Re: Reviving Ultra Power, old servers and history
So the oldest version of UltraPower with server list was something like 0.22 or something like that. Looking back at it, I probably should've just left it at that and not touched it again. It'd probably have been better for everyone's sanity. But no. So that version was a topdown style shooter with 4 or 5 weapons, you could run around and kill people and that was about it. It had a couple of interesting things, like I made a bot once upon a time that would target a player and chase after him and if you killed him you'd get something, a level or something, I don't really remember. But after that was version 1.0 through 1.1 I think where I was working on reducing lag, increasing stability, which I worked on until version 2.5 or something like that, where after that I started to make stupid decisions. The first was to make the game paid. And then 3 versions later, make it unpaid again. Which was a very common thing for me. But version 2.5 was the last 2D version of UP before the rewrite, and that version was kinda cool, as it had a map with a safe zone and a few other things. When version 4.0 was released, it was the first platforming version, and that whole version from 4.0 to 5.8 in my opinion was the best versions of UP, because it had the most things to do. With updates came things like the ability to build on the map, al be it kind of very messily, new voices, and just general stability improvements. Version 6.0 saw the rewrite of UP. This version attempted to take UP back to it's 2D days, and failed spectacularly. So when version 6.1 came around, it was converted back to platformer where it stayed until EOL. Version 7.0 saw the introduction of things that were all removed in 8.0. Titles, levels and a few other things. Version 8.0 was where the real mess started. The map system was converted to Sam's map system, and an inventory provided by Sam based on the STW inventory code was added. At the time this code had the permission of Sam to be used. So starting with version 9.0, Damien Blunderfield (Pendleton at the time), entered the project and planned to do a major reworking of the game's internals. This of course never happened. After version 9.1, X0 AKA Colton Hill entered the project. You can see how this is turning into a huge mess, right? Yeah. So a few versions later, I decided I didn't trust Colton and I didn't like the changes he had been making to the game. It had basically turned into a sounds playing, dev ruled ultra shit fest. So I removed him from the project to which he got angered by and threw the source to Ivan Soto and they planned to make their own version. But instead, Ivan Soto decided to leak the source code to the entire internet, causing the ultimate demise of the game and the beginning of the clones.
After this, there was a 2 or 3 year long battle of killing clones and banning clones, to which eventually I decided that I didn't really care about it anymore and so I just said, Sam if you really want to continue with this I'll just transfer the rights to you so you have full control.
Fastforward a year. I was frustrated at a time because I saw people just genuinly curious about games like UP and TK that just wanted to play and they had no idea of it's history or even about the clones and were being judged and treated harshly for it. I had the idea to host the official UP version with the server so people could do so without worrying or getting killed for playing a clone, and I'll admit I acted quickly and went back on my word which is a very stupid and shitty thing to do. I'd appologize but I know it'd fall on deaf ears, and the damage is already done.
But yeah, that's basically the history of UP in a nutshell.
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