User talk:Ravenstorm/Archive-1

Paintball question[edit]

Allo.
Thought I'd ask you directly, since people don't seem to read the articles' discussion pages as much.
In reference to the "Just plain crazy" game, have you actually ever known people to keep their teams for that? Because I've only known it to be a every-man-for-himself type game.
Anyways, just thought I should ask you, rather than actually editing it. :)

Honestly, I have no idea, I've never played it before. I was simply cleaning up a few syntax errors and also removed a segment I personally thought looked unprofessional. Whether or not Just Plain Crazy is a team game is unknown to me. Ravenstorm 19:00, 30 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

WikiProject Paintball[edit]

Hi RavenStorm. I'm glad to see your interest in the WikiProject Paintball. I'm pretty sure I'm going to go ahead and create the project now. Three people interested, as well as myself, is enough in my opinion to make a major difference in the articles. I would have liked to get more (around ten would have been ideal) but this is excellent as it is. I have a number of goals, and I'll be creating a project page soon to list them all, but one of the things which the project would be focusing on is the addition of multimedia. I'm thinking namely of images, but also of video. In my opinion, paintball is a sport which is far too intuitive a sport to be completely explained by writing alone, no matter how good it is. Take a moment and look at the woodsball article, which I've worked on a lot in the last couple months. It has a lot of images, which I think really improves the feel of the article and the quality of it. You'll note that the larger images around the middle of the page and lower all do a good job of illustrating various camouflage patterns' efficiencies in their respective environments - that is a prime example of images being used to the fullest potential.

Anyway, what I'm basically saying here is, I'm very happy to see that you're interested in uploading more paintball images. Here's something I wrote on another user's talk page about this issue...

One of my plans was to create a sort of project-based image collection, basically a page with thumbnails of all the paintball images, so everyone knows the paintball images that we have here, and also so they know what we're missing. Images and video are musts in my opinion, because one just cannot illustrate, for example, how a player moves about behind a bunker while under fire without writing pages and pages on it, or how a player can become part of a bush or a tree with the right camouflage.

This is just one of the ideas I have for the project. I hope you'll be actively involved. Again, thanks for expressing your interest. ~ Ma x i m illi, 20:24, 12 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

BTW, ich sprecke Deutsche, aber nicht so gut. :) ~ Ma x i m illi, 20:27, 12 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hey,

Although I consider myself a good writer, I have no idea how to create a Wikipedia project (although I'm good with templates). So I'll leave it up to you to create the project. If you were to give me a picture, I'd be able to create a new article (do my research and such) on any paintball gun every week. Although I'd like to see more pictures on paintball, all I've got is pictures of my old Spyder MR1.

By the way, impressive work on the woodsball article!

--Ravenstorm 21:32, 12 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. Ich spreche kein Deustch =P

Well, I'm a passable writer, and while I have a somewhat murky idea of how to create a WikiProject, I am terrible with templates and such. So I'll probably come to you when the project needs something like that. :)

As for new marker articles, I'd be happy to do that. Being the commander of a woodsball team, I have access to a fair-sized amount of markers. Taking pics shouldn't be too hard. Also, I'm planning on getting a lot of video and compressing for some nice video. I've already got some good stuff, but it's not very extensive. Most of the stuff I have is adequate for personal things and web sites, but not for this encyclopedia. I'm going for top-notch quality with this category (my goal is at least three featured articles - no small goal, as you're probably aware), so I'm not going to upload all my poor shaky hand-cam work until it's pretty good. If we end up having a laughs article, which would be difficult but excellent if it works, then I've got some interesting video of myself getting lit-up by a couple guys during a game while recording as a ref. I'd have to censor out the swearing somehow, but it'd be funny if it works. :D

Anyway, I'll stop blabbing and get back to work on the project article. I'm actually doing it as an RTF document until it's passable, but when it's up, feel free to fiddle. ~ Ma x i m illi, 16:02, 14 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. I'd have given a response to that in German, but I don't speak it that well. :D I don't have a head for languages. The only language that's stuck with me somewhat is Latin, but I only remember a few words. Meh.

P.P.S. Thanks for the compliment. I've worked hard on that article. I might actually say the woodsball article and the paintball article itself are the flagship articles of the entire category, and I'm happy with that. It's good that they're on the same level, no?

So, what type of paintball do you yourself play?

Alright, so if you can get the images, I can do the research and write, we can get some good marker articles going! I'll see what I can do about a WikiProject Paintball template, whenever I'm bored I'll work on it. Whenever the template is done I will make a WikiProject Paintball page.

What kind of paintball do I play? Well, I've only had the chance to play recball, but I've always wanted to try woodsball (if what I've heard about is true, I'd probably enjoy it more than recball). The problem is that I have no money whatsoever to pay for paintball, once I get a job maybe I'll buy an Ion, a VLocity hopper and get right back into the game. But for now, I'm selling my sad little Spyder MR1 (article made by yours truly) so I can afford other, smaller things.

By the way, check out the Spyder MR1, Spyder MR2 and Spyder Rodeo articles I made. Although they are small, what do you think of the structure? The whole "strengths" and "weaknesses" thing sounds good to me, although my only source is pbreview.com. Also, check out the paintball gun template I made. --Ravenstorm 16:46, 14 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, we have a deal for the gun articles. I'll get you some images later today, if I can. They'll be of a Smart Parts Ion. I'll go over to my best friends' place next door and have one of them get all geared up with his Ion and take a few pics on the field (it's sandwiched between our two properties). About the template, I'm glad you'll be working on it. As I said earlier, though, I'm working on the WikiProject page already, so I wouldn't worry about it until I've got it up on the site.

Nice choice on the armament. I've played with my friend's Ion (to avoid saying 'my friend' all the time, I'll use his callsign, Interfector) a couple times, and it's really fun to play with. It's nice and accurate right out of the box (fires like a stock hi-end, if you'll go that far), its balance is nice, its profile is small, and it even sounds cool when it fires. I'd recommend it. By the way, would you be trying for an aftermarket barrel at all? I'd really recommend a Stiffi. I have one myself, as does my dad, and Interfector will be getting one pretty soon. They're expensive, at about a $100 per barrel, but they're totally worth it. Thanks in great part to my Stiffi (although a few other mods are due acknowledgement as well), my old beat-up M98C can hit about 4-6 inch groups at 75 feet. No kidding. :D Now that's marksmanship for you.

Speaking of which, I was thinking earlier about creating pages for popular paintball equipment, such as the Stiffi and the Halo loader and other things. The only problem with that is, there are so many products out there, and once we start making pages for these, we're going to have fifty thousand stubs and poorly-written, POV-riddled pages about every piece of equipment on the planet. Only thing is, we can't just leave all equipment out, because we've already started making paintball gun articles. It wouldn't be consistent to leave equipment out. Anyway, I'd like to know your thoughts on the matter.

As for the gun articles you mentioned, I like them. The layouts are good, and I especially like the template you made. Very nice. Now all we need are pics of the guns in action, eh? ~ Ma x i m illi, 17:07, 14 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've just created WikiProject Paintball - check it out, tell me what you think. It's pretty barebones, but it'll do. ~ Ma x i m illi, 18:47, 14 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

For the aftermarket barrel, I'm going to stick with the Freak/All-American barrel system. I loved it in my MR1 (once hit a guy from one end of the field to the other on the first shot, the guy behind him gave up =P), and I expect good results for the Ion. Either that, or I'll go straight for an Ultra-Lite, can't fail with one of those. I aim high with paintball, so I don't play unless I can afford all that. I have a friend who owns a VLocity and it just empties 200 balls in around 6-7 seconds. Funny to think I'm actually more of a real-steel guns type of guy :P

Anyways, as for the WikiProject Paintball page, I'll see what I can do about it whenever I can. What we need to do is make a HUGE list of requested articles. That way, people who join can just pick one and write away! Those articles will be added to the WikiProject Paintball page and will (hopefully) be extensively reviewed to prevent POV and "omigosh dont bye the spyder victor lawl my frenid has an ion nad it shoot faster like 35 bps!! plus my spyder vcitor broke when I puored molten lava into the feednek!!!"

Send me an image and I can guarantee the article within a week. It'll be just like the Spyder MR1 and such articles... not very long, but a great, solid start, with all the paintball-gun template info filled out. --RavenStorm 01:08, 15 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. I'll see what I can do about a template for our project members...

The Freaks are nice - one of my best friends is going to get one of those kits. I was thinking about it, but I could never lease my Stiffis. :D You know, Dye Ultralites are basically Stiffis without being as quiet. I've had the opportunity of comparing a Dye Ultralight and a Stiffi side-by-side, and the Stiffi was better in accuracy and stealth. I dunno - maybe as just a casual player who's never been all that concerned with hardcore accuracy, the extra ten bucks isn't worth it. At any rate, I'd recommend the Stiffi.

I've got a cool story about my Stiffi. One time, my gun was malfunctioning - main valve stripped out and was rattling around inside the receiver - ouch. Velocity spiked at 350 and dipped at 220. Nasty, huh? Anyway, my gun was malfunctioning, so I borrowed another guy's M98C, but his, of course, didn't have all the mods mine did, and the game was starting in like, thirty seconds, so I didn't have time to swap anything more than my barrel and hopper full o' paint (Marballizers, of course). That game was an assault game (I think there's an outline of assault games in the Woodsball article) and I was playing D. My glory play was sniping a guy with the Stiffi from a hundred and twenty feet away with a headshot - no joke. The round nailed him square between the eyes. It was just beewdyful. Anyway, as you can imagine, that shot had more to it than just the barrel, but I won't write a dissertation on marksman doctrine right now. I might for the Paintball marksman article, though...

Anyway, the VLocity's a good choice. I'm hoping to get a 'Cocker over the winter months, and earlier I was considering a VLocity. I've decided on a Q-Loader, though. More configuration possibilities, less profile, looks cooler...the list goes on.

That's a good idea with the Paintball WikiProject page. I was going to do a lot more for the article requests, but I just haven't gotten around for it. I've been working on the code for a couple of the media databases, and that's what's been keeping me occupied. That and working on text for the Paintball marksman article, the text for the yet-to-be-created player position articles, and various other things.

That reminds me. What do you think of my thoughts on bringing the Paintball article to FA status? I think that should be one of the first initiatives of the WikiProject, but alas, nobody else seems to have joined. Which, honestly enough, doesn't make any sense. Whatever.

Speaking of which, I might as well make you the official assistant coordinator. You pretty much said you were already, and I don't have any qualms with that. I'm still of the opinion that we won't need coordinators for anything more than basically generating the road maps. Know what I mean?

By the way, I laughed out loud at the molten lava statement. Very nice. :D Speaking of Spyder Victors, if you look closely at the pics of that scout in the Woodsball article, you'll notice that he's got a Victor II with a custom paint job. Good luck with the templates. ~ Ma x i m illi, 14:18, 16 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. Here are some of my examples of real steel.... I wouldn't mind having those. :D

I remember getting a sweet headshot in a game once, yelling out: "BOOM HEADSHOT!" and then hearing my friend's voice yell back "IT'S ME YOU MORON." Speaking of fun tales, I had quite the experience with my MR1 recently. In one day I completely annihiliated all hopes of keeping it. I got into a game of Street Fighter, but not just any game. It was a hectic firefight, three regular players + an incredible one who had been owning up the paintball place (with a 16'' All-American Back + Freak Front) versus myself and three other guys. TWICE during the firefight I had to get up, sprint back to some cover because my MR1 had jammed! Balls kept breaking in the feedneck.

Just to make things worse, I was playing Street Fighter again later that day, and I was covering the right side of the field. I peek around the corner, nobody's there. I peek again to make sure I can rush ahead, the elite guy I described above starts shooting at me. Right as I'm pulling out my gun from the hole I was shooting from, I get shot right in the hand. I drop my gun and the stock on my MR1 just snaps in half. I usually don't play with the stock on (useless piece of crap in Recball) but I felt like it that day...

Anyways, I'm going to start working on the template (based on the one for the WikiProject Military). --RavenStorm 22:20, 16 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Man, that sucks about your MR1. You won't have that problem with the Ion - one was dropped fifteen feet from a deck and we didn't have a problem with the gun itself. The loader died a miserable death though.

By the way, check out the Paintball marksman article. I've added a bunch of images, although the images haven't distributed throughout the servers yet and so most won't show up on the page proper. Click the thumbnails and tell me what you think anyway, would you? Oh, and check out the barebones version of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Paintball/Image database. I created it earlier. I hope to get the other images up...eventually. :D

Also, if you wouldn't mind dropping me a line when the template is done, I'd appreciate it. Meanwhile, I've got a paper on Anton Chekhov's 'The Student' to write. Woo... ~ Ma x i m illi, 22:42, 16 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

How's that for a template? --RavenStorm 23:42, 16 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sweet template. It looks quite good. I think I'm going to try my hand at creating a template in a moment. For now, I'm going to synchronize the tasks as they're written on the WikiProject Paintball page. I'm just going to call it the WiPr/PB from now on. It's easier to say. Anyway, I'm going to go do that. Oh - my friend couldn't make it, so I still don't have a pic of an Ion, but I have an Overlord (as you may know) so I'm going to get you a pic of that which you can use for an article. ~ Ma x i m illi, 21:19, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Keep working on it. Just remember that when you add items to the list of requested paintball marker articles, add them the same way I did just now, and make them as a link! That way people can just click on it and start writing. --RavenStorm 22:17, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

BTW, I think the entire departments section should be removed. I personally don't think it's necessary. Keep it if you really think it belongs there, but personally, I'd remove it.

Sure, that's fine. With the links, I mean. By the way, check out the template I made a few hours ago. You can see it here - Talk:Woodsball. It's simple, but I'm happy with it. Feel free to try out ideas with it.

Well, it is unorthodox, true, but I think it will serve well. I'm being careful not to over-organize (I'm organized to a fault) but how it is right now is good, I think. If we continue to have such a small amount of people in the Project, then yes, I'll remove it, simply because it'll be unnecessary. At any rate, thanks for your opinion on it - I'll keep it in mind. ~ Ma x i m illi, 01:24, 18 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hey RavenStorm. I need your voice - mind dropping a comment at this page? It's been proposed that the Paintball marker operation category be deleted, and I have plans for it and am too lazy to recreate it when those plans fill out. :D

Thanks, man. ~ Ma x i m illi, 18:02, 19 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I just thought of having a Paintball WikiProject userbox. And a paintball interest userbox, come to think of it. I haven't the faintest idea how to start userboxes, so if you're interested, I'd be grateful. ~ Ma x i m illi, 22:17, 19 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Miscellaneous stuff[edit]

Hey RavenStorm. Just wanted to tell you about this uber-sweet paintball game I just got back from. It was a D-Day big game, scenario paintball of course, with 120 guys there total. We were in the ultra-badass 101st Airborne division, inserted via truck, for most of the day after trying our hands as the 1st Infantry from the boats. It was really cool. There were boats, trucks, tanks - the whole nine yards. I went with the best squad in my team, and we absolutely dominated. As a whole, we got about fifteen deaths total and over eighty kills. In just our squad alone. I myself got shot four times, and shot out twenty-seven guys - six of which were head shots. In the latter three fourths of the game, the 101st division's commander had to go or something, and of course everyone just stalled at that point, so I actually had to take personal (unofficial) command of the entire blinkin' division from the frontline. But hey, we managed. :D

It was pretty cool - my five-man squad at one point actually rolled up from the front line down about half of the Axis' troops, and held their entire territory for long enough to get all the flag points for their territory. The rest of our guys were dominating our half of the field, too, so we got the full fifteen points that time. Such uber-pwnage was had today... :D

Just thought you might appreciate such a cool story. ~ Ma x i m illi, 00:33, 23 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Userboxes![edit]

Check out the WikiProject talk page by clicking here for two new userboxes that I've created. You can see them in action on my User page too, if you like. ~ Ma x i m illi, 16:25, 24 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yo![edit]

Hey man! What's going on? I'm back from my trip, as you can tell. A lot of stuff has happened to the project in my absence. I have been appreciative of what you've been doing for the project. That's why I want to run something by you.

I'm going to be very busy for the next couple of weeks, and I mean really busy - even more busy than before my trip. I don't think I'll have much time to be a very forward force in the administration department because of it, so what I would like to do is simply pass Lead Coordinator over to you. Heck, you won't be doing anything different from what you're doing now, and I get to concentrate on the articles themselves a lot more than before. I dunno whether you'll want an Assistant Coordinator, since the project is still rather small, but do whatever you want and appoint whomever you want. That is, if you accept my proposition. I never wanted to administrate anyway; perhaps that's odd coming from a commander, but whatever. Anyway, tell me what you think. ~ Ma x i m illi, 17:43, 11 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hey,

Hope you enjoyed your trip! I myself have been quite busy recently, I can think of... 7 projects or teams I'm currently part of, but recently things have been pretty calm, so it's back to WikiPedia!

Anyways, unless you are officially stepping down as Lead Coordinator for good, I won't take the position from you. The project is too small for it to really matter, although I know that if somebody wants to talk about the project, they will most likely talk to you first... adjust your talk page accordingly so they contact me instead. I think that's really all you need to do if you're just taking a long break. I'll keep up the good work in your absence...

--Ravenstorm 21:50, 13 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks - it was rather enjoyable. Feels odd saying that a funeral trip was enjoyable, but whatever. :) Yeah, my life is really busy right now. Lots of stuff happening. I'm also trying to get in some more paintball before the season ends. It's still somewhat warm enough down here...at least we're not shooting marbles yet. :D

About the project, I think I would like to step down. You're good at this administration stuff anyway. I will stay an active force in the project, though. I just want to spend more time actually writing articles than fending off the hordes, y'know? In fact, why don't we just switch? You take Lead Co, and I'll take Assistant Co. Then it wouldn't be noticed really if I disappear. Not like it was noticed last time, but you know what I mean.

Anyway, if you agree, then consider me officially relinquishing Lead Coordinator to you, and the consequent assumption of Assistant Coordinator. ~ Ma x i m illi, 22:03, 13 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Alright, I'll make the necessary adjustments... sorry to hear that it was a funeral trip by the way. I'll do my best to manage the project on my own... not that our good members are hard to handle (with the possible exception of some of our more disagreeable members, you know what I mean =P).

--Ravenstorm 22:39, 13 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Meh, don't worry about it. The dude's probably in a better place now. He was a great uncle whom I wasn't very close to, y'see. At any rate, glad to see you've accepted. Good luck dealing with those members... tell me when you need that club again. Keep 'em in line! ~ Ma x i m illi, 22:43, 13 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

References[edit]

They can't be that hard to find, there are numerous magazines and books on the sport, as well as online guides. Whoever wrote the article had to get their information from somewhere, so they should cite it (and if they didn't, it's original research). Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 13:20, 4 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Demographics image[edit]

Haha. Yeah. I have 800x600 so it kinda looked like it was scrunching everything up. o_O It looked really weird. You could make it bigger though. I'm not sure if there is a size limit on images in Wikipedia, suppose thats something I should look up, cause I see alot of images that really make the text look funny, especially for people at lower resolutions, like mine. But thanks for adding that image! :) Disinclination 02:06, 21 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Rob[edit]

Hey man,

Thanks for dropping that message from Rob. If you wouldn't mind sending me his e-mail address, I'd be most grateful. You can e-mail it to me from my userpage, so we don't need to immortalize it on Wikipedia. ~ Ma x i m illi, 15:25, 21 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Woodsball strategy[edit]

Hey RavenStorm! Been a while. I have a quick question for you. You might have noticed the Woodsball strategy article that I finished a little while ago. Another project member suggested it become another Flagship article, which brings up the whole issue about article quality ratings and whatnot. I'd like to get your opinion on the issue, although apparently you haven't been active since the 18th of December. So, whenever you have a chance, I'd be glad for a message. Thanks! ~ Ma x i m illi, 06:18, 7 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hey man. I've been busy for quite a while and I seem to have less and less time for Wikipedia, but I still keep a very close eye on my articles and remain active in reverting vandalism and contributing in any small way I can. The Quality rating thing is still a possibility, as well as a template to accompany it, although it's going to take me a while before I learn how to create an appropriate, dynamic template.

After quickly checking on that Woodsball Strategy article, I agree I could be a flaship along with others. Keep up the good work, and I'm still waiting for those Paintball Marker pictures so I can make new marker articles! I'll keep doing what I can about the template. I'm not busy tonigh, I'll get to work on it after school... Ravenstorm 17:25, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]