RTSC Site History for 2004


	Site History 2004

	23 Dec		Just a few very cosmetic nips and tucks. Its been very busy leading up to the Silly Season, and I haven't even had time to think about Christmas! Well, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone. This is the last upload for 2004 for RTSC. I'll see you all next year! Updated the Total Annihilation Links page. Updated the Supreme Ruler 2010 entry in the Full RTS Games List.

	6 Dec		Updated the Total Annihilation Sci-Fi Mods page. Reinstated the looong lost TA:Dark Suns mod entry and embellished the TA: Independence War mod entry. Updated the StarCraft Links page. Updated the Startopia DIY Supply page.

	29 Nov		Added the Bentusi Roulette entry to the Homeworld2 Game Types and Dust Wars TC to the Single Player Race Mods pages.

	28 Nov		Small addition to RTS Links: The RTS Starter Kit. More rationalisation and tightening of the Total Annihilation section.

	24 Nov		Finally updated the long overdue Total Annihilation section! Broken up previously huge pages into smaller, cross referenced ones, and culled a lot of duplication. Its the same as it always was, only now it takes up less space and will be easier to maintain! Whew! Now for the big Full Games List!

	23 Nov		Another rash of small, quickie updates, accumulated over the aeons... Work In Progress update to the Medieval: Total War page. Some amendments to the RTS Glossary. Some grammatical fixes to the Homeworld2 Tactics & Movement and Subsystem pages. Some grammatical fixes to the Unit Types page. Brushed up the RTS Links page.

	22 Nov		I've had far too many months of system instability and graphic problems on my PC, and it's only been partially fixed by buying a bigger power supply. I'm damned if I know what this intermittent fault is...I've gone through two graphic cards, two motherboards, three power supplies, two lots of RAM, and its still fritzing out on me. On top of that, the major deadline at work is finally gone, and there's actually been some time to address a huge mountain of accumulated fixes and updates to RTSC. Work continues on the TA section update. Updated the TA Überhack page. Updated the Homeworld:Cataclysm mod page. Rewrote the StarEdit entry on the StarCraft Maps page. Updated the Volatile medical entry in the Startopia Medicine page. Updated the Startopia Overview table. Updated the Full Gameslist page. Updated the Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War page.

	27 Oct		Swag of numerous small nips and tucks throughout the site. Nothing to write home about. Some updated images in the StarCraft section. Updated the Startopia Bio-Deck page. Even found an extra link for the retired Age of Kings Links page.

	24 Oct		Time's working against me lately, so updates are a little sparse. Work is currently underway on the long overdue Total Annihilation and Full Game List sections but they won't be ready for a while yet. Anyway: Updated the Homeworld2 Mods & TC's pages - mostly those I'd never quite got to in the last month. Small update to StarCraft Links. Found another Post Purge Link. Graphical updates to the Total Annihilation, Cataclysm, Homeworld and StarCraft left hand menu bars.

	14 Oct		Some further amendments to the Homeworld2 section: a lot of internal wiring to fix up, not to mention uploading a large number of files that somehow missed Tuesday's big update. Updated a couple of mod entries, but there's more to go.

	12 Oct		I've been absolutely run off my feet this last month and a half, so very little has been done. This is a big Work In Progress update, held up mainly by a titanic reorganisation of the RTSC Homeworld2 section, which still continues. I've tried this time to incorporate at least some vaguely okay graphics, starting with the page banners. There's been a swarm of small changes, and I've only just got around to uploading them now. Hopefully, I can keep the ball rolling and get a few more things knocked on the head, now that I've got the bulk of the HW2 stuff out the way. Established the Medieval: Total War page. This has been sitting half done in the wings for ages, and now that Rome: Total War is out, I'd better get a move on! Established the Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War page. This will almost certainly grow into a proper RTSC section. Gave the Black & White page a bit of a polish. Gave the Homeworld Links page and Custom Mods section a bit of a polish. Gave the Cataclysm Mods page a bit of a polish. Updated the Masters of Orion III Links page. There's some good looking custom mods that seem to be revitalizing this title a little. Tidied up the Rise of Nations section. Fixed some bodgy grammar and sentence structure in StarCraft Info & Strategies list.

	7 Sep		Added a few obvious entries I'd missed in the StarCraft Campaigns page: mainly, the developer's own! A few quickie extras to the Full Games List, which is currently being taken apart and reorganised before it implodes under its own mass and turns into an html black hole. Added the Codename: Panzers, StarShatter and Utopia entries to the list.

	2 Sep		Reorganised the StarCraft section as a bit of a dry run for the Homeworld2 reorganisation. Updated the Startopia Links page. An old Startopia site, Apocalypse, came back from the dead. Nothing else has happened in the Startopia world, alas. Except for this small update, of course...

	31 Aug		Nice big re-organisation of the Homeworld and Cataclysm sections. Had to chase up a lot of stale links, and with RTSC's web traffic now comfortably clearing 23Gb for August, many of the big pages are in the process of being split into smaller ones for the purposes of preserving bandwith. The next big update will be to RTSC's most popular section: Homeworld2. And along the way, I'll try to replace some of these godawful temporary banners and graphics as I go... And wow! A tickle over 30,000 unique visitors came to visit this month. Thanks for all your interest everyone!

	24 Aug		Urgent update to the UTASP page, correcting a glaring error that claimed M.A.D. TA, creators of the UTASP custom mod for Total Annihilation had broken up. They haven't - this was an idle rumour doing the rounds many months ago. There's more to come soon on the UTASP page - but there are more pressing concerns with site maintenance at the moment.

	20 Aug		Maintenance tweaks and some formatting alterations for the StarCraft section to bring it in line for more up to date RTSC game sections. I'm in the process of doing a major re-organisation of the site. RTSC's StarCraft Mods page alone has had 5160 unique visitors so far this month (on average about 80% of all visitors warp in via Google, stay 15 seconds and then disappear again...) Since this page takes up 564k, that's going to account for about 3 gigabytes of bandwith this month alone, most of which will be squandered on blow-ins. I think its time I sat down and worked out how to make RTSC a little more efficient with its bandwidth without compromising anything of value for my serious visitors.

	16 Aug		Major and urgent revamp of the About page - basically due to the huge number of bandwidth thieves and rampant plagiarists having a wonderful time at my expense. Its disheartening, but not entirely unexpected. I've set things up to block casual off-site "Image Hosting", so we'll see how things develop.

	8 Aug		Massive update to the Full Games List. There's quite a few major holes in here, and the page is getting so big and ponderous I'm currently working on breaking it up. There's a lot of extra entries: Axis & Allies, Battle for Middle Earth, Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom, Europa Universalis II, Great Empires Collection II, Perimeter, Railroad Tycoon 3, Supreme Ruler 2010, Tropico, Victoria: An Empire Under the Sun, War of the Ring, WW2: Frontline Command and Zeus: Master of Olympus. Reorganised the Vaygr and Hiigaran ship pages in the Homeworld2 section. These two over sized pages have been broken up into more manageable pieces. A small number of nicks, tucks, broken link fixes, etc. that were too small and too numerous to mention...

	2 Aug		Minor update to the Startopia section (Just smartened up the side index). Minor update to the Masters of Orion III section. Minor update to the RTSC Rest Home page. Embellished the Age of Kings entry.

	26 Jul		Minor update to the Rise of Nations section. Minor update to the Homeworld Info & Strategies page.

	25 Jul		Big update to the StarCraft section. The RTSC StarCraft Mods & TC's page scores about 160 unique visitors a day, so much attention lavished on keeping this all current. Minor update to the Cataclysm side index. Biggish update to the Homeworld section.

	21 Jul		Big update to the Homeworld2 section. Minor update to the Rise of Nations section.

	17 Jul		Sorry for the two month wait, but I had a nice relaxing holiday from my PC, thanks to its motherboard blowing up (right after I sold my other computer, naturally!) and a long wait for the warranty to cough up a replacement... plus an interstate trip, a nasty flu, and a few other entertaining distractions too numerous and boring to mention. There's about two months of incremental updates to wade through, so to start, here's the first of the long overdue updates: the Total Annihilation section.

	17 May		Polished the Total Annihilation section. Mainly to update the M.A.D.TA entry. M.A.D.TA may not be closing down, after all. Whew!

	13 May		Some further rearranging to fit the traffic, now that I know where its going to and what people are coming in to read. Un-retired the StarCraft and Cataclysm sections properly. Reorganised the Gamelist and Retired games pages as a result. Updated the RTSC Full Games List (formerly Other RTS Games), adding Close Combat. Did some very cosmetic cleaning up of the Startopia section. No new material, though. Sorry Startopians!

	12 May		Found some more dead links and broken html and thus did a bit more polishing on the StarCraft section. Updated one or two bodgy links around the site: the UTASP mod page has a small update so you can find this mod online, and a dodgy version of the Star Trek: Homeworld site has been located.

	11 May		Finally got some server stats to look at, and would you believe it: the StarCraft mod page is the most popular page in all of rakrent.com - even though I had pretty much retired it last September and felt the StarCraft was old, old news. When your server notes 251 hits in 48 hours you realize its time to give the StarCraft section a complete makeover - upgrading all its formatting to the newer RTSC look, and even double checking all its links and info. I might even have to un-retire it! We'll see.

	6 May		Reorganised the RTS Links page and added the Dot Eaters entry. I'm also going through the Total Annihilation section more thoroughly now that I'm finally back into playing it online more frequently. Alas, I get into UTASP 4.0 just in time for its creators M.A.D.TA to shut down!! Right now I'm currently checking out some other mods: Raven TA, The Pack and a few others. Updated the Switeck Bugfix page. Updated the ÜberHack page. Update the TA Links page and amend the M.A.D.TA entry with a heavy heart... Added The Pack entry to the Total Annihilation Mods & TC's page. This is yet another mega-pack of units for the game - except this time it's come from the Macintosh gaming world to be ported to the PC.

	27 Apr		Further refinements to the Homeworld2 section, especially to the slightly lacklustre Maps page. Gave the Full RTSC Games List (formerly the Other RTS Games page) a rub down.

	26 Apr		Massive rebuild of the Rise of Nations Overview page. At last. Even massiver rebuild of the Homeworld2 pages. Rearranged the Other RTS Games page to become The Full Real Time Strategy Games List page instead. I found it too easy to just teleport in via a search engine and see everything out of context, so I'll dabble with including all the games mentioned in RTSC here, and see how it feels. And - oh yeah, added the Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War entry. Whe-hey! Now this looks promising. If Relic can sustain this sort of thing I'm in grave danger of becoming a rabid fan...

	14 Apr		Big update of the Rise of Nations Links page. The RoN Overview page is currently in the throes of a huge update, but has yet to be uploaded. More minor updates to the Total Annihilation section's Maps and Links pages, adding the T.A.R. link. Updated the Homeworld Mods & TC's page. The Cataclysm: Onslaught Mod v2.0 has been released. Tarted up the WarCraft III page.

	31 Mar		More minor updates to the Total Annihilation section's Mods & TC's and Links pages.

	30 Mar		Added the Warmonger and Raven TA mod entries to the Total Annihilation section's Mods & TC's page.

	28 Mar		Been on holiday, and lots more. And for once, I've actually been indulging in some serious netgaming with Total Annihilation, Rise of Nations and Homeworld2, rather than just writing about them. So, only a few sporadic site adjustments that have accumulated over the last week or so. Fixed a fair links here, there and everywhere. Reformatted a couple of pages. Updated RTS Links: added two glaring omissions I should have entered yonks ago: MobyGames and Home of the Underdogs. Updated and rewrote Boring Theory in the RTS Basics section.

	17 Mar		Further amendments to the Total Annihilation and Homeworld2 sections. I'm on a bit of a roll here!

	15 Mar		General purpose site maintenance and updates. Big update to the Homeworld2 section in general. Only the maps page is starting to look a little old and dusty. Updated Other RTS Games. Added, of all things, The Ancient Art of War! How could I forget this?? Updated the WarCraft III page. Very minor update to Total Annihilation Map sand the TA Overview page. Updated Homeworld Mods & TC's

	8 Mar		Nice, jolly big update to the Homeworld2 section. Had another hiccup with uploading all this so it turned out two days late. Bumped off the ships pages (hmm they're bloody huge now - might have to split them up), and finally got around to updating the hideously out of date Mods & TC's page.

	2 Mar		Updated the Dungeon Keeper II page. Updated the Rise of Nations Overview page. Further update to Other RTS Games. Added Age of Empires, KKND, Powermonger, Total War series, Warlords Battlecry, Warrior Kings, WarCraft Series entries.

	29 Feb		My apologies to anyone who tried to access the previous Total Annihilation section update and only go a blank or missing page: I had a minor tussle with a few ftp and server issues. It all seems to be sorted out now, so the general maintenance sweep continues: Updated the Black & White page. Updated Other RTS Games. A reader suggested I should make a timeline for all those games, since many are starting to age now. I've opted for including publishing dates. Thanks, Keoki - excellent suggestion!

	27 Feb		Small daily updates continue. Reorganise and scrub up the Total Annihilation section's Mods & TC's page. Most links chased down and amended where necessary.

	26 Feb		More fix its of the mundane variety - this is still incomplete and very much a work in progress. Updated the Earth 2150 page. Updated the Startopia section's Neurotic Details page. Lots of low level link and info maintenance on the Total Annihilation section. Lots of link and info maintenance in the Homeworld section.

	24 Feb		Work in progress update on the Homeworld2 section, mostly on the guides.

	19 Feb		Tackle some of the outstanding To Do's with this site. They're all pretty small, but there's dozens and dozens of the little bastards! Updated the Homeworld section's front page. Updated the Homeworld2 section's front page. Updated the Total Annihilation section's front page.

	18 Feb		What a week! Been very busy, so updates have been a little strangled. There's a small backlog of regular link maintenance building up in the other game sections. Nevertheless, another major work in progress update on the Homeworld2 shipping pages, in particular the Vaygr one and some extra bits to the Hiigaran one. There's still some extra screenshots to come as well, but they do take a little time to do properly. Enjoy!

	12 Feb		Work in progress update on the Hiigaran Ships page in the Homeworld2 section.

	10 Feb		Massive work-in-progress update to the Homeworld2 section, expanding the ship descriptions and adding lots of juicy screenshots. There's still more to follow, and I've yet to do some serious link and mod page maintenance.

	29 Jan		Found some old general updates I never got around to uploading. The introduction has been rewritten to reflect the current (and slowly evolving) philosophy of RTSC, and a few links and minor adjustments to the RTS Glossary came of it, almost as an afterthought. Fixed up a mass of small, niggling little things in the Startopia Guide as a result of its renovations from yesterday. This is spit and polish, no new content or pictures. As you were. Updated the Fulcrum4 entry in the Homeworld section's Map Links.

	28 Jan		Got tired of staring at luscious spacecraft and endless editing of the Homeworld2 guides for a while (they're still yet to be finished enough to be uploaded) and polished the Startopia section instead. Split the old Security & Combat page into separate Security and Combat pages. Picked at the Neurotic Details page, adding a new table.

	27 Jan		Added the Total Annihilation section to the TA Universe's freshly forged Top 100 list. Unfortunately, the Top 100 button graphic doesn't appear although we do seem to be registering on their page.

	13 Jan		Came across an interesting mention of the Empires RTS mod for Battlefield 1942, thanks to the excellent AusGamers. Reorganised some of the RTS links to fit it in. Updated the RTS Links page. Updated the Other RTS Games page. Along with the regular strategy games, this page will now include any RTS style custom mods for non-RTS games. Updated the Homeworld2 section's Strategies & Tactics and Custom Mods pages.

	12 Jan		First update for the new year, and back from a very busy and very successful holiday over the Chrissy / New Year silly season! Just a few work in progress items... The Homeworld2 pages are undergoing a serious upgrade, but nothing's been uploaded yet. Some basic link maintenance on the Total Annihilation section: mainly snippets and links in the TA Mods and TA Links pages.