HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: leonard@mimsy.umd.edu (Leonard Dickens)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: Re: New Features? Netrek Community?  Is that you TERENCE?
Date: 14 Apr 92 07:33:00 GMT
Distribution: rec
Organization: Universal Export Ltd, Regent's Park, London

Ivan Vazquez writes:
>So when you play color you get to see the planet owner from the color.
>Great.  That's super.  But when you play monochrome you lose big
>because if you want to see what is on planets AND see their owner, you
>have to keep switching modes.

Not really; you can use fonts to distinguish planet owner.  Your bold
font is used to highlight you and your planets; the italic font for
your teammates and peaceful neutral planets.  Now, it is true that
there does not seem to be a good italic font available anywhere... but
good bold fonts do exist.

The fonts I use (from my .xtrekrc), are:
font:                   -*-fixed-*-*-*-*-10-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
boldfont:               -*-clean-bold-r-*-*-10-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

The way to check out the fonts on your machine is to run "xfontsel", a
standard x program to select fonts.  All fonts in the client must fit
in a 6 by 10 pixel box, though, which means you pretty much have to
try a font out in the client to see if you get funky redraw problems
or not.


>I really think this should be corrected, not so much because I think I
>should be getting a better deal then everyone else, but because I
>would like to get the SAME deal as everyone else.  

Yep.  Same goes for the ogger's window.  (You know, the player list.)
Ogging is far easier in color, where you can see a person's team and
kills at the same time.

The net has voted for Official Changes to help with both of the
problems above for the NBR client.  Look for it any year now in an ftp
site near you.


>I suppose the way to get these types of things is to send Terence some
>nice mail with the suggested patch to the latest release of the
>client, but wait, the latest UDP client sources have been released,
>but are they the same as the latest bronco client?

Anyone interested in serious client hacking probably ought to contact
me.  I am talking lots of time here, though.  The NBR source is
sufficiently different enough from the vanilla source by now that there
would very likely be duplication of effort involved in creating the
same mods for both client variants.  On the other hand, if you have
created some sporty features that are on the Official Changes list,
and they are not yet in the NBR, I would love to have the diffs for
that.  Better than nothing, ya know.

-Leonard
From: botelle@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (Justin R. Botelle)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: Re: Conceited Arrogant Assholes
Date: 12 Apr 92 02:29:46 GMT
Organization: University of Pennsylvania

In article <4dtt2kK00VpFIDOUNs@andrew.cmu.edu) kb32+@andrew.cmu.edu (Kevin Michael Bernatz) writes:
)Hmmm,
)talk was cheap, and everyone knew who they respected.  All this Horseman
)and UPenn bullshit is getting out of hand.  All the horsemen are decent

I agree

)players, that's a fact not an opinion.  Upenn has FreeKill and Hector
)(and I'd be willing to bet others that I don't know).  Both are also
)clued, though Hector is similar to Fury in being a planet scum.  I don't

Thanks for the compliment.  Though I am a bit confused since I spent from
7-8 pm tonight as a dedicated ogger, and you were one of my targets.


I must take some responsibility for this conflagration.  I was playing on
Bronco one night and posting one of my many comments about my teammate 
Streaker (who was not playing, but it the *best at *everthing), and one
of the Horsemen said for the n!th time "The Horsemen ...."  

Being that it was pretty early in the morning and I was getting tired of 
being serious (it comes all too easy for me), I decided that it would be
fun to start a running gag; so I said that Penn was the greatest INL 
team, and that we would *crush the Horsemen.  Needless to say, a great 
many of this esteemed group took umbrage at my jests, and the rest you
have seen.

Honestly, I feel that if we played our 5 best against the Horsemen's 5
best, then the game would be even.  However, Penn just does not have the
depth of CMU, and so the game would be mostly defensive on our part, 
probably ending about ~13 to ~6 (not summing to 20 on purpose), Horsemen.
But then again, we only have 12 undergraduate X-terminals which we got 
last fall... but we are getting more next fall, and if the current players
do not cause it to get banned, then perhaps the cult will grow.
)
)-KB
) A very disappointed Rear Admiral Akira

Justin
=== A very happy Admiral Hector
(happy, you say.   Well the reason is simple.  I am not arrogant, but I
nevertheless feel that making Admiral has been the best netrek thing to
happen to me since I started ruining my life playing it.  Finally, I 
don't feel like I have to play 6 hours at a time, etc etc.)
From: hadley@osiris.ics.uci.edu (Tedd Hadley)
Subject: Re: Sun 4 udp client?
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Organization: UC Irvine Department of ICS
Date: 9 Apr 92 16:52:17 GMT

In <1992Apr9.144850.17632@ncar.ucar.edu> corbet@steam.atd.ucar.edu (Jonathan Corbet) writes:

>I've been trying to run the latest UDP client for the Sun 4 architecture,
>with no luck.  I get the windows up, but nothing ever appears in them; the
>thing eventually times out.  Older versions of this client used to work
>just fine.

>Am I alone, or have others seen this problem?

   This is my fault.  I installed a version before testing it under R5.

   Solution:	define valid fonts in your .xtrekrc
      .font: 		6x10
      .boldfont: 	6x10
      .italicfont: 	6x10

   or, re-ftp the client from cad.ics.uci.edu (note, however, that I'll
   soon be changing the udp clients (sun4,sun3,mips) to v1.0 -- just need
   to synchronize with Terence :)

   I think the problem is due to a bug in R5 (maybe).  Try
   xfd -fn "-*-fixed-medium-r-*-*-10-*-*-*-*-*-*-*" and if your R5 is like
   mine you get a list of mostly blank characters -- that's why nothing appears
   on the screen -- invisible fonts.

   I fixed the problem (or unfixed the wrong solution :) by putting the old
   standby '6x10' back in as the default.

++
   Tedd Hadley (hadley@ics.uci.edu)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
From: carroll@cs.uiuc.edu (Alan M. Carroll)
Subject: Re: Borg and Robot algorithms
Organization: Technophiles Inc. - Engineers with Attitude
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1992 23:06:57 GMT

I shouldn't reveal my secrets, but what the heck.

As noted, not all servers report the PFBEAM flags*. It's a simple
enough check that you should use it, but you need other means. The
other that I use is the "when a planet's armies decrease, mark all
players in orbit around the planet with kills as having armies". It
seems to work well enough. It seems to be unusual for multiple players
to get marked from this, although it happens. A handy feature I
recommend is the ability to turn off the army bit from the mouse, so
you can correct the borg if needed.

Also, every server I've played on reports PFORBIT, even for cloakers.
My info borg puts a little notation next to orbiting ships, which is
very handy for dealing with cloakers trying to drop armies.

* I got some amusing messages from some unlucky player after I told
him that I was getting PFBEAMUP flags for him, and that's how I knew
he had armies.

-- 
Alan M. Carroll          "Weren't there yams involved, too?" - J. Ockerbloom
Epoch Development Team   
Urbana Il.               "I hate shopping with the reality-impaired" - Susan
From: carroll@cs.uiuc.edu (Alan M. Carroll)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: Re: Empire
Date: 14 Apr 92 21:44:28 GMT
Article-I.D.: m.1992Apr14.214428.18741
Organization: Technophiles Inc. - Engineers with Attitude

As a 15-year Empire veteran and former Romulan Admiral, and a
some-time Netrek player, I'll field this one :-)

In article <1992Apr14.161344.21066@news.Hawaii.Edu>, hamaguch@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (Ron Hamaguchi) writes:
>   How different is Netrek from its ancestor Empire on PLATO?

1. It's real time, not stop action. This makes a huge tactical
difference, since you can't hyperjump anymore. (That's what I miss the
most).

2. Bombing is _much_ easier. A single ship can bomb down multiple
planets before repairing!

3. The information about ships is significantly different. You can see
ships a lot farther away (for non-Empire types, you could only see
enemy ships if they were peaced, on a friendly ships screen, within a
screen of your planets). But the information you can get is more limited.

4. Phasers are single ship point weapons, instead of area-affect
weapons, so gang phasers are harder to do. No more "heat is hot".

5. No variable entry (a big problem IMHO), so no more entry-screwing.
This makes last planet stands much harder for the attacking players.

6. (IMHO) less direct teamwork. Most players play on their own
workstations, so it's hard to get a gang of people in the same room
playing. Also, there's not much game team loyalty or identification,
i.e. players don't consider themselves "Roms" or "Feds".

>   From everything that I have read about so far, it seems that on
>   most servers there are only 2 races battling at a time, instead of 
>   the 4 from Empire.

Yes, the server enforces this. It's probably necessary, since the
player limit is 16 instead of 31.

-- 
Alan M. Carroll          "Weren't there yams involved, too?" - J. Ockerbloom
Epoch Development Team   
Urbana Il.               "I hate shopping with the reality-impaired" - Susan
From: epa@cis.ksu.edu (Eric P. Armstrong)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: Re: CLASH OF THE TREK-TITANS '92
Date: 9 Apr 92 00:19:32 GMT
Organization: Kansas State University
NNTP-Posting-Host: aleph.cis.ksu.edu

fadden@uts.amdahl.com (Andy McFadden) writes:

>In article <epa.702765135@aleph.cis.ksu.edu> epa@cis.ksu.edu (Eric P. Armstrong) writes:
>>Considering I usually use a DD, maybe you should calm down and not
>>take things so seriously.  netrek is (oh my!) just a game.

>Netrek IS NOT JUST A GAME!!  It's a way of life!!

Grow up.  This newsgroup begins to look like comp.sys.amiga.advocacy, ugh.

[ugly text graphic deleted]

-- 
Eric P. Armstrong        epa@cis.ksu.edu        cis.ksu.edu!harry!rtfm!epa
       "I plead the fifth, because I'm too dumb." -- Karl S. Hagen
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek,alt.games.xtrek
From: scott@athena.mit.edu (Scott D Bradburn)
Subject: Re: Sys admin troubles (CMU'ers please read)
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: Mon, 6 Apr 1992 12:38:04 GMT

No, I have no knowledge of netrek being banned at MIT and since I'm
a student here and play netrek, I'd probably be in the first to know.
There's several reasons that there aren't many MIT students playing netrek.

1) There are very few DECstations here, and I haven't seen any clients for
VAX's or RT's which are the most common terminal type.  Anyone who knows
where I can get a RS/6000 binary, not source, I can't program in C, it wasn't
invented here.

2) There's an incredible workload here.  There just aren't many MIT people who
take part in time-consuming games like netrek and/or muds.

3) The games locker doesn't contain netrek binaries, and the games that people
do play, are usually those games that they don't require burning 1/4 of their
1.2 Meg account quota.

MIT has a very generous policy on games though.  Athena has an extensive games
locker.  The only restriction I have ever seen on gaming is the common sense one:
If you're playing games, you must give up your terminal to someone who needs it
for work.

			Scott
From: botelle@widget.seas.upenn.edu (Justin R. Botelle)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: Re: THE HORSEMEN ARE....
Date: 11 Apr 92 23:49:26 GMT
Organization: University of Pennsylvania

In article <kdtS6Ue00VpI4j1kcZ@andrew.cmu.edu) rl2j+@andrew.cmu.edu (Ray R. Lieu) writes:
)So Hector, Chalk this up as a lesson learned, son:
)DON'T PLAY WITH THE BIG BOYS!!!!! 
)before you're ready cause you'll look DUMB!!!!
)Yippeeeee-Kai-AAAA Mother F*cker!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
)Yo! I die harder than Bruce Willis, 
)			-The Wise Ice-T
)Come and get it....
)-Ray

Wow, is this high school, or what??  

Justin (Hector)
From: fadden@uts.amdahl.com (Andy McFadden)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: Re: Borg and Robot algorithms
Date: 16 Apr 92 18:15:25 GMT
Article-I.D.: amdahl.a3VO020Tceep00
Organization: Amdahl Corporation, Sunnyvale CA

In article <74232@netnews.upenn.edu> paulsen@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (Commodore FreeKill) writes:
>Basically, how do people decide who is an army carrier when they watch armies
>being beamed up?  Please try to be as descriptive as possible.  This makes it
>much easier to program.

There are two approaches, the "watch the map" approach, and the "let's take
a wild guess approach."  The second, while unreliable, is the more
straightforward.

Basically, my cyborg keeps track of how long a player has had the PFBEAMUP
or PFBEAMDOWN flag set, and then tries to guess how many armies that person
beamed up or down.  It guesses right about 60-70% of the time.  At worst it's
off by 1.

By keeping track of totals, I can print messages like, "R0 beamed up 3 (now 7)."
After a lot of activity the totals will be screwed, but with a little
intelligence on the part of the borg operator it's easy to figure out what's
going on.  The totals get reset when an absurd value is reached (-1 armies
on board) or the opposing player dies.

Only takes about 20-30 lines of code, and it's easy on the CPU.

>Brian

-- 
fadden@uts.amdahl.com (Andy McFadden)
[ Above opinions are mine, Amdahl has nothing to do with them, etc, etc. ]
Organization: Junior, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 1992 04:28:17 -0400 
From: Shih Cheng Wu <sw2m+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: Re: Summary of team :) vs Wiz Kids
	<UduCpe_00VovIGuH8r@andrew.cmu.edu>

Hi Folks,
    Being a permanent defender on veg in that last planet stand against Wizard,
I recall that you guys reduced it down to 1 only once.  It stayed on one
for a long time until it finally popped to 3.  But within 1 minute after
it popped, it plagued to 1.  I thought the game would be over soon.  You
guys were soooooooo
close on genociding us.  Only if Balton had held on alittle longer. 
BTW,  I was
not the person who carried those last armies.  I was away answering a
phone call.  I asked Ceri (ryche) to sub for me.  Ceri told me he did
not want to carry that is why he stayed and guarded veg.  Someone else
must have taken the armies.  
    This game is the perhaps the weirdest tourney I ever played.  I was
sitting next to Balton (their starbase) during the tourney and both of
us were worried about getting booted.  I hope the future tourney won't
be on Sunday night, people generally don't do their work until the last
minute.
                                            Hiemdall
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
From: esj@cs.brown.edu (Eugene Santos Jr.)
Subject: Brown tourney server goes UDP
Organization: Brown University Department of Computer Science
Distribution: usa
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 1992 19:20:04 GMT

I have made all the patches necessary to run UDP on flint.cs.brown.edu
It all seems to work now. All I need is for people to come in and
try it out.

A quick synopsis of flint: It is a server intended for tourney style
play. All are welcome but it would probably be more fun for newbies
to go elsewhere and learn more about the game. Rank is meaningless on
this server. Ensigns can base, etc. The system is also user configurable
via a voting process (read the motd).

This Sunday (4/13) at 3pm, I would like to invite all ye netrek veterans
to get together for impromptu scrimmages. I've done this twice already
and the first time was pretty good. (The second time was just tooo
short notice and sort of fell apart.) With UDP up, this should let the
people from the west coast join in as well. Ping time from flint to
bezier is 100-250 with an average of 150 during the day.

Hope to see you folks there!

Limofel / Quovadis / timid / StarBase / (too many others)

:)
:)
:)
:) Go Team!

uucp:	...!{ihnp4,decvax}!brunix!esj		Eugene Santos Jr.
bitnet:	esj@browncs.bitnet			PO Box 1910, Computer Science
arpa:	esj%cs.brown.edu@relay.cs.net		Brown University
csnet:	esj@cs.brown.edu			Providence, RI 02912
From: botelle@stipple.seas.upenn.edu (Justin R. Botelle)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: Re: THE HORSEMEN ARE....
Date: 9 Apr 92 16:58:09 GMT
Organization: University of Pennsylvania

In article <1992Apr09.145716.17462@cs.cmu.edu) hill@norman.VI.RI.CMU.EDU (Robert Hill) writes:
)
)I understand that they don't have the time to play us, so we'll stop taking  
)bandwidth about it.  I just don't want that #&@^#*$& scum hector to think that  
)we were scared of him or something...cause we aren't.  

I wish you would qualify that compliment.   As Hector, I am planet scum 
(4.80 planet ratio gives it away -- but how else was I supposed to make 
Admiral on Bronco on single DI??).  As SS Botany Bay, I am ogger scum,
annoying scum, and provocation scum.

I am impressed that I drew such a response from my ""challenge,"" but in
the interest of conserving bandwidth (and since I have gotten bored of the
whole subject - but it was fun while it lasted, especially the zeal with 
which the Horsemen replied), I will withdraw my ""challenge.""

)
)THe Horsemen
)
)Rob
)aka Death!

Justin	    botelle@eniac.seas.upenn.edu, (NEXTMAIL)@quantum.sas.upenn.edu
(SS Botany Bay, Hector, Whole Wheat, base ogg)

"It is a common failing of man not to take account of tempests during fair
weather"  Niccolo Machiavelli.

"Finally the Vegetarians-Are-Imperious Myth:  Vegetarians are self-righteous,
judgmental proselytizers who make vegetarianism an issue with anyone, anytime,
any place.

Reality:  Sure, we put you unfeeling, know-nothing, meat-eating murderers on
the defensive.  But how can you go on eating meat when we've told you time
and again how the animals are mistreated, how eating meat can kill you, how
it depletes the rain forests, how it hurts the environment, how.... Sorry, got
a bit carried away there."  Vegetarian Times (03/90-41)  
      ====\ __                 / *                   * /
     |	   \  |=======+)      / *  The WHOLE Happy  * /
{8-)--     ]] |              / *                   * /
     |     |__|=======+)    / *        Camper     * /
      ====/                / *                   * /
From: jh6j+@andrew.cmu.edu (Julian L. Ho)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: differences in UDP and old client
Date: 15 Apr 92 00:38:38 GMT
Organization: Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA

the class name of the UDP client is different than that of the old
client.  it used to be "NEtrek", now it is "Netrek".  I don't
understand the change, since X seems to be case sensitive on this
point...  but there it is.

Ensign ensign
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
From: jch+@cs.cmu.edu (Jonathan Hardwick)
Subject: Re: Please keep the slurs off of netrek
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 92 23:22:32 GMT
Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon

nelson@reed.edu (Nelson Minar) writes:
> For the second time in a week I've been greeted by a message board on
> bronco with people calling each other "gay" or "homo" or "faggot".

You might want to inform Terence.  Bronco and rwd4 have specific rules
about language, spelled out in the MOTD, and offenders risk being
banned from the server.  *I* will definitely report it if I see it. 

Jonathan H.
Xref: sparky rec.games.netrek:608 alt.games.xtrek:3736
From: paulsen@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (Brian Paulsen )
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek,alt.games.xtrek
Subject: Re: Random bit of detail
Date: 12 Apr 92 23:19:25 GMT
Followup-To: rec.games.netrek
Organization: University of Pennsylvania

In article <1992Apr12.191019.14047@u.washington.edu> skaven@milton.u.washington.edu (William Gilliland) writes:

>This is something that's bothered me...an explosion is an explosion is an
>explosion.  Why would detted torps (a) hurt the detter and not the firer, and
>(b) hurt the firer's teammates and not the detter's teammates.  I'm not
>talking reality, either -- torpedos used at close range and zapped plasmas
>do damage to everything in the vicinity, unless I'm mistaken.  Why not make
>things consistent?

As far as I know.  Torps NEVER do damage to the firer, (we're not talking about
plasmas, just regular torps).  This includes if they hit the wall, are detted,
or hit somebody else.  Things are consistent in this respect.  Why don't they
do damage, you ask?  Hmm.  The firing ship's shields are attuned to the proper
frequency to nullify the damage.  Why does it hurt the teammates?  Well, you
can't broadcast this info over subspace frequencies or else the enemy would
intercept the broadcast and make sure that your torps don't damage them as
well.

Plasma torps have such sheer power that there are many frequencies that need
to be changed.  This pretty well prevents anybody from ignoring these torps.

Brian
From: sjsmith@cs.umd.edu (Stephen Joseph Smith)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: Re: I grow sick of this bragging.
Summary: The whole Duke team is yellow!
Keywords: INL Duke Testudo Wannaplay
Date: 14 Apr 92 19:19:05 GMT
Organization: Dept. of Computer Science, University of Maryland at College Park

In article <2349@news.duke.edu> 
jhammond@acpub.duke.edu (John Kirk Hammond) writes:
>1)  First, STOP THIS INANE STUPID COCKY BRAGGING on the Net between
>Upenn and CMU.  Look, use e-mail or something.  I for one, admit
>totally that Upenn kicked out butt at Duke...
Testudo will KICK BUTT at Duke.  You are just too chicken to play us.
And don't try to use Penn's excuse of "we don't have time to play non-INL
games."  This *IS* an INL game.
I predict genocide of Duke in 15 minutes, maximum.

All kidding aside, we'd *really* *like* to *PLAY* you guys.  If you don't
like our remaining time slots, which are all Tuesday/Wednesday nights, 
please propose another time.  We'll do our best to make it.  We've played
4 INL games, scheduled 1 more, and have 1 unscheduled games, and that's
*you*.

Let me know...

						-=+=- Stephen Joseph Smith
						      Flt. Capt. Austere
						      Captain, Team Testudo
						      <sjsmith@cs.umd.edu>
From: bav@hobbes.ksu.ksu.edu (Brick Verser)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: Re: plasmas?
Date: 16 Apr 1992 02:57:58 GMT
Organization: Kansas State University
NNTP-Posting-Host: hobbes.ksu.ksu.edu

gc2n+@andrew.cmu.edu (Greg K Chung) writes:
>Other than the dreaded but useless "Wall of Plasma", the only practical
>use for plasma torps is to attack cloaked vessels.

CHAOS--the anti-plasma training ground of champions.

Only the non-chaos-trained need fear the Wall of Plasma.

--Brick