Wasn't that the joke back in the old days? Massassi has your soul and you can never leave? Well I just wanna say it's true, because I am still drawn to this place, even after getting married, having kids, etc etc. I joined the community around 2000, and my last post was in 2013... and still I'm here because you guys won't give me back my soul! No soul refunds I suppose, but it's worth it.

But seriously, this place has had the biggest impact on me, and I gotta say, showing my daughter random JK levels I used to love and exploring them together is the best feeling. I actually got a hold of Brian to just tell him thanks for making this place, and he reset my old account's password and invited me to share some stuff I made recently.

Long story short, I'm a full-time indie game developer who used to work at The VOID, a location-based VR company based out of Utah. I helped make Secrets of the Empire, with my contributions being texture and avatar work (lemme tell you, I think one finger on the Stormtrooper models had more polys than the entire JK stormtrooper 3DO). It was wild talking to the people at Lucasfilm and helping make an imperial base, because in some ways it felt just like JK editing. I felt like a kid again!

Eventually my side project took off, which was a 3rd person exploration game about a fox called The First Tree. I was eventually able to publish on console, and it made enough money for me to quit my job. It still blows my mind that this is real... and it's all because of the passion and determination which started right here on this website. I love that everything is still up and running here, because it holds a special place in my heart and I love revisiting it.

Anyway, I made a video about Massassi. It's a retrospective on my JK editing career. It's kinda self-deprecating in a funny way, but I wanted to encourage other game developers and tell them that it's a long road to get good at something. I still feel like I suck at all this, but you just keep going and learning and improving, and eventually... you realize you've somewhat "arrived".

Here's the video: https://youtu.be/ciMdRTI5KwE

P.S. I'd love to give away keys for The First Tree to any Massassian who wants it. I just need a platform and the region you live in, and I'll PM one to you.

Welcome back!

I saw a bit of The First Tree gameplay. Was that really all you? Amazing! And congratulations on its success.

Wait, started watching the video and I take back my positive comments.

"Mizz-ass-ee" temple. You're dead to me, brother.

The video is quite charming, by the way. Nice positive message for neophyte game devs. Good work!

Lol I forgot about the pronunciation holy war here as well. Thanks for watching!

Whoa, hi, and congrats on your achievements! I'm gonna have to check the video out later - hopefully it mentions BoaMSE and Leeza's Destiny 3, IMO still the very best JK engine creations of all time ever-and-more.

Nice, I saw your GDC presentation on Youtube the other day. I'd love to play your game with my kids. Do you have Gog keys or only Steam? I'm in Germany.

Welcome back!
I've always wanted to go to the Void, but it hasn't been in the budget. I'd love to play The First Tree, I've been curious about it for a while. Finding out it was made by a guy from Massassi is pretty surreal. I live in Utah.

A Utah Massassian, awesome! I grew up in Virginia but now I'm here in Orem. It's nice... love the mountains.

Hey, man, I really appreciate your posts here. I doubt we ever crossed paths on the forum, I'm probably somewhat controversial on this board, but I think it's awesome you're checking back in. Hell, your posts got me out of bed to do some replies on the PC tonight. I can see myself definitely wanting to pick your brain on a few topics.

Congratulations on your success and happiness and thanks so much for checking back in to this small internet community. I have a feeling your doing so will inspire at least a few among us.

Yeah, I love checking in! So glad this place is still here. I actually recognize most of the names here like your own, but I was such a lurker (still am actually) so I don't know everyone that well.

I'll be honest, when I saw the title for your GDC talk I was expecting a just-do-it environment art pep talk.

*taps on the soul box*

I could've sworn Jim had more posts. Guess he's so good that he didn't need that many to get all souls.

funny story about that... the email tied to DrkJedi82 went away and i got logged out and couldn't for the life of me remember the password... reset password doesn't work if you can't access the email

I actually came here to post the video that Whelly posted above but he beat me to it. It popped up in my YouTube feed this morning and I was showing it to my daughter, and reminiscing about when I used to create multiplayer levels for JKDF2. Congratulations on The First Tree. I'd love a key for the Switch (USA) if you're still offering.

I just played through the game. Very sweet. I could barely beat the ninjas cutting all the onions.

This video is awesome man! I was at the texturing talk for Secrets of the Empire at GDC and got to play it in Glendale at one point. Cool to know there was a Massassian on that project. (I think Makkon/Ben Hale who was at ILMxLAB also used to be a user on Massassi or some other JO forum? I can't really remember).

The First Tree looks adorable, if you've still got keys I'd love one for PS4.

Oh man, Ben Hale! I know him pretty well, he's an awesome talented guy. We worked at The Void together then he got snatched up by ILMxLAB so he moved to San Francisco. Was he on these forums? Was he into Jedi Outcast editing only? Crazy stuff.

Massassi will always have a special place in my heart, even 20 years later.

I remember the old threaded forum also, where I was GA_Farrant. Is the interactive story concluded?

I hope my son who is now 7 can find a place like I did at 13.

Whelly, Did you just recently do a video with Thomas Brush? It was great!

Edit: lol, I just clicked on my profile, it's like a snapshot of the past.

@Whelly - your JK editing retrospective was thoroughly enjoyable to watch. I played the hell out of your later levels on the Zone and this brought back all of the feels. I'm sure the majority of your audience has no idea what Jedi Knight even is, so it was awesome to see you pay homage to the game that got you started. I'd love to see more members of the old community make videos like this, it brought back a ton of memories and it was interesting to see how your childhood so closely mirrored my own. Cheers!

Thanks guys! Magi_Cabaalis, yep did a video with Thomas, he's a good guy! I went the JK editing route, he went the Flash games route making tons of stuff for Newgrounds as a kid.

Dark__Knight, can't believe someone remembers playing my levels! Feelsgoodman

I wish I could say for sure--I'm certain he was on a forum I was on, drawing a lot of little fox dudes and spaceships/jets. Might not have been Massassi, but I wasn't on that many forums back in the day. A mystery haha

My daughter is currently playing your game. It's really cute to hear her thoughts and musings. She doesn't understand English and can't read yet so the underlying story is beyond her.

Me, at the first obstacle: "You can double jump."
Her, annoyed: "I KNOW!"

Her: "I'd love to have babies. Can I have some babies."
Me, carefully: "She already has babies. But they're ... not well."

After she'd found the first one: "Maybe the other's went to the doctor."

When she found a knife: "Maybe, the baby was killed by a hunter and he buried the knife to hide it."

Her: "A lightsaber!"
Me: "That's a fishing rod."

Her: "Now I'm going to find those lights, get past the thorns and find my babies!"

Her: "Why can't she run? Go faster! I can run when I'm sad!"

og blockland!

good times, good times

That's a blast from the past.

Good to see you again Whelly. Definitely remember your twisted camp level.

Nice to see you posting here again. I actually saw in another video (linked to on Reddit a few months ago) that you'd be active here back in the day... I was immediately inspired to purchase your game on Steam. Lo and behold, I already owned it (must've picked it up during a Steam sale at some point). Still haven't had a chance to play it yet (my free time for gaming is somewhat limited in the summers) but I am definitely looking forward to checking it out. :-)

Thanks Echoman and Dsettahr! It's good to check in occasionally, and I secretly hope this place is still up and running when I'm 70.

I really really enjoyed your youtube video and I appreciate you sharing. I mentioned this previously but if I could do one thing different about how I ran Massassi it would have been to be much more gentle and supportive with the work people submitted. Most of my levels totally sucked, and even the ones I released and was super proud of weren't that great. I get that most people aren't so fragile that some unkind words from a teenager running a web site will mess them up or something, but on the flip side I think some kind words would have been so much better.

Anyway, the older I get the more appreciative I get for all the help we've had over the years, not only directly working on the site but also participating in the forums, submitting content, submitting levels, helping moderate, design/artwork, mentioning us in videos, linking to us, etc. It's all just fantastic and I wish I had the time these days to put in that I used to have when I was younger.

So yeah, you're welcome. But also thank you.

Whelly, for some reason I think I remembered your username from back in the day. I started here around 2003 and haven’t been active for the past 15 years... figured I’d drop in on this place.

Glad to see you’ve found success as an indie game developer 😀

Hey everyone. In case anyone was debating on whether or not to try out Whelly's game, it's on sale today for only $2.99 USD on Steam. I just thought I'd share with everyone - it's been on my wishlist so I'm going to pick it up today.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/555150/The_First_Tree/?snr=1_620_4_1400_45

Welcome back Arkon11! It's always fun to check in. Thanks for the shoutout Dark__Knight, and if anyone wants to play it for free, just message me.

Brian, there was still plenty of kindness here of course, so many nice people lending their time and talents to help newbies like me. So don't be too hard on yourself! Just the fact that people still love coming here is a great sign that the culture surrounding Massassi is solid.

I finally got a chance to start playing this game and I'm enjoying it so far. However I must be an idiot because on the second level (after the first snow level) there's a ledge with some stars leading up to it. It seems to high to jump or double jump over. The first time I stepped on it it showed two icons, the first one I couldn't decipher and the second one shows a jump icon. It went off the screen so quickly I couldn't figure out what it was telling me to do. Any tips?

Also not sure if you track stuff like this but I recently bought an Intel NUC and put Xubuntu 20.04 on it. Installed Steam from apt and the game runs great on Linux.

Edit: (just watched a video that showed what I was missing...)

If it makes you feel any better, after I became an Admin some of what you said to me privately regarding your philosophy for how this site should be run really stuck with me, in a good way- even to this day. Hindsight is 20/20 and none of us were always perfect (and some certainly did their best to try our patience ), but I think the fact that this community still exists in some form after 20+ years is a testament to how passionately you tried to "run this site right," even if that meant setting aside ego at times.

Speaking of Steam, Neofeud is on now on sale with 75% off: https://store.steampowered.com/app/673850/Neofeud/

Not only it is an actual game by a DXN collaborator, but it's the only release on Steam that has (IIRC) 3 lines of FGR-recorded dialogue.

Excellent.

(I mean, the game is)

Hello! Given the 20+ years it's been written for, I'd prefer to think "never say never" but it may have ran its course a month or so ago. I attempted to migrate a continuation of it on a site of its own, but it never really gained traction and it may finally be slowing to a halt. Here's some handy-dandy links:

The Never-ending Story Thread
The Never-ending Story Thread²
The Never-ending Story Thread 3-D (not on The Massassi Temple forums)

In addition to the above, there were some spin-off/parallel threads of sorts.

If I want to get technical, the thread you originally started seems to have been lost to time when the Massassi Temple forums got wiped at one point, and I've not been able to find any sort of backup for it.