Thanks

[invaderzim48]

Through some manner of strange nostalgia I find myself on familiar digital shores once more. Heh that took time and effort from a CS major you'd all had better appreciate it.

I'm not sure what compels me to come here and write this today, but I do know that IV played a direct role in my life ever since I found that green boxed copy of Darwinia. Before I even had internet access at home I can remember staying late after elementary school (I guess you guy's would call it primary?) endlessly browsing these forums desperately trying to find out everything I could on Darwinia and how to use that damn level editor, or trying to figure out just what in the hell was Uplink all about. The school I went to had dial-up still and I can vividly remember 'downloading' Uplink a piece at a time and saving it onto a tiny usb drive; I think it took me a straight week to pirate it (I own it now legitimately of course ).

Uplink and Darwinia and later Multiwinia's set dressing fascinated me. I attribute my current IT career to them, those games sparked my curiosity about the machine I was playing them on, of course (much to my infinite disappointment) there aren't little stick figures fighting a battle to the death inside each machine, but nonetheless, they are directly responsible for my interest in computers at such a young age which eventually led to the career I now have. I will forever hold out hope for a darwinia 2, or a Multiwinia level editor, even if my own attempts to create such with the source code proved fruitless.

Once again thanks, I owe IV a debt of gratitude, and $20 for that pirated copy of uplink.

P.S. The key-chain and poster were a nice touch.

[dr.phees]

Yeah, IV were a group I had major respect for and I followed them through all ups and down that a small game developer company can go through. I also understand selling Prison Architect, while I think, giving Steam or GOG keys to the player who had already bought it upfront would have been a friendly touch... (In my case: I bought every single game (except Scanner Sombre, because no linux) at least twice)

What I don't get is IVs turn to facebook at a point the whole world started talking about leaving it. I mean - IV! The 'last of the bedroom programmers' turns to facebook! What a mess! They don't even copy pasta their news from there (I have to guess here, since I don't visit facebook - or they are as quiet over there as well). Due to the underdog status, I would expect many fans to be of the no-facebook persuasion. At least all IV fans that I know are on the strong indie side of the web.

I don't want to just rant here. I love all IV games. They where always different, always timeless, cool, and had a great game flow without being grindy. But IV lost a lot of my respect with that weird facebook-only move, shutting out a lot of their fan base. Maybe there was a reason to cut the ties with their old community, I don't know what happened there. Maybe they just don't want to develop anything indie anymore. All that would be fine by me, but I would love to hear a bit from IV. I would even respect if they closed down for good, maybe told us a bit about the decision and reverted their page to a purely minimum support and download page for people who had already bought their games. Or dish out Steam or GOG keys and close down. But this facebook luring?
What a shame.

[Colytic]

I'm not sure what IV's attitude to the forums is now (and I have asked). They more or less stopped engaging here around 2012.

To be fair, the original community (from Uplink, Darwinia...) had largely moved on by then. I'd guess those people are preoccupied with careers and families now. DEFCON had its own subculture, but that also effectively died in 2016 for similar reasons.

I'm still the caretaker here, out of respect for IV and everyone who used to post. But I don't know what it's for.

[MMonsTerCo]

Yo, this thread's got me feeling all the nostalgia for Darwinia and Uplink. The vibes from those games were unreal, right?