My name is dekema2. How I got here was through daydreaming about my Minecraft past a month ago. Apparently some members here were once part of what I thought was the bustling reddit.com server about 3 years ago, the server where I learned the ropes of not only playing and being a mod/op on a server, but also how to effectively run one as well. People coming on and off, friends to be made, etc.
On that server I learned cuboid, cut and paste, basic design skills and stuff didn't know I could do in Minecraft with the fCraft API. Things like the hotel built in one of the "main" worlds, etc.
Unfortunately, the server shut down abruptly in I think it was late summer/early fall of 2011. I was one of the last members to stay on for a while, and then the place disappeared into oblivion. A whole community gone and forgotten about.
After the shutdown I went about searching around other servers, finding stuff to do.
Soon after I left the reddit server, if that's what it even was, I joined the MCForge community in my attempt to start up my own server. I got enthralled with the community, the processes, etc. and after starting my server, DekemaServ, I decided to try and help the MCForge community and develop plugins of my own. Having never typed a line of code or studied C#, as I was about 14 or 15 then, I got a bit discouraged.
As the months went on I gave suggestions to MCForge and built my server up. People like Discotic, who at the time of closing was a SuperOp on the reddit server helped me with the server and watched it grow with me. It was never a huge success, but I tried my best.
As my reputation and post count on the MCForge forums grew (over 800 posts on a community with over 8,000 members I believe) so did my enemies. In December of 2011 around the holidays I was banned permanently from the community. To make a long story short I was impersonated by somebody who said I wanted to hack their source or something stupid.
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Early 2012 came and I thought even harder about programming. Now I had the ambition to create my own MC Classic API and called it "MCDek," to directly compete with MCForge and many other MCLawl forks that were popular at the time (a list of them can be found here).
That whole year I worked with my "development team," which included a few guys from MCForge and people I found on Minecraft Forum. Over the next few months we took the MCLawl source code from GitHub and started making superficial edits. I learned from thenewboston basic C#, and was able to make some of those edits myself. We used the domain name I had for my classic server, dekemaserv.com, and attempted to build a new API.
In the meantime, I wanted an official server to go with our API. I ended up choosing another classic server that in the grand scheme of things also held a significant foothold in the Classic community at the time, Dodge Them All. They still exist today as a 1.8 server, and still have a website with a domain I bought them, but are not the community they once were. It turned out that one of the developers on my team pointed me there, and its owner lived only 40 miles away from me, so we were able to relate to local stuff from that (we still keep in close contact as I just talked to him the other day).
Throughout the year we developed the API, tested plugins and more, and I improved my Minecraft architecture skills in city building, arena building, world creation and layout, etc., etc., etc. I think I got pretty good at it working along side the server staff, and the owner eventually found trust in me to set me as the co-owner.
However in July of that year some members felt as if I came in and was just granted power out of the sky. Then on our forums I delivered a bombshell comment where I said that the staff members should take over for the admins when we were away, and some members of the community thought it was disrespectful. I was demoted to the guest rank and would never hold the Owner rank again.
I took a break from Minecraft to do other more productive things until early 2013. Between July and then I would pop in and out occasionally to see how the community was doing.
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In 2013 when I came back, the Classic server was gone and they switched to Minecraft 1.6. I worked my way up just keeping in touch over the next few months and eventually became a "staff member." Being a staff member on this server was being part of a social club more than anything, because we never saw over 20 players simultaneously. Because of that I think I will jump to 2014, but let me say during that time I once again worked on projects like building "the largest mall in Minecraft (which will to this day still get built at some point as I have the map save)" with a player named DawnShaker, who would later help me with my endeavors below.
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2014 comes, the server is struggling and as I've been a long-time staff member, I was promoted to Executive, but most people had more respect for me than the title. As second in command I went out of my way to recruit staff members from all over the place, come up with new ideas, etc, so we could get 20, 40, 60 players on at once at some point. It never happened, and at the same time the server was just corrupt in more ways than one. The straw that broke the camel's back however was when the other co-owner decided to transfer the huuuge spawn me and my building partner were WorldEditing together to a new world, and had taken probably a collective 40 hours worth of work. During the process the server crashed and revealed only a little bit of the massive amount of work. So soon after this my interest in the server started to die down as the players did. I left soon after, pretty quietly though.
In February of this year I decided to open a 1.0+ server of my own, which would've been Factions-based. The co-owners I would've brought in would be DawnShaker and nickoiset. The goal was that now I was able to run my own show after all the mess over the past 2 years, we would be able to come up with something big. It was definitely a good idea, but my execution was poor and I spent too much time just building the spawn and not working on the server's content. Then I came up with this idea of opening on Memorial Day and having a grand opening, and it was all a mess because some staff members I brought in didn't show up, etc.
I created a pretty robust staff candidate interview process through Skype that allowed me to tell who a person was deep down inside. Going to Planet Minecraft and Minecraft forum, I came up with this head-hunting, poaching-style staff grabbing scheme where I would go to the staff applicant threads of super qualified candidates, and eventually I found a guy named Arachadonic. This guy was a former Helper at Hypixel so I knew he could help me out a ton. And he did, because he was always engaged, in-tune and always had more answers than questions to stuff.
And so I got artists, terrain folks, etc. who I still keep in contact with now to help rebuild our server, FreshUniverse, into something with some substance. We had the idea of creating a totally new spawn, custom plugins that we ourselves would develop, and a new RPG style-of-gameplay much like that of Wynncraft. Mounting costs kept us from reaching our potential.
Now recently as we all know, Bukkit has collapsed and Microsoft bought out Mojang, and I started college. All 3 of these factors made me put the project on hiatus, and now we will close our doors until we get better footing.
Also, today Dodge Them All is synonymous with the YouTube channel I was briefly a part of, which used to be a regular channel showing off our server and now has 22K subscribers broadcasting junk and collecting ad revenue.
So once again, how did I get here? I just checked my YouTube inbox and found a message from G1_Soundwave.
You might remember some people like Discotic, ProxyOfDeath, MapleExplorer, etc. These are all people you'll find in my videos here:
So I'm here now and will be around a bit, but at this point I'm not sure of my Minecraft future. I may go back to transforming FreshUniverse, or I may just stop altogether. I'm done typing now. Have a nice day...
I would have posted links to things but new members are forbidden from doing this it seems. You can find me on Planet Minecraft under dekema2 and on YouTube under DekemaMC.
FenrirLateralus Admin
Your Style : Landscaper Posts : 243 Join date : 2013-04-10 Age : 31 Location : Kennewick, WA, USA
Subject: Re: Hello and wow Thu Oct 02, 2014 8:36 pm
I remember you, long time no see! Gosh it is weird seeing my name in Admin purple of reddit.com classic in that video ha. I remember most the names you listed as well, it's funny, it's like reddit.com just broke down to two different sub communities.
While our faction all went on to a UK server called Mr. Minecraft, we all eventually left after two years because of the owner there was not on top of updates. Also blaming his mods (Us after we got to ranks that high) for his servers short comings. We then went on to here, Halcyon Minecraft. This server was created in late spring 2013.
I didn't think I would ever see other ex-reddit classic members! You are so welcome here, along with anyone you want to bring.
-Storm
Guest Guest
Subject: Re: Hello and wow Thu Oct 02, 2014 8:41 pm
StormRavage wrote:
I remember you, long time no see! Gosh it is weird seeing my name in Admin purple of reddit.com classic in that video ha. I remember most the names you listed as well, it's funny, it's like reddit.com just broke down to two different sub communities.
While our faction all went on to a UK server called Mr. Minecraft, we all eventually left after two years because of the owner there was not on top of updates. Also blaming his mods (Us after we got to ranks that high) for his servers short comings. We then went on to here, Halcyon Minecraft. This server was created in late spring 2013.
I didn't think I would ever see other ex-reddit classic members! You are so welcome here, along with anyone you want to bring.
-Storm
And I wrote all of that and forgot to mention you, wow. Thanks for the warm welcome.
The only person I've kept in good contact with from that server is Discotic really, and I talk to him probably once every few months. He's doing fine and maybe I'll tell him you guys said hi.
FenrirLateralus Admin
Your Style : Landscaper Posts : 243 Join date : 2013-04-10 Age : 31 Location : Kennewick, WA, USA
Subject: Re: Hello and wow Thu Oct 02, 2014 9:19 pm
I would greatly appreciate it if you did tell him I said hi lol. If I recall he was an Superop on reddit classic before it died.
Also bukkit I don't think is dead just yet, Dinnerbone and Grumm took it over again, and hired some people from Curse. DB said it still won't be Mojang's official API, but it might as well be at this point. I think everything will work out okay as long as Microsoft doesn't do something regrettable.
RubySparkler Forum Admin
Your Style : Architect Posts : 879 Join date : 2013-04-09 Age : 27 Location : Ponyville, Equestria
Subject: Re: Hello and wow Thu Oct 02, 2014 10:13 pm
Hey! Welcome to the server! You probably don't remember me that much as I was hanging around on the beta server more so than the classic server for reddit, but I remember you! Kinda! Lol.
Guest Guest
Subject: Re: Hello and wow Thu Oct 02, 2014 10:23 pm
Evil_Person wrote:
Hey! Welcome to the server! You probably don't remember me that much as I was hanging around on the beta server more so than the classic server for reddit, but I remember you! Kinda! Lol.
Haha I'm trying to remember, maybe somehow I will.
So who else registered here was active there is what I'm wondering...
G1_Soundwave Admin
Your Style : Shipwright Posts : 326 Join date : 2013-04-09 Age : 33 Location : Start Menu
Subject: Re: Hello and wow Thu Oct 02, 2014 10:49 pm
dekema2 wrote:
So who else registered here was active there is what I'm wondering...
ME!
FenrirLateralus Admin
Your Style : Landscaper Posts : 243 Join date : 2013-04-10 Age : 31 Location : Kennewick, WA, USA
Subject: Re: Hello and wow Fri Oct 03, 2014 12:40 am
Isomage, Cherrytits, Meowsers (sorta), sangjmoon actually came on as well recently, and I think that's it.
RubySparkler Forum Admin
Your Style : Architect Posts : 879 Join date : 2013-04-09 Age : 27 Location : Ponyville, Equestria
Subject: Re: Hello and wow Fri Oct 03, 2014 12:41 am
dekema2 wrote:
Evil_Person wrote:
Hey! Welcome to the server! You probably don't remember me that much as I was hanging around on the beta server more so than the classic server for reddit, but I remember you! Kinda! Lol.
Haha I'm trying to remember, maybe somehow I will.
So who else registered here was active there is what I'm wondering...
Nuuuu storm I was in post making the same reply when you cockblocked!
We have a skull of Thurx's head but Thurx is still MIA. . .
Guest Guest
Subject: Re: Hello and wow Fri Oct 03, 2014 1:15 am
Isomage and sangjoom sound familiar. Also I wonder what happened to GBT_7, he made these nice looking spheres back in the day...
And yes I have a head of Thurx on my server as well; past server owners I was staff on got a head in my hidden hall
RubySparkler Forum Admin
Your Style : Architect Posts : 879 Join date : 2013-04-09 Age : 27 Location : Ponyville, Equestria
Subject: Re: Hello and wow Fri Oct 03, 2014 3:37 am
I'm gonna see about trying to boot up an old HDD that I played minecraft on this weekend. I have all of the PC's I played it on, I'll try to pull up screenshots of redditclassic and redditminers, god knows I used to press F1 all the time by accident. . . being 12 (Or close to.) back then does that. lol.
Maybe that'll help us see other people we want to invite and maybe jump start your memory of some of us
Oh also Mapleexplorer used to be on our server but he quit after we banned his one friend. . . possible that Maple got himself banned. . . I honestly don't remember, the whole thing was a while ago.