I just want to tell my story: Trackbase

(Paul) #1

I’m getting a little bit sick of all the discussions lately about Trackbase versus Splatterladder, all the lies and untrue facts that are spreaded around so I am going to write this post here with the full story as I believe how it went. Whatever I try at the SL site, they remove all of my messages and censor anything related to TB.

I joined the splatterladder development team in September 2009, as main goal to make and develop new features so the project wouldn’t die and meet the demands of the public. It all started very slowly and it took some time before I could start.

It was around march by now, and since there was no development going on I decided to start from scratch and under the name “SL v3” the project was started. The other people at SL were also exited and I kept them up to date about the project. All seemed to be promising and better then ever before.

I went on vacation in begin July, for 2 weeks I was gone when I came back and contacted the team again to talk about progress. The thing that I heard was “We’re not so sure any more and blablabla”, but I already made a big progress and decided not to stop it and throw it away. 1 month later, in August we talked again and came to the conclusion it would not be used and all my time would be lost.

At that point I still thought it would be all right eventually and didn’t stop developing. I still maintained my supporting tasks at the SL. It was almost September now, when I got kicked out the SL team because I decided to do something about the so called “xp-whores” to get the top list more clean and represent more value.

This was the turning point, but I was so far with the new system (still named SL v3) that I didn’t wanted to stop and do nothing, since the SL already stopped any development since 3 years. I contacted the 2 major communities at ET at they also encouraged me to go on. So I did, totally focussing and concentrating on the projects and putting a lot of hours on it I managed to work very fast and at 1 October we opened for a very small group to test for the release. (Planned for 1 November) but all seemed to be stable and we opened at 10 October 2010.

Also, I contacted the Farcry community that was left behind by SL (SL Stopped Farcry) and they were very enthusiast about a new system, to save farcry at the last moment. At the moment Farcry is also running at TB and the Farcry community is very satisfied.

Currently SL totally blocked everything related to Trackbase, every form of the name is censored, as is my name: try typing “paul” in the forums and it’ll get ****.

Many people are claiming and asking everywhere that I’ve stolen SL code, but no-one even took some time to check this. None of any code was stolen/ and or used to built TB: it has been built up from the ground.

So many people are claiming I did just a rip-off for my own goodness, but I didn’t do it for myself, it was for the community and no-one knows the full story behind all it, why it even is the way it is. This is why I made this post, I want to be sure everybody hating me and or the system knows where he is talking about, without spreading around things whereof they are not even sure if it’s true.

Thanks for reading,

Paul

(Nail) #2

I have no problem with TB, anything made and given to the community should be applauded imo

(shagileo) #3

Thanks for the support, Nail
That’s exactly what TB is for

(aaa4) #4

Thanks for the support, Nail
That’s exactly what TB is for

lol that tb get supported ?

@paul: you already in the past made sure noone misses your working style when browsing this forum. so why do you think anyone will appreciate that you did another rip off. just let me remember your stuff:

fueldump map
goldrush map
sdu project

yes, right. all “copy and paste work”. just to explain what i mean with that: you take the base of something, modify it and then release it.

so i do not even need to check your codebase, since i know your workstyle in the past, and that you released without a single exception only stuff which is based on others work. so please spare yourself your lies above, you make it only worse.

also just some words to your sl clan page, yes that n1 clan. i can remember pretty well your intro text there, it was something like this: “hey welcome blabla. our target is to build another big community”, while having linked to your sdu project. so you tried to establish the sdu project already there, but since it failed, i guess, you just went on to build something else, maybe a tracker like splatterladder, but who knows, i might be mistaken here.

good thing however is that you have the money and invest into a project which supports farcry. so thanks for your money sir. :stroggtapir:

(shagileo) #5

[quote=aaa4;252880]lol that tb get supported ?

[/quote]

TB is for the community, hence the:

That’s what TB is for (for the community)

(darthmob) #6

Can’t see any similarities there and I’ve no idea what all the fuss is about.

(Paul) #7

@aaa4
I’m glad that you remember the work I’ve done, not many do so.
Many people are trying to improve things that already exists: fueldump & goldrush have been re-made many times: it’s more a learning process.

About the SDU: I don’t see whereof this is a rip-off? Haven’t seen something like that before?
I’ve never lied about sources in the past, so as with this so I don’t see why you wouldn’t believe.

I’m glad you’re satisfied about Farcry.

@Nail
Appreciated, thank you

@darthmob
Thougt so

(aaa4) #8

About the SDU: I don’t see whereof this is a rip-off? Haven’t seen something like that before?

I have some great news, after days days making a website I contacted badman with permissions for the layout - as I based mine on SD.

http://www.splashdamage.com/forums/showthread.php?t=18390

(system) #9

what do i care…badman cut the topic…wich is fair enough.
Paul. you just rip things of and you cry and need to tell all us you are the victim…please kid,
You allready made the design real ugly by now.

AAA4 is right. Your a copy paste dude

(Pegazus) #10

Here is what I think: I believe Trackbase.net is overall a good idea. From what I read it’s supporting 2 games right now and will add one new game to the support list and aint that what matters in the end? If Trackbase.net wants to go slowly more global with adding more games to the support list this can be a very good website. All popular games supported in one place: Massive community.

Also all the people who say that the layout is ripped off from splatterladder than I got some news for you. It’s the basic layout style for websites like this. Internet is filled with layouts like that: they just vary.

Happy Holidays!

(system) #11

tihi…even the 2 games SL support is copied…whatever…

…sl has pretty its own layout and …the one from paul is just stolen…
for gods sake…just look at it what they do with their layout…it just looks like a mess…

what do i care anyway…just another kid who tries to build up something by the end of time…

(aaa4) #12

Also all the people who say that the layout is ripped off from splatterladder than I got some news for you. It’s the basic layout style for websites like this. Internet is filled with layouts like that: they just vary.

yeah Pegazus. but theses people ususally dont come here and tell you that they have done that all by theirself. bit dissapointing comment from you Pegazus …

(aaa4) #13

Also all the people who say that the layout is ripped off from splatterladder than I got some news for you. It’s the basic layout style for websites like this. Internet is filled with layouts like that: they just vary.

yeah Pegazus. but theses people usually dont come here and tell you that they have done that all by theirself. bit dissappointing comment from you Pegazus…

(Krauersaut) #14

Paul,

you were taken on board to help Proddi expanding the system, fixing bugs. Help him with the development in general.

It started, as you wrote, in September 2009. You immediately got administrator privileges in order to familiarize yourself with the system and see how everything works to get started soon. Instead of doing anything constructive, you rested on your oars for a good year and never cared about showing some initiative to help repairing or expanding Splatterladder.

As we found out later, rather than working on Splatterladder, you started to work on a new site, pretty much behind our backs. Because you literally didn’t do anything in this year, you found yourself having your privileges removed when you came back from vacation.

What you did instead of developing was helping to get rid of users by randomly disabling the rating of users. Of course you had very good reasons to do so, as they were “playing unfair” to get a better rating. You even continued doing so after you’ve been told to stop it and wonder that you didn’t make much friends? It looked like you didn’t “decided to do something about the so called ‘xp-whores’ to get the top list more clean and represent more value” but simply tried to piss off long-standing users and settle old scores.

When Trackbase launched, it was a carbon copy of Splatterladder. It had the same features and the exact same design and layout. The only revolutionary new thing was that there were no rating restrictions which made it easy to get loyal Splatterladder users join your site. And before you’re trying to deny it, it was indeed a 1:1 copy, you even copied the background images. Looking at the posts here I obviously haven’t been the only one that noticed it. Amusingly you even hot-linked our map pictures.

A few days after you launched Trackbase, some mysterious rumors went the circuit. Someone spread the rumor that Splatterladder will shut down at the end of the year. A very strange happening, as at the time you had your privileges removed, we were discussing this option in our internal forums. When I confronted you with that fact, you told me you didn’t spread such rumors.

I was really surprised when I read this thread. Are you serious? How dare you saying we hacked your site?! In fact, we’ve got better things to do than even caring about what happens to Trackbase. Saying that Splatterladder hacked your server is just pathetic.

I’m tired of that drama, reading everywhere about how bad and nasty we are. If you are trying to say that, please base your statements on real facts and not on your dramatized figure.

Good luck with Trackbase.

(shagileo) #15

There are many clanpages doing the exact same thing sl is doing (covering map and mod news … even using sl logo’s).
That’s what TB is doing as well, covering ET news (well, I’m also trying to implement Splash Damage news).

I can’t speak for subjects like the tracker, I’m just the news reporter.
But in my opinion (and as I stated earlier), I support all kinds of initiatives to keep the game alive and show the people there is still activity going on.

Also, I believe sl has a solid base (how couldn’t it, after all those years). We’re not replacing splatterladder in any way. It’s not because you’re using sl that you’re not allowed to use tb , or vice versa.
It’s not that players are going to quit sl all of a sudden, because tb is here.

And about that rumour of sl stopping… I think people were mixing sl with wolfmap, since sl was covering wolfmap’s news.

I’m also pretty sure that even if the lay out of tb would undergo a drastic make over, people would complain it to be a raw copy paste of sl.
There’s only one room for a tracker …

(stealth6) #16

lol, as stated multiple times before, nobody cares about how many trackers there are.

Don’t you just find it odd though… Paul ‘helps’ SL for a year, then suddenly Trackbase starts… this isn’t really a problem things like this happen. BUT TB looks exactly like SL… Common that’s just asking for trouble

But as Paul explained this is because it was supposed to be SL v3?
But then here we have a ‘representative’? of SL saying that this was done behind their backs…

But hey, this doesn’t really effect me in anyway so at the end of the day I don’t have any trouble getting to sleep at night. Just stating the ‘facts’ I’ve picked up so far

(Paul) #17

Krauer, I didn’t worked behind the back: I even posted screenshots once in the forums… I had regular contact with Torsten about it, yes behind the back of the rest of the team: but Proddi (Torsten) knew about it. I started before I went on vacation yes, this was SL v3, not TB: when I came back from vacation and I got all my rights removed it still was SLv3 and not TB…

So that’s an unfair story.

I am also not claiming SL itself did the attacks, I talked about “SL Fanboys” which doesn’t point to SL itself, you’re making it from that.

I have never, confirmed or denied to anyone that SL would stop at the end of the year, those are rumors thought off by people they started using TB, got no influence on that and I couldn’t deny/confirm it either because it’s still unclear.

I did not copy the background image, it may looked like it but I made it all myself with my photoshop.

The reason that we started on ET is clear: It was supposed to be an upgrade so it was important to add that one, then next up the choice wasn’t hard either: Farcry was left behind by SL so why not support that to provide these people with such a tracker?

(Crytiqal) #18

et.trackbase.net is under attack again?

I wanted to view both and see what the fuss is about, but trackbase won’t load (anymore?)

(Paul) #19

[QUOTE=Crytiqal;252966]et.trackbase.net is under attack again?

I wanted to view both and see what the fuss is about, but trackbase won’t load (anymore?)[/QUOTE]

Was, up again

(shagileo) #20

Well actually this conversation is useless .
The only thing positive about it, is that we can say what we think about it.

We’ll never really know for sure what the real deal was about sl v3 and Paul’s relation to sl
Only speculations

TB and sl are there, use it freely as they’re for the community