Yes, you can joke about Spirits of TF past and all that, but Tot is still actually here. I wish I could say I had interesting, GOOD news to report - but that’s not the case. Instead, you’ll have to deal with me going into Rant Mode™.
First, a personal one. This one goes out to the arsehole who keeps sending virii attachments (that’s viruses to the less-educated) to my planetfortress email account, with the subject line of Snow White and the seven dwarfs - the REAL story. This fucknuckle first sent it as an .scr file - which is a windows screensaver, usually. The latest was sent as an .exe file. Well, lemme tell you something, sparky - The "send Tot a virus" thing was done last year as well, and it had the same effect. Me notifying GSI’s technical department, and them doing whatever they do. Lemme clue you in on something, I’m a IT professional. I’m not Johhny AOL luser. I don’t blindly open fscking attachments - especially from people I don’t know. Especially with a return address of hahaha@sexyfun.net. If GSI ran their email on a Unix platform - which I sincerely wish they would - I’d use auto-updating .procmail recipes to block out the published list of spammers and junkmailers. But as it is, I rely on my brain - which works quite well, thank you. Oh, and by the way, did you realize that maliciously sending virii thru email is now classified as a federal crime? And the FBI has become rather cooperative with ISP’s and Corporations in tracking and prosecuting these cases. Think about it, ace....
Next is an item that’s closer to the normal theme here at The Fort, and PF in general. In the past, I’ve been the maintainer of the TFC Reform Project webpage, and corresponded closely with Valve on issues I get reports about, and got info from them. However, After the release of TF1.5, I grew disenchanted with TFC, and coupled with personal and health problems - I’ve let TF matters slip to a much lower priority in my life. In fact, the last time I played TFC, was then the last patch was released, to check out the 3 new maps that came with it. I play almost exclusively Q3F these days, because I wholly feel it is far superior to what Valve has mutated TFC/TF1.5 into. With all the changes that have made it "easier to jump in and play", I truly believe it has devolved into what I call AOL Fortress With the auto-upgrade/auto-repair features of the engineer, plus the dispenser’s auto-restock (inhibiting it’s usefullness as a dispenser-bomb) and other changes - it’s NOT a version of TF I want to play. Plus, from reading the league message boards and all - which I still do on occasion, the sportsmanship seems to have gone down the toliet. In particular, I keep hearing comments about one particular dominant clan having a propensity to once they get ahead by a cap or two, go into complete turtle/chaser mode. This Malcolm X style of "by any means necessary" to win mindset completely takes the fun out of playing the game, in my honest opinion. None of the clans I was in ever did this - not that I ever had a desire to be in a l33t, top 10 clan, mind you. So I find something like that, something that goes against the principles of Honour, Sportsmanship, and Fair Play, to be completely abhorrent. That’s another reason you’ll never see me type "gg" at the end of a map or match. It’s become a reflex action, and in that aspect merely lip service. If I see something I truly think worth commenting on, I’ll spell it out, not abbreviate it to a "gg". All too often I see maps end like 130-20, with imbalanced teams, and the usual bunch of "gg" at the end. Frankly, that doesn’t look like a "good game" to me.
Anyhow, back to the point I was trying to get at, before I went on a semi-related tangent. :P In the past couple of months, I had been seriously thinking of giving up on TFC, because I no longer found it fun. I asked Slick to see if he could find someone to take over the TFC Reform page - because I didn’t want to just drop another project on him, especially one I no longer wanted to do. Slick has been helping me with it - reports to the reform@ email hit both of us. However, here’s my problem. For the past coupla months, ANY bug reports, etc I’ve sent to my usually helpful contacts at Valve - have remained unanswered. The emails aren’t bouncing, so I know the accounts are still valid on their mail server. However, I am getting absolutely fucking ZERO SUPPORT from them. Now, I dunno about you, but the only reason I did stick with this thing that long, was because I was seeing that the community’s concerns WERE getting acknowledged - and in most cases, addressed. I don’t intend to stand in an empty area, shouting and not being heard. I’m going to send out a 911 call to the rest of the PF oldsters I know have - or had - contacts with Valve, perhaps look up others in the community who might too - and get some goddamn answers as to why I’m not getting any input from them for what I thought they felt was a valuable asset to the community and to the fans of their game. If I don’t get some kind of satisfactory response from Valve, in a semi-timely basis, I will simply step down from maintaining the page, hand it to Slick and tell him to do with it as he sees fit, and go ahead to do something I’ve wanted to do for a LONG time now - to delete Half-Life from my system.
And take my word on this - it’s not meant as some kind of threat to Valve - cause I really feel they they couldn’t care less - it shows in their lack of support of fan websites, and past track record of emphasis on the big, commercial sites. Nope, I don’t consider it a threat to them at all. More of keeping a promise I made to myself. gg Valve.
We now return you to your normal silence from this area, so Tot won’t offend anyone’s delicate sensibilities any further.
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