burken.org shutting down - a farewell speech

[tut]

So, this is sad christmas news.
At 2011-01-01, 00:00:00 CET, burken.org will stop running XPilot servers.
The reason is that during the last months nobody has been playing on burken.org (aside from the occasional crApple retards).
There is simply no point in running it anymore.
I guess the sad truth is that the very very few regulars still playing only play on rotundas' server.
And of course, kudos to him and all the other cool XPilot developers through the ages!

It was fun running the server.
And it lasted 2.5 years, out of which 2 years were ranked on http://frikod.se/~tut/xpilot/

<nostalgic old fart>I remember when I ran the first 24x7 server with polygon maps, based on U's (Uau) patched code.
It was just before the turn of the millennium, I ran it on one of the university machines, and compiling Expat on Solaris was teh horrorz </>
Then I temporarily had that thing called a life and was away from XPilot for about 4 years, until I returned in 2008.

And for those of you that are ancient dinosaurs like me, these are the nicks I used throughout my XPiloting:
Han Solo, Kosh, Dark Helmet, Keybrd Suicider and finally tut.
(Just to clarify, I don't like sci-fi movies and tv series. What gave you that impression?)

And to end this on an inspirational note:
Slarti/Neuromancer has the most wuss-filth-cheat-hacked client ever, and apparently Vlad (with his vampiric anti lag abilities) is the love child of Slarti and PREACHER
I salute all you wussy mousers that have so thoroughly kicked my noble keyboard ass round after round.
(Yes, that includes the Daimi Filth (Denmark), the KTH Local Wusses (Sweden) and the Tromsø Norwegian Gods)

/tut

[rotunda]

First of all, thank you for maintaining the server for all this time! Unfortunately, it makes sense to shut it down, just like an increased number of active players would naturally prompt people to start new servers.

I think one of the reasons for the lack of new players is that the clients are not as user-friendly as they could be. We (the developers) have some ideas on how to change that, but unfortunately a shortage of time prevents us from implementing them. Here I have to commend the player Angeba Mekelt for the ideas and code he has been submitting in the last few years. I hope the game will soon gradually gain the attention it deserves!

[vlad]

Sad news indeed... as is the state of xpilot in general. Simply put, it has too high of a learning curve for new players, and is unplayable on the only place it has publicity (iPhone/iPod/iPad). I'm hoping to "port" it to a custom StarCraft II map, where it might get get some more attention, but, as always, time is short.

[Angeba]

Tut, thanks for your XPilot support. I liked to play on your servers while
I had a route with managable lag, but later it became unplayable.
Thanks also for your instant response to requests for new maps.
And finally for the fun games.

Come back once in a while for a couple of rounds.