EPTI've reached a milestone of two thousand posts, and it's pretty close to another milestone in my life, which I'll talk about later. But I thought I'd treat you all to a little bit of history about myself and where I came from, and some of the projects I've worked on in the past.
My first copy of StarCraft was when I was around ten years old (2003 or so). It was the original game, no Brood War to speak of, and I didn't play it online. I played through most of the campaign and then moved on to other games for a while. A while later I went to a friend's house, where I was introduced to this expansion pack called Brood War. Even better, they had more than one computer so we played a 1v1 LAN game! I thought all the new units were really cool, so I played Protoss and made heaps of Dark Archons. I figured they'd be like the normal archons but even more awesome because they were red. Unfortunately he made carriers, and I discovered that Dark Archons didn't have any attack to speak of :'( My friend also introduced me to Battle.Net and these weird maps that he preferred playing, called UMS. At the time I didn't see much point, I went home, and didn't think much of it again.
However, the Brood War thing and the online playing was interesting, so I asked for a copy of the expansion pack for my birthday. At this stage I was thirteen years old, and I was overjoyed to receive my first Brood War disc. I played a little of the campaign, and then hopped onto this amazing place called Battle.Net! At the time I had very little computer knowledge, had to look at every key to type, and had no idea what I was doing. In a very short space of time, I improved my typing speed so I could respond to the terrible cruel words of the other players on B.net. I also played some of these UMS maps, and quite enjoyed the ones involving zombies.
At this stage I was recruited into a clan for Resident Evil UMS maps on B.net, called U.B.C.S. (highly original). I met some awesome people in it, but unfortunately it died a short time after I joined. Without any idea of what I was getting myself into, I talked with a couple of the members and decided to start my own clan from the ashes of the old. I called it R.C.D.F (Raccoon City Defence Force). The clan had over 120 members join and leave over the two and a half years that I ran it for, and survived two backstab/member steals from a co-leader. And I learned a LOT about running clans and teams and organizing people and not trusting people.
A second thing that happened at roughly the same time was my introduction to a lovely website called StarEdit Network (SEN). I believe it was one of the U.B.C.S. members that introduced me to it, and it was there that I started to create UMS maps. Over the years I became quite adept at making interesting systems, although I very rarely completed any maps. In hindsight this (and a short computer course I went on) was one of the best things for teaching me how to think in the mindset of a programmer. Making trigger systems in StarCraft is much the same as coding in a programming language. I ended up spending more time at SEN than I did playing any actual Brood War.
Soon after, at SEN, I was introduced to a map called Temple Siege. It was essentially a DotA-style map (I suppose we call them MOBAs or something now), and I quickly became addicted. This was my first real dip into the world of online competitive gaming, and it was exhilirating. Sure, playing against computers with team mates was all well and good, but here it was about you vs them, it was your skill vs their skill, and I THRIVED on this kind of play. At this stage I still had never played much or any competitive 1v1. At best I played a few games of Fastest Map Possible, usually losing horribly to things like storm drops on my minerals. I became quite skilled at Temple Siege (in my opinion, at least
), and even ended up helping on making one of the new versions. I also learned some PHP (a web programming language) while I made a website for Temple Siege, which would be instrumental later on.By now I was sixteen or seventeen, and struggling with a certain amount of depression, although I didn't realize it at the time. Adding in my addiction to computer games, my endless refreshing of the same websites over and over again, and my problems at school, and I was going through a really tough time.
Then school finished, I got a job, and my mental state improved drastically. I still had no real life goal other than "get a job in computers", but I was doing work, which was great fun, and I felt like I was going somewhere with my mapping and gaming and programming. This basically continued for another year or two, until last year.
Everything changed when the Fire Nation atta... oh I mean when I quit Temple Siege for a different competitive game: League of Legends. I only played for around three or four months, if I recall correctly. I realized how addictive it was and quit, not realizing that going back to Brood War wasn't necessarily any better. It's worth noting at this stage that I also played and modded Morrowind, played Need For Speed Underground, and a bunch of other games, but the one that used up most of my time was Brood War, playing on US East.
On Youtube I discovered 1v1 melee, watching Jaedong play and crazy Korean commentators screaming about it. I began watching some of the last BW OSL, and a little of the BW/SC2 mixed OSL. StarCraft II had potential at the time and no one really bore it any animosity. Everyone was prepared to move on. Then beta came out, and I got in! I could barely run it on the computer I used (still didn't have my own at this stage) but I jumped straight into map making. The map editor was terrible. Coming from the Brood War editors people had made, and the game engines I had used when I was younger, it was just awful. Slow, illogically laid out, buggy, hard to use, inefficient, and incapable of a lot of things. No art tools, everything just annoyed me about it. I quit it along with StarCraft 2 (as I wasn't really in it for the 1v1 at the time.
Back to Brood War! When I came back, I didn't really play Temple Siege anymore. StarCraft 2 had dragged a lot of the community away. I started playing this 1v1 melee Brood War that I so enjoyed watching. Now, when I start doing something I throw myself into learning everything about it. The first place I found was Liquipedia. I was already familiar with TeamLiquid from my mapping days, although I didn't frequent it much at all (account created 2007 baby!). Boy was I in for a surprise at the sheer amount of information available and learning to be done. I soon discovered iCCup and began to frequent the TeamLiquid forums more and more in my quest to learn. I left SEN around this time, and stopped making maps.
And here begins the TeamLiquid era of my story so far! The part you're all most interested in, I imagine. Fill up your drink, grab some fruit, and onwards we go!
This is now 2012, as the televised BW era began to close. I had joined the party far later than I wished (in hindsight). But I didn't know about all that, so I joined this league called the D Ranks Team League, which was for new players. However there seemed to be some problems with finding enough teams, and I decided to create my own team: Team Stealth Bunnies! The team name actually came from a game that myself and a friend were designing back when I was thirteen (on a different forum which is where I cut my teeth on the online world). It was going to be about Dutch ninja bunnies in San Fransisco doing some cool stuff, although I don't recall all the details.
I immediately PMed a bunch of the free agents and asked if they wanted to join the team, and most of them said yes. We did very well in our first season in the DRTL (D Ranks Team League), winning the regular season and only losing in the playoff finals to Team Courage. Somewhere around here I also bought my own computer, and started playing some StarCraft II 1v1. Even to my D rank skills it felt really easy, but as a game designer and map maker the game design bugged me. The game didn't...feel good. At the time I couldn't describe it, and I hadn't really read much of the anti-SC2 movement, but I simply didn't enjoy the game and didn't like how it felt. The art style and movement of the army and most of all the sound design lacked grit and punch and the FEEL of Brood War. And that's all I wanted, so I went back to Brood War.
Ahh, I've got some things mixed up in order of time. Oh well! Onwards and upwards!
Around this time I did some very amateur casting of Brood War tournaments (the BWMN Open I particularly remember, as I learned about players like Sziky and Radley and trutaCz and eOnzerg). I did have a blast doing casting and commentating, and I tried to make my production professional. Unfortunately at the time I had a bandwidth cap of 20 gigabytes per month, so I was highly limited in the amount of streaming I could do (or internet anything, really). I threw myself into my team and casting and learning about 1v1 and getting better. I was particularly enamoured with Day9 and his video on mechanics, and I focused on improving my mechanics for most of that year (April 2012 to the end). I only knew 6pool ZvP, 2hatch lurker ZvT, and no idea how to do anything in ZvZ, but I ended up with a moderately decent winrate in DRTL thanks to my cheeeeeeeeese
I was accepted into university for a computer science degree at the end of 2012, as well. I had a more direct goal in my life, and more structure. I was at peace with God and more secure in my life, but I still had this problem of playing games in all my spare time and refreshing the same websites over and over again, and I was starting to realize just how much it was affecting me.
I carried on though, creating the C Ranks Stealth Bunnies team, and the A-rank SBWI Team League PaiN/Stealth Bunnies team, started working on StarServer, and improving rapidly at StarCraft until I hit C-. And it was around then that I realized that it's wasted.
It's all wasted. Not my community interaction and my learning of programming languages and improving typing speed and dealing with failure and learning how to learn and learning how to practice and work hard, but my devoting hours and hours of time to improving at Brood War is going to get me nowhere further. I have nothing else that I can really learn or any worthwhile achievement to make here. Now, if I had nothing better to do in my spare time it wouldn't be a problem, but I HAVE no spare time.
And that brings us to now.
I run a team entered into three team leagues, lead a development team for a Brood War server, watch streams, stream my own play, cast and commentate, practice every day at Brood War, watch replays, talk to skilled players about what I can do to improve, learn Korean so I can communicate with the more skilled Korean players, and refresh TeamLiquid.Net over and over again. I am a contributing member of Team Liquid, I have 2000 posts (of which I hope many are of decent quality).
Brood War is my life.
I don't want it to be.
It's an amazing game, and there's an amazing community attached to it. But I want to play competitive football/soccer. I want to learn to draw, and play more guitar and piano. I want to get really good at programming. I want to build muscle, and learn how to dress myself better. I want to be able to date a girl without spending more time on a game than on her. I want to do more public speaking, and I want to be able to sit at the pub with my mates after an exam and not stress about getting back home so I can organize more Brood War stuff and practice more Brood War and watch more Brood War. Every day I can't wait to get home to do Brood War and all its related activities, but that's getting in the way of the life I want to live, so I'm going to move on.
It's been a wild ride, and I've enjoyed it, but enough is enough.
Thanks for everything, Brood War. Thank you UBCS and RCDF and SEN and TL.net and all the Skype groups and Battle.Net. Thank you, reader of this tale, for sticking it out this long.
I will continue running Stealth Bunnies until the team leagues we are entered into are complete, and I will continue to work on StarServer at LEAST until it is released. I will not cast or commentate any more. This isn't quite the end, but two thousand posts seemed like an appropriate place to leave this here. Thank you for reading.
