The Dink Network

Recondite is my article, and is supposed to be weekly (though it is never released on a schedule) and is usually a whole lot of crazy words. This Recondite is a little different; I dug up a whole bunch of old web page backups I happened to find on a CD, and have created a 'history of The Dink Network through screenshots', if you will. And of course, poll comments are within. Read the comments for more.

Poll Comments

Here are the top 5 comments for the poll 106, Are you a Point Whore?:

5. nope, just a whore

4. I am a ASK TAL point whore. Wait till next week Tal.... Muhahahahaha!!

3. they should bring back Koolaid points, those were she dogin

2. DethLord is going down!

1. I love pointy whores

Here are the top 5 comments for the poll 107, Which Dink Chat do you use?:

5. and i occasionally have a life outside dink.

4. yup, dethlord's chat alright... *huh, you use a chat?* Shut up stupid voice in my head!

3. i never new there wos a chat!

2. I'm all alone in here! AHHH!! Something's staring at me!! Oh... It's my reflection on the moniter.

1. I don't chat. I chit.

Here are the top 5 comments for the poll 108, Favorite Article?:

5. 45k 74l r0><><0r5!

4. Yeah yeah bring on the Tal Machine. And Recondite is cool tough altough should be bigger.

3. Tal is my pal, so I call him Sal, and so you shall

2. Recondite is simply best! Redink1 is my favorite. Umm.. peaches!

1. I like Ask Tal so much I just have to tickle him

Message Board Archives

Before I get started on the main feature, I thought I might as well let you know that I'm thinking about having some message board archives online. I have somewhere around ten-thousand messages archived (possible more), and they're just going to waste... so when I get back to college (and broadband) in August, I'll probably create a program to format them, and then have them browseable like the News Archives. I can't do it without broadband... uploading ten-thousand messages would take weeks.

History of The Dink Network Through Screenshots

So here it is, Sunday night, and work on FIAT v1.00 has come to a crawl (though its going much faster than the slug-who-took-a-whole-bottle-of-sleeping-pills pace of v0.99) and I'm thinking... I couldn't have lost the old Dink Network backups... right? So I start looking through my huge collection of CD-R backups, throw in one that says "School Work", and tada, there they all are. Whew. Then the idea for this thing comes to mind (which was a nagging thought started by a comment by SabreTrout, if I remember correctly)... and here we go.

Redink1's Smallnet: Generation 1



Back in the summer of 1998, I had just purchased Dink Smallwood for the tiny amount of $25 (including shipping) and created my first D-Mod: Lost in Dink. I had purchased some web space through SimpleNet for a failed business venture, and so I had unlimited web space. So a Dink Smallwood web page seemed the logical step for me to do to promote my D-Mod and such.

I swear, the text was a LOT easier to read back in 1998... maybe its easier to read at 640x480 resolution or something... but I KNOW it was readable, unlike what you see in the screenshot. Maybe the color of the text somehow got removed when it was backed up (the background images weren't displaying correctly for some reason, I had to tweak them)... Anyway, not too shabby of a web design... its actually three frames: the left frame is the menu, the top frame is the music frame (which would play a random Dink Smallwood midi for you, and upon Gary's request I added an option to turn it off), and under that the main frame where all of the pages showed up.

This started a precedent of using Dink Smallwood graphics on the page... which was done because everyone else was doing it, I think Back then the best Dink sites were Gary Hertel's The Dink Darkwoods, Mike Snyder's The Dink Smallweb, and The Dink Smallwood HQ. I don't really remember who did the HQ, but it was the best site, until he left.

Redink1's Smallnet: Generation 2

[url=http://www.dinknetwork.com/images/old/smallnet2p.jpg]http://www.dinknetwork.com/images/old/smallnet2p.jpg[/url]

Well, summer turned to fall, and then fall to winter, and so did the design for Redink1's Smallnet. And so did my sudden interest into StarCraft. Why didn't I simply make a separate site for StarCraft? I really can't tell you... I do know that I made a HORRID StarCraft SCM based on Dink. Really. You were like Dink the SCV, and then your momma SCV died, and then your momma turned bad (into Kerrigan, if I remember) and then you killed your evil momma.

The design actually isn't that bad... the 4 black boxes in the middle are actually animated gifs that link to various StarCraft sites. It uses two frames, one for the menu on the left, and one for the news and other pages on the right. I dropped the midi support with this design. At least the text is readable for the most part.

Around this time, the other Dink sites were dying quick. The Dink Smallweb hadn't been updated in months, the HQ was dead, and Gary was still running The Dink DarkWoods, but was getting fed up with Mahdi and his "Richard's Attack" D-Mod. I think Redink1's Smallnet became the top Dink site around this time, or a close second to The Dink Darkwoods.

Redink1's Smallnet: Generation 3

[url=http://www.dinknetwork.com/images/old/smallnet3p.jpg]http://www.dinknetwork.com/images/old/smallnet3p.jpg[/url]

And so winter turned to spring, and spring to summer, and so I decided to make a beach-themed design that turned out to be my favorite Smallnet design. StarCraft's influence was reduced a bit, and its just a nice, clean design. The only bad point is its a little two plain... and the 'smallnet' on top blends into the sand a bit. But I still like it.

Around this time, Gary Hertel finally killed off The Dink DarkWoods, leaving Redink1's Smallnet nearly alone. There were a couple other sites, but they didn't cover as much news or host as many D-Mods as Redink1's Smallnet.

Redink1's Smallnet: Generation 3.1

[url=http://www.dinknetwork.com/images/old/smallnet31p.jpg]http://www.dinknetwork.com/images/old/smallnet31p.jpg[/url]

Exactly the same as Generation 3... but I always smile when I read the caption under the logo

The Dink Network: Generation 1

[url=http://www.dinknetwork.com/images/old/dinknet1p.jpg]http://www.dinknetwork.com/images/old/dinknet1p.jpg[/url]

And so, The Dink Network officially debuts... and who the heck are those staff members listed under the horrid logo? I honestly don't remember them very much... Andy M ran an old Dink site, James made Castle of Lore and 374 Midis, Paco made Zoltron, and Vigilante... I can't remember.

This is not one of my favorite designs... it just so bland. Lookie, sand everywhere. I do like that the 'Latest News' text has a water texture, though. And the transparent knights are spiffy. Other than that... bleh.

The Dink Network: Generation 2

[url=http://www.dinknetwork.com/images/old/dinknet2p.jpg]http://www.dinknetwork.com/images/old/dinknet2p.jpg[/url]

I honestly don't remember this design at all... well, I do have some recollections (like the floating Go To Top button) but I was really surprised when I saw it again.

It isn't THAT bad... its kinda cool, in its own funky way. But it isn't nearly as good as the G4-G7 designs.

The Dink Network: Generation 3.0

[url=http://www.dinknetwork.com/images/old/dinknet3p.jpg]http://www.dinknetwork.com/images/old/dinknet3p.jpg[/url]

OMFG, WHAT WAS I THINKING!? This is my least-favorite design... For instance, wtf are those stupid red-half-spheres doing at the top of the screen? Why is there a crappy drop-down list for a menu? Why does it look like crap? I dunno. I guess I was trying too hard or something... I hate it. Really.

The Dink Network: Generation 3.5

[url=http://www.dinknetwork.com/images/old/dinknet35p.jpg]http://www.dinknetwork.com/images/old/dinknet35p.jpg[/url]

Nothing has really changed over Generation 3.0, but the side-bar things are gone, and I killed the red half-spheres out of mercy. At least a little better than 3.0...

The Dink Network: Generation 4

[url=http://www.dinknetwork.com/images/old/dinknet4p.jpg]http://www.dinknetwork.com/images/old/dinknet4p.jpg[/url]

Aha, now we're getting somewhere near non-seizure-inducing... a nice black-blue gradient (which is still being used, heh) and the floor texture has been restricted to the left menu. The only bad thing is the main logo graphic in the center isn't that good. Its a tad small. Other than that, I like it the best, just under G6/G7.

dinksmallwood.net

[url=http://www.dinknetwork.com/images/old/dinksmallwoodnetp.jpg]http://www.dinknetwork.com/images/old/dinksmallwoodnetp.jpg[/url]

A slight detour... and we arrive at dinksmallwood.net. See, back when I registered the dinksmallwood.net domain name for free from namezero.com, I had a grand vision; create a separate site dedicated to the community of Dink Smallwood. It would only have community stuff, no news, no files, etc. It sounded good at the time...

I like this design, and I find it kinda cool because its a cross between Smallnet G4 and DinkNet G6. The text is readable, and the menus just work.

Anyway, onto what became of dinksmallwood.net; I found I wasn't spending any time at all with it. I eventually came to realize it was extremely foolish to create two separate Dink Smallwood sites, one based on files and news, and the other on the community. And so most of the Community features were incorporated directly into The Dink Network eventually, like the Interactive Story and Message Board. Others, like the E-mail Service, Url Service, Who's Who, and ICQ List were simply dropped.

The Dink Network: Generation 5

[url=http://www.dinknetwork.com/images/old/dinknet5p.jpg]http://www.dinknetwork.com/images/old/dinknet5p.jpg[/url]

We're back on track now, and we arrive at Generation 5. This isn't necessarily a bad design... it is simply needlessly complicated. Really... I had some really, really, really, really horrible CGI scripts running here... I mean, so horrible I wouldn't be surprised if the people from Telefragged decided to sue me for gross negligence of abusing their servers.

It did improve in some areas over Generation 4; there was a nice big title graphic now, and the code overlay is pretty spiffy. The dual-menus caused endless problems, though, and required a lot of funky code to work at all. So I like it a little less than G4.

The Dink Network: Generation 6

[url=http://www.dinknetwork.com/images/old/dinknet6p.jpg]http://www.dinknetwork.com/images/old/dinknet6p.jpg[/url]

And now we arrive at Nirvana, or very close to it. The header graphic connects directly to the menu, the nice black-blue gradient... ah. So nice.

The Dink Network: Generation 7

[url=http://www.dinknetwork.com/images/old/dinknet7p.jpg]http://www.dinknetwork.com/images/old/dinknet7p.jpg[/url]

While not many visual changes have been made to Generation 7 (besides the new Header graphics I added today), the underlying code has been optimized ten-fold over Generation 6 (during the move to Gamespy), and ten-thousand-fold over Generation 5. And that's good.

The End

So... there you go, your curiosity has been quenched, I hope. If you have any questions about the 'old days', please post them below and I'll try to answer them to the best ability of this Swiss-cheese memory of mine.

My goal is to post Recondites for the next two Mondays, so it will become a weekly feature again (at least for a short time I have other recollections, basically the Dinkanoid High Score Scandal (of which I was sort of at the center, you'll see) and Jveenhof's death.