What would largely be considered by most the “glory days” of CCNGTA were strangely enough plagued by the exact same problems people attest to its depopulation later. If not, considerabley worse problems. The code at the time was still quite young and problematic. Issues were cropping up day in and day out but our population was booming so people stayed happy because there were so many people to interact with. I had to carefully balance my time between in game activities and coding, which at the time was quite doable. The shallow hierarchy and the obvious necessity for in game administrator influence to govern certain aspects of the world were frequently rubbing me the wrong way.

I expect the citizens to reach for the stars and actually have the means to achieve their personal goals. I want their achievements to have little to do with the favor of the staff but rather their clout as players. It matters what’s behind the keyboard the most, not numbers stored in a database. Players wanted to group together as social dynamics in these types of situations normally dictates so I was manually coding in gangs one at a time. There had to be a better way to do this, which is when I came up with the gang system. Creating a system where gangs can dynamically be created in game using simple commands. Allowing them to set up shop in various predefined headquarters around the map complete with upgrades. All you had to do was meet some basic criteria which were intended to prevent the predefined slots from filling up with 1 man gangs. I wanted to throw a few more tools into the sandbox.

When I pitched the idea on the forums to the general population the majority consensus was thunderous.

Most thought it was a stupid idea and it would ruin the server. They cried for my head. It wasn’t until later that I really figured out why the notion of the gang code was so ill received. I was basically handing people their gangs, they got whatever cars they asked for, whatever headquarters they asked for within reason, and whatever color was available to them. It was absolute freedom of choice with only the price of time that it took to yell in my ear to get me to do it. Now I’m taking that away, forcing the colors to be earned, limiting the spots, and restraining the headquarters based on budget and locations.

Despite a difference in opinion I proceeded with coding the update to near completion until my computer died. Luckily the hard drive was fine and I had backups anyway but the fact of the matter was that I’m completely offline and cannot afford to get back in. All of this couldn’t have come at a worse time. Tarzan was growing considerably resentful towards the population and I had buried myself in code and become reclusive in game to work. Now any fruits of my labor were trapped, the administration of the server was shaky at best, and to top it off people were saying I was lying about my computer to solicit donations. I did the best I could from the situation I was in. Tarzan had sent me over a copy of the source pre-gang code and I was editing it in notepad from work with no means to test it.

Programming typically goes like this: think, research, code, test until correct, deploy, and repeat. All I had to work with was code and deploy. I was doing it 100% blind. Not to mention secretly chasing down odd changes Tarzan decided to make such as putting in “The Gay” as an STD. When I finally got operational I surged out some code. Buy some food for a weekend, lock myself in a room, and don’t leave to do anything but code, shit, and eat. In the end I’m swimming in a mountain of graphing paper filled with technical notes, burnt out to no end, and usually sleeping at my desk or staring at the TV which is set to the DVD player's menu screen when there’s no disk in the tray. It’s about all I can process at that point. The gang code was released and loved. Fixes and new features were continually added. Cops, gangs, and everyone in-between had all the neat tools for their sandbox. The marathons continued, weekend after weekend I’d lock myself away. Everyone saw me and said I was on fire. I was burning bright. I was burning hot. Like anything else on fire, I was burning to death.