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Message of the Day:
Welcome to the Dynamix Finger Server!
be sure to check out http://www.dynamix.com
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User Name: mitch.shaw Plan Last Modified: 07/14/1999 11:19:36 PST
Who am I? Mitch Shaw
Handle: Skeet
Project: TRIBES/TRIBES 2/TRIBES Extreme
Email: Mitch.Shaw@dynamix.com or skeet@dynamix.com
7/14/99
Excellent, looks like I've been maintaining that
hectic update-plan-once-every-two-months schedule I
was aiming for.
Everything seems to be going along pretty smoothly
on the projects. Some excellent new artwork has been
incorporated into T2 lately, and TRIBES Extreme is
shaping up nicely as well. And the 1.6 patch should
be relatively imminent, QA is (I believe) finishing up
their OpenGL testing on the latest candidate.
Good luck to TRIBES artist Weston Tracy, who has
left for a job at, as Dave Letterman would say,
"another network".
And now, the off-topic section of the plan.
Last week, Mike "Gabriel" Krahulik and his fiancee
visited the TRIBES gang. If you don't know Gabriel,
he's the artist part of the two-man team responsible
for Penny Arcade, one of the best damn comics on the
web (http://www.penny-arcade.com). If you don't
know Penny Arcade, then you're missing out on some
funny stuff. They've just gotten their own domain
running recently after being part of loonygames, and
I wish them great success. Good luck, guys. I didn't
get to hang out at lunch with Gabe (after all, I am
(was?) Sofa King Broke), but he and his fiancee
seem like genuinely nice people, and I gather that
Gabe and Tycho like a good game of TRIBES now and then.
Visit their site, click on their sponsors, send them
fan mail, buy them expensive gifts.
Eerie coincidences department: Happy birthday tomorrow
to Tim "Slacker" Gift, TRIBES project leader (currently
on vacation) and also to John "Sneaker" Alden, programmer
and "annoyance boy". Hmmmmmmm.....
Had a really nice weekend. Got sunburned (at least on
one side of my body) driving out to Florence in a friend's
convertible on Saturday. Florence is a nice little town
on the coast, and we browsed through the "old town" shops
and picked up a couple of souvenirs. Sunday Mrs. Skeet and
myself drove up the coast to Newport and visited the
Oregon Coast Aquarium, former home of Keiko the killer
whale (yes, from Free Willy). Another interesting place,
we'll have to return to walk through the historic bayfront
area.
Strange how perverse the human mind can be at times.
This summer has been pretty mild here in Oregon so far,
with temperatures hovering around the 60s and 70s until
last week. Lately, however, it's been scratching the
90s; so naturally I decided to go buy a new bike and
start riding to work instead of fighting the road
construction around here. Heat exhaustion, here I come.
Chances are the hospital I'll inevitably be taken to
is Sacred Heart here in Eugene, in case you want to
plan on sending a card.
Well, that's probably about as off-topic as I can get
in this update. Check back in two months for more
rambling.
5/17/99
Wow, I've been neglecting the old .plan file lately.
My apologies to anyone who cares.
Looks like the good old TRIBES raiding party has
returned triumphant from E3. A lot of people were
impressed, as we knew they would be, by the snippets
of TRIBES 2 that were shown. If you didn't see any
screenshots or hear any reports of what T2 is like so
far, don't fret -- you'll probably be hearing and
seeing a lot more in the upcoming weeks.
Whilst the higher-ups were busy unveiling the
innovations in LA this last week, dBack and me were
busy with something else -- the long-promised (to
ourselves) and long-awaited (by... um, well there
has to be someone out there) dBack & Skeet Smack
Pack, or if you prefer, the Skeet/Back Smack Pack.
It's been posted on Planet Starsiege already (if
you haven't been, http://www.planetstarsiege.com)
and I just posted it on my old reliable Geocities
page (http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Dunes/8338).
It's more fun than a pocketful of fire ants, and
slightly less painful than a poke in the eye with
a sharp stick. Check it out!
3/3/99
Phew. We got the 1.3 patch out the door, which happens
to be the first patch that I actually processed. (Tim's
been doing it till now.) That whole patch-making dealie
is both simpler and more complicated than I thought --
figure that one out. I'll be the joker cobbling up the
release notes and readme files for the patches now too,
so you can blame me directly for any and all bits of
absolute gibberish. Please be gentle, I'm not used to
writing documentation :)
I'm starting to get pretty excited about the ideas I've
overheard about Tribes 2. (Or is Meddish right, should it
be Tribes II? Or maybe just a different title without
numbers at all, like Tribes: Apocalypse?) Anyone who
likes the original is gonna be pretty jazzed about the
sequel too -- lots of cool stuff.
I've got lots more on my plate these days -- in addition
to doing the patches and internal builds, I've got a heap
of new stuff to learn, like how to be an IRC admin, how to
remotely upgrade the Combat servers, how to write legible
documentation for tools that I don't entirely understand,
as well as get more involved in the script-writing and
eventually, coding. It was nice to have a couple of months
where the pace was a little slower though :) Oh yeah, and
the webpage-based status report that Dave Moore mentioned,
I'll be responsible for compiling that info too.
We're gearing up for a tools release soon -- mission
editor, ZED (interior builder), and graphics-processing
stuff to get your source art in a form TRIBES can use.
With this new release, you'll be able to create your own
bases and buildings, it'll be much easier to make a new
terrain for a mission, all sorts of fun. With the amount
of new things I've already seen people do just messing
around with the scripts, it's going to be really impressive
to see what they can do when they have all the mission-
building tools at their disposal...
2/3/99
I've gotten some great feedback on the crosshair
stuff I did, and I'm working on making up a bunch
of new ones based on a few things I learned from
our resident GUI guy, "Thulsa Doom" Tinman. Since
several people e-mailed to ask questions on the
subject, I'll share some info with you.
* Crosshair bitmaps can actually be any size or
dimensions. They don't have to be symmetrical, and
they will automatically be centered on the screen.
* There is nothing you can do to change the big
black "zoomed in" crosshair except turn it off.
Press K to bring up the GUI options box, and
uncheck the "Sniper Cross" item. When you zoom in,
your "regular" crosshair will remain on screen at
the normal small size (as opposed to growing to
fill the screen).
I'm trying to come up with some ideas for some
interesting and useful new crosshair designs.
If you have any ideas, please leave a guestbook
entry on the GeoCities page mentioned below --
I've seen what happened to Scott when he asked
people to send suggestions to his normal e-mail
address :)
2/1/99
For those of you who want a different shaped
or colored crosshair for Tribes, I cobbled up a
small collection of different ones -- circular,
tiny dots, etc. in a variety of fashionable colors.
I'll zip them all up and put them on my old
GeoCities screen shot page for anyone who's
interested -- the URL for that is
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Dunes/8338
Don't expect much from this page -- I just threw
together some screen shots a couple of months ago
before the game came out, and added some lame
attempts at funny captions. The link for the zip
file should be near the top of the page, above the
screen shots. Unfortunately, there isn't any way
of keeping track of the number of downloads, so if
you grab it and find it useful (or have suggestions
for new, useful crosshairs), drop me an e-mail if
you would be so kind.
The file should be up on the GeoCities page by
2:00 PM PST today. I'll throw a README in too, but
just in case you're one of the 95% who don't bother
to read such files -- unzip the zip file (duh) and
browse thru the BMPs. (I recommend ACDSee) If you
find one you like, copy it to your tribesase
directory and rename it to H_Reticle.BMP (if you
don't do this, your crosshair will not change).
Enjoy!
Oh yeah, and I almost forgot, happy birthday Mom.
:)
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