archives3

This Web site was created at www.homestead.com. You can easily build a customized Web site for yourself or your business using our simple Web page building tools.Javascript is either disabled or not supported by this browser. This page may not appear properly.

The newest entries are at the foot of the page, so start scrolling...

Monday May 7th, 2001:

Crossfire has sent an e-mail about "his" (or Pimpfrog's) strange behaviour yesterday - find it on Archives II. He mentions that clan DW is dead, as Mike is not playing NAB and he is playing very little. Duo tells me his site is coming down, at least for a while, as Homestead keeps messing things up and losing the graphics. B-Ball has given his site a "new look", and that works well.

Justin has got a new remix/retex on his idrive, WW Four beta by name. It is obvious something terrible has happened to Civil War Remix - the grass is gone, the place is a wasteland, the wind whistles bleakly. Add a few crazed zombies and you'd have a really fun place!

Tuesday May 8th, 2001:

He may be on vacation, but SLAM has sent us this report from his hideaway: "I'm in Florida, but I do have regular internet access during this venture, and so I can keep you updated on what's going on that will affect you when I get back (heh, you think I'm on VACATION down here? I'm still working on what I'll be working on when I come back! :-)).

"The night before I left, I opened up NerfEd, and started messing around with a few basic ideas I think I either dreamed or daydreamed about. Soon, I had a general idea of what I wanted to do, and I built one of my nicest skyboxes yet. I left it that night with not quite 200 polygons. I have been drawing up the final blueprint for the level, which like all of my levels, will be even better than the last one ;-). Yes, this one uses the Quake3a.utx package, but it uses it in a totally different perspective. I guess you'll have to wait and see it."

Sounds good. For some reason, Homestead downloads worked for me this morning; Icedude's DOM-UTbooty Unreal Tournament map was "not a valid archive" apparently, but Galen 99's pair, Space Station (with JB99) and Light Blast, are good solid little NAB arenas, and screenshot/review pages should be up today.

Oh, Crossfire mentioned that Pimpfrog is his stepbrother, which is why they have been known to share the same computer. Like they say, you can choose your friends, but you're stuck with your relatives!

Wednesday May 9th, 2001:

I suppose I should have been suspicious when it was Black Ninja who kindly gave me the address for the "Alpha Elite" website, but Alpha Flight, mysterious leader of the mysterious clan, now reveals that he is - Black Ninja! Lord of Darkness, Fry, & Vision are presumably also ex-KnC members. I understood BN to say that he was happy for Dr.Jekyll to remain in CD, however. I hope so, as Doc's a fine player and a real asset. BN made a Forest server to tell me his news, and so, predictably, scored around ten times as may points as I did! He is still unable to play very much at the moment, however. Also on hand was CurtSquirt, though he was calling himself "The Weakest Link" and seemed puzzled when lots of people kept saying "Goodbye" to him. PimpFrog had been on earlier, and someone asked if he was really him, or Curt in disguise...

SquirrelKing, the Elf Leader, pledges no more Elf attacks on our servers, just normal play. His clan has been expanding into other games - UT, all the Quakes, Diablo I & II, and soon StarCraft; with so much clan stuff to organize, he has very little time to actually play NAB. Poad dropped by while we were talking, and some heavy NAB action ensued - him scoring faster than both of us together, of course!

CurtSquirt has redesigned his site. It's looking good, but he warns he is not playing NAB much at the moment...

Thursday May 10th, 2001:

Boom(slang)'s update mentions Sharpknux's rather brief visit to his server yesterday, for what he called his "last game of NAB"; let us hope Sharp doesn't stay away from us too long, he has done a lot for our community - which includes the NAB Forum of course, so remember to drop by there regularly!

B-Ball tells me that he is adding another map to his "coming soon" list, which already has some tasty-looking arenas on it: Honor, which is unusual as it comes from the Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force demo. The "holomatch" part, rather than the single-player progression, I think. West Seiydder's NAB Community's Message Board still seems to have problems, with messages I try to post just failing to appear - but it's still worth signing up as a member...

Friday May 11th, 2001:

Tomorrow is the Clan League II event - let's hope everything runs smoothly! Today, on the other hand, is Boomslang's Birthday, he's now twelve - so everyone round to his place later for a slice of the cake, right? Happy Birthday, Boom!

I have fearlessly managed to infiltrate the highest levels of Clan Destiny for you, and grabbed a report and screenshot of SLAM's top-secret Security Testing map - so head for the Review Index and click that line. Nerves of steel and great agility are going to be needed if people are going to pass that particular test, I think...

B-Ball tells me that he will do a second remix from Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force, as well as Honor - this one is called Delta Station. It will be good when we have some new maps like that to look at, but at the moment everyone seems to be waiting for SLAM! He should be back from Florida on Sunday, but whether that will leave him any time for NAB work, we will have to wait and see.

Saturday May 12th, 2001:

I have added links to the "NO_TS" map pack that FeEdiKo has made, containing versions of
Amateur Arena, Condemned and HoverCraft that do not include the triple strike; just use the "Review Index" button, and go to one of the three appropriate screenshot/review pages. Useful versions of those maps to have, particularly for Tourney use etc! We have also begun our third Archives page, which starts with last Monday's entry; we just reached the end of the available page-length on Archives II!

Ace (as Acemaster2000 now calls himself) has joined CD, and is taking up the post of Clan Mapmaker. General policy should be for maps to be made available to everyone, rather than exclusively for CD members, though there might be exceptions for special testing or training areas.

Boomslang updated on his Birthday; it sounds as if he had a hard time at school, which is often the case. I was lucky, my birthday was always during the school holidays, so no being given "the bumps" or anything!

So, any new maps coming this weekend? Things have been awfully quiet lately, and this beautiful early-summer weather does not help! Maybe The Unknown will release that new Lego map he showed Duo...

The Clan League II should be later today, and the CD team are quietly confident. Check out the CL2 website tomorrow, and see if there are any results posted! And while you are doing such things, don't forget the NAB Forum, the NAB Community, and indeed the Hall of Fame - have you voted yet?

Sunday May 13th, 2001:

Well, earlier in the day Boomslang was saying that Rainmaker would postpone the Clan League II event (yet) again because not every team had four registered players - but the website still said "May 12th". Rainmaker himself did not respond to MSN Messenger Service messages. But he just did not turn up, and finally today the date for the event on the CL2 page has changed to Friday June 1st. Is he at all serious about this? The "teams" page seems to have gone wrong, as well. This event just does not seem to be working, mainly because its "organizer" just is not doing anything, visibly, about it... I don't think the lack of the Gamespy pointblast server made any difference, as for CL2 games surely a special team server is needed?

Anyway, As B-Ball mentions on his site (which now has the classy address of www.nerfarena.de.vu), after we had hung around for ages trying to register, we went off and played a team Hall of Giants game, which made a nice change, and was fun. And then B-Ball went off to try testing some CD candidates for the Security Section on the CD Security Training map, staying up until about 4:00am to do it! I also seemed to spend a fair amount of time in Ride the Dragon Remix, which Tmon & Tux's server seems to be running back-to-back lately. Other players included Black Knight and Armor, who is changing his name to Hulk, plus quite a few of the usual suspects.

Monday May 14th, 2001:

An e-mail has arrived from The Unknown, creator of our four favourite Lego maps. He warns that he has almost no spare time at the moment, so his second Lego map pack is proceeding rather slowly - expect it in "a couple of weeks to a couple of months maybe". Going by the first pack, it will be well worth the wait!

SLAM is back. "Okay, I'm back home after a fun and exhausting vacation. I've revised a list of things to be done in NN, and I guess I'll just have to see how it comes along," he says. I know B-Ball will be glad when he's online, he has been very very busy testing people on the Security Testing CD map - I was telling him that probably half the candidates were well-known NAB players in disguise, just wanting to play SLAM's latest map. Mainly CurtSquirt, probably, lol!

The good news was that one, Black Knight, was actually Sharpknux, taking time off from his plans for World Domination - great to know he has not left NAB! He was telling me that he wants to arrange a kind of "Boot Camp" training exercise for the newer NAB players, probably on a specially-made map he is planning. Sounds an excellent idea, so keep watching here, or on his own site, for progress. Of course, him posing as a new NAB player and joining CD and trying out for Security did take up a lot of people's time, but it is certainly worth it to have Sharp back with us all. And Icedude is back, too, a check of the NAB Forum reveals - some nasty virus problems have been overcome now, but the maps he was in the process of making have been lost. But the 'Dude himself is back, that's the main thing!

Tuesday May 15th, 2001:

B-Ball has had a good idea; go to his "NAB Covers" page and you can see the front and back covers (and the CDs themselves) for both the European and US versions of Nerf ArenaBlast. The European back cover has German text, but carries the same pictures and design as the United Kingdom version. All very interesting!

The password for the Clan Destiny "Hidden Page" has been changed; CD members should get the new one from me. The CD Security Testing map is not normally posted there, however - just sometimes, by arrangement!

West Seiydder is getting married in a couple of years - and if you want to see a photo of the Lucky Girl (?), Emma, check out the NAB Forum, where he gives us a link. He has a girlfriend like this, and still finds time to play NAB...? Look under "NAB In General" and "Big News"...

Wednesday May 16th, 2001:

I noticed a couple of the "web polls" on sites, when checking round this morning. CurtSquirt's "Who is the Best NABer?" gives the message "This poll (9738) was one of the few lost during a recent and unfortunate miscommunication between billing and service departments", when you click to look at the results, to which they add "We do not carry complete backups of users sites for liability reasons." More intereasting is the Alpha Elite Clan's "What is the best NAB Clan?" 2 votes each for TC and TA, 5 for AE, 43 for DW, and 209 for CD, for a total of 261 votes. Which is excellent, very nice, made my morning - until I noticed that the total number of visitors to the AE site is only 140. Something strange going on there, lol!

Well, B-Ball has added another "NAB Cover", the back of the European instruction booklet - very similar to the UK version, though with a different address. And Pure has now got his Big Top Beta 1 map on his own idrive, to which of course we have links. A revised and expanded version of that map should be available soon - which is not something one can say about Nerf Neighbourhood, I guess, as SLAM is being taken off on a 3-week family vacation, starting early on Saturday. Let us hope he at least has access to e-mail...

Thursday May 17th, 2001:

CurtSquirt (or indeed Crossfire) has updated, and has a brand-new poll - so you can vote on whether he should return to NAB. Apparently he is starting to get bored with the over-hyped Tribes 2... He also mentions his 9-year-old friend Hulk, who lives just down the road and who he has helped get started in NAB. There are some people, including Black (Sharpknux) Knight, who are convinced Hulk is really Curt, so it was really funny yesterday when Curt said a few words over Hulk's keyboard to Sharp and the rest of us. You had to be there, I guess!

Hey, I just posted my 100th message on the NAB Forum, which seems to be doing nicely these days. Boom has posted plenty of details about his VE clan. He is going to have a "Protection" section, rather like CD's Security Section, so we must be doing something right!

Dax tells me he has sorted out the "lag" problem in Celtic Arena, so we can expect a version of that we can actually move around in soon. There were too many points-lozenges, apparently! They may look pretty simple things, but not if you are a computer, it seems. There are other maps coming along, too - more news as we get it. Which seems a logical thing to promise, right?

Friday May 18th, 2001:

Dax's Celtic Arena is finished, now; it looks much like any previous version you may have seen screenshots of, but without the "lag" (well, it isn't that exactly, but the effects are the same) which was afflicting it, caused mainly by too many points- lozenges floating about. It seems to me more of a fun place to explore than actually fight in, but a good start. And Dax says he will be sending me Dilapidated soon as well - "I still need to tweak a few things."

Boomslang has updated; he has also posted the first part of a NAB story on the NAB Community message board. Stormforce (who wrote the "Trouble With NerfEd" story) has got a new web page as well as his regular site; this one is dedicated to Clan Destiny, so we have put a link on the CD page.

And with any luck we ought to have a new screenshot on the "Front" page, celebrating a million-plus score. Much cheating was needed!

Saturday May 19th, 2001:

Dax sent me a copy of the new map he has started work on, Delapidated - but he warns that he has a lot to add to it yet, and does not expect it to be finished this side of September. We have added a screenshot/preview page, so click to it by way of the Review Index page, in the usual manner. And we have now been able to add Celtic Arena to the Custer idrive, so go there and grab it, right?

My ADSL connection seems to be messing me about today - apparently I have received 16,034 bytes in the last half hour or so, which does not quite tally with the 576,000 bytes per second it claims! So that leaves me trying to work with an old-fashioned modem connection, so don't expect to see me playing this weekend unless the ADSL comes back on properly...

Galen99 has changed his e-mail address; it is now JLGLDR99@aol.com, OK?

Over on the Alpha Elite site, Alpha Flight (Black Ninja) reports he should be able to play NAB a bit more in upcoming weeks, which is good news.

Sunday May 20th, 2001:

Alpha Flight has updated his "Alpha Elite" clan page. He reports that they now have six top-flight members in the clan. And he tells me that he has started a new idrive account, with two new maps there already - but he is not letting anyone have the idrive address yet! I warned him not to save up until he has about a dozen, last time he did that we were overwhelmed with good stuff, and some excellent maps got almost overlooked. He hadn't gone to bed yet when I got up, or indeed for an hour afterwards; I know there is a five hour time difference, but that is still a pretty late night for anyone - about 5:00am...?

Well, various threads continue on the NAB Forum, including the "Rules of Gentlemanly Conduct" - to which presumably we need to add a "Code of Ladylike Behaviour" or something! My ADSL connection came right yesterday evening - and then failed when I was playing, after five minutes. But it came back later, and has been okay today, at least so far. These things always happen at weekends!

Pure is working on a website; we should have a link to it before too long, but he's waiting for a reply to an e-mail before some news can really be confirmed or released.

Tuesday May 22nd, 2001:

I would have updated yesterday if there had been any news; I guess with the warm and sunny weather, people have got better things to do than play NAB or make new arenas. So I downloaded a variety of Unreal Tournament maps, skins, and voice packs instead...

Boom has got a page of his site devoted to Veteran Elite, and has named the founder-members of his "Order of Defence" team - BoomSlang, Ace, Scouse, and Dreamcatcher (previously Andy), who are the four "Top Guys" in the clan, plus Mononoke. They stand ready to fight off any threats to VE, one of the largest NAB clans; and of course VE has allies, clans which will fight alongside Boom if some cruel threat comes along. There do seem to be some scheming individuals out there, unable to form decent clans of their own, who think that they can provoke Boom into an "ownership war" and, if they win it, "own" the clan. That isn't my idea of how clans work, and I don't think it is Boom's, either...

Ace was saying that a lot of pages of this site load too slowly, because of the number of links I have on them. So, I will be trimming off some buttons, to see if that helps. There isn't much I can do about the "Review Index" and "Screenshots" pages, as their whole point is to have lots of links, while the white-on-black "Front" page is really designed for people with a fast connection or a good book to read, and the "Links" page has to have all its links, right? But I will do what I can - see if it makes any difference for you.

Wednesday May 23rd, 2001:

Justin has made use of the "photo albums" function of his idrive - the screenshots there include (on shot 1's scoreboard) two million-plus scores, and various places that only "ghosts" can visit! Crossfire (CurtSquirt) has got his UT disc back, and so will not be playing NAB for a while, he says; he has a forum and an e-mail arrangement running. Hmm, I wonder what smileys the forum has...?

West Seiydder (NerfJoker) responded to my "ownership war" thoughts here yesterday on the NAB Forum: "lol this would be about me. hehehe. But hey, why not add a little excitement to the game. I have not seen a single clan war since I started playing NAB." And SLAM e-mailed to say "Okay, this isn't right...NO ONE can take a clan away from its leader, especially no one from outside. If some idiot tries to challenge you or something, just forget them. Also, no clan was ever wiped out by a war, so don't worry if another clan "challenges you to the death." They can't touch you, and they're morons for thinking they can." Well, there was a bit more than that, but that was the main part. Good to know that SLAM still has access to the internet, even during that three-week family vacation!

Elsewhere on the NAB Forum, there are plenty of tips on the "cheat codes" you can use to make your character big, small, invisible, shoot rockets out of ballzookas, spawn megapowers, and generally have fun. Great potential for some really weird screenshots, I think...

Thursday May 24th, 2001:

Ace says he is making a "Target Tag" version of Amateur Arena, which sounds like fun - where do the targets go, I wonder? Boomslang has got a new front page for his site, which should be quicker-loading and indicates which sites he links to have actually updated recently, which is a neat idea. Pure's new site seems to be the winner on the number of recent updates, as far as I can see, so check him out too. Oh, Pure, a useful small tip...the drop-down menu from "edit" at the top left of the Homestead screen does include an option to "undo delete", which I have found very useful. Or just close the page without saving it and you are left with the page as it was when you started. The drop-down menu from "page" includes "page bar" as an option - click that, and choose the other (hide frames) version, to banish the bar!

I have been busy taking the blue/grey page bar off as many pages as I can - I got a message that I had 58 new pages to upload, at one stage, and that was only part of it. I think the screenshot pages are clear now, and a proportion of the more recent review pages. Work will continue...

Friday May 25th, 2001:

His Amateur Target Tag map will actually be a brand-new arena, Ace assures us, not just the old place we play all the time with "TT" added. Presumably it will use the Amateur textures, and the general spirit of the place.

Well, Boom(slang) has updated, and put a short story on his "Cover" page - or is it the start of a serial? He has a couple of intriguing screenshots from an early, pre-release version of the NAB demo, too, which I had never seen before!

Pure has updated, assuring us that it is only Fry who hates other clans, not the whole of AE - and the Alpha Elite site has got new stuff, too. They have added some new members, and Alpha Flight himself is offering to train any of his people who need to improve their skills, which sounds a good offer.

Justin has added quite a few more screenshots to his idrive "photo album" - mainly fairly weird shots, but hey, it all adds to the fun.

Saturday May 26th, 2001:

If you are in CD, but have not got the new password (after "victory" was retired) for the CD Hidden Page, then you have a slight problem - how will you ever manage to get hold of the new CD Training Map, specially created by Ace, which is posted there now for download? FeEdiKo, B-Ball and I tried it out this morning, and it looks smooth!

Looking at the NAB Forum, and indeed replying to something West said (West Seiydder/Supreme), I wondered if some sort of "challenge tourney" would be a good idea, where any two first-rank players who met online could agree to go to an empty server for a one-on-one. Afterwards, the loser e-mails me the result, I put it in the next update, and after a while we have enough results to have some sort of contest of the top players...

Alpha Flight (Black Ninja) updated the Alpha Elite site, mainly about how some people are not nice to "newbies", and how we ought to encourage new NAB players. You can't argue with that! Personally, I do try, unless I am engaged in a life-or-death struggle with another player at the time. There is always the risk that the "newbie" is really some "oldbie" messing around, though, so people can be a little bit cautious about offering too much help!

Inspired by Boom's screenshots yesterday, CurtSquirt has put some more details about "The Evolution of NAB" on his site, including some more shots with strange-looking Heads-Up Displays. Do take a look!

Sunday May 27th, 2001:

Dax has released a new map he calls Sumo, because, as with Japanese Sumo wrestling, if you step outside the fighting circle you lose. It will probably be modified and improved as it is not perfect yet, but you can download it from the Custer idrive, and try it out, okay? We do have our screenshot and review up if you want more details, so click through to the Review Index in the usual way...

The Unknown, maker of those cool Lego maps in the first Lego map-pack, is still hard at work on pack two, but he has taken time out to make his own website - we have our links to it up on the Links page, and the Front page. Lots of nice new screenshots of the maps he is working on, and more stuff to come! Alpha Flight has also posted shots too, with The Unknown's permission; Alpha Flight (or indeed Black Ninja) has also got his Codes page full of good stuff - it is protected by a password you need to get from him, though. Still, a lot of the codes are on the NAB Forum too, plus plenty of other interesting entries. Boomslang is working on a new single-player tournament, so watch his site for details!

from: Ace to: Custer@NerfArena.com subject: My Mutators!!

Hi Custer.

Yesterday I was playing around with the script editor thing in NerfEd, and I made some mutators.

The first, NoWeapon.u, removes certain weapons. The classes under it are:

NoBallzooka

NoWildfire

NoScattershot

NoNerfCannon

NoPulsator

NoTripleStrike

NoHyperstrike

NoWhomper

The second mutators package is NoPoints.u. No, you still get points, but you must only get them by shooting others! Its subclasses are:

NoPointsPickups - Removes points that appear

NoTargets - Removes all targets

You can give them to everyone if you want. I hope everyone will use some of them, especially the NoTripleStrike and NoTargets mutators. =) See you later.

-Ace

Monday May 28th, 2001:

Ace has sent a couple of Mutators, which I have put on the Custer idrive. The e-mail he sent with them is on Archives III - I assume you put both files in the Nerf "System", and then they work as extra "cheats". With NoWeapon.u you can take certain weapons (such as the triple strike) out of an arena your server is hosting, while with NoPoints.u you can get rid of points-targets and points pick-ups.

Dax sent through a second version of Sumo - no Bots this time, some useful improvements "up top" and text prompts. He kept the map's name the same, so if you want to retain the old with-Bots version, rename it SumoOLD. The zip file on the Custer idrive for the new version I titled PM-Sumo][.zip - Dax will do at least one further version, I think - just add water!

Icedude has an idrive himself now, and has TheNABCannon.zip there - check our Review Index for Cannon Example, a simple map that is built around his new invention of a special NAB Cannon! He has also got 1 on 1 Amateur available there, his rather fun new map, which I should review today. And Spike sent me a rather more finished version of his "fragball" remix, Euro 2000 Remix, for me to check out!

Hey, Boom's new Tourney has nine top players registered now - he has increased the size to twelve people, so you can still sign up, just click the Tourney link from his cover page, okay? It should be held on June 9th or 16th, he says.

Tuesday May 29th, 2001:

Boom reports a change in the rules for his Tourney - if he and any two players (or for the final match, at present, three players) who are scheduled to play are online, they can hold the match right then, rather than trying to fit everything into one weekend. "This way it is similiar to your idea of a tourney, the "Challenge Tourney," he says. The prize for the winner will be to be able to call himself "NAB-MVP" after his name when he plays - though some "Wuss" has already copied that!

The Custer idrive now has Dax's Barracuda Sumo available, the latest version of his first "Sumo" map - however, it appears on the server lists as Barracuda, which will confuse people, and on the drop-down make-server list as a second Sumo. It also seems a little "laggy" to me, and while reducing the gravity is a nice idea, Dax may have reduced it rather too much. See what you think! Spike has issued a final version of his "fragball" remix, now simply Euro 2000 Remix. I guess I should update my review! Ace confirms that I was right about where to put the "muts" he released; you only need them if you make servers - even offline ones, if you use that trick to play the new arenas against Bots, using the player avatar of your choice, I imagine. We also have a new one up now: HealthBooster.u. This seems a cool idea of Ace's: "I made a more fun mutator than the others; it is the "HealthBooster" mutator. With this mutator in use, if you knock out another player, your health will automatically be "boosted" back up to 100! Same with the bots; if one of them knocks out another player, their health is restored also. This mutator is great if you want to go on a point spree!" And all in only 2 kilobytes...

Wednesday May 30th, 2001:

Tiggy has released the final version of Thunder, set high in the Sequoia forest, so rush over to The Blast Zone to download it! On the NAB Forum he is asking for your input on what sort of map he should try next, so tell him what you think - it is in the "mapmaking" section, unsurprisingly.

Icedude has 1 on 1 Sequoia on his idrive, another nice new map, the second in his continuing "1 on 1" series - our review is now up.

Hey, the end of this month means the end of the voting period for our (and Mac's) Hall of Fame - so, if you haven't voted yet, this is your last chance!

Dax has released a corrected version of Barracuda Sumo, which is up on the Custer idrive for you - it's the file PM-BarracudaSumo.zip, the one without the space in the middle! The one with the space I will delete soon, so if you are a completist about NAB maps, catch it while you can, okay?

The first game in Boom's Tourney has been played, though the result was too close to call: Peps versus Shignami. Poor Boom left a full server to download a new map so that he could enter my server where I was taking a screenshot, wanting to ask me to host the match - only for me to notice there was a place in that server now, and jump in! So he had to host the game himself...

Our Gamespy servers seem to have vanished, after the latest "upgrade" and support for new games at Gamespy - which is bad, if it means we have to rely on home-grown, smaller servers which can't take as many people - and, if they run the new arenas, are not accessible to new players. Let's hope they return soon!

Thursday May 31st, 2001:

Another new "1 on 1" arena from Icedude, 1 on 1 Orbital, available from his idrive; a rather simpler, sparser map than the previous two, intentionally, but still worth investigating. I put up Spike's new BattleField map on the Custer idrive, but it is in fact unfinished, so I guess I will take it down again soon! When it reappears it will be called Battle, as someone pointed out to Spike that there is already a map called "BattleField"! At the moment one main doorway is too low for even Todd to get through, and the sky is pumice/concrete. Thunderbird helped Spike to export the map, and Curt is now helping with the fixing-up - it looks like a rather useful arena, so let's hope everything works out okay.

I asked Ace for some further hints on how to use his mutators, once you've put them in the NAB "System" file. First choose your level, and start the server. Then hit [tab] and type "open [level name]?mutator=healthbooster.healthbooster", with [level name] being the name of the arena you have chosen. Then [line return] or [enter] or whatever you use to confirm a command, okay? You can run more than one mutator at the same time - for example, for an Amateur Arena game using two mutators together, what you'd have to type would be "open pm-amateur?mutator=healthbooster.healthbooster,noweapon.notriplestrike" to get rid of the triple strike as well as boost health. Hey, it works for me! Note that the only space in the string comes straight after the "open"...

Friday June 1st, 2001:

Justin sent me a copy of his latest retextured map - Euro 2001 Remix, which is his version of Spike's Euro 2000 Remix, logically enough. "I just improved Euro 2000, and made the soccer field a little bit greener. I changed a few of the blaster locations, and stuff. Also, Euro 2000 had some "concrete" textures, and didn't quite seem finished. I changed that :-). I might make another version of Euro 2000 soon, maybe not. Oh yeah, it also has a bit of music."

Sharpknux came on the Messenger last night, saying that, because he was playing another game now, and had also got himself suspended, he was not having anything to do with NAB now - maybe he will return one day. I hope it wasn't a lamp-post he was suspended from! This rather leaves the www.NerfArenaBlast.com site in limbo, though all its current pages and downloads should remain.

Well, the "healthbooster" and "notriplestrike" mutators certainly work, as we tested them in Mazon Remix yesterday. Having your health boosted back up to 100 when you blow away an opponent is rather useful! We still seem awfully short of servers, let's hope some of the e-mails sent out will get us some more...

Saturday June 2nd, 2001:

Sharpknux has been active on the NAB Forum lately, which, since it is his creation after all, is good, and brings a bit of form back to things; too many recent posts were short "flames" followed by big signatures! B-Ball has updated his site, with news that he has revised his downloadable "Codes Nerf ArenaBlast" so that it includes the latest mutators. I do wish he offered it as a web page too, for those people who would just like to browse it casually. And I've got the Review Index up to date with the latest maps, and even got Archives III up to date as well. And that is about all there is to report at the moment...

Sunday June 3rd, 2001:

FeEdiKo's latest map, TT-Aureecom, is now finished and available for download - take the handy link here to our screenshot and review page, which in turn has a (slightly slow) link to actually download the map. It works nicely for "Target Tag", and it works fine as a regular arena as well. Fee and I were playing for well over an hour last night before Joey joined us, battling against all four Luna Bots.

The mutators are working well; earlier I ran a rather busy server using, in the always-frantic Luna Bonus 2, notargets, nopointspickups, and notriplestrike - and then for the Skyscraper Arena I added healthbooster as well. Taking out targets and the points-lozenge that blowing someone away usually leaves does cut the speed at which scores mount up, but it avoids people "stealing" points, makes long-range sniping more important, and brings a slight touch of "UT" to NAB...

Justin tells me that he has a number of new maps, including a couple which make rather cunning use of "ballblast" mechanics; I await more details by e-mail! Alpha Flight has a map project or two under way; the Alpha Elite clan site has some early work on show. And the NAB Forum keeps busy, so is always worth checking on. Just remember to hit "mark forum read" when you finish each part, so that next time you will know where the newest messages are!

Monday June 4th, 2001:

We have added links to UltraBug's new idrive (on the Links and Front pages) for the very good reason that he has released his first three maps, all originals - and boy, are they original! Hop over to our Review Index and look up Castle Nerf, which was his first try at a NAB map, plus Swamp Snafu and Tootie-Fruity! They all support Bots, and they all look a lot of fun. UltraBug put a lot of work into these, so look out for some very cute touches and clever ideas.

Peps sent me an early version of Champ 2, a "one on one" map he is working on. Looks like he has got the hang of putting a map together - I'd better add that one to the Review Index too, as a work in progress. West Seiydder reports that he couldn't get FeEdiKo's TT-Aureecom to work, as he does not have the Quake3a texture file - quite a lot of maps use it, so most people should already have downloaded it with maps a few times, but as Id Software cracked down on the use of their textures outside Quake III, it is not generally available. Your best bet is to download an old map that includes it, such as (I just checked) good old Nali Temple Remix, okay?

Alpha Flight has updated the Alpha Elite clan site, mainly to warn that he will not be around much for the next two weeks, as important exams are coming up, and if he doesn't pass them, he will be brutally murdered. So his Sniping Map is likely to remain almost finished for a while; his secret idrive account has a new map on it, but he isn't revealing its location until there are five new maps to unleash upon us...

Tuesday June 5th, 2001:

I ran a server for Castle Nerf and then Tootie-Fruity last night, which gave me a chance to play them longer, with Wombat and his big brother UltraBug himself, plus Peps, Ashitaka and B-Ball mainly, and both maps did impress me - I found stuff I hadn't discovered before, and generally had a good time. So, both maps are highly recommended! B-Ball had trouble downloading from UltraBug's idrive, but I suppose the others, like me, managed it okay.

A message from Killer to say he is quitting NAB, which got boring for him...

Over on the NAB Forum, West Seiydder gives us details of his plans for a new map called Pax Romana, which is a kind of Senate chamber, with framed pictures of NAB clan leaders and other well-known players. He intends to have two different ways for clan leaders to settle disputes - either a brisk one-on-one battle (using an area based on Peps' Champ 2), or, as a test of smarts, something involving a maze and a puzzle. Sounds like fun, check under "mapmaking" for the full West Seiydder Story.

Well, not much else to report; B-Ball has some new screenshots, and the "Blog" at Sharpknux's site seems to be working again, though it is still telling us how nice his mother is, which comes under the heading of "old news"!

Wednesday June 6th, 2001:

Disturbing news on B-Ball's site, that idrive are closing down their service as of 18th June - which means that about ten idrive accounts we rely on, including mine, will vanish. So download everything you want as soon as you can! I will probably put what maps and mutators I can onto this website, even though Homestead is not very reliable for downloads, and space is limited. I didn't use it, but I also had a "myspace" account, and that service is closing too. A sign that some providers of free internet services are hitting trouble - I just hope that Homestead, and the NAB Forum "EZboard" people, are doing okay!

Crossfire tells me that he has four maps almost ready for release, including enhanced and improved versions of a couple of good ones: Fight Club Final and also Boeing Air Final. His Racing Mayhem is brand-new, and AE Enforced is a new training-type level, which will probably be available to all, when it's finished. As of last night, it was only about 10% done! Peps is adding a top level to Champ 2 (which at the moment appears on server lists as "1 on 1 Champion") - expect fire and fog, he says! In the first version, Bots seem to work pretty well, mainly because the place is too small for them to get lost...

Friday June 8th, 2001:

Well, I got the e-mail from idrive too - but that didn't stop me uploading two more maps there, even if they won't be there long! Champ 2 by Peps has now been expanded, with an upper area kindly added by UltraBug, so look for a map file now called Champion 2 ext - it is still not quite the finished version, as Peps wants to cut down on the rather generous supply of weapons there.

And Maze of Doom by Sk8er is now available. Be sure to go to our review and screenshot page, via the Review Index, first though, as I reprint Sk8's "ReadMe" file, which has tips about how to set off from the starting point, and what the final objective of your wanderings should be. And of course both map pages give a link-button to go to the idrive... sigh, what will we do without them...?

The "NAB Community" can host files, apparently, but you probably need to become a member to download them (not a problem, it just means getting a MSN "passport", which can be used as a basis for a hotmail e-mail account...), and the maximum size for any one file is 1.01MB - quite a few maps are larger than that, even when zipped! Any one community member can upload a maximum of 30MB of files, across however many MSN Communities he or she belongs to - but I have no idea if the downloads are reliable.

This is one of my busy weekends, so very little updating will be done this side of Monday; remember to check SLAM's idrive, he ought to be back from his three weeks away some time this weekend. Maybe good old Nerf Neighbourhood is nearly ready to have its final version published...?

Monday June 11th, 2001:

Dax has made a rather quick map called SLAMDUNK - not throwing SLAM in the water for taking so long over finishing a certain map, but a small yet enjoyable basketball map using the "Mighty Mo" nerfcannon. B-Ball has updated his codes page or download, while CurtSquirt reports that he has had a nasty accident on his bike (well, coming off it, I suppose) - much skin rubbed off on the roadway, and bruises. His mouse hand really hurts too much for much NAB or UT playing at the moment - so get well soon, Curt!

Mac's (and our) "Hall of Fame" attracted only 25 votes, in the end, but the worthy winner was Thunderbird, so congratulations to him. He has gone off to the family cottage in the country for the week, so things are going to seem awfully quiet on MSN Messenger around here!

Icedude mentioned something called Velora Remix. And I did try out a "beta" version of a (kind-of) remix by someone else, about which I am sworn to secrecy! I can't reveal anything about a big "signing" by one of the main clans either, yet, leading to a bit of a reshuffle of its top people.

Checking the NAB Community site reveals a new clan is out there and recruiting - Star Wars Clan. Is the force strong in this one? More news when we get it. LoneStar is mentioned as their Emperor.

The Champion 2 ext map may now be considered the final version, Peps tells me. Not a large map, but certainly pretty interesting. Remember, the idrives all close in a week, so download everything you want before it's too late...

Tuesday June 12th, 2001:

How nice to be able to start with a quote from SLAM after all this time. "Hey, everyone, I've made a new NAB site. This one doesn't offer all the content of my last site, but has something very important to gaming today: files. I've built it as a one-page, simple, no-nonsense site that will, after I finish uploading, have all the maps, textures, and more that everyone wants. Visit it and bookmark it now at http://www.crosswinds.net/~slamexpress/" - and, while the files were not yet working when I visited late yesterday, it sounds just what we need! In an earlier e-mail, he had mentioned that "Work on Nerf Neighborhood will continue as much as I can spare. At any rate, NN will have many new areas and surprises, and you will have it."

Curt reports that he is starting to recover, though one leg is rather bigger than the other. So maybe we will see him playing again before too long...

And the bad news is that Homestead, who host many of the NAB sites (this one included), say that they will soon start to charge people by the month for the privilege, except for tiny three-page sites. Eek...

Wednesday June 13th, 2001:

There are nine new maps (in his usual retexturing way...) on the Justin idrive, so if you want them, grab them quickly! Laser Tag did not work for me, the file somehow just was not a NAB map, but that still leaves Alien Planet Three, Sky of Fun ][, WW Four, one entitled "DSF [special lights]", Euro 2004 Remix, and Darkness, plus two that are technically BallBlast: Capture the Flag and Find Them All, though that last one, which is actually based on Civil War Remix, seemed extremely "laggy" for some reason. I will of course be adding review/screenshot pages...

New mapmaker SpUtNiK sent me his original BallBlast map Ball Attack, which is on my idrive. Click the special link-button to go to the brief review & screenshot, but check that you have the Crypt2 and Quake3a texture files before you download it! He is involved in a new clan that is forming, apparently, so watch out for further news of that, and a website and more maps in due course!

But time to quote SLAM: "For the next three weeks, I will be back in action as a mapper. My dad graciously decided to let me do my mapping every day until we move to Florida, so for the next three weeks, I plan to attempt to finish NN, and release my next project, Outcast Facility.

"Outcast will be a special kind of map. In one sense I am building it to make up to all the people whos computers couldn't handle NN. In another, I am building it as a tribute to the forerunners of modern 3D games. Some of the architecture and texturing (yes, custom textures) will resemble that of such classics as Quake I & II and Descent. It will run smoothly, and play well. I have big hopes for this one, and I'm sure already it will be one that many will enjoy. Construction is coming along quite well, and it should be little time before you see something of it released."

So, that sounds good! The "SLAM Express" site is still being worked on, as he finds a way to persuade Crosswinds to let him offer all the files he is collecting from the various idrives - so soon that link from his main page there should work!

Peps is trying to fix his NAB: too many "Assertion Failed: Actor Class..." error messages at the moment, so wish him luck. We may see less of him on-NAB until he gets it running smoothly. Alpha Flight had only one exam left, last time we talked, so he should be back in action soon. And a CD announcement is looming...

Thursday June 14th, 2001:

Alpha Flight has released the address of his new idrive, since that whole system is about to vanish: on it you will find two maps, Longest Yard 2.0 and Nerf Airlines, by Duo. The first of these is a 6.23MB download, as it includes three texture files the map needs: not just good old Quake3a, which you probably already have, but also Quake3c, and, at over 3MB unzipped, Quakearena. I can't play the map, though: I just get "Connection Failed" when I attempt to make a server. Nerf Airlines is a mere 1.77MB - a very fine arena, check out our review & screenshot page!

A new clan website has been revealed to us, made by the Star Wars Clan - and very nice it looks, too! We have added our links to them, so check the site out - and if you were wanting to join a new, fresh clan with some interesting plans, well, this looks like your chance! Ace has also made a new site - he is working on having all the maps available for download there, which is a massive task.

And the announcement from Clan Destiny is that, to celebrate their anniversary - Spike, their original founder and leader, has been invited back to head the clan once again! Spike was away from NAB for a while, mainly due to a bad internet connection, but he's back now, playing better than ever, and about to get a proper cable connection. Custer remains as co-leader, along with FeEdiKo, while SLAM, B-Ball and their other top people certainly make CD a clan to be reckoned with. So, exciting times - though unfortunately we really managed to annoy the leader of the clan Spike had been in recently, by "poaching" him...

Friday June 15th, 2001:

There were times yesterday when there was no NAB server of any sort online, not even a Demo one. I ran the www.NerfArena.com one for a while, but sometimes on a "new" map not many prospective players would have; there were two other servers running by the time I closed own, but none of our familiar, reliable friends. Let us hope that Tmon and Tux can get their server back up soon! SLAM tells me that, happily, the lack of the Thunder Clan Dedicated Server has been caused by the fact that "the place with the T1 connection just got a new server. Policer_O is now in the process of setting the new machine up, and says he hopes to resume the services of one of our last games." With any luck, of course, the dedicated server that will run all four "time zones" of Nerf Neighbourhood should be running soon. SLAM was telling me about what he has been adding to it, and if you think the Beta we have had for the last month or two is good - you ain't seen nothing yet!

Meanwhile, SLAM has released his Outcast Facility, a beautiful and nicely designed map well up to his usual high standards - and he was up until about 5:00 this morning working on NN! The new map is available on his new SLAM Express site - take a look at our screenshot and review, and then download it right away!

Saturday June 16th, 2001:

Sk8er has released Space Base One, an intricate system of corridors and more in the tradition of Orbitspire; he is working on Space Wars (Episode One), to be followed by a map based on his house and backyard - with a few surprises! Ace should be releasing a map called Battle Forts today, so check his site! "Don't think it's just another forts map; this one is way better (at least I think that! =). This one should be a really great map for a team game," he tells me.

Dax's Delapidated map has crashed beyond repair, so it doesn't look as if we will ever see a finished version; he is working on more "Sumo" maps. SLAM has done the "base" for his Nerf Neighbourhood now, and is working on the variations between the four versions. Boom is working on Deck 16][ Outdoors, with more weaponry and new textures; TA Clan has a new website; and Policer_O tells me that his Thunder Clan Dedicated server was down "because I got a new machine. The server is now a PentiumIII @866MHz, 256 MB Ram, and a 30 GB HardDrive, all operating under Win98SE. The old machine was a PentiumIII 600, 192 MB Ram, and 10 GB HardDrive, operating under Win95. So as you can see it is quite an improvement. Please let the others know." Sounds pretty good to me!

If you had any problem with downloading the texture file tlabcomp from SLAM, do try again, as he has re-uploaded it to the SLAM Express site.

Sunday June 17th, 2001:

Sk8er has released Space Wars (Episode One) - an interesting space map with a pair of good movers! He is now working on a map based on his own house and yard, with a nice big swimming pool, and at least one surprise - though the title of "Abducted" may give a tiny hint as to what that might be!

Ace, meanwhile, has released Battle Forts, which is available from his site. My first attempts to get it didn't work - but later on it downloaded fine, and looks a good place to fight. The TA Clan site has Rivers Beta, the first map Peps tried to make, for download... interesting!

That new clan that Sputnik (of Ball Attack) is involved with is called "Blizzard Clan" - if they are getting a website, we will learn more in due course, I guess...

We interrogated SLAM mercilessly about Nerf Neighbourhood - that map is going to be huge, so upgrade to a better computer while you can! He let slip that there will be a "ranch" area, much in the style of an improved Forest - which he might release as a stand-alone map, too. He was busy rebuilding the main base map, to deal with some rather obstinate clipping.

Remember, this is your last chance to download from idrives today, so have a final browse round, for old time's sake!

Monday June 18th, 2001: Nerf Neighbourhood Day!

Dax is working on a map called Alpha Training, and showed B-Ball and me around the rooms he has so far finished (so a screenshot & review page should appear soon...); Spike and I were Thunderbird's guests on PM-ARSequoia: "A great death- match map - for experts", TB says. It's now ready for release, so keep watching such download sites as SLAM's, I guess. As the name suggests, the arena is based on the Sequoia Speedblast map, but with plenty of stuff added!

Another topic has been added to the NAB Forum: Tourneys, to be moderated by Boomslang. Another good reason to join, if you haven't already...

Sk8er says "Ever since I started working on Space Wars I have wanted to work more and more with movers. But I also am inspired by SLAM's use of texture and lighting. My next map, PM-Abducted, will be the best map I have done yet, I plan on taking my time and adding as much detail as possible. Before now I have focused on the gameplay aspect of level design, now I'm going to work on the details and the visual aspect to make my levels look more professional. I hope after PM-Abducted is complete I will be considered one of NAB's top designers, along with people like SLAM, duo, and Boom."

Well, SLAM cut back the "time of day" Nerf Neighbourhood variations to three, day, evening and night - but it is still a 9.82MB download for the pack, available from his site and from his idrive, while it remains up. I intend to investigate it and offer a full report, starting with offering his ReadMe - so click the link to see how I'm getting on! He finished it at 4:00am this morning, and already is talking about a new map project - about which I am sworn to secrecy!

Tuesday June 19th, 2001:

I spoke to SLAM about his flawed masterpiece, Nerf Neighbourhood. Two of the times-of- day, NN-Day and NN-Night, do not seem very stable, though luckily the other NN-Evening version seems okay. See our review/screenshot page for details! I've taken a whole bunch of screenshots, so take a good look round. I even managed to get into the Sky area at night, by walking backwards slowly - not for long, though! "My Sis and I tried that too", he commented. "It worked for a while. We got all the way onto the stage, and could see the turntables. Then started looking around... and boom." I mentioned that I had expected to see dancers there. "I know. I had dancers on there, but the scene is too slow already. When I had dancers in there, they made MY computer start screen jumping. I wanted to have lots in there - but even just two slowed it down too much."

SLAM will have a go at fixing things, but "I need to take a break from that one for a while," he told me. "I'll work on it soon though - let me get some other things accomplished, and I'll see what happens." What he has done, however, is release the "ranch" section as a stand-alone Forest-style map, SLAM's Homestead - he, Alpha Flight and I had a fine time there today at about 3:00am their time, before breakfast for me. SLAM and I were meant to be "hunting wabbits", but the "HS King" was hunting us! Look out for the screenshot. And I am very glad to be able to report that the bad feeling between Alpha Flight and CD has been resolved, and we are all friends again now. The Tycoon area may also be released as a stand-alone map, maybe expanded a bit first!

Wednesday June 20th, 2001:

We now have 24 assorted screenshots of the three flavours of Nerf Neighbourhood up - and we have provided each page with "forward" and "back" buttons, so that you can browse through them nice and easily. Remember, the NN-Evening map is, generally, stable, and allows you to explore all the good stuff in the Skyscraper area - the other two are best avoided, until SLAM can fix and re-release them.

Sk8er has very nearly finished Abducted now, and it's nothing like the early version we have had a screenshot up for. You may need to increase the brightness of your monitor (using the [F11] key) to see it all, but it is well-made, clever, and innovative - not to mention spooky!

Alpha Flight reports that his Unreal Ed is no longer working, which means that he can't remix Unreal Tournament maps for NAB. He can continue to make original NAB maps, however, and is working on a few, as well as looking at some of his older maps and improving them.

Boom, inspired by the "Laser Tag" arena in Nerf Neighbourhood's Skyscraper area, intends to do a Laser Tag map pack, once he manages to do fog - which may also add to the fun in Swampy Beta 4, due out next month. Walkways of Death is also due then, while I think Deck 16 ][ Outdoors, with Sequoia-style textures, a new staircase added, and help with the movers by FeEdiKo, is due sooner...

Icedude has released his Icedude's Island, with the accent on chat and a little exploring - we'll add our screenshot and review soon, I'm sure, but it sounds good. Sharpknux wants it known that he will be happy to pass on any of his unfinished NAB maps to anybody who would like to finish them, which sounds a useful offer. Tmon & Tux have told me the details (and problems) with their dedicated server; as it uses an office computer, it is only usually up at weekends. Since they have changed ISP at work, for a month it has had to be used as an e-mail server instead, catching e-mails sent to their old address - but, by early July, it ought to be back to NAB use. A lot of work and family commitments have slowed down their remixing activities, but time, in the end, will be on our side.

Thursday June 21st, 2001:

Our review of Abducted 1.1, alias Abducted(fix), is now up, in the Review Index of course, along with SLAM's Homestead and Icedude's Island - next on my list is a proper review of SLAM's NN-Evening, now that I have got Archives III up to date...

Over at NerfArenaBlast.com, something stirs: Sharpknux has handed over the torch to Lucky and Pimp, who are hoping to get the map downloads updated. So watch that space! Sharpknux is also moving things along on the NAB Forum, looking for someone to administer it and come down hard on the "flamers and lamers", not to mention cutting the signatures down to size. Some of the current signatures, with a lot of large animated gifs, moving text etc, are certainly out of hand, and look remarkably silly after a one-line comment. He has given the boards a cool new look, too, so check them out. Alpha Flight has just been on MSN Messenger to tell us he has passed his exams, so he's one happy player!

SLAM continues to work on his new project - about which I am sworn to utter secrecy, so I can't tell you that it "spans the entire grid allowed by NerfEd", or that a certain building's "front door will not open on its own. It has to be blown away by a whomper. The effect is kind of neat. Parts of the walls and ground are blown away as well, leaving a smoking, slightly flaming crater." Security cameras, enlarged hummers to transport you around the map... I can't say anything, which is most frustrating. So, whatever you find out - you didn't hear it from me, right? After that particular map is done, perhaps Tycoon City, the Skyscraper area of "NN" with extra added goodness, will get to the top of SLAM's list...

Friday June 22nd, 2001:

Some news from SLAM for us: "Sharpknux and I are working together on a remix pack. It contains a lot of good maps from UT, including Noxion 16, Eternal Cave, and Abyss. We think there will be at least six maps in the pack. Three will be regular PointBlast levels, and three others will be Capture The Flag levels remixed for Target Tag. Taking some experience from my last Remix is helping me a lot in retexturing Noxion 16, and so far it looks really incredible. We don't know when this pack will be released, but we hope it will be soon."

So, that sounds like pretty good news, and stuff to look forward to; on the other hand, we had bad news from FeEdiKo. "My computer crashed (hard drive). I guess all files are deleted (maps). I won't be able to play on the weekend..." which means that some new remixes he was working on may have been lost. And today he added "I hope I'll get my computer back soon. I have not played nab much,because my settings were very, err... strange! I hope it works fine now with the GeForce3..."

SpUtNiK has sent us a copy of his new map, Dark Forest, which he describes as "mostly a bunch of trees and a sort of building - it's about 5.5mb unzipped, so it's pretty BIG, but it's fun to play in." I will investigate!

West Seiydder had a story to share with us, but space is tight, so find it on our "Welcome" page today, or on the NAB Forum, under "NAB in General", with the heading "Announcment" (sic), okay?

Saturday June 23rd. 2001:

Crossfire (or CurtSquirt) has issued the finished version of Boeing Air - which in the end seems very little changed from the Beta version we've had for some while, except for some work on the airplanes themselves. Well, he did say "Don't expect much, just a few variations"! Work on AE-Enforced is coming along well, and that ought to be released alongside Racing Mayhem, "a fun map that features an exciting race", and perhaps more...

Sharpknux has got an update on the front NerfArenaBlast.com page, letting us know that he, Lucky and Pimp are working to get the site updated, particularly the map down- loads; he is also looking into setting up a new NAB Tourney, like the one that Rainmaker attempted.

Sk8er tells me that "I'm making a new map, it is very similar to SLAM's Tycoon area in NN. I think its going to be a hit." - if it is as big, clever, good-looking and intricate then it certainly ought to be! Lucky, Pimp, Excalibur, Dr Jekyll, Hype, Zero and I were playing in the NN "Tycoon City" are last night, a friendly game of Assassination, where you have one VIP, guards for him, and an assassin who is out to kill the VIP. It's a perfect map for that sort of thing. I must check whether the "secret identity" of Excalibur is classified, but it was great to see him playing...

SpUtNiK's Dark Forest map looks good - check out our screenshot/review page, accessed as ever via the Review Index link!

Sunday June 24th, 2001:

This may seem hard to believe, but Crosswinds have deleted SLAM's entire site - again! "This server does not allow offsite linking" is the slightly strange message you get if you try to go there. Where would the internet be if sites did not link to each other? They say people learn from their mistakes - if so, the Crosswinds people must be getting pretty wise by now... So, the "SLAM Express" is no more, at least for a while. SLAM will be out of touch with us for some time after Monday, while the family moves to Florida - so he has decided to release the first two maps of that six-pack he and Sharpknux have been working on, Noxion 16 Remix and Abyss Remix, which Sharp says looks better than the Unreal Tournament original! Those fine people at Star Wars Clan have posted these maps for us, alongside SLAM's NN-Evening, so hurry over there and grab them while stocks last!

SpUtNiK's co-founder on Blizzard Clan, Scott, has released his first map, which he calls WOW. It is a fairly simple arena, as most first maps are, with some nice ideas - it will be interesting to see his future work, maybe the two of them will team up to really knock our socks off?

Monday June 25th, 2001:

The Star Wars Clan site is now hosting all four of the top recent maps, until SLAM gets back in business: Nerf Neighbourhood Evening, SLAM's Homestead, and the two remixes SLAM did along with Sharpknux, Noxion 16 Remix and Abyss Remix. Who knows, maybe they will add a few more today, just to make sure you drop by!

SLAM has been working on Sesmar Remix, but he won't finish it before his move to Florida; the computer gets packed up today, the freight company takes everything tomorrow, and then the whole family follow at the end of the week. So it may be a week or so before he is back with us! Anyway, he told me that he made a new skybox for the map. In UT, it is a "Domination" map, which means that there are three particular points that have to be controlled to earn points - in UT you just run through them to change them to your team colour, and you get points while they stay that colour, which they do until somebody from the opposing team runs through! SLAM is trying to find a suitable way to give them importance in NAB. We have put up a preliminary version of the review and screenshot page, which shows a screenshot from the UT version at the moment!

Also up, and ready for access via our Review Index page, is our page for a new map by Peps, entitled Pep's Brain. Not one of the more painstakingly-created arenas perhaps, but take a look anyway. Dax has been spotted testing a new map called Log Forts - let's hope he is able to share that with us soon.

Tuesday June 26th, 2001:

The NerfArenaBlast.com site announces that it is back in business, with Sk8er's recent and fine Abducted map and SLAM's recent remixes all available from them, which is good news - you should also find Pimp's Castle Vania, and SpUtNiK's Ball Attack. You still need the Star Wars Clan download for NN-Evening at present, however. As usual, we should be adding appropriate links-buttons to our review pages

Peps tells me that he has solved the instability problem with SLAM's Night version of Nerf Neighbourhood, so look out for N-Night2! And, as the removers are a day later than scheduled, maybe SLAM has had time to finish Sesmar Remix...? Ace says that he will soon be releasing a revised version of his fine Battle Forts map, with some new texturing.

Curt was telling me about the "Cool Program" available on his site; it sounds very useful, if you like the idea of Curt himself being able to open your CD tray (when the drive is not in use...) or get your printer to run a brief test! I think the term for that is a "trojan" program, so let's hope that Curt is the only one who can get it to run. Apparently at least 25 people have downloaded the file from him, either from his NAB site or his James Bond one.

SLAM and Curt have begun a site which will boast a "NAB Gallery" - real live photographs, and brief bios, of NAB notables. The idea is that the photos, if submitted at 256 x 256 pixel size, can also be incorporated into a special arena; this will, apparently, promote harmony and lessen the possibility of feuds and stuff, if we can all see how lovable and good-looking we really are. Yeah, right...

Wednesday June 27th, 2001:

Lucky, Pimp and Sharpknux have added NN-Evening (the zip that I made up, with a slightly revised ReadMe as well as the Hummer.utx file!), and now the correct zip file for B-Ball's enjoyable Basketball Center, which is a great place to play even if you don't like ballblast. Talking to Peps just now, NN-Night2 needs more work on it by SLAM himself. "I fixed the street dance but he needs more. He could have done it himself, so don't give me credit. He let me do it." Peps has also added his photo to the NAB Gallery; he mentions that his map entitled Pep's Brain was really just meant as a joke, rather than a serious map, so is unlikely to be released. Peps is working on a proper new map, now, which he hopes to finish by next week.

SLAM's Outcast Facility and Red Psi maps are now available from the front page of the Star Wars Clan site, so if you've not got them, you can get them now!

The final message from SLAM for a while came in: "I'm getting the computer packed up soon, and then I probably won't be online for about a week until we move in our new house. Before then, Sharpknux may release a "deathmatch only" version of Sesmar Remix, without any point targets or emphasis on team play. When I get back online, a team version of the map will be re-released." Good luck on the trek to Florida - remember, alligators don't smile because they are friendly - they smile because they are hungry...

Thursday June 28th, 2001:

B-Ball reports that Oracle Remix should be ready in a day or two now: we have updated our screenshot/review page. If you like Injector Remix, you'll love this one! Pimp was telling me that his new Dance Club map should be done in a week; he would have shown me round it in its current stage, but we were all having too much fun in a server which was running SpUtNiK's Dark Forest, followed by some really frantic gameplay in SLAM & Sharpknux's new Abyss Remix! Pimp has added some more maps to the NerfArenaBlast.com download system, including Space Base One, plus Space Wars (Episode One), Maze of Doom, SLAM's Red Psi, Thunder, and for some reason Peak Remix - its old download must have gone wrong, I suppose... As is our usual arrangement, we have upgraded our screenshot & review pages to link to these downloads, so if you've not got them yet, check them out!

Ace is redesigning his site; in future he will only have his own maps available for download - as well as his fun mutators, and how to use them. The "NAB Gallery" site, I see, has as well as the photographs of notable players, a page with a full list of SLAM's maps, with descriptions and downloads. Could be useful!

This is one of my busy weekends coming up, so there is likely to be a slight shortage of updates here this side of next Monday. So, just don't do anything very newsworthy until then, right?

Saturday June 30th, 2001:

Homestead have now announced how much they are going to charge for their new, improved websites: Charter Membership is $29.99 per year with, as a special offer to existing members, either a $10.00 discount or a doubling of the space on offer from 25MB to 50MB. In the new climate for internet companies, with many other online services folding or starting to charge, it sounds pretty reasonable - and they are still offering free sites of up to 3 pages, which may well be enough for some of the smaller NAB sites. Look at our Archives pages, you can fit quite a lot on one page. Current sites will be unaffected until the end of September... So, it looks as if this site should continue, although I am going to have to take down the section devoted to "Screenshots" at some stage, and maybe replace it with something a bit simpler. The Review Index etc, and the core pages, should continue in the regular way, although there will probably come a time in the next few months when we start getting rather close to the 50MB limit!

Well, not much NAB news to report. B-Ball has got his WinAmp skin, "Nerf ArenaBlast Menu", available for download on his site. West Seiydder is working on his "West Side" NAB site, but I don't think he wants us to link to it yet. It looks as if it should be a good place to drop by for news and match reports, though.

Monday July 2nd, 2001:

Pure is back from his vacation, and noticed, when trying to catch up on maps, that our Review Index's review/screenshot pages have a lot of useless links at the moment - ones marked "(somebody's) idrive" - so just ignore them please, until I have a better place to send you for the relevant download. With the removal of SLAM's site, we are without easy access to a number of maps; check NAB.com to see if Pimp, Lucky & Sharpknux have added ones I don't yet know about, though I try to keep up with their work.

Alopex reports "I've been busy with my new job, but pretty soon I should have plenty of time to sit around and make skins at work. Oh yeah, when I finally do, I'll be done with my web site!!!!" Sounds good to me! Curtsquirt, meanwhile, tells me that "I am importing the NAB skins to UT if any of you want them....and I think I'm going to remix some of the NAB maps into UT. So NAB will live on....Maybe not on NAB, but it will live on..." Curt is worried that as an online game, NAB may be entering its final season, with increasing competition from Tribes 2, Serious Sam, and all the other recent first-person shooters. But making NAB maps and skins available on UT would certainly help keep things going!

Blue_Ghost2 sent me an unfinished map that looks fun - but as it doesn't have a name yet, I can't really do a preview/review, can I...?

Tuesday July 3rd, 2001:

Alpha Flight was playing last night, he tells me, for about the first time in a month. "Kicked ass - first 5 minutes, 20000 points. I never lost any bit of skill." He is going to be playing more soon, once he whips his computer into shape. He warns us that he has about five new maps done, so let's hope he releases them soon!

The latest additions to the Star Wars Clan site are UltraBug's popular trio of maps, which are Castle Nerf, Tootie-Fruity and Swamp Snafu, so if you missed getting them before, you've got a second chance. Any other maps that vanished when the idrives and then SLAM Express went offline - well, if you can't wait for NerfArenaBlast.com to catch up, send in a request to Darth Animal, I guess! And the clan is recruiting, and happy to help train you if you're new, I gather.

Sk8er is working on some new mutators, a look at the NAB Forum informs me; " I want them to be a surprise for the most part", he says, "but here are a couple of my ideas: MidgetBoy and GoldenGun. The golden gun will be a mod for the secret shot that makes its darts "instant death" and make it shoot darts faster like bullets." A camera-guided rocket that explodes like a whomper (or redeemer) has also been mentioned, but Sk8er may need Tiggy or Ace to help him for that!

Wednesday July 4th, 2001:

A new map on Ace's site: Ace's Lair 1 BETA is the name, so I assume it is only a preliminary version, but it looks as if it should play well in a "rocket arena" kind of way! Our review/screenshot page is now up, and can be reached by way of our nice friendly Review Index page, right?

Sk8er emailed to say "This will be the last email I will write until the 17th; I will be leaving for Ireland on the 4th of July and landing on the 5th in Dublin. I just wanted everyone to know, so no one gets worried or writes me too many emails. It's been fun, I'll be seeing ya. If I get a chance I'll send you the flight no. to post on the website just in case any of you "UKers" get a chance to see me:)" - he'll be the one running about on top of the airliner clutching a triple strike...

And Happy Independence Day - any reports of huge spaceships hovering over the main US cities yet...?

Thursday July 5th, 2001:

Boom was back yesterday, for one day only - normal service will be resumed in about a week, he says. So, lots of activity on the NAB Forum. He tells me he is working on a Summer pack of 5 maps for us, and also, along with Scouse, going to do a non-Homestead website. He mentions that he played with Private Ryan and Sk8er, who are attempting to revive the old "82nd Air Pressure" clan...

West Seiydder may be on vacation, but I am adding his new website to our links, as he has left Emma in charge there. Also, $Baracuda$ has begun a new website; very little there so far, but he has asked to be linked, and he wants votes on what to name his new clan.

MSN Messenger wasn't working yesterday, but seems to be back on today. At one time I was one of four people visiting the NAB Forum - however, when I left and started up NAB, I found that nobody was actually playing...

Friday July 6th, 2001:

I couldn't get the download for B-Ball's Oracle Remix to work (just try for a less busy time, if you have that trouble), but B-Ball kindly sent it to me, and it looks impressive - not a type of map I like or enjoy, but you may well feel differently, and it certainly seems nicely done. Blue_Ghost2 has released his previously-unnamed arena, now called MAYDAY - the Star Wars Clan have it for download, and it looks as if it should play well. Review & screenshot pages for both these maps are now up, so access them by way of the Review Index, okay? Our friends at the Star Wars Clan have also posted the three mutators by Ace we used to have on our idrive, for the smallest download ever, so if you didn't get them, and sometimes make servers, you have a new opportunity. Check our Archives III page, May 28th to 31st, for details.

Private Ryan has restarted the 82nd Air Pressure clan, along with Sk8er, with a view to having "rescue the hostages" type special games, and maybe friendly fights against other clans. Ace is working on a new version of Ace's Lair which would have a hidden "lair" area in it. And Boomslang has moved his site from Homestead to Tripod; $couse and RaHzeL will also be working on it. I'd better change my links! Boom's one-day return has been extended, though at some point the plug will be pulled on him for a few days, still. He has been making up for lost time by making lots of postings to the NAB Forum!

Saturday July 7th, 2001:

SLAM has started to unpack in Florida, and managed to get online for a while. "I seem to have completely forgotten about Sesmar", he says. "As I recall, I gave an early version to Sharpknux for him to take care of for me, but apparently he didn't. SO I'll complete it myself, today probably. I am now on a 1 GHz machine temporarily, so I'm going to attempt to fix NN somewhat. Rebuilding will be faster.

"I just started on another map, by doing some experimental shaping of a large starship. I crafted the basic outside structure. When I designed it, I made it to equal approximately one mile. It would be a very large level, and I will most likely have to scale it down to half mile long starships to make it playable. But the idea is an extremely cool concept... Besides the ships, there will be a large asteroid in front of both of them. The asteroid will have slightly habitable areas, like an abandoned mine or something - and either ship can focus its forward guns to destroy it. The asteroid would disappear for maybe a few minutes before slowly reforming. But it would blow up in several chunks, probably killing anyone inside. There will be a lot of smaller laser cannons being used as "broadsides" between the ships. While they don't really damage the ship, they create large impacts on ships' "shields", which can be harmful to any passing marine. Each ship will have a bridge section, and a large laser turret that can somehow penetrate the shields to destroy the bridge until it is "repaired"... I come up with this stuff when I'm on vacation."

A newly released map is called Space, or PM_space, by CPU Wizard; we have our screenshot and review page up, complete with a "download now" link. I won't pretend it's a world-beater, but for a first map, it's pretty playable! .

Monday July 9th, 2001:

The "SLAM's Maps" page of the NAB Gallery site has Sesmar Remix DM Version, the "no frills" version of the map - unfortunately, for me at least, the zip file won't work. "Error: Local header signature not found" is all I get, but maybe you will have better luck, or SLAM will have re-uploaded by the time you try it. But Dax assures me that Log Forts is nearly ready, while somebody (Scouse?) was seen running a test server for a map called Sinister, and Ace has released Ace's Lair, which is a lot larger than the Beta version previously available. Check out the maps page on his site. I must do the review & screenshot page for it today.

Boom's shiny new site was removed by Tripod, for no good reason; his old site is still up, but a lot of work is wasted, unless he can get them to change their mind. Looking at their "terms of service", they can do that sort of thing for no good reason!

Boom was trying to upload some rather large files, to help Joshman who had lost all the original, NAB disc maps... Joshman himself has started a NAB site, so look for the link on the Front and Links pages. It may not be finished yet, but it already has some good stuff.

Tuesday July 10th, 2001:

A test server running CD Base was sighted yesterday, with SLAM and other CD notables in it; as I managed to sneak in, I can report that it is only a very early "beta", with lots of work for SLAM to do yet. The base itself is large, the grassy plain is big enough to need a hovercraft-type mover to take you from one side to the other, and as for the rest... SLAM says "Let them guess", so I don't think I will be getting any more information for a while yet. It does sound as if SLAM has big plans for this one, so let's hope that it all works out okay.

Darth Animal and his Star Wars Clan co-workers have uploaded another four maps that have been unavailable for a while: Spike's Euro 2000 Remix (final), Duo's excellent pointblast Half Pipes of Hell, Icedude's Island, and Justin's WW Four, which is an after-the-bomb version of Civil War Remix. I gather they still have over 3MB of space left (until the end of September), and would be glad to receive suggestions for other maps to post on their site. Flame will be back from his holiday/vacation next Monday, the day on which they plan to have a special clan-only tournament - so if you're in SW, or want to join, put a note in your diary!

B-Ball has been busy converting the music from the NAB disc into MP3 format - once he has zipped the various tracks, he will be posting them on his site, maybe by the time you read this! "you can play them with Winamp or Windows Media Player", he tells me. Should be rather good!

And I still can't unzip Sesmar - has anybody else had the same problem...?

Wednesday July 11th, 2001:

I got hold of a copy of Sesmar Remix DM version from somebody (B-Ball) who had managed to download it safely, and our review/screenshot page is suitably updated; as you would expect from SLAM, it looks good and plays nicely. And let's not forget that Sharpknux was involved, too; sometimes he takes a low profile for a while, but let us not forget that he has done more for online NAB than almost any other player, with his maps, all his work in making the NerfArenaBlast.com site what it is, creating the NAB Forum...and he's a top player too, of course! And even now he is working to make the clan side of things more, um, "interesting"... I can't say that I am sure of the details, but does it include something about making a Ladies Section for CD? (Or isn't that what "ho-leader" would mean...?) There does seem to be some other interesting stuff happening in Clan Destiny, including a couple of strong candidates trying out for the Security Section; hopefully I will get the facts I need to revise the Clan Page before too long.

Boom has updated his site, and says that he hopes to be able to release a number of maps he has been working on, maybe today, so drop by his new site. Crossfire and Ace have both joined his website team, so we can expect lots of interesting stuff to be added there soon, as well. And B-Ball has added the NAB disc's music tracks, as MP3s, to his site, so grab them now!

Thursday July 12th, 2001:

B-Ball has updated his entry for this coming Sunday on his site (which has itself changed its address slightly, but we have updated our links), and added a download that you may never have a use for - but if you do need it, you need it badly! If you have problems with NAB, you may have to reinstall it, and you may sometimes lose your offline scores, and thus lose access to all the arenas - but download B-Ball's "savegame" file, and put it in your "/system" folder to replace the faulty user.ini file, and you are back in control! The music downloads are rather big (28MB?), and may not actually be in place for another day or two; their links don't work yet. B-Ball will be away at a basketball camp for most of next week, starting on Sunday.

Following mounting pressure from the existing CD officers, Sharpknux has resigned from CD, where he briefly held "ho-leader" rank... It had become clear that his aims were not the aims of Clan Destiny, and any actions taken by him are declared void. So, nobody expelled, or anything - though the clan page has been updated slightly, with some minor changes to the rules.

Adding Eddo, Silverblade, Ryoki and Baracuda to the CD roster, I noticed we have actually got 43 members at the moment; I don't claim they all play regularly now, but it's still an impressive number!

Friday July 13th, 2001:

Boom has finally released his ColdHeart Remix (BETA), for which we have had our (p)review & screenshot page up for ages; lots of small corridors, some open parts, some music, some mirrors, and generally quite some fun. Also on his site is a new set of textures for Deck 16, to make Deck 16 ][ Outdoors - which works surprisingly well with grass, sky and sequoia textures, plus some changes to the pick-ups. I feel a bit mean not giving it a higher rating than the original version Boom made...

Over on the NAB Gallery site, not only is there a page revealing who is in the CD Security Section (plus a "Hidden" password-protected page for their members... hmm, who do I know who might divulge details of how to get in...?), there is also a sort of stand-up comedy/improvisation dialogue by SLAM and Sharpknux, done as a MSN Messenger chat, downloadable as a small text file. Hey, it is not as awful as it sounds, actually it's kind of fun. A suitably deft real-world nerf tale of high drama and intrigue, split-second escapes, and Luna dancers! Okay, maybe not that real a world - but I make a brief appearance in the tale, so it can't be bad...

Saturday July 14th, 2001:

Tiggy has updated The Blast Zone - but it is only a slight page redesign, no new content yet, though he says he may have "a real update" soon. Boom's site's updated, with contributions from Ace and Curt; he also isn't happy that I gave his new release Deck 16 ][ Outdoors the same rating as his previous version of the map, after all the texturing work he did - but a first version is always going to be more exciting than a retex, however nice that retex is, I think.

Over at the NAB Gallery, a second "Nerf Stories Impromptu" download lurks: "Curt shows us the wild side of NAB racing, and all the amazing things that can happen, and Peps twists the truth just a little in relating a story about a Nerf fight in his basement," so the blurb goes! The Star Wars Clan now has the ballblast version of Duo's HalfPipes of Hell available for download too, along with Gen][(1), that very atmospheric Alien-style arena by FeEdiKo. Remember, if there is a specific map you want made available on their site, maybe one you made yourself, which is not on any of the download sites at the moment,you only have to e-mail Darth Animal...

The Total Annihilation clan's website is currently not available; Braveheart says he just can't access it, but he hopes to have a new version with a new address up soon. The clan's original leader, Psycho, has been seen online lately - or is it just somebody else using the name? Anyway, it looks like an interesting time to be a member of that clan!

Sunday July 15th, 2001:

Boom's newest update has surprising news about West Seiydder; due to some problems, he may not be playing much NAB for a while. Boom has also decided to post Morbias 2000, a map made a while back by Alfie; however, it does not seem to be in downloadable format at the moment. Still, if you want to see what a "map" really looks like, give it a click...

Problems for B-Ball too last night; his site is supposed to be 100MB, but Tripod refused to publish those NAB music files when he laboriously uploaded them! B-Ball intends to add a new site specifically for the six music tracks, but that will have to wait for next weekend, as he is off to basketball camp today.

The Star Wars Clan people have added the two (large) texture files that you need for the two versions of HalfPipes of Hell, slums and detail, after Baracuda reported that they were needed.

The TA Clan website has been polished, and is back and linked up; there was a friendly battle between TA and CD-S scheduled yesterday, but something went wrong with the server I think, so the CD people ended up playing TT-2001 on a server I made. With my "home advantage" of zero ping, I was doing rather well, until my computer froze in mid-skirmish. Sorry everyone...

However, good news on the server front. SLAM says "I once again have the ability to set up servers, and these will be faster. Whenever I can have the computer unused, I will have a dedicated server with an hour-long playlist of my best maps running." Now that should be very useful!

Monday July 16th, 2001:

Plenty of new maps around; I have posted screenshot & review pages for most of them now. Joshman's debut pair of Movie Theatre & International Space Station are unfinished at the moment (follow the NAB Forum "mapmaking" section to keep up to date there), as is Blue_Ghost2's Sequoia Night Beta 1 speedblast arena, while I am not totally sure if Dax's new Alpha Training and Log Forts are officially released yet. Boom's good-looking new "retex" Fractal Remix 1.2 is on his site, though, awaiting downloading by Your Good Self, as is a previously-unreleased arena by Alfie (remember him?), which is called Morbias 2000 - a version of Morbias ][ Remix with a new, quieter area added!

SLAM has just announced that he is not allowed to do any NAB-related stuff on his computer until he gets a summer job; apparently there is a match between CD-S and TA today, so with him and B-Ball away, Private Ryan will be in charge. A busy day on NAB, maybe, as Star Wars Clan also have something planned... Is it good news or bad that SLAM's "Nerf Impromptu Theater" can continue, meanwhile? "Peps and I did a very stupid story last night, which will probably not appear online yet. I'll probably release it in a year and call it a lost episode," he said with a smile!

Well, I'd better go and get that last review page (Log Forts) done; if they are finished, there is a chance we may even get "download now" buttons for Dax's two maps later today or tomorrow... .

Tuesday July 17th, 2001:

This was the day Homestead went strange, while they updated their systems for the new "pay for your space" regime. Both "Welcome" and "Index" pages "failed to load", which meant they were lost - and I had to put up an interim message, rather than the update that I had carefully typed out!

www.NerfArena.com update

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Well I wrote a nice long update for my main pages today - but with Homestead

changing over to its new form, or whatever, I just can't upload it, and I am fairly

sure that the pages have now been completely lost, now that they "fail to load".

.. Let's see, Boom is working on a new big football stadium map (and hopes to

texture the 20 movers involved...), Dax's maps are nearly ready, I have (probably)

posted International Space Station (by Joshman) on the appropriate review page,

SLAM hasn't got a job yet but is pretty close he reckons, and he has a third

"Nerf Impromptu Theatre" available on the NAB Gallery site...

The way the previous interim page here "failed to load" again, there is no

point in making this too elaborate. I just hope that normal service will soon be

resumed!

Well, let us hope that things do sort themselves out. One thing I didn't mention in that brief recapitulation was that Boom mentioned on his site that Peps' cousin had passed away...