a history lesson..

Hecate

With all the complaining about the quality of the Tribes servers etc. I thought i'd post this little piece of history (written by MindPhuck) about the blood, sweat and tears that went into the IGN, enjoy:

A long time ago in a Galaxy Far Far Away....

About a year or so ago the nice people at IOL provided some rather base quake servers with no modifications, patches and nobody had admin rights. For those of you around long enough will remember trying to do a clan war was near impossible. Imagine ten or so players with itchy fingers trying not to pick up weapons and not kill each other till the server rotated to the level which was agreed and then shouting GO for the game to begin. If you ever tried it you would remember it was complete mayhem and in alot of cases caused animosity among your own team never mind your opponents. In any event it was ****e.

Indigo's commitment to the gaming scene was three CTF servers which had some sort of maintenance but always remained as ctf with no future to expand to any other patches.

At that time, the main scene for information consisted of Zero's News, the Greenfields and the Irish Quake Post. Other sites were set-up along with clan pages, etc. New clans form, Old ones died and even some of em break through firewalls to come alive on the scene.

Telecom Internet went into business.

Around the same time, Eddie 'Rocket' Curry set-up the Irish Games Network and established a relationship with Telecom Internet and with alot of correspondence and meetings with TiNet and ID Software brought to life quake.ie. A Team fortress and a Free for All server were initially set-up by TiNet and the IGN. Just to let you know that TiNET and the IGN actually went out and bought a dedicated server at the value of about £5,000 pounds. This did not include the hosting of the server which costs about £16,000 pounds per year in bandwidth issues. I could go on and on here but I wont, not just yet..

In the meantime while everyone was playing on IOL and Indigo, John 'Cloud Warrior' Breslin, Dermot 'MouseRat' Friel, Ed Curry and a few other players you know well were working hard on the quake.ie web site getting it ready for the official launch of the site.

Mid Summer last year was the first major meet of most of the players in Ireland. At QuakeFest which was hosted by Ray 'Carnate' Casey and assisted by myself. Over 200 people from all over the country came up for it. I can tell you personally that event cost Ray a fair deal both in monetary terms and in his personal life. The organisation and time was quite extensive with the renting of things like the big tent to getting chairs, beer and food, etc.. Anybody who was at QuakeFest will remember it as simply amazing crack.

With the success of QuakeFest, I decided to put together QuakeLords shortly afterwards. You would not believe the amount of work, time, blood and guts I put into that. At that time, I got in contact with TiNet who were more than helpful in getting this event on the road. I actually managed to get them to host 6 duel quake servers and even went over to their premises and set them up with Conor McGovern into the wee hours of the morning. I had admin rights, patches, access to all and everything on those servers something which was completely unheard of in the gaming scene.

I would not like to think I was the start of all this, more that I had good timing. Anyhow, off I went and the competition went ahead. All the way up to the final I had intended to charge at the door so I could cover the costs of hiring the TempleBar Music centre. At the last moment, Lorcan Brophy from TiNet told me that TiNet would cover the cost of the hall aswell. Amazing. Not only did they give the quake community some servers, hosted them, gave us access, helped set-up the final, gave sound technical support, paid for the hall, they then such prizes from cool jackets to free tinet accounts!

QuakeMas was organised as a social gathering by Lorenzo 'Blade' Caira and Tom 'Devore'. A great session to be had and many more followed in its footsteps. More beer and even better games in Trinity which most ****-ups regularly ended up thanx to the CT guys.

After Christmas, the quake.ie servers really came into power. Incidentally, both myself and Conor McGovern spent XMAS eve till very late getting the servers up and running for XMAS Day play and I know that John Breslin spent hours upon hours creating and maintaining quake.ie over the XMAS period. Enough of that.

In January a major change occurred for the servers as the complete server was changed from NT to Linux and the bandwidth increased. Alot of tweaking and fixing was required just to get them to a playable condition, never mind anything else. Along comes Quake II and even more servers are set-up.

More social gatherings occur with the likes of the Celtic Warriors day out in Global Cafe and the trip to both UCG and UL to meet up with Guns Islanders and Na Daghda. All successful quake meets.

The IGN starts hosing clan pages. Mailing groups and clan emails are given out, all set-up and working just nicely for all concerned. A team of guys come aboard doing various pages for the site. Alan 'As' Sweeney, Ronan 'Zero' Condon, Mick(ah) McGuiness, Brian 'Helg' Davey to name a few who put their back-sides into their pages.

Qamex ran by Helg and other prominent quake players opens. A few other here-today-gone-tomorrow sites open and various other things occur.

Then comes the IQCL, which really set things in motion thanx to Dermot, John and Conor. I knew what is involved so I got stuck in on the game admin side along with Ben 'Kaile' Sholdice and spent many a happy hour sorting out matches. The WWWBoard takes off major and with it some interesting threads and some very outspoken characters participating.

The Hiberian Irish Quake Team takes off with Ronan 'Zero' at the forefront. The team actually kick the hell outta one of the UK's top teams which launches Irish quake players into a frantic time.

I gear myself up for the new QuakeLords '98 competition and start putting the web site up.

Some loudmouthed comments and rather unsociable behaviour starts appearing on the WWWboard and it was only a matter of time when it would go wrong which inevitably it did which resulted in the board closing for a week or so and Zero leaving quake.

Other Things occur..



All this time people are playing on the servers and demanding, complaining, screaming all over the net about how ****e the IGN and Tinet is. I've been off-line for the last month, but I have been watching the WWWboard and I also have been very active in the background working on the setting up of the IQCL final, the QuakeLords competition, meeting in Galway and Dublin for the Irish Games Network and also doing various work on the quake.ie servers never mind the other things that you guys aren't even aware of yet.

Well as u can see from that, a lot of work (which some ppl dont seem to have the first notion of) has gone into providing this fine system. And just in case your not convinced;
about July last year, the man behind IGN, John Breslin(cloud) had to take a break from its operation due in part to the effect it was having on his Health, he was sticking loadsa effort into providing servers, websites etc., and getting nought in return except abuse (not directed at him personally but the service he was operating)...there are many other incidents when the whole thing nearly shut down because ppl just went too far. I complain about lag from time to time (actually a lot but i dont go blaming the servers, the problem really lies with the quality(or lack of) of the Irish telephone system, which is in serious need of an overhaul imho.

So remember what was said above, learn from the lessons of the past.

ChungKing

fuppin' A! hear hear. claps, that sorta thing.

I read the IGN 'About' story a while ago (seems different from this one, but maybe i missed it) & it is damn impressive. Hell, i barely have the time to play, let alone do extra-curricular work.

I'd like to add to this - Cloud immediately sorted out server two when vagga asked for it. He's also been willing to sort out new maps for us (although we haven't got our acts together on this one yet - tho I think jag said he mailed cloud the urls today).

I'm new to IGN, since i got into tribes & this wwwboard & the service is class. People get lagged, but I'd say 90% (at least) it's not the server as I have had very very very few probs. Sure, with lotsa people things can get slow, but what else is new? Quake I & II are just the same on servers all over the gaff - it aint a lan were playing on.

Two things -

Can we Puh-leeze use server 2? To date every effort has failed cos we log in and 3-4 ppl join at most & then one drops and then...welll ... off to server 1 now. Happened last nite. Happened tonite. Happened a few days ago... use it or lose it!! Cos I'm sure IGN have good use for it if we dont use it. I was thinking today about putting up a thread with subject 'tonite I plan to log in at XXXpm etc' ... we all read the boards, so it should be easy to give people an idea if (a) you plan to play tonite and (b) what time you plan to be on. If ya can't make it, well no probs - but at least we can, as the man says in MTV celebrity Deathmatch GET IT ON!!! ya know wot oi mean?

Secondly - um , i forget. Please comment on the 'Roll call for tonite' idea - cos if it works, then it would be cool.

nuff said,

chungking - delay no more!

YuM

IGN brilliant job.. TInet supporting IGN great...BUT

One niggly point, connection thru TInet has gone to hell, I started off a few years ago playing quake on the IOL shareware & Reg servers thru IOL, which was fine and as you read above other irish servers gradually came online and to play on them you had to be connecting thur Tinet or InDIGo due to INEX connections and what not.

I got a TInet a/c and all was fine, for a few months, soon to play a decent game I had to ring Dublin and eventually that went to hell. So I wangled an ISDN a/c (TInet) once again all was fine... but very soon (within weeks) I was back dialing DUB and then only getting pings equal with Dublin dialup 56k users.

At the moment I have to play Tribes thur IOL (local Sligo) because TInet has huge PL & dissing all over the place.

Where am I going with this ramble? It's just the fact that while the IGN ppl & Irish gamers are rightfully greatful to TInet for their support, it's limited to allowing a few servers plonked in Dub & some spare bandwidth, it has never extended to the poor sods living outside the pale.

The ould sods around the place know that this is an annual event of RooKIE moaning bout his crappy connection but I'm fed up having to suffer 350 pings to IGN servers when I can get 200 to barrysworld, I mean whats the story...years on ?? can my IOL connection to England be better than the Telecom owned TInet one to a server in DUB.. please "!

Anyway my tale of woe ends the usual way, TInet are getting a bit too much positive PR over their 'support' of (east) Irish gaming and not enough grief from the poor sods living out here in ping land.. ah well maybe someday..

YuM

PS. no dumbass comments about p1ssing off to other servers either.. been there, done that, like to play with ppl I have the chance of meeting, howerver rarely..


[This message has been edited by YuM (edited 21-04-99).]

Shinji

The version of that story on the IGN.ie page is much better, by the way.

And I'm not saying that cos I wrote it. Oh no.

OTOH, it hasn't been updated since god knows when, and my opinons on the IGN have changed somewhat in the intervening months....

Jaguar

Just so you guys know i didnt mail cloud
the URLS. I actually mailed him the maps


"Do or Die"

ButcherOfNog

Yum, i'm, having no probs when i dial the tinet dub no. (well not too many) you dialing the 01 4... or the 01 6... no? i think thats the starting digits of the 2 of them, don't have the nos here

Brit

The solution is grade-A simple.

Make the second IGN server public whilst retaining the guarantee that it can be privatised for matches and practices. Server 'status' pages will then be added to the new EuroTribes site, so peeps can check up on it.

--Brit--