Hi all,
Sorry to bother you but I thought I'll bounce a few things off to you before I forget them. 1st of all, I'm not a FS2 player -- I play only Descent 3 so please forgive me if I got the wrong ideas
. There's more than one connection between the games tho, one is particulary interesting: PXO. Since PXO is quite buggy and prone to crash on a regular basis, I had figured out my own little connection into Volition (they are hosting PXO) to let them know when the servers crashed. The last message I got from Rory (the PXO admin) was a bit concerning:
PXO is down. We're restructuring our network here right now, and we're moving offices next week.
At this point it would be a tremendous drain of IT and potentially programmer resources to get all of the PXO computers to work here. We'll look at it again after we move.
Sorry 
That was May, 23rd. On June, 2nd I sent this message:
Here's a quick status report on what's going on in the D3 community (info starts piling up so I thought I send it to you before I loose
track :^).
W/ PXO offline, emotions are running high and Alex (aka Suncho) is back to lobbying the permanent shutdown of PXO. I'd guess ~25% of the ppl agree w/ him, ~40% disagree (quick background info: the reasoning is PXO's requirement to have a valid login in order to join a game listed on PXO. This prevents players that never heard of PXO from joining these games using 3rd party browsers like gamespy.)
See also the DBB thread http://www.descentbb.net/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=2085
As for the (remote) possibility of having PXO turned over to the community, Bill (aka STRESSTEST -- met him a few times at LAN's I'd vouch for him) offered to host it (his contact email is [email protected]):
> From: STRESSTEST
> To: Grendel
> Posted: Sun May 23, 2004 3:59 pm
> Subject: Community server
>
> If you get anywhere with the talks on these 3 name servers and the
> software, My servers are available to run them.
>
> I mentioned this to them before already. Just an FYI if they ask
> who/where etc.
The FreeSpace2 community is a bit anxious -- w/ Mark they lost their only contact to PXO and they would like to get their only means of a games list back:
> From: DW-Suzanna
> To: Grendel
> Posted: Tue May 25, 2004 9:29 am
> Subject: FS2 in pxo
>
> Could u plz pass this on to those that run the pxo servers.....as
> i posted on ur forum and "psst" im not a guy ^_-
>
> We at Darkwing have a large squad over 50 people and many of them
> still play fs2 on pxo. There are also new people, as many bought
> the game when it was re-released recently, only to find pxo doesnt
> work.
> We used to be able to let Mark know when there was a problem with pxo
> and it was usually quickly fixed. However as we dont have anyone to
> contact now we dont even know if it will ever be fixed, or is down
> for good. So we would appreciate some feedback plz. our address is
> www.darkwing-squad.com ..thx
>
> Regards DW-Suzanna
> Darkwing Squad
and
> From: Inquisitor
> To: Grendel
> Posted: Fri May 28, 2004 5:42 am
> Subject: Just to be clear
>
> I don't want anyone's private [V] email
>
> If, in your conversations with them, you could mention the fs2 source
> code project is interested as well (they gave us the source to the game
> itself not quite 2 years ago), and offer my email if they would liek
> to contact me discreetly, that would rock.
>
> If they need reminded who we are:
> http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/fsscp/index.php
> http://dynamic4.gamespy.com/~freespace/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=50
>
> and I can be reached at:
> Edward Gardner
> [email protected] or [email protected]
> Phone: (555) 123-4567
> Fax: (555) 123-4567
>
> Thanks and good luck
I didn't get
any response to that message. It may have been lost but since the guys at [V] where pretty quick about answering emails in the past, I doubt that PXO will ever come back -- sorry.
I was recently asked about a status on PXO, here's my answer:
Sorry, but I haven't heard anything from Volition. Looks pretty grimm for PXO The D3 world copes fairly well w/ the loss, mainly because D3 supports Gamespy -- that allows the use of 3rd party game trackers like http://descent.cx , Kali and Kquery. I see you got a Freespace site at Gamespy, so maybe FS2 has GS support buit-in (and if not, I'm sure your community could do something about it since you guys have access to the FS2 source code ). It took the Kquery guy only a few hours to add D3 support, I'm sure he could do the same for FS2 (he seems to be a nice guy!) -- it's a really neat program, check it out ! (it's free too ) For chat we moved on to IRC, to GameSurge in particular (check descentchat.com for a web based interface). GameSurge is a IRC server network for gamers only and we got the channels #Descent3 and #Descent3Rookie registered -- just ask them for #FreeSpace2. (this will expose FS2 to a huge gaming community as a side effect too ). W/ access to the FS2 source, I'm sure it could be modified to use the Gamesurge IRC network instead of PXO.
I thought I let you know -- Ball's in your court now, GL..
P.S. Shameless Ad: Anyone of you guys tried Descent 3 ? Check it out, high speed 360 degree action !
