News

Welcome to "The Foundation" and PG Gaming Community!

//Updated - June 29, 2008

Front page update for information on changes occurring in the {MC} community/site and world in general.

What's happening in the MC community? Well for starters, Age of Conan was released a little over a month ago. It's an MMORPG based during the time of King Conan as written by Robert E. Howard back in the 1930s. The game is getting great reviews and is loved by most of the people I hear talking about it. There is some bad press as well due to some of the major bugs that affect some people. Some of which we have some fixes posted for, such as the OOM (Out of Memory Error)

Long Live The Foundation!

The Foundation is still growing. We are over 100 strong now! We are still recruiting quality, mature and dedicated team players. We have built our Tier 1 City, and intend on getting it to Tier 2 and 3 as soon as possible. If you are interested seek us out on the Bloodspire PVP Server or post in our Guild Forums. The AoC section of our Forums will grow as needed with new sections for Guild and AoC related information. We look forward to seeing you all in Hyboria!

The Guild forums section will be undergoing a restructuring in the coming weeks to allow for a more structured environment.  

In other news, there are a few AoC holdouts, those that either don't want to pay per month or their computer can't handle AoC.

Ventrilo: It's where we live... If you really want to know what's going on with us, come visit us.

The site will be undergoing a Hyborian facelift when my schedule permits. I am open to suggestions and any graphical assistance is welcome. This theme will still be available to those who prefer it.

LLTF! 

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-Posted by {MC}ParaDOX (Posted June 29, 2008 at Approx. 12:00AM EST)

//Updated - March 29, 2008

Front page update for information on changes occurring in the {MC} community/site and world in general.

So, the front page was getting a little stale, so I'm going to do something completely unheard of. I, {MC}Troop, have updated the front page of the site.

 The {MC} Community would like to encourage everyone to participate in Earth Hour today. On Saturday, March 29, 2008 (that's today), Earth Hour invites people around the world to turn off their lights (and any other electronics) for one hour – from 8:00pm to 9:00pm in their local time zone to conserve energy, save money, and support the environment. After all, most of us do live on Earth. If we plan to continue to live here, we need to take care of it.

 What has the {MC} community been up to recently? Well, if you look to the left of this web page, you will see that we have added the Call of Duty 4 Server to the front page. We play CoD4 for a few hours each today, and we're starting to get more and more people to join in. Go get it! Don't forget to join us in vent while you play.

 After over six years of dedication towards the {MC} community, our friend (space)Cash has been invited into the {MC} clan. This means that he is now my equal still a minion compared to me.

 Between the Netherlinian elephant graveyard, the rants about bacon, the "no right click", and the "Troop is still here..." It's good to know that some people are finally understanding a bit a {MC}'s (and my) sense of humor. Actually, it only takes a little while on ventrilo with everyone here to understand these things, because they are primarily inside jokes.

 Our source servers are down! Oh no! The machine died, and we have no time to fix it (because we're busy updating the site) // (or transfer the servers) right now. Hopefully nobody gets any cravings to play source, because they could be like this for a little while.
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the CS:Source server is up.

 Starwars_Trench2, {MC}ParaDOX's final latest starwars_trench based map, has been uploaded to cstrike-planet (it only took roughly a year). It has yet to be accepted for downloading.

Troop was here...And Rush Conquered...  wishes he conquered.

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-Posted by {MC}Troop (Posted March 29, 2008 at Approx. 7:00PM EST)
-Edited by {MC}Rush Retrospective (March 30th, 2008 at Approx. 6:00PM EST)
-Reedited by {MC}Troop (April 1st, 2008 at Approx. 3:44PM EST)

//Updated - January 11th, 2008

Front page update for information on changes occurring in the {MC} community/site and world in general.

As I lie in bed each morning I ask myself why I should place my feet on the floor, there are a few precious reasons that I've ever been able to come up with. Chance to escape Doded's morning breath? Sure. Cake. Its too early to eat it, yes. But people its never too early to think about it. And of course, the ever present possibility that I might finally happen upon Suicidal Youth and be able to give him the present I've been holding for him....BAM! Still, the most persuasive argument I've ever been able to come up with is the fact that I get to come to this community every day and help keep people entertained.

This front page update is mostly for the gaming world, since there has been much recent activity that just may change the {MC} community. Some involve the Half Life 1.6 engine. Some the source engine.  

Haven't gotten Portal yet? Number one, I question how you have been living your life these last few months but hey, you gotta do what you gotta do. And what you gotta do is to go over to Steam Powered and get yourself a copy of Portal: First Slice (by clicking here!). There is a catch, however. You MUST have an NVIDIA video card in your PC. Valve will automatically detect the video card and allow you to download this game. If you have Portal already, than you cannot get this. Although, don't fret! you can still get Half-Life2: Deathmatch, Half-Life2: Lost Coast and Peggle Extreme! The reasons for such an offer? NVIDIA and Valve have now formed an alliance, or so you can all it. For the most part, its like NVIDIA and Valve will coincide themselves so that Valve will produce their games more oriented toward the power of NVIDIA video cards. Sad to say though, ATI and Valve had a similar alliance/offer a few months back.

Speaking of bondings of two companies, Valve, as of yesterday, bought Turtle Rock Studios. What is Turtle Rock Studios? Well Turtle Rock Studios may be the basis of this current day community. Yes, Turtle Rock Studios are the makers of Counter-Strike 1.6, Condition Zero and Counter-Strike: Source. They are also the makes of the anticipated Left 4 Dead coming out later this year. Before anyone jumps up and says "wait, valve has always owned counter-strike." Well, Turtle Rock Studios have always been the official owners of the Counter Strike series. Just like Team Garry is the official owners of Garrys Mod. Valve, before yesterday, were only the distributers and advertisers of this game and the game in turn was build off their engine. With this bonding, some good, which we hope may come out of this. We can only hope that Valve (although we won't hold our breath), will expand the potential of source by adding vehicles into the game. Then, and only then, will we see a Starwars_Trench_Source.

Only 11 minutes after the purchase of Turtle Rock Studios, Valve released an update for Counter-Strike 1.6 and Condition Zero updating the in game ads in 1.6 and the official placement of in game ads to Condition Zero. This may be a very dangerous move made by Valve and is a threat to all gamers of a generation of online games with in game ads. Leave it to Valve to kill beauty for a quick buck.

Eternal-Silence, although a mod that we haven't publicly touched lately has made an update. It seems that this amazing mod is looking for beta testers. Many of us from the community have experienced beauty of an ever changing game throughout the beta tests of Dystopia. This means were jumping onto this opportunity. What does this mean to you? It means if you hope to find us on a Sunday afternoon, than you too better register on their forums and make a post telling them you want to beta test. You can find this by heading over to Eternal-Silence and hitting up this thread.

Recently, I purchased the old [CoR] site and its making me so happy. Currently, the front page probably looks better than it ever did under [CoR]'s ownership. It has the great effect of our space (or cyber-space) imperialism with our nations flag into new territory. But why would we stop there? Ohhh yeah, thats right. Just the other day, I acquired the old [CoR] server IP! Thats right, that last dying breaths of [CoR] are now sealed in a jar on Rush's shelf. The IP is 66.254.117.182:27015 and has the best of {MC}! 24/7 Starwars2 under the [CoR] name without the CoRulosis. And Reign isn't even banned! Everyone wins.

Until next time... 

Welcome to the PG Gaming Community!

//Updated - January 4th, 2008

Front page update for information on changes occurring in the {MC} community/site and world in general.

Here Ye! Here Ye! A very long needed update for the Paradises Garage/{MC} community. No actual formal update was made wishing you all a happy holidays, so this is an official belayed Happy Holidays to all those who read these updates!

Anyway, this has gotten me so excited the past week or so. You see, I'm addicted to Dystopia once again. Whats Dystopia you say? Well Dystopia may be the one true Half-Life2 Modification that {MC} was truely involved in during its development. We were there, putting up a server when the game was only in beta testing and everything was glitch-galore. We were there, as supporters beta testing the Release Clients before the game was actually released. We were there, donating our bandwidth so that the masses could download such a game. We were there, on day one of its release, we had 3 full servers dedicated toward this mod. The Dystopia Trailer before the games release did not only feature players here from {MC}, but actually took place in the {MC} server! And just recently, were going back. This mod is the only mod I have seen to date where you actually hack in-game. No, not speed hack or aim hack. But hack in game servers and bring them down to complete objectives. Yes, the aspect of cyberspace in cyberspace. This game has dropped in population over time, true, but its coming back. Be one of the ones to be responsible for the return of Dystopia by downloading this game from here: (Full Game//Version 1.1 Patch//Dys_Fortress Hotfix). Also be sure to visit the Dystopia website and tell them how great this game is (and tell them you read a review here at Paradises Garage. Click here to visit the Dystopia website.

Here in the near future, we will be introducing {MC} Paradises Garage merchandising. No seriously, we will be having {MC} Paradises Garage themed t-shirts and other goodies for sale. In the forums, I have made a thread asking you, the population (I Am Legend?), what you would like to see on an {MC} T-shirt. Companion Cube? Tomb Stone with [CoR] on it? A shirt that says "...and Troop is still here!"? Tell us what you want to see! All you have to do is sign up on the forums (if you have to do this step, whats wrong with you?) and post in this thread.

Anyone addicted to the last song of Portal? I am! And your now going to be forced to listen to it:

Finally, heres for the scrubs update. I still haven't made those darn blogs. I've been busy, but they WILL get done, I promise. Heres the deal though, episode 7 of season 7 will air on the 24th at 8:30pm EST instead of its usual time at 9:30pm EST. It was replaced due to the WGA Writers Strike and is finally going to air again. Right now, 12 of the planned 18 episodes have been written and produced, but director and producer Bill Lawrence will not be doing any work on Scrubs until this writers strike is of course over. Also, only episodes 7, 8, 9 and 10 will be aired, even though 11 and 12 were filmed under Bill Lawrence's absence says NBC. With such a predicament, Lawrence has asked NBC to extend Scrubs into the 2008-2009 Season officially creating an eighth season. This is do far unofficial but if this does occur, two things may occur for us Scrubs fans: 1. We still have something to look forward to for a little while longer since the series will not end until next year, and 2. having and eighth season gives the possibility of there being more episodes than originally planned. The other work around instead of and eighth season is a television movie, which will ultimately be shorter than what you can get out of of another season. Although, from where I stand, I just hope the writers strike ends soon so we can get back to our usual viewing pleasure. Scrubs must end before the actors contracts end! If their contracts end, it will be impossible for Scrubs to end properly.

Only time will tell!!! 

 

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-Posted by {MC}Rush Retrospective (Posted January 4th, 2008 at Approx. 11:12PM EST)

Welcome to the PG Gaming Community!

Front page update for information on changes occurring in the {MC} community/site and world in general.

- Posted November 27th, 2007
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Last week, we celebrated Thanksgiving. Sadly, we were not able to update the front page because many of us were spending the holiday on vacation with family or loved ones, so time was better spent. It would be rather useless to wish you all a happy Thanksgiving now since its long passed, but from all of us here at the {MC} community, we hope you all had a great, safe holiday. Then next biggest holidays coming up are Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Christmas and New Years. Since the following month will be rather busy, I'm not sure if this front page will be updated on time. Regardless of what holiday you celebrate, we hope your upcoming holidays are also safe and spectacular. Hopefully that Bowflex will be a gift your looking forward to to shed them thanksgiving pounds. I know I need it.

To all of you out there who forgot about our Ventrilo server, than here is a heads up for you! The server was updated recently to the new version of Ventrilo (3.0.2). In other words, if you are to join us in the Ventrilo server, you need to update your client version to 3.0.1 (Download Ventrilo 3.0.1). This version of Ventrilo has much more power than the old version such as user ranking systems (gives users under certain ranks to have certain powers in the server), mp3 integration, user-complaint system (average users can complain about a user breaking the rules/being rude etc.), Private Chat, New View Modes etc etc. The list goes on and on. So do the right thing and update today.

Ok, so last month, Scrubs season 7 aired its first episode. A blog post was made about this episode with an outline of what occurred as well as a recap of season 6 as well as the entire episode being viewable in the blog itself. Since then Scrubs has released 4 episodes out of season 7, yet only one blog post stands...for episode 1. For this, I apologize. I have been very busy and have not had the time to write those blogs. This does not mean the blog is dead. This Friday, when episode 5 is released, I will be making a new blog post for each episode, so everything is caught up. Fair enough?

 

Welcome to the PG Gaming Community!

Front page update for information on changes occurring in the {MC} community/site and world in general.

- Posted October 25th, 2007 
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Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends
We're so glad you could attend, come inside, come inside

To get past the little Emerson, Lake and Palmer moment, this is to say I'm back to write a new front page post to www.paradisesgarage.com. Where else am I to start but to make my little holiday paragraph.

Well, there is honestly no kooky holiday today, but there are a few observances I must make you all aware of. tomorrow, the 26th of October is Frankenstein Friday. Honestly, I see no use in this holiday because Halloween is next Wednesday, so why should we have a Frankenstein Friday? I mean, if this were a holiday to pay respects to the achievements the Frankenstein has made to man kind is one thing, but I thought scaring kids and tormenting cities was setting back mankind a few years. It's not like were celebrating Hitlers birthday as we do when we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr's birthday, am I right? Of course I'm right. So lets disregard this day and pretend I never posted the last couple sentences. Saturday is Cranky Co-Workers day. This day makes no sense either. Who works on a Saturday??? Ok, I know I do. In fact, this may be why I'm cranky on my Saturdays? WHY AM I AT WORK???? Bah, now I'm so cranky  that I don't even want to observe Mother-In-Law day (28th), National Chocolates Day (28th), Separation of Church and State day (28th.....how is this a holiday?) or Internet Day (29th). No fun holidays coming up. Ohh well, this is why they invented the Orange Box, and speaking of the Orange Box, heres some new stuff regarding its contents.

The people over in Primotech released a news article including pictures and a video showing us what fun can occur when you port over the portal gun over to Half-Life 2/ep1/ep2/DM. From what has been said, its a totally new game play where you pretty much can use your new found abilities with the Portal guns and flat out manipulate the combine or the Half Life world in a whole new way. Escaping now seems less important as you are now more capable of doing things to combine then you have ever imagined (yes, even more fun then getting the kill with the crowbar.) The link is located here and is very easy to understand the directions. They do "hint" that its possible to port the gun over to CSS, DODS, TF2, etc, but dissuade you from doing so. Although, I do say porting this over to GMOD would be wonderful.

I would also like to add that yes, I'm back for now. Work and school became quiet busy. Ive missed a whole lot and is why this news post is so short. It will take me a while to catch up with whats going on but as soon as I do, mark my words, these front page updates will be a great read.

Until next time, may the force be with you 

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-Posted by {MC}Rush Retrospective (October 25th, 2007 at 3:01PM EST)

Welcome to the PG Gaming Community!

Front page update for information on changes occurring in the {MC} community/site and world in general.

- Posted October 13th, 2007 
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While {MC}Rush is taking a break for school, work and life in general, I thought I would bring you guys up to speed...

The Orange Box has been released and for those who have it we understand why you might be a little scarce over the next few days or weeks.

I haven't even touched HL2:EP2 yet, been too busy with Portal, my new love... It won't last forever though. At least not until the mapping community comes out with some new content. Portal is the most amazing new concept for Puzzle games, Kudos to Valve for having the foresight to realize the potential in Narbacular Drop. Download it and play it to get an idea about Portal, It's Free! They took on the developers from this simply amazing game and had them do it for real on the Source engine, Valve style. The result is simply addicting...

However. in other news.....

Team Fortress 2

We got in on the TF2 bandwagon as soon as the beta was released via the pre-ordering of the Orange Box. The beta was amazing! Hardly any problems. Our server was mostly full and stable as a rock! After a couple of days we started noticing 32 slots server showing up. I did some research and found the there were two ways that this was accomplished. One was a hacked version of the server.dll file, the second and preferred method was a plugin written by Tony P. which can be downloaded from SourceOP's site. Our server was thriving as a 32 slot server for a couple weeks until Valve dropped a bomb on the whole community!

Below is excerpt from my  post in our forums about this:

Valve has decided in their ultimate wisdom, to limit the number of player slots visible in the Server browser for TF2. This is a sad day in the gaming world. Where valve is deciding how we should host our server with thier games. I understand this is their game, really I do. but they should try to understand that we the players and server operators love their games so much because of the variety of things we can change, whether by Third party mods such as our Superhero and War3FT servers or just by changing the default Cvars to suit our playing style like the Starwars2 server which built this community! If we couldn't change the gravity on the starwars 2 server where would this community be right now? Probably wouldn't exist in this form, I can almost guarantee it. It was the low gravity that attracted people to our servers with the 24/7 starwars2 map. Other servers ran that same map but died away with the normal gravity. It allowed us the freedom to play CS our way, not the way the developers had invisioned, true, but nonetheless enabled a new style of playing. Air-strafing was born on our servers shortly thereafter and lives here still! I seriously doubt there are many other Air-Strafers out there like our guys....

Without the flexibility to do what we want within the game and the servers we would not have War3FT, Superhero, Surf,. Climbing, Zombie and many more different style of servers. I think CS would have died if it were not for the mod and mapping community that has kept rejuvenating it with new and creative content.

In any case I posted a message in the HLDS list which I know is frequented by Valve personell such as Gabe Newell and Jason Ruymen to name a few.

here is what I posted:

OUCH!!...

To actually go so far as to modify the server browser so that it won't list 32 slot TF2 servers! Never mind fixing the issues the server browser has, with various servers not displaying for whatever reasons. They chose to take away our choices. To run as many slots as we see fit, with the settings we see fit for our community. To the best of my knowledge without any notification or explanation.

First FF, now this...

All it would have taken was another filter option on the client side to select how many player slots you want display. A useful feature for any mod.

Do it in ranges: 1 - 10, 11 - 16, 18 - 24, 25 - 32 Or do it using > or < any number. An option to filter on a number of players actually playing on servers, rather than just not empty.

Any thoughts on this?

LET THE PLAYERS AND ADMINS DECIDE FOR THEMSELVES!!! YOUR MAPS WON'T BE THE ONLY MAPS FOR TF2 (or will they? Still no fgd...)

I have been hosting only Valve related servers for so many years now, since at least 2000, (WonID anyone?) that this last blow is hitting me really hard. My small community was originally based on CS. Since then we have branched out to other mods such as: CS:S, DOD:S, Gmod 10, Dystopia, Eternal Silence and now TF2. These are just the mods we liked enough to put up servers for. We currently run 18 servers and 3 HLTV servers. The love of doing this for the community is the only thing keeping me from shutting them all down right now. I am still on the fence about keeping our TF2 server up.

I pay for the bandwidth and hardware out of my own pocket, I have never asked for nor taken anything from anyone to help pay for this. It truly is something I love to do. Or at least I used to...

P.S. I do not use the modified server.dll I use the plugin. Thanks Tony, works great!

So today I will post a vote in my forums, to see if TF2 survives or not in our little community.

Yours, Truly disappointed,

Mike ParaDOX

This doesn't even begin to express my true feelings about this. My first thought was to pull the plug. But I would be selfish if I didn't consider you guys first. So let me know what you think...

Thanks...

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If you care to comment on this subject or participate in our Poll, visit the Post Here.

I think Team Fortress 2 is still worth it even gimped with 24 players per server, however I think it is unfair of Valve to not give the community what it wants. After having had a taste for 32 players. I don't think I can go back to playing just 24, It's almost too easy when there are not a lot of people playing together. I love the frantic hecticness of the 32 slot servers. I frankly don't see why they can't just let us decide how we want to play. It's all about Choice. We no longer have one when it comes to TF2 and the number of players on a server...

Eventually I can see them not releasing SDK's for the new games and forcing people to play it Valve's way or Valve's way..

Variety is what keeps the PC Gaming community alive. I don't know about you guys but I get bored really easy with most games.. I need custom content and mods to keep me interested...

Thats all for now...

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-Posted by {MC}ParaDOX (Saturday, October 13th, 2007 at 3:55 PM EST)