Blackshot Gets Canned by Outspark

It’s a shame that Blackshot had to meet this end, though many saw it coming. I loved the closed beta, and will miss that game very much.

To all the dedicated fans of Blackshot,

We appreciate your membership in our community and dedication to the game through beta testing, ongoing involvement in the forums and other places online. We realize many of you have been waiting to play Blackshot for some time now and we apologize for any inconvenience and frustration the delay may have caused.

After exploring every possibility related to the game’s delivery, we have decided to not move forward as the publisher of Blackshot. All related images and links along with the forum will be removed from our website shortly. While we are unable to discuss particular details of the situation, ultimately Outspark was unable to bring all of you a game that meets our standards. We have decided to move on.

Thank you for your understanding. We look forward to seeing you in one of our other games soon and value your membership in the Outspark community.

-The Outspark Team

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Sick

Since about September 21st, I’ve been battling a nasty case of Bronchitis. I’m just about over it now and have returned to my classes, but right now I still have a bit of a cough. I’m able to get back to working Thursday, and boy do I need to.

In other news, I’ve been playing a bit of AION Online, but like every other MMORPG, I’ve never been completely attatched to it. I guess I’ve got some sort of immunity to the “WoWcrack” or “Evercrack” that many have gotten addicted to. That does not mean I don’t enjoy the games; I just can’t find myself playing them constantly.

Project-wise, I’ve been messing around with LightBox, vBulletin, and CSS. CSS has been giving me hell lately, mainly with cross-browser support. IE and Firefox like to fight and process CSS differently when I use a style code such as:

.midBox a:link { color: #000000; text-decoration: none;} <-- This wanted to work fine in IE8, but was ineffective in Firefox for some reason. I had to rewrite it to be:

.midBox > a:link { color: #000000; text-decoration: none;}, which really didn’t make sense to me why the first didn’t want to work. They should both target the link inside the <div> tags.

It could be just me, but I am not sure why that really is happening differently/incorrectly… if you know differently, please comment. I am still a learner!

A friend of mine suggested that I use YUI (Yahoo! UI) “reset.css” which should be able to minimize the differences between Firefox and IE (as well as other mainstream browsers). Unfortunately, with all the CSS I had written, it only made things worse.

In Blackshot news, I had made an attemt to work some new information out of the staff, but there really is no news. Sadly, this game entered Closed Beta testing 1 full year ago. Suprising, isn’t it? Luckily, I have patience and could wait even another year before I give up on the game. I have Counter-Strike: Source to keep me happy.

I also recently uploaded my recording of the Blackshot CBT event: “GMs vs. All” to Youtube, so you can watch it in fairly high quality.

Project Powder & Blackshot

I have noticed there are a few out there who hate Outspark’s guts for not spilling any info on the release dates of the major Project Powder updates as well as Blackshot. Though I may have more precise information on said topics, I do not have the liberty to discuss them. All I have been able to provide to you guys is the dreaded word- “soon”.

Project Powder has had a UI change already and I am looking forward to seeing many more players hop into ProPow! This time, we mean “soon” the way it was intended. You won’t be waiting another 6 months this time! I will update you all as I am given more information to relay.

As for Blackshot, Rider is calling the shots I believe and he had made a recent post on April 1st (What a bad time to make an announcement?) stating that Blackshot’s targeted Open Beta date is somewhere mid-June. Ouch. It has been around half a year since Blackshot went into the first Closed Beta. I just hope the Blackshot team can give us something worth waiting this long for.

For more information- visit www.playblackshot.com and www.project-powder.com today!

Blackshot CBT Starts Today!

Those who have received their Blackshot CBT beta codes in email, from Fileplanet, or the PAX event, be sure to redeem them and join us at 10:00am Pacific Time! (1:00pm Eastern, 12:00pm Central)