Goodbye, Farewell, Amen

[Fox McCloud]

Well, the time has finally come, I’m afraid. Effective September 15th, I will be fully retiring from Paradise. It’s been quite obvious, in the past year, that my involvement has dramatically fallen; it’s been a bit of a challenge to hold on this long. But here we are—I’ve served Paradise for a full 10 years now—an entire decade. It’s been a long journey, and one that I most definitely do not regret—and one in which I’ve managed to earn myself the title of “longest serving Paradise staff member, ever”. I figured it would be fitting to conclude it all with a story of how I got where I am, today, and all the people who touched my life, along the way. It’s a long story, so consider yourself warned!

It started in the summer of 2013 with me just being a regular player on a SS13 server known as “BestRP”. It was a quiet little server, mostly focused on roleplay, but it was one of the few places that was generally ok with having someone with my name and my character playing there---that wasn’t just low RP utter chaos with little social engagement.

It was there that I met and got to know Necaladun, MKenner, and Kodos MacArthur. They were an interesting bunch and I often found myself assigned curious antagonist task out of the blue by MKenner or Neca with a message of “have fun with this one”, “don’t’ go too wild”, or “let’s see if you can do this one”. I was something of an oddity at BestRP---these were the earlier days of SS13, and very few things about game mechanics were documented anywhere. The basics were, like surgery and setting up the engine, but a lot of other tasks (Botany, R&D, nuanced combat methods, etc.) were not documented, and a great many more just weren’t even discovered yet. As an understatement, I was obsessed with discovering every little mechanic, strategy, or detail within SS13 and was one of the only people playing on BestRP who had a grasp of those mechanics. Neca later confided in me that he and MKenner were “horrified” about my capabilities and worried that if I were a truly rogue player I could “blow up the station and we’d have no idea who was responsible”.

It was here that I also met IcedV, Ours, and ABlueFoxNight/AoiKitsune—these were regular players who I formed a fast friendship with and generally hung out a lot doing various shenanigans (Aoi and I became well known for our Virology Xeno hijinks---with one of us turning ourselves into a Xeno to be other’s bartender personal bodyguard. IcedV, Ours, and I became a trio of nerds hanging out in science a lot).

Eventually things started breaking down a bit at BestRP. The server owner and founder, Abbey, maintained a stranglehold on the server. She lived in a perpetual state of paranoid fear that one of her admins was going to hijack the server or somehow usurp control of it, through the code. She also developed a fixation on pushing player numbers up---at that time, turning her server into a TG-like server was the path she chose. This didn’t set well with a moderate portion of BestRP’s playerbase, and especially Neca, MKenner, and Kodos. It was at this point that I started bugging Neca to start his own server. It turns out Neca had already had this thought, and unbeknownst to me, Regens and Ponies had started playing on BestRP to boot. I knew of Ponies from the very first SS13 server I played on, Rocket Station 42. Ponies served as the head coder there, at the time. Unfortunately, Rocket Station died and all its playerbase, including me, were set adrift. In either event, I recalled Ponies time there and encouraged Neca to collaborate with him, due to his past coding experience. I was later informed that Regens and Ponies had spoken to Neca and also hoped to form their own server.

After a few weeks we decided to finally do it. Several of us broke away from BestRP, held a meeting, and decided to found our own server. In total, there were initially 6 of us: Necaladun, Mkenner, Regens, Ponies, Kodos, El Diablo Shadow, and myself. These are the original founding fathers of Paradise and the original administrative team. The first time that all of us had logged into Paradise was September 5th, 2013, which is the date I consider to be our founding date (there were a couple individuals, such as Regens and Ponies, who had logged on a week prior, but no agreement about Paradise had been established yet).

Paradise initially ran off a paid yet shared server hosting service that was specialized for BYOND. It was exciting, but in retrospect, the service was incredibly basic, lacking, and overpriced. There was no database, redundancy, or anything like that. You uploaded a few files and selected which was the executable. No real tools to reset things, no extensive logging---all basic. Still, it marked that we had struck out on our own.

Paradise stayed quite small, originally—we rarely exceeded 20 players. IcedV, ABlueFoxNight/AoiKitunse, Ours, and a few others all migrated over from BestRP. I was even able to convince the person who introduced me to SS13, DaveTheHeadcrab, to join. It was also during this time that we acquired some future admins and coders, such as Heroo12, and Tigercat.

Over the course of the next few months Neca asked if I’d be interested in also being Headmin instead of just a regular admin ---I accepted and helped keep an eye on the server and its administration. By December we were growing quite rapidly; we reached 50+ players by that point. That doesn’t sound like much by today’s standards, but that was quite large for SS13 in 2013.

It was also around this time I started playing on Goonstation, where I was able to form friendships with Cogwerks, Keelin, and ISaidNo (responsible for chemistry, genetics, and botany respectively). It was through this friendship and working with VG Station’s N3X15 that we were able to bring the very first open-source garbage collector to SS13. As a side note, my time playing on Goonstation eventually led me to being the first and only person to discover Goonstation’s “magnum opus” secret chemical, werewolf serum.

A few months later, however, I decided it was time for me to step down and retire; SS13 had become so normalized for me that I felt it wasn’t really filling the initial gap it hit when I first started playing. I didn’t stay retired long though, only a few months; I got the craving to start playing against in late July or August of 2014. When I returned, Paradise was a bit on the decline, but I still met a few more great people---it was at this time that I got to know FullOfSkittles. That downturn at Paradise quickly turned into a crash, sadly. Neca retired again, Ponies’ real life and career became far busier, and he had to step away---there were no other Headmins and no Headcoder. Code contribution tanked, and we lost virtually all our admins, save a few (such as Regens and BoneWhite). To say we were on the verge of utter collapse would be an understatement; at times our population numbers sunk into single digits. Neca returned long enough to offer me the Headmin position again and Ponies also returned for a short period to offer me the keys to the code base in addition to all his authority. After thinking about it hard for two weeks, I decided I didn’t want to see this community I helped found and build die.

It was a lot of hard work rebuilding what was lost, and I can’t put all that credit on my own shoulders in rebuilding things. I hired FalseIncarnate as an admin and accepted a lot of help from MarkVA to help get us back on track, code wise. A few senior admins, such as Regens and Kluys bumped up their activity or returned. It was also at this point that I got thrown into the deep end of the pool with respect to coding. I was by no means the most experienced at that time, but there was no one else to drive the codebase forward, so it was a sink or swim moment—again, I couldn’t let this community die. Upon having discussions with both MarkVA and DaveTheHeadcrab, I chose to start focusing on balance and leaning into TG for design cues and coding standards, as they were the highest form at that time.

To say the least, this decision was a bit controversial. I definitely made my fair share of mistakes along the way that I take responsibility for, but ultimately, I did try my best and always had a mind for trying to make the server better for a larger portion of the community. This meant standardizing the rules, having less favoritism with certain players, and changing some long-loved balance and design aspects into a healthier mix. I knew it would ruffle feathers, but my motivations were always to try to make Paradise better.

By December things were looking up again; our player numbers had recovered to a new peak, new admins were hired, and a few old faces returned. We were also invigorated by a lot of new designs, features, and a more balanced codebase. The foundations laid for the garbage collector allowed us to have improved performance, too. It was also during this time that DZD and Tigercat really started coming into their own as coders, with both starting to make major contributions to Paradise.

This takes us up to 2015, when Ponies returned, and a new system was put in place for codebase contribution; instead of me making decisions by myself, there would be a committee of Maintainers; initially this was DZD, Myself, and Ponies. We could reach consensus on what we felt belonged or did not. After the dust settled on this new system, I took interest in designing a canine-like race for SS13. FullofSkittles had put a few of her sprites up on Paradise’s forums; I used her werewolf sprite as a basis and began coding and testing it out—I also mentioned my interest in a canine-like race to Skittles and showed her a few screenshots using the werewolf sprite. Unbeknownst to me, she also had an interest in seeing a canine-like race too and had been working on sprites. We continued collaboration which led to us co-creating the Vulpkanin, which I still consider the height of my SS13 contributions (garbage collector being second). The amount of people who played Vulpkanin, only to discover new aspects, traits, or dimensions of their personal real lives and personality and how it impacted them, has been especially heartwarming over the years.

The creation of the Vulpkanin, though…unfortunately led to a dark period for me. You see, SS13 wasn’t nearly as open and accepting back then as it was now. It still carried a lot of baggage from its /VG and Something Awful roots; intolerance was high and furries were especially hated. Needless to say, creating such a race brought a lot of extreme hate directed at me. For the greater part of the rest of 2015 and into 2016, a dedicated group of players made it their sole purpose in life to show up to the server and kill me in game, inconvenience me in medical as much as possible, and trump up fake arrest charges. Eventually this graduated into the formation of the “Furry Freedom Force” who would show up and demand I be removed from Maintainer and Vulpkanin removed or the “bombings would continue” …. then 4-6 tank transfer bombs would blow across the station. When this didn’t work, they then insisted I was their secret leader and because the server wasn’t a furry oriented server, the “bombing would continue until the demands of our leader, Fox, are met”. Like most trolls though, they grew bored and eventually left. What didn’t improve, however, was Reddit. Here, vile statements were often made about myself and Paradise---which continued well into 2016-2017 and didn’t really conclude until the famous downfall of Feweh, who, it was found out, developed dozens of sock puppet accounts to parrot points of how bad I was and especially how bad Paradise was. I can’t help but think forming a good relationship with Goonstation’s staff (who were primarily responsible for handling Feweh) helped in this department.

The next few years were defined by a continued expansion of our original scope. As Paradise shed a lot of the trolls and haters, it became easier to focus on code developments. Tigercat, Krausus, TastyFish, CrazyLemon, AuroraBlade/Fethas, and a few others all were major contributors that helped us grow by leaps and bounds. We were no longer a fly-by-night codebase or server—we had matured and come into our own.

After this time, we encountered some unique challenges with hosting, but thanks to Alffd, we were able to get back on our feet and keep the lights on. It was also here that AffectedArc began his redemption arc---from, quite frankly, an annoying pain in the butt to someone who was a lot more thoughtful and considerate----and he showed great promise in his code contributions to boot; he later went on to become one of our best Maintainers and eventually later still our server host. It’s especially been a pleasure working with him over the years.

Our code standards tightened further, we established more well documented standards, formalized the decision-making process for PR approval, involved the Headmins, and established more community input, which brings us to the present.

To say the least, it’s been a monumental journey and one that I am immensely happy I was a part of. I’m happy to retire, having seen Paradise grow so much, and I truly can’t thank the community and staff enough for having the opportunity to serve Paradise for 10 years.

I could go on and on, with all the people who I’ve met over the years, but those stories could fill a hundred pages. Plenty of people had high impacts, too, even if not detailed here, just to name a few: Kasparov, Tully, ChibiTaur, Denghis, Klees & Shina Hoonkins, RB303, Von Bon, Alex Shreds, Archie, Doc/Evie, Jovan, Lowlander, Paranoid Sofa, Pierre, Ryan/Zan, DarkPyroLord/Valthorne, Skyping, StreakyHadock, DragonSlayer932, SteelSlayer, Elysian Prince, ADRKiller, FlattestGuitar, FreeStyla, Fludd12, Ansari, Exa, DumbDumb/Slade, Jayfeather, Normaly, RadiantFlash, Sassnek, Saywat, SkyPing, GuiltyBeans, Rurik, Toodles, Twinmold, UC Guy, Kitsa, Mochi, Ty Omaha, all the individuals mentioned in the body of this post, among dozens upon dozens of other players and staff are to name just a few of the people who have all impacted my life through this journey.

I’ll still continue to be active in the Paradise Discord and will likely even pop on the server from time to time, so don’t worry, I’m not going to completely disappear, so feel free to drop me a line on Discord some time.

It's been a truly wonderful experience and ride, and I look forward to seeing how Paradise develops and continues to grow over the coming years. It’s been an honor.

Goodbye, Farewell, Amen.

                 - Fox