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BoutCheetah » Forum » Other » Off Topic » History of BOTS!! and or BOUT?

History of BOTS!! and or BOUT?

Started by MetalReaper, February 22, 2017, 01:39:55 PM

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MetalReaper

I am here just to learn the history of what happened to this game. I remember skipping school to play BOTS!!(*lol*) and after remembering the nostalgia I figured I should find a private server if available to play this game. However there is a lot of questions I have. Who has the source code and rights to this game? What happened to the original BOTS and how does BC tie into all of that?

Pokeh

well there was

bout - original korean game
bots - original english game
old boutcheetah
old be.volution
new boutcheetah
new be.volution
a side server or 2 that zirak/others who rebelled from everyone tried to make and failed
and the orangegame versions of bout that were modified after acclaim died

no particular order
am i missing something

Meteor

Quote from: Pokeh on February 27, 2017, 11:44:34 PM
well there was

bout - original korean game
bots - original english game
old boutcheetah
old be.volution
new boutcheetah
new be.volution
a side server or 2 that zirak/others who rebelled from everyone tried to make and failed
and the orangegame versions of bout that were modified after acclaim died

no particular order
am i missing something
Nailed it pretty much.
As far as the source code goes, the aforementioned Orangegame remake (T-Bot) is its last known owner, for all we know it could be lost forever.

(click to show/hide)

Allie55

If you're looking for a quick (read: lots of information) summary with details, I think I'm the best to give it to you.

In 2004, N-Log made BOUT. In 2006, Acclaim published an english version.
Around 2009, several hackers from gamecheetah learned about packet editing using WPE (namely auron and later zirak).
Later in 2009, Auron and an ex-vGM from the english BOTS (Tok) decided to start a private server by using the game's client and mirroring the server's game packets.
Auron decided he was no longer interested, and he released the source code to his unfinished work, known as EnchantedBOTS. It was a rough source that had loginserver working and a couple in-game things, but was really sketchy cause it's an unfinished work. Very few people were able to even get it to work.

Myself, Kenny (Santa) and Matt (RedShadow), fellow hackers from gamecheetah (and, already running our own hack website, botscheetah at the time), took the opportunity to grab his code and continue work on it using our own website as a base.
Our website was, at the time, a domain borrowed from Kenny's father, named thenewoutpost.com.
Once we got things working, we named it BoutCheetah and invited several friends for a closed beta while we made things work (at this time, things like drops, base, trading, guilds, etc were still being developed).
Then, once everything was reasonably finished, we used our BOTS hacks to advertise the game (namely orange texting using a bot we made). I won't defend us here, we were kind've scumbags when we were younger, but it may have been the reason BC was big in the first place.

In late 2009, we looked at BC's popularity and decided maybe it's actually worth investing into instead of treating it as a joke hobby. At this point, we shut it down and publicly lied about Acclaim shutting us down. Instead, we worked on fixing it up, smoothed out membership for real profits, and re-released it a few months later.
We opened a second closed beta so we can confirm everything's smoothed out. For those that were invited, many of them consider this the best time BC's ever had, with an active close-knit community of less than 50.
Closed beta ends and everyone's welcome back to a new website, the one you're using now, zylongaming.com.

Throwing a line to itself here to announce BOTS shutdown on August 25 2010.

While BC was growing, Zirak came to help us develop some things with ASM. For example, he made coin items tradeable and did several other noteable things of the sort.
Ultimately, we had our differences and he left, and with Tok decided to start a competing server named BOUT Evolution.
They used our packets to build, because BOTS was no longer available.
In 2011 this server was functioning, but was really buggy and crashed a lot. They mainly consisted of a small community of players who refused to join BC because it was ran by the assholes who "killed" BOTS (reasonable).
They decided to start a lot of drama with us, and attempted to take some of our playerbase by being a (at the time) completely free game with free droppable coins.

In the midst of all this, in 2012 a new server randomly shows up in Indonesia. A company named OrangeGame apparently had the original source code for the server, and was able to actually modify things instead of reverse them like we do.
We found out about it first, and began ripping some of their stuff to add to our game. This is where levels such as 149 and transes such as Xia came from.
We offered them a significant sum of money on multiple occasions and multiple places for the source (namely, in the tens of thousands in usd for a game that never has more than 10 online).
We asked them on their website, we tracked their employees and even their ceo on facebook and sent them a message. Never a reply.
Unfortunately they mostly just released the game, completely randomly, then abandoned it and it eventually shut down. Even I'm not sure what their goal was, but the CEO was rich as ****, maybe he just didn't care about the lost profits.

Moving on, the developers of Evolution eventually got bored and gave up, as expected, in late 2011-early 2012. We had no competition again, but we weren't doing all that much at this time.
We offered to co-host their servers, similar to how we host BOTS, with the same database they used to use and everything. It was purely for the users, and they would get a share of the profits. They declined.

Around this time, we decided we wanted a bots server. For that reason, we began work on our BOTS 2006 version.
It was made mostly from scratch, as we were comfortable with the code at this point. Instead of working in reverse, removing things from BC, I added every item individually with the help of jrharbort and several other players from 2006.
Our goal was to add new content every few months and eventually end up at 2008 bots, where it ended.
When it released, it was a fairly big hit, with 50+ online at once and everything seemed like a success. Similar to closed beta of the second opening of BC, many consider this the best time BOTS had.
Eventually, people lost interest, and as such Kenny's motivation in the project dropped. I mostly took over as its sole admin and kept things working the best I could.

In late 2012-early 2013, Evolution decided again that they were coming back, and with a cool new website to offer. Unfortunately it didn't get very far, as even before the website was finished they got bored again. They took a few interested people, but ultimately there isn't much history to discuss here.

At a critical point, late 2013 Kenny gets involved with she-who-wont-be-named. This person took massive advantage of him, and drove a wedge between us by early 2014. By the time he realized this person was a parasite we were barely friends and he was no longer very interested in working with me, or BC in general. He decided to take a long break.

During this break, someone decided to start a new server named Eagle. There isn't anything particularly noteworthy to say about these guys, admin was bipolar and shut it down every couple weeks.

I upheld BC as long as I could until he finally came back, January of 2015, and we worked on a couple updates. He left again.
Once again I did what I could until November of 2015, when he came back and we worked on a couple updates. He left again.
This time of leaving, it would seem he's officially done working with me, and for now that means no events, bugfixes or official updates of any kind. This leaves us to where we are now.

Sorry if I missed anything, lot of information here.

Godz

(click to show/hide)
Was that the best first post from a new forum user in the bc history?


Thanks for making this post. Better than a short part of the story here and there from this guy and this other guy.



Brandon

(click to show/hide)

This honestly makes me a little emotional hearing about this again. I still remember when Kenny and yourself first found me on GameCheetah back when I was the moderator for the bots section. You guys were a pain in my ass at first but eventually we grew to be good friends, well until I acted like the child I was...hard to believe they put a 13 year old in charge (21 now). MSN was key in the olden days lol..It's been crazy to see how far this game progressed over a period of eight years, bots alongside this game was such a big part of my childhood.

Allie, I've been wanting to know for years, what happened to that game you were making through RPG Maker?I assume progress on that completely stopped due to this game but Fira Xion I believe was the name? This is the only picture I still have from it back in the day;



Also here's a very shitty logo I made for our old forum that we used a very long time ago;


Allie55

Quote from: Brandon on March 01, 2017, 09:09:36 PMAllie, I've been wanting to know for years, what happened to that game you were making through RPG Maker?I assume progress on that completely stopped due to this game but Fira Xion I believe was the name?

Unfortunately I decided it wasn't worth all the effort after being too ambitious with an rpg maker game. I got like 3-4 hours of gameplay with side quests and detailed environments scripted properly instead of the crap the first version one was and started to wonder why I was bothering. Still have the source, but if I decided to do something like it again I think I'd prefer to start over in unity or unreal.

We (Kenny, Matt and I) decided to remake bots as-is in unity several years ago. Significant progress was made and it was almost time to start the multiplayer code when kenny lost interest.

Similarly, having the knowledge of the remake we made, I solo started an HD version of the game. I've released several screenshots and a few friends playtested basic movement, animation and gameplay, but I've had to stop due to lack of time/funding.

eco999

That stuff with that person and Santa annoys me. Wtf, so if it wasnt for that person BC would have recieved more updates?

Allie55

Quote from: eco999 on March 02, 2017, 02:55:18 PM
That stuff with that person and Santa annoys me. Wtf, so if it wasnt for that person BC would have recieved more updates?

most likely.

Meteor

Been awhile since we've had one of those history posts Allie, had a good read.
Quote from: eco999 on March 02, 2017, 02:55:18 PM
That stuff with that person and Santa annoys me. Wtf, so if it wasnt for that person BC would have recieved more updates?
This person's inclusion in the game was probably what you'd call the beginning of the end.

(click to show/hide)

Pokeh

Woah, I didn't know a lot of what Allie filled in. I miss that vaping neck-beard kenny :[

edit: I'm kinda glad bc/bots zylon is still up. I go on from time-to-time for nostalgia. Hitting my 10-year anniversary in 2 weeks (some here have hit/will hit 11 years this year since joining the original community in 2006)

Santa

March 03, 2017, 03:40:44 AM #11 Last Edit: March 03, 2017, 03:48:21 AM by Santa
Quote from: Pokeh on March 03, 2017, 12:48:43 AM
Woah, I didn't know a lot of what Allie filled in. I miss that vaping neck-beard kenny :[

edit: I'm kinda glad bc/bots zylon is still up. I go on from time-to-time for nostalgia. Hitting my 10-year anniversary in 2 weeks (some here have hit/will hit 11 years this year since joining the original community in 2006)

I'm here still. I just don't like talking to anyone anymore (socially awkward).  I do my best to make sure the game stays online, I have been doing some work on the website believe it or not, as the website was having ssl certificate issues mid-last month.  The only other person from bots-era i talk to occasionally is Matt aka redshadow (he graduated college a few years ago and moved away from Texas to Florida and got a job in the IT software reverse engineer field).  If any of you still wanna talk, lemme know in PMs.  Boutcheetah and bots will probably remain online forever even if not many people play or noone plays, just for the nostalgia. It's almost self-maintaining atm.  I would like it to grow again but even if updates were released it would not liven up the game any as everyone has grown up and no longer likes to grind like before most likely.  If enough people want events back, I will work on adding that again.  Other than that the game is kinda in a acclaim status (no updates) without all of the server crashes from us.

Edit:
So what have you all been up to the past few years?

Bluepatchx

Quote from: Santa on March 03, 2017, 03:40:44 AM
 If enough people want events back, I will work on adding that again.  

I think there's a good amount of people who'd like that ;)
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Zad

Quote from: Allie55 on March 02, 2017, 05:24:27 PM
Quote from: eco999 on March 02, 2017, 02:55:18 PM
That stuff with that person and Santa annoys me. Wtf, so if it wasnt for that person BC would have recieved more updates?

most likely.
So people are waiting for updates, lots of events. Bots  and BC...
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Caspian

Quote from: Bluepatchx on March 03, 2017, 05:07:24 AM
Quote from: Santa on March 03, 2017, 03:40:44 AM
 If enough people want events back, I will work on adding that again.  

I think there's a good amount of people who'd like that ;)

And staff ready to help co-host these events :)  I know that there is plenty of people waiting behind the curtains for something to happen.
Dedicated BOTS player

Member and guild leader of Elysium.

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