SST Nostalgia

In celebration of their 10th birthday, Google has for a limited time pulled out of their archive the oldest index of the web they have. This index goes back to the end of 2001. Being curious, I decided to do a search of ‘starshiptraders’ to see what I would find:

Starship Traders Webgame: A free online realtime multiplayer …
StarshipTraders.com. (There are 7 players online @ 02:29 KST). If you are a new
player please read the information below. Enter your name or a pseudonym: …
http://199.44.248.254:1880/ – View old version on the Internet Archive

For a limited time you can go here: http://www.google.com/search2001.html and search the web as it was back in 2001. Click on ‘View old version on the Internet Archive’ to see any page found as it was cached back in 2001. I found the log in page for the game as well as the team page for Game 000. I believe the search will be up for the month of October so be sure to check it soon, and look up starshiptraders for a little SST Nostalgia.

End of an era

That’s it, the IOResort server is no longer responding as of 15:00 AEST (+10:00).

I grabbed a copy of the rankings about 4 hours ago, which I’ll post later today. If anyone has a newer version let me know.

Farewell TLF & TLR! It’s been a blast!

On a related note, Space Tryant has also disappeared.

Maintenance

This blog was recently updated to WordPress 2.5… but it turns out that quite a few of the plugins I use are either incompatible, outdated or broken, and some are just plain toxic! 😛

So I’m now reviewing, updating and fixing as much as I can.

If you experience any problems or notice a problem that I haven’t, send me an email, leave a comment or send me a message on TLF or TLR.

Polls: No updates or patches since September 2006… also turns out they haven’t been accepting any new votes for a couple of months!
FIXED The code I added from the BadBehaviour plugin to prevent ballot stuffing by a certain user needed to be updated due to a RBL server returning false positives.

Downloads: Where do I start… I’ve got the latest version from Oct 2007, the recent addition of some AJAX functionality to the admin pages broke three other plugins (I’ve spent weeks trying to fix the other plugins and only just made the connection)
REPLACING Found a better plugin that also allows multiple versions of the same file… should be fully cutover to the plugin in a few days. 🙂

Recent Comments: Well, all looks good to the readers, but this plugin is almost 4 years old, and completely breaks the widget system.
FIXED A bit of code editing fixed the widgets, but I’m thinking I might replace this plugin.

Cheers,
KRY

Comvatars out, Gravatar in

I’ve finally gotten around to changing the Avatar system for this blog.

The old avatar plugin (Comvatars) was cute, but only had a limited number of images that could be used.

The new avatar plugin uses images from Gravatar.com, which allows any image a user may want to be their avatar.

So go visit Gravatar.com and sign up for a gravatar.

Cheers,
KRY

SST sites

One of the reasons I wanted to start this site was the slow disappearance of all things SST related.

If you do a web search on the terms SST / TLR / StarshipTraders / IOResort most of the entries returned are links from Web Game directories. After weeding through all these you may (if you’re lucky) find a link to something like The Wog’s old website or similiar.

The only other available sources of content are the two (three?) yahoo groups dedicated to these games… however, due to a lack of moderators, these groups only seem to be an endless source of spam.

So what can we do about this, what are our options?
1) Create new fansites! – Easy to do, however they never seem to last.
2) Get some blogs going – Even easier to do, go to blogger.com, wordpress.com, live.com and start writing. Blogs don’t have to have a single author/owner, and most can be imported into other blogs if something better comes along.
3) Share information and links – If you’ve got some info, get it posted somewhere!

I did some Web trawling earlier, and found an interesting players guide written by EMPNEFSI about two years ago. The original guide can be found here, but I’ve archived a copy here as well.

The trawling also turned up some blogs… World of Starship Traders, and a couple of old Vet’s appear to have started blogs. One of these vets appears to have had a Nimrod problem as well!

If you know of any fansites I don’t have listed, let me know… If you have any (constructive) ideas for this site, feel free to pass them on.

Speaking of ideas… I’m considering writing a Bunker Buster plugin for TLF. The idea is that a random bunker location will be revealed once a week… what happens to the bunker then is anyones guess. To be fair, all bunkers will be included, no Team or player favourism. No details of who the bunker belongs to, or the strength of the defences will be revealed by the plugin. Readers will be able to submit new bunker locations. 😀

Online graphs problem

Something strange is happening over at ELF… the number of logged in users is jumping all over the place which makes the graphs look very strange.

I’ve done a quick workaround with the graphs, so they look a little saner.

Sane Graph
Sane graph
Crazy Graph
Crazy graph

I’ve sent Dragelet an email about the strange figures, as I think it’s something that should be investigated.

If (and when) the figures come good, I’ll restore the ELF data from a backup, which will remove the bogus data…

Silence of the Trolls

I really have to check my email more often… here’s another message that was blocked by the anti spam plugins.

author: mister e
email: elnimrod AT gmail DOT com
url: http://www.kry-cant-handle-the-truth.au
comment: kry is blocking my proxies IPs. i can't post anymore. what does
blocking proxies do for you anyway KRY? is it that important that you have to
spy on who i am and gather information on me? you just have to have that. not
wanting you to spy on me has nothing to do with balls. or does it drive you mad
that you just cant stop me from voicing the facts that contradict this 
propaganda without resorting to this pathetic anti-proxy excuse. you probably
use that and other means to censor all those who aren't in love with you. are
you afraid the truth will get out? i'm not as brainwashed as everyone else is
here.

i'm just hoping i'm on a proxy he hasnt found to block yet. 

Nims

Hmm… how should I respond to such well constructed accusations?

1) I’m not blocking any proxies… the anti spam measures I’ve implemented apparently has the ability to block known ‘OPEN’ proxies from being able to submit posts. Excellent! Looks like I’ll have to double the monetary contribution to both of those plugins!
2) I’m not stopping anyone’s voice… I’ve posted up any valid comments I’ve found which have been blocked. The thing is, this will probably be the last time I do this for you, as there’s very little validity to anything you’re posting. If you’re not grown up enough to play by other people’s rules, I suggest you refrain from interacting with those people who do.
3) Nothing you do drives me mad… doesn’t that just piss you off? 😀
4) You have yet to provide any substantial facts…
5) Thanks for signing this comment… Now everyone will know who my troll has been.

Ok, now to clarify some of the rules for this site…

I hate spam, so there are anti-spam plugins running… if these plugins happen to block the occasional legitimate comment, that’s unfortunate. If these plugins stop comments from people who insist on using known ‘OPEN’ proxies, tough!

If you’re unable to submit a comment directly to this site, and you’re reluctant to email me directly, leave me a message on the TLF message board, I may (or may not) post it here on your behalf.

If there’s any content on here that you object to, let me know and I’ll consider removing or editing the content. (This does depend on who the Author was)

I’m running this site to help promote the game(s) I like to play. If you don’t like the game, don’t visit this site!

Okay, the troll has now been fed and mocked, let’s all go and have some fun! 😀

Macros, bots, clients and scripts – The secrets of SST

Long before the current crop of clients in SST, there was automation in one form or another. It was just kept secret from most of the players and used just by the elite to rule the game. Many of the features now available in the game were introduced by Ray to help balance the game, things like the macro, the auto-scoop and the scout launcher. And later on, spurred even further automation. As more graphical based games started flooding the internet, the client port was added and the graphic client was born and evolved into what some people know as the Kirellii client. And which is probably the source for most of the current clients and bots being used these days.

Continue reading “Macros, bots, clients and scripts – The secrets of SST”

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