Quake3World

rest in peace Map-Center.

http://www.map-center.com/

...related to the g00ns.net attack of late, or because it was announced that it would go down eventually (announced a few months back)?

Either way it's a pity...
If the first scenario is the case I hope the same won't happen here.

This place has survived anything thrown at it. I doubt that it would stay down for more then 3 months, mostly because it's that long for tech support at ign to pick up the slack.

First scenario Spookmineer. :icon21:

Is there anything known as to the big "Why" this happened? There were a few links posted on map-center that weren't really consistent (the way "they" work I mean): attacking sites because of the content shown, and in other cases attacking because someone was being treated wrongfully.
I can't imagine how any of these instances could have triggered the events that took place.
Then there is a third possibility, that seems to be: attacking random game related sites...

If there are backups (which I hope there are) is map-center going to be restored? Or no chance of that because there are no backups

Hope someone can provide some answers.

I can provide.

I met the guy who did that, he told the main reason was "boredome".

Astrocreep left Map-Center between myth and godmil hands for more than one year. He wanted to close Map-Center, but since there was much people hanging on the forum, it seems, he didn't.
With the recent event, he took the decision to close it for ever.

H.Reaper, that PM you mentioned over on the MC was from me. I didn't know whether you'd seen my reply to your post about the RAA trailer. If you didn't see it, let me know and I'll PM you here.

I'm not sure whether the MC is dead just yet, although the main page seems to have gone. The remains of the forums are still there at the moment. But I wouldn't be surprised if Astro decides to pull the plug on it once and for all. It's a pity that the place should come to such a miserable end.

Meh. Astrocreep has always come off as kind of a jerk to me. Don't get me wrong, he does deserve credit for a lot of what he has done and contributed, but he's always seemed a bit selfish when it has come to the future of map-center and I remember many threats of closing the site over the years, irrespective of the people it would affect. I may have a grossly wrong picture of things since I'm kind of coming from the outside but that's just what it looks like. But whatever.

Well, i can't say you're wrong wviperw, it was more interrested in getting money form his site than in the mapping community he did, but perhaps he had some troubles am not aware of.
Anyway, in the last years, he only appeared to ask for money, with threats of closing the site.

But his site was great.



No Anwulf, i have not been able to see your pm.

p.s to anwulf (or anyone): feel free to correct my language if i do big mistakes, i really would like to improve my english.

I think astro merely wanted the users to cover the cost of the site, since he no longer had any interest in it.

I seriously doubt astro ever turned a profit on the site.

Yeah, perhaps, but i'll never understand why never wanted to try/discuss/talk about having a free host for the site, there was some people able to host the site for free with a good bandwith. He never heard any of them and just wanted us to give money without discussing.
He was a bit weird some times, especially when he banned people who reregistered his irc channel to prevent it from takeover, while he was away for months.
I was invested in a project of a new website with him and a few others, it was, more than one year ago, something like leveldesigners.com or such. we did much things to start the site, but he never started it.

Well, not here to say bad things about Astro, he did a great thing with MC, and it's a pity that MC came to a such end.

H.Reaper wrote: p.s to anwulf (or anyone): feel free to correct my language if i do big mistakes, i really would like to improve my english.

your english is better than alot of natively english speaking nerds on this board. i wouldn't worry about it.

thx much.

But i must confess that i spend "much time" writting my post. It's not a problem when am writting quick post like the ones here, but when i would like to enter technical subject where its required to be clearly understood, it's really hard

:icon26:

So I wrote this long post about what MC did wrong and right and thought the better of it. The short version is that MC started dying when Astro lost interest and started with the site closure drama, and it's already been dead to me for something like a year now. I hate to say it but it's probably a good thing that matters have been forced to a conclusion.

It was nice that various MC forumites emailed me over the months after I stopped posting to find out what I was up to. It showed the community cared even when the owner didn't really want the burden any more.

Hopefully we will pick up a select group of the stragglers since there were a few good posters from there that don't post here (or at least not much).

I don't know if i am a good poster, but i'll keep posting here again now.

From your post count Shallow, it seems that you don't post much either :icon21:

I believe that is not his original account.

Yeah, used to have considerable [BAP]s but I had them reduced. Maybe one day there'll be some more account merging and I'll get my old posts and 2000 regdate back!

Well, i saw a topic about that Shallow.

I didn't read it entirely.
http://quake3world.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=315

My issues with some of Astro's posts/attitude put an end to my participation at Map-Center quite a while ago, and, yeah, I knew it was going away at some point anyway.

Regardless, the site was a hell of an achievement and a wonderful resource for level designers, and it's truly a shame that its demise was hastened by a bunch of pathetic twats who try to distract themselves from their own sad, empty lives by pissing on others' accomplishments.

@ H.Reaper--your English is quite good for a non-native writer--don't worry. (Also, "writting" should be "writing"... only one "t". )

pitty map-center has gone down, but it was inevitable. For that matter it's a small wonder that Q3W still exists.

Anyways, I'd like to remove some rumours that popped up in here.

- The reason why Astro chose for a paid server and not a free one was that he has been fucked by one in the past, just like a few more peeps on Q3W and Map-center
- A few years ago (2003 iirc) map-center was virtually dead (10 posts a week). Due to a few nice peeps that offered to be staff and attract new members, Astro reconsidered closing the site, and kept it up for the last years!!

- Astro never had the intention to make money from the site. all he hoped for was that the community paid for itself, and all those years he paid good money to keep it up because the selfproviding community ended up as an Uthopia.

Now stop complaining about him and start showing him some respect. It's not his fault map-center went down.

Hr.O

@pjw: Ho yeah one 't', cause if there was two, the pronunciation would be different on the firt 'i', right ?
thx anyway.

Hr.O: as i said, there is certainly much things am not aware of, and still as i said, he did a great thing with MC.

But, astro never took the time to explain or answer much of the users questions, i should say that he doesn't answered any. he just came on, and post "give money or i'll close the site". It's not the way you get money from people, if you want people to pay for something, you take the time to be here, on the site, or at least, to explain and answer the questions that has been asked in the topic you made to claim money. he didn't he just wanted us to click on paypal icons on the right... i think that's a first kind of lack of respect from him.

astro asked some of us to help him to write some tutorials for a new website, i think you were one of us Hr.O ? right ? there was also Godmil, dONKEY, Myth, perhaps a few others, and myself. we spent time making list of entities and things for the tutorials. but the project went done, i tried to contact him, to start the project again, to do something from all the time we spent looking for informations for his site. he never answered my pm. and that's another lack of respect.

finally, i have been banned for sometimes from mc, cause on irc, with a few others, we took the decision to reregister the MC channel when it reached its maximum duration, to prevent any takeover, cause Astro wasn't able to connect on the Internet (he was moving afaik). When he came back, he connected on the channel, waited 10minutes, left, and banned us all from the forum, without any questions, any word, any time for us to give him the ownership. that a final lack of respect from him.

i already showed more respect for him, than he showed for his forum active users.

Hr.O thanks for explaining this

I can see why a host doesn't have time to answer questions, he has to take care of the site, that's his main "job". I never ask too many questions to someone who hosts a site. Other sites are run completely by staff alone, and that's ok because it works (with the right people, map-center is no exception ).
It is odd that he didn't take some time to answer some questions though...

Questions should be answered by the forum community, like in any forum, and that did happen.
I certainly learned a lot by reading the forums.

H.Reaper wrote:Well, i can't say that you're wrong wviperw. He was more interrested in getting money form his site than in the mapping community he did (don't know why this is here), but perhaps he had some troubles am not aware of.
Anyway, in the last years, he only appeared to ask for money, with threats of closing the site. (awkward)

But his site was great.



No Anwulf, i have not been able to see your pm.

p.s to anwulf (or anyone): feel free to correct my language if i make big mistakes, i really would like to improve my english.

Not too bad, really.

Thx much,

but next time, for other people, plz, leave me a private message with your comments =).

:icon17:

The site did have an ugly ending I think Christmas of 04, but it had a wealth of information in the JA section that Raven and pals put together from scratch. It was probably the best JA resource on the web for a while. I went the other day to search one of Raven's sticky posts to find the wonderful information deleted. I'm pretty sure MC was on an unlimted bandwidth server with his other site, so he left it open so people could download textures and search and stuff. He was a pretty grouchy guy heh! I guess learning hacking and cracks is better then the other type of crack. I don't think the hacker realized the ship was already scuttled.