25 December 1997

Hey, Merry Christmas to all of you out there who celebrate that holiday, and Happy Holidays to all of you who don't.

Our latest member is Hock, say "hi" to him.

Quake2 is out and has probably arrived at most of the homes that ordered it within the first week of its release. The "point release" (bug fix) is due sometime real soon now -- probably early January. It will apparently fix most of the bugs currently in the product and will overhaul the multiplayer functions to include co-op/team play as well as built-in support for CTF. Some deathmatch-specific maps will probably also be included. Stay tuned.

And hey! I've finally fixed the links to MaxMouse's SMS CTF Page.

5 December 1997

Man, am I quite the unit. I forgot to mention the arrival of Wangus, who joined us about a week ago.

Also, welcome to Up_Late, another new member.

And, in case you have been in a hole somewhere, Quake II was officially completed and shipped off to the CD-ROM burner for manufacturing. It is expected to be on the shelves (in North America) on December 9th. Whoo-hoo!

27 November 1997

Happy Thanksgiving to all my fellow Americans out there....

26 November 1997

Quake II by December 1st? According to SMS' LT Red-Five:

BTW, we just got the empty boxes for Quake II at Electronics Boutique. And the rebate coupon says that you must send in the original dated receipt by December 3rd. Hmmmm.....

Another source (though far less popular with the ladies, one would guess after seeing a certain someone's homepage), Joey Liaw of Ion Storm says in his .plan:

I have nothing to say. Was an uneventful week. Had raw oysters. I suppose we might be getting Quake 2 code dump early December.

Furthermore, at tin's QUAKE2 nutshell is reprinted a conversation with Id Software's American "Tokay" McGee:

tokay: because we are busy trying to finish the game. once the game is finished we are all going out of town for thanksgiving.

Finally, this damning bit o' evidence from the Quake2 Infosite:

Yes! That's right. Friday 5 December is the official releasedate of the full version of Quake2. This has been confirmed by the Swedish distributor Wendros and Activision. Wendros got the information from Activision today (24/11), to release it to the public.

And has anybody noticed that we haven't heard from Id's Paul Steed? I wonder if he's on his way "down under" for the release party scheduled to take place there...

Let's keep our collective fingers crossed...

16 November 1997

Congrats to Red-Five, who has won the FFA and the last open Lieutenant position.

Also, we welcome _FrEaK_ into the fold and bid farewell to Deathpiggy, another in a long line of victims of Real Life^TM.

I've also put up a list of standards that we adhere to for Clan battles. Don't worry, there aren't many of them.

15 November 1997

A few things on the social calendar for today:

• MaxMouse has the Steel Maelstrom CTF Page up and running; give him a visit.
• We will be having a FFA tonight to fill the last open Lieutenant position, practice is at 9pm as usual on Undernet #sms.
• We will also be having a mandatory practice on December 6th; if you didn't get your E-MAEL, drop me a line for details.

13 November 1997

A big buttload of thanks goes to Dr. Nick, who has so generously donated some of his server time to us (undoubtedly after being subjected to the charms of our own XO Ace). Visit him at his server: 209.29.200.253.

12 November 1997

We've been challenged to a Clan Wars battle by Clan CWO (Clockwork Orange). More details as they become available.

10 November 1997

I've added a new section to the Articles page, devoted to my various rantings and ravings that have nothing to do with SMS. If you've got way too much time on your hands, check out the most recent Editorial.

6 November 1997

Whew. Lots of neglect going on here at the News page. Damn that real life of mine. Here's a summary of everything that's gone on:

• We were defeated in our battle against DKT on October 25th. The biggest problem seemed to be ping: we played on their server.
• We were also defeated a day later by ORB, also playing on their server. I know that I wasn't playing my best, although my ping wasn't too terribly bad. The ORB guys were gracious winners, and certainly had skill. This was a Clan Wars official match.
• New rules & regulations were proposed by yours truly and voted upon by the Lieutenants on Tuesday. Although it seems a bit much, the new structure of the Clan should more clearly define everybody's role and their responsibilities...as well as (hopefully) eliminate some chain-of-command bottlenecks by the creation of an Executive Officer (XO) position.
• Tonight PFunk hung up his stripes and pinned on a bar after winning a FFA match for the position, recently vacated by our friend Heehee, who's been MIA for over two months now...
• Tonight I also named Ace as the new XO. Ace has been a member of SMS for well over a year now and has not only been responsible for the recruitment of 3 members (former members Taz and Dawg as well as our newest member, Slavemistress) and has covered for me in the past, but today announced the acquisition of a part-time SMS server. Damn. He da man.
• Also, best wishes out to member DQ, who recently got bashed upside the melon while playing football. As per doctor's orders, he has to stay away from shit that might make him dizzy or disoriented (i.e. Quake) for a while.

25 October 1997

Battle with the Dark Knights of Takhisis tonight at 9pm Eastern. Maps are e2m1, e1m8 (our friend, "Ziggurat Vertigo") and a third map in the event of a tie. Teamplay 2, deathmatch 3 rules.

My apologies to The Original Bastards, whom I've mistakenly referred to as "the Original Ruthless Bastards." I've obviously been mixing up my clans again. We're set to battle them tomorrow at 9pm Eastern time as well, maps DM2 and DM3.

Chiclet has resigned, citing his inability to make it to practices. We wish him well.

Thanks to Slavemistress for registering us a channel on the LinkLine IRC network. And let's not forget Kreth's current work in getting our Undernet IRC channel registered as well. You can never have too many backup communications systems..... :)

20 October 1997

Cleaned up a few things around here...bad links, huge-ass images...that sort of thing. More changes to come.

The QuakeWorld ring apparently became the ClanLink somewhere along the line. Good thing, too: the banner image is smaller. Like with the ClanRing, we had to re-register because some numbnuts restarted the whole roster apparently.

The battle with ORB (The Original Bastards) looks like it will take place this coming Sunday.

19 October 1997

Welcome to Slavemistress, a LPB who joins us from the great state of New Jersey!

Look for a website facelift soon. Yeah, yeah...famous last words, huh?

Oh, speaking of the website...my esteemed ISP, Tidalwave.net, saw fit to change which system housed all their subscribers' home pages last week. Instead of just dumping everything from the old server to the new (and thus, nobody would know the difference), they left everything on the old server and just put a shitty demo Perl script and a HTML-ized FAQ in everybody's home directory. Surprise! No e-mail, no phone call, no horse's head on the pillow. Nothing. And that's what visitors (all 2 of them) to the SMS website found when they came to the URL: nothing. My apologies for the incompetence of my Net provider; I'm shopping for a new one that can get it's personal shit together and provide me with:

1. A mail server that is working at least 95% of the time
2. A dial-in service that doesn't hang up on me at random times
3. A dial-in service that doesn't lose my account information WHEN I NEED TO GET ONLINE TO RUN A GODDAMN QUAKE PRACTICE!
4. Technical support that doesn't scramble from the building after 5pm on the weekends, leaving everything to fall apart
5. A voice mailbox that doesn't fill up, so I can leave a scathing commentary on their service if it sucks

If I wanted this kind of service, I would have chosen AOL. I've been patient for weeks; they dropped the ball. It's time for a new hometown for this team.

The battle with the Dark Knights of Takhisis is still scheduled for next Saturday, and a battle with The Original Ruthless Bastards (as opposed to the "New Coke formula" Ruthless Bastards, I guess) is pending. Ahhh, what great times we live in....

Oh yeah....the Quake II demo has been released. Your best bet is to go to Download.com and avoid the crowds. Why am I burying such an important story here? Well, after all, it's only a demo. Without multiplayer capability. And it's a compatibility test (kind of like the February '96 Quake alpha release); a second "real" demo will follow. That one will have multiplayer capability, and that one will have an impact on clan warfare. Expect me to be a bit more hyped about it.

Hey, while I'm updating the page, let me give a shout out (lookit me, being all fly with the lingo...ain't I da bomb?!?) to Nick "Reaper" Stuart over at the Quake Clan Wars. Nick has been busting his ass, trying to get some clan battles a-running (the ORB battle that I mentioned above is one of them). Give him a visit, and buy a t-shirt or something.

4 October 1997

Congrats to new Lieutenant, LT Reaperman whose bagged 170 frags in three rounds. For their outstanding work, the 2nd and 3rd place finishers have been promoted to Sergeant (based on a consensus by LTs Ace & MaxMouse and myself), so congrats also to SGT PFunk and SGT Ulikit (who was playing under the mysterious monkier of "Stutter"). Notable mentions go out to Kreth, SCSI-Terminator and Red5 as well.

Here are the competition screenshots:

• Round 1
• Round 2
• Round 3

2 October 1997

Welcome to SCSI-Terminator, our newest member. Ask him about 6th street in Austin!

Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight is out. Find the link elsewhere: I'm feeling lazy.

23 September 1997

Congrats to MaxMouse, who has been promoted to Lieutenant. One more slot is open....

21 September 1997

We've been added (once more) to the ClanRing. Let's see how long this round lasts before I receive another e-mail stating "the ClanRing is under new management, re-register...blah blah blah."

Lots of great practices going on within the last few days...I'm hoping to make a weeknight practice a standard thing for us in addition to the one we have on the weekend.

From the RIF: Reading Is Fundamental file, this exchange of e-mail:

Subject: 'SMS APPLICATION'
   Date: Sun, 21 Sep 1997 12:32:30 -0600
   From: notme 
     To: jake@tidalwave.net

hi,
I do qw ctf.(and others)  I am pretty good.
let me know if you are interested.

nuff said.

If you've checked out the Joining page at all, you can understand my response:

I'm not interested, unless you actually follow the instructions on the
"Joining" page.

And of course, I get a response typical of his species:

ok,  your loss.  I'm not into joining a clan that would be so anal
anyway.

Happy quaking.

Yep. Our loss!

Dude, that's up to you.

I'm not interested in members who can't follow directions.

...of course, all of you out in TV land already knew that...right?

11 September 1997

Welcome to new members Chiclet, Deathpiggy and Pfunk.

Thanks to everybody who showed up for last Saturday's practice and the one we held on Thursday night (Kreth's screenshot will be posted soon). Turnout has been incredible lately -- let's keep it up!

3 September 1997

Rantage is back, after waiting almost TWO WEEKS for the losers at Bell-Atlantic to get off their dead asses and install a single fucking phone line in my new house. Apologies to all who e-mailed me in vain for the last few days...

20 August 1997

Happy First Anniversary to Clan Steel Maelstrom. If we keep this up, we'll beat every other clan by mere endurance... :D

19 August 1997

Whew.

The page updates have taken a back seat to my real life and will continue to do so for a few more days -- I'm closing on my house tomorrow and moving Friday.

Thanks again to everybody who showed up for the practice last Saturday. We had a good time fighting as a team and did pretty damn well. We've dropped a couple of people from the roster....not just for not bothering to show up, but not bothering to even mention they weren't going to show up. As for how the rest of the cards fell....well, everybody who needs to know already does if they read their E-MAEL.

I resisted the temptation to pile the screenshots on this page in one bandwidth-wasting heap...you're welcome. Check out RedFive's climb to the top of the rankings, Ulikit's assraping of the competition and another RedFive spooge shot.

Caught on film...er, screenshot: this loser who thought that switching colors could save his ass. Think again GOH Spaceman666...you wanker!

From the I can't believe my luck so I'd better take a screenshot file...I managed this feat and just had to brag. Hey, us HPB's gotta take what we can get!

14 August 1997

The SMS website upgrade continues, with some help from Kreth. Look for a slick new intro coming this weekend.

And from the Ok, And You Are...? file, this e-mail:

	Subject:  	        CHALANGE
        Date:    		Thu, 14 Aug 1997 21:40:05 -0700
        From:    		JaKe (XXX@XXXXXXX.XXX)
        Organization: 	        JAKACIDE TM.
        To: 			jake@tidalwave.net

	Jag here,
  	Hey, at irc remember we were chalanging War god? well, he accepted my
	chalange, and we could always use more chalangers, how about it, wanna
	chalange us, the knightz of the pentagram?
  
         Jaggard

My response:

	A) I don't know who "War God" is.
	B) I don't know who YOU are.
	C) Clan Steel Maelstrom will be available for battle after September
		1st.  Contact us then.

Hey, I thought I was doing pretty well....no wise-ass remarks about spelling or nuthin...

12 August 1997

If some of you were wondering (as was I) what the status was on the SMS skin being worked on by artist-at-large GreytWYTE, I found out what the deal is. And unfortunately, the truth was far more unpleasant than what I had suspected (which was that he had simply lost interest). Apparently GreytWYTE, aka Mark Bannister Jr. was killed along with his family last month in an auto accident. The news story is available here. I wouldn't have bothered to mention this at all were it not for the fact that Mark had been generous enough to volunteer his time during a period shortly after the suicide of his father. Certainly puts computer gaming into perspective, huh? :(

On a lighter note... Steel Maelstrom has two new members tonight: Kreth and Ulikit. Welcome, guys!

11 August 1997

Citing his IRC addiction ( :D ) as the cause, LT Taz has resigned from SMS thus leaving open a Lieutenant slot. This position will remain unfilled until after the August 16th mandatory practice (see below).

In other news, the recruitment call was made again, this time at The Clan Complex, a new site dedicated to Clans and clan-related news...a definite asset as the whole ClanRing thing seems to be seriously fucked (after three unsuccessful attempts to get us re-registered, I've given up on ClanRing). Check them out; they're trying to do some good without the kneepad action that has become so common amongst the webmasters of the more popular Quake pages. And I've gotta agree with Dymite (Clan Complex webmaster) with what he wrote to me:

Those Dm4 rules sound like they suck. All those stupid whiners who always accuse campers probably like DM4 rules. Those little lamers have no skill, killing campers is easy and fun sometimes... Unless it's a very skilled player.. Then it can get pretty tense.

My whole stand on camping: it's perfectly fine. If you're stupid enough to stand out in the open where everybody can see your dumb corn-fed ass, then you're stupid enough to catch a round in your head. Uncle Sam taught me that! And while we're talking about sniping, check out The Sniper Weekly over at PCGamer.

10 August 1997

Thanks to LT Ace, Dante, Reaperman and EvilNun for attending last night's practice.

9 August 1997

Welcome to new member, Dante.

Non-mandatory practice will be tonight at 9pm Eastern. Same bat-time, same IRC (Undernet) channel.

4 August 1997

There will be a MANDATORY SMS PRACTICE on Saturday, August 16th. E-mail Rantage if you missed the notification in the last E-MAEL.

25 December 1997 http://www.tidalwave.net/~jake/sms/sms-news.htm