KoolBear

[VertigoAbyss]

Does anybody know what happened to the koolbear website?

[Duper]

This might be as close as you get.

iirc, Mike dismantled his site a couple years ago and it seem that he let the domain name laps. Ah well. Were you looking for something specific or just curious. Most of the resources that were there can be found on a couple current sites. There's also the Wayback machine too.

[ArgusX10]

Poof!!!

[Alter-Fox]

Not a good idea to post email addresses or phone numbers publicly on the forum. Roving spambots gobble them up.

[Duper]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^



Exactly! Send that stuff in a PM.

(well done!)

[sdfgeoff]

As soon as the site's home page dissapeared, I used one of my bookmarked links to it to jack myself into the pages that still existed and grabbed a mirror of what I could. The mirroring software wasn't very good and broke all the links (ie images don't show on pages). If you're looking for something in particular, feel free to ask for it. I'm not even sure how much of it I got.

(Note: I will not upload any of the stuff from koolbears site for people to browse through. I don't own it and don't feel comfortable doing so. But if you want something specific, then I feel you could find it elsewhere on the web already it would just take a long time to find it, so I am happy to upload some of the stuff for you)


Actually, I see waybackmachine grabbed koolbears site:
https://web.archive.org/web/20100126033 ... ntro.shtml

[VertigoAbyss]

I was just curious, but one of my favorites of his was the "how to know you play descent too much" list

[sdfgeoff]

Sorry for the huge delay here. I forgot all about this.

Here's the Descent Blues list:

You've been Down Too Long When ... (Compiled thru the years)

-You blast doors open - not bump into them.
-Play multiplayer internet Descent on KALI without cheating.
-You circle rooms and round corners with slides without thinking.
-You can switch weapon loads in less than a second -- primaries and secondary weapons included.
-You analyze how to spatially confuse opponents with your movement.
-On levels you know well, you can locate opponents by gaps between when you hear doors opening.
-You play on difficulty "insane" with the "buggin" cheat on and no others.
-You can control two games at once on two different machines, with dedicated strafes on both, and look at least as good as a newbie in both games.
-Ed McMahon shows up at your door with the Publishers Clearing House million dollar check, and the only thing you can say is "cool...but where's Descent 2, dude?!?!? (of course, the million's nice too)
-When you see how far you can send a newbie into the negatives.
-When you use the D2 trailer as a screen saver.
-When you add to a TRUE DESCENT PLAYERS... list instead of studying for a final the next day.
-When you buy a skinny puppy CD just to see what future descent music will be like.
-When you win without cheating on insane for the 30th time so you can say you beat the game on the hardest level for as many levels as there are.
-When you try to make levels like you saw in the trailer.
-When you have to clean up all your drool after you hear the words "D2 shareware is on http://www.interplay.com NOW!"
-When you bug the programmers with stupid suggestions that they've probably already thought of before D1 shareware was released.
-True Descent players in multiplayer deathmatch wait on launching a mega until they have 2-3 players in one area to go for that multiple kill with one shot.
-Also, true Descent players are rarely _hit_ by megas (too easy to dodge) and destory the smart missle plasma before it destroys them.
-When you feel funny changing lanes in their cars without using a slide key.
-When you use the Vulcan Cannon just to see your opponent jitter in his tracks.
-When you can't focus your eyes on a sheet of paper 1 foot away after 10 hours of "360 degree 3D action!"
-Ugh, when you close your eyes and you get visual flashbacks of mine shafts.
-When you start gathering scrap metal to make your car look like a Pyro GX.
-When you circle-strafe a deer during a hunting trip.
-When you throw things at doors (real world) to open them.
-When standing in the shower you visualize your energy level rising.
-When you post to the "101 things to do with an AOL diskette" thread with a Descent related suggestion.
-When you win the lotto and the first thing you think of is ISDN, and the second thing is a set of 3-D shutter glasses.
-When you spend valuable time posting to a whacked-out thread in alt.games.descent.
-When you get so angry at your co-workers while playing networked Descent late at night that you throw a cup of boiling hot coffee at them, the logic behind this being that the coffee will splatter when the cup hits, generating a smart missile-like effect.
-When you use Descent sounds for your Windows events.
-When the announcement comes, you're fighting to get into an ftp site against all the other hardcore players like an old lady at the Sunday Macy's underwear sale.
-When the first thing you do when you log into the Internet is go to alt.games.descent to read new messages--even before you check your mailbox.
-When you start critiquing (sp?) the flying style of the Descent 2 demo.
-When, while driving your car, you begin to run over discarded retreads and old engine parts in a vain attempt to upgrade your vehicle.
-If, after reading that Descent won PC Magazine's game of the year award, you got up and did a little dance, then logged onto KALI to celebrate.
-If you can no longer play games like TIE Fighter and Wing Commander comfortably...
-When you don't even think about conserving ammo. When you hit every time, you don't have to worry about it.
-When you take a directory listing for alt.games.descent first thing... looking for postings from Mike Kulas, Adam Pletcher or Robert Berzins to get the jump on everybody who will be trying to ftp the demo at once.
-When you have descent.exe in your autoexec.bat file.
-When you finished the D2 demo the day it came out.
-When you upgrade your hardware solely for the purpose of playing Descent.
-When you have trouble playing Doom because it's too hard to get used to the 2-D environment (no, really, I get disoriented in Doom).
-When you blackmail the computer geek down the hall to stay logged to http://www.interplay.com until D2 comes out, then download it from a DIRECT internet backbone lead at a few Megs per seconds and installing it on your computer in which you are beating D1 in front of for the 100th time.
-When you can navigate the new D2 levels with all the lights out and still not hit the walls.
-When you install Linux, Xwindows, and DOSEmu so they can be on #descent, read alt.games.descent, and play the D2demo simultaneously.
-When you find a good hiding spot and are willing to give your life so as to conceal the location of these weapons.
-When you find these weapons first so others can't use them.
-When you copy the D2demo to diskettes and give them as Christmas gifts and stocking stuffers.
-When you uses flares to confuse opponents into thinking you're going one way and then ambush them from behind.
-When you can tell where an opponent is coming from even if they just push open a door.
-When you use flares to open doors because your so damn good that you don't care if someone spots you because you'll just blow them away.
-When you can recite all the robots, including their weapons and point values from heart.
-When you don't know what any of the robots are like, since you never play single-player mode.
-When you always fly in at least two directions at once, 'cause two (or three) thrust vectors are faster than just one.
-When you know that chair motion really DOES help win a battle..
-When you can defeat any level with the display turned off. The stereo sound effects are enough to navigate and fight with.
-When you have bothered to think about '360 degrees of freedom' and realized that that's a flat circle, like DOOM. DESCENT offers an entire sphere to move within.
-When you are practicing bank shots in pool to prepare for the Pheonix cannon.
-When you have already learned to use reflective shots to shoot around at least two corners at once. (quads can do more but its really tricky.)
-When you never stop complaining that the multiplayer score display never seems to resolve ties correctly.
-When you waste vaulable online time thinking up these things.
-When you let other people find the big weapons, kill them, and then rummage through their debris.
-When you leave the debris scattered with proximity bombs for people without a clue.
-When you grab cloaking devices just so you can get a close-up view of the mechs in their natural habitat (ever seen a homing missile jerk fold down his head?).
-When you go to the zoo, you end up embarassing yourself in front of the elephant cage because you thought you were about to take some hits from a vulcan cannon.
-When you no longer stay near walls when dogfighting, as the backblast from a missile casues damage.
-When you can consitently dodge incomming homing projectiles. (including mega missiles)
-When you learn how to use Devil to make your own levels.
-When you can recognise most levels other people are playing while watching over their shoulder.
-When you can explain to someone where the exits to the secret levels are without having to start descent.
-When you can use combination slides and turns to keep an opponent in sight (and under fire) without thinking about it.
-When you can fly levels as well upside down as right side up.
-When you look where you are flying instead of sliding down vertical tubes. (You never know what's down there in mutli-player).
-When you know that once down to 10 shield, you cannot lose any more just running into walls.
-When you rarely run into walls, or get trapped in a corner.
-When you can usually pick the exact location of a cloaked robot or opponent.
-When you have finished level 7 on version 1.0 (the tough boss before he was weakened in 1.4a) not losing a ship.
-When you kill people by hitting them with the smart missile dead-on, not using the green tracking balls...
-When you collect all the megas, but don't use them because they're too easy, and then no one else can get them...
-When you only use the fusion because you actually have to aim with it instead of spraying the room with plasma...
-When you fight with flares...not those wimpy lasers. (Actually, I've had a few local flare wars....)
-When you only use proximity bombs. None of those wimpy projectile weapons.
-When you fight the robots by bumping into them - and you use only the rear view to navigate.
-When you don't use any stupid throttle keys - just megamissiles - for propulsion.
-When you can use what ever you have to kill anything, even level 1 twin lasers, and RAM your way to an energy charger.
-When your downstairs neighbor is vaccum-cleaning, and you (not playing D2 at the time) look around for the thief-bot.
-When you STOP playing Descent, but swear that the music is still coming out of the speakers of your PC!
-When you wake up during the night to take a leak, and then can't fall back to sleep because you keep seeing 'bots coming at you when you close your eyes!
-When you're editing a word processing document, and your brain starts wondering what's below the bottom line if you tip the viewer down (e.g. push your joystick forward)!
-When you leave the Guide-Bot in his cell cause you think he just gets in the way.
-When you pop the Descent II CD in your CD-ROM at the same timeyou turn on your computer.
-Or better yet when you never take the Descent II CD out of your computer.

-When you long for the ramming power of a Pyro-Gx when youre stuck in a traffic jam.
-Even if he hasn't stolen anything of yours, you chase the Theif-bot into the bowels of the level, ignoring all other bots.
-You can get the bots in a crossfire so they kill each other.
-Even when walking around your house you get 2D disorientation.

[Duper]

Thanks for posting this! Man, it's been a long time! The scary thing is, I used to do some of those things.. OK.. quite a few.

[VertigoAbyss]

Thank You sooooooo much!

[Sirius]

Ah, I remember that from a while back. There are a few duds in the list though - things that are either really obvious or make no sense at all (only using mega missiles for propulsion? Huh?)...

The "skill" ones are kind of funny though - because most people can do most of that now. Any 1v1er worth their salt can use noises and timings to predict someone's possible locations, chording is something practically everyone does, staying away from walls is a highly recommended counter to mercury missiles, and face-planted smart missiles are routine. (They do more damage that way. Except when they bounce, but I doubt many people in 1996 had seen that.)

[Ferno]

Even if he hasn't stolen anything of yours, you chase the Theif-bot into the bowels of the level, ignoring all other bots.

I still have an unquenchable bloodlust for this hateful little machine.

[VertigoAbyss]

I remember in the first time I played Descent 2 I just wanted it to leave me alone

[Krom]

People who played with me back when I was active can probably remember that I could at times be a huge pain in the ass in CTF if I came after you while you were running with my teams flag...That skill was something I had originally developed from chasing the thief bot. Because if you don't kill him immediately, he will sneak up on you and steal your quad lasers or afterburner before you know it.

There was something so immensely satisfying about landing an earthshaker missile right on his face in a wide open room though.

[VertigoAbyss]

I never kept an earthshaker long enough to try that, although I could change

[Sirius]

The thiefbot paths from the center of one cube to the next - if you can figure out where those are, it helps an awful lot in predicting where it'll go. Landing an earthshaker is still going to be fiendishly difficult though, because it's also quite fast.

[Ferno]

My favourite way of dealing with him (and this is a little on the sadistic side) is to pound him to pieces with the Gauss cannon.

[VertigoAbyss]

I would go into a yellow door and let him in, so he couldn't get out, I found it very useful so he could be enclosed into a smaller area

[Alter-Fox]

I still have an unquenchable bloodlust for this hateful little machine.

Don't you mean oillust?

I try to get him into a room with no exit and pound on him with flashes and helix, or I lay smart mines near the doors to whatever room I'm in when he comes up to get me. He doesn't often leave alive. I do that to kill the wandering mine layers too sometimes if they're being really annoying and they wander into an area with only one exit.
He's always toughest on the first few levels when you don't have all the really good equipment. And then there are the odd ones that are really interconnected, like the Quartzon maps... If you keep him alive long enough he'll show you all sorts of secrets tho. Almost like he wants you to pick up more things for him to steal. And if you don't kill him at all, when you blow the reactor he ignores you and tries to get to the exit. I think he must use some of the same code as guidebot.

You don't need to hit him in the face with a shaker, the splash damage or the mini-shakers are enough to kill him. But you do need to be on a map where you have shakers. And at a point in the game where you're not trying to save them for a final boss.
Why wouldn't he be able to leave a yellow door?

[VertigoAbyss]

Colored doors (as far as I know) can only be opened by the player

[Pumo]

The thief can freely open colored doors as long as the player also has the corresponding key to those doors.

[Alter-Fox]

Yeah just like the internal tactical droids...
Best to take him out before you get any keys unless you want him alive.

[Ferno]

All you really gotta do is set up an ambush with two or three smart mines behind a general door and have some mercs at the ready.

He won't know what hit him.

[Alter-Fox]

It's odd, I kinda tend see all the thiefbots as one character.
Maybe he gets reincarnated between maps. And on the maps where he's missing is where he decides he's going to just enjoy the robot afterlife... but then eventually he looks at what's going on in the mines, he sees the Material Defender and the urge just gets too strong. He has impulse-control problems that run so deep they persist into his immortal soul. Poor Steve.

He should be able to steal more things. In the D2 Demo he could steal energy weapons, headlights and even laser levels.
I guess the possibility of him leaving you with just level 1 lasers is a little too much for the maps beyond the demo though.

D2X-XL used to have a bug where the item stolen messages would be punctuated with : ) or ; )
Unfortunately it was fixed.