How odd. The play test fell through for Saturday night due to my network's excellent ability to work. The DHCP server was all fubar'd and therefor no one could get online so that put a huge damper on things. So today finally it's back online and I can actually get online. (hence my ability to update) The play test has been moved to tonight at 8 pm EST. I don't know how many of the people who were supposed to play Saturday night will be able to attend tonight so if you haven't e-mailed me and are interested do so and I will include you on the 'list'. I'd rather have a few too many people then not enough but that is I. Until I get my new computer built (as soon as I get enough *extra* money to purchase all the parts I need...haha), which will be WAY faster then the linux server I got now we should be able to have more people for play tests depending on how many people the network would support. So that is my reason for why I haven't been seen. As for the other guys reasons for also dying out the past few days...I'll have to whip them around later and find out why they haven't been anything. I always love it when I have things carefully planned out and every single thing that could go wrong does. That always sucks. Life goes on I assume.

I don't know what to do with that boy lately. I have been the center of this group up until now and keep things moving along (not bragging or saying this is solely my deal but just stating a fact). So now suddenly he gets the nod from PF to host us and now he's the mad man running around doing a million and a half things at one time. Impressed by this I am but I feel left out or something as it seems I haven't been doing anything around here. But I've been doing a million things in the background of all this mess when I got a few minutes. As I haven't been able to work on Dethwell for more then 10 minutes at one time this whole week. And being that I have to be up tomorrow at 8 am or so and it's after 1 am now I will be going to bed in the next hour or two. So yea...hopefully once I get all this mess straight that I call my life tomorrow and get moved into school hopefully I will be able to spend all of Friday night and Saturday up until the play test working on the map. Oh another 'funny' note. VorTeX doesn't seem to get the concept behind the 'latest updates' heading up top of this page. He updates the projects section today and yesterday and yet doesn't change the date up top. Go fig eh? Of course I'm just publically teasing VorTeX and all to mess with him. Keep in mind he is one of my absolute best friends, on and offline. On one last final note. I will hold off my lawyers from VorTeX this time for the rant. But this is cause of one VERY big reason. Violent video games or movies do NOT make violent people. Stupid fucking people who are violent people are just that becuase they are. How simple of an idea is that for these people to grasp? Er wait I know...they don't want to take responsibility for them being bad parents. AH HA! I have solved the whole crisis in a matter of 4 seconds. Now if these people who think they can take away our First Amendment and tell us what we can and can not be exposed to would leave us the hell alone and go look at the REAL problems then maybe they would get something accomplished. Nah that'll never happen, it's too simple. Oh and one other thing. If the FBI's hit ratio is only 20%, maybe it's just me but maybe they should think about learning how to aim, I mean you ARE supposed to know how to fire a gun properly if you are in the FBI, and might make life simpler in the long run for them. Hell I can hit 20% of my targets and I can't aim for shit. The world is full of stupid people and I swear they seek me out some days.

I've put up the next two shots in my Snipe Hunt preview.. focusing on the deck tonight... so go check 'em out!

I think this is my shortest update yet :)

Now I know that I'll probably get a notice from Lord Bishop's lawyers saying that I'm not allowed to rant on this site as that is his job.. but I'll risk it. This pseudo-rant is inspired by this flaming piece of poo of an article.. it's what I sent the editor.. so I felt compelled to post what I told him to the world. What they said is in teal.. my replies are in red.

Well let's see... where to start? (you guys will post anything that's newsworthy or otherwise now a days)

"Never in the history of law enforcement has anyone shot with such accuracy. Even the FBI's average hit ratio is only 20%."

Never in the history of law enforcement has anyone shot with the intent to hurt or kill innocent people just standing there.

"Grossman said a game called Quake 3 was pulled from the market recently because it allowed players to scan in pictures of real people and then kill them."

And once again he's wrong.. the game is in its test phases and is planned to be released in the fall.

"He's working with authorities to have age restrictions put on violent video games."

If you would go look at a box for a game such as Doom.. you will find it has an age restriction of 17+ on it.. what parents choose to allow their kids to play is their business.. not the authorities.

"These guys played a game called Doom, which is a game where you kill and hunt people down," said Stone. "The difference is the video games don't shoot back. We did."

Well.. not sure quite sure where to start with this one... Ok.. first, in Doom you don't kill and hunt people.. you kill and hunt aliens or demons.
Second of all, if what the boys was doing was shooting.. then the only thing that the monsters could be seen as doing is shooting back.. because it has the same effect in the game that their shooting does.
Third, the Jefferson County police shot back? I coulda sworn the boys (disturbed far beyond anything video game could even begin to touch I might add) killed themselves.

Well.. I think that should do it for my problems with this poor excuse for journalism... it would help if they would even so much as verify the tiniest of information before they go reporting it.

I've put a preview for everyone in the projects section of my current map.. which I shall now reveal to you!

Snipe Hunt promises to add life to the Sniper War genre of map by putting in twists to give those wanting to do more than just snipe eachother.. a chance to liven it up and get some good practice while they're at it. Snipe wars will never be the same again!

Also: I plan on putting up at least 2 new screenshots every night until the maptest and then will have a full-blown expose afterwords complete with an actual explanation of how it all works :)

The response we've gotten to our launch of our site has been spectacular! I know I speak for all of ZFP when I say that I've been overwhelmed by the number of people taking a look at our site and our wares... Speaking of that.. I plan on having a little surprise to put up either late tonight or early tomorrow morning.. so keep your eyes peeled :)

The first day of school was tiring but all in all not too bad.. I have like male teachers in the majority of my classes this year though.. so it's kind of a triip compared to what I'm used to. But I think I'll manage. I actually managed to get my homework done for the first night.. but it remains to be seen how much TFC and Tribes cut into that in the future :)

Well.. that should be it for now.. I strongly advise you to check the site around 10:15 to see if I've maybe posted my surprise...

I swear wonders NEVER cease around here. One night I'm informed we are moving here to PF and the next night it's done. VorTeX cracks me up somedays, as this is almost all of his engineering. We had been looking for a host and it's nice to be on my almighty favorite website out there, PlanetFortress. Kissing ass? Probably not. PF is the only webpage I actually read every day. Hell it's about one of the only webpages I look at period. I'm sure it all mostly stems out of the fact that TF is THE best mod ever made hands down and no one will ever be able to compare with it. At least that is just my opinion which rarely counts for much. So yea it was nice to have someone else take control of matters and do all the grunt work like changing over parts of the pages to be used right here on PF and hell most everything else related to this move. Though I'm appending some minor shit which is no biggie and fixing something semi-major he screwed up in adding the new section links. (as he reads this and probably wonders what in the hell as he has no clue what I'm talking about) Anyways you should be reading this tomorrow after our official launch on PF. I'm told it'll be announced tomorrow but I'm just a pawn in this game of moving this time around. Which is more then fine with me. I'm sure you all know The Hal's rants. Well most of my updates are almost always as bad as his but he is still the master of the rant. So get used to it or petition to get me off the 'air' or something slick like that. Make sure to visit our message board as your feed back is quite important to us. Without you, we are worthless. Dethwell will definately be beta tested at our play test coming up. I haven't seen the 4 fort map from Clan BSP yet but to my understanding Dethwell is the first 'true' 4 team CTF map. *DISCLAIMER* As I said I'm told their 4 team map is more command the flag rather then CTF and as far as I know no one else has released a 4 team CTF so if I'm wrong sue me or something as I can't possibly know everything. *END DISCLAIMER* And now I go back to my tasks to get everything happy dandy for your viewing pleasure.

I believe that the infrastructure for our site is now laid out... we got everything we need to inform you.. indulge you (with files).. let you discuss amongst yourselves (the new messageboard!)... and all the other stuff we conspire to force upon you (the nostalgia section for instance)... so the only thing left to do is let the world know what's up and then paaarrrtaaay!!!!

Speaking of parties... our kickoff the site and server TFC maptest and map play party is now tentatively set to be 8 pm Eastern time on this Saturday the 28th... so send a note to LordBishop to reserve your spot!

Well.. that's all for now.. school starts tomorrow.. so expect to see updates in the early mornings a lot as I will update before I head off to the learning place.

Sometimes life takes you in unexpected directions you never thought where possible. When times like this happen it's normaly best to just go for it and have as much fun a possible.

Well here we are at our new home here at Planetfortress and i must say I'm damn happy about it. There is a downside about this however. Now I'll have to crawl out from under my rock more often and show myself here in the news page. Well how about some background info on myself. I'm 27 years old and live in the Washington, DC area. I've been playing Teamfortress for about two years now (anyone remember "Specialized TeamFortress rock1 only" server). I've been a member of the "TF>Junction" for almost 1 1/2 years now. I started mapping in april just for fun and now it's nice to see that some people like the work I've done too date. My main job here at ZFP is too do mapping, QA and dream up stuff.

Server admins running my first map "The Citadels v1.1" there is an updated version now out. Make sure to upgrade as this version fix many of the orignal's flaws and it looks damn cool now :)

P.S.: Don't forget about the big ZFP Teamfortress jam we're haveing on the 28th. We'll be playing all the current ZFP map released to date and testing our latest work. Read on this page for more details if you would like to be a part of this. O...Download the latest ZFP maps if you don't have them.

We've arrived here on Planetfortress... it's been a smooth move as far as getting the banners and counters and such running... and the site looks good.. (images work, etc.) Only problem we've got for now is getting our files mirrored and working and such.. which should prove to be a fun adventure.. but it will definitely be worth it because having it so our files our mirrored on cdrom.com and other sites gives us mucho speed for our downloads. =D That should do it for now... expect to hear from the other Z Factor members in the next day or two.

Well.. after a long and valiant struggle (or rather long waiting more than struggling.. hosting people on other sites took forever to respond).... PlanetFortress has agreed to host Z Factor Productions. I am certainly excited to be hosted on a big time site such as PF and look forward to what it can bring us in exposure and contacts. In other news.. my two top-secret TFC maps are being developed at a good pace and I expect at least one to be ready in time for our big map test on the 28th. If you would like to be a part of the test, drop an e-mail to LordBishop about signing up. On the STQ (Smear the Queer.. my Half-Life mod in development) front.. I've been busy w/ my Tribe (which I have recently defected from due to a large defection of the best leaders and other reasons) and TFC maps.. and getting ready for school (it's my senior year in high school and I'm kinda pumped.. but not really.. I'd rather be out of high school at this point)... and goofing off.... so I haven't had time to do more than a little bit of coding on it. Well.. I think that should cover it.. have a nice day everyone.. don't let the evil mutant dogs get ya down.. leave that to the crazy monkey people.

So yes life is slow at times. In these last couple weeks home before I go to school a week from today, it's been fucked up around here. Some days I have so much to do I swear I'm going to explode and other days I'm sitting around so much in one day it's not even funny. So aside from that I've been here at Katie's everyday now for over a week but one. Of course the one night I was home I didn't feel the urge to work on my map so I didn't. Actually, I'm not sure what I did do that night. Seemed to go by rather fast for not doing much of a damn thing. I did go eye the prices on the a-bit BP6 board I want and saw that the new Celeron 500's were out. At some point when I get a little more money that BP6 I want is going to be my linux computer/server. That thing will definately kick some ass. So about the only real thing on my adgenda right now is this. We are going to be holding a private playtest / return party on Saturday the 28th, some time in the evening. If you would like to be a part of this drop me an e-mail and let me know. We will be testing out Dethwell and any other maps we have ready enough to beta test at the time. Also we will probably play any other of a number of maps as long as we got enough people to do so. So yes it's private in a sense but it's an open invite to those who would like to help us out. It will just obviously be passworded and such. So let me know if you are interested and I'll tell you where to be and such fun and exciting stuff. At some point I will probably move my other computer here to Katie's for the last week I'm home and get a bit of time in on Dethwell to get it finished up enough to beta test it on forementioned night. Here's looking forward to school starting back up soon.

If you are a smart one, you'll have noticed we moved to a new site. Now this one isn't as fast but such is life as it's free and doesn't alter my damn page from how I have it. Which means there are no add banners and such bothersome things. Besides this is only going to be a temporary home for us, should only be here for well under a month. See it was on my ISP's webspace but my account ran out yesterday and I don't care to spend the money so I can be online a handful of times in the next 2 weeks before I go back to school. Therefore we don't have that webspace anymore. Once I get back to school I will probably just host the page on one of my two computers myself, so we won't have to worry about it. So how am I online? Simple, two words. Friends with an ISP account. Now what's wrong with that sentence? If you guessed it's more then two words then you were right. Let me tell you what you won. Absolutely not a damn thing. So anyways this all means I will end up going one of two paths. Either A) I do lots of work with my projects and get lots done or B) not touch the computer and thereby getting nothing done the rest of summer. I'm leaning some towards B myself as my only motivation for going home (which is coincedently where my computer is) was to be able to use the net at a speed over 24,000. Now that I can't do that...why go home? Especially since in 2 weeks I have a T1 again. So the only real point in this update is to state we moved. If anyone sees anything wrong or finds a link that doesn't work *please* let me know and drop me an e-mail. Though I can't check it except from home so I might be slow in responding. Maybe when pigs fly VorTeX will get a life. Then again we have a better chance of pigs flying then VorTeX doing that.

Finaly got around to fixing the flaws in citadel11. ALL server Admins should upgrade to the new version. Here is a short list of some of the changes.

    -fixed lighting
    -new skybox
    -new textures
    -fixed doors
    -more ammo in respawn rooms
    -respawns protected by lasers
    -tad lower r_speeds
    -other little things

I was looking at the webpage today cause we were changing a few small things around on it and such, as you can tell from the previous two updates. I'm such a moron. I just noticed tonight that the little box up top there had said the last update to the downloads section was JUNE 29th when it should have read JULY 29th. I was smart enough to change the date but not the month. I did the same thing with the projects part too. Tell me that wasn't slick of me. As you can see we haven't died yet. We haven't updated cause we've been doing too much work on our current projects, yea that's the ticket. Well it is half acurate at least. Since I saw the news of a new TFC patch which is going to fix the whole problem with the 4th team scoring I've been working on Dethwell again. I was kind of bummed about the whole scoring bug, plus I was working on some other stuff when I was home, so I hadn't done much with the map in a bit. But as I said I've been working on it and I'm around 85% done now. I only have one major structural section to do and then it'll be a whole ton of tweaking and details and fun things such as that. As for our little group effort of a map here I got my section as done as it's going to get and now it's up to waiting on other people again. Lets see what else in on the agenda. In less then 3 weeks I get to go back to school and we will have a server to run our maps on. YEA!! It makes me happy at least. Plus it will allow for us to play test our maps much better then we have been able to over the summer. VorTeX was here just a bit ago but he blew up and died and I haven't seen him since. It would have been cool to get everyone to update all on the same day for like the first time. Ah well such is life. I know there was more I wanted to post but alas my brain is fried and I want to eat some food so that's that.

Well after it's was only out for about 1 week I've finished the revised version of citadel32. Nothing changed on the gameplay side but I have mostly added custom textures, some different sounds and spiced up the bases insides a bit more. Work is moving along with the revised version of "The Citadels" (citadel11.bsp). So if anyone wants something changed in that map better ask me now. Also I'm working on three other maps right now but none are not quite ready for the public to view yet. Keep your eyes on this site in the next few weeks.

All seems to be going well so far. They've changed my original design a bit (getting rid of the frames per my *original* idea) and haven't screwed it over entirely. Yay. =) Now then, if you'll notice, there's an "old news" link at the bottom of this page. Well, right after this news section, actually, because this *is* now the bottom of the page. =P