Greetings, Wastelanders! Aposiopesis Fullstop here again with a new, revised edition of The Pulp, after an unpleasantly long absence due to a malfunctioning word-masheen. One of the metal arm-dealies got caught on one of the thingamabobs, and prying that off managed to snap some other doogimaflange, and then the whatsamaflorg started rattling around in the bottom…. But I think I managed to get it fixed; the thing should work all right from now on, so long as I avoid typing anything with the letters “qwa.”
…Gods dammit.
Anyway! The puttering and tinkering gave me time to think about the Pulp itself, and to ponder on a new way of writing them so I don’t run out of paper so dang quick – or to make room for other interesting tidbits.
This Week in the Wastes
Saturday
Fight Night @ The Arena at the Old Potato Farm, Hambone Slash 3:oo – 4:00 pm SLT
One-on-one combat in a brutal, trap-filled combat arena. Occasional guest DJs!
Apo’s Audio Atrocities @ The Sledgepile, The Wastelands 5:oo – ??? pm SLT
Mashups, bizarre covers, retro, silliness, and whatever sounds like fun at the time.
Sunday
Pathfinder: Curse of the Crimson Throne @ Hambone Slash 10:00 am – 2:00 pm SLT
A high-fantasy tabletop roleplaying game related to Dungeons & Dragons. Spectators welcome!
Jaynine Scarborough – Live Performance @ The Junkyard Stage 12:00pm SLT
A professional Acoustic, Folk, and Jazz vocalist, Jaynine (aka Juliane Gabriel) hails from Berlin.
Monday
DJ Giuseppe Spicoli @ The Boat House, Burnt Oak 6:00-7ish SLT
Audio collage, bastard pop, obscurities, oddities, and old-school vinyl.
Movie Night @ Burnt Oak Drive-In, Burnt Oak 7:30 SLT
Absurd comedies, so-bad-it’s-good relics of the 80s, occasional documentaries, and things uncategorizable.
EVENTS HIGHLIGHTS:
Monday the 8th brought another DJ session and Movie Night courtesy of Giuseppe Spicoli. That week’s fare was the 1987 buddy comedy Big Shots, the story of an 11-year-old runaway named Obie who gets lost and mugged in the south side of Chicago – then befriends a pre-teen scam artist named, cleverly enough, Scam. After entanglements with gangsters and the police, the two set out on an adventure – pursued by both sides of the law as well as Obie’s family. Including his hot sister.
Last Monday’s feature was 1989’s Gleaming the Cube, starring Christian Slater as a skater punk named Brian Kelly whose adopted brother discovers a Vietnamese drug smuggling operation – and dies under suspicious circumstances. Though the death is ruled a suicide, Kelly takes the law into his own fingerless-gloved hands and tries to bring the criminals to justice.
Although technical difficulties made War Zone impossible at its usual time, it came back with a vengeance on Saturday the 7th! Team One was captained by Aposiopesis Fullstop, Team Two by Dassina Andel – and, rather than the usual choice between Cash and Victory Platter, this match came with a third choice of Mystery prize! Both teams fought fierce, close matches – deft steals, close calls, and bold maneuvers kept all players on their toes. Team Two won the first match by a narrow lead, and won the second match by a mere three seconds. After a final exhibition round with fist wraps, the prizes were awarded. Since Dassina’s winning team asked for the Platter, the Mystery Prize went unawarded – and unknown.
The Saturday events went back to the usual schedule on Saturday the 14th, as Fight Night again made the Arena echo with the sounds of cheering and screaming and buzzsaws. After many close, fierce fights, including a massive battle royale just to determine who went on to the final match, Dassina Andel again came away the winner, with Ccindy Pfeffer in second and Leovinus Skytower in third. As ever, the first place finisher won the Fight Night trophy/button set and L$1000, the second place finisher received L$500, and third place took home L$250.
ESTATE NEWS:
The Wastelands now has its first officially-released Critters! With their blood-red heads, filthy feathers, and wickedly curved beaks and talons, the Turkey Buzzards look none too pretty ((Editor’s Note: WL: Turkey Buzzard created by Gutterblood Spoonhammer and Makaio Stygian-S.K.)). While they offer a decent bounty of loot to those who manage to fell one, that’s not always an easy task – even when armed with a ranged weapon. These flying beasts have been known to turn on their attackers, circling their heads, wildly clawing at their scalps and necks and shoulders. While the damage done is unlikely to be fatal on its own, it could mean that any already-bloodied Waster who tries to make a meal of a Buzzard could find herself the meal instead.
The 2011 Wastelands Machinima Contest is underway – and the deadline has been extended to June 15th! Your work must be filmed in the Wastelands estate, and must not have been seen before. The winner will receive a free 234 prim plot and one year’s worth of tier, and all participants will receive L$5,000 as a consolation prize.
School is coming to an end, the weather’s getting toasty, and it’s once again time for the End of Education Land Sale! All Estate-owned parcels are 50% off from now until June 15th – and they come with all the usual snazzy features!
- Four weeks of tier
- Free access to the textures and sculpties created by the Wastelands Public Works Department
- Free high-quality thematic builds – all of them made by Wastelanders, for Wastelanders.
Whether you’re a visitor or a regular who’s been waiting for a good opportunity to buy, or an old resident looking to settle back down, there’s no time like the present to get the radioactive sand between your toes once more! ((Editor’s Note: The Resident Referral program is OFF for the duration of the land sale.-S.K.))
A Wastelands Community Meeting took place on April 30th at the Arena in Hambone Slash, attended by dozens of Wastelanders. For those who couldn’t make it to the meeting in-world, the link above leads to Sandusky’s logs of the meeting as posted on the Forums. Discussion and questions are more than welcome! Neo and the Devs discussed all aspects of The Wastelands, including the land, the game, and the roleplay – giving residents an idea of the current state of affairs, the new things that are coming soon, and proposed ideas for the still-under-development Version 2 of the Wastelands Game, aka V2.
New game mechanics were discussed for V2, including Races, Traits, Skills, and Classes. Also mentioned were potential changes to V2’s crafting process that would make mass-selling and profiteering from recipes obsolete – though somewhat at the expense of the trial-and-error method and the value of discovery.
The recent spate of griefing was also acknowledged, and an idea proposed that V2 HUD users might be required to register their IP address in order to play, allowing Neo to prevent banned players from returning on alts and wreaking havoc. This was a contentious issue, and many salient points were raised regarding privacy, the separations between SL and real life, and how effective such a plan would be at preventing griefing.
Linden Lab”s questionable judgement was the core of another bothersome issue: the fact that the Add feature of Viewer 2-based viewers lets fashion-conscious avatars wear two objects on the same attachment point – including Wastelands game weapons. Unfortunately, there is no quick fix for this exploit, and the Wastelands game scripts will have to be changed to make this act impossible. Until this update is completed, however, Neo made the rules very clear: “Let it be known that if you use this exploit I will ban you from the game for it.”
Neo also addressed the current state of the Wastelands Public Works Department, which has been on hiatus due to scheduling issues. The WLPW is a group of Wastelanders who organize infrastructure improvement projects (such as the Fort Stygian wreckage and sacrificial scaffold) and who also create free textures, sculpties, avatars, and other assets for Wastelanders to use. Any Wastelander who wishes to take the lead on this project is encouraged to email Neo!
Again, there is far more to the Community Meeting than could possibly be summarized, so please read the logs and have your say! Community Meetings will now be a monthly feature, taking place at 2:30 every last weekend of the month, and lasting for half an hour until War Zone starts at 3. The next one will be on May 28th!
In the weeks since, the HUD update has been progressing well, with a new function discovered that should let Neo fix the double-equip exploit without requiring a complete rewrite of the scripts. It will still take some more testing, but the update should be released soon – and will also integrate the new jump limiting and falling damage features, but the “endurance” feature will not be added at this time. No longer will your foes be able to leap off the top of a building and suffer only by a little stumbling when they land! Instead, players will receive realistic amounts of falling damage proportionate to the length of their fall – anything from “stubbed toe” to “shattered femur” to “oh god, my kneecaps are wedged inside my heart.” Hunters stalking buzzards would be advised to watch both the skies and their feet. As usual, Neo is being quiet for now on what else might come out with the new HUD – there may be more surprises in store!
RP NAMEDROPS: Typically, in the Wastelands, there’s no telling when a new person will show up. But on very rare occasions, a new arrival is as plain as the nose on your face – or the bump in your belly. It seems that Mr. and Mrs. Black ((India Jehangir and Smokey Steamweaver)) are expecting – and that the child is due any day now. There’s no way of knowing, now, whether anything of the Ghoulism fungus has passed to the child – or if even that could stop the other hungry Ghouls from preying on something so tender and helpless.
A new Mutant has been seen among the mysterious Grotesks – a huge and hulking green-skinned figure (Ironblood Mechanique). Their encampment in Hambone Slash seems to grow by the day, with new structures, totems, and shrines. There are no reports yet of Smoothskins or Manimals going missing in the night – but it may only be a matter of time.