We’re living in these hard times. In last weeks there has been such a concentration of bad events for Smokin’ Guns’ community that’s hard to summarize them all. Like in a domino, our beloved game has witnessed a chain reaction of pieces falling down.
So, in the right column of this site, we have tried to collect all relevant SG’s links to be used as a “survival kit” while waiting for a new official site.
What we’ve lost so far.
- December 2011–January 2012: SG forum is heavily targeted by spammers. 10-20 posts a day in The Silver Screen thread are enough to scare legitimate posts.
- 19 January 2012: US Justice Department forces Megaupload.com offline. Megaupload, was hosting many files linked from SG site (demos, videos of new maps, and so on). Lost forever.
- 30 January 2012: After 7 years of honoured service RAWHIDE is put to sleep. Players from the Americas, loose their reference point. ReD NeCKersoN declares his tiredness in contributing to the game. Pardner will follow him soon.
- February 2012: Master server crisis. SG master server goes offline, so servers list in game, in XQF and in MonsterBrowser becomes useless. The problem is partially solved with a new master server (master.smokinguns.fr), but you have still to configure your client for using it and not all servers are listed. Newcomers are becoming scarce. A brave group of developers starts working on a new release to correct the problem.
- 29 February 2012: SG site and SG forum are down. Nobody exactly knows what happens, but they’ll never be put online again or at least this is what the webmaster says [unverified rumors]. We loose 10 years of memories, fun times and hard times, images, videos, discussions about new maps, new features, new models, an interview with IronClawInteractive, the way to private messaging a player, our mail history, SG manual, a lot of useful links and informations, and much much more. Not the work of one man, a whole community contributed to the growth of such a complex, living site, for years. The same brave group of devs starts working on a new site … there is a slight chance they’ll be able to get something good from old database.
- 01 March 2012: SG name. Rumors report that we can’t use “Smokin’ Guns” name anymore. A call for proposals is opened in this site. Next the threat seems to fall.
- 02 March 2012: Due to policy changes [??] our URL shortener “lameclan.tk“ is no longer free, we are forced to go with “lame-clan.tk”.
- 03 March 2012: SG maps. Unverified rumors talk about a couple of maps that will no longer be available, due to license issues.
What we should expect to loose soon.
- The fuel in Molotov cocktails
- Both barrels of Sawed-Off shotguns
- The sound of the Gatling Gun
- The saloon in NewTown
- The bell tower in San Cuchillo
- The trains in Station
- The canyons in Coyote Bluff
- The money in safes
- The smoke in guns
- FuzzyQjones’s pants and AwesomePossum’s skirt
- SG will be no longer available for PC. Only for Nintendo GAME BOY
[Drawing courtesy of SNH. Click on image for full size].
Well, this was only a personal opinion about what we should expect to loose next. And your opinion? What do you think we are going to loose?
So much bad is happened in short time
lol, the pic looks like pokemon fight, my kids love this on their nintendo ds 😉
next horror message could be :
doc and @spi have a dispute, and split BB Team.
@spi quit his job an shutdown the gameserver …
no … just a joke 😉
lg
Hehe 🙂
One “BB” team split in two would mean two “B” teams (Baller and Bude).
Thats the dark side of wild wide west.
Thanks Sceese 🙂
It stinks that I start playing in November and now everything has pretty much failed into crap… I love to play though when I can. You *LAME* people are pretty fun to shoot…lol; see you in the game sometime
No problem, I understood that the end of your article was plain lulz ^^
Ah OK, well…It did look a bit apocalyptic by putting all those events in a big list. Seeing them all combined is a bit much…
BTW, maybe some you have misinterpreted my post … my fault, I have to explain. The first part of the post was meant as a summary of what happened lately, just to give some directions to confused players until SG site will be back. Secondarily it’s a memorandum of a chain of facts so peculiar that they are able to capture the attention of any observer.
The second part of the post was only meant to be fun, evocative, nonsensical. No drama.
YES!
(but wait and see. And Biondo, did you know of a small club of players who have some nice traditions and inspire new and old players to keep the love and interest for SG in the game too? They might be more influential then you see.)
Tnx for your update btw ;03
Good traditions, indeed. Hehe.
But ;03 and his courageous friends don’t necessary need us. Who need us are new players, ATM… at least while SG site is offline.
Hi Lamers 😉
The website template is lost (the copyright owner doesn’t want to give it to us), but the phpBB database is ok.
Tequila should provide a new forum soon (I hope tonight, but “wait & see”).
For the name of the game, we will be able to use “Smokin’ Guns”. But we don’t own the trademark. Actually, I don’t know if there is really a trademark, or if this is just a bluff. I can’t find a proof on the internet that the name is REALLY trademarked, so I tend to think that we can use it.
The rumor of SG maps dropped due to licence issue is totally false. In fact I said on IRC that I will ask to mapper to re-licence their work into Creative Common. The licence in this game is a mess, while the engine is under GPL, there is no explicit licence for the content. I want to simplify things.
Someone may have misunderstood what I said : I NEVER said that everything else will be dropped! lol
Some map could be dropped IF the copyright owner demand us to remove it. (that’s why I want that futur map should be at least licenced as CC – or a more open licence – before going into mainline).
That’s all folks 😉
Hi “mysterious” ;03 😉
You are optimistic as always, and this is good news by its own.
If the website template is lost, no problem at all. We can live without it, it was so dated that we’ll never miss it.
Good news also that it’s totally false that some SG maps will be dropped (I correctly reported the fact as rumors. You know I have to do my job, that sometimes means provoking some feedback 😉 We are all hungry of verified news).
No, you “NEVER said that everything else will be dropped”, but you talked only about a database, nice to know that we’ll have back also multimedia files.
Total mess about licenses: yes, I know. And I think it’s too late to get some certainty. But go on trying to make some order, it will be useful.
Thank you very much!
Let’s stay optimistic, friends. Once the SG did survive, when it was abandoned by the developers of the Iron Claw Interactive. It has survived once, it can do it now. Please, stop panic, and come to play ;).
No panic Mope, just trying to be helpful to SG community.
Maybe just one think more:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8u4VLk0iTI
Hm… I feel that you fell Biondo. Perspectives are tragic…
What can we do?
i have a feeling somebody or somebodies want to kill our game.
Too much bad incident. Would it be randomly events?
Whose interesting in it?
No Sape, not all facts are connected together, and they couldn’t be in any way. What’s true is that at least one persons, that had the responsibility of SG site, has shown his limits and we all are paying the consequences.
@Biondo: thx for the great text and the so very funny and creative grafics, i love it!! back to the roots, 8bit is coming 😀 . good and funny writing, but about sad news. i hope the future comes better again for SG 😉
Thanks Slowly. I’ll forward your compliments about 8bit image to SNH 😉