Since I have been on BYOND for nearly 10 years, I thought I would go ahead and create a specially made thread for storytelling of how you came to BYOND/DUNG and what has happened over the course of your history (as well as any events that occurred during your stay).
I know there was another thread about remembering your first time (which I have already posted in), but I thought I would make a more dedicated thread for storytelling.
Now here is my story (Warning: It is very long. Due to that reason, rest of my story will be in future posts of this thread):
When I first joined BYOND back in November 26th/27th, 2003 (I was 15 years old at the time.), I came to play a game called Dragonball Zeta. This was because I was reading a thread at a Dragonball Z mod's forums where some of the posters have mentioned of this game. Back when I first played Dragonball Zeta during V46, I was actually very quiet till days later. Not too long after I joined BYOND, I went seeking for other games. Tried many Dragonball Zeta rips and found them too much the same. One of the unique Dragonball Z games I played on BYOND at the time was DBTC by SuperSaiyanGokuX. Unlike most Dragonball Z games at the time, this one was unique in the regards of gameplay. Being able to type different messages when you use attacks is very nice.
Other games I have found during this time includes IronDogs (all the games) by WildBlood, Bullies and Nerds (forgot who made this one), Survival by Polatrite, Seika (now Teridal) by Iccusion Entertainment, and others unlisted. About nearly to over a month of joining BYOND, I decided to experiment with the DM programming language. Originally, I had no plans to be making serious projects in BYOND. That changed when I thought I could make interesting projects appear on BYOND (starting with games). This has begun with learning from tutorials through ZBT by Zilal.
Having prior experience with BASIC, I was able to make use of some of the features. This leads to some of my earliest game projects: The Industry Wars and Text City Simulator. The former was to be a more advanced port of a game/adventure of the same name I made for the Adventure Creation Kit by Chris Hopkins. That game was never released and finished. Both of these projects started between late December 2003 and early January 2004. For Text City Simulator, it was to be an original new port from the BASIC version I made in QBASIC since November 2003 (not too long before I joined BYOND). Months later, I made a decision to just port the original first version of the BASIC version that led to an eventual release (though not downloadable yet till later) around July 2004. It was pretty much a single-player experience, but with multiplayer chatting features. Not too long after Version 1 was released, I managed to port Version 2 to BYOND (with some feature differences as well from the original BASIC builds). After Version 2, begun production of Version 3. This led me to learn more features such as savefiles from the DM Guide (which is very old by now).
Due to the release of Text City Simulator, I actually managed to meet a few more BYONDers besides the ones I met at Dragonball Zeta and some other games. One being Evi of au himself (who is now selling interesting LEGO sets). As 2005 came around, I have begun work on more projects and started with experiments. By this point, I was already helping out a few others with their projects (even if some apparently used Zeta 2 code, which was a nightmare to fix.). One of the first projects I started this year was Movie Maker BYOND where you got to make movies consisting of actors/actresses played by BYONDers. How this project came about was because of a friend from Dragonball Zeta who used DFilm to make basic movies. Went by Super 17 Cool key for anyone who has met him during this time. Text Adventure Generator was under work at this time as well, but since vanished. One of the first experimental projects was called Area 25, which involved several experiments. Even created a basic echo generator (which became obsolete later in the year due to a reason I will explain). Created my own Manhattan Project experiment that involved a simple atomic bomb explosion (which killed you if your altitude was too low and you were too close). There was a space project experiment that was never finished.
During Easter Sunday of 2005, there was an easter egg hunt for various eggs placed on the hub (when it was still different back then). That marked the first time I joined Chatters (though didn't come back again till years later for this program). Some of the special links were traps that led to no actual egg, but still funny nonetheless. This was also around the time I first posted on the BYOND forums. Didn't really post again till months later same year for various releases.
Around Summer 2005, I have begun assisting with a version of Idle RPG made by Repsteve along with Loki. This was done by providing a battle system that has been enhanced several times. Another project I have started work on was Killer Rally, which was supposed to be my own fan game port of Death Rally by Remedy Games. This was worked on just before or around the time of BYOND 3.5 came to being. BYOND 3.5 brought on new features as well as the first introduction on BYOND membership (on the website). Not only that, but the website was beginning to change. On October 8th, 2005 (coincidentally, just turned 8 today), an alpha version of Movie Maker BYOND was released (0.50 was used, though not sure why I did this during the first release). This is how I first met Calus CoRPS, Blakdragon77 (which I have not seen in a long time), Killerdragon, and few others.
Near the end of the year, I devised a plan to try releasing several games based on actual old games. However, only one such game was ever produced. That would be Classic Tron BYOND Edition, which is based on the lightcycles portion of the original game. When the game was just released at the end of the year/start of the new year of 2006, it was littered with bugs. It didn't take long for several patches to come out for this game.
Due to the story being rather long, I don't plan to add anymore till a future post in the same thread. Don't worry though, I have more to tell y'all. Go ahead and start telling your stories about being on BYOND/DUNG. :D
ID:1394348
 Oct 8 2013, 10:55 am
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This was a great read. I laughed so hard at
'don't let Tom tell you how to place your brackets' and 'if this guy Lummox can read it, you're doing it wrong'. | |
I first heard of DUNG/BYOND on the Massassi.net website. It was a modding website for the game: Jedi Knight Dark Forces 2. Someone posted about this place and the fact that a DBZ game was being created. Turns out that game was Dragon Ball Z Spar (by Ebonshadow). I was super hype about that game. Around the same time another DBZ game spawned and it was Dragon Ball Epic Online. Played both of those but favored DBZ: Spar over it. Unfortunately just like Nadrew... The game stopped showing up. They went through various teams and rehashes to the point of just dying.
Later on, similar to Nadrew... I found DBZ: NN, DBGT Genesis, and various minor DBZ games. As you can tell, I was a fanatic. Played those directly after school without even caring for the homework, haha. Shortly after the DBZ craze, I slowed down and stumbled upon a glorious game. That game would be SilkWizard's: Dragon Warrior Online. Oh what a beauty that game was (to many). I would just idle in the first town's Inn listening to the repetitive midi music. (I'm skipping a lot due to getting bored typing some of this) After a long time of playing DWO, a guy by the name of WizDragon had some DWO Chatroom going. His was an offspring of DWO turned into a Zelda-ish combat game. It became, Dragon Warrior Legacy. Very popular, hosting plenty of events (around holidays), etc.. Good times. I also recall playing around with the Sidewalk Santas source in order to learn programming. Obviously that didn't work out so much. Yep... (Yeah, I'm done... Can't go any further. Too much to type and not enough ambition, haha.) | |
I heard of BYOND from a couple of high school friends in late 2006. They were talking about a Naruto game and asked me to play it with them. I assumed they were talking about a forum, which I thought was the only thing the internet was good for at the time, and it turned out to be an actual game: Naruto Birth of the Legendary Shinobi. I played that for awhile, and I thought it was the greatest thing ever considering I had never played an online game with several others before.
A week after, I browsed for the type of game everyone wanted to play at the time: DBZ. Every DBZ game that was hosted, I eventually played. I stumbled upon Finale by Tenshaku which is where I invested a lot of my time roleplaying. I had no idea what roleplaying was until a user, Bass3, took me aside and educated me ( the roleplaying community was nicer and more tolerant back then ). I picked up a lot of grammar lessons and big boy words from Finale, as well as general character design. My favorite had to be DBTC by SuperSaiyanGokuX, it was the most unique of the bunch and the combat was preferred at the time. Eventually I met with an "owner" of a DBZ game ( which is where I was educated on rips... the hard way), who tried teaching me how to create pixel art. Safe to say, that failed. I stumbled on yet another fangame DBZ: Legend Reborn by Ruben7, which is where I met BxS0lid3r ( now known as MDC ) whom is one of two BYONDers I've been friends with since our voices were crackly. In 2008, I continued to play DBZ games, such as Onslaught by Quaddw. I soon picked up on original games and was amazed by them: Murder Mansion by SuperSaiyanGokuX, Scarey Game2 by WildBlood, Mafia by LostRealm, Castle by Abra, and the ever-so-addictive Incursion by Lummox JR. I invested way too much time into those five games. Skipping ahead to 2010/2011 (fuzzy memory), I discovered we had a forum on the website. Around the same time, I was brought on board as a programmer and ... let's just say I had vision, but not the talent. But at the time, if you could type mob/Login() you were legit. Anyway, I was asked to help make Naruto: Origins ( one of many with that title ). The team consisted of myself, Branks, and the kid who brought the team together. The projected bombed once the kid had a break down due to a bad day at school, so Branks and I ditched him and started to work as a team. We made several games, although only a fraction of them were shown to the public, and a fraction of those were ever released at one point. When the new site updated, that was my quitting point. I had a good time on BYOND as a player, but a horrible time as an unsuccessful developer ( like now, haha ). I stuck around to check out the new website, and one day after work, I noticed a Moderator category. I brought it up to Tom that the website was bugged, but he informed me that he had made me a moderator. That's how the reign of terror on BYOND had begun, although some of you might know it as Doomsday. As a moderator, I mainly reviewed games for listing. The majority of the time, it was easy. Other times, it was claims such as "This isn't a rip, my friend gave me this game!" and "I'm reporting you!". I started to get into moderating the website, which wasn't too difficult and, in the long run we removed some bad apples. I've also made quite a bit of people upset with me, but that's why we have Nadrew and Stephen. The latter is our Yoda and bails us out while the former is our trump card. | |
Excellent stories so far. :D
Here is Part 2 of my story now: Before 2006 arrived, I remember playing some interesting games. Castles by Abra was fun for the fact you had to defend the castle along with other players before the minions took over. Deadly Waters by Officer Falcon was very nice since it was like playing Space Station 13 underwater. Quite some roleplaying too. Thinking about Space Station 13 by Exadv1, I remember playing it with Strawgate (who I first met when Text City Simulator was first hosted) along with others. Good times when everyone was becoming infected and transforming into monkeys. One thing also happened was bomb making (which admittedly I still have not attempted successfully). One game that almost everyone played around this time was good old The Sky Is Falling. The one game where everyone tried to avoiding getting crushed from falling blocks. Definitely fun to play in those days. This was near the time I also entered wiz_chat (where nearly everyone on BYOND was chatting at the time). It was a nice place to chat around. One thing I have discovered was a nice trick (which turned out to be a bug that got fixed much later) involving styles. This particular trick involved changing the styles of chat boxes or even the pager (unless HTML is turned off), sometimes causing ruckus in some games. It was a pretty useful and funny trick because you could either make it change backgrounds or make it appear a game got hacked. At the start of 2006, I was dealing more with experiments as well as providing some additional updates/patches to Classic Tron BYOND Edition. This was also around the time I was working on a DBZ game called Dragonball Z: Warriors of the Future (my attempt at an original DBZ game). Due to some relatively advanced concepts and not having enough pixel art skills at the time though, that game was never finished. This game is no longer in production anyhow years before C&D was issued on BYOND. One experiment I worked on during this time frame happened to involve onscreen input. This was because at the time, I was just starting to get into Topic usage. Due to others being able to use HTML to make their login screens, I decided to work on something a step further. Trying to get working onscreen input. Due to the capabilities of BYOND at the time though, it wasn't as feasible. Around February/March 2006, I was gifted my first year of Membership by Evi of au and Tiberath. This was around the time I began work on a new game project. The variation of Chip's Challenge called Disky Challenge. During development of the original versions of the game, I actually implemented a built-in map/level editor right from the start. It was even used to create levels for the main game. Graphics are done by hand while the Sounds and Music came from the Windows version of Chip's Challenge (which I have plans to change for the latter two in case of any copyright issues). I remember sharing what I learned a bit from Precalculus on how to build a nice movement system (using unit circle logic). Built an orbiting experiment as well as a spiraling experiment from the concept of unit circles. Around May 2006 just before I graduated from high school, Iccusion Entertainment announced their contest. This was how I created another game called Sledgem! (which is basically like a top-down version of The Sky Is Falling). Another game was created as a for real entry into the contest called Colori Poker (not related to the card games in any form). This game worked by mixing colors and then placing them on numbers (which involved a lot of clicking). Due to the failure of this game, another game was cancelled (which would've served as a second entry). That other game was the Colibrinum Challenge to the Center. During this year, I remember playing plenty of Paint by XxDohxX. That game was definitely fun since it was like Pictionary, but led to all sorts of drawings. The drawing mechanic might've been slow at the time due to BYOND's capabilities at the time. Making confusing (but relevant) drawings was fun too. One game I remember playing that actually was an entry for the same contest was Meteor by Koil. On November 1st, 2006, I have released Disky Challenge to the public for the first time (with multiplayer support that was handled through alternation). After a month of release, I decided to host a contest by releasing a special version of Disky Challenge that involves finding the golden disk (some reference to an episode of Dexter's Laboratory). Whoever found the golden disk was supposed to be granted early access to the built-in level editor. Never did make a release that enabled it for the winner though (since I was working on new features at the time). During December 2006, I was thinking of the concept of reverse engineering DMB files after being inspired by the PSP Homebrew Community (especially after the TIFF exploit discovery). Before I started research, I thought it couldn't be done until I was getting incorrect information in reference to the File Matching Environment (which I thank Hiead for providing a solution for). One of the first things I was researching at the time was strings. I was using Hackman's Hex Editor for the first stage of research (years before I used anything like HxD). Before I learned how to properly use a hex editor, I was using binary mode to study the strings. Entering 2007, a field of DMB-related research opened up. By this point, I didn't play as much Dragonball Zeta anymore. On April 11th, 2007, a major breakthrough was made for DMB-related research. That was uncovering how strings were translated by simply using XOR and a particular formula. Next day, I shared an example with others. Hiead due to having prior experience with reverse engineering, was able to figure it out easily and created various string tools. This also led to one of the very first DMB String Extractors in existence. About over one to two months later, Slurm created a working DMB Decompiler along with Hobnob. Around June 2007 just before my 19th birthday, I was learning PHP to the point it gave me an idea on how to link it with BYOND. By simply creating a mailing system called ByMail. The webserver code was in PHP and the actual client code was in DM. On June 15th, 2007, the client was released to the general public. A few updates were released nearly around the same time. Over a month later (nearly two depending), BYOND 4.0 enters the public eye as a beta test for the very first time. With the new skin features that enabled customization, it was perfect for upgrading the ByMail Client. Interface design scheme was originally provided by Evi of au (who also hosted the original webserver and provided the idea of using MySQL instead of files for handling mail). The upgrade itself was never finished, but did release a client support library due to popular request. During the latter half of 2007, I have worked on a RSC Extractor due to request (though it wasn't perfect). Near the end of the year, I created my first DMB String Extractor (though buggy, it was considering a stepping stone for the next generation of string extractors). There was a time where I have granted myself GM powers in older versions of Dragonball Zeta (V13/14, V31, and also V45.5) due to the verbs being stored in savefiles. When I was hosting such versions, I also granted such powers to anyone interested in being a GM for these old versions. All that took was a string extractor and a working savefile editor (DM-made) to make that happen. During early 2008, I was actually on a short break at one point. By the time I returned around March 2008, server-side DLL/SO support was added for the first time. With some C++ programming experience already available, I was able to conduct interesting experiments (though only available through server-side). Amongst these included some window experiments and Speech Recognition through the Microsoft SAPI (after finding a standalone application provide it). These experiments required another thread, which used to not result in crashes till a later version of BYOND upon exiting locally hosted Dream Seeker or dedicated hosted Dream Daemon due to leaving the thread open upon world shutdown. Other interesting experiments included an Ultima-styled City Building Experiment. How this one worked was you created a city that can be accessed from the outside world (like in Ultima). Whatever you built inside the city, those changes would occur on the outside world. I meant to add support for even larger cities, but was never finished since that project was lost in a future data corruption incident. Around Summer 2008, I began work on a new text-based project that involved using interfaces. This game was known as Text Nuclear War to try bringing a text-based nuclear game to BYOND. Progress was done this project until this particular project was also lost. Around August/September 2008, I began DMB file research again. This led to the development of my first DMB File Analyzer. Due to this program, it has led to a newly built DMB String Extractor (which was built from scratch instead of from the original one I made which was also built from scratch). This eventually led to more tools until it was time to build my first DMB Decompiler towards the end of the year. As the end of the year approaches, I was beginning to experiment with a new type of project. First being an attempt at bringing client-side Speech Recognition to BYOND projects. This eventually led to an even more powerful project called the DM Call Controller. What the purpose of this project was to enable client-side DLL access by communicating with supported games or other projects. Beginning in 2009, some projects were being produced at this point. Unfortunately, several projects disappeared or got destroyed due to data corruption caused by a very bad SATA Controller on my previous system (nForce 4 chipset). This led to my first attempt at a DMB Decompiler being destroyed as well as other projects. Only projects that survived were ones I have had from previous backups. By May 2009, I was working on a PIP concept before disappearing from DM-related programming for a long while. Around the latter half of 2009, I was able to recover several bits of information (some thanks to Stephen001 for keeping good storage) and rebuilt some programs or reupgraded them. Eventually in October 2009, I started my second attempt at a DMB Decompiler (still not finished). This attempt could be considered my best attempt at it as it did lead to some decompiled information. While not a finished project to this day (probably never will be), it has led me to learn some more interesting things about the DMB file format. I even found a few bugs with it caused by faulty compiling in some places. Before working on the 2nd attempt at the DMB Decompiler, I did a bit of research on savefiles with Audeuro. Of course at that time, nothing was built yet till over a year later. That is all for this part of the story. Due to still being a very long story, I plan to share another part of it in the near future (probably tomorrow or sometime later tonight). Fortunately, the next part should be the last part of the current story. And as I stated earlier, excellent stories so far. :D | |
I've told my "how I came to BYOND" story several times, so I'd like to instead share something that has always stuck in my head about those times:
"Irreversibility Tuesday, September 11, 2001 Oh, day of evil trade, Mourned across one soaring nation In a sudden diving realization That God cannot be paid To undo" I joined BYOND a little over a month after 9/11, and that quote remained on the main page for quite some time after. And it's been burned into my memory forever. Kind of a weird thing to associate with BYOND, and it's not like thinking of BYOND always reminds me of 9/11, it's just that whenever I think of 9/11, I remember BYOND's little tribute. | |
SuperSaiyanGokuX wrote:
I've told my "how I came to BYOND" story several times, so I'd like to instead share something that has always stuck in my head about those times: That is very interesting indeed SSGX. Reminds me of the time two months before 9/11, we bought Counter-Strike just to play the game (mod for the mod version). This was before the attacks occurred on 9/11. | |
I found BYOND around a year before making my key. I was, at the time, a regular of the RPG Tsukuru community.
Having played a game called Mystic Realms of Alhanzar, I become very interested in making someone similar. It took me a long time to get DM under my belt, so I played some games every now and again. NeoHaxor's Eyes of the Mysts, Hedgerow Hall, the original DBO by Cinnom, Dragonball GT: Genesis by Dracon... They all stick out in my memory. I've grown up here. It's home. There isn't much more to say than that. No matter how well I could do elsewhere, I will always be here to try to help BYOND, because BYOND has always helped me. | |
Ter13 wrote:
Hedgerow Hall Oh man. I miss Lexy and her great games. Hedgerow Hall is one of the very few BYOND games that I've ever actually played during my time here. It's not that I've got anything against playing BYOND games, I just never make the time for it, unless something really piques my interest. | |
Viper wrote:
I first heard of DUNG/BYOND on the Massass.net website. It was a modding website for the game: Jedi Knight Dark Forces 2. Sure it was. | |
Here is the final part (for now) of my story:
During the start of 2010, I was still busy with getting more of my DMB Decompiler to function. A few months later, however, I started to bring back my attempt at client-side DLL/SO communication. This project now underwent a new name called the DM External Library Communicator. For the first time after some work was done, I was able to achieve some form of client-side access for DLLs through a download method for clients (though that was stripped in a future project that was a step further). A few people helped test out the project. Unfortunately, we happened to find some bugs with the system due to the way world.Export() was handled. This, however, was my revival into the DM programming language. During Summer 2010, research began once again on savefiles for BYOND. This time, it led to actual information being discovered. Method used to translate strings also worked with savefile data entries, though used in a different form. Audeuro also helped with the research and eventually developed his own tools in reference to savefiles. Around early August 2010, I experimented with a method of handling HUDs (a very old method mind y'all) that allowed me to create messages using character objects and store them into specialized lists. Just a few weeks, however, I realized a new method of creating text thanks to the introduction of v455 (the version that introduced native isometric support and native icon sizing support). That version was released almost a year before I started work on what is known as single icon state text. Before that, it used to require several icon states to store entire text. No longer is the case to do that, which anyone with DM experience could've accomplished upon the release of v455. I decided to call them Text Objects and in order to properly introduce them, I went ahead and created a new project that was going to be a game. This project became known as the Strategic Warfare Prototype, which served not only as a testbed for new capabilities, but also try to create a game with those capabilities. Not too long after that, Lummox JR announced the Cartridge Classic II contest. This was a great opportunity to develop an actual game using single icon state text objects. That is how SkyDrop Delivery was born. In order to make the game come to life, I had to come up with a game idea for it. I thought why not have a game where you deliver goods to nearby stations to earn money. This game not only served as a true test of implementing text objects, but also became my first new game in a few years. Around the time development started on this game, there were already talks of developing a new library that enables others to create text objects without having to program the whole thing themselves. That later became known as the SByIo Library, the third project to utilize text objects. Cartridge Classic II was extended a few times until it ended. Before the final extension, I finally finished SkyDrop Delivery on January 18th, 2011. However, there was a bug that was fixed after the contest was extended one more time. After being finished with SkyDrop Delivery, I decided to focus on developing SByIo Library V1. One of the new capabilities introduced was the ability to create menu objects. This made it easier and more organized to create item text objects. SByIo Library was finally released to the general public for the first time on February 24th, 2011. However, there was an issue with item text objects not lining up properly for menu objects at different icon size settings. This was corrected four days later. Before SByIo Library was released, I was actually working on bringing back onscreen input. Due to issues I was having at the time through the Strategic Warfare Prototype, it was not included with SByIo Library V1. It was later corrected and made an appearance for V2. Unfortunately, onscreen input at the time was not quite perfect yet due to issues with flickering (used mainly icon objects at the time). Months later, I have released yet another library called Modular HTML. Original plan with this library to enable wrapping/interfacing Javascript capabilities along with a nice way to create HTML through any DM project. It later was updated to provide some additional features such as making form construction easier. After that, I went back to work on the SByIo Library. The first demo provided by the library introduced a form of a chatting system. This happened due to a suggestion made by Gooseheaded that made a very nifty use of onscreen input. Before V2 was released, various other upgrades were made. Item text objects became more efficient at highlighting by being able to take advantage of another icon state (using two icon states total). Multi-line support was added for regular text objects (and probably item text objects at the same time). Menu objects were upgraded to be able to utilize input objects (which at the time, was also used for onscreen input). Font objects were upgraded to utilize an update procedure that updates all text objects that use such a particular font object. Menu spacing was provided for menu objects to enable horizontal and vertical listing. Side cursor highlighting was added to item text objects (which can use any icon out there). After V2 was released, there were a few fixes provided by V2A and later V2B (the latter due to changes made after 494). A few months later after some suggestions, I have finally uncovered efficient onscreen input. This involved a hybrid of image objects and icon objects. The latter involves only scaling a copy of an existing fonts file and later reuse it for the entire text input object. While I still need to correct delays on it, it has finally made onscreen input feasible after earlier experiments with it. First started sharing the concept with forum_account (and he managed to improve it before he disappeared) as well as with the public, leading to one of the very first public test code releases of SByIo Library V3. Back on September 2nd, 2011, a brand new Classic Tron BYOND Edition was finally released after years of no new releases. There is a possible full upgrade on the game in some future. Just about an hour or two later, BYOND finally added support for native pixel movement (which was a public test at the time). Talking about proper timing just after I released a new version of that game. Around the time SByIo Library V2 was released, I already had plans to work on a sequel to SkyDrop Delivery. In fact, this sequel marked the first time I used the SByIo Library on any game. This game is currently on hiatus until I release a proper version of SByIo Library V3. I will discuss about what happened in 2012 in the near future. Thought I would go ahead and end it at 2011 for now. Hope y'all enjoyed this story. :D | |
SuperSaiyanGokuX wrote:
Ter13 wrote: I still play it alone all the time *whistles*. I'd host it, but I doubt Lexy would appreciate that and it wouldn't appear on the hub either. | |
Nadrew wrote:
SuperSaiyanGokuX wrote: I might have to beg very politely for the files. | |
I am curious about that game y'all have been talking about. However, it appears the hub definitely vanished. :|
Thinking about really old games, I wonder what ever happened to other games like Bullies and Nerds (I bet some of y'all have played it a long time ago). | |
Hedgerow hall was a roleplaying game inspired by Brian Jacques' Redwall novels. Basically, you could create a character with certain positive/negative traits, and develop skills. Every few hours, you would gain skillpoints that you could apply to one of the various crafting, magic, combat, or socialization skills. If you were a member, you could dig a burrow and customize it to your liking with your crafting skills.
Eventually, however, the playerbase became increasingly hostile, so Lexy decided to take it down rather than enforce roleplaying with moderation. I enjoyed it immensely. | |
Sounds like a very interesting roleplaying game Ter13. Though I rarely play roleplaying games like that these days, I definitely would've tried a game like that.
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If Lexy would give me permission I could host a private server...
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I posted a few things on the forum and fiddled around with the language that came with the software off and on but never really got into things with it, I mostly messed around in the few games that had cropped up by the time I came around like NightMUD and PipeStock (Dan and I logged probably 200 hours playing that game against each other and I'm still not sure I know how to play it...). But back then internet access wasn't exactly a common thing to come across and I ended up offline for quite some time, forgetting about DUNG.
Skip ahead to June 2001, I'm finally back online with dial-up that's actually blazin' fast for the time (a day when hitting that 50.6kbps was a feat and a half). I've been online for about four months, gathered some new friends and gotten into the Dragonball Z Roleplaying communities on Yahoo Geocites, even running one of my own that topped out at over 200 members at its best. One night a bunch of my members and I are sitting in an AIM group chat talking about anything and everything when someone pops in talking about this awesome DBZ game that 'has moving characters and everything' so we all flock to this byond.com website the guy's talking about, download the software and join the game, DBZ: Spar, by Ebonshadow. Needless to say, none of us had ever seen anything like that before, a free DBZ game where you could actually play with other people in real-time. Unfortunately, DBZ Spar was actually in sporadic testing when we found it and soon stopped showing up live often enough to fill our newfound hunger for games of the sort. This was just before the big DBZ explosion on BYOND, but we already had about 10 different DBZ games to pick from, all pretty decent for the standards we had back then; absolutely terrible by the standards we have now =P. I eventually settled down in Hiroki's DBZ:NN where I met this little-known game moderator called Dracon who was making his own DBZ game called 'Genesis' -- I'm not getting into that mess here though -- which inspired me to delve into learning how to make a game myself.
This was when I realized this BYOND thing was in fact the DUNG system I had tried and loved years earlier, and settling back into the language wasn't as much of a problem as I anticipated; I had plenty of stupid-newbie questions though. But after lots of forum posts, guide reading, and the lovely ZBT tutorial I was on my way to learning how to make BYOND games. My first experience was obviously a DBZ game (my own code and RPGMaker graphics, ripping didn't exist yet), but I had never planned for it to be released or become the 'next big DBZ game on BYOND', it was to mess with things with something I knew BYOND could do from first-hand experience. It wasn't long before I was ready to move outside of the realm of the known into making my own original projects, which led me to a game called 'Castle', years before the tower defense game, which was a generic dungeon crawler game that tasked you to climb a castle tower with increasingly tough monsters and powerful rewards until you reached the end.
I found early I wasn't exactly the best at making games, but I did have a knack for the language and especially helping others pick up DM and learn it; so I started to focus on that aspect of things. I released quite a few libraries, demos and tutorials in 2001 and 2002, some of them such as my leveling system and HUD demo gained a lot of popularity while others caught niche users and not much else. During these years Dan somewhat took me under his wing and taught me some of the finer points of programming like 'don't let Tom tell you how to place your brackets' and 'if this guy Lummox can read it, you're doing it wrong'. Which ironically resulted in me being one of the few people around who can decipher the enigma known as 'Dan code' -- but only if I'm knowledgeable in the subject matter beforehand, otherwise it's not much good to me. That's why I couldn't fix Dantom.DB until I learned how MySQL worked =P.
Near the end of 2002 I started working closely with Deadron and his DDT team on their projects doing things like testing and debugging, during the time I cultivated friendships with many of the BYOND 'oldbies' I had grown to admire and respect, often spending late nights watching Tom and Zilal's awkward sexual tension come to light in disturbing and amusing ways.
In building these relationships I not only grew up as a person but I gained a backstage look at the then rag-tag operations behind the BYOND project, just a couple of guys having fun with a project and the group of loyal oldbies providing them with feedback and testing. It wasn't long before I was invited in as 'one of them', perhaps a bit longer than some others but they had to teach me how to be less idiotic and just the right amount of insane first.
By 2003 I was helping out with various operations of the BYOND system, doing things like game reviews for channel listing, forum moderation, support tickets, and whatever else I could do to help out. Deadron and I spent quite a lot of our time manually reviewing each and every game submitted to the Hub and placed it accordingly, if it met the requirements.
In 2004 (I believe) the group known as the 'Business of BYOND' or 'BoB' was formed from a pool of long-time users who wanted to get together with Tom directly to discuss the direction BYOND was headed and how it could start to generate some profit. Deadron, Lummox JR, Gughunter, Shadowdarke, Mike H, Zilal, Tom, and myself would meet up every Monday evening in the BYONDscape game that Gughunter made. Most of my duties included bug hunting and tracking, and community feedback on things.
It was during these meetings where things like BYOND Membership, blogs, guilds, and stuff like that were formulated, and where Lummox was first set down his maddening path as BYOND source monkey.
In my years here I've been active in many games, mostly as 'the help', and for a time a lot of people didn't like me very much because I was a bit gruff with my moderation duties (had to be, I was the only one moderating the hub for like four years!), but in all, I've grown up more than I ever would have without BYOND.
Since 2003 I've just been hanging around doing what I can when I can, whether it be bugging Tom on AIM about something he might have overlooked on the forums or moderating those same forums. Along with Stephen001 I'm considered the 'community guy', in charge of dealing with moderation-related issues, and occasionally stepping in when the moderators can't decide on a course of action.
Aside from Lummox and Tom I'm the only remaining active member of the original BoB team, but I'm not quite good enough at the C++ to put my Dan code skills to use for anything, so those two will just have to keep the weight of the ATOM on their shoulders for the time being. I'm hoping one day Tom will finally realize I'm not dead-weight and let me do something productive with all of the knowledge he and his community has bestowed on me over the last 14 years.
Also... holy crap, 14 years?! That's more than half my life, I was barely 12-years-old when I joined this community and now I'm on the dark side of my twenties. Ah the years, how they pass.