Author Topic: Exilian: A History  (Read 67901 times)

Jubal

  • Megadux
    Executive Officer
  • Posts: 35495
  • Karma: 140
  • Awards Awarded for oustanding services to Exilian!
    • View Profile
    • Awards
Re: Exilian: A History
« Reply #15 on: January 20, 2012, 10:39:09 PM »
Started my chronicle.  :)
The duke, the wanderer, the philosopher, the mariner, the warrior, the strategist, the storyteller, the wizard, the wayfarer...

comrade_general

  • Guest
Re: Exilian: A History
« Reply #16 on: January 20, 2012, 10:56:16 PM »
It was that very dismounted praetorian unit that drew my interest in modding RTW. Epic. 8)

Marcus

  • Devourer of Souls
  • Megas Domestikos
    Voting Member
  • Posts: 1667
  • Karma: 10
  • I think, therefore I am.
    • View Profile
    • http://exilian.co.uk/
    • Awards
Re: Exilian: A History
« Reply #17 on: January 22, 2012, 10:19:49 AM »
Now that's a blast from the past. I might ad my own perspective soon.
"So if you meet me, have some courtesy, have some sympathy, and some taste. Use all your well learned politesse, or I'll lay your soul to waste."

Cuddly Khan

  • Silhouette in Disguise
  • Patrikios
    Voting Member
  • Posts: 7832
  • Karma: 33
  • PURGE THE BOTS!!
  • Awards Awarded for oustanding services to Exilian!
    • View Profile
    • Awards
Re: Exilian: A History
« Reply #18 on: January 23, 2012, 09:38:13 AM »
:\ Join dates of us and also people in the past would be a good addition to this.
Most effective elected official. Ever. (not counting Jubal)

He is Jubal the modder, Jubal the wayfarer, Jubal the admin. And he has come to me now, at the turning of the tide.

comrade_general

  • Guest
Re: Exilian: A History
« Reply #19 on: March 03, 2012, 12:14:28 AM »
It was that very dismounted praetorian unit that drew my interest in modding RTW. Epic. 8)

Check it out, I still have the UI I made for that guy. :P

Created: ‎Wednesday, ‎June ‎20, ‎2007, ‏‎7:38:56 PM

Jubal

  • Megadux
    Executive Officer
  • Posts: 35495
  • Karma: 140
  • Awards Awarded for oustanding services to Exilian!
    • View Profile
    • Awards
Re: Exilian: A History
« Reply #20 on: May 31, 2012, 01:59:29 PM »
Added a bit more to my chronicle and updated the timeline.  :)
The duke, the wanderer, the philosopher, the mariner, the warrior, the strategist, the storyteller, the wizard, the wayfarer...

comrade_general

  • Guest
Re: Exilian: A History
« Reply #21 on: May 31, 2012, 11:22:04 PM »
Yay! But I feel bad for not joining Exilian sooner. Then again I didn't even know it existed until Marcus sought me out for help with his little Etruria project.

Ladyhawk

  • Citizens
    Voting Member
  • Posts: 1817
  • Karma: 14
    • View Profile
    • Awards
Re: Exilian: A History
« Reply #22 on: June 02, 2012, 02:14:45 PM »
You need to add your and Comrades' triumph points Jubal!
(\__/)
(='.'=) This is Bunny. Copy and paste bunny into your
(")_(") signature to help him gain world domination


A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.

Cuddly Khan

  • Silhouette in Disguise
  • Patrikios
    Voting Member
  • Posts: 7832
  • Karma: 33
  • PURGE THE BOTS!!
  • Awards Awarded for oustanding services to Exilian!
    • View Profile
    • Awards
Re: Exilian: A History
« Reply #23 on: August 06, 2012, 06:34:05 AM »
Why we no have the move of forums? From Zetaboards to where we are today?
Most effective elected official. Ever. (not counting Jubal)

He is Jubal the modder, Jubal the wayfarer, Jubal the admin. And he has come to me now, at the turning of the tide.

Marcus

  • Devourer of Souls
  • Megas Domestikos
    Voting Member
  • Posts: 1667
  • Karma: 10
  • I think, therefore I am.
    • View Profile
    • http://exilian.co.uk/
    • Awards
Re: Exilian: A History
« Reply #24 on: December 28, 2012, 03:52:34 AM »
My perspective:

Now bear with me, I am fishing around in the murky depths of my memories for this tale...

When I started getting into modding RTW, one of the things I liked doing was downloading and augmenting small mods to the existing game. mostly it was reskins and new units, which steadily built up a version of RTW for me. I had looked at the mega mods like EB, RTR etc. and although they offered some good things, I didn't want everything they had to offer, so I mainly stuck with my hybrid RTW. As I got deeper into modding, I thought it would be a good idea to start a site for people to present mods and collaborate to combine them into their preferred combinations. In retrospect, it was a pretty dead end idea, and Mixed Mods became a small modding site, which expanded into Mount&Blade modding.

How did I set up my own site? Well, at the time, I didn't really have much of my own money, and I'm not even sure I had a bank account at the time. At HeavenGames, I met a person called Vampiric, among other names, and started talking and hanging out with him. He had his own server space and when he learned of my idea to build a mod site, he happily gave me the space to do that, and even set up the forum for me. He then stayed around as technician, while me and Jubal tottered around the world of forum running like toddlers. Vamp also helped me to build a site to accompany Mixed Mods, and it was really there that I learnt about making websites proper. Then all of a sudden, the hosting went down and Vamp was no where to be seen. Either he moved on, or something happened in real life, I don't know. At that point I lost interest and let MM sink, while focusing on real life etc.

A few months later Jubal contacted me, telling me he had restarted the site and renamed it Exilian, and even had some of the old guard with him. It was really due to his enthusiasm that I rejoined and took a staffing and technical role at Exilian. I got more and more into it, taking the staffing quite seriously, as I remember, and I'm sure Jubal had to rein me in from banning somebody on the grounds that if I did, we'd have no visitors. I dabbled in modding RTW and M&B for a while, but never really got deeply into it, so left those departments to Jubal and CG, focusing myself on the technical side of maintaining the forum and the associated site I had built with it. At this point I had my own hosting space, so had my own playground to play in, and had various little projects I was working on, none of which I finished. I guess I'm just that kind of guy. Exilian however was more serious, as it had other people using it, contributing and appreciating the work I did. In time, the limitations of Invisionfree/Zetaboards got too restrictive for me, so I set about preparing the forum to move to a forum on my own hosting. Unfortunately, there are no official tools that can transfer Zetaboards data to SMF, so I found a third party tool that would download all the information to my computer in database format, at which point I could re upload it to SMF. Accounts, threads, forums and posts would all be preserved, not bad considering the major lack of compatibility between platforms. Seems the middle man has some use after all. Unfortunately I had missed the fact that we had several private passworded forums, which the software couldn't access data from for obvious reasons, so merely skipped them. Not too much of a problem as those forums could have their stuff transferred manually, even if it was a bit tedious. The changing of the forums for me was an interesting time, a test, if you will, of whether I could actually do it without major cock ups, and as things settled down, it seemed I could.

However, not long after, I was losing interest again, as my real life activities changed and I lost interest in web development and technical computing in general. I also saw that my hosting was leeching from my bank account, and although the money going out was small, if I had little interest in maintaining Exilian, what point was there in me paying for it? It was at that point that I decided to resign, and hand over technical duties, ownership and thus payment, to Exilian.

The nice thing with this particular case is that, although it has all the hallmarks of me having a lack of commitment and easily losing interest, I felt good about what I had done, as Exilian had taken on a life of its own and could survive and thrive quite happily without my inattentive stewardship. Now you've probably been reading this and thinking,  'what, we were nothing more than an idle experiment?!?' and probably thinking of me as a pretty armadilloty person. But as I have said, it's not the case here. To me, this is not something I have abandoned and left to die, but something I have worked on for years, and now wish to move on from. I love this place, the people here, the hijinks, and the mods and other content, and wish it to continue. But I also knew it couldn't really go anywhere fast with an inattentive site owner who didn't want to continue and pay the bills, so I stood aside to let others with more enthusiasm fill the void, and here it is, still going strong.

Despite all I've said, I love this place, and enjoy coming back once in a while to see how the place is doing, and it's doing fine. This is mainly due to Jubal doing most of the work, even when I was on board, and pressing forward to build the community, which has shown results. Bravo, Jubal, and bravo to all the staff here that keep the place running day by day, you're great! :D
"So if you meet me, have some courtesy, have some sympathy, and some taste. Use all your well learned politesse, or I'll lay your soul to waste."

Silver Wolf

  • Megas Domestikos
    Voting Member
  • Posts: 4744
  • Karma: 42
    • View Profile
    • Awards
Re: Exilian: A History
« Reply #25 on: December 28, 2012, 04:10:39 AM »
Honestly, I had no clue this.
I've heard of the Exilian's predecessor, Mixed mods. I just never heard the whole story with so much background.
Thanks for sharing this!
It's our book of creation.




I plan to revive these boards a bit in the future.
I haven't mentioned this before (didn't want to raise the expectations), but I'm secretly brewing a mod for M&B 2. Full steam ahead, in order to be prepared and release this mod in a shortest time possible.
Already piled up an astonishing amount of various resources. We're talking about 600-800 MB here, out of which 150MB are game ready material made or compiled during the course of last few weeks.
« Last Edit: December 28, 2012, 01:52:55 PM by Silver Wolf »
"Less of a young professional - more of an ancient amateur. But frankly, I'm an absolute dream."

Jubal

  • Megadux
    Executive Officer
  • Posts: 35495
  • Karma: 140
  • Awards Awarded for oustanding services to Exilian!
    • View Profile
    • Awards
Re: Exilian: A History
« Reply #26 on: December 28, 2012, 01:19:53 PM »
That sounds very exciting. I am officially very excited.  :)

Added the History according to Marcus, be good to get a few other recollections of the site down too if anyone wants to add them.

Also added Chapter Three of my grand history, dealing with the birth of the citizenry and the path to the first constitution. The next chapter will deal with our early mod projects, the Exilian Games of 2008, and Wibulnubniblia, I think.
The duke, the wanderer, the philosopher, the mariner, the warrior, the strategist, the storyteller, the wizard, the wayfarer...

Dimos

  • Patrikios
    Voting Member
  • Posts: 2184
  • Karma: 18
    • View Profile
    • Awards
Re: Exilian: A History
« Reply #27 on: December 29, 2012, 02:48:56 PM »
And here's my idea of how the list should be (and as posted on the High Court). We should thank Jubal for all the info he gathered and all the work he continuously does at the forums...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Team member of: Europe 1080 / Southern Realms / Britannia 1100 Gold

Jubal

  • Megadux
    Executive Officer
  • Posts: 35495
  • Karma: 140
  • Awards Awarded for oustanding services to Exilian!
    • View Profile
    • Awards
Re: Exilian: A History
« Reply #28 on: March 26, 2013, 11:32:23 PM »
I should get to writing the next part at some stage...
The duke, the wanderer, the philosopher, the mariner, the warrior, the strategist, the storyteller, the wizard, the wayfarer...

Jubal

  • Megadux
    Executive Officer
  • Posts: 35495
  • Karma: 140
  • Awards Awarded for oustanding services to Exilian!
    • View Profile
    • Awards
Re: Exilian: A History
« Reply #29 on: December 30, 2013, 09:35:39 PM »
TWO MORE CHAPTERS DONE

Though there are more bits/sources I should maybe add to the Wibulnubniblia one.
The duke, the wanderer, the philosopher, the mariner, the warrior, the strategist, the storyteller, the wizard, the wayfarer...