DOES ANYONE REMEMBER GAMINGGROUNDZERO? (REMEMBERING GAMINGGROUNDZERO)

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Hi guys!
I just talked with my wife about my teenage web/gaming adventures and casually googled Wishmoo to lead me here.
Im happy to be able to tell you how GGZ started:
Some time in early RPG Maker western website history I got inspired by DON Christobal(?) and created my own website to help people get easy access to Alot of GFX/sounds to use in RPG Maker. I noticed it was pretty hard to search online for nice resources, but I was good at it. The name of my website was RPG Underground. It grew alot and we had hundreds if not thousands of weekly hits, it was pretty unusal at those days. Soon people started to join the staff and we were a nice litte community with absolutely the biggest database of ripped/original content for RPG Makers.

Wishmoo and QHeretic had their own website along the path and being not so many website about this we got in contact with each other a few times for different reasons. In the end I think(as I can remember) that I got less interested in the website doings and more into creating original content art. So for some reason me and Wishmoo merged our websites into one, GGZ was born. I know many people didnt like this, Wishmoo wasnt liked by everyone but I was about to get out and still wanted RPG Undergrounds database to live on and be avalible online. I created the design for GGZ, some military theme that was pretty un-inviting tbh. Wishmoo sent me two cool t-shirts from America to my home in Sweden as thanks and thats basicly it.

I probably have all website/RPGM files still hidden on an old harddrive somewhere.
Sorry if my memory confused somethings, it was loong ago lol.
Long live the RPG Maker community online!! Happy to see some old names ^^
neat! thanks for the background information.


We need an RPG Maker community historian or something.
InfectionFiles
the world ends in whatever my makerscore currently is
4622
I thought LordBlueRogue was our historian?
Hi mED!!

thank you so much for this information! ❤


GamingGroundZero, man, you guys were kind of what got me into rpgmaker.

author=mED
In the end I think(as I can remember) that I got less interested in the website doings and more into creating original content art. So for some reason me and Wishmoo merged our websites into one, GGZ was born.

I remember GamingGroundZero, the site, I think, had a splash page at one point, with a beige background, and black and white original concept art on top of it as a logo. It blew me away seeing this stuff as a kid, cause it looked a lot like the concept art you'd see in Final Fantasy, Lunar and a lot of popular JRPGs back in the day. You mentioned original content art, was this your work? cause it was incredible! I’ve been looking for this artwork for awhile.

The way you guys presented GamingGroundZero to the world, made it very exciting and very appealing to work with rpgmaker2000.

If you have any artwork or files or games, pretty much anything you were able to manage from the site. Please feel free to share it with us here on the forums!

Gaminggroundzero kind of laid the groundwork for a lot of rpgmaker sites back then, you guys kind of figured out a lot of stuff involving rpgmaker2000 that we are still using today. To not have GamingGroundZero or RPGUnderground around anymore is really daunting. It’s like starting from scratch all over again for a lot of us, especially since rpgmaker2000 and rpgmaker2003 are now officially available in english on steam, so there's a lot of new rpgmakers coming into the mix as well - like bleet, hogwash and rindre, and they're doing some pretty crazy stuff with it, stuff we couldn't even imagine ten years ago. - which is kind of what prompt me to start preserving and talking about these old rpgmaker sites in the first place - cause we still get the odd "How do I make a Steal command in rm2000/2003" or "How do I get FF6 font for rm2000/2003" a lot these answers can be found in old communities and old games, that's why it's worth saving.

So yeah, if you have any artwork, files, games, even stories from your time on gaminggroundzero meD
, please feel free to share them with us! I'm eternally grateful! It's really exciting to have you here!

EDIT: meD, is RPG Underground, still available somewhere in some form? please let me know.

author=InfectionFiles
I thought LordBlueRouge was our historian?
...I’m not, but I have a genuine interest in preserving software, tutorials and applications that make rpgmaker2000/2003 infinity easier for future users to work with. Anyone can backup software, anyone; I just want to make sure the important stuff is still available.

...Speaking of preserving software,

Kentona ❤. Do you have still have a copy of:

“Obama RPG:Magical Quest 3 HD – Future Legend of Superhuman President Starring Barack Obama”?

It’d be greatly appreciated.
Im happy I could help with sharing this ancient history ^^
author=LordBlueRouge
had a splash page at one point, with a beige background, and black and white original concept art on top of it as a logo
Im not sure who made it but I Think it was a drawing by "Illustrous"(or similar name). I think it was art from his own game in the makings. He was like a family member to Wishmoo and Q, very good at hacking and drawing as I recall.
Funny blury memory is that there were a guy called Strife(or similar) that was kind of like an antagonist of the RPG Maker websites, he had his own and there were alot of drama around Wishmoo and him. I always kept RPG Underground group out of drama so our website was neutral. Wishmoo was a law and order crusader.

The most awesome part of all RPG Underground community was that so many random talents joined in and shared their own work/resources. All from a guy who made original music in classic rpg style, to really great pixel sprite artwork by others.
In the start my main focus was to gather all and every piece of resource from the internet. The best RPG Maker graphics came from an asian guy/website that was pretty hard to find.
Later I ripped gfx from all kinds of games and spent soo much time putting them into the standard RPG Maker templates.
At last when there wasnt much more to be found I started creating sprites myself, characters and world gfx. One of my greatest was for my younger brothers South Park RPG. Unfortunately he didnt completed making that game tho.

After I left the RPG Maker stuff to GGZ I joined the staff of Graal Online and made GFX for their upcoming game Graal Kingdoms. Graal was like a Zelda style game, looked like Zelda on Super Nintendo alot.
(I just googled now and Graal can still be played it seems, thats pretty amazing: https://www.graalonline.com)


author=LordBlueRouge
o yeah, if you have any artwork, files, games, even stories from your time on gaminggroundzero meD , please feel free to share them with us! I'm eternally grateful! It's really exciting to have you here!

EDIT: meD, is RPG Underground, still available somewhere in some form? please let me know.
I will be moving this spring and before packing I will go thru all of my never-use boxes. If I find the old HDDs somewhere I will have a look and tell you if all those old websites and the HUGE amount of resources(art, sprites, music, sounds etc) is still alive.

Edit: Another piece of the puzzle is that at the very end I had a website called MadHouse. I changed my alias to Jolt or Joltbolt, and only posted my own original RPG Maker gfx. So if you ever come across some gfx tagged Jolt/MadHouse/mED/RPG Underground, I would love to have a look :)
Yeah I'd really like to see the GGZ splash pages as they were if possible. First I remember was the 3 gundam looking suits in a blue hue background sounds similar to the "military style" mED mentioned. Next one I remember was some squall looking guy facing to the side and an elf chick facing forward, kind of beige and brownish background, probably what Rouge is talking about. I remember getting most of my rips and resources from GGZ especially the custom made stuff by the pelican(?) guy who did the really tall looking charsets.

I have Illustrious on facebook and talked to him here and there awhile ago. He told me a lot of crazy GGZ stories but I don't think I'm at liberty to share them since I think it should come from his discretion. Suffice to say he's deeply connected to a lot of the turmoil surrounding GGZ. I'm pretty sure QHeretic was more of the hacker type. Illustrious was more of the art/town/writing kind of guy.

Speaking of which I desperately want to acquire Wishmoo's game: Tabernacle, mainly for historian's sake but also because the one saving grace of that demo was the town that Illustrious made for it. I remember the town map very vividly and actually enjoyed the dramatic tone of the game. Another game I actually have is Illustrious's game Forever Across Dreams which was basically Angels of Exodus but a year older. Made during the RPGMaker 2000 translation beta when don miguel was testing things out. Edit: Actually FAD is available here on the french site. It's some good GGZ lore history embedded in that regardless.
author=mED
After I left the RPG Maker stuff to GGZ I joined the staff of Graal Online and made GFX for their upcoming game Graal Kingdoms. Graal was like a Zelda style game, looked like Zelda on Super Nintendo alot.
(I just googled now and Graal can still be played it seems, thats pretty amazing: https://www.graalonline.com)

Side note: I totally remember graalonline! Never had a chance to play it, but i'll probably try it out now.
Graalonline was featured on fhm100's 100 greatest online games
(NSFW):
They had some really cool games on there, including Bust-A-Move entirely done in flash
and this really cool 4 player online 3D Tron Game, done entirely through shockwaveflash and javascript
(you'll need shockwave and a non-chrome browser to play it, but this was really impressive back in the day!)

-------
author=meD
I will be moving this spring and before packing I will go thru all of my never-use boxes. If I find the old HDDs somewhere I will have a look and tell you if all those old websites and the HUGE amount of resources(art, sprites, music, sounds etc) is still alive.

If you come across a lot of stuff meD, don’t worry about uploading individual files one-at-a-time. I’ll understand! If you don’t have a lot of time and just want to throw whatever you find, into a folder/winrar and upload it to googledrive, with a brief text file explaining what’s there – that’s okay too! – we’ll take care of the rest. ❤ I'm eternally grateful that you're doing this, so thank you!❤

author=meD
Edit: Another piece of the puzzle is that at the very end I had a website called MadHouse. I changed my alias to Jolt or Joltbolt, and only posted my own original RPG Maker gfx. So if you ever come across some gfx tagged Jolt/MadHouse/mED/RPG Underground, I would love to have a look :)

Will do! I will keep my eyes peeled for any resources you made under Jolt/Joltbolt/MadHouse/meD/RPG Underground as well!

author=Darken
Yeah I'd really like to see the GGZ splash pages as they were if possible. First I remember was the 3 gundam looking suits in a blue hue background sounds similar to the "military style" mED mentioned. Next one I remember was some squall looking guy facing to the side and an elf chick facing forward, kind of beige and brownish background, probably what Rouge is talking about. I remember getting most of my rips and resources from GGZ especially the custom made stuff by the pelican(?) guy who did the really tall looking charsets.

Yes! Thank you for remembering this Darken! ❤

Yeah, at some point I’d like for, Illustrious, Qheretic and Wishmoo, pretty much everyone and anyone involved with the creation of GGZ, to come here and give their side of the story if possible. Like, it’s very easy to make gross generalizations about what happened over on GGZ and have that be the end of it - but that's not fair to GGZ - and unfortunately, this was a site I never got a chance to be apart of - so I want to hear the story from the creators of GGZ themselves too and learn everything I can. Like, I really want to hear both sides of the story if possible and as much as possible.

Like, whatever happened in the past may never be easy to talk about. But at the same time, those guys were my heroes, I want to hear the story, in its entirety and as accurately possible. Unlike rpgmaker communities of the past, I pass no judgment; all I have is compassion for you guys. Everyone deserves to have their story be told here.

But yeah, thanks for letting me know Darken. I’ll add “Forever Across Dreams” and “Angels of Exodus” to the archive as well. If you guys know of any other rpgmaker games that were significant to GGZ, let me know!
Starscream
Conquest is made from the ashes of one's enemies.
6110
author=kentona
neat! thanks for the background information.


We need an RPG Maker community historian or something.

I was actually just thinking about how all of the late 90's / early 2000's nonsense is slowly starting to slip away in my head. It's much hard to recall now. Sad, really.

Except for remembering WIP stands for WackInPsychotic666 and NOT "work in progress". That is forever etched into my soul.
Now I know the rest of the story.





some sick old GGZ banners I found from crawling around old sites. The color scheme and the gundam looking thing are part of what I described. Still, it would be nice to see the big splash logos in all their glory.

Some questions I'm curious to ask to oldbies like holb and mED. This ties into Don Miguel lore.

How involved was holb and ankylo in the translation of RM2000 with Don Miguel? I ask because this caught my eye in particular:
author=Don Miguel
9.06.2000: Finally English RTP for RPG Maker 2000 is ready for download!
I very like Ankylos support. I like Ankylos IRC Channel also... but I was kicked & banned by his pals... They did same stuff with my best friend Dr Sun (aka Super Sunny)
YOU MUST SAY THANX TO DrSun because he did all RPT Mirrors for ya!

And... It's pity... I thought that Holbert is good guy... 8-(

What extent did QHeretic introduce about RM2K? Also how deep was he involved? It seems he had a geocites page that introduced the Rm2k that Don redirected to.
author=Don Miguel
06.05.2000: I put some new MonsterSets, CharaSets (From FF, SF2, PS4) to my pages. Check them!
Read info about RM2000 in English at The Heresy site.
Here is the direct link to all English Info about Japanese version of the RPG Tsukuru 2000 (RPG Maker 2000).
Thanx to The Heresy members. And YES - i got my first link to RM2000 files from The Heresy.

Who was the one who leaked the RM2000 Translation Beta? Excerpt from https://rpgmaker.net/users/Darken/locker/donmiguellegend.txt
author=Don Miguel
"Don begin to work...a small light shone off his computer and out of his window for days..
"Don had much translated when he decided to give his "beta" to some of the Head People in the village"
"These ppl were trust worthy"
"Don figured he could trust them with his beta"
"and he could"
"But..."
"There was on person, one sneaky person who gave it to one of the village commoners"
"That commoner gave it to others, they gave it to other, and so forth..."

I'm trying to pinpoint when people were actually allowed to download RM2000 vs when the leak happened. It seems June 9th 2000 was when you were to fully obtain both the RM2K installer and the RTP installer publicly. Not 100% if Don released both installers at the same time or not.

June 10th, 1999 Don CDrips a new version of RM95 1.23
January 26th 2000 Don retranslates RM95
March 22, 2000 RPGMaker95+ v 1.1
March 21, 2000 Holb translates SimRPG

April 5, 2000 RPG Tsukūru 2000 Released by ASCII

May 3, 2000 Don announces translation project
(May 28, 2000 Forever Across Dreams' RPG_RT.exe file created)
May 30, 2000 RM2000 v 1.03 patch is released by ASCII, don decides to retranslate
June 1, 2000 RM2000 is done translating
June 8, 2000 First mention of the RM2K3 1.02 leaked beta

June 9, 2000 English RTP Installer is released by Don
June 9, 2000 first mention of irc channel #rm2k
(June 10, 2000 Don's Sample Game curtain.png gets created)
(June 14, 2000 QHeretic's Exile RPG_RT.lmt is created)

Were there any other games being made during the RM2000 translation but before the public release?

What was the anticipation of RM2000 like?

These are mainly open questions but I'm hoping this somehow triggers memories to talk about.
Its the place where I downloaded Kindred Saga and nothing else.
June 10th, 1999 Don CDrips a new version of RM95 1.23
January 26th 2000 Don retranslates RM95
March 22, 2000 RPGMaker95+ v 1.1
March 21, 2000 Holb translates SimRPG

April 5, 2000 RPG Tsukūru 2000 Released by ASCII

May 3, 2000 Don announces translation project
(May 28, 2000 Forever Across Dreams' RPG_RT.exe file created)
May 30, 2000 RM2000 v 1.03 patch is released by ASCII, don decides to retranslate
June 1, 2000 RM2000 is done translating
June 8, 2000 First mention of the RM2K3 1.02 leaked beta

June 9, 2000 English RTP Installer is released by Don
June 9, 2000 first mention of irc channel #rm2k
(June 10, 2000 Don's Sample Game curtain.png gets created)
(June 14, 2000 QHeretic's Exile RPG_RT.lmt is created)

Thank you so much for this timeline. This is something that I've always wondered about. I had no idea the translation began so soon after the release of RPG Tsukuru 2000. I'm also extremely curious to hear if there were any other English games in development before the translation.

It's amazing to hear that the production Forever Across Dreams began less than a month after RPG Tsukuru 2000's release! I'm going to check the creation dates of every old RPG Maker 2000 game I can think of.

I'm eager to see if any old-timers pop up to answer some of your open questions.
harmonic
It's like toothpicks against a tank
4142
author=kentona
We need an RPG Maker community historian or something.

-Don Miguel had an adventure
-RPG Advocate advocated for COOL SYSTEMS
-A rash of sites spawned, all equally toxic as hell
-RMN came along as everything else whithered on the vine
-Aveyond's success inspired hate and jealousy
-RMWeb grew with the participation of Kadokawa/Degica, much less toxic
How have I not noticed this thread before? I used to be a member of GGZ before it died off. Wasn't really active with the community save Wishmoo and QHeretic, which pretty much stayed to their own devices. I wasn't even aware of other RPGMaker websites til I found RMN here years later.

I still have games from the site on my computer. Kindred Saga, Crossbone by DanTheWeremole, Dark Dreams by TitanOmega, Delta Star (It's in German?), some CBS for a game called Rogues Tale, Flitwick by Felix Trapper, Revelation: Apocalyptic Literature (not sure who did this one), something by Stoof that doesn't even look like an RM Game (didn't really check it out), and I even have a copy of some spriting event they made into an RM game still on my computer.

All I really remember about them was how Wishmoo was Q's mom? This may of just been 'site based' but idk, she was always nice to me though, with the exception of being outright violent towards anyone using pirated software (like RM2k3 at the time).

Edit - A funny thing about Kindred Saga, I was running some sound clips I picked for Descendant of Truth by Q, he pointed out how I was using the same battle theme as him for Kindred Saga before he'd released it, haha. So I ended up changing it.

Edit #2 - Dunno if this has been posted here yet or not, but someone archived a lot of them and posted them for public consumption, most of the ones I have listed are here too. http://www.rpgmakerarchive.net/2016/10/reference-gaminggroundzero-games.html
author=lily
and I even have a copy of some spriting event they made into an RM game still on my computer.


!!! I remember that, it was a bunch of sprites on a theatre stage showing themselves off like a beauty pageant right? Yeah we know about RMArchive's GGZ page but as far as we know it's pretty much what games were hosted before the site went down. I know some games were put on and taken off before then and it sounds like you have some of those games. I remember the Rogues Tale CBS I think it was done by the Pelican guy who also did stuff for Butterfly's Song at least art wise anyway. Would be appreciated if you could upload the stuff not on RMarchive.

Flitwick sounds familiar, yet I completely forgot what that was. Was it the one where a character dresses up as Don Miguel to go to some rpgmaker/anime convention? I might be mistaking it for another game.
No, Flitwick was a silly little puzzle game about using inverting colors. I'll zip em up and stick em in my locker. Flitwick was actually kinda fun.

Here you go, put up Flitwick, RoguesTaleCBS, and the sprite contest. What else are you wanting here? That past link had most of the other stuff.

Flitwick Gam

Rogues Tale CBS

Sprite Contest

Edit - I've asked to have some of these put up here, but I guess it really can't be done without the designers permission.
@Illy:
Thanks! I'm actually curious about Revelation: Apocalyptic Literature and the Stoof game, pretty sure those aren't there. But yeah you've made my morning, (mostly also due to work also being cancelled via snow day).

The sprite contest game is rather interesting because it does give a glimpse into what GGZ's custom art community was about. I do remember Ahruon (creator of Card Saga Wars (will never be finished)) Android18a, Cold Mage, and various other artists with resources on the site. Shame we never really saw that many games made with the resources, guess the problem was they just weren't flexible as the standard RTP and other commonly uses charsets. Were there any issues with people outside of GGZ using custom art in their own games? I'm guessing it was just mainly minor debacles regarding other sites posting such resources.

I'm trying to think also, there were multiple rounds and other sprite contest "games". Do you have any memory how these contests were voted on and judged? I was just a lurker outside the forum so I really only had the tags of artists on charasets to go off of.
No idea how they did judging. I wasn't that active with the community, I just used it to post my gam.

Here's Revelations and Stoof's thing.

Stoof Thing

Revelations
Actually Revelations was already on RMArchives. Sorry must have misread something. The Stoof thing seems to be the same project that's on Stifu's site though it is notable that his project was in the GGZ games at this point. Funnily enough I mistook Desceandant of Truth for a 2k Stifu game for some reason even though he's a 95er til the day he dies apparently. Thanks anyway.

Yeah you can't exactly upload other peoples' projects on RMN but we do have a thread for RM archival https://rpgmaker.net/forums/topics/22883/ which we'll likely dump there. They're usually for forgotten games or trying to find certain ones. These are really good finds and I had almost forgotten about these. Flitwick IS actually pretty fun. Though I guess when you have only single lines left its a bit samey.
Someday I'll go back to DoT. It's the closest thing I have to an Illy exclusive title. Har.