And I've yet to try that new typing test that's been posted, but I'm going to wait until I wake up a little more...

quote:

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Now I just have to figure out where to get a tank costume. . .That's the only way he will pay attention to me.

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The trick is to mention (subliminally) the word TreadMarks every so often and what you want him to do. Sort of like Mr Subliminal on SNL.

Also, you could try a t-shirt that says TreadMarks on it and in a little font, "Frag This!".

For Matrix: I took it upon myself to add puctuation marks and paragraphs. I just hope the formatting from Word will transfer over to this little box. Here it is: GoldAnt's story:

Ok, here's the story from Me to Moltor

Ok well. When I was 5 or so I always loved airplanes... Making paper airplanes. Now we had this old DOS CPU. We had a cabinet/cupboard above it. In there I found two flight simulators. One for jets, almost like a dog fighting game, which was pretty advanced for back then, and the other one was Microsoft® Flight Simulator. I think 3.1, or something like that.

I soon learned how to get the plane off the ground. I learned all that good stuff about how hitting down pulls back =) and how hitting forward dips down. I soon began to learn how to use all the knick-knacks and this-and-there inside the program.

One day I had a friend over. We decided we'd like to fly the plane to the North Pole.
We used the y key to slew up there. It took quite a while so we left the computer for a while and left it running. When we came back we were almost to the North Pole. Right before we reached it the program crashed, probably because those idiots at Microsoft® had never beta tested any areas in the North Pole! My sister was coming home, or something like that, and we didn't want her to get a hold of the floppy with flight simulator 3.1 on it. We, being the smart people we were, put it into a game called the 7th Guest's Box. This had come with my dad's work CPU a long time ago. I soon forgot about where we had put the disk, before the day ended. When I couldn't find it I figured, "Aargh, Valerie did get the disk! She hid it! She stole it! ARGH!" I went on thinking this. In the meantime, our friends in the ward decided to switch with us a game called Myst for the 7th Guest for like a month or two. I continued to look for the disk every few days or so. I was heart broken about Valerie taking it.

One day I saw my dad looking in a CPU magazine that talked about a program called Flight Simulator 98. He told me that it was probably better than the 3.1 disk that I had had. I was reluctant to believe this, even though I knew it would be way better =). I think maybe a few months down the road (friends still had 7th Guest) my Dad had gotten me the Flight Simulator 98 thing. He had just brought it home and then showed it to me. I hadn't asked him to or anything, (my dad is really a great guy, I love him and I'm really glad that he's my dad.). We installed it on our newer 95 CPU and I started flying. It was real cool, with 3d planes and everything. A Helicopter included =), but extremely hard to fly. After maybe a few weeks of flying solo, messing around by jumping on and off air craft carriers, and playing with their elevator systems and underground parking lots, I wanted to play with other people.

Flying alone just doesn't seem as much fun as with others, like most games. It took a long time and A TON of over night downloads (the modem we used was EXTREMELY slow, it was I think maybe a 16k or a 10 or a 6k. I'm not even sure how it connected). After we finally got the Zone downloaded I got could fly with other people, and fly I did. I would usually do the flying and my dad would talk with the other people from around the world (my dad speaks French). We'd fly over CA and point out where we lived and stuff to other people. It was real cool. My interest eventually died out for some reason. I forgot why, though. I just plain stopped doing it.

In 5th grade one day, I remembered that when I'd been looking on the Zone at free games I remembered that I'd tried to get a free game called Ants to work. It didn't, but with me I try something even though I might not know how to do it. I tend to learn things in levels. I may not know something, but when I figure it out, my knowledge jumps up another level and then BOOM! , I KNOW IT!. I attempted to do get Ants to run again. This time it happened easily. I figured out what a download was so I was able to download Ants successfully. Next I figured out how to install and installed it. The First time I tried it, I played single player, which now really doesn't seem that fun. Right then, though, it was so COOL! There were Combat Ants, Bomber Ants, Swimmer Ants, Fire Ants (they laid firewalls), Thief Ants, and Regular Ants. The Ants were all 3d, too. I went and I began my career of playing Ants.

After a while I discovered what a team/clan hosted by the Zone was. I decided I'd make one. I called it "The Golden Ants". it was time for me to look for my first member. I opened up a room and right after I played with a guy I asked him if he like to join and he did. I explained the complex process of how to sign up through the crazy forms the Zone gave. Finally, he was a member! Thus, The Golden Ants were born!

His name was GoldAnt_Jake. We began to look for our second member, he turned out to be GoldAnt_Nick5. Jake made a website for our team/clan that day while Nick and I were recruiting more members. Through all this there were a few people who've probably changed my life by their influence: GoldAnt_Nick5, Greatyk, and a sly fellow called Signals. After everybody sifted around, etc . . . Signals was always there for me. It seemed a bit suspicious. My brain said, "A-hah ,of course he was always there because he wanted something". Eventually he made his own clan. You can guess the conflicts that arose there.

I had no problem with it, but he wanted ownership of The Golden Ants. w00t! pfft, dagnabit, the Meanie! What's he thinking anyways? He would often give me cheezy speeches like, "GoldAnt, now is the time for the ultimate clan. We must unite and RULE THE ZONE" (ok, somebody's a bit......... errrr crazy over here, it's a game for crying out loud! I couldn't bear to break it to the poor little world dominance seeker). I'd tell him that I would think about it, or maybe in a week Serves him right, too. He eventually stopped bugging me about it and that's a good thing. Nick and I started taking a liking towards old DOS kind of games, like ZZT. He made a site of games =) Yippy!!!!

There was one game called Pizza Tycoon (or something like that). I decided I'd try it. It didn't work, so I went to the site where it originally came from. YEEESH!, It gave me over 10 pop up ads. Man, I wonder how they support themselves? Could it be by making people accidentally click on ads to get them cash? Think so! For those of you who say "10?? There couldn't possibly have been ten pop up ads, well pfft, I went to the site again and got bombed by ads again. More than 10, but I'm not gonna list a number any higher, or bother to count them all. However, at the site I saw a game, DXball. It sounded cool. I also liked the 3d icon it had. I downloaded it......

One day when I was playing DXBall (note from Susan: It is a very addictive game, but doesn't require quite as much eye-hand coordination as TM. More my speed as well my my kid's speed) I accidentally clicked on the web page button. Argh! The CPU (actually the modem-SW) dialed up and went to the site. I decided I'd look around since I just plain loved the game. I looked at the games and proggies there. It was pretty spiffy. There was this one game at the bottom that I didn't click on, Tread Marks. Sounded like a stock trading game. Silly me, I thought it said Trade Marks at the time, lol. I avoided it. Each time I checked in on the site I'd see that TreadMarks sign there, staring back at me with its logo. After a while I just said, "Bah, who cares! If they're gonna make all these others games of such high and fine quality, if they're gonna make some kinda trademark stock game thingy, I should at least give it a chance". I clicked on the page.... *turns on the Theme Music* and TA DA! I found out it was really a Tank Game, Tread not Trade!! WHOA!!!!!!! COOL!!!!!

According to what the site said, it had TONS of maps, tons of tanks, and tons of weapons!!!! With Multiplayer!!!!! Boy was I glad for givin' this a try. I downloaded the demo, which is something like 30-40 megs (my achin' 56.6k modem) (note from Sue: I thought it was a 16k modem, you must have upgraded. See paragraph 5). The first time I tried the demo, I was confused!!! I ran into other tanks on the races, I hit the posts marking the track, I ran into the trees blowing them up, and I'd flip over upside-down in the water. Despite this, I explored and became a member of what ya might call now today, The Tread Marks Community.

Whoa, it's just so nice talking with people in the TM community. The thing is, we're all for each other, unlike most gaming communities. Sure, we have clan wars, but we all cheer GJ for each other! Ya know we're all friends. If some hotshot gamer comes in acting tough, usually he's scared away for some reason or another. It's the lack of meanness. People can feel it and it *CREEPS* them *OUT*. Other great things about Tread Marks are that you can make your own mods and that the game itself takes patience. You can't learn it in a day. You CAN learn it in a day, but it takes FAR longer to master.

I began to dive in and around TreadMarks. I made my first tank, the Nuke Tank. It had a nuke for a turret and shot mini nukes that gave off real cool sparkle smoke. That was also my ONLY tank =). I did make a few weapons here and there, though. I changed one weapon called the wasps, so that instead of shooting 10 tracking missiles it shot 400 at a time Nasty little lagger. When you shot it you saw a red beam of smoke for a little bit then wasps on the horizon. People would just be swept away *BANG* BANG* BANG* lol. IT was cool. People began coming into my life again. I met Dudymas, JL, Random Chaos, Coaxs, SuperUnkown, Goku, David, Matrix, and many others who I appreciate just as much, but don't have the time or the memory to put down, lol. I began to become involved. Coaxs and I started the TM Player-Bio site, where we had their fav pic, their ICQ#, and other info about them. We posted DDM scores....etc. I doubt that part of the site is still up, though.

During this period Dudymas gave me an old Beta Version of Texturizer that Seamus McNally had made and given out for beta testing. I had joined the TM community one day before Seamus died; March 21st. Thus, Texturizer was never finished for the public and only a few people have the beta (not that I would've gotten it finished, I just don't know how to reword some of this paper). A great work of art (literally) put to waste. Well, almost put to waste. On the web site that Coaxs and I started, I made the background textures mostly with Texturizer. Texturizer works with layers you might say. You would put one layer down and then the next until in the end, they'd stack and blend together to make a picture. It's really an effective process. I had my exploits in CPU
Art, one of which I liked to call Black and Orange. It was pure accident, but beautiful!!!!

By this time I had stopped playing Ants. I was on the "Great Search for Dudy" I looked everywhere I could trying to find him! He had disappeared with hardly a word!!! I eventually found him, but I've presently lost him again. He's in Florida for the summer, I know at least, then Colorado....When you're around people for long periods of time, some of them begins to rub off on you (whether you like it or not). And I had been around Dudy for quite a while, which I think was a good thing!!! Having a good influence like that on you is well, good =). But bad, is, well, Bad. Dudymas always acted a little crazy; spamming/rambling/talking/discussing/philosophizing about Cookie dough and other such things. Some of his craziness rubbed off on me you could say, but I'm not into cookie dough quite as much. I was more into.......A....N...T...S..................
Since Dudy was missing from the TreadMarks forums I sub-consciously took on the duty to give them their daily dose of Dudy. And I did, lol. There was a How Did You Get
Your Name Topic once.......... LOL, I had the *longest* post. It was HUMONGOUS!!!! (Note from Sue: and this one isn't?)

By THIS time I had met somebody called Kaeto. I had just been introduced to NetHack by Dudy. Dudy and I wanted to play/make a multiplayer version so we could play with each other, of course. Kaeto played some kinder multiplayer one and he had us try it. Mangband...... Boy, will I have trouble forgetting that name when I get older, haha. Well, we played it, we ran around as our little @ guys (@ is the character of the guy, everything used letters and numbers). Dudy fell away after a bit. I searched and found a link on the Mangband site to Pern Mangband!, Whoa! Looksie at all the stuff there, I said. They had tons of neato classes. I began playing there... I won't go into full detail, because that story alone would be more than this one, and would be *EXTREMELY* boring at times hehe. I started a newbie, and ended a newbie, but a better one. I played and played. I met lots of new enemies, a few friends, and a few wacko/crazy people. Of these people I met, one person always stood out, there helping the little guy starting out-- the poor newbie, ruthlessly attacking the meanies!!!, Moltor. Tune in to the next few paragraphs to hear about him.

I played Pern Mang a lot. We'll leave it at that for now, me thinks, unless you poor victims stuck reading this story want to hear more. As the years/ months/days /hours /minutes/ seconds/miliseconds/nanoseconds went on I became more obsessed with
Ants. I had found Dudy again, and this time he had gotten me interested in Venus Fly Traps. Well, not just them, but all Carnivorous plants In 8th grade I had a very special teacher, Mr. Seymour. Mr. Seymour was the *BEST* teacher I have ever had. We did tons of activities in and out of class. He knew how much I liked Carnivorous plants. At the end of the year when he was shopping, he came across some at a store. He bought them for me, brought them home, put them in a pickle jar, and fixed them up in a neato Terarrium. I've grown a few kinds before, but he had given me 1 Venus Fly Trap, 2 Butterworts, and 1 Tropical Pitcher Plant. They're growing by the window right now, too. hehe, The day I brought them home I decided, out of sheer madness, that I would Annihilate and Destroy the Windows 98 Start up thingy- just on my cpu, though haha. I needed something to replace it with... I thought long and hard. After the debate in my mind, I decided I should put....... THE ANT HILL!!!!!!! I went about making an anthill with a flag that had a little ant on it (blue flag). I also made a 3d Yellow Ant. It was almost ready to be pasted on top of that yucky windows picture, but I needed to finalize my draft of the anthill/grass/ and the ants' limbs. Around this time, maybe a little before, Moltor had asked the question that shall forever echo in the ears of all things that get stepped on and splattered on the ground (or in the air...) "What's with the Antness?" (btw folks, hate to let you in on this little secret, but those little fellas don't have external ears like us humans they gotta pick up vibrations without eardrums 'n all, mostly ....... hehehe)

I gave Moltor my ICQ# and the ICQ web site and we got to work. We began by opening a chat room. I'd type and type and type and Molt would tell me what sounded good and what didn't. Usually he'd just pfft alot hehe. As we went along, I remembered to save but once and early on. BANG! The CPU crashed just when I was saving the for 2nd time. Actually, right before I clicked the button. What a pity, lol. I had to type that part all alone, and it's still not done. Gonna have to get Moltor to help me do it again for you readers out there.

Here we are now, I'm typing the ending and I'm realizing that the old or the new ant can't go on forever. It's just not gonna happen... But, there will always be a little ant somewhere, in whatever game or community I reside, and there will always be a little ant in all of us. For good or for bad, that little ant just sticks with ya, especially once you've read this story.