RTSC Site History for 2003


	Site History 2003

	21 Dec		Pre-Christmas madness, a mild illness and full time work conspire against RTSC. Some random updates, but its all works in progress and nothing that finalised. I'm off on holidays. Merry Christmas, all! Updated the Homeworld2 section. Micro fixits, here and there.

	8 Dec		Ongoing work in progress update of the Homeworld2 section's Custom Mods and Ships pages. More work in progress update on the Startopia section's Neurotic Details page.

	7 Dec		Large work in progress update of the Homeworld2 section. This includes adding a HW2 Top100 button from the massive moddatabase web site. On the topic of Top100's, the Total Annihilation section clears 12,000 hits. Sort of un-retired the Cataclysm page and reinserted it between the Homeworld sections. Work in progress update on the Startopia section's Neurotic Details page. Behind the scenes html maintenance on a number of pages, fixing ancient headers and key words long since obsolete. Squeezing in the time, these days.

	2 Dec		Finally got the Total Annihilation web buttons built! Amended the Total Annihilation section and the Linking page as a result. Also, added the Age of Mythology entry to Other RTS Games.

	28 Nov		Joy of joys. More maintenance. Just clearing the decks for more important stuff. FIxed some bodgy table formatting in the Startopia Guide's Boredom page. Updated the GMTA entry in the Total Annihilation section's Mods and Total Conversions page. Further amendment to the Cataclysm: Onslaught mod in the the Homeworld section's Mods & TC's page: forgot to mention the custom maps. Good grief. After - how many years?? - I find an unfinished sentence in the opening paragraph of the StarCraft section's Custom Mods page. I've only edited that page a squillion times over the years and somehow completely missed it. Doh! Fixed. Filled out some missing text in the StarCraft Reclamation mod entry, too.

	27 Nov		Another quick update. Updated the Cataclysm: Onslaught entry in the Homeworld section's Mods & TC's page. The Onslaught mod was recently updated, and the new version is a barrel of fun!

	26 Nov		Further updates to the Total Annihilation section.

	25 Nov		Another hefty update, mostly in the writing and maintenance department. I don't get good runs at graphics unless I've got a weekend to tackle them. Updated RTS Links. Updated the Rise of Nations section. This was mainly rewriting the Overview page. Updated the Total Annihilation section. Another general purpose maintenance pass, tarting up links, smartening internal page details, and going through as many links and version numbers as I could before going stark staring mad.

	18 Nov		Once upon atime I embarked on a foolish endeavour to get RTSC up to date in one hit on a long weekend. I sat down and finally put a number of sections to bed, established some new ones and rearranged and tidied up the in one colossal effort. Six weeks later, that "long weekend" was still going, and it looked like it would never finish. I've had to take a week "off" RTSC before I went stark staring mad... anyway, quite a bit stuff has been done and duly uploaded! You'd have probably thought that being in the visual effects business would mean I'd have a site just soggy with cutting edge, super slick graphics. But no - the same old shithouse temporary placeholder graphics I knocked up one afternoon four years ago have practically become permanent fixtures. So I've finally started creating some proper buttons... Jolly big work in progress update to the Homeworld2 and Homeworld sections. The Homeworld2 upload is mostly text with one or two pics. Changed the temporary Homeworld2 icon (the Hiigaran Interceptor concept drawing) to a more(?) permanent icon (two Vaygr Destroyers in a lush environment). Regraded the Homeworld page blues to be a little less saturated. Tidied up here and there and checked a few links. Added the RTSC linking buttons! The freshly established Linking to RTSC page! Updated the About page; just shifting the Linking to RTSC bit. Behind the scenes: fair bit of collating and note taking (and even a little playing) on the Masters of Orion III guide pages. And believe me, there is a lot to wade through. The challenge is keeping it down to a useful, informed, correct and succinct read without degenerating into a mindless numbers fest. Nothing to see yet, though. The Startopia Neurotic Details page has briefly paused, since HW2 and MoO3 require more urgent attention.

	6 Nov		Update to Other RTS games: two new entries. A Settlers clone called Alien Nations, and a rather promising tactical World War II RTS called Wartime Command. Startopia's developer, Mucky Foot is closed down!! Update the pages to reflect this sad fact...

	1 Nov		Quick adjust to the Homeworld and Homeworld2 sections, reinserting the Homeworld: Cataclysm buttons into the the menus. Updated the HECLiD link, adding it to the HW Links page. Cataclysm is still "retired", but I'll add any relevant links to the Homeworld section.

	29 Oct		Bits and pieces. Quick update to the TA:Mutation page. Tweaked the Homeworld Ships page. More work on the Homeworld2 section, mostly fixing stupid site mechanics, buttons and the odd link.

	28 Oct		Lay some proper foundations for the Homeworld2 section. Actually scribbling away into the early hours and doing lots of LAN multiplayer and screen grabs. For some inexplicable reason, Relic did NOT implement game playback(!!!!) in Homeworld2 which complicates things as far as getting the best screen grabs. are concerned. The Maps and Mods pages are understandably empty at this point. Also: Work continues on the Startopia Guide's Neurotic Details page. Updated the StarCraft Mods and StarCraft Links pages after receiving some email from ScytheBlade1 of The Sovereign Modding Empire. Thank you!

	23 Oct		Mostly working on the Startopia Section's Neurotic Details page - the leftover's of the RTSC Startopia Guide. This is taking a while because I'm going through all the game's data files that inform it. I'll keep posting work in progresses as I go, but other RTSC Sections need some attention. The study of data files and scripts is very time-consuming and I want to get this right so it can be put to bed properly this time. Along the way encountered a few minor quibbles and dealt with them: Maintenance update on Homeworld Links. Updated the Impossible Creatures page. Updated a few entries in Other RTS Games. Shortened the introductory text in the RTSC Rest Home. Fixed some bodgy grammar in the Strategy page in RTS Basics.

	21 Oct		Incremental update to the Startopia Guide. Added a few (mostly cosmetic) bits, added some more thumbnails here and there and tightened up some of the more clumsily implemented tables. Nothing too dramatic.

	16 Oct		Slight delay in the RTSC maintenance binge - got sidetracked by the creation of the Downloads page of the Magic Portal site. Why not mosey on down and have a look? Startopia pages almost complete. Only Neurotic Details to go. Finally, finally finished the Bio-Deck page(!!). What an effort that was! Unless I change my mind on some of the details; I usually do after I've uploaded these things... Nipped, tucked and updated a few errant links here and there. Some formatting snirks ironed out in the Total Annihilation and Rise of Nation sections.

	9 Oct		Made some very minor cosmetic changes to the Master of Orion III section. Work continuing on the Startopia pages. Uploaded the massive States of Mind page, plus quite a few tiny corrections and fixes to the existing pages.

	8 Oct		Updated a few significant Total Annihilation links and item entries. Work continuing on the Startopia pages, but nothing is ready to upload just yet.

	6 Oct		I seem to pour entire nights of maintenance and updates into this site, and it vanishes beneath the surface with nary a ripple. This "quick" fix and retirement weekender is now into its third week! Updated quite a few more of the Startopia pages. Freshened up pictures, homogenised tables, tarted up some text, and feeling pretty happy with the whole thing for once. Updated Other RTS Games: added a few more interesting entries. Evil Genius, Heaven & Hell, and The Outforce. Fixed wonky navigation buttons on the Impossible Creatures page. Amended some sloppy writing in the Master of Orion III overview page. Updated the UTASP page in the Total Annihilation section - the UTASP mod was updated to v4 after a two year period! TO DO: Properly give UTASP 4 a good whirl and update the page accordingly. Guess that's one more for the TO DO list. You wouldn't think TA was seven years old now - the TA modding community just never sleeps...

	1 Oct		Some overdue link maintenance work on the Total Annihilation Links page which almost got lost in the general site-wide revamp, and added the Natural Selection link to RTS Links. Uploaded the DIY Supply page in the Startopia Section. Working through the first of the massively tabled Startopia pages now...

	30 Sept		General work on the Startopia section progressing. Regraded several images; went through all the Peep portraits and regraded them to be a little more luminous so they're more readily readable when scaled down. Altered all the Peep emoticon icons by removing the thick borders around each and enhancing the actual emoticon itself. I'm now going through all the tables and attempting to standardise and add more "breathing room" to the lot of them. Uploaded the (mostly completed) first six pages of the RTSC Startopia Guide. More to come, Startopia fans!

	25 Sept		General work on the Startopia site progressing. Uploaded the freshly polished Startopia Links page.

	23 Sept		Quick slap dash update to the Homeworld2 section, correcting a factual errors after actually playing the game. Discovered a new Homeworld fan site: Homeworld Zone. Now - must dash back and actually play the thing! Cheers.

	22 Sept		The update and maintenance momentum continues. Much overdue maintenance update to Other RTS Games and some finishing touches to Homeworld Ships.

	21 Sept		Finally got around to finishing off the Homeworld Section's Ships and Formations pages. Updated the Rise of Nations Link page. Huge amounts of editing and modifications, and the site seems to swallow them up without so much as a ripple. Now, back to Homeworld2...

	17 Sept		Found some more stupid mistakes, mostly in the turn page buttons at the bottom of most of the RTSC pages involved on Monday's big reshuffle. Updated the Welcome Page with some text to go with the pictures, and replaced the dreadful old nondescript "3D strategy" pic with a much smarter looking newer one.

	16 Sept		After the big upload, a mass of small corrections and fixits. Nothing you should notice, other than buttons that didn't work properly before now do, and menus should now line up. Some missing graphics replaced.

	15 Sept		Massive, massive update with some major changes. This has been building for some time now and its complete enough for a major upload. Added not one, nor two, but three whole new game sections and six new game pages! Believe it or not, this is actually to make things slightly easier to maintain. Updated and optimised the RTS Glossary, RTS Basics, RTS Links and the opening page. Started the big revamp on the Startopia section. This will eventually include the very overdue Bio-Deck page... Updated the Homeworld2 page. Got as far as revamping text after playing the demo, but with everything else I simply haven't got to the pictures yet. RTSC Rest Home: in order to keep maintenance at a reasonable level, I've "retired" several game sections. That is, they'll just sit quietly and collect dust from now on so I can focus on other things. This is for games that I've stopped playing or having any interest in. The retired games are: StarCraft:Brood War, Age of Empires II: Age of Kings, Homeworld: Cataclysm and The Settlers. Established the Rise of Nations section! Established the Master of Orion III page! Er, well, yes, it is turn based, but I can't seem to keep away from this one. It's in! Reorganised Other RTS Games. Some games now have their own single pages: Black & White, Dungeon Keeper II, Earth 2150, Impossible Creatures, Real War and WarCraft III. All this is in work-in-progress mode, so extra pages (like extra pages for MoO3 or RoN) and some nifty new pictures for Homeworld2 are still in the pipeline, plus reformatting and finishing off the Startopia section.

	9 Sept		Gave the Total Annihilation section a bit of a spit and polish; optimised some clumsy html and updated one or two links. Add a nice big new pic for the front, and gave some old pictures some text to fuly explain their purpose. The real action hasn't been uploaded yet - there's several new sections and pages coming this way - but they're still under construction.

	4 Sept		No updates, but the Total Annihilation section records its 10,000th hit (since it's move to the rakrent address) on the Planet Annihilation's TA Top 100.

	2 Sept		Updated the Homeworld Mods & TC's page; culled a few dead entries and updated a few links.

	27 Aug		Updated the Total Annihilation section, RTS Links and the Homeworld2 Overview table. Mostly link maintenance and html optimisation. Massive reorganisation going on here though - update to come very, very soon. Started updating the Startopia pages, but nothing ready to upload yet.

	23 Aug		Updated the possible Homeworld2 release date on the Homeworld2 Overview page, as based on the release date cited by an online games shop here in Oz. As you were.

	13 Aug		Applied the new formatting regime to the Homeworld section. Things have hotted up since I've returned to a full time schedule at Animal Logic, so progress will undoubtedly slow on RTSC and my other projects.

	3 Aug		A nice jolly big update! Its mostly a reformatting exercise, adapting all the table graphics so they're more modular and expandable - and so they look the bloody same on different browsers (snarl gnash). Maintenance and upgrades are already a little bit quicker and easier. Decided if it looks okay in Mozilla - my new browser of choice - then I'll be more than happy. Changed the "default" RTSC pages to white/grey, leaving blue for Homeworld and red/orange for Total Annihilation. I'll reformat the Startopia pages next - a monster effort in itself - and finally get around to that long overdue Bio-Deck page... and think about how to economically reorganise the left hand menu frames. Replaced some old Homeworld pictures with better looking quality versions. Updated RTS Basics, the RTS Glossary, Other RTS Games, RTSC Links and this History page. The older history pages will be left in their original condition, for historical purposes. May or may not retire the StarCraft pages and Age of Kings sections, establish a couple of single page mini-sections for games like Dungeon Keeper II and The Settlers IV... decisions, decisions. I do NOT want to be stuck maintaining ancient games that I've not touched in years when I've moved on to other things. TA and Homeworld at least have lively communities that are still doing things; but the StarCraft - WarCraft - Diablo sites just haven't been the same since Blizzard did its massive infringement purge, and I've never ever really given the Settlers its due.

	27 Jul		Updated RTSC Links and the Homeworld and Cataclysm sections.

	10 Jul		Much overdue update to the Total Annihilation section. The new look and format I've been thinking about for the last few months is now being applied in stages. Strangely enough, things have cooled off slightly in TA-land and checking all those links wasn't such a pain. Also, added a download to RTSC - its first! Its the old modding group TABDD's Red Alert Total Conversion that turns TA into Command & Conquer: Red Alert. I've scoured the web looking for this for a long time and came up with nothing; so I was a bit surprised to find it lurking in a dark corner of my old downloads folder from several years ago - so, unless I've missed a final version somewhere, I'll post it up on my site.

	17 Jun		Very small update to the Homeworld2 pages. Clarified some not so sure info and amended a few items.

	16 Jun		Absolutely run off my feet this month - I'm back at work so bugger all is getting done in the pet project department. Pick at RTSC and seriously contemplate a complete upgrade with some proper graphics. So, dabbled with this experiment in table formatting on this very history page whilst humming and harring. Think of it as a portent of things to come. Other musings include: Retiring the Age of Kings section and possibly replacing it with a Rise of Nations page. I haven't touched the game in, ooh, two years now - and I'm not likely to, either. Apart from an initial rush of interest it simply petered out. Retiring the Settlers III page, or rather, updating it somewhat belatedly into a proper Settlers IV page instead. Maybe embellish some of the economic bits in Settlers. I'd make a guide but they take forever to do properly: just look at how big the Startopia Guide got - and Settlers is probably a helluva lot more complex internally. Make an Ancient Relics Zone, just for retired RTSC Game sections. These relics would retain their original formatting, just for historical sake. Some single pages dedicated to some games I thought were pretty damn cool, but for various reasons didn't warrant a full section but wound up with huge entries in Other RTS Games. Either that, or I simply discovered them too late. A prime example would be Dungeon Keeper II. And for real retro maybe add a Dungeon Master or an Elite/Frontier page. Ha! Why not? Splitting the huge Other RTS Games page into smaller bite sized pieces. This is half done already. Expanding the scope a wee bit from just RTS into strategy, simulations and anything else I feel like that are vaguely related in general. This is just so I can stick in a Masters of Orion III page which I'm playing a fair bit. Its an excellent game but pretty daunting for casual players.

	22 May		Update the Homeworld2 section. Update Other RTS Games. Amended the O.R.B. entry (it disappointed, unfortunately), and filled out the Star Trek: Armada 2 entry. Couple of near-to-finished finishing touches to the Startopia section's States of Mind page.

	16 May		Certainly nice having a few consecutive days on my hands. Ploughing through some backlog. Some quick links and entry maintenance in the TA section. Finally culled a couple of links and entries that stubbornly refused to be found. Most work in TA Maps, Mods and Links pages. Spit and polish on Homeworld Section. Culled the Homeworld Top 100 button after it continuously 404'ed instead of Top100'ed... Established the Homeworld2 section! Comes with a lump of written diarrhoea so all the Homeworld2 Fan Kit pictures have somewhere to sit in, and lay down some preliminary links. Stay tuned.

	15 May		The Startopia section gets a nice, big work in progress update thanks to a few days of uninterrupted time. Polish up and adjust formatting on most RTSC Startopia pages, with States of Mind getting the most much needed attention. The Bio-Deck page is still unchanged and in little bits (screengrabs and all that) which is taking a while, cultivating a nice orderly Bio-Deck and arranging, checking, and typing up all the bits. There's some distracting green and red borders which I'm not happy with and will go, replaced by something more elegant. They're simply a quicky fix before I put in my better solution. More to come!

	9 May		Updated the Startopia Links page. Actually I did this a week ago, but completely forgot to upload it! Sorry to all you frustrated Startopians... I'm going through a number of small fixes and tweaks on the Startopia pages, Other RTS Games and the beginnings of a speculative Homeworld2 page. My schedule's been a bit cluttered of late, and other things like the Magic Portal Website really have to be updated.

	23 Apr		Thanks to an email, the Homeworld Mods and Links pages get a look at and a few dints are straightened out. Unfortunately, a few more Homeworld mod sites seem to have bitten the dust, but expectations are high for Homeworld2. Also added a Homeworld Top Sites button to the Homeworld main page.

	20 Apr		After some email from someone trying to look up "RTS" in RTSC's own RTS Glossary, it suddenly occurred to me that many search engines simply drop people into the pages without the frames index down the left hand side. Unless readers think to work backwards in the URL prompt, everything can be out of context. Experimenting with a few page format ideas on the newly updated pages, which at this point are thoughtful dabbles that may lead to a major page format update. Hence the blue borders in some pages. Updated entries concerned in RTS Glossary, which led to an amendment to Population Limits in the Economics section of RTS Basics.

	13 Apr		Updated Other RTS Games. Added a long overdue Impossible Creatures entry, and tidied up a few others.

	5 Apr		Big update to the ÜberHack page. Added umlauts! Fixed a few links around the site to go with it.

	31 Mar		Finally got around to adding the Gaming Top 50 button to RTSC's front door.

	30 Mar		Cosmetic updates (mostly fixes) to the Settlers III Overview page. Thinking of getting around to that Settlers IV page some time.

	25 Mar		Updated the StarCraft section. I haven't played this game for a long time now, and this part of RTSC has collected dust as a result. Early last year Blizzard Entertainment adopted a zero tolerance policy on copyright and cheats and clamped down on some home grown game servers (fed up with Battle.Net, usually), custom mods and Battle.Net hacks. Now there's a few new sites proudly sporting "Blizzard approved" stamps. I dunno, its just not what it used to be. Some seemingly big sites have popped up out of nowhere: Blizz Planet has archived history that starts only a month or two ago, and much of its material seems to be simply clipped from official news posts with a few of the poster's comments to make it go further, while the articles are basically taken verbatim from game manuals. Campaign Creations is back on the web. Thanks goes to Chris Morton for that tip; thanks Chris! Due to a lack of StarCraft articles, the Shambler.net link has been moved from the StarCraft pages to the RTS Links page.

	12 Mar		Slightly overdue update of the Switeck's Bugfix custom mod page in the Total Annihilation section.

	11 Mar		Lots of small changes coming thick and fast. Find one and suddenly you've found a dozen. Mostly correcting badly expressed paragraphs, fixing the odd dud link here and there, and amending what I feel is now out of date or simply incorrect text. The changes took place in: Boring Theory The RTS Glossary: amended Custom Mod, Total Conversion and Turret. RTS Basics: Strategy page's opening para's re-rhetoricked! About RTSC page added to (false RTSC sites amended) Couple of fixed links buried in paragraphs here and there.

	10 Mar		These small incremental updates are much easier! Finished off the related links table I forgot about in the Boring Theory page in RTS Basics.

	7 Mar		Maintenance on the RTSC Links page. Some sites that had been down for months finally get the chop.

	6 Mar		Amended some of the changes to the Total Annihilation Mods and Links pages, mostly small fixes and adding a few pics to the Mods page.

	4 Mar		Maintenance updates to the Total Annihilation Mods and Links pages.

	20 Feb		Incremental updates. Some of the text in the RTSC Startopia Guide kept bugging me, so rewrote some of the text. Updated What's In A Peep and Food & Drink.

	19 Feb		Another sizable update, and as usual, only had time for half the things I wanted to do. There's a still a couple of outstanding games for Other RTS Games (like Impossible Creatures and Star Trek Armada) and the Total Annihilation section is almost certainly out of date by virtue of the fact I haven't looked at it for a week. Updated the Startopia section. Nothing too dramatic, just added a To Do list; a progress box at the start at the suggestion of a reader. Updated the Homeworld Section: Link maintenance, major update to the Mods list, added a To Do list, and further ongoing refinements on the Ships and Formations pages. Maintenance on StarCraft Links. Oh my heavens, Camelot Systems bit the dust!

	5 Feb		Fair bit of work going on with RTSC and the Magic Portal site, and some of it's finally appearing online. Updated the Command & Conquer entry in Other RTS games to reflect Westwood's new release, C&C Generals. Added FAQ's to all the game Overviews. Routine update to keep with the times in the Total Annihilation section. Expanded on the Ships page and added a Tactics and Formations page in the Homeworld section. This bit has been slowly growing for some time. Big update to the RTSC Startopia Guide.

	8 Jan		First update for the new year. There's been quite a few incremental updates all through the site, but with the Silly Season, holidays, work and just lots of fun and excitement, there's been very little time to piss about with a website! Just a work in progress upload of Other RTS Games. None of the other tweaks and adjustments for the rest of the site are ready for uploading just yet. There's a few new entries in this page, and a couple more to enter. Battle Realms, Dark Planet, Heægemonia, Imperium Galactica III, Metal Fatigue, Sim City, and a few paragraphs reinserted into the Real War entry that I took out for some reason or other. Space I think... Star Trek Armada and a few others will be coming soon to this page. Updated the TAUCP custom mod page in the Total Annihilation section to reflect the latest version. As mentioned before, there's more to come. Cheers!