History of Fallout Studios

From FSDB

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This article is a description of the most important events in the history of Fallout Studios and its predecessors, E-Studios and C&C Reneclips.

Contents 1 2002 and 2003 2 2004 3 2005 4 2006 5 2007 6 2008 7 2009 8 2010

2002 and 2003

Fallout Studios was originally called C&C Reneclips, and it was started around 2002 as a Command & Conquer news and resource site by Chrizz (called ChrisV80 at the time). It was hosted by C&C Guild and was located at 'reneclips.cncguild.net'. The site originally had very little activity, as it was mostly a simple project run by Chrizz alone. However in October 2003, the site gained a forum running on IPB 1.3.

2004

In 2004, a new domain at 'www.cncreneclips.com' was bought. The forums were initially rather inactive, mostly due to lack of a core userbase that would help attract more users and enticing them to stay. In April 2004, The_Hunter joined and was made an administrator the day after, and ShockWave was hosted at the site to start work. As ShockWave grew, so did the C&C Reneclips userbase, although activity was still restricted to a small group of users that visited the forum frequently. The forums included the 'General' category (later renamed 'Community') with General Discussion, Announcements, Spammy Yummy Discussion and Artwork, as well as several more forums that since disappeared.

• Forums in January 2004
• Forums in November 2004

2005

Before the release of ShockWave 0.8 in March 2005 the forums had still changed little. But after the release, the amount of active users started to grow faster and was now in the several hundreds. The forum underwent two skin switches in a few months, the latter of which was the E-Studios blue skin that is still used today.

The forum structure was however rather haphazard, and in April 2005 CodeCat (called ImmoMan back then), at the time still just a friend of Chrizz and The_Hunter, offered to help restructure the forums a bit so that they were easier to access and had less empty forums. As a result he was made administrator to help set up the new forums. Deathstrike was made an administrator shortly after. This restructuring formed the base for the forums as they still exist today. The 'CNCRE' (later 'E-Studios') category was created, as were forums such as Announcements and Activities and Game Discussion, and hosted modification forums were moved onto the index page.

In May 2005, the forums got broken into and hacked. While little data was lost, this prompted an upgrade to IPB 2.0 for the added security and features. In October 2005 the Staff group was formed as a separate entity.

• Forums in February 2005
• Forums in April 2005

2006

Each release of ShockWave had brought more users to the site, and by now it was the site's flagship project. In January 2006 the forum passed the 1000 user mark. Some progress was made in terms of forum structure, with forums like Entertainment (March) and Political Discussion (April) being created. In May, Political Discussion was renamed Deep End to allow for non-political philosophical discussions. The Creativity Centre was also created, containing the old Artwork forum as well as the new Writings. Technology and Science was created in June, initially with the Warfare Technology, Computer Hardware/Software, and Science subforums.

In June 2006, the site also gained its own IRC channel, #estudios. It started off as CodeCat's pet project, and was advertised on the forums from the beginning. Although initially slow because of most users' lack of experience with IRC, it gained a surprise following in its first weeks when the forums were brought down again. With nowhere else to go, those that were able joined the IRC channel, making it a 'home from home' until the forums were brought back. Afterwards, the forums were upgraded to IPB 2.1. The Serial Spammers forum was also created at this time, to separate spam games from non-recurring spam topics.

In September, Deathstrike left the community because of real life issues. Prophet of the Pimps was made administrator as a replacement.

• Forums in February 2006 (skin missing)
• Forums in July 2006

2007

2007 started with the departure of Chrizz, the site's founder, in February. He had become increasingly less active over the months before, and announced that he would be resigning his position because of real life, work and friends. The site's ownership was formally handed over to The_Hunter in a final goodbye message. [1] He also announced that the E-Studios name would remain his property, although the site would be allowed to use it until the remaining leadership could come up with a replacement name.

In March, the #estudios IRC channel was revamped with a Java-based client, which allowed users to join the channel without deeper knowledge of IRC or even a separate IRC client.

In April the Deep End forum, originally intended for political and mature discussion, was shut down. Staff found that discussions in the forum were not as controlled or mature as they'd hoped to be, with a lot of infighting between members in some sensitive topics. The Philosopher's Corner forum was set up as a replacement, where only non-political discussions would be allowed. In July the Creativity Centre was split up, turning Artwork into a category and putting Writings directly into the 'Community' category. In October the Code block forum was created, to provide a place for people seeking help with programming or website building, as well as to provide a location for tutorials and such.

In September, Blaat85, who had been staff for a long time, was promoted to administrator. It was however short-lived, as personal issues made her decide, in November, to lay down her adminship not only at E-Studios but also at its neighbouring community Revora. Her departure was never officially announced, but nonetheless noticed by members.

2008

2008 started with the promotion of Comr4de to administrator, soon after this Rayburn and Warboss Nooka ended their time as staff. This coincided with the promotion of both Dauth and Wizard, it was seen by the members as replacing the two elder members but was intended to compliment the staff. Two months later in April Overdose was promoted to staff followed by E.V.E.'s promotion to administrator in June.

In 2008 the forums passed several milestones including, 400,000 posts and 500,000 posts and 3,000 members. The timing for 400,000 posts and 3,000 members were close together and thus were celebrated as one [2].

On 1 October, the forums underwent a major revamp, dubbed Ground Zero. As the name E-Studios was still owned and used by Chrizz, the original founder, it had been inevitable that the site would have to change names sometime in the future. It was decided that a large mystery campaign would be launched leading up to the planned date. Starting 26 days beforehand, announcements across the forums displayed X days till Ground Zero. On Ground Zero itself, the site was transformed from the old E-Studios into the new Fallout Studios, which would follow a theme of nuclear fallout and energy. The new slogan for the site became The Energy Within, emphasizing both the creative aspect of the community and the nuclear energy aspect of the new theme.

Ground Zero also saw the release of the Fallout Studios Data Bunker, a wiki aimed at the community which anyone could make changes to. The wiki had been in the works from the beginning of 2008, and when it was released it already contained many pages that had been written by several modification teams and Fallout Studios staff. Additionally, the forum received a completely new forum skin named Fallout Orange (created by Wizard), which had an orange-themed feel along with pictures of nuclear power plants. This new skin also became the default skin for the forum for a while, replacing the old E-Studios Blue skin. The old skin was not removed however, but was slightly edited with new icons and a new banner to become Fallout Blue (created by Bob). The membership of Fallout Studios later voted by an extremely narrow margin to make the blue skin the default once again.

Since the closure of the Deep End, politics had been banned on the forums, however after a long discussion by the moderating team the Political Area was opened. It was the brain child of Dauth and Wizard who have taken the role of Political Area leaders complete with a set of rules and punishments dedicated to the Political Area.

After some delay, on 27 November the completely renewed Fallout Studios site was launched. Created by Bob, it was styled to fit the new Fallout Blue theme, and offered several modding resources and a news feed from day one. Towards the end of the year Prophet of the Pimps stepped down as administrator. AJ for his consistent work on the Fallout Studios Data Bunker was promoted to FSDB:Moderator.

2009

2009 began with questions regarding new skins for the forums and a replacement for the ageing Soviet Skin was decided upon. Later in January The_Hunter shocked everyone by announcing his retirement from administrator and the promotion of Dauth in his place. As a result of this Stinger and CommanderJB were promoted to staff from global moderator. In March Comr4de announced the creation of Team Fortress Tuesdays, a weekly event where a number of members gather for games of Team Fortress 2.

In May the Fallout Studios Leadership decided to merge the Staff and Administrator groups, giving the forum 9 administrators. However, following the departure of SWR from the forums on the 9th of June, Overdose, E.V.E., Comr4de & Stinger resigned their positions as administrators leaving just 5.

On 20 June, the entire community was taken down for maintenance. The resulting downtime was used for some much-needed upgrades and moving around. After it was over, Fallout Studios was officially switched over to its new domain at falloutstudios.net. The old domain was redirected to the new one for the time being, until it expired naturally. Shortly after, on the 24th of June, the questions surrounding the ageing Soviet Skin were answered when Wizard finally revealed the replacement, Fallout Red, to the public.

The Fallout Studios Gaming Revolution was announced on the 28th of June providing the community with the Fallout Studios Game Servers and a the Fallout Studios prize fund for competitions.

On the 20th of July Fallout Studios was rocked by the untimely death of CommanderJB, condolences were made in a dedicated thread and CommanderJB was awarded the rank of Fallen Brother.

2010