User:Jason the Echidna/Internet History

Introduction

This is the history of Jason the Echidna's life on the internet in relation to SRB2 as written by him. It documents everything he can recall, even the "war" between #srb2fun and #srb2netgame, the move to EsperNet, and philosophy behind SRB2JTE.

The beginning

After moving to Piscataway, I finally had an internet connection. After all those years of being limited to a half hour of videogames, computer, OR television once per day, with no internet connection aside from the occasional AOL trials, one month every year or two...

I spent countless hours Googling "Sonic the Hedgehog" of course! ... And didn't come up with much, unfortunately. Occasionally a sucky little fan project here or there... and SRB2 Demo 4.35.

I played through 4.35 as best I could... THZ2 didn't exist back then (aside from a secret beta hidden in a DLL much like the xmas stuff is now which I didn't find out about until much later) so it was fairly easy once you got used to the controls... I loved it, I didn't care much for graphics or anything, at this point it was either this or the good old Genesis that was my only friend in all my internetless years. Sonic Adventure? Nothing more then a dream to me, honestly.

The only thing that was left in it to challenge me were the impossibly hard special stages... They were much different and much more challenging then the stages we have now, with very tight time constraints and whatnot... I was always more of a Knuckles user then anything else, so I never learned how to thok (or multithok) very well... The fact that Knuckles was the "ugliest" of the bunch never turned me away, I became quite accustomed to seeing him like that after some time.

Alas, when I finally managed to beat the first special stage, I found the second stage exponentially tougher. While I learned to beat the first stage nearly every time without fail, that seemed to be the farthest I could go. So I occasionally checked the addons section for fun stuff and did little more with it. I did not go to the forums or IRC, I was very shy. I'm always very shy...

So I learned of Match stages and an alternate GFZ3 and whathaveyou... Things were good, but eventually I ran out of things to do and realized just how long it is between updates... So I left SRB2.

SRB2 2k3 and the forum

That is, until I found SRB2 2k3 in SAGE. Sucks that it lacked singleplayer levels, but I played around with it in multiplayer mode by myself anyways... It was so vastly enhanced compared to SRB2 4.35 that I couldn't go back. So I began checking srb2.org "for news and updates" regularly again. And I started going to the message board here as well.

No. I was never a n00b. What gave you that idea? In fact, I'm more of a n00b now then I was back then, I'm sure. The internets ruined me, I swear. Anyway, while there was much to be learned from going to the message board, the joy of it was quickly ended one day as I experienced something new for the first time... Sepwich went down.

Thus, I was forced to figure out this "IRC" thing, though I really was still too shy to do much. But I worked up my courage and went to #srb2, asking about why "the MB" was down. Jaeson was like "omfg clone!1" as I was using the nick "Jason"... Aside from that, a lot of people ignored me, a lot of others asked "What's a MB?" and "We have a message board?" but luckily SSNTails was there to refer me to #srb2netgame... I think. Maybe it was Mystic, but I doubt it.

My first visit to #srb2netgame? All I remember was NeoGenGamer and shadow there. NeoGenGamer gnawed on a rock, shadow destroied the rock, etc. Just stupid antics. They told me about how the message board goes down sometimes and I was on my way. Meh.

Anyway, the board went back up and I never touched IRC again. Or at least, I didn't really want to go back on IRC again. 1.04 was released around this point, I think, so I finally had something to occupy myself with on the side. However, all good things come to an end... It went back down again soon after. At first, I wanted to try and wait it out. This happened before, right? I was still very shy and I didn't quite have pleasent memories of my last visit. A few days passed. Still no message board. Thus, I had no other choice... I had nothing better to do, anyway, right? I joined #srb2netgame, where I spent much of my time...

IRC

In my second trip to #srb2netgame, Digiku taught me how to use /me. And I quote: <Digiku> /me goes to the porto-potty-wotty-dotty <Jason> You do that... ... ... <Digiku> That's the command, you dolt!

One day on IRC, I found that the name "Jason" had been registered, so I took the name "Jason_the_Echidna" instead for a time.

I found out the message board's SQL database got erased or something like that, which is why it was taking so long... Unfortunately, this means everything was erased... All the posts, members, everything. I was one of the first people to sign up again when it came back up, as I was still very attached to it... This is why I am number 8 on the members list. Seriously.

However, due to my time on IRC, I slowly drifted from the message board... What did I need a message board? I could spend endless hours sitting at my computer waiting for the rare occurance of a netgame instead. What more was there to live for? Too bad my netgame obsessions were so quickly deminished by the lack thereof.

I started to go to #srb2fun one day. Not exactly sure where I heard of it. It was pretty much empty except for a441, who sat there alone doing whatever. I believe there may have been a tiny tiny bit of life in there sometimes, but it was nothing.

One day, Penopat stopped by. He had a script, something about cheese and voting. Not sure. Learning that mIRC had scripting features piqued my intrest. Thus, I learned to script and made a quotes script and a database of SRB2 players, their ability to host, their skill level as a unique number, and some misc. info (fighting style, favorite map, whatever.) Aside from never finding the time to keep the database up to date, that was as far as I needed to go with scripting. As far as I'm concerned, I could make whatever I want in an mIRC script.

Learning to Wad

Thus, I decided to learn to wad to occupy my time, starting with a simple CTF map which I decorated greatly and ... overlapped a ton of linedefs, failed to make water (or FOFs in general), etc. But it wasn't buggy, aside from a segment violation when standing in a certain spot and facing a certain direction. Thank God for WadAuthor's messy nodes builder which hides all map errors. Seeing my creation come to life in 3D was the greatest joy I had known. But I wanted more.

I quickly learned all there was to learn about level wadding. And character wadding as well, piece of cake. At this point, a441 began releasing public betas of what would become 1.08 on IRC in #srb2fun. I think this may have had some play in #srb2fun's "rise to power" which is why I tried to mimic it in #srb2jte recently. Of course, more people means a need for more ops.

I was the first of the "new" ops a441 chose. I didn't think there would be more. He later added Shuffle and FuriousFox. Maybe a few others, I don't remember. About each one, he'd PM me with something like "FuriousFox seems to be a very level-headed guy. should he be an op?" and I'd nearly always agree, usually too busy with wadding to actually have seen much. Only few times did I disagree, and he agreed with my reasoning for it, though I think he usually went ahead anyway. I wouldn't know, I was too busy wadding all the time to do anything.

In any case, each new beta introduced a bunch of exciting new features for me to play with. Map scripts came first. What is now SA City was once nothing more then a test map for map executed scripts. The original script did nothing more then wait 3 tics before echoing "*** Welcome to SA City!" to the console and the map contained nothing more then a single house, which remained mostly unchanged throughout development. It was the official test map of map executed scripts and a441 said I should leave it at that, but I went ahead and made it into a full game of it's own.

Then when I thought it couldn't get any cooler, out came linedef executors. I made a test map for that, too, but it became only a concept wad for an addition to SA City which did not use linedef executors. At first, the map seems completely empty. Just a big square of grass with a thok barrier around it.

However, if you walk forward a bit, you trip the linedef executors and suddenly find yourself in a dirt pit with no way out and darkness covering the rest of the map. I then added simple stands to sit up in and look down into the pit from as well. Unfortunately, at the time, "instant" linedef executors were truely instant. The floor instantly lowered, leaving you to fall into the pit rather then taking you down with it... But the stands instantly raised as well, so if you happened to trigger it through the stands rather then the pit, you'd be stuck inside them. I began to think up neat things I could do with this, but a441 fixed it in the very next beta. So much for that.

Public betas and #IFSFTLG

At this point, #srb2fun had quite a lot more life then #srb2netgame, though they were both very much "alive." In the middle of the night one night, a441, Chompy, FuriousFox/NeoGenGamer, and I (maybe some other people or if it was FuriousFox or NeoGenGamer, I'm not sure) went "channel hopping"... I'm not exactly sure how it started, but one person would say a channel name, we'd all join that channel, in that channel another channel name would be said and we'd all join that one, etc. and if you weren't fast enough you wouldn't know where to go next.

We stopped in #ifeelsorryforthelittleguy. Why? Because a441 registered it, claiming to have come up with some use for it. It then became something of our secret #srb2fun ops chat. We didn't really need it for much, or ever use it much, for that matter. But it was there. It was later moved to #ifsftlg, which at first I didn't understand was just a shortening of the name and always pronounced it as "ifs feet lag" for some reason. #ifsftlg stands completely empty and unused today, except for maybe FuriousFox and Alam.

In the 1.08 betas, a441 began to code the original Circuit mode, which was an actual gametype rather then a derivitive of Race. This was because a certain mod by shadow, "MKraces", was rising in popularity and the concept was simple and pure at the time. In fact, it didn't even have Mario Kart characters, just racing versions of normal characters. All kinds of characters were made and ported from previous versions of SRB2 for MKraces by shadow. "sonicr.wad", "tailsr.wad", "knucklesr.wad", "marior.wad", "luigir.wad", "metallixr.wad", "sonikkur.wad", "goombar.wad", "eggmanr.wad"... If it was ever in SRB2 at some point, there was an mkraces character for it with a little "r" at the end of the name to denote that it was tweaked for racing, which basicly meant it had altered stats and no abilities.

a441 also started working on "golf mode" later on as well. I assume circuit mode was completed at this time, but it was so "messy" that SSNTails did not include circuit nor golf in 1.08. However, a441 invented the blue springs for golf modee and those stayed. In #ifsftlg, we were given a new beta exe with golf enabled as well as a wad with blue spring sprites, a soc edit which made players bouncey, and a prerelease of the golf maps. Thus, we, the elite of #srb2fun, got to play GOLF. What generic big-time company owners we are. Next we'll each have a secretary as well so she could buzz in "I've got an annoying n00b here, shall I ban him?" and we don't have to do anything at all. Haha, good times...

1.08 and a441's leave

Eventually, 1.08 was released. Purely so all this messy "patching" stuff was no longer needed. Shortly after, things changed. Mysteria died. In it's final days, it was decided that we would move to AccessIRC. Having never been on a server other then Mysteria, I saw no reason to disagree. I was completely indifferent to it, aside from the pain of leaving "my home" as it came to be. a441 was very hasty about the move and, while he never actually forced everyone off of Mysteria to my knowledge, the channel was moved quite easily.

For some reason, he decided to take both #srb2 and #srb2fun, though #srb2 was supposedly the "official" channel. Unfortunately, the #srb2 on Mysteria was none too happy about this and thus refused to move to AccessIRC with us. Instead, they moved to EsperNet and Mystic moved #srb2netgame there as well. I'm not sure, but I believe he moved it under the name #srb2general. He may have changed the name after the move, though.

At this time, I had stopped going to #srb2netgame, so I really didn't know or care. I knew only that it was dead, few people from #srb2 actually knew anything of SRB2 or cared or went to #srb2netgame. It was pointless for us to move with them, though Mystic found it convinient. a441 held #srb2fun on AccessIRC for the remainder of his time in our community.

At some point, he must have been drunk or something, because he gave me founder privledges to the channel and told me that it was like he was handing me a wasteland, that the channel was a ruined utopia... The next day, he used the channel password to steal it back from me. Thus, while I can claim to have owned #srb2fun at some point, nobody remembers.

A few weeks later, after talking about leaving in #ifsftlg for several days, he finally did it. He gave FuriousFox the channel and left. Soon after we heard from Mystic that he had destroied much of SRB2's source code claiming he would rebuild it and never did. This was to be the final blow to the SRB2 community. First he had split the community in two by seperating the channels onto completely different servers and then he destroied the game itself? No more game and a confused and split community meant that SRB2 would quickly die, right?

Unfortunately, it was not so. The next release of SRB2, I believe it was 1.09, was merely delayed. Greatly delayed. I'm not sure, but I believe it was at this point when I started making SPMoves. Either that, or I started making it in 1.04...

SPMoves

In any case, SRB2 had the source code included at this point, and I hadn't really touched it that much, but as I had mastered wadding and SOC edits, there was nothing left to do... I opened p_user.c and began coding Chaos Control, after making a quick concept in MultiMedia Fusion using a Sonic Crackers Shadow sprite edit Donnyku made. At the time, I could not compile a new exe myself, I needed to have Alam do that for me. In my impatience, I started making other abilities as well. Thus, what was once "SRB2ChaosControl" became "SRB2SPMoves"...

After a while, the thrill of SPMoves died in me... It was a big buggy mess which I didn't really feel like fixing, mostly because my "audience" did nothing more then leech... I gave, they took, and they begged for more. More abilities, more lame recolor characters, more bug fixes,... It wasn't fun anymore, mostly because I was the only one doing all the work and I didn't even get to do what I wanted.

Roleplaying

At that time, I began to go to #MimirusHome on AccessIRC. It was a roleplay channel, as most of my friends like to obsess over such things much moreso then the pastey-white dorks who play Dungeons and Dragons. To them, it was more then just a game or a chat or a TV show. It was a way of life. If they didn't roleplay, it would totally ruin every other aspect of their existance.

I also created #JTEsHouse soon after, but for a different purpose. After my good friend a441 had left, I felt very empty... a441 gave me something to look up to, someone to impress, and something to look forward to in the middle of the night when it was only he and I. Thus, when a441 left, I needed someone else to hang on to.

I quickly grabbed Omega the Hedgehog and soonafter Dan_P, who later, after going through a series of nick changes trying to find one which suited him, stopped with "MK". I created #JTEsHouse in order to have chats with them both at the same time, as pming between them at the same time was hard. Omega was never around nearly as much as MK, and now neither of them are around much at all. But that's okay. I've slowly grown less dependant on them anyway. Around this point, I changed my nick to "JTE"... Purely because it sounds "cuter" then "Jason_the_Echidna," and not because I found the name too long to type out all the time.

Getting back to #MimirusHome, I was never too fond of roleplaying. I tried it, but I quickly degraded to the role of nothing more then a pet to MK. The whole time, however, I secretly had my own little storyline slowly progressing. Much slower, in fact, then any the rest of the roleplayers had ever imagined. Over the course of several months did I drop small hints, odd encounters, and even began making my character horde small artifacts from things happening in other, unrelated plots.

Then, in one glorous day of roleplay, I revealed the nature of the remainder of my plot, linking all of the events and small details from the previous months together in a very sofisticated manner, revealing an unimaginably intricate plot from what for all that time seemed to be a completely random and pointless chain of events, all that's left being the ending...

Heh. Unfortunately, the others had their own plans. They decided that they'd rather continue with their lame "World War 3" and Kingdom Hearts ripoff storylines, literally peeing on all that I had ever come up with, all the original ideas that I had ever added to the game. Thus, I no longer roleplay.

SRB2RP

Despite this, I secretly began working on what was known as "SRB2RP"... A mod of SRB2 which added features designed specificly for roleplaying. Like adding a limit to how far away you can "hear" things people say, adding intercom objects to talk to people standing near other intercoms despite the distance, new ability edits, new textures, and a Mimiru's Home map, complete with rooms for everyone on two seperate and detailed floors. I went through hell making it and it was much appreciated.

I then made one fatal move. I spent several days, maybe even a week, working on something special. In order to create every character's insane special abilities, I needed to add a huge number of new animations to SRB2, but there were already a ton of frames used to begin with. The solution? Seperate animations instead of a single set of animations for all players. Consider this: In SRB2, you have the frames PLAYA0, PLAYB0, PLAYC0, PLAYD0... In SRB2RP, you have the frames STNDA0, WAITA0, WAITB0, and WALKA0. Much better, yes? But after all my work... After I finally got it working, felt the joy of seeing no difference in my edited Knuckles from the original... I found that it horribly broke netgames.

All that work. Wasted. Disheartened, I stopped programming again.

The move to EsperNet

Meanwhile, when a441 left, he left FuriousFox in charge of #srb2fun. Why FuriousFox? Because at the time, he was the quietest, calmest, most passive, and level-headed of the bunch. In short, a441 left FuriousFox in charge because he knew FuriousFox wouldn't do anything. Ever.

Unfortunately, that was not the case for long. FuriousFox was forced to change "for the worse" by his responsibility as the leader of #srb2fun. In #srb2dev, Mystic "and the others" supposedly brainwashed him, daily telling him he should move #srb2fun to EsperNet so they could "reunite" the community again as part of repairing what a441 broke. Of course, there was very little life in #srb2general to begin with and #srb2 is completely unrelated to SRB2, so it made little sense for us to move there. But he did it.

One day, SSNTails joined #srb2 (we were still using #srb2, though I have been referring to it as #srb2fun) and told everyone to move to EsperNet. FuriousFox then set an akick so chanserv would ban anyone who entered and tell them to go to #srb2fun on EsperNet. Having superop privledges, I was able to remove the akick and reenter #srb2. It was post-apocalyptic. I remained there alone for several hours before FuriousFox came back, removed everyone from the access list, and re-set the akick. Let it be known that I was the last echidna standing.

Now, just because #srb2fun moved to EsperNet doesn't mean the rest of us moved. #MimirusHome, #MK, and #JTEsHouse remain on AccessIRC to this day, among some other channels I don't particularly care for. a441 even stops by once in a while to PM me, ask how things have been, etc. I feel quite at home there.

At first I hated having to be on multiple servers at once, going to EsperNet just for #srb2fun, so I abandoned it for a time. It was registered, of course, by SSNTails rather then FuriousFox, though he and Mystic have been given SOP powers as the "leaders" of the channel... While I was but a lowly normal op like the rest of 'em. For some reason, despite my leave, I remained an op there.

After a while of being just on AccessIRC, I came back, probably because of 1.09 being released or something. Meh. I don't feel very welcome there anymore, in all the years I spent wadding and programming, I barely noticed all the people who came and who left... I was a stranger again.

1.09 and SRB2JTE

1.09's release did more then make me interested in SRB2 again, however. It made me interested in SPMoves again. But SPMoves was so old and broken that I decided to use what I learned from SRB2RP and start over, creating what is now SRB2JTE. At first, I was a little cautious, however...

I didn't want to get into the same situation I did with SPMoves, where people would demand more from me without ever appreciating what I had already given them. I asked Mystic for advice and he told me I should make what I want rather then what the people want. Thus, my first order of buisness was to create bots.

As it stands, SRB2JTE still doesn't nearly have everything SPMoves did. Partially because when I started SRB2JTE, I decided it would only add to SRB2, not replace parts of it... But as you notice in recent editions, that is no longer the case... Rather, most of the reason I haven't "ported" SPMoves completely yet is because I'm still doing what I want to do rather then what anyone else wants me to do. I don't want to port SPMoves, it's no fun to make something I've already made... I'll do that when I feel like it.

Then 1.09.2 came out. I tried to port it and succeeded in some respects, but it was no good... Official changes that were made broke my bots, the most basic, earliest, and widely considered most important, component of SRB2JTE, among a handful of other things. Now, if there's anything I hate about programming, it's debugging. Especially when I'm not quite to blame for the errors, though everyone blames me anyway and I can do no more then try to blame Alam. So I scrapped it, releasing one last beta with no MD5 checks so it should have at least partially worked with all future releases. Another failed project...

The dark ages: 1.09.3

It didn't matter in the end, anyway... I stopped paying attention to #srb2fun for the most part again, though I remained there always, quiet and shyly wandering into #MarioKartDS and #AnimalCrossingWW on occasion too, never really saying much... I began to go to a few more IRC networks, DeltaAnime for Ragnarok Online and eAthena, which I got into for some time... The 1.09.3's came and left at this time, while I remained oblivious to SRB2 or it's message board.

I heard people tried to "port" SRB2JTE to each new revision, doing very little in the way of actual porting, a few changes being neccessary to make it able to run at all. This made no sense to me, it should have run just fine as I left it... But unfortunately, it was so. As if someone were purposely trying to screw me over every step of the way.

I heard people kept asking for where to find SRB2JTE, to the point where it had become a bannable offense. I didn't particularly care anyway, SRB2JTE still meant nothing to me. Just some more wasted time and effort.

SRB2JTE 1.09.4

Then I heard Alam was slowly porting SRB2JTE through each 1.09.3 revision and was inspired. When he finally made it all the way to 1.09.4, I quickly took a look through the code and fixed all the small errors with the SPMoves abilities and nearly every other feature of SRB2JTE which had become broken in the porting process... Bots were still broken, so I just took them out and rewrote them completely, making them use player structs from the actual players array rather then having their own array so they would easily work outside of co-op. And I began coding new AI for them.

When that was finished to a satisfactory point, I revived the good old SRB2JTE thread. Ah, it was good to be back in full throttle development again, really. Everyone was happy they could finally fight bots in Match and SRB2JTE worked in 1.09.4 and whatnot... So I made more. Little bits and pieces, whatever nutty thing came into my mind... Unfortunately, as you well know, my happiness was short-lived.

What I feared of SPMoves had come back to haunt me. People were making demands of me and not appreciating my work again. Thus, I came to be known for saying, on IRC and otherwise, "Sorry, I am not taking any suggestions, ideas, or requests at this time."... And saying it repeatedly, because nobody would get it the first time and shut up. As I made Soviet Russia Blast 2, all the problems of SRB2JTE's "fans" were starting to pile up again.

The channel, the factory, the Wonka

Thus, I decided it would be best to make my own channel, #srb2JTE, and have all the "problems" moved there by exclusively distributing betas there and nowhere else. It would be my own little community, where I could be appreciated and feared, rather then Mystic, FuriousFox, or SSNTails, since I would be the only one "feeding" them... And this seems to have gone fairly well. Or it was, until Super Mysterious Shadonic decided to be an ass.

I was outraged and shamed at how stupid I was to simply put the beta in the topic, so much so that I decided to lock up #srb2JTE and disappear from the community again. At this time, I continue to work on it in peace and near-solitude, with only my Oompa Loompas to help me and suggest new things in a totally non-demanding and non-urgent way. I am happy here, in my chocolate factory, and wether anyone outside of it ever gets to taste my chocolate is irrellevant to me now, though I'd prefer if they didn't.

Where we currently stand

Why don't I release new betas anymore? Well, I suppose you'll be that much more suprised when I hold my "golden ticket" contest for all the work I've done on it which only my trusted friends have seen.