DOES ANYONE REMEMBER GAMINGGROUNDZERO? (REMEMBERING GAMINGGROUNDZERO)

Posts

author=ftrbreed
author=Darken
Did you go by Silver X also?
I did not, my only name I went by through the GGZ community was Silvereye. I do remember other Silver* people which made the chat rooms rather confusing since Wish always referred to me as "Silver"

author=LordBlueRouge
...If it's not too much trouble, what I wanted to ask is, would you know what happened near the end of gaminggroundzero?

Unfortunately I have no idea what happened. When I initially tapped out (we're talking.... 2004/2005), Q had been attending university I believe, so he was no longer actively involved. Illustrious (as mentioned previously in the thread) had been pushed out or left GGZ. Wish was the one I still had a connection with, and it seemed she was trying desperately to hold the ship together. Felt every time I came back to the site, a whole host of our old resources were gone, tutorials wiped, etc. The biggest hit for me was when the old forums had been wiped or moved to a new forum host. I had an absolute TON of interactions with people on those forums that were lost forever. At that point, I saw little reason to go back.

author=LordBlueRouge
So I really want to learn everything I can from this, to try and prevent it from happening in the future or if not that, at least take the necessary steps so that nothing important is lost.
That's really hard, as you're likely finding out. Forums drop support, servers go down and never come up again, etc. Even sites like archive.org are imperfect (as you can see with some of the deeplinked GGZ archives which work yet none of their child links were archived. I for one would love to see an archive of the Staff page so I can find out what the heck my bio was. I remember my avatar pretty vividly 'cause it was some terrible photoshop I did with). This is going to continue to be a problem until communities find a good way of preservation, which is also an ongoing and very serious problem in the gaming world in general. We are losing our games and source code at an alarming pace.

author=LordBlueRouge
you mentioned you're currently working as an engineer in the games industry. Could you tell us what's that like or what games you're working if any?
I'm currently an operating systems engineer at the Xbox team. I worked on shipping features such as the multitasking Guide, system settings, the Games with Gold program, Xbox Game Pass, and most recently shipped the Xbox One X and S consoles. My interactions with shipping game code directly are limited, but I have provided a ton of consulting and bug fixes with plenty of games over the years.

Damn that xbox position is crazy. It's interesting to think how many pros are in the industry that originated from small rm circles. I guess CBS skills really can turn you into an engineer lol.

I mean it's not a huge mystery on how to maintain the community: make sure someone is paying the server bills and have an admin with some humility and yet some personal stake in the endeavor. Ultimately people are going to lose interest and move on to other stuff on their own volition though, and that's really hard to control. It's really about relying on the people that do rming for fun ultimately and don't stress over prospects. Problem is, making JRPGs is so time consuming that it's hard to be a simple side thing. There are people that still make Doom maps to this day, despite it no longer being a job offer hub for late 90s level designers anymore though.

GGZ is a sad case in terms of diagnosing how a community lives and dies. Because other than hearsay and the games, there's not much to go off of due to the insular nature of GGZ. I suspect Wishmoo pulled the plug with the robots.txt intentionally and doesn't want GGZ prominent anymore, it's seems similar to what happened with the drama surrounding Tabernacle. In any case I would love to see how the site looked like in its every stage, and yeah I do remember looking at the staff page and seeing all these members and wondering what they did.
author=Trihan
There was a fairly prominent community member called webmaster (or webby to his friends) who was infamous for becoming Wishmoo's mole in #rm2k and related communities, where he would essentially spy on us and report what we were doing/talking about to shmoo. She threatened a few of us with legal action one time, which was fun.

Basically. Wishmoo called my mother and my high-school, both of which laughed off an incredibly insecure and unstable adult.

Trihan... are you still around ATL?

author=mED
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.

You're thinking of Stryker, who ran his own lil' forum. Stryker was obsessed/fascinated by RM95 and pretty much would only code games for it.

Interesting fellow.
Thanks for taking the time to post Webbeh!♥

It's always cool to see GGZ peeps pop into this thread and reminiscence.
I'd like turn this into a GGZ reunion thread of sorts, lol. So yeah if you know of any other GGZ members, please tell them about this thread - I loved GGZ!

I apologize for not keeping up with this thread. 2 years ago when I started this I had no idea GamingGroundZero members would eventually pop up here. But I guess that's what happens it suddenly becomes the first search result on google. Either way, it's really cool to finally meet some of you guys during a time when I wasn't able to - While GamingGroundZero was still up I tried registering and logging into GGZs forum many, many times and I just couldn't get in.



Basically. Wishmoo called my mother and my high-school, both of which laughed off an incredibly insecure and unstable adult.

Yeah, I read about this over on gamingw too. Some guys are saying now, how they felt really bad for starting fights with wishmoo like that, when they were just like, teenagers at the time etc - Back in 2007, when I started to get more involved with the rpgmaker community, it felt strange to be in the midst of this all stuff happening, when all I really wanted to do was play and make rpgmaker games. I wish things had turned out differently. I wish I had a chance to meet you guys sooner. :(

But yeah, if you have any like, stories, memories or anecdotes of GGZ, please feel free to share them.
I don't know if this is necroposting but I wasnlooking for GGZ to see how they were fairing before finding information here. My friends and I were kinda small fish in a big pool when we joined GGZ back in like 2000 or so. We just got into RM2k and were designing our own games. I went by Teknoskan, my friend was AliAs and his brother was DaBlindGuy. I still have all of their old projects and assets. AliAs invented a simple menu system that utilized a specific chipset as its backdrop that I actually designed. It was never submitted to GGZ officially and was only included in a demo that we hosted on GamingW. That system's readme file ended up on GGZ breifly and was taken down after I complained to Wishmoo. She then banned our accounts and said that they were a private group and we had broken the rules by moving on to RM2k3 as it was illegal. Even tho they still used RM2k. A week later that readme file was back on their site with someone removing AliAs and DaBlind's names and saying it was open source. It seemed after the release of RM2k3, the craziness really hit the fan and caused a rift in the community. I remember when Roco left GGZ and took her resources with her and Wishmoo tried to play it off as others stealing her works. Go figure.
Thanks for this teknoskan! No worries about necroposting here! I started this thread with the sole intension, that information would slowly start to trickle in over the years, as a way to try and get in touch with older members and other peeps who may have remembered GamingGroundZero and maybe piece together what happened. Any info is good info here! it's also been really cool to hear from peeps who have moved onto other things like Lunais releasing Timespinner for commercial platforms, etc.

But yeah, If you still have those old projects and assets, feel free to share them on the archive thread I'd love to see them!

If you got any more stories to share, feel free to share them! Your story sounds very similar to what a lot of people encountered back then.
Thanks for sharing this! ♥ :)
author=teknoskan
I remember when Roco left GGZ and took her resources with her and Wishmoo tried to play it off as others stealing her works. Go figure.


Do you have any other info regarding Roco? So little is known about other than her departure. I did not know that detail about her involvement with Wishmoo (though I do recall discovering roco's stuff on GGZ for the first time).
The most I remember (and I still have bits of her work that were not as widely distributed before she bailed) is that she was essentially one of the most sought after resource creators due to her face sets and portraits. I am not sure what exactly happened that pushed her to leave but Wishmoo created a post that basically said (don't quote my accuracy) "Roco has decided to leave and remove her works from GGZ due to people stealing her works and not providing credit." Now, I'm not against giving credit, but I doubt that's the sole reason for her departure. It was all so sudden and she just began releasing her portraits which I have posted about years ago on this site. I haven't really posted anything here but those and on this topic so it should be easy to search up. (On my phone so copy/paste issues). I kind of wish she would pop back into the scene and give her words on it, but apparently whatever happened drove her out of the scene for good. Which doesn't surprise me when it concerns Wishmoo.
Interesting, yeah I wonder what Roco is up to now. Probably still doing art I imagine. Her faceset art really does hold up against the test of time, she had a really good grasp on face anatomy and anime aesthetics that weren't too overdone. Which was quite a feat for 2001. I guess I'm also interested in her collab with Mac and Blue as I assume the charsets were made for her facesets as well. There's a lot of resources that get passed around where the origins are so murky.
Thanks teknoskan. I'm gonna repost what you mentioned there, just so that there might more eyes on this. But yeah, these facesets appeared in quite a few popular rpgmaker2000/2003 games during their time. I had no idea these originated from Roco. Excellent find teknosan, thanks for this.

author=teknoskan
I have seen plenty of requests for Roco facesets and charsets, but I am specifically looking for the full portraits. Not the Mini-Portrait set, but the large individual portraits. I have two to share for reference.

Yep. That's them. I wish I had my harddrives from the late 90s. Could probably restore all sorts of lost and forgotten resources. Unfortunately I only have my unfinished project and AliAs and DaBlindGuy's demo, so most of those resources have likely been rediscovered already. As for posting them in the archive post, I could probably share A&D's demo. My project I am remaking in MV so I mkght finish up the 2k3 version into a demo for reference. As for GGZ, I have a bunch of resources somewhere on my old 2000s era hdds. I kept them throughout the years to try and salvage old ideas I left on them. So tomorrow I'll dig around and see what I can find as far as old games and resources to share.
Hey folks, this is random but I was a member of GGZ back in 2002- I went by KHCloud- I was 12/13 at the time and I remember so little, aside from friends like Silas and Draze\Cloud7, ClearTranquil/CT, and Zedja, the mod with the white tiger avatar. All these names are bringing back crazy nostalgia memories. I had a few talks with wishmoo on AIM but it was always cordial. I remember I got in before it was all closed off. I actually have been a concept artist working in games since 2012 (Halo 4, Halo 5, worked briefly at Riot). There were at least 3 other artists who were or are professionals - Corey Loving, GraySapphire/GreenTopaz, and Ahruon, I also believe Matt Herms was there- he became a colorist for the Archie sonic comics, among other things. Most left before I did, and didn’t do much spriting after 2003 aside from Ahruon. As a young artist, it was a very valuable community- to be able to talk to artists more accomplished than I was. though its reputation was clearly earned. But it had a healthier (but not healthy) critical culture that helped me improve a lot and definitely fed my game development passion. I honestly probably won’t end up in this thread again unless I remember, and I really wish I knew more\had more to offer. I wish I hadn’t forgotten so much but it was definitely a formative place regardless.
It's always nice to hear from users who have gone on to work in the industry. Did you work on RM games back in the day, KHCloud?

Also, I was not a member of the forums, but I did go there a lot for resources and games, so I remember a lot of usernames from that. Your name is familiar - did you make resources back then?
Sorry for bumping such an old thread.

I was a kid when all of this stuff happened and my mind is kind of fuzzy, but I was in an IRC channel I believe was #rm2k, it was either on the BeyondIRC network or DynastyNET. I vaguely remember wishmoo being a huge pain in the butt with her rules and iron fist. The channel was closed one night, and when we were allowed back in seemingly the admins stepped in from the IRC server and gave people access to the channel again. wishmoo and her son(Q? Was this even true?) were gone as well as a lot of users. Then word of GGZ started up. It was indeed a very dark time from what I can remember of it.. people who were seemingly friends became enemies, I remember getting banned countless times because I was a kid and couldn't shut up.

I went by the name ATTIC back then, I was like.. I dont know.. 10-12 years old.

Reading through this thread I randomly found today I recognize some of the usernames listed/talked about. That stuff was so long ago, it's crazy what sticks in your head even 20~ years later.

I can remember some names from back then even today, DragonRift, DragonM, FGTrapper. Kind of hard looking these people up as well, because a lot of them used names from existing games. Like RubyW and Emerald_Weapon haha.
Yes, Wishmoo was apparently QHeretic's mum. The only tassel I ever got in with her was when she caught wind I was using 2k3 (illegally at the time). She absolutely refused any sort of connection between GGZ and 2k3 because there was no legal way to use it outside of Japanese.
author=Illy
Yes, Wishmoo was apparently QHeretic's mum. The only tassel I ever got in with her was when she caught wind I was using 2k3 (illegally at the time). She absolutely refused any sort of connection between GGZ and 2k3 because there was no legal way to use it outside of Japanese.


There was no legal way to use RM2K, either, but they hosted plenty of RM2K games.
I was worried this would be a necropost but it seems this thread has been "active" for a few years now so I wanted to just pop in. Maybe I did a few years ago and forgot. Anyway, I'm Sephie who used to do Sephie's Graphics (had sprites up on GGZ etc!).

I used to chat to Wishmoo a lot via AOL, back when my username was Android18a/Sephie. I kinda looked up to her a bit myself, she was like a cool aunt or something to me. I know she had drama in the community but I remember her being very kind and caring. And I really enjoyed the activities she organised in the forums. It's something I try to foster myself now (although I'm more into the Warhammer twitter community these days). I hope she's ok, it's been a long time since I spoke to her.

If anyone remembers at all, here's my website from the wayback machine!
https://web.archive.org/web/20050310003832/http://www.silentdream.co.uk/index2.htm

It's mostly my RM2k Charasets, of which most ended up in the GGZ Resources section towards the later days of the site's life!

I still speak to a few of my friends from the era, although not quite as often these days as we've all drifted away. I love seeing how some of the RM2k community we had back then have gone on to be successful like Matt Herms and a bunch of the pixel artists! I think that's really nice.

These days you can find me on social medias @jewelknightjess - mostly Twitter but also Instagram when I have anything to share. :)
author=AznChipmunk
i remember

GGZ was just before my time, like moments before. It was mentioned--as was the infamous Wishmoo--when I was just getting into RPG Maker for the very first time. I don't remember if the site still existed at that point, but I was not a member.

Still, holy crap, what a sprint down memory lane this thread is.

@Sephie: holy crap! Now, YOU I do remember. But I wasn't on GGZ. But seeing Sephie's Resources rang a really loud bell for me...I think I might have seen some of your sprites and whatnot just as I was first joining the hobby.
Someone remembers me! Haha. I'd like to think someone out there might still be using some of my stuff!
Ciel
an aristocrat of rpgmaker culture
367
wishmoo was a legend. rest in peace qheretic

i remember ggz being one of the sites i browsed when first getting into rpgmaker around age 10 or something. hearing that name makes me miss that time