I thought you should know...
 

Since the last time I logged in, I've learned the true meaning of pain and regret. I've laughed and cried so much over the years. Gamingforce was a source of magic I'll never forget.

I can't imagine how true that is for many of the members here.

I hope there was more laughter and good times than pain and regret for you.

Heya Sass.

Yesterday, I called an old friend who I'd met here on the boards, then attended a GFF meet with, then became room mates with and got hired together at multiple jobs. We hadn't spoken in 15 years.

For us, it was as if time stood still. Gave me lot's of closure.
Seeing you here adds to that.

Wow, this place is like a time capsule, but I'm glad it's still here!

Miss this kind of communication. Something about it that modern social media just doesn't reflect or capture correctly. Not quite like logging in and doing a music contest, or playing a round of D&D by post, or just seeing what the community's been writing about.

I miss talking to other geeks 'n' gamers on the computer.

This place still emails me on my birthday and apparently I haven't logged in for 12 years wow.

Did anyone ever think to set up a Discord or something?

Yes.

https://discord.gg/WrrU3snB

Dead link!

Gotta make those links set to not expire. Unless...

Here’s an up to date invite link, set to not expire:

https://discord.gg/fr2VEF6E7P

Cheers all, hope to see you there!

I'm interested in joining a geriatric GFF Discord server too if it's still around.

DM me at: starman_037

Logging back in after 16 years feels like going back in time, so much has changed especially considering my last post was around the time of my first date. I'm happy I see a few familiar faces that have checked in over the years, I hope I hear more from you all again as GFF was a large part of my early adulthood.

If there's a fresh Discord link (since the other is expired), let me know. Or any other non-Facebook places GFF alums congregate.

So many years, so many things happened and yet, this was the only magical place where I truly felt at home.

The discord invites posted here are down. I know it is futile, but can anyone post a working one? Before this place goes down forever?

Invite expires in 7 days. Good luck, evilboris! =U

https://discord.gg/wce622ww

You sure that one works? It got me into a single room, where I told that I'm the last poster from this thread, then the whole thing disappeared from the window before I could reply and now the invite no longer works. Didn't even get a chance to say much of anything other than that I used to post here back.

Were you ManoNegra, evilboris? You were put into rando-quarantine to determine if you were a person that should be allowed into the discord. You didn't answer folks questions. Twice they asked who you were on the forums and you didn't give a username at all. I think you got kicked or banned since you weren't answering questions sufficiently. Do you know anyone from the forums still that could vouch for you? Do you know magi? If you do then try having him plead your case.

Reason to not just post and write here? Is Discord just constant fun times?

Only thing I've been able to figure out is the ~400 "guests" constantly crawling the forum. No to minute long page loads.

Seems like the scrape-bot wave washed over everything. If some of the constant server abuse could be toned down, probably be relatively responsive.

And the obvious Tombstone situation. Need Friendly Zombie Thriller Island or similar. Course, only ref ends up being Scooby Doo Zombie Island. Maybe Isle of the Undead (cool cover at at least) or Ravenloft with "mysterious islands of undead horror and hilarity float among the fog" (D&D was kinda popular)

Otherwise, actually happily surprised it still works, and still one of the better structured, formatted forums.

Yeah, bots be crawling constantly across the Internet wherever they can find anything. Some websites handle it better than others. Currently I'm seeing 375 guests. No way they aren't all bots.

Did you want a new invite link to the discord server, Araes? I see that you might be an old friend of Rychord's.

Who's even keeping the lights on at this point?

re: Discord, was not especially looking for a link or anything. Tried a few times, and kept having the failed link error, back when folks were actually posting them somewhat frequently.

If so, probably just send it PM or something. My life appears cursed with bots everywhere.

Frankly, reluctant, just because I appear to have a horrible bot wave that does very little other than obliterate and ruin almost every community I join. Now I just write on forums that are mostly quiet. Very little to steal or ruin.

Here, D&D forums, /., MtG forums, HN, Stackoverflow, almost every journalism site. Became some kind of aggro lure for griefer bots unfortunately. Massive LLM/scrapebot shitwaddery. Don't especially want to infect your discord if it's working. Kinda like being a plague carrier...

(edit: HN still kinda work cause lots of money involved and really lightweight format, just lots of scrape and marketing. Not much to read. 100's or 1000's of scrapes a second doesn't do quite as much when it's almost plaintext.)

Earlier comment was mostly just a general question to those who happen to read here.
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re: Rychord. Maybe? Recognize the handle, maybe D&D, or Civ 3/4 games, or the music contest possibly. Miss the music contest. Tough criticism, yet a lot of interesting music got floated. (Note: Found somebody archived our contest results on Github from GamingForce Best Song Contest editions 2 to 15 (2004-2017))

Unfortunately, last personal activity before starting to do my posts occasionally here again was back in 2009-2010. ~20 years is a long time.
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edit: aside question: Anybody actually have the forum code in a form that's distributable?

It's pretty amazing forum code. Lots and lots of features. It's just really heavy on pageloads.

Be cool to turn it into something that was way more lightweight per load. No images. Near plaintext (at least for guests, and people who choose that browse option). Tried downloading my own articles and 25 posts worked out to ~200KB for the text/HTML. I write a lot, yet a similar HN page with ~25 comments works out to ~50KB. Tiny.

GFF piggybacks off of a particular server that hosts something with higher priority. I'm not sure who funds that server these days.

Sent a PM your way with the discord link that will last 7 days.

No need to worry. Anyone that joins has to pass through quarantine and manually allowed to the rest of the discord.


Oh rad! :rad:

Yeah, forums have been around for ages and the age of social media and other platforms made it take a nose dive in activity so that gap isn't too unusual around here.

This particular iteration of the forums is old enough to be an adult. Not quite old enough to drink yet I think.

Yeah, you'd have to consult with someone on the discord who a) has access and b) would actually want to take the time and energy to look at it. I've tried to use the built-in backup/archive tools for the journal and PMs and they seem to be broken. Possibly out-dated bobo code or not enough dedicated server cycles to make them function properly. Whatever the actual explanation is it would be nice to have an archive.