History of Free Rider HD: Part 4 the Silver Era

xD i haven't read it completely just saw some words

 

ok now I have read it by the way nice stuff pssst

 

Someone else want to take on writing part 4 or nah?

 

Part 4
~~~~~~~~~~~~~



On January 1st, 2015, Round 1 of Remix Contest 3 started, to a crowded and competitive field to include the best of the best trackmakers in the young community: Maple, alexander, Max007x, crane and others. Usual contests within the community only have 1 long round (sometimes extending months), that features little competitive spirit. The Remix Contest however, typically has 3 rounds being 2-3 weeks long. This fast pace not only forces players to work quickly and be competitive, but it also causes the database to see multiple high quality tracks in a short period of time.

Highlights from RC3 include:

Psychosis by crane


Vulcan Genesis by Maple


Valenwood Inn by elephant_breeder


Seventh Sea & Ithaka by alexander



Stacked Containers & Shattered Dream by Max007x



and many others.

Around the same time, on January 17th, midway or so, the Subscribe feature was announced. Now players could follow their favorite track creators and through this many database users caught on to the contest and to other things organized on the forums. During and after the contest, the forums received another wave of players, notably: TheEnd, TeamPhantom, FreakyKT/Sannin/Madara, Cityshep/thyprith, Damien2003, Flying_T_Rex, genericusername/peterpoe, Rey827, gmskittles, Armain/Cynic, JulianBlack, IshuDaBurgerMan/Ishu/mistatungtwista2, CHOLO, Nitrogeneric, gr611, LucJohnson, TodRedRob, Wave, Jgeleta1, Dblu, MikeWi, WyattStonhouse, StevenLeary, Noob, Polygon and others.

The months following were magical; in 2015, including the RC3 entries, 32 feature-worthy tracks would be posted. (picture below is in no particular order)



However this period of greatness would not come without controversy.

First came the appearance of new members WyattStonhouse, Rey827, CityShep and StevenLeary, whom all were putting out high quality tracks from the jump.

On Jun 18, 2015 WyattStonhouse released his track, The Dreamt Place, which immediately became a polarizing topic on the grey area which decides whether or not a track is feature worthy.



Despite having a low clear time of 9-10 seconds, it compensated by having multiple extra paths that would put total play time above 2 minutes. And the track also feature a very original detail style and track design. After being brought up as a potential feature on the forums, it would devolve into a greater debate and be one of the few times the admin Char got involved in forum arguments.



Then began the now common referencing of other featured tracks that could be perceived as inferior to a track in question. In this instance Char insinuates that dreamt place is better than blue trashcan by pssst and mmi ((which i agree with, blue trashcan is mmi's track basically, id rather have it swapped with one of my tracks that i actually like))


The grey area in describing what was feature worthy would be a common topic across 2015 with threads such as:



And still continues to this day. But alot of the credibility and leeway the feature mods had at the time was heavily criticized, comparing even the feature mods own work was on the table, which now included Ness. Lucid Dream by Max007x was featured and unfeatured in the same week, due to the forum community feeling it didn't go through the rigors that a track normally would in getting featured at the time.



WheelieMaker's credibility was also in question, due to his behavior on the forums and he had yet to make a solo featured track of his own since FRHD began.


Elsewhere on the forums, more stuff was happening. The long-running pssst thread, which had now amassed thousands of posts was deleted due to inappropriate content that was reported to the dev team, including through parents of young users. Reports included pornography and pictures of drugs/drug paraphernalia. Despite this, a hallmark of the community was lost.



Reaction was mixed.




In retrospect, deleting the pssst thread may have done more harm than good. The community had long gone without moderation, but the toxic behavior that expectedly would ensue was relegated to the pssst thread, where it would be quickly buried in the thread. Deleting the thread caused this toxic behavior to leak more into the forum as a whole. Afterwards however, forum tinychat usage would surge and the pssst thread was replaced in spirit by the, FRHD Chat Thread by Armain/Cynic.

As I mentioned previously, several new authors came up in this era, and the most controversial person to do so was CityShep. CityShep released his first track Vermillion Cliffs and was featured around April 2015, mainly to inspire him to make more tracks. However, his persona wasn't quite endorsed by the community, proclaiming to be an asexual then an openly gay furry. His Sexuality/Gender/Crushes thread that was posted only a week before the pssst thread was deleted, quickly became an outlet for toxic behavior.






The examples on the forum are more tame. Within private circles such as tinychat or bhr, cityshep was ridiculed for being someone who is not only gay but is someone who is sexually attracted to dogs.

This kind of behavior lasted much of the year until it was felt that the forum needed a moderator. Stig was gathering support from the community among the likes of alexander, wheeliemaker, xwinx/chalk, max007x, pssst, maple, etc and in conversations with the dev team who also felt that they needed a moderator. And on Dec 11th, 2015 he got the role.




The year of 2015 was very productive for the trackmaking community, some of best of the year include:

Calamity by Maple


Descent: Hysteria by Elibloodthirst (from his Summer of Hate album)


Shadowland by Crypt (ft. weem and swaggabot)


Super Mario Bros 2 by Stig


Aurora by Ness


Escape Communist Utah by StevenLeary


Also the Helicopter power-up was released and players quickly included it in there tracks, notably the "Wright Brothers" alexander and pssst, with the tracks heli in trap city and trap islands




Max007x, who had been jaded since the Lucid Dream event was also making something. The intent was to make something so massive and undeniable that his credibility would never come into question again. His Magnum Opus. On November 7th he released it to critical acclaim and it would quickly be recognized as one of the greatest tracks of all time.



Stemming from the success that Remix Contest 3 had early in the year, the growing quality of tracks and playerbase became organic. And so, players were eagerly looking forward to compete again. People began asking pssst to host the Remix Contest again, and so he did. On December 26th, 2015 the 1st round of Remix Contest 4 started, and would lead us into the truly greatest era of Free Rider HD.

 

Thanks man, if you have any suggestions on what I should add let me know

 

Can't wait for the next part

 

SO much nostalgia. I miss those days

 

major respect to this thread

 

thank you for including this and including my suggestion

 

I don’t need compliments. I need contribution, suggest/write stuff to add.

 

Someone else write part 5

 

Felt deep outrage that I hadn't seen this before thinking it got written up ages ago and just got an update but feelsgoodman to see I haven't missed it by much.
Awesome work/effort guys, its like a digital time capsule of ye olde days.

 

Pssst, you should join the FRHD newspaper team. (Just a suggestion.)

 

pssst YOU ARE THE GREATEST GUY ON FRHD!! I loved this so much...
This has inspired me to make good tracks from now on!

 

i would like to help write part 5 except i don't know what to write

 

Anything

 

I’m disappointed that no one has made an attempt to contribute to this

 

I cant I am too new of a player to know any history

 

i would love to help. though, check my stats and everything, and you'll see i'm relatively new. but i really love what you've done and i hope someone helps