In the 1/4 of a year since the last entry a lot has happened here at DES. We’ve seen the addition of four new members, the return of three long-term absences and four experienced players relaxing their game-time a bit.
April 7th saw the introduction of jamz (from the UK), spotted mouthing off in the AC forum as much as in-game. Six days later, the 13th brought Mr RAWR! himself SMASHing in; ex-oNe veteran, Woolly (Canada). There was a slight gap before Godsmack (US) was recruited on May 11th (raising the DES average age again); notable for his all-round friendliness, punctuated by long periods of in-game silence. And the latest appointment is Jelly (Australia), the one-time C=64 team member arriving on the 21st of this month.
The clan’s heartfelt ‘wb’s go to TwItCh, Fragment and blackbeast , who have all made reappearances in-game recently after spells away from playing. On the other side of this coin, tipper is taking a well-earned break away from ladder stomping duties for personal reasons and Cleaner, Cyprian and byrus are putting in the odd appearance as real-life takes the front seat in their lives for various reasons.
Away from individual endeavours, DES seems to have become incredibly popular in public games, with most members reporting ‘How do you join DES?’ incidents. In light of this and having a healthy roster of 27, we have reverted to an ‘invite only’ policy. If you feel you’re DES material, just be yourself in games with our members and don’t worry, we’ll notice you.
On the mapping front, the recent good news is that our very own RuThLe$$ (along with Undead) has had ac_iceroad achieve Official Map status. Congratulations Ruth. Also, last month saw the arrival of ac_outpost, an all-round DES map with so many contributions from our highly skilled members.
In server news, last month Freddo decided to ditch his unreliable home server to invest in Robotics, a VPS running one public, one match and one mapping server; a bonus for Australian players. Also, jamz brought the unreliable SpaceJam with him, since ditched and replaced with Astral on a linux VPS.
As far as playing goes, it seems so long ago now when DES got a raw deal in the opening season of the AssaultCube CTF league on the ESL site in March/April. After qualifying with wins against ANGRA and BCFH ( and a draw with C=64), we progressed to a victory over MCNNM in the last 8. This brought us to what turned out to be a controversial encounter with .rG! in the semis; having struggled to agree a mutually suitable time, the match was played at an ESL admin. appointed time when DES members were thin on the ground. Halo, RuThLe$$ and jiba performed admirably, but were beaten by .rG!’s tactical display. Thanks go to tipper, R4zor, sundown, Medusa, Cleaner, OpenSource, Cyprian and Hallstrom who all took part. With the memory of this behind us, we can look forward to the next official competition.