Messages

151

Off Topic / Re: blockland: the community that killed the game

« on: January 16, 2023, 10:26:25 AM »

ah that's on me for being unspecific as I was discussing two separate conversations at once. Drendran was the one trying to say that non-cishet folks don't experience any discrimination. My main qualm for you was the whole "telling people to kill themselves should just be treated as normal" thing. Sorry for my ambiguous wording.

alright glad we could clear that up. also if we could clear something else up, i never said telling people to kill themseves should be treated as normal, in fact I implied quite the opposite:

That's obviously not a very nice thing to say to somebody - I don't think I would say that even to my worst enemy

what I did stress however was that if random person on the internet you never met a day in your life says something hurtful to you, it's not something you should probably take seriously. now if random this person is constantly harassing you and making legitimate threats that is a different situation and should be dealt with more seriously.

152

Off Topic / Re: blockland: the community that killed the game

« on: January 16, 2023, 09:02:11 AM »

Yeah I apologize for getting sucked into arguing with such ignorance.
Interestingly relevant to the OP however, is that his and goth's mindsets are exactly why when I decided to resume brickbuilding I switched over to brickadia. There is much less tolerance by the community for family values and common sense.

i'm not homophobic or sensible jeez dude. as a matter of fact, there are homo & trans that I am friends with whom I talk to semi-regularly and have even bought games for - not going to mention any names out of respect but im sry u feel that way

Also I don’t think anybody brought up clans. Clan culture was probably the best thing to happen to this game in terms of community, IMO. Im sure there is probably a rabbit hole we could also go down about how some people were victimized through clans, but for the most part, there was so much fun in making things with your clan mates or just being there for the competitive nature between clans.

clans were awesome especially the ones doing a lot of building/eventing for big events - fond memories doing group builds

what the heck happened on that day that spiked the player count so drastically??

153

Off Topic / Re: why the forget are people using discord for file hosting and support???

« on: January 16, 2023, 05:45:49 AM »

this and discord server invites aren't permanent to begin with unless if you have a massive ass forget-all server to get a custom url, it's just a mess

you can edit the time in which a discord server invite link expires, it doesn't need to be a massive server

The main issue is that information stored in discords is not privy to search engines; so to actually find that information you have to first know where to find it and search for that first and then search in that place (with discords loving dogstuff search feature) for the information you're actually looking for. This makes research impossible.

yeah that is actually quite annoying

okay, but for example, would you rather if stackoverflow was a discord or a forum? how easy is it to just google a question affixed with 'stackoverflow' and just find an answer to it, even if it's not the exact wording due to semantic search? would you rather ask first and potentially get ignored or posted over by some other dude who posts a 3150 line log.txt in their discord message, completely drowning out your post, or have a forum where your message is guaranteed to be seen as all posts take up the same amount of space?
i've already run into this issue; data just kind of disappeared if it was hosted on a discord from 2017-2019 for the most part and socially it sucks. someone dmed you something and you don't share servers with them anymore or they deleted their account? after a while you can no longer access your dms with them. it sucks ass if you have an older discord account.

right I see your point here. it's like crook mentioned, searching for something specific on a discord server can be a nightmare. a forum where the question has already been answered and is easily findable in a simple google/forum search is obviously the better option. in my experience, when I can't find an answer to a specific question (usually gaming or modding related) through strenuous google searching, joining a discord server where people are actively having discussions about the topic that I'm looking for support in and asking questions has really helped

154

Forum Games / Re: Blockland Vending Machine! (OP missed 10 year anniversary and should feel bad)

« on: January 15, 2023, 02:18:39 AM »

* Masterlegodude inserts the info_player_start entity from Valve's Hammer Editor program

you receive info_player_stop entity from Valve's Hammer Editor program

I insert a golden brick shaped key

155

Off Topic / Re: blockland: the community that killed the game

« on: January 15, 2023, 02:07:37 AM »

I sincerely hope you will never have to suffer the heartbreak associated with someone close taking their own life. Self Delete is an awful plague that affects many young men, such as those attending these forums, and having this kind of statement as something practically every user will read is not going to be completely unimpactful.

You think I've never had to suffer from the loss of a loved one? I have dealt with it, on more than one occasion unfortunately. In fact, one of my best friends who I met through this game took their own life - do you think it had do to anything with this game though? the answer is NO, because people go through the most real life stuff outside of the internet

even if it is full of "weirdos" (which I assume is meant to be code for queer and trans folkx.)

it was actually code for creeps, but that stuff is pretty weird too...

It's different if it's the users saying stuff like that, but for the main developer(s) of a retail product say that is unprofessional and creates an abusive and toxic environment for the paying customers, it's no wonder that with a young and impressionable playerbase that the community eventually started adapting similar behaviors

I agree, and as I already stated, I would never even say such a thing to my worst enemy.

i'm honestly tired of being told to chill when doing so has done even less for helping a situation than me openly expressing my feelings

okay don't chill then D:

no..there wasnt..?

This place is infamous for having like only 3 moderators max in its entire history. Where are you getting this info from because I only remember Rotondo, Ephi, and Kompressor…and Ephi was the most active of the three by a large margin

I seem to recall Space Guy being a moderator as well, but lost his mod powers at some point out of the blue

156

Off Topic / Re: blockland: the community that killed the game

« on: January 14, 2023, 09:28:22 PM »

I seriously hope this isn't you sympathizing for Badspot, as if he was any better than the literal kids he was literally telling to kill themselves

That's obviously not a very nice thing to say to somebody - I don't think I would say that even to my worst enemy, but not everyone is me - people say hurtful things sometimes but you can't let pointless stuff like that get to you. Like when someone on the internet that you have never met a day in your life tells you to go kill yourself, you should probably take it with a grain of salt...

5. Do not plea for sympathy

• Do not make posts about how you are leaving the forums. Just leave.
• Do not make posts about how the game isn't fun for you anymore.  Just stop playing.
• Do not make posts about how you are going to kill yourself.  Just do it.

damn, nvm those forum rules have me feeling edgy

How many other devs of popular indie games or ones that have a cult following have you seen have such a vocal disdain and hatred for their players, especially just because they were a furry or had legitimate complaints about how they handled their game?

kinda strange to throw "just because they were a furry" and "had a legitimate complaint about how they handled their game" together like they are even in the same category. typically, people who have legitimate complaints or concerns with the game care about those sort of things, and don't get banned for expressing those concerns - but the people posting furry art don't last long...

"a decent sized moderation team"??? You mean Badspot who started to get lazy after appointing Ephialtes, who then later quit and was replaced by Rotondo who then also became inactive because he had his own game to work on? That's not what i would call a decently sized moderation team for how many users used to be active here 24/7 and then with how chaotic things got once the moderation started to die down after Ephi quit and it was mostly just Rotondo and occasionally a very selective Badspot for a while
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hwz7YN1AQmQ

there were more moderators than that, maybe you just don't remember - but as time went on, yes, there became less and less moderation.

WHO DO YOU THINK ALLOWED THAT TO PROPOGATE?
WHO DO YOU THINK NEGLECTED TO DO THAT??????
WHAT FORUM HAVE YOU EXISTED ON THIS LAST DECADE?

please stop yelling

yeah lol chill

157

Off Topic / Re: blockland: the community that killed the game

« on: January 14, 2023, 06:19:41 PM »

been playing and mod making for this game semi-regularly for over a decade so i guess i have a few things to say in regards to this topic

Badspot created a fairly successful game in a time when there weren't a billion other lego or even building or even online indie games out there, and yet he went nowhere. Why? Because he is not a good or nice person, and that is why his community was known for being not good, for being not nice, and it's why this game died when it did and it's why over a decade later he has 600 followers on twitter. It's why he still mentions almost 20 years later that he "made a game once."

Everywhere you go on the internet you are going to find people being jackasses, that's just life, dude. We were all young once, and I'm sure plenty of us made some stupid posts that we regret. Nobody is perfect. The main problem the forum had back in the day were young teenagers starting flaming wars leading to other stupid drama, which if pressured enough could turn serious because things escalate. some people are just looking for the attention. The issue was and always has been forum moderation. When there was a decent sized moderation team, people were regularly getting banned because of their stupidity - sure maybe Badspot & the other moderators were a bit harsh at times, but in the end they were doing what they felt was right to address problem users...most of the time, anyways

There was never any attempt at hiring moderators or moderation in general outside of the rules which were judged VERY arbitrarily (as were permabans/unbans) and he made little to no effort at keeping out repeat abusers until it became clear that his the same toxicity that he festered in had projected onto his community and made it impossible to sell get into the game and then boom suddenly we get modera- NO wait that never happened, you just had to buy the game to post. I guess if it's the trolls or the gp at least youll know the trolls will keep paying.

plenty of people were permanently IP banned from the forums, this was back before you needed to own the game to have a forum account. The issue was that simply by using a VPN the offender could make a new account and be posting again within a matter of seconds, doing the same toxic stuff as before. To address this issue, Badspot made it so that each BLID is tied to their forum account - I really don't see how that is a bad thing...

He had people who were so passionate about this game churning out content, hell Ephialtes and then ran an entire dedicated server rental service and created an entire client to do what Badspot was too uninspired to do, and he managed to drive them away by being a gigantic starfish.

Wait, you think Badspot was the starfish in that situation? Ephi wasn't exactly a nice person himself....see an example here:
https://forum.blockland.us/index.php?topic=250264.msg7227840#msg7227840

A person who needed help on an issue cross-posted a topic about not being able to join servers. Ephi moved the topic to help, and then proceeds to ban said user because he expressed that he wasn't getting help in that particular forum section. Come to find out later the real issue was with RTB servers all along. I wonder if Ephi even felt a shred of remorse for banning someone over something so trivial, then discovering it was his own mod causing the problem in the first place? Somehow I doubt it.

Here is another example, where Ephi scolds a user that asks about embedding adfly links into their add-ons download links:
https://forum.blockland.us/index.php?topic=249288.msg7194731#msg7194731
At least user "Sevara" was bold enough to call him out on his hypocrisy.

I don't blame any of you for how this forum operated, but Badspot I do blame you for the traumatization of dozens of children.

Why is it Badspot's fault? If anything it's other user's fault - just look at your topic title it's called the COMMUNITY that killed the game, right?? The weirdos, the groomers, the sickos - those are the people that gave the game a bad reputation - and those are the kind of people that deserve to be banned

This forum is, and I don't mean this as a compliment, a monument to what could've been.

I can agree with that, although I feel it's better to look at the positives instead of the negatives - at least most of the weirdos went over to Brickadia

Despite everything though I still hold my memories of blockland highly as I met my best friend of 12 years now and counting, and made a very good handful of friends that I still talk to on a daily or weekly basis and I will be ever grateful for that. I hope that everyone that wasn't a groomer or something equally vile is doing good now, genuinely. I never knew about anyone's background so reading through this thread really opened my eyes at the people behind the posts. It does feel funny that we were all similar in our real life situations at the time, as I was also a really lonely 11 or 12 year old when joining the forums. I do miss the good times where I used to see a lot of people interact on the forums and always wanting to talk to some of them but was too shy to say anything lol.
It would be really interesting to have a video essay about the forums and the good and the bad the community was involved in, i've always wanted that since the sharp decline in the player base and forumer activity. Thank you guys for the good times. I hope this thread gets to other people in the community to hear their insight on their experiences and opinions on the forums and the game itself.

That was quite a wholesome post. I too have made some great friends from this game over the years.

Personally, this game has been nothing but a blessing for me. It's a fun way to express my creativity with my friends and family. I feel sad for the people who have had a bad experience here because of unfortunate events or the disgusting nature of toxic individuals. I wish nothing but the best for this game and hope someday the community can regrow into something better than it once was. I know I'm being highly optimistic, but I will continue to play with friends and create mods as long as possible. If baddy ever decides to shutdown the master server I hope he at least makes BL it free and open source / a way to host without needing authentication to master server as the final goodbye so that people who still want to enjoy the game online with friends can do so

158

Modification Help / Re: Flip Player Camera

« on: January 14, 2023, 01:14:12 PM »

Alright, so by copying the default player and shape mdts code and making a new playertype from it, by replacing the look sequence I have made it so that the player stands normally (root is used as look)

this brings another question, is there a way to make it so that the camera is facing the characters back instead of the front?

159

Off Topic / Re: why the forget are people using discord for file hosting and support???

« on: January 14, 2023, 10:30:41 AM »

anyone who uses discord for a permanent cloud storage solution is out of their mind. it's like people who use dropbox just STOP DOING IT

always used mediafire and google drive for hosting my files...it's simple and it just works. there was the thing with mediafire in 2020 where old/abandon accounts were deleted, but luckily my account was considered active enough that nothing was wiped.

now when it comes down to support I actually think discord works well for that. it's much easier to join an active discord server for a specific topic and ask for help in real time VS emailing support or going to some forum and posting a topic waiting days on end for a response. it's just a great tool for communication in general

160

Add-Ons / Re: [Pack] Bleach Stuff (v1.2)

« on: January 14, 2023, 09:36:15 AM »

Update v 1.2

NEW ADDITIONS
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-New feature: Sword Clanging
When players are attacking each other if the timing is right they will clang swords and neither party will receive damage

-Added Shinji's Sword "Sakanade" to the pack
-Added item icons and ci kill icon

  BUGFIXES AND ADJUSTMENTS SUMMARY 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-Fixed hand nodes hiding and unhiding properly
-Fixed normals on the hands of some models (senbonzakura still a bit weird)
-Fixed some missing texture and shape filepaths/names
-Fixed issues with some inherited image datablocks
-Fixed Senbonzakura sub explosion debrisThetaMax being > 180
-Fixed Senbonzakura using the wrong sfx for one of the image states
-Fixed Nozarashi trail emitter ejectionPeriodMS being < 1 ms
-Fixed Nozarashi 2-handed knockback not calculating correctly
-Removed unused SenbonzakuraScatter2 emitter
-Removed unused SenbonzakuraFire2Sound
-Removed unused NozarashiYellow.dts filepath

-Updated topic main post

161

Modification Help / Re: Flip Player Camera

« on: January 12, 2023, 08:35:08 PM »

well holy crap, it really was that easy.  why the heck is it negative pi? In retrospect, my line of thinking was that it would be in degrees from 0-360 or something along those lines.

thanks much Biqus

edit: Okay so it works fine except for the one tiny issue, that being in 3rd person (and to everyone seeing you) your character is stuck looking at the sky and can't stand up straight

162

Modification Help / Re: Flip Player Camera

« on: January 12, 2023, 05:59:58 AM »

Idk about  console commands but you cam do it by changing playertype look angles

doesn't seem to be a thing

minLookAngle = controls how far down you can look
maxLookAngle = controls how far up you can look
maxFreelookAngle = controls how far you can look left or right (while holding z)

163

Modification Help / Flip Player Camera

« on: January 11, 2023, 10:50:13 AM »

Whats the easiest way to go about flipping the players camera completely upside down?

In a post by Drydess back in 2017 they mention:

i know there's a console command somewhere out there to flip your screen upside down but i can't remember it to save my life. i think it was some variable like $pref::player::zskew but i don't think that's it

Anyone have a clue as to what they might have been referring to?

164

Help / Re: Steam unavailable

« on: January 10, 2023, 06:12:12 PM »

I had totally forgotten about these other 2 methods, maybe one of these will work

redeem via original purchase email
https://blockland.us/steam-redeemEmail.php

redeem via forum email
https://blockland.us/steam-redeemForum.php

165

General Discussion / Re: Will Badspot ever reopen new forum account creations?

« on: January 10, 2023, 05:48:30 PM »

I'm sure that's the whole point. Disabling account creation puts a closer end-of-life on the forums instead of having it taper off for another decade.
He doesn't care.

Look at his forum posts since the genesis of this forum. He's always retained complete apathy and resentment towards the game and its community since the start and that's remained unchanged for the past almost 20 years. If he was burned out he would've sold off the game to a larger company for some 5 or 6 digits many years ago and then moved on to pursue his next project.

To be fair though, even after the key leak happened he chose to save the game and address some other bugs instead of letting it crash and burn - surely there must be some part of him that still gives a stuff? I seem to recall badspot saying that he would continue to support the game as long as people continued to play - and believe it or not quite a few people still enjoy playing blockland, myself included. of course the number of players certainly has dwindled since the key leak, there is no denying that    ):

I mean like so you're able to post on new accounts again. I know it was already shrinking, but now it's inevitable for the forum population to shrink to zero with this current status. What is Badspot doing now? He made just a single post in 2021 and then zero posts in 2022. I'm sure he's burned out on this game by now, but I feel like there's a few little things he could do to keep the game/forums a slightly more afloat. Also I really miss having fun changing ingame names 

Undoubtedly, BL could be saved with some advertisement and the forums too with some revisions. Also, Badspot mentioned something about implementing a cooldown timer so people can change their names again, they just wouldn't be able to do it as frequent as before which I think is a better solution than disabling name change entirely....unfortunately we never got to see this feature