Monday, July 22, 2002

Apophis on Vacation...

va·ca·tion Pronunciation Key (v-kshn, v-)
n.
A period of time devoted to pleasure, rest, or relaxation, especially one with pay granted to an employee.

A holiday.
A fixed period of holidays, especially one during which a school, court, or business suspends activities.
Archaic. The act or an instance of vacating.

-= Apophis =-
(Wearing a wetsuit as I speak)

Sunday, July 21, 2002

Server Status

There have been posts lately about servers being down, or having been down for a day or two. Please if you notice anything e-mail one of the admins. Contact info can be found HERE.
If the admin you contact can't reset the server, they can get in touch with someone who can. Remember if we don't know about it, it can't be fixed.

Thank you
eternal

Wednesday, July 10, 2002

Quake 2 - LMCTF Server Online!

Yes, you read that right. We now have a Quake 2 LMCTF server online and operational. The IP address to this server is 208.144.244.100. If you've ever played LMCTF in the past and want to join in on some old-school fun, check it out.

A bit of history; LMCTF was the first server Network 42 ever ran. It was many years ago and got a tremendous amount of activity. It's also one of the original games that had servers compiled for Sun Microsystem's Solaris OS. I'm not sure how long this server is going to stay up, but I thought it would be amusing at least for a while.

You can get more information on LMCTF and file download information by clicking here.

-= Apophis =-

Monday, July 01, 2002

N42 Grabs some spotlight on GhostRecon.net

A mission creation competition over on GhostRecon.net recently released it's results, and members of the Network 42 community took the second and third places.

TalkingBeerMug took second spot with his "Border Ambush" mission, And Rose took third with "Jack Rabbit". You can take a closer look at the results here.

A nice touch was the fact that both mission creators were recognized as hailing from our little Network 42. Hopefully that kind of exposure will attract some more teamplay-oriented tactical gamers.

Congratulations go out to all who participated, and especially to BeerMug and Rose for their good showing.

Karma

Monday, June 24, 2002

Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K...

I hope you all get the Bill & Ted's reference. If you don't.. Well..

There have been a lot of changes here in Network 42-land lately. We've added a new "Reviews" section off the main page where we will be putting up hardware/game and possibly other reviews, be sure to check that out. Also added to the main page is a list of the latest reviews. There have also been some slight tweaks to the structure of the site. Each individual game-specific page now contains the same news as the main site. This was done because many people were missing out on what else is going on with Network 42 because they were only visiting a single game-related home page.

In all probability, the game-specific pages will be removed or somehow adapted so their only use is for server-status information and/or file downloads, but this hasn't been finalized yet.

On a down note; I'm sure many of you have noticed that we have ceased support for JK2 and DoD. These games were removed for a variety of reasons. JK2 was removed because it just doesn't fit into the grand scheme of things with N42. JK2 has turned into a Mortal Kombat type of game, he who knows the right combination of buttons to push or he who has scripts to combine those moves automatically is he who wins. When the game first came out it had great potential because saber dueling was more like an actual duel; it turned into people almost exclusively executing special moves and very little in the way of decent gameplay. Purely a button-combo & twitch-reflex game. Not something I want to support. I also wasn't too keen on the fact that most of the players assumed it was a DLSA server and operated by the DLSA clan. The demise of DoD was due partly to lack of use and the fact that it has been a public server for MONTHS with no real attempts and moving to a private architecture. I don't want to run and/or support public servers. Little to no promotion of the server and/or it's ideals/philosophy was done and player registrations were poor at best. Since I didn't have the time to do this promotional work myself, I felt it was best to pull the plug and allocate those hardware resources to a game that WAS getting active promotion by it's players.

This brings us to Counter-Strike. We've already dropped from 2 servers to 1 based on lack of play and several theories have been brought to light about why the gameplay has been so sparse. I have a few things to get off my chest regarding this matter;

The boundaries on N42 never used to exist. When N42 PCS first was started the players sought out a tactical/teamplay/objective oriented server. They looked for a server like N42 because it really was what they wanted. Boundaries weren't needed because the players knew and understood what their jobs were and what flexibility they SHOULD have in any given situation based on what was happening.

Would they rush as far forward as possible to some imaginary "line" where they were told they could go no farther? HELL NO... Mostly because I didn't *NEED* to say anything..

Players knew what offense and defense meant, and they knew what teamwork and objectives were all about, and the server kicked ass. It was the best CS I had ever played in my life.

As time went on more and more people started signing up, but now we were split between 50% of them seeking out N42 and 50% of them simply *hearing* about N42 or having friends that played here. I would wager that as it stands right now, 75% of the players who are on N42 never read the FAQ, nor did they take the time to understand what we were all about.

Every time I try and play CS I can't stomach it longer than 10 minutes. Usually because people are whining about how bad a map sucks, or complaining that every time they die it's BS, or being too damn anal retentive about the rules/guidelines that they spend more time trying to find someone doing something wrong than just playing.

We have some smart players now, unfortunately they are outnumbered by the stupid whining babies who seem to live for nothing more than to bitch and complain about anything they can possibly think of.

Cingular hit the nail on the head; CS has turned into who can "twitch" faster and if anyone uses any original thought it's stamped to shit because of the whining babies...

If the players can show that they truly are objective and team oriented, all these silly rules can disappear. We can go back to how things were in the beginning and all will be well. The players also need to show some restraint when whining constantly about everything. This means that all CS players should go RE-READ the FAQ and make sure they understand what it's all about. Defensive players need to concentrate on defense and not rushing as far forward as they can to try and get as many kills as possible.

I am going to be re-adressing this whole issue in the admin forums and see if we can come to some conclusion regarding the rulesets and the players and hopefully we can keep CS alive. I will say that the best games I have had recently are with small numbers of people, especially Phyllis and Remjin, when the game takes on a totally tactical feel. The movement is quiet and calculated, and you don't have teammates thunderbooting all over the place and jumping in front of each other trying to get kills. Players will cover various choke points and STAY there unles needed in other places, as opposed to running all over and doing very little in the way of communication. These two relatively new players know what it's all about; they may be newbies to N42, but you can learn from them...

-= Apophis =-

Friday, June 21, 2002

CZ:GR Co-Op Tournament...

As many of you know, The Combat Zone is having a Co-Op Ghost Recon Tournament. Two of our native Network 42 units have entered this tournament, null and the 42nd. I really would love for ANY N42 members who want to play to have a chance to play in this. As such I've made a new unit;

You may register and petition to join the "Network 42 Tactical Gaming" unit.. Your clan tag for the events will be "|XLII|".

Click Here to Register

Any N42 GR community member may petition and play. I really don't care WHAT team pulls in the victory, as long as they're from N42..

So good luck null, XLII's and 42nds! One of us needs to take home the cake...

-= Apophis =-

Thursday, June 20, 2002

New Ghost Recon campaigns in the works

With the release of the N42 mod, version 1.1, we've started looking toward the next release. A couple of items that are in the works are some campaigns. The first of them will primarily be a multi-player campaign, designed to provide some continuity to the co-op server play. It is set to have 5 or 6 parts and be set in Georgia, Azerbaijan and Russia.

The second campaign is being developed as both a single-player and multi-player campaign, and it will feature 9 missions. (yup, I have to make 9 missions) This campaign will be primarily an outdoor/daytime campaign, set in South America, and complete with Columbian guerillas.

The Russian campaign should be ready to go by the end of June, with the South American campaign being ready by mid-july.

Karma

Thursday, June 20, 2002

Network 42 Ghost Recon Mod - Audio Patch v1.1.1

A patch for the Network 42 GR Mod was released today. This patch is for those people who no longer have sounds for some of the weapons. It's only a 1.42MB patch, so it wouldn't hurt to install it either way.

Work is progressing with 1.2 from a "tweak" front and some more research is being done as to how to add some new functionality we'd like to see.

-= Apophis =-

Monday, May 13, 2002

Network 42 - 2002 Summer Bash

Registrations for the Network 42 Tactical Gaming - 2002 Summer Bash are underway! If you are planning on attending the N42 bash, you must pre-register! It looks like it's going to be a good time with plenty of people from all over. All the information required is available within the registration system.

This is only open for N42 members. It's also a LOT more than lan-party, it's going to be like a 24 hour a day "happy drunk night" that lasts 4 days. There will be plenty of fun stuff to do both on and off-site at the bash.

To register for the bash; Click Here

-= Apophis =-