DescentBB

Say what you want about Minervaâ?¦But that level provided hella lotsa fun for hella lotsa players for hella lotsa timeâ?¦..

One of the reasons I found D2 fun was that I avoided Minerva.

I pretty much never really liked playing Warlord anywhere because of the amount of time it took just to get one kill on him. But, playing him in Minerva69 was one of my few exceptions. He usually gave me a good show.

Minerva (no matter which version) has always been a love/hate kinda thing for me. I wasn't a fan of the level, but at least there was always someone playing it.

Tricord wrote:... so when my buddy and I were going to play, I'd go downstairs to tell my mom and dad not to pick up the phone if it rang. Then, a little later my dad would get upset when he heard the modem shrieking instead of a dial tone

Hehe when I first wanted to play descent with a friend, I had to wait for my mom to fall asleep, grab the telephone from her bedroom without waking her up, call a friend and pray she wouldn't hear the modem dialing and wake up. Very exciting!

(I wasn't allowed to play much at the time..)

I loved minerva.
But another level I used to like a lot contained very intriguing switches. It was a sort of CTF-designed level which looked like opposing medieval castles. When you flew through a specific place, forcefields would block one of the two castles (depending on the direction in which you flew).
When you flew through a waterfall in the middle of the level, twice, the forcefields would deactivate (there was one waterfall for each "castle). Never knew its name, only played it once in a friend's house. Never found anyone else who heard of it, and my friend can't remember its name either..

Ferno wrote:Vli you bugger!

I cut my teeth on that level with a dude named "Underdawg". I wonder what he's up to these days...

Hmmm, I used to fly under that nick in D1 and D2. I wonder if I'm the guy? I also flew under "Intrepid".

Loved Minerva. I also kinda dug Minerva4 -- the one with the giant dogfighting room . . . (I think that was min4 . .. maybe min5).

BD

My first game of Minerva was with Descentile. I got down 0-6 before I had any clue about the layout, then we battled fairly evenly from there. Gosh, that was September 1996, I think.

My first Busdriver award on the IDL came in Min2. The story of that can be found in the War Journal.

http://idl.warpcore.org/homelevs/minerva.html

I have both good and bad memories from the level, but probably more good ones. On IDL, I led a largely successful peer-pressure campaign to lead players to play a diverse selection of levels, so I have literally tons of memories from many other levels and never felt trapped by the open socket Minerva Mania.

If D3 had allowed for truly FAIR 1 vs 1 play, there might have been the ingredients necessary to sustain a larger community. Alas, with only larger games viable and everyone at the mercy of server availability and server quality... Minerva Syndrome did more damage to D3 than it ever did to D1 or D2.


- Sirian

Which is one of the reasons I'm hoping CD does go somewhere... duel mode would be nice.

Oh, minerva... that was the first level I ever played on Kali, I think. I came on there thinking I was on the top of the world (well, I could beat all my friends easily enough, coudln't I?) and I got smoked. I don't even remember by who... I even made a demo of the game so I could study the game and dissect it.

I remember flying through the downstairs hallway so clogged with smarts you couldn't see ten feet in front of you. In fact, I remember digging through the missile spawing algorithm in the D1 source to figure out how the missile catcher in Athena worked, planning to modifly minerva and put several catchers in the basement.

I remember hiding in the super-secret room where the fusion starts, thinking I was such a genius, not knowing the reactor "pointed" at me after I'd gone in there.

I remember finding a D2 min2 game with smart mines in, and planting some in a door, and some big name pilot hit them. And there I was all overjoyed ("I got a kill on ___!!! ... can't remember who, might have been Karash) and him typing something like, "Arg, guess I better start checking doors."

I remember creating a horrible remake of minerva in which -every- surface was lava. Minlava. It was to teach myself not to bump walls when trichording.

In fact, I remember spending *hours* trying to reproduce that one stupid Kiln trick--you know, the minerva one. I never did pull it off.

I remember offering to teach my friend Overlord how to dodge a smart, and my hopeless instructions "I'm going to shoot it where I flare, and you just kind of slide left and then fly forward." His very wooden attempts to follow those directions led to a comical and drawn out death in the main room that is forever burned into my memory.

I guess my memories of minerva are mostly noob memories--I was more of a fan of Nysa and Athena later on. As much as anything else because it kept the noobs out a bit better. Most of what I remember about Minerva, in fact, were the long and loud campaigns *against* it!

I do have memories of Nysa, though. In fact, I remember running D1 to check up on something a while ago, and I started up Nysa single player and just flew around and flared things. Here was where I got that sweet ratting kill on Lothar when he was teaching me how. This was where I was when Jediluke scared the living daylights out of me with spread. Right here, I blind-sided Birdseye with a smart that one time, it was sweet. Here was the clincher kill in that awesome game with Tyranny. *sigh* So many memories.

Do you play much anymore? I never did get my rematch Just can't believe it's been almost what? four years since that game? yikes.

I had demos in certain parts of that game. Wish I still had them. Used to do that with everyone I played for the first time and also playing the same people in different levels. At one point I even started a journal listing pilots that I've played and their tactics/habits, Weapon usage, strengths, weaknesses, etc..

Sadly I don't have that anymore either. Yup, fun times

Tyranny wrote:Do you play much anymore? I never did get my rematch Just can't believe it's been almost what? four years since that game? yikes.

Heh, yeah it's been a while. It was one of those games you don't forget.

I don't actively still play D1. I've played a little D3 at LANs recently, and got in a good D1 game with Kufyit and Lothar in Chicago. I'll play an occasional game with my husband on Kali... but that's been about it for the last year or so.

I actually stopped playing seriously not long after I finished working on the Wolfpack ladder with you. By the time I did UDL, programming and forum posting (and my husband) were my real connections to this community. These days it's mostly just forum posting. I don't even care for D3 much. That's more general--I don't have much time for or interest in serious games these days.

Odd, that. I don't remember growing up.

It's almost unbelievable, but I have never once played Minerva or any of its variants . I need to convince Phaser to throw a game in at the next Revival .

I'm sure most of us wouldn't mind just one game. It's been a few years.

Drakona wrote:Oh, minerva... that was the first level I ever played on Kali, I think. I came on there thinking I was on the top of the world (well, I could beat all my friends easily enough, coudln't I?) and I got smoked. I don't even remember by who... I even made a demo of the game so I could study the game and dissect it.

Oh man. I was just digging through some old files trying to make hard drive space, and... I found this demo. The demo shows the opponent as "Quel". We were fighting in the main room with plasma and the occasional homer. By the date on the demo, this was 7 years ago, in Febuary of 1998--I guess it can't have been my first game, then, as I think I got Kali in January. Still, it was in my first month on Kali. I was flying with keyboard and maaaaaaan was I a sad pilot. Cautious single-chording strafes. No visual awareness. No real leading. No active dodging. The score showed 17-1... and I deserved it!

LOL, old newbie demos. So fun to watch.

Watching that one, and then one from September of 1998, me fighting Deimos in Black Rose. Man, it's night and day. What 6 months on Kali will do for your skillz...!

Meh, I had more memories with other levels played with online buddies in "clans" and such. Minerva is just kinda the level you play when no friends are around and you just need some random people to play with. I remember getting owned by Bama in a 1on1 once. I never knew where he was and he always knew where I was. Man that's a scary thing. I think I killed him once.

That's about it for special Minerva memories. Now Pulling Teeth and Ambage... that's a different story.

UFO2020 wrote:I never knew where he was and he always knew where I was. Man that's a scary thing. I think I killed him once.

Don't remind me. Look out if he ever got behind you. As for Minerva it wasn't too bad a of a level. But it did piss me off time to time constantly seeing 5 or more of these levels up at one time. Iâ??m just glad Minerva never made a big impacted in D3.

That's what Skybox was for. hehe. There were like 3 ports fo Minerva for D3 done. None of them very good. ..er.. IMHO. ..yea...

LOL I should really learn to reread my posts. Any way I know the D3 versions of Minerva sucked all the more reason Iâ??m glad it never made it big in Descent 3. We didnâ??t need history repeating itâ??s self.

i remember UES'n with codger years ago. good times.

I liked playing UES with ENDER when he still played. Couldn't find him half the time

TigerRaptorFX wrote:We didnâ??t need history repeating itâ??s self.

So instead it got replaced with Subway Dancer? Personally I'd take minerva any day of the week over that trash.

BD: (yea yea i've been busy, sue me) were you ever on MSN Gaming zone?

Drakona wrote: ... I started up Nysa single player and just flew around and flared things. Here was where I got that sweet ratting kill on Lothar when he was teaching me how. This was where I was when Jediluke scared the living daylights out of me with spread. Right here, I blind-sided Birdseye with a smart that one time, it was sweet. Here was the clincher kill in that awesome game with Tyranny. *sigh* So many memories.

*sniff*. You are killing me here, girl .. I'm getting all teary eyed ...

Tyranny wrote:

TigerRaptorFX wrote:We didnâ??t need history repeating itâ??s self.

So instead it got replaced with Subway Dancer? Personally I'd take minerva any day of the week over that trash.

Agreed. But letâ??s be glad Subway Dancer wasn't around when D3 was in its prime.