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Thursday, October 17, 2002
Freeciv News: The following News was cut and pasted from the game's front page: NEWS For Sale 15 Oct 2002 One slightly used Sparcstation 5. I would like to sell the old Freeciv machine. I thought I'd offer it here first if anyone in the community wanted it before trying to sell it elsewhere. Its a SparcStation 5, 170MHz, with 96MB of RAM and 2 2GB drives. I can install Solaris 8 or 9 on it if desired. I'll also throw in a SparcStation 4 if you want it. All offers will be considered. The money will go into the general Freeciv fund. We'll do this as a "silent" auction. Send your bid to me via email. I'll let you know the outcome after bidding is closed at Friday, November 1, 2002 at 12:00 PST (20:00 UTC). Please keep in mind I'll need to tack on any shipping costs from San Diego, California, USA, to your bid. Paul Zastoupil Apache 2 08 Oct 2002 The webserver has been switched over to Apache 2. This should help us quite a bit at the next release when we are getting lots of hits. I've also got some plans to help out with the ftp server when the time comes. Please report any of the problems with the website to the webmaster. Paul Zastoupil Hardware Follow up 04 Oct 2002 After a few glitches, we're up on the new hardware. Enjoy the wonders of the Ultra 2 running Solaris 9. I'm still looking to add some RAM to this machine, but for the time being the performance should be much improved over the old machine. Paul Zastoupil Great News on Hardware 02 Oct 2002 Check out this link to an eBay auction. We've won an ultra 2, and with dual 400MHz processors, faster than I had hoped. The bad news is that we are a bit short on cash to completely fund this. Not to fear, I'll float Freeciv for the time being, but my pregnant wife wont want me doing this for long. So feel free to make use of the donation links above. Paul Zastoupil New Maintainers 25 Sept 2002 A belated welcome to our new maintainers! Gregory Berkolaiko Davide Pagnin Jason Short May Freeciv development continue in accelerated fashion from here on out. Paul Zastoupil Donate to Freeciv 24 Sept 2002 I would like to replace the current Freeciv server which currently is a SparcStation 5 (170 MHz microSPARC II, 128MB RAM). I have been looking at getting a used Ultra Enterprise 2 (Dual 300 or 400MHz UltraSparcII, 1GB RAM). The cost should be around $600 and will allow us to just slide in the current drives and require no recompiling. The Freeciv checking account has been started with $100. Donations are, of course, welcome. You should see the new links on the index page. Please feel free to use Paypal or Amazon (however, Amazon takes %15). I'll keep everyone updated on how we're doing. Paul Zastoupil Canon News: Its Free Again! The following was posted by Canon admin Decaeon October 15, 2002 in the game's forum, Temper's Ball : Canon, Free again. A common definition of community is a sharing, participation, and fellowship. I am happy to announce that we, as a community, have weathered one of the worst tech crashes to have ever seen our day. We shared the problems, the disasters, and did so in such a way as to only grow stronger. During that time some decisions were made to keep our world afloat, hard ones that cost us a large amount of our group. In the beginning we were ridiculed, harrassed, and generally snubbed -- however those sacrifices paid off. We can look around us today and see friends that have stood by our sides for not just weeks, or months, but years. In the real world, let alone the cyber one with such a transient nature, that same accomplishment is stilll difficult to achieve. I would like to say that we have all overcome an obstacle that has now been cleared from our paths, and in doing so, surpassed the expectations of many. Canon, is once again free. TidalMark Inc. disbanded and we are again awash in the truth of our own destiny. Market forces do not drive us, and the lack of money will no longer cause stress or be a crutch for those that either have, or do not have it. Please, feel free to relate this news to anyone you know who at one time played, wanted to play, or could not play because of the charge. As small as it was, the deterrent was quite strong and I understand the varied reasons that people left, or in the end, could not stay. In the future we do plan on bringing forward more products and will most likely charge for them. As long as we are financially able (which should be an indefinate amount of time) Canon will be free. So do not assume that when a new product is brought out and the words pay to play are mentioned, that Canon is involved. It will not be. Now, many of you have paid to play. Some of you may want a refund, if so, please follow these instructions. Email billing@evernight.com with your username, and address. We will send you a refund if you currently have over 2 months paid on your account. Keep in mind that this process is going to be long and annoying as we work through our customer base and continue to pay our bills. It might take months, many months, to fully dole out and refund the financial responsibilities that we have taken on. If you do not wish to have a refund, then you simply do not need to email us. We will be placing a 'Donate' button on the front page for those of you who wish to continue to help fund the Evernight Games endeavor. Keep in mind that from now on, any bills or commitments will be taken on by myself, Brian (SoulDemon) and any other third parties we might bring in. Thanks for sticking through the hard times folks. Let's hope it gets better from here. There is a new multiplayer online game resource site in the works, OMGN . It promises to give the likes of MPOGD and Top Web Games some stiff competition. The following is an email recieved from press@gamerifts.com : GameRifts.com talks with Jihak Chung from JC Entertainment regarding their upcoming MMO game href="http://gamepriest.com/">Priest set in the Wild West with a horror themed feel to it in this href="http://www.gamerifts.com/sections/interviews/priest.shtml">interview. Tuesday, October 15, 2002
AND NOW, THE LATEST ISSUE OF THE Top Web Games E-Newsletter: Greeting Top Web Games Members! This is the Top Web Games newsletter for the week of Monday, October 07, 2002 through Sunday, October 13, 2002. Here's what's been happening in the last week. You will need to click here once each month two continue receiving TWG emails. Alternatively, you may log in to your account on TWG. Recent Gaming Articles No news this week. Game Additions .:Inside Tha City:. (10/6/02) Betholia (10/8/02) DragonBall Z RPG (10/10/02) European Soccer Manager (10/8/02) Fallen Earth (10/10/02) MonstersFighting (10/8/02) Panic (10/11/02) Sryth: The Age of Igtheon (10/9/02) The Geeks (10/7/02) Zelda rpg (10/6/02) That's all for this week! If you would like to unsubscribe you may do so by logging in to the members area. Monday, October 14, 2002
EXCLUSIVE Oct. 14th, 2002 INTERVIEW WITH TDZK ADMIN. JERLE: Chuck: (6:52 PM) Just saw the announcement that TDZK was hacked. Jerle: (6:52 PM) Yeah. Yesterday was not fun. Chuck: (6:53 PM) Have any idea who did it? Jerle: (6:57 PM) Yes, we know exactly who did it, and that person has been banned. Chuck: (6:58 PM) great. Was this a long term player or somebody who started relatively recently? Are you going to press charges against the evildoer? Jerle: (7:00 PM) He's been around for a while. I deleted him Saturday for cheating. Chuck: (7:01 PM) And he was trying to strike back? Jerle: (7:02 PM) Apparently. He got into Hotaru's account and went on a killing spree through the galaxy. Jerle: (7:02 PM) Fortunately, there wasn't much he could do without just Hotaru's player account, but there was still mass havoc. Jerle: (7:02 PM) Around 380 players destroyed. Jerle: (7:02 PM) So all of yesterday I was restoring the database. Chuck: (7:03 PM) Wow. Chuck: (7:09 PM) Well, I know of at least 2 BBG's that shut down after being afflicted by vicious hackers. Take it that you're optimistic that it won't happen again? Jerle: (7:11 PM) We're pretty sure it won't. We've got fairly good security built into the system, so hacking in the traditional sense should be pretty hard. Chuck: (7:16 PM) Is the reset date still Nov. 1st? Jerle: (7:17 PM) We're hoping. If it does have to get pushed back it would only be by a day or two. Jerle: (7:17 PM) Though the loss of yesterday was rather significant: I lost 11 hours of time due to that attack. Chuck: (7:30 PM) How are donations coming lately? Jerle: (7:30 PM) Poorly. This hack thing didn't help any. :P Chuck: (7:39 PM) About the reset date: do you remember my telling you about how the next SMR NG also starts on Nov. 1st? Jerle: (7:39 PM) Yes, I do remember. I have yet to bring that up in an admin meeting. Chuck: (7:40 PM) ok...also, is the next round of the game to be Chapter 2, Part 2? Jerle: (7:42 PM) Hmm, don't know if that's it's official designation, but yes, probably. Jerle: (7:43 PM) Oh, this is fun. Seems we've got another warpod running around. Chuck: (7:43 PM) Warpod? Jerle: (7:44 PM) The DB rollback caused a few minor errors, which we're working on fixing. There's a L230 escape pod with the stats of a Destroyer running around killing people. Chuck: (7:44 PM) player or AI? Jerle: (7:44 PM) It's been known to happen a few times in the past. It's a fairly amusing sight, but those usually get reported fairly fast. Jerle: (7:45 PM) Player. Supposedly, he was in a destroyed before the rollback. It's possible a query misfired and changed the class to escape pod by mistake. Jerle: (7:46 PM) Though for kicks I might make an AI warpod on of these days. A new 'Dragonne-Class' pod. :) Jerle: (7:47 PM) Do you remember Dragonne? His kill ratio is unmatches in TDZK history, and his count was only surpassed about two months ago. Chuck: (7:47 PM) Not especially, but I do remember a SM player by that name. Jerle: (7:48 PM) The same. Jerle: (7:48 PM) He's off in the Air Force now. Chuck: (7:51 PM) I've heard allegations that he had as many as 6 ISP accounts and in that way cheated big time in SM. Have no idea if they're true or not. Jerle: (7:52 PM) He didn't cheat in TDZK, as far as we can tell. Chuck: (7:53 PM) Of course the allegations may be spurred by jealousy too.... Jerle: (7:54 PM) He was amazing. Chuck: (7:57 PM) I think that there's a bit too much killing in TDZK right now...are you planning on doing anythign to temper it? Jerle: (7:58 PM) The BP will (finally) start protecting newbies. Possibly intervene in other situations as well, but not too often. We don't want to squash killing, mainly just help the newbies. Jerle: (7:58 PM) The new code for NPCs is so much cleaner than the old stuff, and alot easier to manipulate. |