2002-2014

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This thread surely was a stroll down memory lane. I remember playing this game for far too long but truly discovered the community in 2009 as I'd just be fooling around with EVM/ECX and whatever modifications to the game I'd find cool. It's so cool to hear from you again Arsen and I'm glad you and Thompsoni remembered me enough to put me on your halls of fame.

I was 16(?) and was fixated on becoming the best player in the game, at least in the European scene since I always found it more competitive. While I'd enjoy being in the US servers for other reasons, those guys were much more chatty (and had understandable English :p). I was and probably still am a big fan of having a good chat with composed people. When I realised how surreal a few players were like Miro and Togan I gave up after having tried everything. I don't know if it was lack of competence or gaming experience because I had never tried to become good at a game prior to ESF, but I know that I was very dedicated back then.

ESF didn't just turn me into a more social guy. Meeting Snowgum whose first language wasn't English and yet had such a vast vocabulary inspired me a lot to learn the language myself. I would struggle with words like especially back then when I think about it lol... how I would remember it was parting the word up like "e-spec-ially" spec as in speccing a game and ally as an ally. Later I'd sit with useless words that I knew Snowgum had learnt and I wanted to learn them as well. Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. Memorising a word like that, knowing how many letters it contains and knowing how to pronounce it perfectly was an achievement for me back then haha.

I wanted to become some sort of a second Snowgum, but hey I couldn't call myself Snowgum2 because the bastard had already done so! (All jokes aside, I wasn't thinking of renaming myself). I started teaching hundreds of people, in hope that some of them would continue to play. I thought that was the best way to resurrect the community because of its ridiculous learning curve and the ridiculous difference between a mediocre player and a beginner. Most of them would claim I never taught them or quit the game, but I can remember a few people who I saw grow, even if they seemed really hopeless in the beginning. KarmaGuitars (only ESF player I met IRL too - which is weird considering I met over 20 CS people and all of them at very different times and ccountries), Werty, MJ Rene, Rang. Karma was probably the one who became best of the people I took in early on, and I only taught him the basics if I remember correctly.

I was naive and very easily influenced back then so I met a lot of people whose opinions and personality traits probably smeared off on me and that I still have today. I can think of a few at least, and yeah Arsen whether you consider me to have grown up or not, you're the judge - I'm 21 now :p.

As for s2k:
S2K was taken over by Tribute at the time I was playing, he gave me leadership when he stopped playing. I then gave Sailent the right to invite people to the clan if he wanted so I guess he's some sort of co owner and has helped in making the clan grow.

Good to see a lot of you are doing well you have my respect for what it's worth, and I hope this won't be the last stroll I take down this memory lane, I don't regret playing ESF at all.

Let's have a chat soon, Arsen.

PS. Thanks to everyone who taught me and could bear with that annoying kid back then, of teachers I have had I can remember Snowgum, Miro, Togan, and Kadaj (Sam). I was taught by so many good players and I wonder why they bothered, there were several people who gave me tips as well I can remember Arsen and Kai specifically at the very moment.

These are ESF-related things, some of them and more people also taught me stuff about life and how to handle a few things :)
 
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Guess its my time to tell a story XD

I found this mod on an old magazine demo CD in 2003. It was ESF beta 1.0 and i had no internet. So without bots it was mostly just me and a friend or 2 playing on LAN. We pretty much played it like the alpha version since none of us actually knew how to use the melee in the bloody thing. So we would just teleport round and shoot beams all the time.

Then a friend who actually had net access told me there is a 1.1 with new stuff. At round that point i gor my 33k modem (fast mother****er) and i sent masta an e-mail about adding kaioken and that android movie spiritbomb absorbtion thing along with joining the forum. He actually replied and shot me down with the good old "no movie content" bullet.

When i finally upgraded to 56k i started playing in servers. You can imagine 1.1 with 300+ ping in every single server.

Then 1.2 rolled along with the nasty screenshot bug (if anyone still remembers that thing). The 1.2.1 update fixed it but now the game randomly crashed every couple of minutes. Thats about the time i met Rick in one of the servers and that was practically my first testing experience. We tried multiple ways doing things over and over hoping to get the game craqsh a bit more known. No luck.

Afterwards 1.2.2 got released and i got a DSL connection. Pings under 100 it was AMAZING though my PC could only muster 20 FPS MAX. So after the net speed increase i stopped playing bots all the time and started playing online. I went in to a server with only 1 person in it. We talked a bit and i proudly showed him how swooping in a L shape i can hit someone on the side while missing half the time XD Well the dude in the server was Gohan.... You can imagine how badly he owned my ass. ^^;

After that i met Styx and Lynx in a server and we kinda made the SF clan. Well they did and i just joined. At that time i meet Ready and Ness. Both Styx and Lynx stopped playing and ready reopened S2k. Ofcourse Ness also joined, and we had a few matched with Ocrana. Later Omni joined along wtih the guys from Okrana. Kartsah under the name Hinata and pretending he was a she for some odd reason.

The years gone by and i started working on BTL making the one and only map for the bloody thing before development died XD (wonder if i still have the source code for that somewhere). In any case after i joined the testing team i mostly stopped playing.

Thats about mz story.
 
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Swag
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What was the screenshot bug?

Is Rick = Kuro/amon? and yeah can imagine Gohan was always good haha

What is BTL?

And interesting read, thanks for sharing.
 
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What was the screenshot bug?

Is Rick = Kuro/amon? and yeah can imagine Gohan was always good haha

What is BTL?

And interesting read, thanks for sharing.
The screenshot bug was as follows. In the great forrest map and at random times in other maps, the game just decided to start masively taking screenshots. So your frames dropped to like 2 and your foulder was cluttered with screenshots when you turned in to a direction or were just trying to play on the great forrest map (the map itself was removed from 1.2.1 and subsequent versions though) XD

And BTL was an AMXX mod in the making. Pretty much EVM with different ideas. We had things like transformations while swooping and stuff in the game. But after Kagato took over as leader it just fell appart. Also didnt help that the coders got their accounts VAC banned for implementing motion blur VIA AMXX.
 
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ah nice, what does BTL stand for? And lol @ the vac bans.

nvm someone told me.
 
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ah nice, what does BTL stand for? And lol @ the vac bans.

nvm someone told me.
We had to use external DLL files to get the motion blur working.and VAC saw that as wallhacks and so on.

Oh yea and Rick A.K.A. [Me] the dude who made the bots.
 
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We had to use external DLL files to get the motion blur working.and VAC saw that as wallhacks and so on.
That's how I got my first Steam account VAC-banned...

 
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I remember when Logan became the project manager for BTL.

Good times.
 
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Merce... omg man..one of the funniest people i've met over the years on the net, shadi..im not using anything nowdays( fb,skype or whatsoever, but i should just use fb to catch you)
 
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Thread necromancy? Doesn't really matter anymore anyways

Guess I should reopen S2k when ESF Final is out. Me and a classmate founded it way back around the days alpha2.0 came out .. even before I joined the dev team :)
 
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S2k's in-game activity only died like half a year ago. And although I'm not even sure if it's the same S2k you founded, it's still there. So "reopening" isn't the best way to call it. But you are welcome to come back and reclaim the leadership.
 

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