Care to tell us about the old forums?

[ElephantHunter]

Do you care to tell us about the old forums ElephantHunter
because your post has aroused my curiousity.

Ye olde forum was started in October 2002 by DNA.Styx, our grand iron-fist administrator. MM crowned it the Official Soldat Forums, and it continued 4 years until June 2006. Snitz, the engine running the old forum, was riddled with issues. Mostly it was dreadfully slow to load, often timing out and leaving the forum unusable for hours. Despite these regular outages we came back every time.

Now when people reminisce, they often think of the old moderation team. This is a complete list as left when the forum was terminated:

FliesLikeABrick (profile) - Successor to the admin team when he dutifully offered to host and maintain the forum that we use today. He gained power through the popularity of U13, a stat-oriented site that hosted Soldat CTF games.

b00stA (profile) - German programmer and administrator of the old forums, Amblin (formerly known as b00sta), was an active member of the community. He regularly enjoyed heated discussions with Hitman over political issues.

Outcast (profile) - Tough, strong and MAD. Outcast is one mod that doesn't f* around. Seriously, watch your step.

Chakra` (profile) - Every time he plays Soldat he's barraged by "OMG r u Chakra from the forums!?!?" toward which he feigns annoyance, but we all know he loves it. If there were a mascot for Soldat Forums, Chakra was born for the job.

Kazuki (profile) - We all know Kazuki He made the mod team early on by helping at every opportunity.

Meandor (profile) - This sexy Italian was well-known in the Soldat world. He was active in leagues and formed the site Cereal Reich with Evil-Ville.

Ok - Highly controversial moderator for the Soldat Guide subforum. Can't say I miss him.

Bugs Revenge (profile) - Isreali beta tester and active member of the community, Bugs Revenge moderated Weapons Balance Discussions (a now-defunct forum.)

Tha Doggfather (profile) - Still around as JayBee, Tha Doggfather was lounge moderator for as far back as I can remember. He takes great pleasure in intelligent conversation.

DeMonIc (profile) - Very active, if moody, member of the forums. Although I believe he's gone and banned himself for two months (in attempt to stop refreshing the active topics page)

DePhille (profile) - Creator of the Soldat Webring (at the bottom of the forum) and Soldat Page

papasurf31 (profile) - Detailed mod author and elaborate map designer. He made some amazing maps even before PolyWorks came about.

n00bface (profile) - Now a long-haired and well-traveled musician, n00bface hosted the grand custom-map servers of the day. These servers were the hangout spot, and were often filled with forumers casually gaming.

grand_diablo (profile) - Mapper extraordinaire, grand_diablo provided many an insightful suggestion and review. Some of the most popular maps known to Soldat were created by him, many of which made their way into official Soldat releases.

As you may notice, the majority are still among us. Although this is in fact a complete list of moderators, there were many folks from back the day whom I have not mentioned. That Fuking Sniper, Night Cabbage and Lawrence to name a few.

The transition to our forum required all members to re-register and old posts to be archived.

I'd like to hear what memories the community cares to share of the old forums.

[Chakra]

FliesLikeABrick (profile) - Successor to the admin team when he dutifully offered to host and maintain the forum that we use today. He gained power through the popularity of U13, a stat-oriented site that hosted Soldat CTF games.

In specific towards his adminning and hosting of the fresh new lovely Soldat Forums, he was a diamond. pooty little snitz forum software that was a mishmash of crap and half baked modifications and 'left in' coding fluff that didn't help stability on top of the (non-soldat-orientated) hosting service Michal was paying for that kept fecking going down at the time.... 'and' they were about to raise their prices. Took a bit of arm-twisting but I finally got the bratwurst convinced that a new and better forums was for the better with him as admin. Operation Bum Weasel it was colourfully called.

I can only imagine the old forums got buggered somewhere between Styx transferring the forums from the DNA server to the hosting Michal found years ago. How that poo stayed running for a year I don't know.

[Hair|Trigger]

Mhmm.  Thanks for the update, history lesson in there

[pavliko]

hmm thanks for the info ...
and an israeli beta tester omg!!!

[SDFilm]

Wasn't there an oldie-oldie forums before the 'old' forums? The one which, as legend tells, had an actual front page instead of the typical forum index, and Chakra had an Ali G avatar. Or was that the same forum as the 'old' forums, exept that it had changed somewhat by the time I joined (late 2004-early 2005/version 1.2.1).

I used to love the Soldat Bar in the Bash Pit, RP e-fighting with Lastpatriot over who controled the bar counter. Didn't care much for the rest of the Bash Pit though, it just kept most of the poo out of the Lounge. Drawing Soldat comics was fun though; plus you had other comics there that were made from more than just 3 minutes in MSPaint. Shame those comics have all faded away into inactivity now. Good times...

[jrgp]

I think I might have liked the atmosphere of the older forums better, the people might have been nicer, and I really liked that portal thing on the home page. Or maybe I just remember having those opinions since, at that time, I was 11-12. I can't remember.

As for the bash pit, while it was a waste of posts and disk space (probably on that old pooty host), it did help keep crap out of the Lounge and was somewhat amusing to take a look in every now and then.

Shame those comics have all faded away into inactivity now. Good times...

Don't despair; a lot of those comics can still be found here.

By the way, the list to Outcast's profile doesn't work.

[Laser Guy]

That's what I needed ElaphantHunter, thx

[FliesLikeABrick]

SDFilm, the "old old" forums were just a first phase of Styx's doing.  At some point they moved from soldat.dnagames.net to forums.soldat.pl, and I think Styx upgraded to a new version of Snitz in the process.  Whatever he did, the database was preserved in the process.

The problems with the old forums were a few things:
1) the forum software sucked.  It was buggy, lacked features, and it was insecure.
2) The host we had sucked.  I forget who it was.

For those who don't know, this is all hosted on a server I built and manage for MM in Chicago. This server hosts just about everything for Soldat and MM's other games/projects.  I can dig up more information about it if anyone is curious.

edit: we really need an IRC revival.

[jrgp]

edit: we really need an IRC revival.

Yeah... barely anyone's ever in #soldat.forums and real meaty conversations never happen there anymore. I just created a channel for my mapping site, #soldat.tms, maybe some interesting conversations can take place there since it's something new.

edit: Maybe make a tab on this site called IRC with a links to the popular Soldat channels and a web based Java IRC Client for people who don't feel like downloading and installing an IRC client? That'll certainly make IRC more active.

[Chakra]

fuck it, 8 hours from the time i've posted this. #soldat.forums ... pre-mini irc revival.

[FliesLikeABrick]

deal

[Graham]

Redownloaded irc already :3

[Lapis Lazuli]

I was a moderator on the Snitz forums. Where's my love?

[TBDM]

you forgot nightcabbage,(evil)ville, (or however you spell it) and karmazon (althoug we know him a bit from here aswell)...

[Laser Guy]

feck it, 8 hours from the time i've posted this. #soldat.forums ... pre-mini irc revival.

Crap, I won't be here by the time...

[tehsnipah]

Wait, so Demonic is a recent forum modder?

[Laser Guy]

Yes

[Slashnoob]

anyone remembers the incredibly old moderators such as Psylentshadow, Soldat Striker etc?

[Sticky]

You forgot MrKhan. And me. Dick.

anyone remembers the incredibly old moderators such as Psylentshadow, Soldat Striker etc?

Psylent's sometimes still around, isn't he?

[UnknownSniper]

feck it, 8 hours from the time i've posted this. #soldat.forums ... pre-mini irc revival.

I'll come in for a few hours. ;p