I want to see the old version of SoF with a subway, to see if there's anything worth salvaging from it.
Perhaps... the oldest RC I have is version 9 (out of 32). If someone can point me to an upload site I'll be glad to share it. I've also found an ancient Empires map pack, & the long forgotten (& never played) 1.07 ‡|JPL|‡ edition (We stuck turrets on jeeps yo!). I also found my old custom sounds. It's mostly just rearranged sounds to suit the weapons better, the old Megel NF voices for troop orders mixed with the current NF voices for commander & squad leader orders, music by that one guy who offered to redo the entire Empires soundtrack, as well as a a remix by Dubee. I also replaced the armory sound so that it plays trance music instead :p.
Sorry to interrupt your chatter. I remember starting up a CD from one of these computer games-magazines. IIRC, it also had Empires 1.04 on it. Sadly, I didn't own a Source-game back then (I was still way too young to buy it myself). So, time has passed until June of 2006, when I finally got my father to buy the Valve Complete Pack for me. I instantly installed Empires and hopped right into it (without reading the manual first ofc) and managed to do some "good" as engineer at first. After a month or so I became better rapidly, kept playing Empires day and night. Ah, I remember having to wait 10-15 minutes for my slow-ass computer to load everytime. I always made myself a pizza in the time. Ever since I've been obsessed with Empires, I kept pushing it on the german Half-Life Portal, which might be why it's still their #2 on their list of best mods (and it has been #1 before the release of Black Mesa). Later, I got into the testing for 1.08, which was said to include aircraft back then. Good old times, especially when they got to finally release 2.0 on the 30th of November. As far as I remember, on that night, we had around 1000 new players playing, at least 20 servers were full at the same time. We had a huge PR-action back then, that did an excellent job (how about we get the same people for the next release?). Anyway, after 2.2, I became more and more inactive. The servers were slowly losing players. Additionally, there was the same old story: stacking. Either you were matched with noobs and losing, or you decided to join the other vets and have no challenge. One thing I miss from the old matches in the night of the 2.0 releases: fair matches. I remember fighting an intense fight for more than half an hour on the s-bend on slaughtered (without nukes and HE btw, only AFVs, APCs and LTs), in which no side would actually advance for long, remaining very even. Another problem for me is the lack of players itself, be it noobs or vets, but it just ain't fun that much anymore when you are 8vs7+9 in spec. This also causes a lack of epic 24vs24/32vs32 battles. Also, since everyone is playing on the US-server now all the time, the game loses some fun to lag/high ping. Might give it a another try though, now that those dudes at 1&1 (my ISP) finally decided to stop sitting on my Internet-connection to slow it down. Hilariously, what Empires also has offered to me is getting better at speaking and writing English. I've done well in class before, but when I compare my earlier grammar and vocabulary to what I've learned up to now, teachers would start wanting their pupils to play online-games like Empires, that focus a lot on communication (i.e. micspam and commandeering yells from HSM) once they take note on how stuff like that improves your language. Last but not least, some of the people I met by playing Empires: HSM: Best commander ever. Nothing gets you there better than constant yelling till you've done it. That man's the reason why APCs had to be nerfed. Before that, he could win a game with noobs vs vets. Sodaen: Pretty much like HSM, just less yelling and sounding more like a hiphopper. Mkoll, Sgt_Simple, Mkvenner (or, let's just say: the Ghost-clan): Some lulzy dudes I've had much fun and good teamplay with. Trickster: Let's try to put it that way: a reasonable, friendly ass. He pushed Empires' development further after Krenzo left. M00tant: Being a tyrant. Daruck: Not being a tyrant, but always being a friend who also created the improved HUD we all love. And greeting everyone who joined IRC with "Hello [Nick] friend". The KM-clan: They provided one truly nice server and community back when 2.0 (or was it 2.12?) was newly realeased. Also had a lot of fun with them when they gave jeeps godlike turbo - and tanks too. CW-clan: My last known clan-affiliation. A lot of good people I had my lulz with. Not only in Empires, but also on IRC and some other games. Many thanks to nebajoth. Mayama: For being an ass. And rage. And being a roflwhore. w00ie: Being awesome. Eth0: Accent, commentary. UKGamer: Being UKGamer (you see, I am getting more lazy with every word I type. Might want to continue writing on a later point of time). The dudes I played TF2 with to get the "With friends like these"-achievement. There are a lot more I would mention, but as I said, I am too lazy right now, so I will do that another time. TL;DR: Huehue, brbr. Gibe armory pls, with 64mining. Anyway, some old random IRC-logs I've found: By the way, Pope, please upload those mappacks. I would love to see some old, old maps getting recompiled, mainly gauntlet and badlands. Last time I played, I barely ever saw more than the same 3 maps over and over .
-Ancient map pack -emp_Badlands -Some other maps I found. -Personal sound fixes: Includes the classic voice for NF, rearranged weapon sounds, alternate lose & start tracks by Christiaan Bakker & Dubee's remix, as well as armories blasting some dance music. Can't seem to find Gauntlet though.
badlands has been fixed for empires since forever. whoever made it doesnt want it to be played though, so for some reason we listen to him. and ahaha gauntlet
I started playing Empires in about 2008 because I over heard a co-worker talking about Zombie Master. I Played Zombie Master and WOW mostly then and thats when Zombie Master's population started to die. So I did some searching for other HL2 mods with RTS elements, and came across Empires, when I first started playing it it made no sense to me, and I was underwhelmed by the playerbase, because there was only one or two populated servers, so I figured this mod was dead too. I stopped playing it for about six months. I was bored one day and picked it up, and it reminded me of Battlefiled 1942/BF2 somewhat, so I came back to it, and started reading the wiki, and experimenting with the different research combinations on a empty servers by myself. Then I joined the forum cause I wanted to pitch a map idea I had for Empires.Then I tried doing some shitty modeling submissions which got rejected by the populace etc etc.... I don't think I learned how to use the armor customization until maybe after four months of playing Empires,I got to be somewhat decent as a player, playing one of the easiest classes to get points with the engineer. Then I was recruited by Spike to join his clan SGC, and that was with Psiko and a couple others. Then recruited by Paradox for RAGE, and then Hobbes for MEG, then G. I would say the highlights of empires have been the hard fought counterstack games, where we are able to bring games back from the brink of disaster, and scrim. I think I have stuck with Empires because it is unique, and it does so many things right, although I have learned to live with a lot of the clunkiness of Empires interface, and the gameplay quirks, it still a lot more fun to play than most games in the genre to people who want that teamwork aspect in a FPS games.
I first heard of Empires some time back in 2006, some forum (Something Awful I think) had a thread where they discussed their favourite HL2 mods and someone linked Empires. For whatever reason though, I didn't actually download the game at this point in time. It wasn't until a year later, winter of 2007, that I would rediscover and download the mod. I jumped into whatever server had the most players, probably Nachos & Juiceboxes, and started my first round as rifleman. I got better at the game at a pretty decent rate and started trying out other classes and started favoring the grenadier since he could take out both vehicles and infantry. A couple of months later I am playing a game of slaughtered and constantly killing this dude named Trickster, that kept trying to go past us with jeeps. As it turns out, he was the leader of an up-and-comming clan called "Epic". I was somewhat reluctant to join at first, but seeing as they were the anti-ghost clan and I remember some of their members treating me less than kind, I decided to join. Played my first scrim some time later, got top score for being a base bitch I think. That's pretty much it really, I don't think this is my most played game ever, but it's most def. in the top 5. ------------------------------------- For those of you that's been here since the start, I've always wondered...when was Empires the most popular? I can't remember there being more than 2 populated server.
I believe 2.0 release had like 1000 people, but when I started playing during 2.11, we had maybe 2 full servers each night (48 player limit back then) and sometimes a 3rd with low playercount, at least on Saturdays. Even during the quiet part of the day, you still had at least one full server.
I think we had a full server (64), another one (20-30 players) and the ELC (up to 30) a few times. But only a month or 2 after release.
Ahh.. The times when you had to connect + ip to connect to the servers, to get those admin spots.. Good times.
I cant really remember when I tried empires for the first time, it was ( I guess) one year bevor the big 2.0 release that made the mod popular. I just remember that everyone used one smg (dont know which one anymore) and crouch/sniped everyone at max viewing distance. a I reinstalled the game when 2.0 was released cause it fixed alot of the stuff that anoyed me about the mod. I played alot and by alot I mean like the whole fucking time. I did not touch any other game for month. Back than BSID was actually good and people stacked the team with the most bsid/jpl tags on it. tI dont really remember how the (new) community actually formed but I did alot of bullshit with blight. I started to play gren almost exclusive because back than I had such a shitty PC that I couldnt use any of the guns properly. I really loved the game (and still love it) because their is not a single commercial fps out their that has such a replay value like empires has. After some month I played regulary with some guys and hands down empires has the best community of any fps game out their, the lack of 12 year olds helps alot I guess. Mkoll asked me to join ghost because I was such an awesome driver (his words not mine). If you want to survive dont jump into a vehicle I drive, orange box somehow destroyed my driving skills completly. I joined ghost after he spammed me for 2 weeks I guess.. It took such a long time to decide it cause I usually dont like clans and the whole stuff that comes with it. Our first scrim was against @-clan and it played out like this: 50% of our team where drunk, we lost everything exept our home base on cyclopean, blight buys a tank and we won. Not by killing their CV with the tank, blight just somehow killed their whole team and structures with that one single light tank. It was hilarious. Some month later mkoll disappeard without telling anyone and valiant went crazy telling us that its "doomsday bitches" and we should make a new clan without mkoll... well... in the end ghost just dispanded and we where puppers again. It was not that bad because no one scrimmed anyway and I really enjoyed playing the game no matter what. I guess it was the time where I was in my best shape and I had alot of fun doing retarded stuff with sonecha like spamming weaponless apc's and ramming the enemy CV til it flipped etc. I loved urban chaos with walls and escort (arty escort not that pussy escort people play nowadays). I guess the drama was one of the things that made that mod so great, it was like a soap opera. BSID trolling with stacking one side, the CW/MAD split etc. It sounds funny nowadays but for us none clanners bsid was the personification of evil and jpl the white knights. Epic was foundet and everyone laughted at them and no... trickster... mkoll was better than you, not even the same league. I joined epic because I wanted to scrim again. JPL was invite only and I didnt want to apply to BSID. The newbies in our community propably cant imagine it but the bsid of the past had some of the weirdest fucktards of the whole community as clan members. They died the day simon left the clan because he couldnt stand it anymore. ...and I left epic because I couldnt stand trickster anymore. Trickster matured alot over the years. When he joined the community he was a selfish kid that wanted to controll everything. Hes actually quite ok nowadays. I joined JPL some weeks after that because of skiedragon asking me to do it all the time and I was to involved in the community to not be in a clan. Yeah empires is a very good game but I dont have time anymore to play alot of games. I could write alot more but this is already a long post etc... bla bla. People that stood out for me: (not a complete list by any means) Daruk / Sonecha: Duo infernale, balancing on the thin line between sanity and just beeing fucking nuts Krenzo: for making this game Dubee: beeing the white knight of empires, always joining the not stacked team Mahtipakarat: craziest jeep driver under the sun Simon: the voice of sanity in a room full of weirdos LordDZ: funny and nuts Trickster/Slade/Omneh: great times playing stupid games with you Youzy/Predator: I HATE THAT YOU BOTH ARE BETTER THAN ME Communism: Drunk ramblings in voicechat where always fun HSM: most entertaining enemy Valiant: the manliest voice Deadpool: always laid back Bob, fishstick, opie: always fun to have on the team beerdude: "pupper": hey do you know how to comm. "beerdude": dont worry im propably one of the best 3 coms in this game. "2min later" help i somehow drove the cv into a crater and im surounded by enemys hobbes: dont touch the CV Haschtewas: anyone wants to 1v1 on district... I bet I forgot at least 10 people... dont take it personal
I started playing empires when I read this article about it in the June 2006 PCGamer magazine. I thought the mod was awesome but is was really buggy back then (version 1.04 or something) and the servers crashed a lot. The mod kind of died and I waited eagerly for 2.0 to come out. When 2.0 did come out it was the main game I played for like two years. First clan I join was ghost clan and when that collapsed I ended up in EPIC clan. I mostly stopped playing empires because I got bored of it, the games aren't the same like they were in 2.12 days because every game used to be like playing in an organized pug every night with 64 players.
Is anyone else noticing the recurring theme that pretty much anyone that was in ghost and who still plays is now in epic?
I think the first version I played was 1.08 or something like that, when I was quite young (around 14, I think). I remember running around not having a clue what to do on duststorm. I stopped playing until 2.0 came out (it was around this point that I started using my mic, much to the dismay/delight of others), played quite a lot until 2.24 and then kinda got bored/moved on to other things. I think one of the reasons I kept playing Empires was because of the community; as much as it pissed me off sometimes (I think that happened to everyone) there was something that made me keep coming back. I remember my first Empires map that Trickster, Omneh and some other EPIC guys helped me test. My god, it was terrible, but Trickster did at least have some constructive criticism for it and we made some funny screenshots on it of parenting buildings to the NF CV that might be lying around on the interwebs somewhere. Also, Omneh said he liked my brushwork. ove: I'm grateful for the opportunities I've had to further my skills as a programmer while contributing some behind-the-scenes (and frontend) stuff for Empires and EPIC. I find that nowadays I don't play games as much anymore. Growing up and stuff I guess. It was fun/aggravating while it lasted. Uh, what? Is that a good or bad thing? :confused:
