that kick-ass Game Boy Color (what can I say,
I'm a fiend). Lucky
Luke from Infogrames (you kick butt JJ :) is a platform game
with the tried-and-true plot of
"The most infamous outlaws in
the old west have broken out of
jail, and Lucky Luke is the only
cowboy crazy enough to try to
stop them." Cartoony nature of the screenshots actually reminds
me a lot of Outlaws, I could swear I see Sanchez and Two Feathers
in a couple of 'em. And is that Bob flying through the air? Oh
wait no that's probably a vulture. ;) Hmm actually Infogrames
has quite a site up for the original 3D Playstation version at
www.lucky-luke.com,
almost makes me wanna buy a PSX. Almost.
* * *
Wednesday 6/9/99
Go To Mallard's
Yeah go on, git outta here an' go visit
Mallard's
Saddlebag. He's been real busy lately, spoonin' up
tons of level reviews, news and even a HTML basics section
fer all you budding web masters and mistresses. He had
a map I didn't,
Suntown
but I pretty much agree with his review that this big flat
squarish map with chickens isn't really worth yer time. He's
got oh so much more than that though, so get on out of here
an' head over there now! I ain't got no more news t'day. :P
* * *
Tuesday 6/8/99
Raptor's "Pinball" Land
A big chunk of a file landed in my inbox from Raptor.
A hefty 946k, Pinball
is a REALLY unique map indeed. Perhaps you've played a little
game called "Kirby's Pinball Land" on the Game Boy in which
you smack a round little chap named Kirby about a bunch of
pinball table shaped level (lots of fun, by the way! check out
the recent review at
recent review at gbc dojo),
here's a screenshot. Anyhow,
in Raptor's "Pinball" you learn what Kirby must have felt
like: you become the ball in a giant pinball machine!
The table is based on the simple but classic layout in
Microsoft's little Windows Pinball game.
To complete the transformation Raptor has put together an
incredible array of pinball-perfect sound effects, textures
and character images. Yes, the characters actually do look like
big steel balls with handguns. ;) Here's a
screenshot of me as a pinball,
I've probably never looked better. There are appropriate
pinging and ringing sounds for everything, even for picking
up items and reloading your weapons!
But the very best part is, of course, ricocheting around this
electronic arena at supersonic speeds. It's dizzying,
exhilarating and probably not for the faint of heart. Man,
this is one level that I am REALLY going to have to make time
to play, basically the most complete transformation of the
game yet seen, well worth the download I should think. Check
out these screenshots while you get the map:
shot 2,
shot 3 and
shot 4.
By the way, Raptor took special care to reduce the file
sizes of the character .nwx files as much as possible, as these
make up a large part of the map's file size. If you're going
to include custom characters in your level, you need to use
his .nwx editor to replace unused animation frames to keep the
file size down as much as possible. The simple thing to do is
just to replace the unused frames with 1x1 transparent pixels.
The unused frames are different for each character. Raptor has
a list, hopefully he'll get this on the web somewhere for
LawMakers to use as a reference. I just don't want to see
maps wasting space with un-needed character animation frames.
A Keyboard Turn Speed Tip
Ben Rogers found a way to make keyboard turning
more responsive:
When playing around with the Outlaws registry
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ Lucasarts
EntertainmentCompany\Outlaws\Users\Default User\Keys) there's a string
called "Yawl Accel MSecs." I found that by changing this from the
default (200) to zero, I negated the annoying lag that would possess
your character when using the keys to turn left or right. I think it
must have something to do with the delay before reaching full turn
speed; i.e. changing it to 0 meant no delay, whilst 200 was something
like 200th of a second (?).
Well there you have it. Not really sure how many folks out
there are using the keyboard to turn; frankly, you'll get
MUCH better control using a good mouse to aim. Buy yeah there
are always people who just have to do things their own way...
Asianary's Outlaws Site
Well it's a bit wild and wacky, but here 't'is:
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Asianary's Outlaws Western
Grammatically unusual, a bit rough around the edges
and definitely not very PC but, if you can take it,
an interesting and definitely unique individual
Outlaws site.
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* * *
Monday 6/7/99
Trojan Virus Warning from Stryker
Remember that supposed Lucasarts music converter that
Stryker posted
the other day? Well a routine virus scan of his system found
that the files in the archive are infected with a virus.
So if you downloaded it, delete it; I don't think it would
have worked with Outlaws music anyhow (Outlaws music is standard
CD audio). If you unzipped it, do a virus scan to be sure
nothing's gotten into your system. On my
other helpful files page you'll
find a link to the freeware F-PROT antivirus program, a very
good one. Heck even if you didn't download the file, try
F-PROT out anyhow you just might save yourself a lot of trouble
later.
New Maps
Man, what is up with Mondays and new maps? Gosh.
Stryker scores news again with a new map,
SunkCity.
The interesting thing about this one, set up sort of as a two
fort deal with a lake between, is that in the submerged city
you can breathe inside the houses, and shoot out into the water.
Whoa, pretty funky. See, here's a
shot from underwater. Actually
you can't quite breathe normally as your breath bar doesn't
go back up, but at least it doesn't go down. This raises a lot
of interesting possibilities. Otherwise there really isn't a whole
lot to recommend this map as framerates are pretty darn bad
(something to do with the water trick, I think) and there are
a few small 3dfx errors. Here's a
shot from up top.
Skywalker sent in his latest,
Ugly.
Actually it's very nice looking, I especially like some of
the interiors as you can see here.
A small town in a canyon, framerates are amazingly high in most
spots especially for the number of windows and posts and things
he's got in here. Here's a
shot of the colorful saloon.
Looks like a good lil' town fer a shootout. Some of the interiors
are a bit narrow, have to see how that works when I try it out. ;)
Hmm okay well there were almost more maps than that, but one
the author decided he needed to work on more, and one I'm hoping
the author can optimize a bit 'cause it looks incredible. If
anyone can do it, it's him. Hope to have more on that tomorrow.
There are also a couple more news items but frankly I've just
got to get some shuteye now. :p
* * *
Sunday 6/6/99
Four New Maps
Slow week for new maps last week, I had a feeling more were
a-brewin' and here they come.
Picante sent me his spicy new one,
Jalapeño
(you have to savor that n and roll it around in your mouth,
you see). This is a medium-sized Mexican fort with very nice
texturing and construction. The fort is very well planned out
and you feel like gosh, so this is what a Mexican fort looked
like!
The interior of the fort has buildings around an open courtyard
with a double-tiered fountain, and that fountain is my only
niggle with this map. The Outlaws engine doesn't handle looking
through circular areas with detail in the middle very well and
the framerate gets a little rangy looking across the courtyard,
especially from the rooftops.
Then again it is a very authentic-looking fountain, and who
can blame Picante for the fact that Mexican forts just weren't
made for top framerates? Blame the old Mexicans, I guess. Here're
the screenshots:
shot 1,
shot 2
and shot 3.
Sleepy made a new map called
Dead By Dawn,
a pretty large outdoorsy map designed with CTF in mind. The
layout is interesting and doesn't rely on sides that are
exactly identical: one fort is a cabin which has multiple
entrances but only one approach and the other is a mine shaft
with only one entrance but multiple approaches, if that makes
sense. There are lots of trees outside and a waterfall that looks
nice. Everything is a bit dark but this is supposed to be
pre-dawn, after all. There are very few items around so you
have to make the most of your resources. A very good addition
to the ranks of Outlaws CTF maps, I think. Check some shots:
shot 1 and
shot 2.
I collected two maps from
Darlin's
site,
Tricky Fix
and Tricky 2,
both by the same guy whose name I forget, same guy who did the
recent Tricky
I should think. Well I didn't like Tricky much and I'm not sure
what "Tricky Fix" fixes but it doesn't make the map more
interesting for me. "Tricky 2" isn't low-gravity like its
predecessor but it goes for this very cramped underground tunnel
maze with no lighting variation that actually came near to
making me nauseous. Not very well put together, either. Ahh
I had a screenshot but it really isn't worth it, I only got 10
megs out of 80 left anyhow. ;)
* * *
Friday 6/4/99
Cutter's Big "Little Whisky"
As I mentioned yesterday, Cutter just released a
new map
Little
Whiskey that easily takes the crown as the largest
Outlaws map file ever, weighing in at a mighty 1 MB even
when compressed and over 2 MB uncompressed. What takes up
all this space? Well he's got 5 modified characters in
there, replacing everyone except Two Feathers with badguy
characters from the main game. He's also got a ton of
audio clips from Hollywood westerns that play when you pick
up certain objects. And he's got a heap of new items and
textures to give the level a very special look.
Overall it's a very nice level, in the open horizon style
with a small 4 building town in the desert. There are a good
number of small windows facing the street, making cross-street
shootouts a possibility. The place looks very nice and the
custom sounds should add a fun old Western touch. I found that
a few of the normal items didn't have their regular pickup
sounds on them, could have just been my sound card. On the
whole this is a very well tailored map, well worth the download.
I took a few screenshots:
shot 1 and
shot 2.
LucasArts LAB Utilities
Stryker has added
"LucasArts LAB Utilities v1.3" to his "Misc addons" file
section. These seem to be sort of hacks to... well here's
some of what the readme has to say:
There are two utilities included: UNLAB and IMX2WAV. UNLAB will extract
and decompress all of the files in a .LAB file so that you can do what
you want with them (background gfx, sound themes...whatever). IMX2WAV
will convert any LucasArts .IMC or .IMU music file to a .WAV file.
Ah...ha. Well LawMaker's ConMan can manage .lab files, but that
music converter might come in handy for those wanting to mess
with the Outlaws soundtrack, if it is in one of those formats.
New GSK Posse Site
Yessir a nice new site I recently found out about:
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Graveyard Shift Killers
An excellent example of how to make a stylish site
without using images. Great use of fonts and color
make this site a breeze to browse, and the extensive
information section provides a well-written reference
guide with solutions for yer Outlaws troubles.
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Toodles!
* * *
Thursday 6/3/99
Oops!
Well I managed to mess up just about everything yesterday,
that's what I get for letting new maps tick me off. :P So
let's see... I screwed up the JOE page URL, got that fixed
this morning thanks to quick feedback from Runaway Jim,
Grifter and Karrde. Hoss politely mentioned out that it was him, not
Martone who pointed out the extra .rcm in cavebear, as I should
have known because the OGB news guys thoughtfully color-coordinate
their news posts. And some dude named Rick and Grifter too
let me know that IE 5 lets you turn Javascript off, like
Netscape. Hurrah!
So let's see, what can I screw up today? Hmm not much, I
spent most of my free time this evening playing with
Mp3Spy which is pretty
darn cool, sure beats the heck out of the lame local radio
stations. Oh wait okay I did screw something up, I missed
Cutter's latest (and last?!?) map over at
Outlaws Gang
Busters. This baby weighs in at over 2 megabytes
when you unzip it, man! So I haven't looked at it yet, go
get the scoop from Hoss at OGB. He's also got a preview
of a new one coming up from Runaway Jim, looks like
a real firecracker...
* * *
Wednesday 6/2/99
Map Blitz Continues
Yes we have even more new maps today than yesterday, five
count 'em five new ones. Man is it hard to keep up...
Hagen is one of the prime movers yet again today,
sending me his map
New Orleans,
an edit of the LEC "Orleans" level. Hagen has dried up the
map, literally: he's removed the water to prevent the dreaded
"bobbing" technique that I always hear LawMakers complaining
about. Now me I'm not too sure what Orleans is without water,
as this lets you run about and jump up to areas you weren't
able to reach from the water before... hmm (and I think
Rat_Filthy's
Orleans Seafood House & Tavern might back me up on this one). He's also removed
non-ML items and added in some of his own custom props. I
miss the pretty watery blue, as you can see in this very reddish
screenshot. I mean sure mebbe
removing the water defeats the "bobbing" technique but it
also sort of defeats the purpose of the map as a whole.
I filched the rest of the maps from
Outlaws Gang Busters.
However I should note right off that I changed the archive
for Kodia's Cavebear.
As Martone pointed out at OGB, there was an extra .rcm
file in there... it actually placed itself in an entirely
new folder in your Outlaws dir, which I didn't think was very
cool at all. ;P Cavebear is a rework of his "Bearcave" level,
adding in some new play modes. In case you don't remember,
here's the screenshot I took
of the original Bearcave. "Bearcave2" would probably have been
a more appropriate name but yeah it's hard to pass up a pun.
Martone also had two new ones from
Don Ramoses,
Don City and
Don Camp.
These are very nice looking levels with lots of buildings
windows and cross streets and stuff which would all be great
except that the structures are too open and there are quite
a few areas where framerates drop considerably. Here are a couple
screenshots: City and
Camp. One other thing I think
I should mention about "Don Camp:" the readme notes "Abandoned"
as a base. Slaters_dog's readme for
Abandoned
says quite specifically that it may not be used as a base for
levels by other LawMakers. However, looking through "Camp"
I didn't see anything I could say was taken right from the
Abandoned .lvt file, so I'll let that slide. BUT just so you
know, if I do find maps that use other people's work without
their permission, those maps do not get posted on my server.
The final map is
Hometown,
yet ANOTHER map by the fiendish Chet_R1. I kept crashing
when I tried to go upstairs in this big house/building structure
so I gave up trying to get a screenshot. It was probably something
to do with running the map in NT but normal well-behaved maps
do not have a problem with that. I might bother trying to check
it out in Win95 but heck, Chet doesn't even bother writing a
new .txt file for each map so I'm not too motivated to make the
effort. ;P Hmm I think today's maps have put me in a bad mood, shoot.
JOE Guild Site Online
Kali fixture DirtyDon has been planning this and
various other JOE schemes for quite some time now and it looks
like they're starting to come to fruition. The site is
still in the early stages but I'm giving it top marks first
because you can really see the time and planning put into it
and second because Don would never let me hear the end of it
otherwise, and I have to respect his dedication. ;)
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J.O.E.: An Online Multi-Game Guild
The JOEs started back in the early days of Kali Outlaws
and have flourished ever since, branching out into all
sorts of other games. However their roots are in Outlaws
and they haven't forgotten them. This site sports stylish
50's Art-Deco graphics wrapped around a ton of information
on this huge and busy bunch of Kali gamers.
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There now that wasn't so hard. Let's see what else today...
uhh... oh yeah I realized I made a format goof-up with my .html files
a little while back. Went ahead and corrected that, reducing
all the pages by about 15% file size so things should feel a
little bit zippier around here. And thanks to Idgit for
showing me how to disable Javascript in Netscape 4, good to know
you can still do that in the new versions (something IE has
never let you do :P).
* * *
Tuesday 6/1/99
Map, Map, Map and Map
Gosh, just a four day work-week this week (in the U.S., that is)
and we already
have four new maps. :)
Hagen, in whose excellent
Lakota
Basin I and seven other people spent close to two hours
joyfully mauling each other yesterday, sent me a brand new
map last night.
Heartbreak
Ridge is, like Lakota, an attempt to model a natural
landform. But there Lakota was essentially one big bowl-shaped
area, the Ridge breaks the area up into multiple irregular
openings, canyons, tunnels and caverns. Needless to say
strategic possibilities abound... you'll have to do a lot
of bounding yourself if you want to get around! Heh for me
this map could be called Anklebreak Ridge, but I'm sure
I'll get th' hang of things eventually. I took a number of
pictures 'cause in addition to building great natural rock
formations, Hagen is pretty darn good with natural lighting
and texturing effects as well. Oh yah he's also got custom
props and sounds in there too but time presses so on with
the shots. Just get this map, pronto!
Shot 1,
shot 2 and
shot 3.
BaD BoB sent me a new map of his own,
Bobs
Bunker. Sort of a one-level cave and clearing affair, with
nice wood flooring and brickwork in the cave. Dang, that cave
is nicer than my apartment. Well at least I have a
screenshot to enjoy it in.
Wildbill
has been going great guns with his site lately, today he sent
along two new maps that he's collected (posted on his site first,
obviously),
12th Level and
SWL, both
by Chet_R1. Chet has been crankin' out maps like crazy
so yes "12th Level" is indeed his 12th Outlaws map. Mebbe he
named it that instead of a descriptive-type name because it IS
a bit tough to describe, some buildings in canyon with
slightly unexpected twists to them as well as lots of doors
to open, which is a little annoying. Here's a
screenshot of an interior.
"SWL," I guess his 13th map and named after his posse, is yer
usual elbow-shaped-two-fort-CTF type map with some very
unusual switch manipulation required to get through the bases.
This is an interesting idea, though it could prove a tad
frustrating in laggy internet conditions. Well anyhow here's
a fort screenshot and a
shot of one of the switchy
areas: in this one you have to trip a switch to get in a cell,
then press a panel, wait for an elevator to descend, hop in
and wait for it to go back up. Whew.
* * *
Monday 5/31/99
Ratted Out in Orleans
Rat_Filthy has done up a new site dedicated to just
one thing, the "Orleans" map. Now you'd think this'd be a
small site... an' you couldn't be more wrong! To quote the
Simpsons, Ratty has made one helluva site dedicated to this
"home of pirates and drunks and whores" (not that I've
ever been there myself).
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Rat_Filthy's Orleans Seafood House & Tavern
The only Outlaws site dedicated to a single Outlaws level,
Rat's Seafood House covers every aspect you could possibly
cover in the "Orleans" map, and does it with a whopping dose
of rodent flair. A bit heavy on the download but each custom
image is either instructive or hilarious, and usually both.
If you want all the low down on Orleans, the best place to
get it is from the Rat's-eye view. An' even if you couldn't
care less about Orleans, the Seafood House & Tavern has
plenty of great tips and humor that even the most jaded
Outlaw will appreciate.
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Two New Maps from OGB
Found two new maps by Caleb over at
Outlaws Gang Busters.
Both are of the err big-boned variety, with huge wide tunnels
and such, no texture stitching and no running sounds.
But there's something almost compelling in the self-titled
Caleb map,
it goes a little beyond the usual starter map and actually seems
almost like a real place. Maybe you can see it in the
screenshot. I wasn't as taken with
DK's Hide
which is sort of tunnels in boxworld, or something. Check the
screenshot.
Well that's about it, have a good Memorial Day. I'm hoping to
get in a lil' Outlaws action later this evening. Oh yah
SilverZ added a rather odd
screenshot
page to his "V4E" site which is already pretty weird.
And I tried some behind-the-scenes reworking of some of my larger
pages (links, levels) to make them display faster, but gave up...
Netscape and IE just don't agree on how to align tables,
and the solution that worked in one just wouldn't work in the
other, and vice-versa. Gah. I guess I could break the pages
up into multiple smaller pages, but I'm stubborn and I just
don't want to do that, so there.
* * *
Sunday 5/30/99
Four New Maps (Wildbill Updates)
Yeesh, I am gettin' really bad at updating regularly on the
weekend. :P Let's see what I've been missing...
sshep sent me yet another new map he's made, this latest
called Boomtown.
This is a medium-sized town with a jail, hotel, barber shop,
theatre and so forth. Framerates are good throughout and there
are some interesting ways to get around, though some of the
building layouts seem a little odd. Pretty good map though.
I took a lil' screenshot even.
Not only does
Wildbill
have a full review of Boomtown with like 13 screenshots of
the level, he also had three other new maps as well. He's also
spruced up his site by adding the level reviews section and
reducing load times by cutting down on the graphics and music.
Wow, see now there's a guy who doesn't take time off on the
weekend like lazy old me hehe.
The most recent of the new maps I found there besides Boomtown
was TNT's Favorite
17. A pretty bizarre map by TNT_PoPeYe, basically
a level shaped like the number 17, with bunches of items thrown
around. Hmmm okay... anyhow I took a
screenshot, this is from the
top end of the number "1." :P
SWL_Chet_R1 did up
Face It
as a two-forts-facing-each-other style CTF map. Nice construction
here, the broken bridge between is particularly well done. Some
odd bits like a wall that appears after getting the vanishing
cream from atop the waterfall. Also I may be missing something
but the map might be somewhat unbalanced, for instance I found
a badge in one fort but not the other. Interesting. Here's a
screenshot.
Fort Matt
rounds off the bunch. This one was really frustrating just to
run through due to the fact that certain areas area accessible
by only one long, treacherous path, with nasty falls along the
way. Most buildings also have their entrances blocked by doors
which could be aggravating in a laggy game. Well anyhow here's
a screenshot.
Simon, Nikita Also Update, Maybe I Will Too
Simon let me know he's redone the design of the
Simon &
Garfunkel Outlaw's Page, much easier to get around in
now. :)
Nikita has also given her site a big spring makeover
and even a new name,
Niki's Outlaws
Party Palace. Still brazenly pink and purply but darned if
it isn't one fine site.
I'm gonna look into making some of my longer pages (like that
darn link page) display faster... darn site's getting too fat
hehe.
* * *
Thursday 5/27/99
A Real Win98 Join Fix?
Wes Hardin wrote me this:
I have been having a lot of difficulty getting into games that have
already started. Was getting into about 1 in 8. Would get a
"Outlaws not responding message".
I checked my internet security level setting and it was on high. I
dropped it to medium low and started getting into games at about a 4
in 5 ratio.
So mebbe we have here a genuine fix for the problem people
are having joining games when running Win98. Since I don't
play in Win98 myself I'd appreciate it if some of you folks
could try this out an' lemme know if it helps. :)
Spectre's "1999 Outlaws All Star Ladder"
Spectre has an interesting idea for a new twist in
a two-on-two Outlaws ladder. He's looking for teams to sign
up right NOW, so if yer gang thinks you have what it takes,
check it out!
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The 1999 Outlaws All Star Ladder
Just imagine of each Outlaws posse sent their
two baddest hombres to an elite two-on-two
tourney. Think of the carnage to ensue! Well
this is Spectre's brainstorm, all topped off
with a neat theme reminiscent of a certain
major baseball league. Play ball!
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The Biggest Outlaws Logo of All
Silverwire (aka SilverZ) sent me the following URL,
a site which he has made stand out in rather brilliant fashion.
Oh yeah then I found another new site on their link list,
so we have two URLs actually:
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Rock 'ard Renegades
Slightly better than normal looking posse site, though
the RARs do boast the single largest logo in Outlaws
history thanks to the mad stylings of SilverZ. How big?
I'd say 964 pixels wide is pretty darn big... the neat
thing is it all fits into 30k. So I like big fast loading
things, okay?
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ACS hq
Wow! Big backgrounds with Outlaws graphics... really makes
text hard to read! Who would have thought it—but now
we know. Not a whole lot here other than regular posse
info, some maps, tips on using taunts... did I mention
how it's really hard to read?
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More LawMaker Discovery Time with WinSanc
Yes, I think the little winter conversion of Sanctuary is
being adopted by the Outlaws LawMaking community, sort of
a lost little lamb that everyone wants to nurse back to health
so they can shoot the heck out of it. Today, Runaway Jim
pitches in with several tips for our poor waif (I'm
being lazy so I'm jus' gonna paste th' whole thing, post-script
and all :):
Heya....was just on your site and noticed the problem you had encountered w/
the Winter Sanctuary fix concerning the changing skies...this usually
happens when Lawmakers change sky textures and forget to change a sector or
2...therefore, when u look at that sector from certain angles or are in that
sector u get the sky change...that's easily fixable...I took the liberty of
going into Lawmaker and finding the culprit...sure enough, this being a
Lucas Arts original, the bar porch upstairs had the old texture....this is
due to the fact that LArts mapmakers didn't take full use of the layers
provided in Lawmaker so if they have a sector over-top of another sector and
providing they don't overlap height wise, it's perfectly O.K. except that it
makes it difficult to notice that sector when editing...HOWEVER, when
checking for errors, it said that the # of Walls <> the # of sectors and
also that there was a bad sector that it couldn't fix....to be honest, i
have never encountered these error and from the looks of these, it can't be
good...one thing I would suggest to the author is to delete the town square
sector and make another one... I would have tried that myself but i didn't
want to take the time adding and stitching the textures again....I don't
know if those errors will keep the map from working, but I'm betting that
they do....anyway, i think that's all i have to say about that...
P.S. - Don't quote that suggested fix for fact because i'm not sure if it
will work but i hope it does as it seems that this is a fairly popular map
right now
Whoops, late breaking update. Marshall just dropped his
own updated version of WinSanc (which was his originally, btw).
I'm renaming the file to keep it straight, so come get
wintersanc2.zip.
Mechanized Mice, Poltergeists and Bad Email
salmoides sent me the URL for
this
Logitech press release hyping their upcoming force-feedback
mouse. I think Microsoft actually announced one recently as
well... now call me a pessimist who's blocking progress, but
why on Earth do people think it's a good idea to put a rumbling,
vibrating motor in a precision pointing device? Okay, so maybe
force-feedback Minesweeper WOULD rock. :P Here's a snippet from
the PR: "Novice gamers and kids could benefit from a mouse that
moves by itself to guide them through an unfamiliar interface.
Force feedback will also enhance the online experience. Now
internet-based gamers will feel the impact of being fragged
by an online nemesis thousands of miles away..." Yeah, they'll
be getting fragged because they can't control themselves as
their mouse skitters away across the table. Sheesh. One of my
coworkers is fiending for one of those new Microsoft mice,
you know, the one with tail-lights. Maybe I can get a force
feedback mouse to come along and break the tail-lights. ;D
Stryker sent in
this screenshot which he
describes as follows:
"We were playing proudness and while standing in the corner,,,,this
thing popped up in front of me..There were only two of us in the map
checking it out and he was way over on top of that platform with
TNT...this thing blocked my view... but didn't his... he killed me
lol... strange it looks like a guy..." Whoa, that sure is one weird
screenshot. Stryke doesn't mention why he was playing in 800x600
software mode, not to mention running a screenshot program, but I
guess we can consider ourselves lucky he managed to snag this bizarre
shot. Mebbe I should have a contest to explain what it is.
If you wrote me an email recently I WILL be replying like a civil
person, just as soon as I get time. I get to drive the parents
to the airport tomorrow morning so they can jet off to Italy,
home, as we all know, of the Spaghetti Western.
Bonjourno! (or whatever)
* * *
Wednesday 5/26/99
Maps: "Proudness," "Desert_Town," More on "WinSanc"
This week's been a bit slow on the map side of things, up
to now. French (I think) LawMaker jackling sent me
a copy of his very first (I think) map,
Proudness.
Well for a first map this one is extremely impressive, I must
say. It's a very complicated, somewhat symmetrical indoor/outdoor
maze atop a deep canyon. Mastering this one will take great
skill at hitting all the tough jumps 'cause if ya miss one, well
it's a long way down. Yee-ouch. Framerates are on the slower
side outdoors looking over the maze but should be acceptable,
I think. I would NOT want to have to navigate
this maze while being sniped
at! Oo and here's a neat shot from one of the
indoor areas. Very attractive
texturing I must say, though no stitching (doh). But like I
said a very impressive map indeed.
MikeDaKid sent me his latest,
Desert_Town.
Town may be stretching it a bit, after all it's just three
one-story buildings in a wide canyon. There isn't a whole lot
else to tell, but framerates are pretty much as high as you
can get and you could have some pretty wicked one-on-one rifle
contests here. Again no stitching but I like his selection of
textures, the pale red sand especially makes this map stand
out as you can see in this here
screenshot.
Skywalker pointed out that th' latest
wintersancfix.zip
still has a problem, namely with the sky. Most of the time it
looks like a windy wintery sky but if you look at it jus' right
it sometimes turns into a sunny summer sky, as you kin see in
these screenshots: one second it's
winter and then just a bit to the
right and you have summer. How
'bout that? Sheesh.
Doominator Updates His Western Songs
Th' Doominator has really taken to this composing thing
lately. He's up and moved his MIDI-made .mp3s to
http://www.amp3.net/lancelot
(I guess you could call "CHAN Lancelot" his recording name :)
where you kin download his very latest Spaghetti-Western
inspired composition, "Showdown." VERY nice to listen to with
quite convincing vocal harmonics and
he's got some good base in there too hehe. Give it a listen
though keep yer volume down at the start to get past the
brief but LOUD little advert.
* * *
Tuesday 5/25/99
Is ADSL Available in Your Area?
USWest sent me a new digital modem today 'cause as I mentioned
last week my old modem's AC adaptor died. I thought they might
jus' replace th' adaptor but hehe they sent over a whole new
modem. These things are pretty cool, Cisco model 675s... basically
they're self-contained routers and once hooked up they become
your default gateway with their own IP address and everything.
They've got their own operating systems, VRAM and best of all
they look like tiny little stealth bombers perched on top of
your computer with mysterious twinkling lights. Took me a while
to figger out how to get this new one working, but now I guess
I know a bit about programming digital modems. :i
Anyway what I was going to mention was that if you're interested
in a fast connection there just might be an ADSL (or other
flavor of DSL) provider in your area. adsl.com has a
list
of ADSL providers that you might want to check out. See
today some of th' guys at work noticed that besides USWest,
another company called Covad
offers DSL service in Seattle, among other areas. So it turns
out that my brother Slack-Jawed Pete, who wasn't close
enough to a USWest "central office" to get a good DSL signal,
IS within range of Covad. Cool!
Cable modems are another fast internet connection option you
might try checking into, I guess the thing to do is to call your
local cable companies. Out here in Seattle TCI has an exclusive
service contract and they are REALLY dragging their feet on
expanding their internet service area. ;P But apparently in
other places, like Boston, you can get cable internet service
good and cheap just about anywhere in town.
Check Out Fallsdown's Sites While They Last
Funnyman Fallsdown has decided to take down his Outlaws
sites in the near future, apparently he's just gotten a bit
tired of them. They're hilarious and very attractive pages so
I suggest you check them out while you can. Here's the index
of his pages that he sent me:
Now personally I wish these pages would be around forever
but Falls seems to want to move on. He sums up by saying
The WAW gang is still around in the zone mostly and is not
disbanding, reorganizing, degenerating, or dismissing anyone.
This is just a personal artistic expression. So please do not
hold the other WAW members responsable. On the other hand if
you're glad they are gone it was all my idea and I deserve all
the credit.
A small peek at his special brand of humor there. Well I have
a feeling that this won't be the last we see of Falls' on the
web (webmastering is pretty addictive) but you certainly ought
to check out these pages while you have the chance. Of course,
this may all be a cunning PR ploy on Falls' part, in which case
he has completely succeeded. ;)
Rate-a-Map at Stryker's
Stryker has been posting on the
Outlaws Newsgroup that
he's got a
Rate-a-Map
page up where you can send in your own map reviews. Pretty
cool idea, now's yer chance to break into the wonderful field
of map criticism.
Wanted and Oops
LoFidelity pointed out that there's a 70 MB demo out
now fer that
Wanted: The Quake 2 Western
Pack thing. Of course you do need Quake 2 to run it.
Looks interesting, I've heard decent things about it from
several people. Now personally I prefer the light airy feeling
of Outlaws to the dark grungy feeling of the Quake 2 engine,
but if you like grunge with your cowboys this just might be
your cup of tea—er... coffee.
Wildbill pointed
out that I incorrectly pegged JTMason as the author of
WinSanc yesterday. Oops, that was actually Marshall.
JT did the recent
AR_Fort.
According to Bill his name is actually "ARMason" but the map
is signed "JTMason" so that's who done it as far as I care.
Don't be like JT folks, include a readme with yer maps!
* * *
Monday 5/24/99
New Version of Gas' "Factory," New "WinterSanc"
Man, Gas works fast! He's already fixed up that lil'
problem with the spawn point that could get you stuck (a
bug in Outlaws, see yesterday's post), plus he made a lil'
change to improve framerates, all in the newborn
Factory2.
Woohoo!
Also, Martone posted a fixed version of JTMason's
"WinterSanc" map at
Outlaws Gang Busters
in which he (Martone) added the missing snow
texture to the .lab file. Way to go Martone! To avoid filename
confusion (but this'll probably just compound things hehe) I've
named the map file
wintersancfix.zip.
SIN EATER's Site, Silverwire's New Logo
SIN EATER (yes if your name was Sin Eater you'd get it
in all caps too if you wanted it that way 8o) has announced the
opening of his new site. Some of the pages aren't filled in
just yet but it is looking pretty darn nice. And his name scares
me.
|
|
SIN EATER's Outlaws Site
Not completely done yet but based on the very attractive
design, bold approach and well-written text I think this
one is going to be a real winner. A mix of news, reviews,
tips and smoking shotgun barrels should make for one
darn—yes I'm going to say it—*spiffy* site.
|
Ah and expatriate Silverwire (SilverZ these days) has
stuck up a new logo on his
Vodka 4 Ever
gang page. Seems he's excited by recent delvings into image
processing, look for the V4E site to be sporting more of his
custom graphics in the future.
* * *
Sunday 5/23/99
LawMaker Alert: Outlaws Bugs to Avoid
C_U_J_O told me in the Zone yesterday about a problem
he ran across in the just-released map
Factory.
I checked it out an' there are indeed a few problems, but
I want to be clear that these are not the fault of the map
author, Gas; these are bugs in Outlaws itself that
Gas's expert design just happened to bring to light. I'm writing
this here so that LawMakers will know how to work around these
bugs in the future.
The first bug involves getting stuck in place at a spawn point.
When this happens you can run in place but not get anywhere, and
there's a sort of interesting effect on your hand where it
moves as if you're running but the frames aren't removed as
the animation goes through them so you end up seeing dozens of
overlapping hands, as you can see in the
screenshot.
Now why has this happened here? Okay I need to point out that
I am NOT a LawMaker expert and some of this is conjecture, but
I'm fairly sure this could be duplicated under circumstances
similar to those I'm going to describe. I opened up Factory
in LawMaker and zoomed in on the spawn point I got stuck at.
As you can see in this
screenshot from LawMaker, the
spawn point is in exactly the same X,Y position as the vertex
of a sector above it. I think this is the root of the problem,
and to avoid this bug LawMakers should take care not to place
spawn points on top of any other points.
Okay but you can spawn there just fine most of the time, why
did I get stuck only a couple times? Well take a look again at
that first screenshot when I was stuck. It says I just picked
up 116 Cartridges and 112 Bullets. But the game only ever lets
you have 100 cartridges or bullets in your possession at one
time, not including those already loaded in your gun. These cartridges
and bullets came from me dying there I think four times already
by typing OLTOMBSTONE to kill myself and respawn. So the game
got too much ammo at once, got a bit out of whack and compensated
by freezing me in place.
Why did this ammo pileup happen here? In other spawn points
around the map, my ammo dropped in separate bunches each time
I killed myself, so I never picked up more than 30 bullets and
32 cartridges at once. Well I think that the spawn point
and the vertex together at this point somehow cause
the ammo to clump together into one illegally large bunch and
the game says "Whoa hold on there buddy, yer not gettin' away
with that much ammo!" and holds you in place until you die and
drop it. So there you have it, a bug in Outlaws.
The second bug I ran across by chance in Factory while
trying to find the first. I think it's something screwy with
how the game handles 3dfx textures on sloped areas, or something.
Anyhow if you spawn in on the upper light wooden catwalk and
run STRAIGHT ahead towards the head of the stairway at the end
you will notice the texture on the side of the stairway gets
turned to the side and scrolls across the surface of the wall.
VERY funky. If you turn your facing off of the perfect square
angle you spawned in at the effect vanishes. Here's
a screenshot of the texture
turned diagonal to the left of my pistol. Funny how I'm just
learning about these bugs two years after the game came out.
My apologies to Gas for using his well-built map to show them
in.
Where's that Extra Ammo Coming From?
While investigating those bugs I noticed an interesting design
choice LucasArts made in Outlaws (again, I feel silly for not
really thinking about this before :P): dead characters sometimes drop more
ammunition than they actually have!
For instance, as you can see in his
character stat file,
Sanchez starts with 24 bullets and
16 cartridges. But if you pick up the ammo from a dead Sanchez
who didn't shoot off any rounds you'll get 30 bullets and
a whopping 32 cartridges. Whoa! Works with other characters
too. I guess LEC must have made this as a gameplay tweak,
perhaps they found that playtesters were just running out of
ammo too quickly, or mebbe they wanted to make looting your
enemy's corpse more worthwhile. ;)
Wildbill's Map Mayhem
Also ran into Wildbill in a game last night
(in ay-suc's
Space
Cowboys, man is that an awesome map! Hard to believe
anybody could have made this huge floating chunk of space rock
with so many ledges, stairways, twists and turns and
gravity-defying jumps... incredible stuff, some people seem
to hate it but wow not me :) who let me know he now has over
700 maps on his
Wildbill's Outlaws Bar site. So today I counted mine an'
hmm only ~670, thought I should go see what Bill had that I
didn't.
Well after sifting through his huge inventory and carefully
checking map names and file dates I found 15 maps that I don't
think I already have under another name. 10 of these are
different versions of maps that I had. The others I haven't
seen before.
Of these, AR_Fort
is the only recent one, in fact Bill told me to go pick it up
there (thanks Bill!). By JTMason, it's a neat lil'
night-time canyon with very nice construction of a large round
tower with battlements, a wooden building and two walls with
archways in them. Very impressive framerates especially considering
the design of the walls and the tower, and I like the blue
night textures. Looks like a fun small DM level. Check out the
screenshot.
As for the others hmmm... not really noteworthy in any way.
Well, that was easy hehe.
Martone's Survey Results, WinSanc Fix
OGB webmaster
Martone has posted the results of his last poll, this
one was questions of how people feel about the Outlaws
community. Very good topic and he's got some interesting results,
go check it out.
Martone also caught a problem with Marshall's "WinSanc"
level that I posted yesterday: Marshall didn't include the snow
texture in the level file. Just happened I had it already in my
OL directory. Doh! Well great guy that he is Martone is going
to put together a fixed version soon. Another nice catch by Martone. :)
Mr Pink's Outlaws Sequel Petition
Rabble-rousing Mr Pink wants to see an Outlaws sequel
so much that he's decided to do something about it by starting
a petition. Who's to say if it'll get anywhere at LEC but hey
it can't hurt, right? (well except that nothing can kill a good
think like a bad sequel hehe) So if YOU would also like a crack
at an Outlaws sequel, send the following info to
Mr Pink:
Name (First or Last, doesnt matter), Country, State, Postcode. So like this:
John Smith, Australia, NSW, 2000
There you go, joining up is just that easy. Let's hope the
Pinkster has some powerful friends at LucasArts.
Latest XGl200 Wrapper Works on TNTs
salmoides tried out the latest version (0.04) of
Scott Cutler's XGl200 Glide wrapper, the program that runs
Outlaws in Direct3D on video cards other than those made by
3dfx, on his STB Velocity 4400 TNT card. Here's what he
reports:
I just wanted to let you know how the wrapper ran on my STB Velocity
4400 TNT card running on my P II 350 mhz system. There was some
glitches. Around some windows there was a black space bordering the
windows and in Orleans I couldn't see underwater from above and if I
dove in the screen goes black till I surface. Looking through windows
made the waters surface look like the sky. Strange stuff but if I only
had a TNT card I would definitely go with the wrapper! As far as frame
rates I found with the wrapper I would get 60 fps at 512x384 , 85 fps at
640x480. That isn't a typo better fps at a higher resolution. Weird.
Running my Voodoo 1 under the exact conditions I got 105fps at 512x384 ,
69fps at 640x480. The way I tested was by starting the first Outlaws
level and before moving checking the frame rates.
...and part two...
After sending the first
letter I decided to see what frame rates I got with direct draw. What I
got using the same test as I used to get the results in the previous
letter. In Direct Draw I got 60fps at 512x384 (the same as when using
the Glide wrapper!) and 42fps at 640x480 (what you would expect).
Interesting that the rate went up from 512x384 to 640x480...
perhaps TNTs aren't really too keen on 512, which was the
minimum resolution of Voodoo1s and 2s and mebbe a bit of
a bastard resolution that 3dfx just worked in to improve
framerates on the first Voodoo cards. Not that I don't like
512 of course. :P 'Course, have any
of ya seen the reviews of Matrox's G400 MAX? That thing looks incredible...
and given that Scott's wrapper was originally made to work on
a Matrox G200, might be a great card to use in conjunction with
XGl200. It wouldn't be as fast as a 3dfx Voodoo3 which can run
in native Glide mode, but does make the graphic upgrade picture
a bit more complicated (looks better'n the TNT 2s, for one thing).
Outlaw freak that I am I'm stickin' with the V3 3500... if 3dfx
ever decides to actually bring it out. Heck, their next generation
chipset is supposed to be coming along by the end of the year...
Actually perhaps the best advice fer Outlaws enthusiasts looking
for LONG term Outlaws compatibility is to get a Voodoo2 since you
can use that in conjunction with whatever primary video card
you may end up with down the road.
* * *
Saturday 5/22/99
Improved XGl200 Glide Wrapper
Scott Cutler has come out with a new version of
his XGl200 Glide wrapper, a program that runs Outlaws
in Direct3D. This latest version seems much more stable
and even fixes virtually all of the graphical artifacts,
so basically you can run it on yer D3D card (like a Rage 128)
and have it look just like it would on a 3dfx card, though
not quite as fast (but still pretty darn fast).
Get the latest version and more info at
Scott's
XGL200 page—where you should also let him know how well
it works on your D3D card. Oh heck I'll just paste the "what's new" part of
the his announcement on
GlideUnderground in here:
- Reworked frame buffer write back-end
Much more robust, and lots of bug fixes. Not perfect, but it's getting close.
- Reworked texture load engine
Much cleaner code, and somewhat faster. Nearly complete (and easily extended) texture format
emulation.
- Partial paletted texture emulation
As a result of reworking the texture engine, I was able to add paletted texture support for TNT
owners. Right now, it's only partial support, but it does work on Outlaws. More support will come
later.
- More game compatibility
I fixed a lot of the games that broke in version 0.03, so try your games again if they were broken
before.
- Massive bug fixes
The big one was fixing the crash-on-exit bug that many people were having (including me).
There are a ton of other bug-fixes too, so if you had problems before, you might want to try this
version.
- More video card compatibility
I was able to add more emulation modes for different cards, so if you had problems before, try
this version. Don't worry if your card isn't on the configurator list, selecting the default will work
just fine.
Woo-hoo, quite an update (and notice how the game he chose to
mention was Outlaws :). If you don't have a 3dfx card, you'll
want this wrapper. Oh okay lemme jus' cover what isn't quite
working right: looking at water through an alpha-masked texture
(like a window or a non-rectangular object) leave a hole in the
level right through to the background sky, as you can see in
this screenshot taken in Orleans.
Luckily most levels aren't water-coated anyhow. :P But ya know
I think this stems from a bug in Lucasarts' 3dfx driver for
Outlaws, 'cause if ya look at th' semi-transparent parts of the
window along the wood slats in
this 3dfx shot you kin see straight
through to th' sky too. Funky. Oh yeah also with XGl200 when you
get vanishing creme your arm doesn't look invisible. Boohoo. ;)
Progress on the A3D Sound Problems
Some folks involved in 3d gaming sound have been taking an
interest in the various Outlaws A3D sound bugs and I think
we're getting close to having the word passed along to
Aureal and Lucasarts. Those with Vortex cards (like Diamond's
MX300) or those still looking forward to 3d sound in Outlaws
owe a big thanks to
Mark Jenkins of 3D Sales
Limited, Aureal's European distributor, Travis Howell,
webmaster of Aureal
A3D Central and Mark Muschett of
3DSoundSurge for their
continued efforts. Thanks guys!
New "Factory," "TNT_Fun" and "WinSanc" Maps
A trio of new maps today. Gas moves indoors with his
Factory.
Red brick walls and green murky chemical vats provide a playfield
with what looks like smooth gameplay, though there are a low
fps spots as well as a couple places that could really use
some lightsourcing. But of course "the play's the thing," as
we all know. Took a couple screenshots for ya:
shot 1 and
shot 2.
Poison sent along his new one,
TNT_Fun.
Basically two big rock (??) houses in a rectangular valley with
lots of TNT all around. Looks like it could be fun throwing TNT
at each other from the rooftops--seems to be only one way up
to each roof, so I guess the goal is to get up there an' hold
everybody off. Check the
screenshot.
Picked up the reformed Marshall's
WinSanc
from Darlin'.
Bet you'd thought you'd seen all the possible variants of
Sanctuary, eh? Well you forgot Sanctuary in winter. Aha! Now
there's a good reason to stay in the bar all day, it's icy and
windy outside! Brr! Marshall's added a couple sort of pits
outside of town, one connects with this interesting tunnel that
you (or Sanchez, anyhow) can only fit down one way. Interesting.
Sanctuary lovers will want to put on their jackets and have a go
with this one and yes, check the
screenshot.
Updates and Stuff
Stryker has updated
his hideout with oh tons of
new stuff, here's his list: "Updated and redid all my pages...also have
a map rate section, message board, Download/Upload file section
all the maps and some good western TV/Movie thems that
can be downloaded or Old Timey western shows that can be listened
to in RA or MP3 format...and more to come." Whoa, he's got
quite a few "Old Timey" listings... ooo, Maverick!
:j
Oh yah noticed that
Darlin' slapped a new splash page on her
site, nice GDO logo.
3dfx has apparently pushed the release date for their
Voodoo3 3500 cards back from this weekend to two months from
now (July 22nd). Doh!
Well I bid a fond farewell to Big Nose Kate yesterday,
she's off to a life of riches and excess in Boston. Best of luck
to ya Kate, I'll miss ya! *sniff* Wellll... now I've got some
more time on my hands, mebbe I'll even make it out on th' range
tonight/tomorrow ta shoot it up a bit.
* * *
Thursday 5/20/99
New Poll at Outlaws Gang Busters
Yep, Martone and the rest of the hard working crew at
Outlaws Gang Busters
have come up with a new poll, this time asking about your
experience with the Outlaws multiplayer community. A very good
topic, I recommend you participate—especially because once you
fill it out you get to see what everyone ELSE had to say (and
keep in mind that everybody else will see what YOU say hehe).
Go on do it, get involved (it's fun darnit!).
A3D Bug Report and Discussion
Well I jus' can't leave well enough alone. I started up a
discussion of A3D sound bugs in Outlaws over at
3dsl.com, site of the European
distributors of Aureal products. The cool thing is that one
of the 3DSL folks (and another Outlaws player who's also had
problems) responded to my initial post and indicated that they
will investigate these issues and try to bring them to the attention
of Lucasarts. Here's a followup post I made, summarizing the
Outlaws A3D sound problems as best I could and providing steps
to reproduce them in testing conditions:
Outlaws was developed and published by LucasArts. http://www.lucasarts.com
I did some testing on a separate system (Win98, k6-2 400, 64mb, 2 speakers, Rage 128) with a MX300 and an Aureal Vortex 1 reference board yesterday. Here
are the issues, steps to reproduce and more details. I greatly appreciate your interest in these issues.
1) Performance loss in A3D
I realize that A3D sound will take a certain amount of CPU time, however Outlaws performs quite well until more than 16 sound streams try to play at once, at which
point gameplay can grind down to the point where it becomes impossible to complete in multiplayer.
To repro: extract the multiplayer level ftp://ftp.paleface.net/maps/old_orchard.zip to your Outlaws (v2.01) directory. Host a multiplayer game; the level will show up
as "Orchard2" in the level selection list. There's a hallway in this level lined with double rows of barrels along each wall. An explosion in the middle of the hallway will
strike over 16 barrels, each of which generates a 3d sound stream. Toss a stick of TNT into the midst of the barrels and run around. When the stick explodes the
game literally freezes for half a second or so. If you want to monitor your framerate type "olfps" to show a framerate meter. You should do this at least twice as the
first pause may be caused in part by the program loading the sound file.
This pause occurs on both the Vortex 1 and Vortex 2 cards, though it seems even more pronounced on the MX300. In addition, on the MX300 a loud "bleep!"
sound occurs when the barrels are struck, instead of the dull "thwack!" that usually plays when they are struck.
The fact that this is a problem even on the Vortex 1 card (using latest reference drivers) seems to indicate that it is indeed, as you mention, a problem with LucasArts'
A3D implementation (lecaur3d.dll) handling more than 16 simultaneous sounds.
2) Screeching and performance loss in DirectSound
To repro: Make sure DirectSound is selected in the Outlaws config program. Set mixer channels to 16 in the advanced sound options. Make sure DirectSound
hardware acceleration is enabled in the Aureal driver applet. This problem only occurs with the 2030 Vortex 2 beta drivers.
Extract the level file ftp://ftp.paleface.net/maps/fod.zip to your Outlaws directory. It will show up as "Field of Death" in the multiplayer level selection list. This level
seems to facilitate quick reproduction of the bug because it uses a number of environmental water and wind sounds. Load up the map and run around, shooting and
exploding dynamite. In less than a minute you should start to hear bizarre screeching sounds.
Also if you try the TNT test noted for issue #1 you will see a similar though slightly less significant loss of performance when the TNT explodes.
As previously stated these problems only occur with the Aureal 2030 beta drivers, and only with DirectSound hardware acceleration enabled. When DS is disabled
there is no screeching and no performance loss in the TNT test. Of course this would not be a significant problem if the A3D framerate loss did not force players to
revert to using DirectSound.
3) Loss of gun firing sounds in A3D
Sometimes the sound of the player's own gun firing will be inaudible, or very faint as if it is playing somewhere in the distance. This only really happens in multiplayer
matches with a lot going on at once; in games with 4 or more players using pistols you should encounter it fairly often on the MX300. Haven't had a chance to try a
repro on a Vortex 1. The fact that the gun firing sometimes sounds as if it is playing not locally but in the distance makes me wonder if internet lag is involved
somehow.
As with issue #1 I suspect this is problem with LucasArts' handling of multiple simultaneous A3D sounds in Outlaws. Perhaps the player's own gun firing sound has
not been given the top priority.
Thanks again. My own attempts to notify LucasArts and Aureal of these problems have met with polite or silent deadends. I know both these companies are very
concerned with producing top quality products and perhaps if you can bring these issues to their attention they will feel that they are worth addressing. :)
Paleface
Now I know there are lots of folks besides me who have played
Outlaws with an A3D card, and you may have encountered these
or other issues yourself. If you have something you can add
to the discussion to facilitate the process of finding and
eliminating these issues, now is the time to do so. Head on
over to 3dsl.com and check out the Outlaws message board thread.
* * *
Wednesday 5/19/99
A3D Testing: No Joy
Did some testing on a separate system today with A3D sound
in Outlaws run on another MX300 and an Aureal reference Vortex
1 card. The MX300 had the same trouble mine has: massive
framerate loss in noisy multiplayer conditions and screeching
sound using DirectSound with hardware DirectSound acceleration
enabled. However, I can't detect any framerate difference
between the two DirectSound settings, even with 64 mixing channels
hacked up for Outlaws, so mebbe this isn't TOO bad... though
it is annoying. The Vortex 1 card was okay with DirectSound but had
the SAME framerate loss in noisy multiplayer situations when
running using A3D sound.
Soooo... I guess the A3D sound problem isn't so much a bug
in the latest drivers, but a limitation of Outlaws' A3D
implementation. Which means that it just isn't practical
to use 3D sound in Outlaws multiplayer except maybe in
one-on-one matches. Phooooooeeeeeeey! And that's all I have
to say about that. ;P
Vodka Page Updated
Yep you guessed it, slow news day. SilverZ (useta
go by Silverwire) has updated his
Vodka 4 Ever
Outlaws posse page with some compendiums of the members'
favorite maps, some notes on when to find them online and
err... other stuff. Of course when you go to a site named something
like "Vodka 4 Ever" you realize you are taking your fate or
more immediately your peace of mind
into your own hands...
* * *
Tuesday 5/18/99
File for Win95 Users of OLconfig
Okay, you should'a picked up the
Outlaws
Configuration Manager (or "OLconfig" for short) yesterday
so's that you kin change all yer settings around without
even having to launch the game. It also lets ya set up
multiplayer user profiles, each with their own keyboard and
mouse setups for multiple users on the same system. Well
author Cia_Bpi let me know today that
Win95 users must have the file "comctl32.ocx" in
their windows\system folder to use OLconfig's mouse and keyboard
functions. If you've got an
old version of Win95 you may need to get this file which you
can download right
here (227k).
Just extract to your windows\system directory,
once it's in there things should work spiffily.
Doh! Vsync Command Correction
Those folks who read the last day's vittles very late last
night may have noticed I made a booboo in which autoexec.bat
file command disables Voodoo card Vsync (letting you get more
frames per second than your screen's refresh rate). Good thing
Martone was one of those late night readers, he corrected
me and pointed out that the actual command is
SET FX_GLIDE_SWAPINTERVAL=0. I corrected yesterday's post
already but just in case I thought I'd print this here some
everybody can see what a doofus I can be.
EAX and A3D, But All I Want is 3D
Dude wanted to be clear about just what it is that the
new "Live!Ware" 2.0 drivers for Creative Labs' "Soundblaster Live"
sound card are doing for Outlaws. It's complicated so I'll
jus' let him tell it:
As far as I know, CL doesn't have or use A3D drivers at all. EAX is actually
an extension of Direct3D and you don't actually do any configuring in OL to
get the Environmental, or "positional", effect. That's all handled by
Windows (DirectX) and your speaker setup. Probably the easiest way to think
of EAX, as far as OL is concerned, is that it's kind of like a A3D "wrapper"
:)
The Live!Ware 2.0 drivers sport a beefy 3D engine that enhances OL's
directional code all by itself, and then EAX is actually separate - an
extension to D3D, where you can setup OL to run using 3D sound "presets"
(one of the 80 supplied or you can make one of your own). The presets
further enhance positional audio and add special 3D effects, such as reverb,
etc.
The way you apply the EAX presets to OL is pretty simple. You just run the
"AutoEA" applet and assign the OL.EXE any preset you want to use(see
attached). Then as long as AutoEA is running in the system tray, when you
launch OL, you get to play OL with some serious 3D audio! :)
Dude also threw in this
screenshot of what it looks like
settin' up Live!Ware ta enhance Outlaws sound. Slick stuff,
I wish I could hear what it sounds like.
Well I suppose I could if I really wanted 'cause we got
a Soundblaster Live somewhere around the lab at work. Actually
I think tomorrow I'm gonna try to snag both an A3D Vortex 1 card
and an A3D Vortex 2 (ie MX300) card and see how they work with
Outlaws on my system there, 'cause this trouble I'm havin' with
my MX300 and A3D sound in Outlaws is really naggin' on me.
Heck, if th' Vortex 1 card works well I jus' might swap my
MX300 fer one of those old puppies, you kin pick up OEM ones
fer like $20 mail-order these days.
Oh yeah an' jus' a consumer warning based on personal experience:
avoid AT&T 900mHz cordless phones. The one I got (model 9400)
ships with an AC adapter that is so unshielded as to let
electrical fields near the plug (like umm other electric things
plugged in at the same wall jack) create feedback so that a loud
buzzing sound comes out of the intercom in the base when you
pick up the line. D-arrr!!
* * *
Monday 5/17/99
Cia_Bpi's "Outlaws Configuration Manager" is Here!
Yay people have been lookin' forward ta this fer a while:
Cia_Bpi has finished up his
Outlaws
Configuration Manager (53k) program! What's it do? Well
basically it does most of th' setup stuff ya kin do in th'
Outlaws game options, but ya kin do it without loading Outlaws.
However, th' real kicker izzat ya kin make multiple player
profiles fer different people who play Outlaws on yer computer
so that each person kin have their own keyboard and mouse
config, an' switch between 'em real easy. Hurrah! No more
Slackjawed_Pete comin' over ta visit an' screwin' up all my
controls. :P OLConfig edits th' Outlaws registry settings
directly an' in addition ta th' stuff already mentioned, gives
ya a easy interface fer settin' up custom taunts. Check out the
screenshot. an'
don't fergit ta read th'
readme
that Mallard wrote up fer ya!
Cia_Bpi wants folks to know they kin copy OLConfig to their
web sites if they wanna. He's got even more features planned for
the next version if people show enough interest, includin':
- Save and Load configurations ( so they can exchange
their own configuration with others )
- Setting taunts, included in lab-files
- Special button for video and sound setup
- Extended options to allow changes in settings v.1.0
- Addaptation for mouse, to allow other values than 1,
2 and 4 as left, right and middle button
- Saving of the window position, when closed, so that
next time it will be launched, it will appear there.
So, since I'm sure this'll be a very popular lil' program
I think we'll have even more good stuff to look forward to
somewhere down the road. :)
More on Creative's "Unified" Glide TNT Wrapper
Dude has been messin' around with Creative Lab's
"Unified Driver," ie their glide wrapper that runs 3dfx Glide
games in Direct3D on a TNT. Seems that sometimes when switchin'
weapons th' wrong weapon pic pops up! Check out
this
wacky shot he took where he pulled a knife but uhhh that's
not yer normal everyday knife... whoa. He's also gotten weirder
stuff like a left-handed stick of TNT with rifle crosshairs
and firing. Krrrazy.
Dang A3D Sound Notes
Well me I'm still strugglin' with th' drivers fer this fancy
A3D sound card (Diamond MX300) I got a while back. Actually
I've just about given up for the most part for now, mebbe I'll
take up th' fight again when Aureal kicks out th' next driver
release. Anyhow, after much frustration and reinstallation of
every Vortex2 driver under th' sun, I've found that A3D still
isn't workin' right in Outlaws on a Vortex2 card. When too many
sounds (ie more than 16) get goin', th' framerate drops
precipitously, and I mean to the point where things can get
pretty unplayable even on my P2 333 w/ Banshee in a three
person deathmatch. Not fun. There's also a good deal of static
and popping sounds which make it almost impossible to hear people
sneaking around you anyhow.
To make things worse, or at least more confusing, even switching
back to normal DirectSound doesn't work quite right with the
latest Aureal drivers (v2030). DirectSound exhibits the same
framerate loss in noisy conditions and also pumps out th' worst
screeching sounds I have ever heard from a sound card in certain
circumstances. Ouch. Arg. After messin' about for a LONG time
I figgered out that I could fix that by disabling DirectSound
hardware acceleration in the Vortex2 applet... and actually
framerates if anything are better that way, so I guess that's
no big problem. Sure is weird though. Anyhow I set my mixing
channels to 64 in the Outlaws DirectSound registry directory
and things seem pretty smooth with that, you can hear a lot
goin' on especially in big fights, which is nice. Sure wish
I has real 3d sound workin' right though. :P
To add insult to injury, Dude tells me that the latest
"Live!Ware 2.0" drivers for his Creative Labs Soundblaster Live
card let you use Creative's EAX Environmental Audio in old A3D
games, and that it works great in Outlaws. Sheesh! Almost sounds
like Creative has better Aureal A3D drivers than... Aureal! ;P
How to Get Real High Framerates: Vsync OFF!
Many oldtime Voodoo users will know this already, but I had
two folks ask me today how I get framerates higher than my
screen refresh rate in Outlaws. Well fer starters you should
run your screen at the highest refresh it and your video card
can support—and Voodoo cards can do 120Hz. Lemme tell ya,
120Hz is a lot easier on th' eyes than 60!
Okay so how to get framerates higher than your screen's actual
refresh rate? There's this video card setting called "Synchronize
to Vertical Refresh" or "Vsync" for short. Some video drivers
will have an option for disabling Glide Vsync in the Display Properties.
For those with Voodoo cards that don't have an easy vsync toggle
in the control panel, you have other options. These can be found
on my video comparison page but I
know it's long so here they are:
Voodoo 1 and 2: add "SET FX_GLIDE_SWAPINTERVAL=0" to your
autoexec.bat file
Banshee: get the "Banshee Control Panel" utility from
KoolSmokey's site
That should do th' trick. By th' way if ya can't setcher
Voodoo 1 or 2 refresh rate in the Display panel you can add
"SET SST_SCREENREFRESH=120" to yer autoexec.bat to get it at
120Hz (or use a lower number like 75 or 90 if yer monitor can't
do 120). Not sure about Voodoo3, I'll hafta figger that out
when I pick one up, hopefully in th' next couple weeks or three.
I did get a new phone today. ;P My old one broke down, but in
stages so I spent all day running around trying to find a 9 Volt
AC adapter only to find that it didn't work... because now the
whole phone was kaput. Plus I couldn't find a new 5 Volt adapter
for my digital modem ANYWHERE... hit two large drug stores,
Radio Shack and Office Max both TWICE—it was a long, rainy,
humid, rush-hour traffic afternoon. Augh. But at least now I
have an expensive phone that is charging up and seems to make
a loud buzzing sound when I try to talk. Yay!
Oh and by the way, if you ever see me in the Zone and wonder
what to say to me, the question "Are you really that Paleface
guy with the site?" seems to be a popular icebreaker. :P For
some reason people skip that formality in Kali and IRC. ;)
* * *
Sunday 5/16/99
Outlaws Glide Wrappers Galore!
Well okay mebbe not "galore," as there are really only two.
But hey, that's twice as many as b'fore! For those who are
new to the whole wrapper thing, a "Glide Wrapper" is typically
a program that lets you play 3dfx Glide-only games like Outlaws
through Direct3D so that you don't need a 3dfx card to get
nice hardware accelerated graphics.
Dude has bin playin' about with Creative Labs' "Unified"
drivers. It's funny they call 'em that since they aren't even
drivers—running the .exe just extracts a glide2x.dll file into
your windows\system directory. So these aren't drivers, but
just a Glide wrapper that works with Creative's TNT cards.
3dfx of course isn't happy with this and it will be interesting
to see what comes of it—I hafta think that Creative must be
banking on some loophole, like mebbe their contract with 3dfx
back when they made Voodoo cards didn't say explicitly that they
couldn't use the 3dfx development tools for other hardware, or
something like that.
If you have a Creative TNT you can snag the wrapper at
Creative's "Unified
Driver" page. Of course there are also "mirror" sites
like this
Russian one though if you have a Creative card you really
should support the beta test by logging in at their site.
I've tried the wrapper on my Banshee (silly isn't it) and it
didn't work at all—couldn't even pick a resolution in the
Outlaws configuration program. This makes me think that the
wrapper has been hard-coded to work ONLY on Creative cards,
and that makes sense from a legal standpoint (ie Creative avoiding a
3dfx lawsuit). BUT then again it may work only on a TNT card,
I dunno since I don't have one.
The interesting thing to me about the Creative wrapper is that
tech support in their newsgroup is being handled by Bill
Ball. This is the same Bill from
Bill's Workshop, a
site that has great support for Banshee cards. A while back
Bill helped me with a workaround that fixed graphical glitches
in Outlaws on Banshees running early drivers. A coincidence
that Creative comes out with a wrapper shortly after hiring
Bill? Hmm... I've always been skeptical of coincidence. I'd
say it's a good bet that this is the second time Outlaws players
owe Bill a big thanks for his support!
The second wrapper is a new version of Scott Cutler's "XGL200,"
XGL200
0.03a. This new version is apparently completely legal as
Scott has purged all files related to 3dfx's SDK at their request.
Th' old .03 version didn't work at all with Outlaws
but on my Banshee version .03a works fine with a few small
glitches that seem typical of Glide wrappers. In fact, it looks
EXACTLY like the screenshots Dude sent me of Outlaws
running on his Creative TNT with the Creative "Unified Drivers"
(aside from gamma differences that I didn't bother to try
matching).
Another coincidence? HMMM... but don't take my word for it,
compare the screenshots yourself and take a gander at the
framerates. My system is a P2 333 w/ Banshee, Dude's got a P2
350 w/ Creative TNT.
Interesting, no? You see the exact same artifacts with the
XGL200 that you do with the Unified, and framerates are
pretty close too. A couple things I noticed running XGL200
were that framerates, while sometimes high, varied widely
and left gameplay noticeably jerkier than in Glide, and that
hitting ESC while in-game would dump me back to Windows. The
old XGL200 that worked with Outlaws didn't work on TNT-based
cards, so somebody let me know if this new one does... or if
the Unified's work on non-Creative TNT cards. Creative is
saying that the Unified will work on their TNT2 cards as
well which is obviously their whole reason for doing this;
whether Outlaws will run on their TNT2 remains to be seen
but if it does that's something to keep in mind
for those Outlaws looking to upgrade their system.
Five "New" Maps
sshep sent me his latest level,
Campout.
Pretty good construction here in the sandy canyons around a
single-story building, framerates are high. Several bunkers
made for snipers so be aware of that when picking your character.
Only thing I don't quite get is why the level is so dark
everywhere—eyestrain, eyestrain! Ah well check out the
screenshot.
In the mail this came in sshep mentioned it was based on
his old map Campfire but it didn't look familiar to me at all.
Then I thought I'd check Campfire again—and realized I didn't
even have it. A journey over to
The BOK
Homepage turned up not only
Campfire
but another by sshep,
Rodeo. These
are some of his earlier maps, both kinda dark like Campout.
Campfire looks pretty solid, Rodeo has some hidden sniping spots
and AI baddies with gatling guns, not what you would call yer
usual Outlaws multiplayer map.
DeadlyShot sent me his very first map,
Counterpart.
A decent small arena map though it lacks some of the basics
you'd like to have such as texture stitching and audible
footsteps. High framerates though and a pretty solid first
effort (I always feel funny saying stuff like that considering
that I've never made a map in my life :P). Check the
screenshot.
And lastly I found a map called
Tricky over
at Outlaws Gang
Busters. Hmm a big flat canyony thing with low gravity and
invisible sniping caves. Whee look how high I can
jump. Blah. If you want low-grav fun check
out the classic Alien
Moonbase.
Well that's all fer th' weekend. Pete wanted to go see
"The Mummy" for some dang reason but I said nuts to that, I wanna
play some Outlaws finally. Gonna be around Kali tryin' ta host
a few of th' neater lookin' maps off an' on this evening, yay!
* * *
Saturday 5/15/99
New Maps: "NonStop" and "Civil Farm vrs 2"
Skywalker sent me his new map,
NonStop.
Hehe it's a train station and you hear the train but don't
see it, so I guess it didn't stop? ;) Skywalker tells me he
was a bit frustrated after people told him his last map,
Law Tower,
was too big. Now to me that's a silly criticism to make 'cause
there's no one perfect map size—different size maps make for
lots of variety. For instance if you have say 4 people you can
play a fast an' furious game in a small map, or a slow sneaky
game in a big map. An' of course if you have a lotta folks
at once you'll prob'ly want a big map anyhow. :P
Oh well back to his new map. NonStop is more medium-sizish,
a lil' trainstop town cut in half by the elevated tracks. A
tricky design to pull off with high framerates but for th' most
part he succeeds, though if yer on a slow machine you'll
prob'ly want to avoid looking over the town from the rooftops
(unless yer sightseein' like me when I took this
screenshot). Saw some non-stitched
textures but all in all a very solid map and the GREEN sky is
a unique touch—or was that just my Banshee acting up on me?
Well anyhow I liked it. Also has some nice lighting in the
twilight, check out this hallway).
Raf sends a new version of his just released multiplayer conversion
of the second part of the Civil War historical mission.
Civil Farm
version 2 does without chickens and hmm some moving sector
or something (.inf) to improve network performance. A nice
map, if you liked the first you'll definitely want to pick up
the new version.
GoJo on Invis. Tunnels, Wheelmouse Setup
GoJo took a look at that map
Canyon Lands
by MikeDaKid that I posted on Thursday. There is indeed
a tunnel running through midair that turns invisible when viewed from certain angles.
Dunno if Mike did that on purpose but it's an interesting effect,
I wouldn't put it past GoJo to use it to make a mirage ghost
town or something. ;) Anyhow he sent a couple shots to demonstrate
how it disappears: now you
see it and now you
don't. Weird! Oh yah he also
wanted to show off his nifty custom crosshair which you can
see in th' shots. Of course we all know REAL Outlaws scorn the
use of crosshairs (hehe we can't aim too well either :P) but
as crosshairs go that is a nice one.
GoJo also did some tooling around in his registry to get his
mouse wheel working in Outlaws. I haven't got a wheel mouse
(I prefer a normal third button) but I know that most people
do like those wheelie dealies. You can get the full scoop on
how to use yer mouse wheel in Outlaws on
GoJo's
page.
Outlaws Demo a Popular Download
salmoides noticed over at CNET's
Download.com that
Outlaws has been downloaded over 271,000 times since it was
posted there on July 17, 1997. He figgers that's an average
of 368 downloads of the 13.5 MB demo every day for the past
two years. Not too shabby! In fact I noticed that if you go
there and sort
by popularity, Outlaws weighs in as their 14th most popular
demo of all time, right behind Lucasarts' own "Jedi Knight: Mysteries
of the Sith" demo. The original Jedi Knight demo comes in at #2 with
over 1 million downloads... actually that works out about right,
I've noticed that you'll usually find ~4x as many people playin'
JK as Outlaws in the Zone. Aren't numbers fun? Anyhow, just
goes to show ya how popular Outlaws has become.
Sheesh
Oop one last news bittle, Simon tells me he's updated the
Simon
& Garfunkel site with tips on starting yer own posse and
a map section featuring maps that are less than a week old,
a nice way to stay up to date.
More'n more folks have been askin' me if I still PLAY Outlaws.
Darnit of course I do, I just haven't had a whole lotta time
ta play lately. :P When it comes to playing or updating this
site, I tend to go for updating the site. AND Pete and Kate
have been playin' Outlaws on my machine fer th' past few weeks
(it's pretty funny to watch 'em play 'cause they get so into it).
ANYhow I am itchin' ta play an' in fact what with Kate movin' to
Boston in a week (doh!! but at least she'll be rich and get
a cable modem an' mebbe we'll see her terrorizin' th' Zone
from time ta time ;) I jus' might finally have some time to
do some real playin'. D-ar! AND th' plan to set up a server
is still there but I am still waitin' on th' system, though it
seems to be inching closer and closer to getting handed over
to me. Emphasis in the inching. :P
* * *
Thursday 5/13/99
New Maps "Canyon Lands" and "Fred's Farm"
MikeDaKid sent me his first map,
Canyon
Lands. A tall square canyon with paths and several
buildings around the edges. Decent layout though it lacks
running sounds and stitching and has some minor 3dfx issues. And am I
imagining things or is there a tunnel that crosses mid-canyon
invisibly? Funky. Here's a
screenshot.
DrDeath2,
thanks to the recently released utilities from Raptor,
has come out with a map he calls
Fred's
Farm, a small version of part of the farm area from the
second part of the "Civil War" Historical Mission. In fact this
is already the second conversion of this area, I think people
like that chicken coop. ;) DrD2 has made extensive modifications
however, removing the barn and basically creating a nice grove
around the farmhouse. Rather idyllic, if it weren't for the
shooting and all that. Check the
screenshot.
Two New Sites
Man, my link page is getting seriously overweight. Ahh well,
can't get enough Outlaws web stuff. Here's more:
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Vodka 4 Ever
Silverwire's latest assault on your eyeballs, or confessions
of an 18-year-old Outlaws fanatic with a love of Vodka.
Strange posse page but the bold use of fonts is actually
quite well done. Also has a handy collection of all the
single-player missions and recipes for various mixed
drinks involving, you guessed it, vodka. Not your average
Outlaws site.
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Bjarte's Homepage
Just barely qualifies as an Outlaws site, though he does
have commentary on the 6 characters and a big list of
cheat codes.
|
Thanks to Frisky for that second one. Whew, just spent
some time ripping out the dead links, page should be a bit
more spritely now. :P
Odds and Ends
Simon has some unusual advice about using a steering
wheel with Outlaws on his
news page.
Noticed a couple screenshots purporting to be of Kali
version 2.0, check 'em out:
the game
browser and
the
chat window. Looks like you can set your own background
image, and nice to see they're finally going to get a modern
Windows look to the thing. If these are genuine. It's funny
'cause if you search for v2.0 stuff on the Kali.net site
all you find is posts saying it should be in beta in the winter
of '98. Hmmm... Finally, and perhaps most bizarre, Creative
Labs has releases a Glide wrapper for their TNT-powered
"Graphics Blaster" cards under the aegis of a "Unified Beta
Driver." This is completely unexpected, and I could only be
more amazed if 3dfx DOESN'T slap them with the biggest lawsuit
they've ever seen. Crazy stuff, will be interesting to see
what happens with this. You can check the
official
Creative Unified Beta Driver page, and get more info
at the
Glide Underground
hacking site.
* * *
Wednesday 5/12/99
Stuff a' Brewin'
This's turnin' inta a mighty slow news week, not that I'm
too bummed about that since it means I get more sleep. :)
Anyhow jus' 'cause I got nothin' new fer ya now don't mean
nothin's comin'; in fact I have been beta testing a number
of things, including something that'll save me a lotta trouble
when Pete wants to come over and play on my DSL and reprogram
all my Outlaws controls. :P
I thought at first mebbe people were distracted by that
Quake 3 Arena "test" thing, but a quick peek in the Zone and
Kali showed more people than normal playin' good ol' Outlaws.
Th' boys at work are of course entranced with Q3ATest... I
haven't played it but I've watch them try and it still looks like th' same ol' dull grunting
rocketfest that's never really interested me. I also have to
mention that it's just incredible how computer hardware companies
suddenly come out with new drivers just to run the latest id
software... basically every other game producer has to deal
with drivers designed to run id products.
Killercraig wrote me to say that he'd like to see maps
with no items except ammunition. That is, no weapons, boilerplates
or health things laying around. I think that sounds cool, would
make for a pretty gritty level where the differences between
characters really make themselves felt. In fact I've always
tended to like levels that are stingy with items, and I know
nobody read it (:P) but in that
sketch for a "realistic" western
shooter game concept thingy I wrote up I went even further
than Craig, saying there should be NO items to pick up except
for your enemy's weapon (which you can't use more than once)
and the gear you've packed in your horses' saddlebag. Not that
anybody cares. Sniff. ;)
I heard from another person who said that hack I came up
with has helped them join games they never could have before
with Win98, so I'm going to post it here again one last time
in case some of ya haven't tried it. If you have Win98 and
trouble joining Outlaws games, especially those with high
pings, try this:
Go to your Start Menu and select "Run..." Type "regedit" and
hit Enter. The registry editor will open. Go to the "Edit"
menu and select "Find..." Search for "Session Search Timeout"
without the quotes. Double-click the variable when you find
it and change it from 3 to something higher, like 9. This changes
the number of seconds Outlaws will take to try finding a
game. Now go to the "Edit" menu and select "Find Next" to
locate the second "Session Search Timeout" entry and again change
3 to something higher. Close Outlaws if you had it running
and try to join the game. If you're still unable to find the
game try higher Session Search Timeout values, mebbe even
going as high as 60 though this could cause yer computer to
pause for one minute as it searches for the Outlaws session.
So if that doesn't work for ya, well nuts. It's worked for
at least four or five people that have emailed me, so I guess
I regard it as a partial success.
* * *
Back to Stale Vittles
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