After many years doing my best to serve you all and keep FAF moving forwards, my life has become busier and busier, and it’s finally time to pass the torch on to a new Game Councillor.
After beginning to play way back at the very start of SupCom, at just 13, quickly began modding it to do silly things like making Fatboy fire nukes, Titans run at hyperspeed, and make the Spiderbot 10 times bigger. Just silly fun. From there, I became involved with the 4thDimension mod, and then BlackOps in a small way. Once GPG died and FAF began, I contributed a bit to the project before PilOt gave over to the community, and realised that the programming skills and knowledge of the codebase effectively put me in charge of where the game went from there.
Years later, and FAF has brought me well over 20,000 hours of joy, great games, and priceless learning and service opportunities. It’s been a true honour. This project, and the amazing volunteers I’ve been working alongside kept me sane through the boring parts of university, and taught me skills that have been instrumental in getting me to where I am now, in my everyday life.
I would like to thank all the hundreds and hundreds of individuals who have got in touch with me via PM over the years for your trust and constant feedback. I would like to thank those people who have given literally tens of thousands of collective man-hours, working alongside me to keep improving the game. It is completely unrecognisable compared to when we began.
I am infinitely grateful to the following individuals, who each went above and beyond what could ever have been expected:
- sheeo - For his dedication, sound judgement, and fantastic teaching ability. Without this man, FAF would not be where it is today. A year ago today he gave me the opportunity of a lifetime in offering me a position at his company. Meeting him here has, quite literally, changed the path of my life.
- Exavier_Macbeth - For being instrumental in tearing into the game’s LUA code and documenting what things do and how they work. Also BlackOps is amazing.
- Zock - For showing everyone how to make one of the hardest strategy games ever made look as easy as a walk in the park, and making bold decisions about game balance which drove us to new heights. His insights into how the game is and should be played have never been matched, not that I've seen.
- Hussar - For being the man who does GUI the way the rest of us are terrified to. He was the brain behind integrating things like Hotkeys, Notify, Unit Restrictions, and the almighty Supreme Scoreboard, and endless help besides.
- BRNKoINSANITY - For exploding the community with more gameplay and laughter than we can shake a stick at, and being an all-round stand up guy. May he bring joy to this community for as long as he can bear the insanity.
- PhilipJFry - For endless hours testing my idiotic and broken code, his patience, and his dedication to keeping patches tested and flowing as my life became busier and busier.
- And, finally… ...
keyser. For proving, in probably the longest probationary period FAF will ever see, that he has the time, passion, willingness to learn, and stability to be trusted with the responsibility for making sure that inexperienced fiddling modders don’t break the game every time we patch
He, helped by PhilipJFry, has actually been doing 95% of the work this position involves between them for the past 18 months as it became clear I just don’t have the time any more. I have every confidence that he will push FAF’s gameplay forwards into a new era of progress and fine-tuning.
That’s me off to the Quantum Gateway for the last time! It’s been amazing, and thank you all.
IceDreamer
