Ogging
Encyclopedia
Ogging is term for a tactic developed for the online multiplayer game Netrek
. This game was among the very first multiplayer Internet based games, and was most popular in the 1990s on university
Unix
systems used for internet access, and is still played today, having been later adapted to Windows and Macintosh computers.
The "ogg" is a kamikaze
-style attack, frequently coordinated between multiple ships, with the goal of eliminating a target of high importance, generally with the idea that destroying the target is strategically more valuable than the survival of the attacking ships. It was typically used to destroy enemy ships carrying armies or as a coordinated multi-ship ogg against a starbase.
According to the Jargon File
, "ogg" was sometimes also used by extension in the context of other games or in real life.
a planet or achieve some other team objective.
numbering). Thus, for example, a player on the Federation team in the 11th of the 16 player slots would be designated "Fb" (FED or Federation team, player B), or a player in the first slot who was playing on the Romulan team would be "R0" (ROM or Romulan team, player 0). There were four "reserved" slots that could only be used by local administrators, identified with g-j (these have since been reallocated for use by observers who wish to watch the game). While the game
has four teams, normally only two are used at a time, with the unused teams' planets being used as part of the playing field.
During a full game on a Netrek server at CMU
during the 1990-91 school year, a member of the Federation team, Stephen Russell (callsign Feakhelek), was heading into Romulan space to capture a planet. The server administrator, Terence Chang, came in on the first reserved slot on the otherwise-empty Orion team, thus being designated as "Og". Instead of engaging in a dogfight, Chang charged in suicidally, failing to kill the Federation ship but leaving it badly damaged. When Og re-spawned, and again charged the now-crippled ship, the Fed player shouted to other people in the workstation cluster, "Help, it's oh-gee!", followed by cries of "It's ogg! It's ogg! Help!". The second suicide attack worked, prompting the Fed player to broadcast "Arrrgh, I was Og'ed" on the in-game message system.
Netrek
Netrek is an Internet game for up to 16 players, written almost entirely in cross-platform open source software. It combines features of multi-directional shooters and team-based real-time strategy games...
. This game was among the very first multiplayer Internet based games, and was most popular in the 1990s on university
University
A university is an institution of higher education and research, which grants academic degrees in a variety of subjects. A university is an organisation that provides both undergraduate education and postgraduate education...
Unix
Unix
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
systems used for internet access, and is still played today, having been later adapted to Windows and Macintosh computers.
The "ogg" is a kamikaze
Kamikaze
The were suicide attacks by military aviators from the Empire of Japan against Allied naval vessels in the closing stages of the Pacific campaign of World War II, designed to destroy as many warships as possible....
-style attack, frequently coordinated between multiple ships, with the goal of eliminating a target of high importance, generally with the idea that destroying the target is strategically more valuable than the survival of the attacking ships. It was typically used to destroy enemy ships carrying armies or as a coordinated multi-ship ogg against a starbase.
According to the Jargon File
Jargon File
The Jargon File is a glossary of computer programmer slang. The original Jargon File was a collection of terms from technical cultures such as the MIT AI Lab, the Stanford AI Lab and others of the old ARPANET AI/LISP/PDP-10 communities, including Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Carnegie Mellon...
, "ogg" was sometimes also used by extension in the context of other games or in real life.
Fake ogging
Often a player would cloak and make ogging-like movements if injured or in order to buy time until reinforcements arrived; this was known as fake ogging. Fake ogging could also convince a team that their starbase was under attack in order to provide a diversion for a carrier to capturea planet or achieve some other team objective.
History
In the game, players are designated by two alphanumeric characters, where the first character represents the team and the second letter represents the individual designation of that player. There are four teams, Federation, Klingon, Romulan, and Orion, identified as F, K, R, and O, and 16 player slots, numbered 0-9 and then a-f (hexadecimalHexadecimal
In mathematics and computer science, hexadecimal is a positional numeral system with a radix, or base, of 16. It uses sixteen distinct symbols, most often the symbols 0–9 to represent values zero to nine, and A, B, C, D, E, F to represent values ten to fifteen...
numbering). Thus, for example, a player on the Federation team in the 11th of the 16 player slots would be designated "Fb" (FED or Federation team, player B), or a player in the first slot who was playing on the Romulan team would be "R0" (ROM or Romulan team, player 0). There were four "reserved" slots that could only be used by local administrators, identified with g-j (these have since been reallocated for use by observers who wish to watch the game). While the game
has four teams, normally only two are used at a time, with the unused teams' planets being used as part of the playing field.
During a full game on a Netrek server at CMU
Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States....
during the 1990-91 school year, a member of the Federation team, Stephen Russell (callsign Feakhelek), was heading into Romulan space to capture a planet. The server administrator, Terence Chang, came in on the first reserved slot on the otherwise-empty Orion team, thus being designated as "Og". Instead of engaging in a dogfight, Chang charged in suicidally, failing to kill the Federation ship but leaving it badly damaged. When Og re-spawned, and again charged the now-crippled ship, the Fed player shouted to other people in the workstation cluster, "Help, it's oh-gee!", followed by cries of "It's ogg! It's ogg! Help!". The second suicide attack worked, prompting the Fed player to broadcast "Arrrgh, I was Og'ed" on the in-game message system.