Rates Received

1

tastyspleen.net / 10 years

Rock On

Greetings!! Or as the Chinese would say, 我的雞雞卡在窗戶裡了，請叫救護車。

This is your quarterly reminder that I am still here, collecting pieces of information on all of you so I can sell my Tastyspleen dossier to Indian hackers on the dark web.

It's been 10 years since I asked quadz to de-activate my old account, and 15 years since I initially joined this godforsaken corner of the old guard of the internet. Crazy, huh??? It's not really crazy. The passage of time has not and will never change. Do you remember February of 2025? Man those were some good times. That was when everything was so much simpler......



I wanna spend this moment to shout some people out/totally crash out depending on who we're talking about.

Big ups to cowie/Zeppelin, the Xprojects Secret Society (XSS for short) was a long and fruitful endeavor, it was a shame it had to come to an end. I hope that you all take the lessons and/or sexually transmitted diseases we got from our time together and bring them to those you love. Bip For Life.

I wanna give a quick Fuck You to Alpha, I find it very hard to fight against you on the DM server because my eyes well up with tears from the pity I feel for your lack of skill. I've secretly lobbied claire to specifically allow you to use a wallhack just so you can have a fair shot and finally start enjoying this game. I'm rooting for you, my man.

Giving a shout out to IceFox and Ruiner; IceFox is a true homie that I've shared plenty of personal stories and anecdotes with over the years. I have nothing ironic or stupid to say, I wish you good health in this life. May plenty of hot, big-dicked furry werewolf men enter your dreams (and your asshole). Ruiner, I'm glad we kissed and made up, but I think it's best if we stayed friends. I got your card in the mail and it was wonderful, but it's just not going to work out. It's not you, it's me. I think we should see other people. I'm keeping the flowers, though.

To VaeVictis, I'm really glad I could teach you how to finally play this game properly, it was a joy to spend so many hours of this game showing you all of the tips and tricks in this game! I'm so happy to be a mentor, and even (dare I say), a father figure to you, but your attitude just needs a little bit more work. Keep it up and you'll get there in no time!

Going to give a fat Suck My Cock to haunted/adren, I'm sure after you finally shake off all of that rust over the past decade, you'll finally be able to beat me when I'm not using only the grenade launcher! Maybe put in a little bit of practice, and you can handle me with the machinegun too (chaingun's too powerful, sorry).

Shout out to God2dum, your decision to fight me with blaster only and win 5-0 was very unsportsmanlike and quite frankly, hurt my feelings. You'll be receiving an invoice from my therapist for the mental damage this transgression has caused me. Failure to pay will result in a legal injunction to invalidate the results of the match. You've been warned.

Big thanks to Jehar and RottenRose, no memes here; thank you for helping keep Quake and other arena shooters alive in the modern streaming age. In another life, I probably would have been a regular contributor in your community. Oh well!!

To Exterminader, the thousands of zombie computers I have that I've specifically made to connect to your server and harass you have been acting up lately, so I apologize for any lack of action recently. Somehow you've manage to catch and ban every single one! I'm very impressed.

Big thanks to Golgo, the harassment over the years very obviously came from a very deep-seated place of insecurity looking back. True visionaries are never appreciated in the time period that they live in. You tried to give us the truth and we branded you a heretic like the Luddites that we were/still are. I can truly say that you are the Galileo of Quake 2. Embrace it, my friend.

Shouting out Kyper, please let me win TS500 please let me win TS500 please let me win TS500 please let me win TS500 please let me win TS500 please let me win TS500 please let me win TS500 ple

Shout out to beaver, I think it's great that you've done so much in promoting this game over the years and I sincerely apologize for the transgression on your server. I was just checking up on you and I didn't mean for it to come off that way. I don't appreciate the ban in response however, and would have liked an honest, private conversation about my behavior if it was that upsetting to you. There are better ways of dealing with stress than crashing out on social media and putting your deepest, darkest insecurities and traumatic memories out there for everyone to see, it gives off a very weird vibe and unflattering perception of you. I recommend journaling.

And lastly, big thanks to all of the nameless, faceless lurkers here who have either yet to make a name for themselves or are just gawking at the dumpster fires that happened here over the years. You're the real heroes.


If I didn't mention you, I either don't care or think about you at all or you're just not that important in this story. sorry.... 

I love you all, even my haters and their ugly ass children. Jah is good. Here's to all of our slow marches into nothingness for the next 10 years.

Thanks,
-xana 

2

Bot Drop / Re: Chacal

Funny

Alpha, just because chacal has better internet (and probably more hair) than you doesn't mean that he's cheating.

3

Bot Drop / Re: First hack of the year 2993

Funny

Alpha, stop being mean to Killah just because he's black. He can't help it.

4

dm / Re: Kickoff to 888 merchandise

Funny

I am currently in possession of absolute and irrefutable proof that 888 had direct ties to Jeffrey Epstein. How do you respond to these allegations?

5

dm / Re: 888 needs to be muted

Insightful

what they dont understand is by not banning tards like 888 ,, its actually killing the game itself...how many new comers has he ran off .. or current players ?  if the trash were taken out I bet twice as many ppl would play the game..
....but that's just my 2 cents and I'm nothing but a penny waiting for change

Haven't bothered to read over this thread that much, but me and quadz personally got in a few spats over this exact topic. My argument was that allowing people to continuously grief the server just enabled people to keep doing it and passed the responsibility of dealing with it onto other people who weren't doing anything wrong by just "ignoring it". In addition, a very large majority of multiplayer games out there either actively disallow or at the very least, say they don't allow this type of behavior. The idea is that part of the success of a game in the modern era is to create at least a somewhat welcoming atmosphere to new players or people who aren't "in the know"; and even if shit talk is present, genuine toxicity and harassment shouldn't be allowed. It was always my assumption that ignoring someone worked best when maybe you didn't like someone or if you thought they were just being kind of annoying in chat, not when they were being a genuine disruption to everyone.

It was also very confusing why things like the n word and slurs against black people like "porch monkey" quadz would always put a stop to, but slurs against Mexicans, gay people and Jews were fair game on the DM server, but that's another argument altogether.

Here was quadz' stance on this issue when I brought it up in private around 2017:

The "I have to deal with it" tell for cognitive dissonance.



There has been a consistent feature over the years of personalities who get riled up by trollish language, and "I have to deal with it" is the sweet spot in the Venn diagram.

Is it forseeable there could be any utility in reflecting on when and whether one is ever truly obligated to pay heed (or even give a fleeting second thought) to comments made by some anonymous rando in a video game? What if he said things, and nobody listened?

If, for the sake of argument, one were to adopt a view favoring free expression over censoriousness, then might not /ignore be regarded as a tool empowering individuals to tailor their own online experience?

If nothing else it allows solutions to converge from both directions (client and server.)

Regards,

quadz

I eventually dropped the argument and respected his view and decision. If people were to actually not play as a result, I like to think he would have respected that as well.

However:

Alright, seems I have nothing to lose. I will then start this spam campaign you talk so much about. I will increase my private message spam amount from 10 to... let's say, 1000 for starters. If I get banned, maybe I'll get one of those VPN connections you talk about.

The whole forum software is very old version and has probably numerous vulnerabilities and is just begging to get hacked.

quadz would have never allowed this; krenz was permabanned for this exact type of thing almost instantly. You are very lucky that administration still allows you to post after threats like this.


Respectfully,

sh1va

6

Error/Glitch Demos / Re: Quake2 Unlagged Netcode (by Razor's Server)!

Racist Ignoramus

lol relax, I'd never expect you to actually program something like that anyway. Plus I've wasted hours creating jump maps that took 15+ minutes to complete so I'm not much better.

It's fun to look back at what could have been and this is just one of them. The premise of eliminating latency in this game was completely overshadowed by the fact that Razor did it and you just proved that point. How many home/away games in TDM could have just been a complete non-factor if we didn't have to worry about hitscan latency?

This is definitely something to at least look into, if you find it annoying having to lead shots in this game.

7

Bot Drop / Re: oops bot

Funny

Sorry about that, the wallhack proxy has been acting up lately. It normally shouldn't be as obvious. 

8

Quake / The State of Vortex

Insightful

 

It's been well over a year since this was posted and I've already seen servers pop up here and there using this as a foundational template for a functional Vortex server. Very nice! I hope that everybody who downloaded it found very little problems in setting up this absolute nightmare of a mod for other people to enjoy. While this warms my bitter, cold heart by just a few degrees, I think it'd be even more productive to expand on all of the frustrations that I've had with Vortex over the years and what I think is holding it back from being bigger and better in the grand scheme of Q2.


If you don't know, Vortex mod is an RPG style mod for Quake 2 that involves gaining experience and levelling up in order to build your character from whatever class it is that you decide to build. These classes include Soldier, Poltergeist, Vampire, Mage, Engineer, Knight, Cleric, Shaman, Alien, and Apprentice/Weapon Master. Every class has it's own unique abilities and talents that offer advantages and disadvantages over one or another. It was originally created by GHz using the KOTS mod as a framework, and eventually grew into it's own thing with it's own community. After the release of version 4.3 in 2009, however, GHz dropped Vortex and the websites associated with the original version of GHz's Vortex disappeared shortly after.

If you Google "quake 2 vortex", a moddb will show up as the first result. This is a full download of v4.3 in 2009, so we'll call this version "GHz's Vortex". There was however, no guide whatsoever to prepare you for setting up a server.

Fast-forward to 2012 (it could be earlier, I'm not sure), Vortex mod was picked up yet again in the Chilean scene by Darkzard (along with a few others such as N4CH0 and Ticamai, who later changed their name to ky0), who added new features, new gamemodes, and some additional stuff that I don't care enough about to look up right now. Let's called this "vrxcl", or "Chilean Vortex". The Vortex scene exploded once again before dying off a few years later. Over the past couple years, there were some attempts to revive the Vortex mod once again, but they also died out very quickly.


So what happened?

Well, for the first and most glaring, offensive sin this mod commits, the user-unfriendliness.

Vortex is an incredibly complex and arguably sophisticated mod. You're taking a game that was originally designed for just shooting people and turning it into a full-blown role-playing game complete with classes, an experience point system, and gear. Of course the code involved in it is going to be sprawling and confusing. It's not just the code, however, just playing the mod can be incredibly daunting for a newcomer. Even the most recent version of Chilean Vortex that was picked up not a year or so ago still has the outdated link to GHz's Vortex page in the help screen. It's just not useful whatsoever for a newcomer who has no idea how the mod works to navigate to the help menu (if they can even find out how to bring it up) and be greeted by "there's too much information to go over, go to this web page".

It's just not practical to tell newcomers to stop playing and read some outdated guide in order to play the most fundamental aspects of the mod. Most people will just quit! You should be able to join a Vortex server, be able to find out how to navigate the menu fairly easily, find out what it is you're supposed to do, and start playing immediately. For all of the quote-unquote experienced programmers and software developers out there who have picked up this mod, they haven't quite figured out how to solve that one.

But since I'm on the subject of the code, let's talk about it!! I personally had to pester Darkzard over and over and over again to compile some form of server package. Expecting your average person to compile this fucking abomination of a mod even with the source code is absolute lunacy. There are over 180 different commits of Chilean Vortex on Github, and there might even be more than that made by other people. The documentation between versions is very poorly written (if written at all), and there is no .dll or .so file to download. You are expected to compile everything yourself if you want to play this mod.
I understand that the only people who play this game anymore are deranged veteran IT professionals who own their own server hardware and can just edit whatever they want in this mod and compile it with no issues, but that still isn't a sustainable long-term strategy for the survival of a mod. I feel like there were too many people with their hands in Vortex who wanted to use it as their own personal little side project to mess around with, but nobody has any concept of user-friendliness when working on it. It's just a side project, so I'll just commit it to github and call it a day; who cares, right?

I had to figure out how the admin commands worked in Vortex by peeking around the source code myself. Giving yourself ability/talent/weapon points, credits, and the ability to spawn enemies from the console is supposed to be an invaluable tool to test the functionality of the mod! How come I had to find this crap out on my own?! When Darkzard finally decided to take pity on me and compile the server for me and fish to throw up on his .german network of servers, we found out that generalabmode, the ability to grant every class the power to use every ability, was bugged and did not work.

When I asked Darkzard if he could compile the newer version of Vortex he made that fixed this issue, he told me to "just use mercurial with scons".
While I'm very happy for the fact that he clearly never had to work on a help desk to get to where he is, it wasn't very helpful to a teenager who just wanted to get his daily heroin fix of Vortex. I had to get Razor to help me compile the .dll and quadz to compile the .so (which was still bugged with q2admin and prevented any server using it from being able to use WallFly, to my EXTREME FRUSTRATION).



Even though I still hold that it's vastly superior to GHz's Vortex, it's very unfortunate that the zip in this post is using a very old version of Chilean Vortex (v2.65, it was the version I originally played in 2012), since newer versions include new classes, new talents, higher level caps, and other stuff. Uniques were also bugged in 2.65 as well to my knowledge, and did not work. But that leads into another problem; the unnecessary changes.

Why were things like the ability to buy weapon/ability points removed? Why were hard skill caps introduced when you could already become absurdly powerful either way? Why were runes nerfed so badly in later versions? Character rotation should be introduced if people get too powerful anyway! It made no sense to me. The fun of Vortex and RPGs in general to me was character building, and anything that gets in the way of that isn't fun. These are things that should at least be able to be configured on the server-side, not hard-coded into the mod.

This has kind of always been a problem in Vortex, things getting nerfed or buffed constantly, with no clear consensus of balance ever being reached in the community. There were some people I saw who even lowered the amount of experience you gained! Why? Do you think you don't die enough in this mod already? I love a balanced mod more than the next guy, but I just wish there was an option for those of us that loved our crazy OP builds. 



And last, but certainly not least, one of the biggest problems is the inconsistency in availability.

It feels like every two years or so, somebody comes along and wants to revive the Vortex mod. "We're reviving Vortex! We're gonna bring it back! We're getting like 8-10 players every night! Come visit our website!", only for it to completely disappear in a single year. Maybe their free trial of AWS ran out??

The lack of a consistent, always available server on tastyspleen or even packetflinger has hurt this mod more than anything; because once someone tries to do something to revive the mod, they post Discord servers, websites, and server IP's all over the place only for those links to rot away forever, further confusing people who just want to play. If there was just one, single, always available Vortex server that was properly maintained over the course of multiple years, it would probably be very popular even to this day. Maybe there could also be things such as events that give prizes such as credits, ability points or runes. More invasion maps would also be great because nobody can seem to get enough of that fucking mode.

But that sadly hasn't happened. So Vortex remains dead. There are a couple of servers, but they're not connected on goto and don't seem to get much traffic.



So what can be done to truly revive Vortex?

• Compile all major Vortex versions as .dll's and .so's, complete with proper, up-to-date documentation and changelogs detailing and outlining all noticeable differences in versions.
• Have an official, easy to setup server package for people who want to run their own server instead of play on one.
• Make the Vortex mod much more easily accessible to those who have no experience in how it works.
• Come to a clear consensus with regards to gameplay features and balancing.
• Have a consistently available and well-maintained server on goto.
• A proper, long-term web presence wouldn't hurt, either.

I would be willing to at least help out with achieving some of these goals, but only if I had full, unfettered administrative access to such a server. I'm finished with constantly being some sort of intermediary when I just wanted to make this mod better.



The airing of grievances has now been completed. You may now continue with your normal operations.

-sh1va

need a light?

9

dm / Re: ADMIN

Funny

TacoRosado

Bad, Perky, bad.

 

The Banana Council will certainly hear about this at our next ice cream social.

10

weapons / Re: Appreciation for Ice Wolf and Null

Funny

Big thanks to Ice Wolf! Yes!

He paid my rent and gave me shelter when no one else would.

He gave me a shoulder to cry on when my pet died.

He made me a thank you card made of macaroni art.

Thank you Ice Wolf, you can have sex with my wife any time you like!