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Wow, didn't expect to see @xfennec pop up on hacker news while drinking my coffee this morning! I don't know if he'll see this, to be honest didn't know he was

Wow, didn't expect to see @xfennec pop up on hacker news while drinking my coffee this morning! I don't know if he'll see this, to be honest didn't know he was still doing things - but this person basically got me into programming and game development-I really can't believe it. xfennec (and some friends?) I think built a game engine called Raydium, and one of their games called Mania Drive-a Track Mania clone-got distributed with OpenSuse installation CDs back in the day. When I was just like 12 years old, my dad installed that on the family computer and it was all we had, Mania Drive was one of the coolest games on there. Me and my siblings played that for literally days and months on end, making crazy levels we couldn't beat without knowing every turn. It was a huge part of our childhood. Their game engine was in C with PHP scripting, I remember posting some levels to their forums and asking, in retrospect super dumb, questions and they were so polite and friendly. I remember us joking at the time that the French seemed like these god-like game developers, it had such a profound impact on us, I even wrote about it last year and linked a video of Mania Drive first[0]. I went on to learn Python and then lower-level languages as a result. I'm not sure I'd be coding today without them, to be honest. Sorry it's off-topic, just really blown away to see a username like that pop up in my feed. Really goes to show that kindness + some cool open source software can have profound effect on people. [0] https://devlog.hexops.com/2021/increasing-my-contribution-to-zig-to-200-a-month/ https://devlog.hexops.com/2021/increasing-my-contribution-to...

ktm5j 3y ago
I love stuff like this, thanks for sharing!!
dilap 3y ago
Such a great story. This part made me lol: > // Don't remove this print statement. Game will crash! :-)
xfennec 3y ago
Xfennec here, thank you so much for this message. ManiaDrive was a small game made with a bunch of friends, I'm so glad it had an impact on you. I'm now a dad, and it makes me very emotional to read this. Thanks again.
- evilos 3y ago
  Things like this is what makes the internet feel so human sometimes!
  - noir_lord 3y ago
    The internet used to feel so human most of the time back in mid-90's because there was somehow an awareness that the person you where talking to was a human in a way we've lost. Those where the days you could email a webmaster and get a response, when you hung around with like minded people in self-organised communities around a thing that interested them - like reddit without the massive negativity and astroturfing. The modern internet (or web really) has lost much of that flavour, there are a few places that still maintain it with anonymity - HN is one, specific subreddits, the IRC server I've hung around forever, I've friends on there going back more than 15 years, we where all early 20's computer geeks, now a lot of them are married with kids or have kids on the way - I know a tonne of details about them personally and sometimes don't know their real name. I do see some echoes of that world in some modern platforms (discord for specific games (in my case Arma) captures some of it).
yobert 3y ago
I'd never heard of that game. Trying it now and it's great fun. Really enjoying the soundtrack.

ktm5j 3y ago

I love stuff like this, thanks for sharing!!

dilap 3y ago

Such a great story. This part made me lol: > // Don't remove this print statement. Game will crash! :-)

xfennec 3y ago

Xfennec here, thank you so much for this message. ManiaDrive was a small game made with a bunch of friends, I'm so glad it had an impact on you. I'm now a dad, and it makes me very emotional to read this. Thanks again.

evilos 3y ago
Things like this is what makes the internet feel so human sometimes!
- noir_lord 3y ago
  The internet used to feel so human most of the time back in mid-90's because there was somehow an awareness that the person you where talking to was a human in a way we've lost. Those where the days you could email a webmaster and get a response, when you hung around with like minded people in self-organised communities around a thing that interested them - like reddit without the massive negativity and astroturfing. The modern internet (or web really) has lost much of that flavour, there are a few places that still maintain it with anonymity - HN is one, specific subreddits, the IRC server I've hung around forever, I've friends on there going back more than 15 years, we where all early 20's computer geeks, now a lot of them are married with kids or have kids on the way - I know a tonne of details about them personally and sometimes don't know their real name. I do see some echoes of that world in some modern platforms (discord for specific games (in my case Arma) captures some of it).

yobert 3y ago

I'd never heard of that game. Trying it now and it's great fun. Really enjoying the soundtrack.