It's been a while...

Yup, it's been a long time. Welcome back.

No idea if you remember me from back in the day. I've mentioned I shifted over to the site when it was new, but they allowed anonymous posts for the first few years. I didn't create an account until I had to. People pushed me over in the late 1990's where I was an Undernet #C and #C++ moderator, and also active in the Undernet #gamedev channel. People like Swish recommended I join the Afternet #gamedev channel, which was the social side of the site that paired with these more persistent forums.

The site is one of the few that has spanned more than a generation. Consolidation of the Internet and reduction in forum sites, rise of sites like reddit and stack overflow, and plain old natural attrition have all changed the site over the decades.

Welcome back o/

It took me a long time to get around too, it's not just because of building games, but I actually get more meaningful programming help here than anywhere else.

Now that I see it, I do remember your username. I remembered a few others as well:

Tanstaafl

Slartibartfast

Gaiiden

Tha hoodrat

I feel like there's so much that I have forgotten though. Like I forgot that there was the ability to DM users.

Moe wrote:

So yeah, it's been a while. As I was falling asleep, I was thinking about some of the old GDNet users. I am not sure I ever said thanks for the community while I was here active on it. Some of the names that come to mind: - Khawk

Hey Moe, been a long time! Welcome back even if for a quick hello. Much has changed in all our lives I think, whether career, hobbies, life events, etc. While the same cast of characters you list aren't much involved, we still have a core community here that continues on and others may randomly show up. 😉

@Myopic Rhino @nes8bit @Pouya @cow_in_the_well @Ravuya @Tape_Worm (still around) @Gaiiden @Slartibartfast @Tha_HoodRat @TANSTAAFL

Hey Moe. How's it going? You still in the city?

I'm down in Lethbridge these days.

I still remember when we went to go eat Transformers at the Auclair theatre. Good times.

hello.jpg, everyone! Definitely has been a huge gap in history since the last time we spoke. Life for me is certainly different. No ring on this wedding finger, no. But I'm not spread out too thin, thankfully. I do have the means to do whatever I want whenever I want. And it's all because I picked this as hobby when I was a kid. Not realizing it would become the most lucrative thing I could ever do by a wide margin.

I recognize so many screennames here, but Moe, I can't remember who you were?

Semi-related interesting piece of IRC history I found recently:

https://duke4ever.altervista.org/textdocs.html
Search for: February 5, 1999 IRC chat session with 3DRealms developers

The fact that you still get the itch to make a game? That's the spark that got most of us into this industry in the first place. 3 kids and a mortgage have a way of turning that itch into a "someday" — but honestly, the game dev tools today (Godot, Unity, even just Löve2D for a weekend jam) are so much more accessible than whatever we were wrestling with back in the GDNet heyday. Your "someday" is more achievable now than ever.

It's true - the tools and resources available are definitely way better than what was around a quarter century ago. For me, the limiting factor is time. I've also got a woodworking hobby, plus home maintenance. And I said I would build my kids a go kart this year (majority of the parts are sitting in the garage). I never did get to build the go kart I dreamed of as a kid, so I'm committed to doing it now.

Maybe after that's done, I'll start digging more into doing something with Godot.

Moe, I for some reason thought you changed your UN. Now I'm starting to remember you. Sorry, hard to remember everyone in a pre-pfp era. The only ones I've really kept up with are SHilbert and Myopic Rhino. Every now and then I'll get roasted by Washu in the discord for over-engineering my code. But that's it.

This post comes at a really odd time for me because for the first time in 20 years I have re-entered the gamedev world. Over the last few years or so I've been working on a project. Prior to that I was just a Wordpress janitor. And prior to that I was just trolling this forum. Those were good times. And it is so cool to see how many people came from here who pioneered game development over the years.

Oh wow, how did I forget about SHilbert and Washu!

I'm trying to remember - was it you in one of the first or second Four Elements contests that did a first person shooter with a giant Tux penguin throwing "GPL"?

Moe wrote:

Oh wow, how did I forget about SHilbert and Washu!

I'm trying to remember - was it you in one of the first or second Four Elements contests that did a first person shooter with a giant Tux penguin throwing "GPL"?

lmao yes. I'm surprised you remember that!

When I get a few moments I'll check but pretty sure we have all the 4E contest entries sitting around (along with a lot of other things).. one of my wishlist items is re-enabling all those old links for folks. Little bit of nostalgia motivation, but there's a history of gamedev evolution worth sharing.

Welcome back for newbies like me 🙂

khawk wrote:

When I get a few moments I'll check but pretty sure we have all the 4E contest entries sitting around (along with a lot of other things).. one of my wishlist items is re-enabling all those old links for folks. Little bit of nostalgia motivation, but there's a history of gamedev evolution worth sharing.

Sorry to invade a thread like this - but as it was mentioned - is there a plan for contests/challenges? I recall participating in one or so ... it was quite fun and enjoyable (definitely more than 72h jams - which, with growing business, growing age and larger family ... are becoming quite impossible to do).

Vilem Otte wrote:

Sorry to invade a thread like this - but as it was mentioned - is there a plan for contests/challenges? I recall participating in one or so ... it was quite fun and enjoy...

Yes! It would be great to have a contest/challenge and get those happening regularly again. Definitely agree with the challenge of something like a weekend jam. No definitive plans but open to suggestions and ideas on what would be of interest and interesting to folks. My only real challenge on this is I may need 1-2 volunteers to help organize/run the contest/challenge (tbd).

Not sure if we should make another thread or just let this one evolve organically, but I'm interested in any feedback/inputs on the idea of a contest/challenge.

Nobody's gonna remember me as I wasn't exactly a regular poster, but web searching on the topic of open source DX12 engines led me here. I found that my account, which I hadn't visited in 14 years, still worked. So after some minor shenanigans, here I am. I count as an old timer.

It's been a shockingly long time. And still no game. Any time now though :-)