August 19
Some good news!

I'm actually posting! Well on to the REAL good news. I am going to be making a news post just about every day from today on (assuming that I can get to my comp).

There has been a lot of cheating going on in the arena lately. I ask all pilots of the fringe, be respectful of your neighbor and don't cheat to get an advantage over him. Really, he is just like you, he has the same troubles with his ship as you do. All you have to do is ask for help and you'll get it, especially if it's from a vet. Just please, don't cheat or hack.

I'm pretty late on this but a post was made in the Stealth Shipyards' regional Forums, with some interesting information on 3d Studio Max. The post goes as follows...

3D Studio Max 3.1 will include gMAX or what Discreet is calling, "an extensible content creation platform for professional and consumer use." Basically what they plan to do is release gMAX with 3D Studio Max 3.1 so that 3D game developers can ship a 3d toolkit with thier games that will give gamers/players the abilty to model, texturize with lighting, and animate the 3D content of the game. Then they plan to make this "extensible" or gMAX available as fully supported freeware. The idea behind all of this is to extend the life of 3D games across the whole board. Fantastic news! Go to this link for full details.

Discreet Announces New Platform for Game Development Community

And this one,

Discreet to Showcase New Products and Technologies at SIGGRAPH 2000 - Providing 3D Artists with Unprecedented Capabilities

Well that's all for now but there WILL be more for tommorrow! -VG9FTW

August 15
LIVE DAMN YOU, LIVE!!!

Well, well, no big update eh? Figures. Got tied up again and was out of town for a few days.

I'm in the process of designing a new front end page, if I can figure out how to get the onmouseover working. The screenshots page is coming along vvvvvveeeeeeerrrrrrryyyyyyyy ssssslllllooooowwwwwllllyyyy. I am going to be adding a voice chatroom to the site shortly. As you all know, school is starting in a few days and we all will be quite occupied so updates will probably be once every other day. I'm reworking some of the pages so that they are not so vague. Such as, the multi and single player tips and hints section. I'm attempting to make it into a manual of sorts so it may take a while.

I do have some interesting news fo you all. At Stealth Shipyards, in their recent newspost, they say that "this message has been brought to you by Milkshape 3d. An extremly useful tool in editing the appearances of ships." I was wondering what this tool is. Is it a freware tool, a retail tool that I've never heard about, or is it a tool that SS fashioned themselves? I leave you with that thought, because I'm gonna try to figure it out myself. -VG9FTW

August 10
Just plain ole stuff...

Well, there has been a buzz about the new interactive storyline and Grey Lemming posted the following message on the TTFD message boards, so I thought that I'd share it with the rest of you...

I want you guys to know that this is for an interactive story. I don't know if any of you guys have ever done role-playing games, but I decided to try making one for Tachyon.

Also, if anyone wants to help me be a game master, I would like a resume with a story or two. I will determine if they're good enough at storytelling to become a game master.

Yep, yep. In case no one noticed, I have reformatted parts of the site so that they are not such a butthole for you guys to deal with, such as, you can now read the whole story instead of the nav bar getting in the way and stuff like that.

Big update tommorrow, don't miss it. -VG9FTW

August 10
Site being moved!!!

Pretty soon the site will be moved to http://www.tachyondb.cjb.net. The reason I am moving the site once again, is because cjb.net offers service that has no banner adds, which means that it will make it easier on me for formatting's sake. By the way, anyone that has a really good reason as to why I should not make this change, please send me an email ASAP!

Banzai Lemming has started an interactive story which will feature any squad or clan. All you have to do is sign up at the boards under the warstories forum. You may read the introductory story here.

Screenshots page is coming along a lot slower than I thought it would. The proggie I have for it really sucks so I am going to be getting a new one pretty soon.

I added a new story to the warstories section. It's called A Small Battle Scene and was written by Myk Wyvern 12 a long time ago. I would be surprised if he remembered it...

I am going our of town for the weekend to a place where the is not a phone line within 100 miles, so, there will be no updates on friday night through sunday night, but, I am going to try to make a monster update tonight that will make the waiting worthwhile. Until then... -VG9FTW

August 8
Hopefully back to normal

Well hopefully everything is coming back to normal for this site. I have been really occupied for the past several weeks and I apologize.

I am going to try to put a screenshots page up tommorrow. I will be working on it for most of the day , so I believe that I will be able to get it done.

I just want to say this. There has been a lot of flaming and accusations flying around the Tachyon 8k forums for the past few weeks, and I (along with the rest of the community) am getting tired of it. All of the "warring" clans need to resolve their differences in a much less public manner. This is the reason that JAG was started. Soon there will be a court where the clans may bring their problems instead of littering the public forums with that crap.

At the present I havn't been able to find any wonderful news relating to tachyon so I'm going to sign off for now. Happy Hunting... -VG9FTW

August 7
Site Navigation

Well, I'm back. If all of you haven't noticed, ezboard is performing maintenence on all the ezboards. Dunno what that means.

About the navigation bar, freeserver keeps wanting to put an add banner in the window because it is a seperate html file. So what I did is upload it to geocities and so the add banner is gone, but I did not forsee the other problems that would arise with this. In short the menubar was looking at the geocities server for those pages instead of looking at freeservers. Oh well. Sorry for the inconvenience, I'm gonna fix it now. -VG9FTW

August6
Site stuff

Hey everybody! If you have visited the site in the lase 4 hours you will have seen that I have been doing quite a bit of tinkering with the navigation bar. I have found a wonderful dhtml script that is supported by all browsers and it will let me use an external html file for the nav bar. This means that I don't have to work so hard. When one change is made it will effect all the other pages, so you won't be plagued with inconsistant navigation bars. There is more to come but I still have a few bugs to work out with this nav bar. -VG9FTW

August 4
The Great 5 Day Drought

Well now, It's been a while since I was able to update. Sorry about that. NovaCentral has just released a program that will extract certain tachyon files, click here for details.

I am only going to say this once. TTFD is in no way trying to be a rival to any other Tachyon related site. It is just a database of information and the latest breaking news (except for last week=). Therefore, TTFD is going to be hosting mirrors of tachyon related utilities and even some apps that may make your life a little easier. I am currently revamping the downloads page so that it is easier to use.

Several days ago, the Stealth Shipyards released the SSX2 and the SSZ2 along with a bonus ship called the ???. Click here to get it.

As far as I know, that's all that's going on right now, but I plan to make a news post tomorrow so, enjoy! -VG9FTW

July 30
I actually am alive...

I've just been really bogged down with Real Life. Ok, well a long time ago I said that I would post a review of the ships recently released by Stealth Shipyards. I'm gonna do that now.

When I flew these ships I didn't know exactly what to expect. The new Compression Pack Missle seems to be much like a swarm missle except that they don't have much power against shields (hardly any) against shields, unlike the regular swarm missle, but are deadly to an exposed hull. I believe that this is a step in the right direction, because if this change was ever made to multiplayer ships then misslers would be able to have so much fun shooting off 20 missles and laughing to themselves as the fighter futily tried to escape. The ships also maneuver as advertised and the lat thrust vector helps a lot. Just to clearify I had better list the changes in the ships.

• The Lateral Thrust card and the Combat Scanners are now standard equipment.
  *Note* Do not add these in the cpu slot selection. Doing so will render the standardized versions unavailable.
• The Advanced Blast Torpedo has been converted to a powerful energy weapon instead of staying as a missle.
• Compression Pack missles have been included.

Barona1 has announced that the Alpha Versions of the ships are almost complete. You all will be noticied once they have completed the testing phase. -VG9FTW

July 29
Real life interferes

Sorry that the updates are so few and far between, real life has been getting in the way. I still haven't even gotten to touch the new ships. Like I said I will post a full review once I get to actually use them. Maybe later today but don't hold me to that.

Mossman2 is at it again with the 5th story in his second series of Jake Logan as a Star Patrol employee. Tehy are very good so I would suggest that you check em out at Tachyon Tech Ideas forum. Mebbie later. -VG9FTW

July 27
SSX1 and SSZ1 gone Beta, Tachyon Story get's even deeper!

Hey guys, Some interesting stuff is happening. Stealth Shipyards has released the SSX1 and the SSZ1 beta ships. Just some of the modifications that they have made include, lateral thrust and booster modules made to be standard equipment, a NEW MISSLE!!!, Advanced blast torpedos have been made energy weapons, but, just to name a few... Get on over there and check it out!!!

I just wanted to say, that if you havn't already been to the Tachyon Tech discussion forums and read the Tachyon 2 Story with Jake Logan as a star patrolman, you should get over there and check it out. Seriously, the storyline for this one is even better than the last!

That's all for now... I will be posting a FULL review on the SSX1 and the SSZ1 tonight. -VG9FTW

July 25
Tachyon2 the story is back!!!

Yep, you guessed it. By popular demand it's back. Jake Logan is now on Star Patrol. Mossman2 is back at it again and already has one mission out and ready to read! If you do not know what Tachyon 2 The Story is, you may go to the warstories section of this site and it is posted in it's entirety. You should head over to the Tachyon Tech discussion forums and read the story. That's all I have for now, I'll try to dig something up for later =) -VG9FTW

July 23
SSX1 and SSZ1

Well here goes. I flew both ships for about an hour (each). Here's what I can tell you. The SSX1's new gunmount placement is awesome. It make sort of a crossfire effect(with and aimpoint mod) and is very effective. Handles like a forklift (meaning that it can turn very quickly and the lat thrust vector has been improved). I took quite a gallery of screenshots and they are available for download in the Downloads section (SSX1 has about 40 pics and is 1.4 megs, SSZ1 has about 30 pics and is like 870 kb), but back to the SSX1. I noticed a peculiar characteristic while flying the SSX1. Usually, when I do the ring course in single player I have a lot of "Magnetic Walls" of which I cannot free myself. On the few occasions that I have gotten stuck to walls in the SSX1 I was able to get free quite easily. I do not know if this is due to programming changes or to my getting lucky. It's top speed with boosters and afterburners is a hair short of 1600 slu (while afterburning), all in all I think that it was a very nice ride. From what I could tell there are very few visual changes, but I'll let you guys be the judge of that.

Now, when I flew the SSZ1 (cutlass convertable=) I was a but more surprised. It has been changed into a ship that I wouldn't mind flying. It's weapons mounting was nice, kind of like an inverted triangle. It was a bit more manuverable (I thought). Another interesting thing about the SSZ1 is that I coulda sworn that it's aim was off by just a hair but I could have been wrong. It's top speed has also increased a little bit. Something that I hadn't noticed before was the fact that the SSZ1 has 2 railguns mounted and I pondered, did it used to? *EDIT*It is capable of holding 3 rails.

The most dissapointing thing to me was the fact that there were no extra decals or anything on the ship =) But my general opinion would be that the stealth shipyards has had quite a success. A few of the things that made me laugh were, when you start the game you have an ungodly amount of credits LOL, all weapons have already been bought and you can outfit your ship with anything that you want.

There may be more as I find it out... -VG9FTW

BTW, If you are number 1000 on the hitometer, TAKE A SCREENSHOT!

July 23
Geez, I'm a sap.

Ok, the long awaited news is here. STEALTH SHIPYARDS has released the Archangel SSX1 for download! I encourage you to go to the Shipyards and download this ship. Borona1 said that you should not expect much seeing as this is just a beta ship, but I have to say I'm psyched! I'm going to go fly it and then come back here to post a full review. Cheers! -VG9FTW

July 22
*No Fog hack*

Ok, first off there has been some confusion as to how the patch works. When you download it you have to unzip the file using winzip. When it is unzipped, put nofog.exe in your tachyon directory. If you get a netsock error, you have it in the wrong directory. If you cannot find the directory then run a search for netsock.dll and extract the files in that directory (providing that it's the tachyon directory). The picture is an ico file for you to put as the icon image of the nofog shortcut. When you have placed the files in your tachyon directory, READ THE README!!! Second, put a shortcut on your desktop and run tachyon from that file and not the normal tachyon shortcut. Basically nofog.exe is a hacked version of space.exe, therefore the game can be run from that one file. Also just some general tips when running tachyon. Make sure that your computer has been scandisk'ed and defragmented at least once a week. I hope that this helps you guys, BTW the sectors where the fog should be and isn't, look extremely cool =). -VG9FTW

I would suggest that you check out a new clan/team/whatever called "Lance." It is a squad based on teamwork, not on skill level or kill points or anything. Basically, if you like having the comfort of friends around you, the knowing that they will watch your back, and if you are tired of flying alone go to the Tachyon Tech Message Forum.

July 21
*No Fog hack*

I already posted a news bulletin about this but it got deleted somehow. Anyway this is a very good thing to look into. Check the downloads section on the menubar to the left.

ok fine I wanted people to actually look at this file and I figure that nobody will if I don't post something about it. It's basically a hack of the space.exe file. We all know that the space.exe file in tachyon is very unstable, well, Stone_D, the guy that made it asked me if there were any other "niggling" problems in tachyon that he could fix. HEH, HEH, HEH, well anyway I sent him a list of 3 things that I know you guys want. Free flight, hacking of training beacons to warp in 10 pegs instead of the standard, and the space.icd error. Now he has not said that he would fix any of these things, but he might and that in itself is something to hope for... BTW a little note, the nofog hack stabilizes tachyon A LOT! In fact I have not gotten a space.icd error yet (and I get them very frequently). It also speeds up the game too. In multiplayer when I ran into a tach gate I was immediately warped instead of having to wait 1 second like I normally do. I have tested it pretty thouroughly. The only thing that it does not seem to like is taking screenshots (crashed on me there but it wasn't a space.icd error), he has agreed to fix this hack if it needs it. Anyway, if you have any thing that you think needs fixing in tachyon (gameplay related, such as the space.icd error) send me an email at VG9FTW@netzero.net. -VG9FTW

July 20
Updates are suckin, but Stealth Shipyards is on the ball!

The popular 3rd party website, Stealth Shipyards, is fully operational, rather the Tachyon wing is. Currently in Modification and Upgrade is the Archangel SSX1. I believe that this fighter is ready for beta testing, but borona1 is the one who decides that. In Field Engeneering is the Pegasus SSX2, and in Research and Development is the Orion SSX4.

Now this is something that is going to make a lot of people very happy. Pretty soon TTFD is going to be hosting a Hack for Tachyon that totally disables the fog in foggy sectors and makes the images appear as normal. Why am I allowing this to be hosted at my site? Well because there are many games that never get played on base wars and arena matches because fog is in them and I realize that there is no point in these certain playing fields going wasted. The usual rule for 3rd party development still applies, If you don't like it then don't download it.

Also coming soon is Mossman2's Tachyon2 story. I am going to make a special section of the site called "Warstories." This section will be open to all who want to test their hand at writing warstories for tachyon. Remember, the story doesn't have to be really well written to be good. Anyway, just email me your story and they will be as good as posted.

While we are talking about stories, I just want to mention that Mossman2 is going to be finishing up on his Tachyon2 story. Today (I believe) is the last mission in 20. It depicts an epic battle between 2 rival forces (Oberon and the Bora/ Boran Avengers) with a climax that is better than any you have ever experienced before! HEH, well anyway it's a great story with lots of imagination and ingenuity. I strongly suggest that you check it out at Tachyon Tech.

BTW if you get on basewars at 12:00 AM (midnight) to 3 or 4 in the morning (central time) expect some very good battles. For the past week i have gotten on at those times and the games have always been too close for comfort. Well that's it for today =) And I do know that this site looks terrible in netscape, I'm working on it. *Note* There WILL be a news update tommorrow... -VG9FTW

July 18
I'm on crack but all of the formatting is done. *YAY*

OK, I have one thing to say first before I do anything. *PLEASE!* clear out your temporary internet files. If you don't, this site is going to be all jacked up looking, and, If your browser does not support styles... well I feel sorry for you trying to figure out the garbled mess on your screen.

How about some news? If you are a user of the popular HOTBAR Then I would suggest that you go to www.moochers.com and download this. After you do that get rid of hotbar. Having to have a program running constantly just to have a browser skin is bullcrap.

Oh wow! Go to stealth shipyards and click on the link "Tachyon: The Fringe", Then click a transport. It's pretty cool and I don't want to spoil it for you (if you havn't been there already). Also, in case you havn't already found out, Stealth Shipyards is in the testing phase of their websites for tachyon.

I don't really have much else for you right now, I apologize for the lack of updates lately. -VG9FTW

July 17
Updated Layout!!!

Well, well. What have I done to the site, you ask. Well, I've made it a whole lot easier to update information so now I can spend more time on content. I have switched it to be totally style driven instead of html only driven.

I have Archived all the past news. You may read it by going to the bottom of the menubar and clicking on "News Archives

There will be more tommorrow but it's late and I want to go to bed. -VG9FTW

BTW, Please be patient while final formating is being finished.