For one who is normally lazy, who really doesn't like to write anything, you'd think that one would not write anything. But because of the passion that fills me, it is now impossible to be lazy, to not write about what I have to say. I was in junior high at the time. There was a guy on the campus that I did not like, whom I harrassed quite frequently. We didn't get along. But there was a point in eighth grade that we ended up in the same classroom. He asked me something computer-related...I don't know what he asked. Then I replied in an unfriendly-like manner, maybe I was saying that I was involved with tweaking my modem's settings. I don't remember, it was all unclear. Then we found out we had similar interests and thus we became friends. We were friends all the way up until this point and still continue to be.
At this point, I was heavily into IndyCar Racing II. He handed me a "Descent 2 Demo" CD. Life was never the same again...
That is not to say that it is the only thing that has dramatically shaped the life I lived, but it was one of the greatest. I will tell you all that I can remember from this day forward.
At that point, I wasn't into violent games. He insisted, so I gave in. I installed the CD. We both had modems, and I think I was the one who dialed him with it, if I'm not mistaken (using the game). We connected, and it was successful. My first game was a modem-to-modem multiplayer game. I can remember back then in the demo we couldn't choose "cooperative," or any other mode, other than "anarchy." So we went into an "anarchy game."
A "cooperative game" is a game in which you are fighting alongside your teammates, against the robots. An "anarchy game" is a game in which all players try to kill each other, and, in the end, to dominate the game with the most amount of kills.
Since modem-to-modem games are only two player, and we played in Anarchy Mode, we are to kill each other. So we started up level 1 (Ahayweh Gate). I started to move my ship around. Oh man! The ceiling and floor became the walls, and the walls became the ceiling and the floor. I got my first headache from frighteningly unnatural, but extremely interesting causes. Then I saw my friend circle me, with weapons firing (they looked like the lasers from Star Wars, plus a concussion missile). I was firing flares at him because that is all I know what to shoot, since I looked for the "fire button" in the "controls configuration." But I was dead before I had a chance. I remembered what his ship looked like. This is so awesome!!!!! We were wandering around through the level, with him knowing which way was up and as for me, not knowing which way was up. I was so disoriented the whole entire time. The 3D environment disoriented me. If he couldn't find me and kill me, if he found the Reactor, he would blow it up, and go through the exit, leaving me to die. But he had to go. So I went into Single Player to familiarize myself with the game. I saw little blue flying-saucers firing weak, red bullets at me. At least this is what it appeared to be through the Eyes of a Noobie. I fired my flares at them, but they took several hits before I could kill them. Again, the ceiling and the floors became the walls, and the walls became the ceiling and the floor. My ship was upside-down sometimes. I was extremely disoriented. I don't know whether or not I found the reactor in this game at this time...maybe I had to go. So I left because of dinner.
Then later, I came back. I looked at a demo when I got back into the game. The D2 Demo demo that was pre-recorded showed me the proper weapon to fire. Flares weren't used to kill robots! Lasers were! I even saw a missile being used. This was a complicated game, at least in my eyes, at the time. IndyCar Racing II was more simple and easy-to-use. As for this game, this was quite different. So I looked in the controls configuration again, and I saw the primary and secondary fire buttons. So I went into the game and used them. They do destroy much faster than those weak flares. During that time I didn't understand the function of flares, not until I found out some months/years later that they can be used to light up the surrounding area, and help sniff out cloaked robots. (Cloaked robots didn't exist in D2 Demo, but the full version had them.)
So I continued to play the game. During my development as a player, I first tried to learn to slide left and right. In a matter of days/weeks after, I tried to learn slide up and down. Then in a matter of days/weeks after, I was learning to bank. I was learning the controls configuration given, which wasn't the best one, as I found out later. (Years later, the controls configuration given as the default in D2 Demo proved to stunt my growth in becoming a better player by restricting me from doing certain things, as I will tell you later in this document.) I finally beat the game on Trainee on level 3 (Wenl Mine), for level 3 was the last level of the demo.
Sometimes I would call my friend on the phone to play, and we would do modem-to-modem. Now I was able to beat him. I would nail him with my lasers and missiles. Then I think he got better and started to kill me. Then I got better again, and started to kill him...and pretty much, it stayed that way up until this day.
After he noticed that I was killing him a lot, he stopped fighting me. We flew through the mines together, exploring the three levels. We would do this routinely.
I had told my grandparents that I wanted Descent II Full Version for Christmas. When Christmas was coming around, and I was getting bored of the demo, I opened up one of the presents and it was the Descent II CD. Soon after, I was playing on it all night long. Some days later, my friend and I would play cooperative games over the modem. We would blow up robots together. Back then, I was zealous for anarchy games, because I liked to kill my opponent. But he insisted that we play coop. I think I also was playing single player at the time, trying to see how far I could get, and exploring new worlds. This game had become an obsession to me.
The year 1997 was a year that saw a lot of things. This was probably the year that influenced me the most. In the spring or summer, he gave me Kahn. At this point I thought I was pretty good, and that I knew quite a bit. When I went online with my 14.4 modem, and connected to Kahn, and played my first multiplayer game there, in Dogfight! Level 1: Gorilla Gauntlet (it was my first three-way or four-way game I've had), I got killed over and over. People were backing away from me in defense, whenever I would charge at them, and I ended up getting killed. Worse, I couldn't even score any hits. No doubt that the Descent 2 manual warned that ships will jump around in IPX-emulators that let you play over the internet. (My friend said to me that this piece of software tricks the computer into thinking it's on a IPX LAN.) Still, I have having lots of fun. This multiplayer stuff really rocks, even though it was as laggy and lossy as heck! I did manage to scrounge about, scraping away some kills for myself. I saw lots of messages at the top of my heads-up-display. "So-and-So killed a Someone Else! So-and-So killed you! You killed So-and-So!" A little later, in Pandemonium Level 5: Argyle Park, I saw a guy by the name of NinjaK. He was doing pretty well. He was getting some kills, but sometimes he would get killed. Soon, everyone left except for me. I stayed in the game because my butt was glued to the chair. Everytime I charged at him, he would back away from me, shooting back at me with lasers, plasma, or some weapon that I have trouble remembering that he used. I remember that we talked to each other, but I don't remember what I said or what he said. After about five to fifteen minutes, he left the game, and I was the only one in it. I was very angry that I gotten beaten so badly. Temper tantrums were not uncommon of me back then, though I would restrain myself from insulting people. I couldn't kill him. But this game rocks...
Sometime later, whether it was on the same day, or later in the week, I joined up a game in Dogfight! Level 3: The Vortex. I remember seeing a player in there named Greywolf. There were some other players in the game, and I saw some intense dogfights on the outer wall of the Vortex. The Vortex is a small level that lacks energy centers (I didn't know this level lacked energy centers). It's red, with a room in the middle of the level. The center of the room, however, was enclosed. Moving grates kept you from entering it indirectly. If you are on the outside of these grates, you are on the outside of the Vortex Room. Therefore, the Vortex Room IS the center of the large room. It's just enclosed. It's only accessible through some narrow chutes just above the doors. There were four doors, behind each would have a player-starting (or respawn) point/position. The chutes would lead up to a medium-large room at the upper part of the level. Then it would narrow up near the top, then it would widen again, into another room, which was medium-sized. That room also had four respawn points. If you drop down below, directly downwards, you go back into the medium-large room, and if you drop down even lower, again, directly downwards, not taking the side-chutes, you come to a door. This leads to the Vortex Room. Now you can see the grates on all sides of you...all of them move. You can shoot through them, either if you're inside or outside the grates. If you were on the inside, you can subject yourself to stray shots coming from all sides, because most dogfights take place on the parts outside the grates. Drop down even lower, and you see the Lava Vortex, a twisted vortex of downward-flowing lava. Go down ever lower and there is some grates that make up a floor, with a reactor hidden beneath it. You can pass through the Lava Falls that are falling all around you, and you are in a room with lava on the floor, with a bright, hot-stream of lava flowing downwards in the center of this room, but I didn't know this at the time. The room surrounds this lava fall. You will be able to pick up some pretty dangerous weapons down there in that room, too. It's an awesome level.
There was one time I was playing Pandemonium Level 4: Repulsion Necrodome. It is an Alien2 (green) Level. Lots of people were setting up mine traps behind doors with smart mines. I got killed almost every single time I went through a doorway. After I noticed this, I started to use this tactic and I have used it up until this very day. Today, if someone hides a smart mine trap behind a door, I always check it before I go in (well, almost always).
Some other levels were being played at the time, like "Minerva2," which is a level that "would not load" when I tried to join. Later I found out that this level is donwloadable and I could obtain it. I do not know exactly when I started to play Minerva2, whether when I was on Kahn or when I was on Kali. Neither did I know it was made by Spaz... I guess the time I started to play Minerva2 was on Kali, and I think that's correct.
Then the time came when I had used up the 30 days or 90 days that Kahn had offered me. Now I couldn't play on Kahn anymore. But soon after, my friend handed me Kali. Now, it only allowed me to play for fifteen minutes, in a game, at one time. Then it would boot me off the server, and I would need to restart Kali again. It was quite annoying, but if you didn't have a serial, and an s-key and t-key, you couldn't play without getting booted off for every fifteen minutes that you used it/started it up. My friend lent me his serial. I knew that I couldn't share serials (I think I found out when I tried to use it after he logged onto Kali). So I was using Kali all the time, then a couple or few days later, I get an angry phone call from my friend, or maybe an email message, or some message of some sort. Whatever it was, I don't remember, but in either of those ways, he told me to stop using his serial, because he couldn't get on. It was close to my birthday, and on my birthday, he purchased for me a Kali Serial to use. Nice! I would like to thank you for doing that. I would have never been here today if it wasn't for you! So I entered in my serial, and man, I was so addicted. I was playing non-stop. I looked at homework as something that got in the way of playing Descent II.
I went into what I believe was my first D2 Anarchy game on Kali (D2 Level 1: Zeta Aquilae System: Aheyweh Gate). I saw two players: Mad-dog was probably his name, though I'm not sure...and Guido. Mad-dog kept shooting smart missiles in front of him whenever I chased him down. They exloded, went through him, homing in on me and killed me, all the time. A while later, I was chasing Guido up the blue, secret tunnel. I couldn't score any hits on him. He laid down a bunch of red, proximity bombs. I may have bumped into a couple of them. I think I got killed this way (if that is indeed the way I got killed). Now in this level, or in the next level (D2 Level 2: Zeta Aquilae System: Turnabout Bore), he said, "This lag sucks." And so he left.
On another occasion, I went into a game (D2 Level 3: Zeta Aquilae System: Wenl Mine). I saw a quite a few players in there, possibly five or six. I came up from the starting position in the level and looked into the large room. I saw a group of players there, along with a player named "Eildon." Later, I came into the same room, but I entered into it from the opening near the top of the large room, which was next to the grates. I think I have entered into some dogfights in that room.
I found Minerva2 on the internet, at some small site created by a Descent fan. I put it into my missions folder (I don't know if I knew that levels went into that folder at the time...but somehow I found out...maybe I saw levels that were included with Descent II to be in the missions folder, and that probably told me where they went). Then I went into a game of Minerva2. I had no knowledge of the level before I went in. Now when I went in, I saw a player named Chipmunk. Every time he passed me, I didn't see him until it was too late. Every time he passed me, I heard the tell-tale sign of a smart missile crunching into my ship. Now, I saw something else; whether it was in this same game, or in a game that I played sooner or later, or much later, I don't know. I saw two players playing: Karash and Ender. I was near one end of the room, opposite the mega. I saw Karash move REALLY FAST around a corner, and I believe I saw him chasing someone. Wow!
There were some other levels played too, levels like Darkhall, Joust, Ultra-Earthshaker (UES) and Gigadeath2.
Sometime sooner or later, I went into another game. I believe that the game contained about five or six players. I remember a player by the name of "something"-tree; I forget the first part of his name. He layed out a smart mine where the hallways meet at a corner. I crashed into them a lot; it was quite annoying. If I remember correctly, he wasn't getting killed a lot. How could someone stay alive for that long? It seemed impossible. I didn't think he was cheating though. It wasn't until much later, years later, that I began to understand why this was so...
The best that I have gotten at that time was average skill. To repeat what I said earlier, I had no joystick, and I had a p75 that gave me about an average of 25 frames per second, with a 14.4 connection. (One historical note to add: There was no such thing as 3DFX in those days, or 3D acceleration, as of yet. You played the game with 320x200 resolution with 256 colors, with about 20-30 frames per second. Lag with my 14.4 was at 800 and above. If you had a 28.8, you were better off; it was still laggy, but a little better.) Now if I attempted to dogfight, my frames would drop *dramatically,* and it felt like in a dogfight I was getting about only 10 frames per second. The lag was really bad, especially in the room, where one can move anywhere, anytime. It just was impossible for me to dodge shots at that framerate and only using a keyboard to do so. I didn't think about the importance of dodging at the time. I didn't know it was the most important skill, at least not yet. I didn't have enough knowledge or experience to know. I just attacked and attacked, and got killed over and over. So now, at this point, dogfighting was out of the question. It wasn't to be done with this machine, using a keyboard with the default config that was given (which wasn't a good one, but I didn't really know at the time). I did whatever I could to keep my efficiency up. I took to the tunnels instead of the rooms (where my frames didn't go down as much, since fights in the tunnels only last for a few seconds), and starting hoarding smart missiles and going out and killing people with the quads and smarts, while their back from turned. I did hit-and-run, like the blue, flying saucer-bots (called Internal Tactical Droids) in Level 1 did. I started to camp. I started to lay smart mines to the doors that lead to the reactor room in Minerva2, and covered all four doors with all four mines, with a mine at each door, with me barracaded inside, waiting for someone to fall. If I'm not mistaken, I had a little over 1000 kills, with a 33% efficiency rating. If I got a 50% efficiency in the game, I think I got away with it, or that I was fortunate. If I got a 20% or 30%, oh well, that was part of the game.
I also remember being in Descent II Level 1: Ahayweh Gate. At the bottom floor, with the triangular obstruction, I remember seeing a player by the name of "Mordrim." I was next to the energy center. Man, this guy was good; he was banked while he moved, and he would attack me either from the left or the right hand side of the obstruction in the center of the room. He was also very fast. Impressive!
This was also the same year I believe that I saw Glock21 for the first time. There were probably four or five players in the game, including Glock21 and I (this was in Minerva2). He was pretty good. Then after a while, everyone left, but Glock21 and I were still in the game. I think he was dogfighting in the big room. I did hit-and-run on him, and retreated from the room, towards the end of the room that had the had the mega, and went into the back alley (not the one near the reactor). I may have taken the short, narrow tunnel from out of the large room into the same alley. Then when I got to the other end of that alley, at the corner (it leads back into the large room on the other side), when I was about to continue going, WHOOOOOOSH! Glock21 burned unusually fast past the opening of the corridor, shooting a spray of plasma at me, and I got wounded. Then after seeing him burning past the opening of the corridor, to where I couldn't see him, he reappeared, but at a distance, backing up very fast, shooting plasma at me, and disappeared behind the distance corner down that other corridor. I think I even saw him in a banked position.
I went into a level named Defcon Duel. In there I saw two other players playing, including Spread97. In one of the many curvy tunnels of Defcon Duel, which was the one connected to the main, middle room, which had the exit, I would see him fire the Plasma at me and back up away from me. I couldn't score any hits on him, but I remember I got hit a few times. Can't remember how often I died, but since this was Spread97, I think I may have died a lot. The game was really lagged.
In this year I have improved on my game, getting efficiencies that were a little bit higher. Also, my friend, I think, got a 56k modem, and he gave me his old 33.6. Pings were better and I was scoring more hits.
I also was making levels at the time. This was the year in which I have made the most amount of levels to play (?). I gotten MD-1224's H2O Mine done. I adheared to strict guidelines on using standardized-sized cubes. (Standardized cube size is 20x20x20 level units. A typical door is 20 level units wide and 20 level units high.) I looked at Minerva and how it was constructed: Simply a set of stretched cubes, so before long, I learned how to stretch cubes. At this time, I was using DMB2 to create levels and edit robots. DMB2 v1.0 was the one I was using. I made Battle Arena, put some bots in, and armed them with two combinations: Plasma/Smart Missile, or Phoenix/Mega Missile. I would try to calculate the mass, etc., of the robot to match those of the player's ship as precisely as I could. I could even make them turnover right before they die (death roll). I was using these robots, which I have placed into a level which I named "Battle Arena" (I still have it by the way). There I would practice against them. I also modified the robot options so that the same robot is inside the first robot, with the probability being 16 out of 16 times, so that every time I would kill it, another robot of the same type would come out. I also tried typing in silkwing while in the game, just to see what would happen if I did, and watch the robots kill each other. One time I gave one of these bots the attribute of a Boss, just to see what would happen if I did that. I also set it to have another robot of the same type contained inside, with the probability being 16 out of 16 times, that this same robot will come out. The result was this: I blew up the robot with the Boss attribute, and the moment the same robot came out of it, it also exploded. Then when that one exploded, another one came out and also exploded, and again, and again, and again. So it was a purpetual series of explosions where the robot never stops exploding. It would stop exploding, after a while, but you could get quite entertained with watching a perpetually exploding robot exploding all over the place in the room like mad. Since the robot wouldn't stop exploding, the "countdown number" to get to the exit would not decrease. Then when the robot finally stopped exploding, the countdown actually counted down.
The year of 1997 was also seeing a few different kinds of levels, too. In addition to the usual Minerva2, Darkhall, Joust, Earth Shaker, Ultra Earthshaker (also known as UES), and Gigadeath/Gigadeath 2, there were other levels out there. Stadium and Stadium ][ were being played. (Some time later, Stadium ]|[ was made, but I never seen it played once (?).) Also one that was being played commonly at the time was LaserDeath, a level made by Sirian (I didn't know this at the time). I think this may have been the same year that Abyss v1.1 won the IDLC (Internet Descent Level Contest), on KoolBear's Web Site. In other words, levels were quite diverse back then. However, Joust didn't live to be played in the year 1998, nor Earthshaker (UES survived until 1999 or 2000), and LaserDeath died a premature death in 1997 as well. Darkhall went on to be played until late 1997 or in the year 1998. Gigadeath, the original, was outlived by its successor, Gigadeath 2, and the Original Gigadeath didn't even carry on the next year (Gigadeath 2 lived to be played until 2000 or early 2001, and it died there). KegParty won the IDLC in 1998, but we will cover that later, since this section covers only 1997.
One time I joined in a Minerva2 game. Not very much later, there was only three players in the level, Swazook and Eebeus. They kicked my butt hard, but especially Swaz. Then one of them, probably Eebeus, said to me, "There is something special about you MD. You never give up." Then a bit later, they started to talk; Eebeus was telling him to try out the Monster 3D. Swaz said, "Na." Back then I had no idea what a Monster 3D was. But I killed them while they were typing. I wanted kills bad, and wanted to get back at them, but this was an impolite thing for me to have done. Then I remember Swaz asking me, "Ok MD, how do you want to die?" So then I stopped. He taught me how to bichord. We actually started on one side of the room, flying all the way to the opposite side. He bichorded, using one of his horizontal slides along with his forward motion, and he actually moved ahead of me! He moves ahead of me, and just before we arrived at the other end, he would circle out in front of me, demonstrating that he indeed flew faster than I did.
At this time, I completed my level, Subwater Canals. I used this level not just for testing custom robot settings, but also to bichord. It was a bit tricky at first, but I learned how to do it in a matter of days to a matter of weeks.
I have seen various players, but I remember a few players in particular. One of them was named Manhawke, and he just whooped everyone in the game (including me) every time he joined. He would get around 70% efficiency.]
By this time, I had finished making MD-1224's H2O Mine, Battle Arena (mentioned earlier; it was my second level), Subwater Canals, and The Dark Mine of the Dead. All of them were for Descent 2; I didn't have Descent 1 (?). I know for sure I didn't play it at this time even if I had it.
There was a time I also went to my friend's house. We experimented with his DMB2, when editing the robot's Big Explosion attribute. We turned it up all the way. I think we also gave it a death roll. So then I entered the game, and there was the robot, in the middle of the room. (The room was VERY WIDE and LONG, but with low ceiling.) Then I took it down, and as it did the death roll, I went up close to it. All that we saw next was that my ship had become a tiny speck in the distance, on an extremity of the room, with the text at the bottom saying "Ship Destroyed!" My friend and I laughed so hard! It was so funny to see that my ship was instantly pushed across the room in an instant, when the bot blew up, and released its shockwave. It was definately a hilarious effect! Later I patched up to DMB2 v2.6 The death roll bug in this updated version was fixed; for the death roll bug in v1.0 made it so that there was hardly any death roll at all. Now I could make a robot roll over lots of times before it exploded, or a brief death roll.
Also, this same year was the time I believe I had joined D4C (Descenters 4 Christ). I met some people there. Here are their names: LaserBrain, Dre, Eagle3, and Falcon. Metman was also in the same clan, but I never met him, nor did I really have an opportunity to play him. Goldwing, my friend, joined up into the clan as well. I never really met Pyrotech, at this time, but he was a member. I have talked to him a few times in the past. Today, we are the only two people that are in D4C. But we almost never talk to each other anymore (part of this is due to the fact that I'm always at the Ranger's Server).
We played the D4C level, and I remember playing a lava level, which had a large room at one end of the level, but two or three tunnels meet up in this room, with the two meeting at the sides of the room, and if I can remember, they may or may not have fed into the room at an angle. I can clearly remember Dre was playing that day, Falcon, and possibly Eagle3. Dre was whooping me, and I was the least dominant of the players in that game. Another one of them was named "Arctic," or "Winter." This level had some brown textures in it, and it was architectural. It was rendered unplayable for me, because the large room made my frames go down and made it play like a slideshow. The level had one shaker, from what I could remember. LaserBrain, a couple other players were playing in this level, and myself as well. I couldn't get a hold on anyone.
I was able to bichord. But whenever I saw Manhawke in the same game I was, I still couldn't beat him. Nor could I beat Mordrim.
There was a game that I joined, in Pandemonium Level 1. There was this guy named "Saturnn" in the mine. But shortly after I joined, he left. So I was stuck there. At this point, I think I made a decision to explore the level a bit. I think it was also very late at night. Then a guy named "Flyhard" came in. We played and I was getting more kills on him than he was on me. Finally, we started to talk. I showed him the hit-and-run tactics that I use. I told him to email me and to tell me how well he did. Then he emails me one day or two days after the game we played and said he got lots of kills. Of course, I still had the "Mr. Know-It-All" personality, but something was in store for me that I didn't expect. More on this later.
So I would be playing multiplayer games all the time. At some times, Flyhard would come in and be playing too. He loved Darkhall. We would play one vs. one matches in that level from time to time.
Flyhard and I continued to play. He told me one time that he got his Sidewinder 3D Pro. Now he was starting to whoop me, so I got mine. I had some trouble setting mine up, but I used the config that I had used before, just this time I was using the hat for sliding around. Also, around that time, Flyhard made his own level, and he designed it to look just like Darkhall. And so then we played in it. But it wasn't much later that I was getting whooped by him again. I have seen him periodically hang around a guy named "Kicker." Kicker was a very good pilot...he always whooped me. At that time, I didn't think much of it. Now, when I look back, it was obvious he was receiving training from Kicker. Otherwise, how would he know that trichording existed? Now at this time, I learned from http://www.descent2.com/hoppe that trichording is a thing that exists. I already knew how to bi-chord. Isn't that sufficient enough? Would even just a little bit more speed really help that much? After all, I remember playing a guy named Gritz in Minerva 2.1. He was a periodic player, who was pretty decent at playing. I would use my bi-chording and afterburner to fly past him, or someone else, sending a knife of plasma or lasers through them, side-sweeping them with shots by sliding the shots through them; I made some pretty aggressive maneuvers this way and got quite a few kills in clouds of spew where no one could see me (I was at the energy center that was in a cavity in the wall, an energy center where you could get trapped in, near the door and fan). Apparently, this wasn't enough since Fly was whooping me. I speculated that Flyhard was trichording, and so I set out to do the same. I ran into Glock21's Web Site, The Descent Professional's Resource Page. It taught how to set up a good config, how to lag-lead, and how to trichord; even how to trichord backwards.
On a side note, I also learned how to lag-lead by watch a demo on how to lead in lag–"For every 200ms, lead just under one ship length" was his words. A player in the demo was pinging a player named Hamster, and the ping showed 312. And as hamster flew along the wall, the player aimed his gauss so far ahead, like 2 extra ship lengths ahead so that it appeared to be missing him, but you could hear the clangs, ending in a kill. I wish I still had the demo.
This is how I learned to perform very well in lag. I adopted R2D2's configuration, the famous w-s-a-d setup, with w and s to move forward and backwards, and a and d to slide left and right. You would use the spacebar with your thumb for the Afterburner. When I first tried it, I was disoriented again. Not only was this a new config that I had to get used to, but I had to learn something very difficult, trichording. So I headed into a multiplayer game to try it out. I trichorded and afterburned at the same time, in the room, in the middle of the dogfight. I was fighting a guy in there, and I clearly remember moving forward, sliding right, and sliding down all at once, while using the afterburner. And I slid my line of plasma fire right on him. When I saw the speed of the trichording, I thought, "Wow, this is FAST!!!!" I was getting killed quite a bit in that game because I felt "disabled" since I wasn't used to this new config.
I knew that this was going to take much more practice than I thought. I went into Minerva2 and practiced trichording around the level in Single Player mode. Wow, this is indeed quite difficult, especially when trichording backwards. So I had a plan in mind for me: In order to make practicing Trichording as fun as possible (though it was very boring), and knowing that I was going to get beaten in games and get discouraged easily, I went back to the main menu, went into Single Player, and planned to finish ALL Descent 2 Single Player levels. I also made myself go through all the Vertigo Series. For by the time I would be done, I would have it down.
I was now in Descent 2 Level 1: Zeta Aquilae System: Ahayweh Gate. I was on a different mission this time. Unlike last time, which was exploring uncharted territory, this time I was in training for a special purpose: I wanted to become better at what I was. I trichorded as I was playing. Now I was used to changing directions in dogfights. I would attempt to change direction while trichording, but I would change direction the WRONG WAY. The feel was very different, and I felt like my left hand on the keyboard was "full of equipment." Initially, all that I thought that I needed to do was that I only needed to learn to trichord in a straight line, but when I found out that it was possible for me to change direction while trichording, I thought I may need this. There was something potentially important about this, and not just important; VERY important. For if I learned how to do this, I would have unparalled manueverability. Initially, trichording in a straight line was hard enough. But in addition to this, I was faced with the possibility that I may need to learn a very complex set of angle changes (directional changes) that take place while you're trichording. I asked myself, "Do I really need to learn how to change directions while trichording?" I decided to practice it, just in case. It wasn't much later that I realized that these same angle changes can be performed while trichording backwards, too, so at first, learning to trichord in a straight line was going to be a very tough task. Learning a complex set of angle changes while trichording made it look even more daunting than I had ever expected in the first place. For in the first place, I thought that I only needed to trichord in a straight line. Then when I found out that you could change direction while trichording, this made the task seem three times harder than I initially thought.
It WAS. I went through all the levels. I tried to find every angle that I could possibly think of. I purposely tried to change direction while trichording. I did this as often as I could, practicing sliding into crevices and openings in the ceiling, walls and the floor while being banked at a 45 degree angle constantly. I tried not to understand how I was operating my fingers on the keyboard along with the hat on the joystick; it was too complicated to figure out the keys that I pressed along with the hat switch to produce the desired direction at this time. What mattered was that every angle corresponded to a unique keyboard/hatswitch finger position. Every time I would slide into crevices and openings in the ceiling, the floors and the walls, I would correlate the feel of my finger/hand positions with the angle change being produced. Sometimes, it was natural to visualize a few angles. With the joystick in my right hand, and the left hand on the keyboard, using the middle finger on W to go forward, and the ring finger to hit A for slide left, with the hat up for Slide up made it natural for me to visualize this and feel it. This angle actually felt like I was going forward, sliding left, and sliding up, because the hat switch and keys point in that direction, and so does the finger position; the finger position was placed on the upper-left hand part of my config; so I drew an arrow in my mind's eye on the keyboard, pointing left, up. Some other angles weren't as friendly and were hard to visualize; you needed to rely only on feel for those ones. Again, my left hand is on the keyboard, and the joystick is in my right hand. Here is a hard angle to visualize: Forward, slide left, slide down. The W (forward) and A (slide left) keys, when connected together, look like they point up-left. Your finger positions feel an "up-left" sensation because those keys are located, again, at the upper-left hand corner of the config. But if you slide downward with the hat, it seemed awkward, because W and A seem to point up-left, and your finger position, even though it is placed on the upper-left hand portion of your config, the sensation makes it feel like you're going up-left, but when you hat-down to slide down, it sorta "scrambles" the position and it messes around with your mind.
If I didn't get an angle right, I would perform it again and again until I got it correct. Then I moved on. After I finished the Original Single Player Descent 2 Levels, along with the Vertigo Series, I had it all down. I returned back to multiplayer, and I played at a level that I never even dreamed of. I was smacking down so many players; I never expected to play this good. I felt like I was moving around unusually fast when I used the afterburner; in Single Player I don't use my Afterburner much because it consumed a lot of energy. Of course, I made some angle errors a few times, but they were minimal. I think I also would try to perform them over again until I got it correct.
Maybe this same year I also downloaded the Entropy Experiment by Luke Schneider. You battled against Pyros in that level. It was the first level to feature "Robot-Pilots." I extracted the HXM and viewed it with HXMEdit. I saw that the polygon number was 108. So I used the same with the robots I was working with. Before I was using DMB2, and it lacked some features when it came to editing the robots. You could only edit most aspects of a robot. For example didn't give you the option of giving a robot an actual player's version of a plasma cannon, or laser cannon, etc., just the robot's version. Only HXMEdit let you arm a robot with player's weapons. I also tried typing in silkwing while in the game, just to see what would happen if I did, and watch the robots kill each other with player's weapons. And it really looked like players were killing each other, only robots were.
At this point in time, Dre, Eagle3, and Falcon all left the world of Descent. Dre told me that they couldn't tolerate the garbage at the Descent Server and I couldn't blame them. At this point in time, they were no longer in D4C. LaserBrain was very busy at a College or University. However, I wasn't about to stop playing. I did see Metman play some games on the D server. He was a pretty good player. However, if the game was restricted and he was the game master, he never let me in. Goldwing was one of the last ones to leave D4C.
There was one day where I challenged Mordrim to a duel. I happened to be in a game of Minerva v2.1. He agreed, and I started hosted a game using the same level. We started playing. At this moment, my dogfighting skills weren't very highly developed, because I could only dogfight from a distance, automatically spraying plasma at my opponent while concentrating on dodging shots. I felt comfortable in the room, and I was dodging more shots than he was. I beat him. I finally defeated one of my rivals.
Flyhard asked me if I wanted to join TR (The Renegades). He persuaded me to join because I was the type that liked to please people. I left D4C for a while and joined TR. There I met some new players. I met Nazereth, D2hound, Kicker, Storko and Wareagle. I heard that Skeet was in this clan too, but we've never met each other. Just last year (2004) I heard that Skeet got killed. I forget whether it was a car accident or if it was a disease/heart attack/stroke. I think it is correct that it was a natural death. It was sad to hear that. I have met Kicker earlier in my Descent career and he always whooped people, even me. Wareagle was also a good pilot. D2hound was responsible for making Combat2, a level with custom textures, most of them blue, to reflect the clan's color. The clan's colors were both Blue and Silver. The clan used to have a web page, now defunct.
Lately I just started to play D1. I know that my first game was with standard Descent. I had to make myself to play it, to increase my skills, because I knew I had a hole that needed to be filled. I saw about two or three games hosted...possibly four. I joined a game. The first level in D1 that I played in Multiplayer was Minerva. I had a very tough time hitting people, secondary weapon pileup was huge, especially in the tunnels, where they respawned. Secondary weapons in this game, that respawned in the level were homing missiles and smart missiles, and in great abundance. Smarts were flying everywhere. About anywhere I would go a smart would smack me right in the face. I remember joining a game, and one of the players in Nysa was Thumb. He used smart missiles up the wazoo. I kept getting killed by him.
It took me several weeks to get used to playing in D1 under these conditions, possibly a couple to a few months. Then I would go into a tunnel, load up on secondaries and boat homers into the room and score kills.
Flyhard asked me another question. He asked if I could join the IDL (Invitational Descent Ladder). I told him, "Now Flyhard, ladders are for awesome pilots. I'm not one of those. This ladder is not for me." He persisted and said, "Aw man, come on up here!" So I gave in and joined the ladder.
My first thought in my mind was that I was going to suck really bad. I played my very first match against Humle in D1. Whether or not the source code was released at this time, and whether the D1x patch was made available at this time, I don't know. But I know that I wouldn't play a game without D1x with a dial-up connect because it gave me the option of using short packets in the game, combined with a control that lets you set up the number of packets as well, just like in D2.
We entered the game. I played in his homelevel, Minerva. I was very much surprised that I wasn't playing bad at all—in fact, he was the one playing quite badly. Every time he went down into that lower tunnel in Minerva that took you underneath the room, I would constantly surprise him at the other side. Final score: 20-5 me. I got my first busdriver award.
All this time I thought I was going to contend with monster-players. Turns out that I was already one of them, but not with fully developed skills, yet. My skills were only partially developed.
I think I was still playing with the p75 at this time. I remember tell Flyhard that I would not play anymore IDL matches until I got a faster system, because it was so hard to dodge shots with limited framerates, especially in dogfights.
At this point in time, Birdseye was in the LT. Flyhard played some games with him, and didn't win any of them. Karash, Sirian, LordDeath, and Ender were in UT at the time as well. Flyhard played against Ender in Ender's home, D2 Vamped. He suffered a monstrous loss of 3-20 playing against Ender there. His comment: "Wow I learned a lesson! Yeowch!"
I finally got my new system. It had Windows 98a installed on it. But it had a defective hard drive that froze up on me when it was installing software. I contended with this for years until 2003 or 2004, when they copied the data from that hard drive to a new one, and put the new one in. The old drive can be used as backup for data though. This hard drive made recording Descent demos troublesome.
Playing Descent on this system was different though. Framerates were oh, so smooth! I entered into my first Descent 2 game on a new system. Because the framerates were high, being at 60 fps, I had no trouble seeing anything. This made me want to play more aggressively and get closer to my opponents. But even though these extra frames let me be more aggressive, my aggressiveness still got me into trouble, scoring myself some deaths. So I had to get used to the high framerate and not play aggressively. After only about a couple to a few weeks, I was making so many kills. I do not mean at all to brag about the following, but I was so excited! In many average games, it wasn't at all uncommon for me to score efficiencies of 80%. Some maliciously accused me of cheating. I was having the time of my life! I also started to try to create as many demi pilot files as I could, and I have seven of them; three or four of them have 80%s. I give credit to God for this, in giving me the skill for this. Now if a good player came in, however, my efficiency would only be 60-75%.
I am willing to teach someone how to achieve this. There are a series of tactics that I use to do this. If my shield got low, I would camp in the tunnels. If someone was chasing me down a corridor, and I would be going backwards away from them, shooting, I would not back around a corner when I came to one. Once I would arrive at a corner, I would turn into the next direction, down the other hallway that meets up with that corner, to see where I was going. This is better than backing up around a corner because you might back up into shots. Instead, I would just turn down the other hallway, facing down the hallway, and burn down it. If anyone was down there, I would already have my guns aimed at him and ready. Also I would switch weapons depending on the distance of my opponent; gauss for long range and plasma/quads for short range. I even remember gathering as many missiles as I could to maximize my potential to get a kill, smart missiles, especially mercury missiles. I would load up on as many mercs as I can so that if someone was down a hall, I knew there was somewhat limited room. I would fire a full load of mercs down the hall, along with my primary fire, hoping to hit my opponent directly, or with a blast radius. Oh, and don't forget to trichord forwards and backwards, and change direction while trichording forwards and backwards. Use the afterburner while trichording, or changing directions while trichording, whenever necessary. Sliding up and down in tunnels also works because some shots are placed too high and too low. Take advantage of this by sliding up and down, even in the tunnels. Even in the tunnels, you have a tiny bit of room to work with. Don't think you don't have enough room to dodge shots placed too high or too low. Know that dodging is the most important skill, so concentrate on it!
At this point, I was playing weak LT pilots to get my confidence up. I was playing them in their homes, beating them in their homes, and trying to collect as many busdriver awards as I could. Turns out that this had repercussions later on as I would make it so that I would never get #1 on UT, because I would wait too long. More on this later.
Also, I decided to practice my fusion to get my skill higher.
At this time, I was making lots of kills in free-for-all games on socket +0. Only this time, when I met Manhawke, I felt like I was equal to him. We killed each other a lot, but still, pretty equally matched now. As months passed, I was starting to beat him. I still had my modem connect though. I remember going to my friend's house and using his cable modem connect. Oh, it was like Heaven! I played Manhawke from there in a one-on-one match, using my config and my friend's Sidewinder 3D Pro. We were doing dogfights in the main room. I was beating him. He told me I was dodging very well. (Whenever we did one-on-ones with my own modem connect at home, he would blame it on lag.) Of course, my dogfighting skills were underdeveloped, because I could only dodge shots well at long range. In other words, I could not afford to let him get close to me, or I would die. I thought it was impossible to dodge shots at short range because there was just too little time to dodge them. But later on, I found out that what I believed was a myth; pocket dodging, performed frequently by Birdseye against his opponents, proved to be very helpful and effective.
Manhawke and I were Descent buddies at this time. One time we started up a team game, with everyone vs. us two. Both of us were scoring 80%s. It wasn't uncommon for him to be scoring 80%s either. He used to get around 70%; now he gets 80%s. His favorite weapon combo was Quads/smart missiles. He used the ratting style as his preferred style.
But there was one time that he demonstrating a great amount of brilliance to me.
I guess one time we were talking about levels, possibly ones that I created. I asked him if he created any. He said, "Yes." He told me he used Devil to build his levels. He handed me ^^ Hawke's Lair - SE ^^. It was a BRILLIANT LEVEL designed by a BRILLIANT MAN. Man, this guy was BRILLIANT! He integrated elements into a level that I never even thought of, nor would I ever think of doing. I will tell you about his elements that he put into his level. When he showed me around, he pointed out the GRACEFULLY curved "stairways" (they were actually rampways that took you to the next floor) that made the phoenix cannon useful! He told me that you could use a phoenix cannon here! Next, he showed me the reactor room, and the lights beneath them. The lights were colored. But I didn't understand their significance until he told me about them. (I don't think he told me that they were color coded, but they were, I think, if you match the color of the top of each spiral rampway's entrance to the color coded lights.) He told me that there was four sets of these lights. Each set corresponded to a rampway that led to the second floor. He said that if you were watching those lights, and someone was coming down one of these spiral rampways, the lights would light up, pointing in the general direction of the rampway (since the four sets of lights were set on a octogonal cylinder). Then he showed me his room.
Then he showed me Ladyhawke's Room, and showed me a hidden energy center behind an illusionary wall, which you could camp and see everything through the illusionary wall, but you're hidden to any passersby on their side of the wall. He showed me a camping spot on the second floor, from which you could see other players through a wall, but they couldn't see you on their side of the wall; the smooth, curved walls on the second floor, so that the phoenix can be used with ease; and locked doors that could be opened if you flew somewhere on the other side of the block, from which you can't reach the doors in time to get into them. His point, as he told me: The person who causes the door to open cannot get to it in time, but other players who are closer to the door than the first player can get in and seize a cache of weapons.
He even showed me the top floor. Oddly enough, this floor is accessible only from the first floor; not the second. The exit just above the reactor could be opened, so this was a secret area. This floor was made for trick-purposes than anything else. He made it so that if someone was chasing you, and you went through the next door (after the exit) that the moment you passed through the door, the door would shut and lock, keeping anyone from chasing you behind you. He made it so that a certain illusionary wall can let players in only one way, but you can't go back the same way; it won't let you.
Here is a guy, with a brilliant mind, yet no one has ever heard of his level. He deserves my praise.
Flyhard gave me permission to "convert" his newest D2 level, Kicker, to D1. He threw his old level away because he messed up on it, and made a new level. He said he was trying to build a cage in the center of one of his rooms, but he failed to do it. So he tossed that level and made a new one.
The manner of how I converted a D2 level to a D1 level was VERY challenging. I found a way to cheat the system. It wasn't a simple task, like converting a D1 level directly to D2. But there was a trick, I found out, that can be used to convert a D2 level to a D1 level. First, I would mark all cubes, copy the whole D2 level (using DMB2) as a block as save it as a block file. Then I would go to file -> new -> Descent 1 Level. Finally, I would paste the block. There was a problem though. The orientation was way off. I had selected a side of a cube rather than the floor, and this cause the block's orientation to be flipped around at a 90 degree angle. So I had to redo that, but this time, I went into Kicker, marked all cubes, and made sure the floor was the selected side. Then I started a new Descent 1 level, and selected the floor as the current side. I pasted the structure in. It worked! But the textures were all messed up. Some textures that were selected were secondary textures (decals) that took the place of primary textures, and if you went into the level with the textures still unchanged, you get that ugly Hall-of-Mirrors effect that actually scared me. So I had to redo all the textures. I moved the player start position to one of the cubes inside the block and deleted the D1 starter cube. Keep in mind that converting D2 levels to D1 is ENTIRELY possible. But changing all the textures is so troublesome that I will not recommend it. If you want to have a D1 version and D2 version of the same level, always start from the ground up. It's very hard to take something apart, fix everything, and put it back together, than it is to simply build something, and not really fix much.
BHayes was also playing at the time. He was known for his decent fusion aiming. He got promoted into UT. I beat him in Kicker for D1, and the score was 20-12 or 20-13. However, this was all rat, with very limited dogfighting. I switched my weapons often. I did this on the basis of what Karash said about Diablo.
Karash had a page up called the "Karash's Hitlist." It had a list of pilot ratings on the page, with Glock21 at the top, with an overall rating of 10, Spread-97, the second one, with an overall rating of 10. The next one down was Diablo, with a rating of 9, Sirian was next, with either a rating of 9 or 10. Then next after him was Peartman, with a rating of 9, I think. Karash said that Diablo would have a weapon selected that you didn't know was selected. So that everytime he came into a fight, you didn't know which weapon he was armed with, and when he came in, you would have to adjust yourself. He said that he fights similar to Glock-21, selecting high velocity weapons like gauss or vulcan, for long range, and plasma for short range. If I can remember correctly, Karash also said that Diablo would simply not fight on your terms.
I did this same thing to Bhayes, coming into a fight with a random weapon selected, so that he would have to adjust. And when I exited the room to get into the wider corridor that leads into the side room with the energy center in it, I would switch a weapon and fire a different one. But I tended to find out what worked best, too.
A little later, every time I exited the main room, turned around the corner into the corridor to go into the side room, I'd switch from whatever weapon (usually a short range one) that I had to the Vulcan, knowing that he was going to be coming. Then I would fire when I didn't see him, and the shots hit. Lag causes this effect. So I had to guess and time my shots when I thought he was about to enter the corridor, when his "real" ship would come into the corridor to shoot something at me. The "real" ship was the ship you couldn't see. The ship on your screen isn't really where he is.
He was around for a while, then retired, disappeared, and never came back. A UT pilot is now MIA.
Birdseye gets promoted to UT in late 1998. He played so much, that one time he played up to 11 IDL matches on the 21st of November! (The rules said to "please keep the amount of matches per day at a maximum of 5 per batch.") At first, Birdseye was losing to ENDER. Birdseye one time said, "I bow to the homer king" after the match with Ender in D1 Eris...
...Yet, when the next year hit, Ender was losing games to Birdseye. Ender told me that this was because Birdseye stopped playing him in levels with homing missiles. According to the record, there may have been around a couple of games in which Birdseye played Ender in, those that had homing missiles. I don't know how many homing missiles there are in those levels though. However, roughly have of those that were played had homing missiles, and the other half, non-homing missile maps.
This was the year that I thought about the Rangers. First, I remembered the group. Then I visited the web page and seriously started to think about joining. Except I must go through a few things before heading to that point. I was in a game, and I was using the nickname MD-777. (At this point in my playing career, I tried to make as many demigod pilot files as I could possible, just to see how far I could get. That was why I used different nicknames in those days. I went by Plasman, Io, Napalm, Gaussguy, SniperMD, MD-777, with MD-777 being my seventh pilot file.) My HUD said I was getting 83%. A guy in the game, named Exe, was throwing fits at me, cursing me, and cussing me out, calling me a cheater. Woogie was in the game as well, and while Exe told him to kick me out (Woogie was the game master), he didn't. Good for you, Woogie! You showed them! Then a little later, Daz came into the game. He called me a cheater. Wow. Was this Daz or someone posing as him? By the way, I still have screenshots of this game to give proof.
After all of my days being inexperienced, back in 1996 and 1997, I now can understand how great it is to play at such a skill level, but notwithstanding knowing the price you must pay for playing very well: People will call you a cheater, and I now understand what it is like to be a skilled player. Others will whine and cry about lag.
Some days after that, I decided to sign up for the Rangers. Remember Gritz? He played games on the Descent Server every now and then. He got to know me some (?) and told me that I should join the Rangers. I joined up, and he was my sponsor. Everyone was so friendly...everyone was so considerate! This was in stark contrast to the kind of stuff I had to put up with in ordinary games on the Descent Server. While over there, people will not hesitate to be mean, and get vicious, calling you a cheater, cursing you, and cussing you out, while here at the Rangers, it is like, "Wow!" We're all like family! The atmosphere was so clean, games were played in a friendly and civilized manner, and there wasn't much whining about lag either. This became my favorite place to stay! Thanks to Sirian, for originally creating such a great group as this! For where could I run to, when the years 2001-2005 came along, with very few players playing games on the Descent Server (because they migrated to D3 or other games)? Where could I run to in order to enjoy a clean, family-oriented, friendly gaming atmosphere? No one could ever beat this group! Because of this, I told Kirian in an interview in 2005: "This place has become my monastery. The air is really bad at the Descent Server."
I can remember playing a strong Case's Ladder player named Cappo. I have played him twice in Minerva 69. During this time, he was whooping me, using the blast radius of mercs to nail me when I was close to a wall, the ceiling, or the floor. He did have quite a lead on me, but fortunately it wasn't too much. He was always a very strong player. It was kind of humbling.
Manhawke started to play D3, but some months later, he was telling me that he was getting Descented out. He stopped playing.
One other thing to mention is that D3 had a new feature in which if you wanted a certain map, you didn't have to go out hunting for it on the net. Double-clicking on the game that has the map that you don't have will download the map to your computer so that you will be able to join the game and play it. This feature killed the chance of Minerva ever surviving into D3. Also other maps. Though Minerva WAS made by a certain person for D3, it hardly ever got played, and many people went for other levels instead.
I also quit playing Descent 3 this year because Descent 3 made me lag to myself so that even if I dodged a shot it would still count against me. Had my 56k modem running at this time.
This year, I have come back to playing Descent 3, after I got my new cable modem. Wow, the shots really hit this time! I'm rocking with this new thing! I love it!
One level that has survived into D3 from D2 was Stadium. It became a popular level for many players, especially those who hated the Mass Driver.
On December 26, 2002, Mark392 beat Jediluke in Fuzed 20-12, followed by another win in Jediluke's home, Nysa in D1, 28-26. At this time, there was no one greater than Mark392. And if there was anyone greater in skill, Mark's skill AND sportsmanship combined to create something that was very noble (and enviable).
This was also a time when the UDL came into existence. Many players flocked to the new ladder, and IDL had already started to lose members.
During this year, I had met Spread-97 and joined his [mi] clan. During this time, I was doing my best to try to beat him. That day did come though. This was the year I beat Stan (Spread-97) for #1 on the UDL. It was a game to 10 points in Barathrum. I finished him off 10-7. He said to me, "I am not like what I used to be." Might be true...he didn't see very strong. This happened approximately on May 22. I still have the screenshot of Thrasher317's and clone7's posts saying "Good job MD!"
This year, the UDL died.
Alright, today I played a game. There were seven players, including me, in a Wolf Den Game. Verran, DK, Madmswat, kirian, afpilot, Cloud, Lord_Rage, and I were playing. Apparently, Cloud lost connection; I don't know why. After a while of waiting, we started the game. I got the most kills, but Verran got the highest efficiency. He had a 80% efficiency at the beginning of the game and it lasted for a little while, then it gradually died off into the 70s. I could only kill Verran once or twice, and he got me more times than I got him. This was kirian's first time getting a double kill with a Mega. Nice job! :)
Flyhard has come back! I was really excited to see him come. He's had lots of problems getting his D2x to work though. Spud, Bubble, Vinyl, Strife, Fly and I would play games in Toeboy's Toy Room, or the Black Dragon-R.
I also took Fly with me to play all the coop levels. We finished all of them and I kept on pointing out how much he was missing. I did the same thing with Sharpie---took her through all the 24 levels in Descent 2. Sirius and I would also play some games, but we have been playing Vertigo lately. He's more adept at Vertigo than I am. I kept on dying, but we were having fun. It was quite embarrassing watching myself die because I was normally very good, if not expert, at coop. But it's probably because I don't know the bot positions in Vertigo enough and the types of bots in those positions, so I will need to play it more. No mean to brag, but I know all D2 single player levels by heart, all D1 single player levels, almost all D3 single player levels, and all D3 Mercenary levels all by heart. But I don't know Vertigo, and I want to do what it takes to master this game.
I also heard that just before I got out of school, that Flyhard quit playing Descent. This is his decision. It was probably because I wasn't available enough to teach him, but I was so busy withs schoolwork. He said that he wanted to become very good at the game, but this is evidence that he doesn't have the patience for it---disappointing. Sigh...oh well.
Well, now that I'm out of school, I am able to play more. We just added a few more Rangers to our list at Descent Rangers. We now have Rage's_Goddess and master all ready to become members. Rage's Goddess has all the vouches; she just needs to be tested and scoreable. This was Rage's_Goddess's first appearance on Kali these days, and is the wife of Rage. I have known Rage as far back as in the days of IDL when IDL was in its prime.
I have gotten out of school and I'm now playing to almost my full potential...hopefully I will have some good games.
Well, we got some more players, mostly old school players. Big_Rat, DDragon, DSlayer, Juggernaut, Kieferskunk (Dorsola) are all new applicants for the Rangers. KoolBear has also come back and has reapplied, for he's coming out of retirement. Juggernaut is an old time D1 player, and Dorsola is an old time player I have seen way back then, and also KoolBear. (I'd sure like to see StormShark come back too!)
Master has become a full member of Black Squad not too long after applying. Congrats!
Bubble has become 2nd Lieutenant of Black Squad.
Just two days ago, I helped DSlayer with using DMB2. He was delighted at what he could do with it and he appreciated my help very much. He's a promising Ranger who has good sportsmanship, appreciative, and is very kind. I'm looking forward to him getting tested (he's scorable though), so that he knows the rules of this group. I look forward to the day that I will take him through all the Descent 2 single player/coop levels in Counterstrike.
Also, Eulogy applied for the Rangers. I think I remember playing him in Descent 3 and he kicked my butt there. However, Eulogy saw the reverse when he played with Sissy and I in Athena. I told him various things...that weapons were stronger in Descent 1, fusion was harder to aim with, and the fact that the game was simply harder. He also had to compensate for lag, rather than doing it the D3-way (i.e., you shouldn't have to lag-lead in D3). I also told him that I stuck with D1 and D2 because of the lag-dodge problem in D3; that is, if you had a ping of around even 120, for instance, if you dodge a laser or fusion shot that streaked past you so close, it would count as a hit anyway. I told him that there was no Mass Driver in D3, though his response was that he also hated that gun; he was a fusion guy. He told me that the fusion in D1 is too powerful. It's too powerful for him; D3 fusion is very weak by my standards. D3 fusion did 25 from a Pyro-GL uncharged, while in D2, it did 30 uncharged. In D1, it did 60 uncharged. I told him that he hardly even needed to charge the fusion up. He commented that it was harder to play with no burners. I also told him that two full shots of quad 4 killed a ship with 100 shields (each quad hit does 52).
Alright, lots of new developments just happened. KoolBear has just come out of retirement in order to resume playing Descent (Welcome back, KoolBear)! Mark392 has also come out of retirement (in the both the Rangers AND the IDL too). Big_Rat has become scoreable and has passed his test in the Rangers.
I also resumed work on my web site. I already have had the index page, the beginner's page and the config page made out. But then I added the bichording page and the buttons just recently. I was also looking around for a good, free, web site hosting service. I asked Sirius if he knew of any good, free, web hosting services. He told me he used http://www.globalweb.com.ru . I decided to bookmark it and to sign up soon for it, though I wanted to get another large chunk of my web site done before I started.
That is until I was discussing my new map with KoolBear, which was a test version of Asaph. I told him some ideas that I made or adopted, as well as observations I made. He was quite impressed. He didn't like the fact that old sites shut down and huge chunks of knowledge were being lost. Then he offered up some space on his website, so that my advice on how to build fast playing maps or slow playing maps, would be passed onto the next generation of pilots and map makers. This was so very nice of him, and so very generous. I couldn't thank him enough. I have my website up and running. I plan to make a special page giving him thanks for his generous offer, on my tactics site.
People on the IDL saw that Makaveli was rank-sitting, so they dropped him.
The IDL is also seeing some new players as well. Behemoth, a player that I have been playing a few times, who is really awesome (if I can remember playing him, he was quite underdeveloped back then, but he's dangerous now; he told me Birdseye trained him). Greenbear is also a new member of the IDL.
Some players have also come back to the IDL. Players like KoolBear (who last played on the IDL a LONG TIME ago), as well as master and JF. Welcome aboard.
JF also has come back to the Rangers. He is now willing to play games after being away for quite a while. Welcome back.
Behemoth is a new member of the Rangers. Congratulations.
I have also completed my Combat Arena. It is made from one of my older maps, named Combat Zone. Its modifications were inspired by UT GOTY's Rocket Arena, one of my favorite mods for UT. It allows you to watch or play. It was built in such a way that people would be waiting in line, and two will go down and duke it out (or two teams). Then when one of them dies, he respawns upstairs, and waits for his turn. The next one in line, or whoever is ready (however the game is organized) goes down the challenge the winner. Sorta like the King of the Hill kinda deal.
But I also realized it could be played in a variety of different ways. You can watch the action below, in the middle of the game, after being killed, which is something today's OBS maps couldn't allow you to do without restarting the entire game again.
There were some people, one of them probably being Bubble, suggesting to me that it would be cool to put a reactor in the midst of a dogfight room. This may be fun, AT FIRST, I thought, because after a while, it MUST get annoying further down the line. At least this was feedback for one of my former maps. But I did a similar experiment to what he proposed with Combat Arena. I inserted two cubes in the room, both diametrically opposite each other, and inserted a smelter bot in each of them. Then I inserted a wall that would allow their shots to pass through, but would also not allow the players to even kill them. I set this up as an experiment to see if it would truly be an annoying thing to have stray bot-shots bouncing all around the room. Well, I made some observations and it looks quite overwhelming, but, at least, it would appeal to those who want to engage in extreme dogfighting.
Based on feedback from Rethink, when we first tested the map (it was buggy), we concluded that it was best to have more than two insertion points in the map. An insertion point in this map is any place that you can slide down into the arena. You can slide down through the ceiling, but you cannot slide back. They are marked with stripes and downward arrows pointing down at the stripes. I told people that if you were to die somewhere in the map, that you could choose your insertion point, so that you "respawn" right next to the spew, or going an an insertion point as far away from your opponent as possible, or even slide down an insertion point just as your opponent is approaching it, and you slide down right in front of him and take down his shields with laser level 1s. Though this is risky if your opponent has the big guns, it's good, I said, to do this if they're low on shields (this tactic seems close to being on the edge of not being very good etiquette though).
I also found that I forgot to put in the afterburners. They're now put in.
I had to patch up a hole in the ceiling that I forgot to do. The map is functional and is very interesting to play on robo-anarchy, where the bots fire at you from behind their shielded walls.
I am making plans for my main page hosted on KoolBear's Website. I decided that if I was going to include Map Building Theory on the Tactics page, it would be disorganized. So I resolved this issue by planning to make a main page. The main page will have a link to the Tactics Manual, as well as to the maps and Map-Building Theory.
I also just got proficient with the mouse. Was able to beat Mark392 with it, so I guess I have finally mastered it.
Well, I must say, the Rangers are one of the few groups that have outlasted the others, with the exception of CM. Everyone is now flocking to the Rangers to play games because there are no games going on at the Descent server.
Well, today, I just started on another project. I'm working to put all of my maps into one convenient hog file. Unfortunately, I have to mod all my maps to accomodate this, since almost all of them don't have reactors or exits. I thought this was going to be a pain in the butt about a month back, but when I started on Combat Arena, this hog-file project, in contrast, is much less of a pain than trying to create Combat Arena. Creating Combat Arena was very exhausting. Anyway, I will be making three different hogs for my maps for both Descent 1 and 2 each (though this is simply preliminary planning at this point), one for small maps (2-3 players), one for medium maps (4-6 players), and one for large maps (7-8 players).
I have also started to create buttons for my main page, for the map-building theory page, for the pilot ratings page, and for the codex page, so that they're all linked to the main page.
I've also been training ByeByeStyle in his skills. He's really nice and cooperative. He also understand the concepts well, and most importantly, he's serious about improving his game, because I can clearly see it when he comes to me constantly. He's also starting to move faster now that he's more frequently utilizing his trichording to dodge incoming fire (I told him NOT to bank so that he wouldn't rely on his banking to do the dodging). After he gets comfortable with his angles in dogfighting, I'll let him bank. (Banking only serves three purposes, for orienting the ship properly in order to trichord, and to turn left and right into a hole in the ceiling the the floor, and to help him out in vertical dogfighting, not to help you dodge.)
I've also given him some more maps to increase his map-diversity.
As in the previous few years after Descent's decline, it is now summer, so that means that there is less activity in the Rangers.
ByeByeStyle and I are the most active at this time.
Also, Esp's Descent Pilot Ratings page is still up @ http://edpr.gotdns.com Woohoo!
I have just finished up Meat Grinder, which was a level that I was working on. Stealth and I are working on Ehud together, just to see what we come up with. I will be making more modifications a little later on.
I had sponsored Scrappy and he's now a member of the Rangers. Congratulations. Also congratulations to Zoom for becomone one of us, too. I had also sponsored DragonFist and now he's going through the membership process.
I have moved into another house, also one with virtually no storage. I have pretty much decided not to get my old machine out because it took up lots of room. I'm now stationing my operations off a laptop. My old machine was the only thing I could use that would run Descent 1 and 2. However, it was God's will that I could use D2x on this laptop with no problems. I could also use D1x 1.43 but I can't move the mouse as well with it as I can with D2x. Because the laptop doesn't have a joystick port, I decided to use the mouse with D1/2x. I used the mouse with D2x and I'm doing very well with it.
Made and finalized the Meat Grinder after getting some feedback from players that it needed more guns put in it. I also threw in two extra smart missiles, with a total of eight.
Added the trichording page as well as the trichording button.
ByeByeStyle beat me in a one-on-one match in the Meat Grinder, a map that I made for the Rangers. Score was 15-14 him. Congratulations!
Added the skeleton of the maps section as well as adding in the map-building theory section underneath maps.
The web site is growing at a good pace. I just added the credits page, the map-ratings page, the pilot ratings page as well as adding some more buttons. I also corrected quote-and-question-mark-bug errors on the Codex page. I also put in my first victim to be rated on my pilot ratings page: ByeByeStyle, one of my students, but I also had to correct a typo on that chart. The explanations on how to read the graphical rating bars on the pilot ratings page will be put in shortly.
Found some bugs in the stable release of D2x-xl-w32-1.6.58. Diedel left in charge High Octane to oversee the bug reports submitted to them. The fast pitch couldn't be unchecked. I found that it always turned itself back on when I left the options menu and when I came back to it. Also, the keyboard ramping would always set itself back to 10% after I exit the whole entire game and when I restart it. I submitted a bug report on that page.
The fast pitch may not be allowed by the Rangers, so I asked DKnight if he knew about a good D2x version that I could use, and he gave me D2x-w32-1.1.34. It works great. At first the middle mouse button didn't work, but upon restarting the computer, it worked okay. The sound isn't very crisp though, and at the end of hearing a certain sound, it sounded like static.
Today I just added some more stuff for the config page. Also fixed some careless errors. I might look again in a few days for more errors, even though I might think that it could be error free. Added much more stuff to the Pilot Ratings Page. Modified the scales by adding "Weapon Control." (Some graphical-file errors I made, for example, was byebyestyle.gif on the pilot ratings page. I realized that the links and files must match EXACTLY because of case sensitivity. Anyhow, that file error is corrected.) Plans are currently underway for putting more pilots on the pilot ratings page. An addition to the Tactics Section might come after that.
Stealth and I finished up Ehud and The Cage. We both did lots of work on Ehud, but as for The Cage, he did most of the work, but I help out with some restructuring in one part of the level and messed around with lighting. The levels turned out good.
Ehud is an ice level of non-Minerva design. It can easily house 3-6 players. The Cage is a level with a large cage in the central structure. Estimated "ideal" capacity in my view is 5-8 players.
These two levels can be found at Stealth's Hangar. Since Stealth made The Cage, while I only helped him out with a couple things, it is found in his section. Ehud can be found either on his section, or my section because both of us did much work on it.
Okay, I think that this really is the time that Meat Grinder is truly finished. I put in more weapons and energy centers. I also put in different water textures to give the watered parts a more realistic look. It was because in the largest room of the level, the waterfall room, that the water seemd to flow too slowly down pretty steeply inclined planes from waterfalls. I also made it so that the water in the bottom of that room wasn't still; that still look gave it an unrealistic appearance, so I put in moving water and made it run into the most realistic direction possible. In one of the other rooms in the level had had a water fall, I also changed that still water to moving water, so that the water moved slowly away from the waterfall, though I almost forgot to do the same thing underneath; having flowing water when viewed from the top and still water when viewed from below was unrealistic; I had to align them so that the water textures on both sides flowed in the same direction whether you viewed it from above or below. It can hold 3-8 players.
Stealth now has this level downloadable on my section of Stealth's Hangar -- Thanks Stealth for posting it and for giving me suggestions on what I should do in my level, about putting in more energy centers.
Today I just added another scale to the pilot ratings. ByeByeStyle now has this Weapon Type Preference rating put in. A lower value means that the rating player relies more on guns than on missiles, while the higher rating means that the player relies more on missiles and bombs than guns.
Also, a player that I know of came back a couple days ago. He came back as "FallenAngel." I played FallenAngel and he was so good, even though he was rusty (he did have some practice before he played me). I had trouble catching up with him as he had a good start in our first game. I told him beforehand that I could only play a short game before I had to eat, so we played to 10. Score was 10-6 me, but he wasn't easy. I know who he is, but I won't be revealing his identity.
Later, we also played in Minerva 2 , after I found out that I didn't have Minerva 69. I had 20 points and he had around 12. But around 30 points he caught up to me, and I maintained a two-point or three-point margin over him, though at times he did get within one point of me or he may even have tied with me, but it wasn't easy keeping him at bay. He did dogfights with me in the early part of the round, which gave me a significant margin, but after finding out that didn't work, he starting ratting and camping, and so, because of that, he caught up to me. He's getting his game back, and before long, he'll be back whooping everyone (and giving me a very challenging time indeed).
Added Weapon-Type Preferences to the Pilot Ratings page. Also corrected a few trivial link-errors on the Codex page and added in the Links page. Also, someone in the Rangers (I think maybe it was Fliptod, don't know) gave me a link to Grendel's newly invented 3D Pro Converter.
Warlord is now a full member of the Rangers. Congratulations! (I sponsored him, too.)
Also, AoD-Krez is now on IDL.
Added the Weapons Section to the Tactics Sub-Page with the Weapons Button added. It is still not complete though, as it will have graphics of weapons and descriptions of them. Also added two more links to the Links Sub-Page of the Site, Esp's Descent Pilot Ratings and Dxx Rebirth.
Added more information to the Weapons Page, but it is still not done yet. Added "alertness" scale to the pilot ratings page.
Also updated ByeByeStyle's Ratings to fit my most accurate assessment of him after playing many games with him.
Gave D1x- and D2x-Rebirth a try. They're great.