04-21-2011, 08:44 PM
(This post was last modified: 04-21-2011, 08:56 PM by Jacob__mybb_import1.)
I know nobody wants to read all of this, but I'm bored, so I'll write it anyway!
My life on the internet started in early 2006, when I found a small community called the Game Creation Forum. We used a program called Stagecast Creator, which I had gotten in 2003, but I didn't know about its community until 3 years later.
I wasn't great at making games, but during the spring and summer, the founder of the forum decided to start a free web hosting company. A few weeks before the release, he showed us the web-based file manager he had created. It was very rudimentary, and I showed him how it could be abused to edit or delete any file on the server. So, I decided to learn PHP (my first programming language), and I made my own file manager that worked much better than his.
Then the site opened, and I worked as a moderator, answering support questions and looking for rule-breaking accounts. I got promoted to "junior administrator" on my birthday in 2007, and gained more access to the server (most of this job consisted of typing "sudo chmod -Rf 777 /home/zendurl/public_html/a/account" repeatedly, but that's another story.)
In early 2008 the web host became unprofitable, so we had to shut it down. I continued to work on my own site where I distributed free PHP scripts, but I always found writing scripts to be tedious and a little boring.
I became more active on a website called Sodaplay, a game where you could construct models out of masses and springs. It started to get boring, but in August 2009 one of the members discovered a new indie game called Minecraft. I quickly got addicted to it, and learned Java, hoping to make some Minecraft tools. I started hosting a Minecraft Capture the Flag server, which is still up today.
In late December I came up with the idea for Buildism, and I wrote the first line of code on December 30th. I kept working on it through May, but I got demotivated due to all of the bugs.
Last summer, I wrote a 2D Minecraft clone called CubicRealms for fun and to get experience with procedural world generation.
I started working on Buildism again in September; I threw away all of the old code and started over. After several months, we had gained 1,000 users! In April 2011, I wrote a post detailing my Internet adventures on the Buildism forums.
EDIT: Writing this post just reminded me of something... yes, I was immature once too.
My life on the internet started in early 2006, when I found a small community called the Game Creation Forum. We used a program called Stagecast Creator, which I had gotten in 2003, but I didn't know about its community until 3 years later.
I wasn't great at making games, but during the spring and summer, the founder of the forum decided to start a free web hosting company. A few weeks before the release, he showed us the web-based file manager he had created. It was very rudimentary, and I showed him how it could be abused to edit or delete any file on the server. So, I decided to learn PHP (my first programming language), and I made my own file manager that worked much better than his.
Then the site opened, and I worked as a moderator, answering support questions and looking for rule-breaking accounts. I got promoted to "junior administrator" on my birthday in 2007, and gained more access to the server (most of this job consisted of typing "sudo chmod -Rf 777 /home/zendurl/public_html/a/account" repeatedly, but that's another story.)
In early 2008 the web host became unprofitable, so we had to shut it down. I continued to work on my own site where I distributed free PHP scripts, but I always found writing scripts to be tedious and a little boring.
I became more active on a website called Sodaplay, a game where you could construct models out of masses and springs. It started to get boring, but in August 2009 one of the members discovered a new indie game called Minecraft. I quickly got addicted to it, and learned Java, hoping to make some Minecraft tools. I started hosting a Minecraft Capture the Flag server, which is still up today.
In late December I came up with the idea for Buildism, and I wrote the first line of code on December 30th. I kept working on it through May, but I got demotivated due to all of the bugs.
Last summer, I wrote a 2D Minecraft clone called CubicRealms for fun and to get experience with procedural world generation.
I started working on Buildism again in September; I threw away all of the old code and started over. After several months, we had gained 1,000 users! In April 2011, I wrote a post detailing my Internet adventures on the Buildism forums.
EDIT: Writing this post just reminded me of something... yes, I was immature once too.