We are sorry for the inconvenience that this has happened.
We are currently investigating what has happened, I just hope it had nothing to do with my little xhtml code I added to the forum last night,
We will keep you updated on changes that may occur.
We might be able to provide a temporary forum but then thats not a solution.
It seems it’s a time of major upheaval here at DES. As if one council retirement wasn’t enough, two more swiftly follow with the creation of a group of DES Veterans. Cleaner has been joined by tipper and TampaMike as the elder statesmen, leaving the way for two more council appointments. Congratulations to Mr.Floppy and Bukz who, we are sure, will help to carry DES forward on the groundwork set by our older members 
, who will, of course, be watching very closely.
Congratulations also go to Davitomon, of A&D clan, on his victory in the ESL 1v1 Summer League, proving that even if SMG > sniper, at the top level, as some claim, there’s no substitute for practise and dedication. Well done Davi.
Congratulations to jamz on his appointment to the DES Council!
Sadly, Cleaner has expressed his wish to step down from DES duties, due to inactivity and other commitments. Our warmest thanks go to Cleaner for everything he’s done to make DES the respected AC clan that it is. He will always be DES, whatever he chooses to do, and his resignation has left a hole which would be hard for anyone to fill.
jamz hopes to do the best job he can in making the right decisions for DES, and will continue to represent the clan’s ideals as he has for the past six months.
More sad news at DES, as we say farewell to Jelly, who has quit for personal reasons. He’d only been with us for 4 months, but in that time he became, arguably, our deadliest player on the public servers. He hasn’t admitted it, but it was probably the pressure of being called an aimbot every other game that did him in. Best wishes Jelly.
The DES mapping department has been busy again, turning out ac_culvert by Bukz and optus (missed off the last post 
), ac_ingress by R4zor and RuThLe$$, and ac_alcove by Halo and Bukz.
Apologies go to Woop, oNe and BCFH, against whom we were unable to fulfil our ESL 3v3 fixtures. ESL apathy finally set in for good, and that will probably be our last involvement with the website from hell. Maybe.
This week marks a sad point for DES as we lose long-standing member jiba. jiba had been at DES since March 2008, but has resigned for personal reasons. He has said that he’ll still be playing AC, and will, we hope, continue to turn out the high quality maps that are his trademark. Good luck jiba.
In other news, we’ve taken the unusual step, of closing recruitment to DES, even through invite. With several new members on board, we need time to settle everyone in. This means that current apps will be on hold for the forseeable future. If this affects you, we hope you understand and, if you’re meant to be DES, there’ll be a slot waiting when we open up again.
We got our act together, briefly, to play an ESL match against MCNNM. Thank you Boni for being patient; your reward was a well-deserved victory. DES lined up with Godsmack, jamz and OpenSource, but a lack of tactics was the key issue again. A heavy defeat in game one, 14-4, led to us copying their tactics in the second. Our brilliant plan lasted for about three minutes, until MCNNM came up with a new one. 6-3 showed an improvement, but the most important feature was that it was a fun match.
Today our ranks are swelled by the addition of optus. Mapping with Bukz, he co-produced ac_edifice and is best known for making pretty pictures with lines on. Currently in Japan, he’ll soon be relocating to his native US.
Our bad start in the ESL 3v3 league came to grinding halt after it became increasingly difficult to pin down players. As a more mature clan, we just can’t guarantee attendance when real life duties take precedence. Since our participation in ESL relies on being able to stick rigidly to its rules and reg’s, it looks like we’ll be avoiding tournaments organised there in the future. Many thanks should go to tipper for sticking it out as team captain for so long.
The announcement in the AC community of a new ladder has produced a rush for points, and it was good to see DES appear at the top of the Clan ladder: if nothing else, we certainly have dedication to playing the pub’s. gj team.
Not much good news yet in this competition. Timezones continue to get in the way of arranging matches, as the Australian trio struggled to even arrange an appointment with ANGRA. When an agreed time came up (on 11 August), we tried for an all female team to play, but Cyprian’s internet connection cut out at the last minute. Medusa, Hallstrom and stand-in jamz performed admirably against a team centred around an outstanding display by Panico. ANGRA won both games 11-5; a lack of paractised team tactics being the major difference again.
On 16 August, again with time running out to play the game, A&D were ready and enquired in IRC as to DES’s position. Freddo, Bukz, and Jelly were present and able to start, so together they took the decision to play. Despite a strong start, once more, never having played together, the DES team were eventually beaten by an experienced A&D side 11-3, 11-6. These bad results and the difficulties in arranging matches with the multinational, multi-aged squad, has left DES clan disillusioned with the ESL tournament. We will, however, fight out our remaining matches with our usual good grace.
Meanwhile, the clan is investing time in a different tournament altogether. tipper has been singing the praises of competing in Unreal Tournament 2004, with RuThLe$$ joining him. A large group of DES players is looking at the game at the moment, with a view to DES branching out into another community. However, with the deep feelings we all have for AC, there’s no danger of us disappearing from this game at all.
And for all byrus fans out there, he may be back this weekend, after studying hard and, hopefully, getting his broken computer seen to.
4th August saw New Zealander BenWasHere admitted to the mad house clan. His biggest contribution to AC is undoubtedly the tight, compact ac_arid which has achieved official map status for the next AC release. 7th August brought Bukz to the fold. Bukz, from USA, is a seasoned AC campaigner who, I’m sure, would welcome donations to his “Free me from this dial-up hell” fund.
On a sadder note, the decision has been taken to create an MIA section and place h00ver, riverOut and Vampy there. Their past contributions have, of course, been excellent, but it’s been a looongg time since we saw them around.
In other news, we lost our opening ESL 3vs3 match against M|A. Despite a good performance with their weapons, tipper, Godsmack and Jelly struggled to contain the tactics of a well-practised South American team.
This update comes fresh on the heels of the first AssaultCube World Cup. Started by Nighthawk of C=64 and followed through by Drakas of woop, the competition was hugely exciting, but strangely anticlimactic in the end.
DES was represented by tipper (UK), Medusa (Benelux), Godsmack (US) and a healthy showing from R4zor, RuThLe$$ and Jelly in the Australian team. UK and Benelux went out in the first round, each to the eventual finalists. US triumphed over Latinos before succumbing to a rampant Australian team in the semi’s. Unfortuantely for our members, Germany were too strong in the final. Congratulations go to tenshi, Smack, The_Rock and burp. All details available here.
Away from the battlefield there have been recent upheavals in the AC community, particularly at Tear you Down, whom we wish the best of luck in troubled times. Huge thanks go to Apollo and KanslozeClown for everything they’ve contributed in the past. Also, with AC servers coming under increased scrutiny from the developers, we’d like to let everyone know that DES server admins will be doing as much as possible to ensure adherence to any new rules, whilst maintaining fair and fun play, in the AC spirit, as often as we can. Changes to server restrictions mean we’re seeing a rise in the number of ‘new’ arrivals to public games. DES members will always be happy to say Hoi to those discovering how exciting AC can be away from their comfort maps. Stick with it guys and gals.
In the clan, tipper appears to have returned to his near-permanent position on public servers, and Cleaner is making more and more frequent appearances; they just couldn’t stay away for long.
Tomorrow (26th) sees the start of the ESL AC Summer 3v3 CTF league. In group A, we’ll be taking on M|A, followed by ANGRA, A&D, w00p(Tyr), BCFH, MCNNM and oNe. A feast indeed; best of luck to all.
In the 1/4 of a year since the last entry a lot has happened here at DES. We’ve seen the addition of four new members, the return of three long-term absences and four experienced players relaxing their game-time a bit.
April 7th saw the introduction of jamz (from the UK), spotted mouthing off in the AC forum as much as in-game. Six days later, the 13th brought Mr RAWR! himself SMASHing in; ex-oNe veteran, Woolly (Canada). There was a slight gap before Godsmack (US) was recruited on May 11th (raising the DES average age again); notable for his all-round friendliness, punctuated by long periods of in-game silence. And the latest appointment is Jelly (Australia), the one-time C=64 team member arriving on the 21st of this month.
The clan’s heartfelt ‘wb’s go to TwItCh, Fragment and blackbeast , who have all made reappearances in-game recently after spells away from playing. On the other side of this coin, tipper is taking a well-earned break away from ladder stomping duties for personal reasons and Cleaner, Cyprian and byrus are putting in the odd appearance as real-life takes the front seat in their lives for various reasons.
Away from individual endeavours, DES seems to have become incredibly popular in public games, with most members reporting ‘How do you join DES?’ incidents. In light of this and having a healthy roster of 27, we have reverted to an ‘invite only’ policy. If you feel you’re DES material, just be yourself in games with our members and don’t worry, we’ll notice you.
On the mapping front, the recent good news is that our very own RuThLe$$ (along with Undead) has had ac_iceroad achieve Official Map status. Congratulations Ruth. Also, last month saw the arrival of ac_outpost, an all-round DES map with so many contributions from our highly skilled members.
In server news, last month Freddo decided to ditch his unreliable home server to invest in Robotics, a VPS running one public, one match and one mapping server; a bonus for Australian players. Also, jamz brought the unreliable SpaceJam with him, since ditched and replaced with Astral on a linux VPS.
As far as playing goes, it seems so long ago now when DES got a raw deal in the opening season of the AssaultCube CTF league on the ESL site in March/April. After qualifying with wins against ANGRA and BCFH ( and a draw with C=64), we progressed to a victory over MCNNM in the last 8. This brought us to what turned out to be a controversial encounter with .rG! in the semis; having struggled to agree a mutually suitable time, the match was played at an ESL admin. appointed time when DES members were thin on the ground. Halo, RuThLe$$ and jiba performed admirably, but were beaten by .rG!’s tactical display. Thanks go to tipper, R4zor, sundown, Medusa, Cleaner, OpenSource, Cyprian and Hallstrom who all took part. With the memory of this behind us, we can look forward to the next official competition.