{ Heading off road }
posted Saturday, February 15, 2003 by Nebula[CSR]
Steve recently brought to my attention the fact that by Nebby standards, I'm staying suprisingly on track talking about Counter-Strike. So here's a little theory I thought we could apply to the world in general. It's called The Whistler.

MY girlfriend and her friend came up with this idea a while ago, and I've sort of picked it up and run with it. If you wanted to start your own terrorist cell to spread world terror, there is an absolutely flawless way to get away with whatever you want.

First, perform the act. Blow up a bank, sacrifice some kittens, take the First Lady hostage, whatever. You can take this extreme from whatever angle you'd like. Just make sure that you attract the attention of international terrorist authorities, right? OK, on to step two.

Step two, is to wait until the authorities arrive. You wait for them out the front of the site. You look at them, throw away your guns into the nearest tall grass, link your hands behind your back, and walk away whistling.

And there you have it! You can get away with absolutely anything you want if you applied this theory. Saddam Hussein could stand in front of a weapons factory in Iraq, use the whistle and the inspectors would just shrug and walk by.

So take this advice, and you can all be blameless terrorist leaders!

Oh, and if anyone has any complaints about my lenient scorn of terrorism ...

/walks away whistling
Comments (2)

{ Huzzah! Keep on runnin', Nebby! }
posted Monday, February 10, 2003 by Nebula[CSR]
Well, well, well, maybe my artwork ain't completely useless.

Check out the second from the bottom, baby!
Comments (1)

{ It's ALIVE! }
posted Monday, February 10, 2003 by Nebula[CSR]
Sorry for the long pause, readers. I feel like a bit of a tool now, considering one of the last posts I made was "Hey, I'm going to post a whole bunch more". Stupid poetic justice!

I came home around just over a week ago to discover that the computer had decided to shut itself down and not turn itself back on. The power supply had given up on us, and needed to be replaced. So it had to go into my father's work (who bought it in the first place) to get repairs, and we only just got it back today.

On the up side, however, it's kinda convinced dad's work that we could really do with a new one, so dual Pentium III 1 Gig's, here I come. Unfortunately, I still have to wait on that descision. But I still have "Old Faithfully Crappy" here to connect me, so I suppose thats some consolation.

And no, everyone who's wondering, even though we're getting a new computer, I still get the same modem.

... *sigh*

Still, I suppose it will stop adding a bad frame rate to a crappy ping.

Anyway, keep on visiting! I'm sure to post some intersting stuff soonish!

*!!!SYSTEM ERROR!!!*

-Nebby
Comments (0)

{ This old bag? }
posted Wednesday, January 29, 2003 by Nebula[CSR]
As promised, here's a mailbag!

Dear Nebby,

As a newbie, I feel your pain... Actually I've been playing for a year. So as a crappy player, I feel your pain. It's been a long embarrassing road that I've traveled since my "friend" (yes, you {FOWG}Zylox) introduced me to my ultimate addiction: Counterstrike. My supernatural ability to suck bullets into my body is only trumped by my god-like skill of getting knifed in the ass. Laugh if you will, but know that very few players ever achieve this level of ability. This has caused me to reexamine my hobby and ask the painfully honest question: "Should I continue to play Counter Strike?"

Let's go back to my "addiction". Most people that are addicted to something get something in return. They get a high, a sense of power or bragging rights, depending on the addiction. I, on the other hand, have managed to find an addiction where the only benefit is that I make people laugh... and they laugh very, very hard. But, as you can imagine, making people laugh is only fun when you see the humor of your situation. (Note to reader: This letter is not humorous. If you find it to be hilarious it's because the CS Curse has followed me here.)

So the question remains: Will I continue to embarrass myself while entertaining and beefing up everyone’s scores? Of Course! I've found my niche in CS. No one can compete with me at my level. In fact several players have told me that they were reluctant to kill me because of the low prestige they’d gain and lack of bragging rights that they would have otherwise been able to perform.

So I endure countless 20 minute humiliation ceremonies where I fumble to reload my gun, pull out my knife instead and, with my knife, try to zoom in for a... LOL... kill. Of course the last three things are usually done before I realize that I have actually been dead for two minutes and have been viewing/living vicariously through some unknowing CS god (aka a person who can hit a target), while I wonder why the controls have taken on a life of their own. While this is happening, my teammates are receiving text messages similar to, "wwasddsaw rgxc q12da4 43." This, of course, makes them laugh... very, very hard. The tears of sorrow and angst I shed will soon reach the proportion of the tears of laughter that I've provoked.

To all the newbies (and crappy players), pray that you never reach the level I am playing at. Amen.

Damn your knife is sharp!

{FOWG}LaZaRuS


Dear Lazarus,

Yes, it's a tough life being an experienced CS player and still sucking. Of course, we can always say things like "Boy, wasn't Beta 7 great?" and similar, but when it comes to the crunch, sometimes we just have to admit that we suck. I know Van and Steve admit it every show, and I certainly can't deny it either. I find that often the best thing to do is try to get high scores with obscure weapons in the stats. At current I'm attempting to become the Lord High Master of the SG550. It's difficult, not only because my lack of ability, but also because it's such a crap gun, but I digress.

I think the best advice I can offer is rushing people with an AK, firing in bursts randomly in the enemy direction. I once scored 4 headshots in the one round because of that tactic.

Good luck!


Dear Nebby

Why the hell did VALVe change the name of "Tracker" (the uber-cool name of the messaging program from CS 1.4 Steam Beta) to "Friends" (the gay name of a gay TV show that airs on a gay station)? That's one of the stupidest names they could have chosen!

William "Disk2" Brendel


Disk2,

I always thought of the new Steam tracker as a way of making all the poor lost souls who play CS for companionship feel "special". When your lonely CS player loads up his Steam when the full version is released, he'll get the warm and happy feeling that at least somewhere he has a friend.

At least, that's how I see it.


Nebby,

If you could design any sort of game you wanted, with any technology you want, what would you design? I'm thinking you'd do some sort of guy that drinks a lot of Jim Beam and flashes old ladies. The more JB you drink, the more points you get, but less money. The more old ladies you flash, the more points you get, and a small possibility they'll drop their purse and you can buy more JB. There is also a chance that the police will show up and arrest you. The more JB you drink, the drunker you get, but the higher the chance you'll be arrested. By the end of the game, it comes down to your alcohol tolerance, how much money you have, and how many old ladies you've killed from heart attacks. There is also the bad, which is times arrested. It uses this to determine your final score as a Jackass.

-LaserGuidedBunnyRabbit


As much as my real life revolves around drunkenly flashing poor old women, I always found games that come close to real life rather boring (just scroll down to my jabbering about the Sims!). If I could design a game, it would probably be just like Counter-Strike.

... Except of course all the players are kung-fu fighting shiny robots who have their own super powers and could join together to make a giant super robot. And when they're singular, they could transform into cars a stuff.

... So I guess, when you think about it, my ideal game is nothing like Counter-Strike. Maybe Voltron-Strike Transformers? Oh, who knows.

But you've gotta admit, CS could use some shiny kung-fu robots! 'Reckon Goose'll put it in 1.7?

Oh come on, he put a bullet shield in the game!

Cheers for all the mails folks! Remember to send more in!

-Nebby
Comments (4)

{ I really sux! }
posted Monday, January 27, 2003 by Nebula[CSR]
Heya once again readers,

No I'm not dead. Sorry for the long gap between posts, but I've been spending time with my girlfriend who was up this week. She's living away right now, so I spend whatever time I can with her.

But she's gone away for another week, so it's back to my usual stupidity!

Anyhoo, I'd just like to point out my current ranking on the CSR server. Anyone playing with me knows I'm not exactly fantastic, but today I hit an all new low. We loaded on Dust, where I didn't do so badly, but all through Assault, Aztec and Inferno I sucked so hard that bullets started turning corners to hit me. I'm like the black hole of the server, I attract every gun in the map. But anyway, just for a laugh I thought I'd check my score when I was sucking. I'd gone from 420 (not so bad, all things considering) to 787 out of 794. For obvious reasons, I stopped laughing. Apparently, out of the whole of everyone playing, there are only eight people worse than I am, and they were all probably AFK. Really makes you think.

And by that, it really makes me think "Hmm, I wonder if there is like a name change script that could chnage my name just before every shot, then change it back directly afterwards, so if I'm awarded a kill, it'll go on my good name?". Something to consider if you ask me.

Anyway, I've got a good idea for a little contest coming up. And I still need a few more mails for the mailbag, so be sure to send something in, no matter how irrelevant!

Mail me something!

Lotsa love,

-Nebby
Comments (2)

{ More sound bits! }
posted Tuesday, January 21, 2003 by Nebula[CSR]
Here you go listeners. Here's the song that was at the start of the last show, entitled "CSR: I Love You". Apologies to Van in advance, but his was the voice I got on record.

CSR: I Love You - Once again, big cheesy grins for Solid Snake 88 for hosting. If your looking for the lyrics, you can find them here

Look forward to other sound bites coming your way, Nebby style!

-Nebby
Comments (2)

{ Ahh! Tortise! }
posted Wednesday, January 15, 2003 by Nebula[CSR]
Ave, readers!

As everyone knows, there has been a fair few CS 1.6 previews popping up before it's release tomorrow. But looking through all the previews for 1.6, the bullet shield cannot help but bring one thought to my mind.

Does everyone remember the Asterix comics, where the Romans always advance with their shields locked about each other like a big turtle? And then the Gauls would run straight through it? Looking at some of the pictures, I think if people are organised enough we really could see turtles of CTs advancing. I suppose it's something we'll have to play the game to find out about, but it sounds damn funny to me. You might be able to kill off all your opponents while they're on the floor laughing.

All the game needs is a spear to be added and you could call it Roman-Strike.

-Neb
Comments (4)

{ Mail Call! }
posted Wednesday, January 15, 2003 by Nebula[CSR]
Alright then, we'll go with the idea of the mailbag. So all of you with questions or problems for me to consider, please send them to:

[email protected]

Look for the first edition when I get enough mails!

Cheers!

-Neb
Comments (0)

{ Lightbulb! }
posted Monday, January 13, 2003 by Nebula[CSR]
Morning/Afternoon readers!

Sorry about the lack of me writing lately, but there hasn't been much to write about. No shows (*coughHURRYUPcough*), no new Beta, no funny news. Curse this mundane world!

Anyhoo, I thought I'd just run an idea by you. How about a Nebula mailbag? People e-mail me their opinions, and I crap on for half an hour about how much I 5ux0r?

Just an idea, tell me what you think.

-Neb
Comments (9)

{ The other sound skits }
posted Tuesday, January 7, 2003 by Nebula[CSR]
Thanks once again to Solid Snake 88, the other two sound skits I made for CSR are now available for download.

CS-Radio: The Movie - Exactly what would happen if I was hired to create the CS Radio movie?

CS-Radio Sunscreen - Rules that every CS Radio listener should adhere to. Done in the style of the sunscreen song.

Solid Snake 88 deserves all your love if you like them, because he was nice enough to host them.

Still looking for new ideas for skits or songs!

-Nebby
Comments (2)

{ What ever happened to a good article? }
posted Monday, January 6, 2003 by Nebula[CSR]
Those of you who knew me early on enough in the show, know that I used to work for a couple of gaming news sites. The first, which I ran myself, called the Forge, and the second called the BackBurner. It was through working on these sites that I came across (and fell in love with) CS Radio in the first place. I even took the first opportunity to interview Van and post it on the Forge. However, call me incredibly old fashioned, through all the time I've been around in the Half-Life community I've noticed a slow and steady decline in good articles.

Now when I was in action, I was an absolute wizard with articles. The way I saw it, news was important to keep people coming back daily, but it was a second best to a good read. And I wrote articles that people absolutely loved to read. I could knock up good (as in quality, maybe not opinion always) reviews in half and hour. I could make creative articles in even less. The moment I had the list of interview answers back from an interviewee, it took me minutes to format it all and have it ready for posting. Add a few minutes in PaintShop to edit the image thumbnails (every article needs some good images) and it was all ready.

And you know what? I absolutely loved that. The Forge, the site I ran almost completely under my own steam, gave me no end of pride. This was because I could look at it and see that I'd done a good job. Not only was all the news updated the moment I found something to write about. Not only did I make a point of introducing myself and the site to most every mod that came along, but I kept a detailed ICQ list (which I still own today, but is probably too out of date) of all my mod contacts so I could keep updated on their progress. Van would probably recognise this from the first time I talked to him on ICQ. But overall, what I loved the most was that every day, I'd have a new article for the readers to enjoy. Whether it was a review or an interview or whatever, there was always something new. Every day.

In my eyes, that made my site better than every other Half-Life site out there. Even the people getting paid for what they do at Planet Half-Life. In fact, Planet Half-Life, bemoaning their lack of actual content, actually asked me to work for them. I accepted, and was for a short time part of their staff. I was fired not too long after I was hired, officially for trivial reasons, the ACTUAL reason being the PHL Site Director looked at the Forge every day and wanted me to do all that content for PHL.

Anyway, if you look at the community today, things have changed. Take exclusive pictures, for instance. Back when I was at the Forge, exclusive pictures (or preview pictures) were rarer and more interesting. If you were as connected as I was, sometimes a few pics would filter through to you from different mods showing the development in process. These were always good pics, which had obviously been taken because someone was proud of what they've done. If they did come to me, I'd simply ask "Do you mind if I post these?" and if they didn't mind, up they'd go in the news. And they belonged to your site, because you'd recived them personally, requested if you could post them, and put the work in. Your site all of a sudden had something for the readers to look at that no other site had. Just before I left gaming sites, a disturbing trend had popped up. Exclusives, weren't actually exclusing anymore. Mods would just take pictures of anything they wanted (this included crappy looking grey models taken with a screen grab), attatch it to an e-mail, and send it off to all the news sites. All of a sudden, every news site from Half-Life Center to Half-Life.Net had that picture in their news, and every news post said "New Exclusive Pics". I despised this practice, because there was no longer any link to getting the pics and deserving the pics. And now all you have to do is wait three months for Planet Half-Life to load, and you'll notice that most every single news post they have has pictures with it.

But to make my point, while your at Planet Half-Life, supposedly the "best" Half-Life site around, take a look at their article history. It reads like this:

-PHL Poll
-PHL Poll
-PHL Poll
-PHL Mailbag
-PHL Poll
-CS Level of the Week
-PHL Mailbag
-PHL Poll

Now don't get me wrong, as much as taking a selection of the stupid people e-mailing you that fortnight and laughing at them in an article is a sort of distraction, it's no proper article. To put it in simpler terms: "It's no how you make porridge".

I know a lot of sites try, and I respect those sites that are, but somehow I think we've lost a big section of the Half-Life community with the article drought.

Tell me what you reckon.

-Nebby
Comments (9)

{ Why does God hate me?? }
posted Sunday, January 5, 2003 by Nebula[CSR]
While playing on the CSR server, I noticed something rather disturbing that I'll relate to you here.

Now anyone who has played with me on the CSR server can notice that my ping is not entirely ideal. Especially if you define "not ideal" as a constant 500 plus. But then again, only having a 56k modem and living in Australia will do that to you. But I don't mind, considering my frame rate never exceeds 20 FPS anyway, I've kind of gotten used to shooting at targets that aren't exactly walking, but more warping frame by frame in front of themselves.

But I never complain. It's just my computer, so it's no-one elses fault. And it's not exactly like I can blame it for my crappy playing, otherwise I'd seem like a real jerk indeed (not only that, but a really POOR jerk!). But there has come one little red word that has become the bane of my existence on the CSR server, and that is "CL_FlushEntityPacket".

For those of you who know what this is, you'll know it's about as unwelcome as third testicle to a sprinter. For those of you with no experience with this phenomenon, a FlushEntityPacket occurs when your extremely lagged, and for all I can figure it out, to catch up to the rest of the game, the computer has to remove all the entities in the map and put them in their right place. This means everything that's not walls and floors disappears. Players, breakable boxes, everything your able to interact with. This leaves you hanging in online limbo for a good 10 seconds, nothing but raw map on your screen, waiting to either be told that during that ten seconds some bugger killed you, or that your team has gone on ahead, leaving you and your pistol to sort your own laggy arse out.

Now even at this juncture, I don't complain. This is still my crappy computer and connection doing this to me, so I can't really blame anyone but myself.

But at the point when I finally overcome my lag, finally manage to kill a few opponents, and then get the chance to win the round by defusing the bomb and become everyone's hero and a FlushEntityPacket occurs, then I blame God. This has actually happened to me a few times now, and boy does it suck. Nothing better than think your going well, start defusing the bomb, then wake up ten seconds later to see your corpse explode. Curse that bastard! Not that I actually believe in a God, but it seems like if he did exist, this is exactly how he'd punish me. So God, if you really are up there, could you get away witcha? Honest?

Keep ever vigilant against God, fellow laggers!

-Nebby
Comments (4)

{ Crisp and crunchy sound thingies }
posted Sunday, January 5, 2003 by Nebula[CSR]
Heya again guys!

At the request of Sushi and Solid Snake 88, I'm reposting the link to a couple of sound deelies I did for the show a while back. They would be:

The CS-Radio Rap - Which I made a little while ago, to the tune of "Take This Job and Shove It". If you wanted to know the exact lyrics, you can find them in this thread, although theres the entire section of me babbling at the end which isn't covered.

Blowing Up Gooseman's House - Part Three of a radio serial I've created. And no, don't go looking for part one or two, they don't exist. It's all part of the joke.

If you guys would like me to make more sound stuff, leave me some talkback with suggestions of topics and songs to go with them (I'm not actually good enough to make my own songs).

And when I get them a link somewhere, I'll also post "CS-Radio: The Movie", "CS-Radio Sunscreen" and "Neb in a Minute", three other existing sound skits I made for the show.

Until next time!

-Nebby
Comments (1)

{ The Sims' Pointless Waste of Disk Space }
posted Friday, January 3, 2003 by Nebula[CSR]
I only bring this up because someone called in and asked about the Sims online last show, and I thought I'd get my two cents.

For anyone who hasn't played the Sims, it's basically a game where you control the lifestyle of your very own virtual person. You spend your whole time deciding what furniture, job, attitude, pets, recreation and so forth your Sim gets to indulge in. Now excuse the bluntness, but what's the fucking point? I mean honestly, it's not cool to live vicariously through LIVE people, let alone a collection of screen sprites.

The entire idea can probably be traced back to a really old game called Alter Ego, in which you were given a series of options as to how you lived your life on the screen, and the answers you gave would decide your personality and success and such. The "fun" of the game was supposed to be in answering all the questions just like you would in your own life, thus making a screen version of yourself to play with. Of course, the real fun was just answering the teenage year questions over and over again until you think you've scored with nearly every female in the game.

Quickly following Alter Ego was Alter Ego: Female. It was the exact same game, except now you play as a female. Supposedly released so all the females could play, but of course highly sought after by the male fans of the original just so they could play the sluttiest role possible.

And of course, let us not forget the influence of the never-ending franchise of Sim games like Sim City, Sim Town, Sim Tower, Sim Farm and Sim Ant (by far the most stupid). Indeed, if it involved some sort of social structure, it had a Sim version. But eventually this all came together in the Sims, the game where you could fuck off the city planning, and just be a person. And just like Alter Ego, try and get all the other female Sims to sleep with your character. His name is your name, so your both scoring! Hooray! Sim Nebby slept with Sim Denise Richards! I am such a stud!

I thought "Fair enough". If people really wanted to muck around controlling a stupid little complaining bastard on their monitor, good luck to them. What really confused me was when the expansion packs started coming out. The Sims' House Party. The Sims' Hot Date. The Sims' Unleashed. And all of them were designed for one point only, to add some extra furniture to Barbie's Fun Palace.

The thing I perhaps find the most stupid about the whole idea is people who would go to really big LAN events, and PLAY the Sims. What is the point of connecting your computer with a lightning fast connection to 100 computers, if all your going to do is the same thing that you do at home.

However, all my ranting on this subject comes to one point. The Sims is just "get a life" mentality. I've seen one of my friends who actually plays it get narky for a full two days because they're Sim got caught somewhere in her own house and died from malnutrition. I thought it was hilarious. My friend didn't. I think that if the Sims actually showed any semblance to real life, the game would be thrown in the bin quicker than a copy of Mario Paint. Think on these few expansions I'm waiting to see, just to tweak the reality factor of the game.

The Sims: Working Day
Instead of every day getting picked up in a car pool and having the clock speed past until your Sim comes home, your screen follows your Sim to work in his office cubicle. There, without adjusting the speed, you must sit at your desking continually telling your Sim to type on his computer so he reaches his deadline and won't be fired. At the same time, you must keep him caffinated, and repress all the ideas in your Sim's head that are telling him to go postal.

The Sims: Rent Boy
Every day when your Sim goes off to work, leaving your wife alone, your wife Sim gets jubilant and goes and changes into her underwear. Right on 11 o'clock, the Gardener that you pay good money to keep your hedge trims shows up. Your Sim wife lets him inside and proceeds to have her way with the hired help on your new couch and leopard skin vibrating bed. The action stops for a small amount of time while the maid comes through the house, at which point the gardener is shoved inside your linen cupboard. He is let out again 30 minutes before you are to arrive home, so he can complete his gardening duties. Your Sim arrives home and wondera why your garden is so shabby lately.

The Sims: Serial Killer
Your Sim goes certifiably insane and decides to take human lives in his own hands. Abducting the neighbour's daughter because of her young supple skin, your Sim throws her in a pit in your back yard and twice daily lowers some skin lotion to make sure it'll keep when he wants to cut it off her and make a suit out of it later. Challenges include keeping the butterflies breeding properly in your hot house, and all the sewing you'll need to be doing.

Feel free to add your own expansion ideas in the talkback.

Lots of love,

-Nebby
Comments (12)

{ Watch out! Cannonballs! }
posted Thursday, January 2, 2003 by Nebula[CSR]
Well that was snappy.

It's a long history I have with these blokes at CSR, and a surprising honour I must say to have my own little column to spout off in. Viva CSR!

Anyhoo, for those of you who don't know me, I may be the original CSR fanatic. I've listened to the show since the days when it was just ThatHurt talking to himself about Counter-Strike. Odd but true. If you people can find those early shows, I'd recommend downloading the little bastards, because as odd as it may seem, they're interesting to listen to. Well, actually, now they're probably f**king yawn-o-rama to listen to (unless you really want to hear about when Beta 7 is coming out).

However, if you do listen, you'll notice there are things about the show that have never really changed. For one, I've never been able to submit a sensible plug or Top Ten. But then there are the other obvious things like how Team Fortress Two is due about three months away EVERY SHOW.

Anyhow, this is my little place to rant and rave on, so drop in to have a read now and again, and argue with me in the talkback section or the forum.

Cheers!

-Nebby
Comments (5)

{ Just setting up Nebby's Corner }
posted Wednesday, January 1, 2003 by u_suk_it[CSR]
This is just a test
Comments (0)