It's official! The first Interstate '76 Zen Rollerball match was a success! Saturday, May 31, 1997, around 2:00 pm Pacific time, the Puce Panthers (Podaar, and Ozone GoM AVA) narrowly defeated the Aqua Marines (Stingray ms/ava, and GoM StrikeAce), with Ax-L hosting on the spare.activision.com server. To quote Aqua Marine GoM StrikeAce, "What an awesome game."

We learned a few things along the way, and were hit with the usual I-'76 occasional setbacks like ISP dumps and game crashes, but all-in-all it was GREAT fun. Below, I'll try to cover what I noticed during the game, some of the other players feelings, and give you a WWW  link to some revised rules, as well as pix from the match.

First off, we were tight for players - Ozone was on an open invite from StrikeAce, but we needed to keep moving. Podaar stepped up and volunteered to be the lone ranger in a 2-on-1 match; the understanding between all of us was that Oz' would join in with Podaar immediately, if he showed. Well, he showed. JUST after I had explained all the rules and we were about to start the actual game. Murphy, eh? Anyways, we clued him in quick and moved toward the real game....

I took position, everyone left and a two-minute entry countdown begun. Podaar was the first in. The others were in seconds afterwards. All but Strike', that is. Ha! Now Stingray was facing the solo position due to typical I-'76 circumstances - StrikeAce had experienced a game crash/ISP dump and couldn't get back in right away. But, as had been discussed, we kept playing through these situations. That seemed to work alright, as various players got "the boot." I think Stingray was in and out the most. Podaar suggested in the post-game that we take a two-minute timeout immediately in these circumstances. We shall try, next match....

By the way, related to the dropout problems are some scoring issues. In team play, the game apparently DOES take away some player points for deaths of various sorts. I couldn't quite nail down the specifics - it seemed to vary a bit as to what types of deaths related to how many points were deducted, and I was REALLY busy monitoring these crazy-ass Zen warriors....

Anyways, quick discovery of this points detail led me to call out on the CB that I was NOT going to be deducting 400 points/death at game end as previously planned. No, it became evident that idea had been flawed, because each time a player dropped out and re-entered, their score was reset, the team score was affected, death counts were different, etc. I think you'll just have to balance things out. Dropouts are going to happen - that's a fact. So, we took it in stride, and if your team was droppin' points because of dropouts, well then you had best just fight back even harder!

Overall, the scoring seemed fine and fair. Each team held significant leads at various points in the game, and each lost them several times. Sometimes point progression seemed really slow and that the game would take forever to reach the threshold; at other times teams were rackin' up points left and right (typical during battles with those "I'm afraid to go outside without a full suit of armor and weapons" Mantas kids ... hehehehe). I didn't keep track, but the game must have lasted 30 or 45 minutes itself, with a little time spent before and after.

The Puce boys hit threshold first, but were havin' trouble with the jump - and when they missed and died, their score dropped, and you didn't want to end the game with a lower score. This meant that you had to build up a little safety buffer of points as you jumped for the upper regen where I sat in my car, the Host vehicle, engine off, waiting for our fateful finish and the end of the game. At times, Oz' and Podaar's score even dipped below the Aqua Marines', and they had to hold off on the jump for a while. BTW, it's okay to keep jumping if you dip below the threshold - you only have to reach the team threshold of 5,000 points the one time, then you are continuously eligible for the end-game objective.

Eventually, both teams were significantly above threshold, and were battling it out HEAVY!!! Podaar made the sucessful leap and kill that ended the game, with his team's score barely above that of StrikeAce and Stingray. One note here, for future Hosts: PAY ATTENTION AT THIS POINT OF THE GAME!!! During the game I would announce scores, make crack commentary, and use the "E" key coupled with F5 to take screenshots. But, at the end, it is imperative that the Host exit IMMEDIATELY after being killed. I was caught for a second trying ESC to quit before realizing I was doing the death spin and needed to hit the spacebar before ANYTHING else was gonna happen. Luckily, I had the screen set to score mode at the time I was killed, so I saw the game end score - which had changed by the time I had regened and exited (a couple deaths were occurring simultaneously).

Also, Hosts should keep your engine off the entire time - don't worry, they won't have a hard time killin' ya. I was in my typical battle Lep' and I can tell ya - I saw Pod' in the air, and the next thing I knew I was doin' the spins....

Afterwards, we met as agreed in a game called Zen RESULTS! Take a look at the last couple of screenshots in the ZIP (if you download it) - they sum up the FIRST comments as people entered the game. Hehehehe. Nice. All positive. Some suggestions were made, nothing major though. I'd suggest coupling this summary with my still-in-progress always-updating rules, which are downloadable at the following address:

	http://www.silcom.com/~firehrse/zenrules.txt

The pix ZIP is at:

	http://www.silcom.com/~firehrse/zenpix01.zip

Be forewarned, that's a fairly fat file - 1.74 MB, about 100 pix. But, I didn't want to delete ANY of the shots - they are sequential, somewhat evenly spread throughout the game and players. Great memories!

If anyone is interested in getting together with us for some more Zen Rollerball matches, feel free to e-mail me at:

	firehrse@silcom.com

Also, you'll need the map. What was our final beta simply became final release. Hehehehe. Yup. That good - Stingray's a BADASS!. So, look  for Zen-R and Zen-M (there are two different renders - R for Rollerball play and M for general melee, in which the upper regen really regens) at a WWW site near you! I know Vigilantes' Paradise has it, and so does Covak's Time for the Funk.

That's it for now! See ya in the arena!

	-- Ax-L

