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| Trump |
  Posted 28th Jun 2005 2:30am |
Retired MCPO
L4Y Member
Post 100 / 607
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I was just wondering what drives someone like Garner to put up alot of his hard earned cash and more than like all his spare time to keep a site like this. Obviously, he must have a great love for gaming, but it doesn't seem like he'd have alot of opportunity to game himself trying to maintain a site this big. I guess it must be the proverbial "labor (labour for y'all Europeans) of love." Kudos to you, Garner, for whatever reason that drives you.  I think a biography or history of L4Y page or soupe would be a great idea. |
TRUMP'S MAPS
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; wisdom and instruction fools despise. |
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| Molodiets |
Posted 28th Jun 2005 5:52am |
L4Y Member
Post 400 / 2687
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| Quoting Trump | | I think a biography or history of L4Y page or soupe would be a great idea. |
| Quoting Blue_Fish |
Site History
Levels4you.com was the brain child of first year university student (Garner, then going by the handle "Garner_1") studying Internet Computing. After seeing the amount of money his then roommate made via advertising banners on his website, he thought it'd be the ideal way to supplement his student loan. Ideas were tossed around with his then computer illiterate brother (Blue_Fish) in mid October, and the domain name - www.levels4you.com/ was registered on 11th November 2000. levels4you.com opened its doors on 28th November, with just 2 staff, and supporting only 2 games; Descent 3 and Delta Force 2.
At this point, the website was entirely made of html, which made updating the site very labour intensive! It was hosted on a virtual host machine, costing just $25 a month. After a week or two, a contact Garner had made through his days/years in the Descent 3 community asked how he was updating the site. After a brief chat, Garner was converted to PHP by a fellow member of the Descent 3 community, Tricord.
Shortly after, the site started to use PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) in adding new files, although it was only responsible for creating the html pages which were saved and not created dynamically. This version of L4Y became known as MkII.
Knowing Dead Ghost from the DF2 scene, he was quickly enlisted to help as a trustworthy and hardworking staff member for the DF2 section.
Our third game, Delta Force: Land Warrior was soon added - Garner shipping a copy from the States especially for Blue_Fish. 6 months later, Unreal Tournament was added, bringing the total amount of games supported by www.levels4you.com to 4.
The site was transferred onto Tricord's host in Belgium, which was connected to his university network.
Garner joined Tricord in creating redfactionplanet.com early on in May, 2001. Tricord had created a File & Content management system (Unified) for use with www.planetdescent.com/ while it was owned by Gamespy. Tricord was the administrator, while Garner was a staff member. Unified seemed the logical way to run RFP, and seeing as how Garner had helped beta test it, a copy was procured.
L4Y (now on MkIII) was re-launched on 28th May 2001, using Unified Version 1.6
After 6 months on Tricord's server, Garner bought our current server - a dedicated machine based in Florida, on a 45 Megabit line.
Over the next year, we added Total Annihilation, Tribes 2, Ghost Recon and Operation Flashpoint. TA and T2 were soon removed due to non-participation from staff members responsible for those sections. Operation Flashpoint, with DG as Section Lead really took the site to a whole new level - literally taking the site from 100's to 1000's of hits per day. When popular levels were added to the site, the "Last 24 Hours..." tab in the left hand navbar, was often seen in the thousands of Megabytes.
On 17th March 2002, RFP was merged into L4Y, bringing the total number of games supported at that point to 8.
Genxer, who was a staff member on RFP took on section lead for Red Faction and was soon supported by NoClanFrank. With the introduction of Red Faction, the forums really took off - hence why Red Faction has 3 separate forums :] With the Operation Flashpoint downloads starting to slow down, Red Faction more than filled the gap. The Hive Mod and Hive 1.2 proved to be very popular files, but at only ~22MB, the server was coping just fine.
Then Neo Cairo Beta 5 for Unreal Tournament was released. At 94MB each, the size wasn't a problem, but the popularity of the file was unexpected! Downloads hit 20GIGS per 24 hours. The site (and file in particular) was advertised in Gamespy Daily - Gamespys own newsletter. We were an official mirror for Neo Cairo Beta 5 for a day, but the site was struggling to cope. The file was removed from the site .... and re-added a week later when the rush had died down.
In the first week of January 2002, Garner purchased an alternative domain - L4You.net. This was to save time for you all hosts that get pestered where you get your custom maps from! He originally wanted L4Y.com, but the company that owned it wanted $1900 for it! The following week, Garner and I were skiing on company funds and he mentioned at least once per day how astounded he was!
Red Faction 2 was announced by Volition, and a huge multiplayer following was pre-empted by the Staff. A section was created, with trailers and screenshots added... but then the disappointing news that there was to be no Multiplayer for Red Faction 2 followed. The section remains today, in the hope that a 3rd party will be willing to create the Multiplayer mode!
Most recently, UT2k3 (Section Lead - Mono), C&C: Generals, DF: Task Force Dagger have been added to the site, and are growing day-by-day.
DG's brother (Psiborg) very generously mirrored the Red Faction files, easing the strain on the server. Props! Major Props!!
Our section for and DF: Blackhawk Down (Section Lead - Tekron-x) is in the making and will officially open soon!
Other games are currently being considered for L4Y support, and we are always welcome to suggestions for what you would like to see :]
As of writing this history (8th April 2003), L4Y has had 7,803,695 page views and 1,133,155 downloads! We currently have 3580 members - only a very small percentage are active on the forums though!
Levels4you.com is extremely proud to be a non-cheating website! We actively abhore all forms of multiplayer cheating, and will not host any files that can be used to disrupt other players enjoyment of a multiplayer game. But, as Genxer once pointed out, "a bit of god-mode in Single player never hurts anyone!"
A very big thank you to all the staff L4Y has had in the past 29 months! And also to those who inhabit the forums, and all those that are downloading the files we host! None of our achievements would have been possible if it wasn't for any of you... or the mappers who graciously let us host their files - what a great way to get exposure as a mapper; to let a proven map site host your first attempts!
-Blue_Fish (& Garner) 8th April 2003 |
To be continued...
http://web.archive.org/web/20040119114918/www.levels4you.com/forum/view.l4y?view=57505 |
| spoilsport |
Modified Jun 28th, 01:45pm by Molodiets |
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| Johnny_Suave |
Posted 28th Jun 2005 7:27am |
L4Y Member
Post 390 / 1154
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Good call Trump!
THANK YOU GARNER!!!!    |
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NoClanFrank  |
Posted 28th Jun 2005 8:26am |  |
Post 1100 / 5840
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molodiets I thought I was the only one that still had that essay.
Trump to answer your question: IMO I think he is crazy. |
| >Click Here< If You Don't Have a Social Life :/ |
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| Johnny_Suave |
Posted 28th Jun 2005 9:03am |
L4Y Member
Post 394 / 1154
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Why is this in the shop forum? |
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| DG |
Posted 28th Jun 2005 9:16am | |
Post 333 / 700
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ugh, 4.5 years ago. I'm such a l4y fossil  |
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Beatonator  |
Posted 28th Jun 2005 9:24am |
Post 512 / 3716
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Ughhh 35 Years ago... Im such a fossil. (check my profile)
| Quoting Blue_Fish | | we are always welcome to suggestions for what you would like to see :] |
I want to see Blue_Fish on here
Would be soo cool to see him around again. |
Trying to find old players. Anyone about? Drop me a PM or reply to this thread:
>Link< (or head over to RFrun.net's comment section!) |
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Mostertman  |
Posted 28th Jun 2005 9:34am |
Post 335 / 2820
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That really needs updating |
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| Trump |
Posted 28th Jun 2005 12:11pm |
Retired MCPO
L4Y Member
Post 101 / 607
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Thanks Molo for breaking that out.
| Quoting NoClanFrank | molodiets I thought I was the only one that still had that essay.
Trump to answer your question: IMO I think he is crazy. |
Insanity must be a part of it to put up with all the guff he gets. I'm just glad he does it.
| Quoting Johnny_Suave | | Why is this in the shop forum? |
I dunno. I put it in the Lounge (I thought). |
TRUMP'S MAPS
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; wisdom and instruction fools despise. |
Modified Jun 28th, 12:19pm by Trump |
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| Garner |
Posted 28th Jun 2005 12:34pm | |
Post 996 / 4125
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I'm still asking myself this very question. I've yet to find an answer.
| Quote | | After seeing the amount of money his then roommate made via advertising banners on his website, he thought it'd be the ideal way to supplement his student loan |
Has yet to work, money has always gone the other way. In the 4.5 years the site has been up I think its currently at around the -$4000 mark once donations and banner revenue has been taken into consideration (cant remember exactly as spreadsheet of financial data is at home)
The Lounge forum is available from all areas of the site, if you create a topic in the Shop Lounge forum its still viewable on each site but its marked as being in the 'Shop' forum. Its not something I intend to keep |
"Science is this extraordinary transnational, transcultural, trans-everything language which is the only way to discover Truth and its regrettable that billions are still stuck in the Middle Ages believing the crap propagated by Popes and priests..."
- Peter Atkins |
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| SkipRat |
Posted 28th Jun 2005 6:36pm | |
Post 293 / 3024
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| Quoting DG | | ugh, 4.5 years ago. I'm such a l4y fossil |
heh |
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