(@mods, plz approve this post tommorow, 7/19/2024)
It’s a very special day today, my friends!
Alright, calm down, calm down, it’s essay time. It’s been about four months since I last posted a gigantic essay like this one (the TMF3 Game Theory doesn’t count), so I figured I should break that monthly chain. Especially when I’m forced to consider my reputation for very long texts.
Now, where should I begin? This day marks my 16th birthday and marks three years on the Makecode forums. I figure I should heavily unload some lore regarding my origin. Consider this large essay about my 16th birthday as an origin story of the almighty and great Dr. Taser.
It was a dark and stormy night. An 11-year-old me was sitting at home during the summer. The quarantine (COVID-19) was underway back then, so I had little to nothing to entertain myself with. Tbh, all I did over the summer was eat, play, and sleep. Alas, what a–
Ok. This is way too dramatic….
So, I’m sure a ton of you were wondering. How did I discover Makecode in the first place? Let’s go back to the 11-year-old me sitting at home during the summer. Let’s go to Black Rocket real quick. Black Rocket is essentially an organization that hosts STEM programs/summer camps for K-12 people. During my 6th grade summer (and during the quarantine), my parents signed me up for this Black Rocket program called Make Your First Video Game (if I remember correctly)! The program covered three programming software/platforms, and you guessed it! One of the platforms covered in this course was our beloved Makecode (specifically Makecode Arcade).
I don’t know what hit me. Soon, however, I became completely addicted to programming in Makecode (ever after Black Rocket’s course ended). Well, modding, to say the least, I specifically modded the games Cat Jumper and Jumpy Platformer in the Blocks Games Category. After a few modded games, I decided to check out the Community Games Category on Makecode Arcade’s website. I was wowed by what the community had created. I think I was 11 back then, so I couldn’t join the forums without getting banned. Although, I didn’t even know the forums actually existed until I was at the end of 7th grade.
That being said, at the end of seventh grade, I found out that the forums existed, and the Makecode Community was so much larger than I thought. Back then, I was modding a game, Blocky Boss Battle (it’s still in the Community Games Category to this day). Once I turned 13, which was the age requirement to join the forums, I signed up for the forums. My initial username was not Taser. No, No, No. It was actually Erico. My pfp also wasn’t that yellow electric guy that you see today. Rather, it was some pixelated slender human wearing a crown on his head. For some reason, I can’t find it in my computer files; it has been lost to time. Although, I’m sure there’s someone active on this forum who still remembers it.
Now, regarding that Blocky Boss Battle mod I was making, I finished it on Jun 16. 2021, which was also the day that I joined the forums, I think. I called it Devil-Prism Boss Fight. And on that same day, I published it on the forums; it was the first thing/topic that I ever posted on the forums. Unfortunately, it didn’t gain much traction, even after 3 years. Either way, I continued to make mods of other games, some gaining some traction and others left to rot for all eternity.
While I was on these forums posting mods and such, I noticed a lot of collaborations taking place. Stuff like Makecode Kart and Friday Night Funkin Recreation were in the forums, and they were huge. It was satisfying to see all the forum members banding together to build a masterpiece of a Makecode Game. I’d say the first time I actually interacted with the community was during the Makecode Kart collaboration. When I first joined that collaboration, some good and groundbreaking stuff was taking place. Makecode Kart represented the first time a 3D Map and landscape engine was actually built with Makecode (without it being 100% in typescript/some other programming language at least). Makecode wasn’t necessarily built for 3D games, so something like this was definitely something that only a few could’ve expected.
While Makecode Kart became more fully fleshed out and polished by the community, I decided to build a map for fun called Scorching Dynasty. It turned out quite well, and I decided to submit it in the Makecode Kart Thread which was accepting map/track submissions. @Kiwiphoenix364 agreed to place my track (with a few modifications) into the game. This was definitely one of the most prideful moments during my Makecode career. Unfortunately, this would be my only map placed in the game. All the other maps I made were rejected, and a lot of the people building the game simply moved on. Although, a new and stronger 3D map engine was built by @Kiwiphoenix364 later on.
Final Version of Makecode Kart (I think):
After Makecode Kart, I continued to mod and mod and mod; I posted many mods on my account; however, after a very long time of self-reflection. I realized something. No one wanted anything to do with my mods! Majority of my mods gained little to no traction across the large community. (Take the image above for example, this game is only at 18 views and 0 likes, even after nearly 3 years of posting it. So, make of it what you will ig). If I kept going at this rate, I’d stay like a forgotten makecoder for the rest of my life. I didn’t want that. Yet my coding skills sucked back then. So, I had to brainstorm a ton of stuff. And that’s when it hit me. CODER KING (indeed, this was the first thing that popped up in my mind, and the name stuck).
Yep, I built on a huge Makecode Competition, making it more and more ambitious. I was inspired by reality competition shows such as Lego Masters, Next Level Chef, and The Great British Bake Off. I had planned it all out, and I gathered/nominated 10 of the greatest makecoders on the forums. And a lot of them were happy to join my competition. A ton of hype was soon surrounding the competition from across the community. My dream was finally coming true; I was finally going to gain recognition for my work. Yet, somehow, the whole contestant pool went from 10 to 5 people. As a result, I had to cut down the amount of challenges from 9 to 3. Thankfully, everything went quite smoothly from there on out.
Now, while Coder King went underway. I began to look back at my profile information, and I made a Nobel-prize-winning discovery. Eventually, after over 1 year of being on the forums, I got ill with my username, Erico. It just sounded weird, you know what I mean? I tried to brainstorm for a new and simplistic username, considering how lots of Makecoders have already done it. However, a lot of the names I thought of just sounded stupidly cheesy and cringe. However, right before I thought I was going to stay as Erico for the rest of my life. Electro came to save the day. That Spiderman villain you ask? You are indeed correct! You see, I was searching for Spiderman on google, and a picture of Electro just popped up on Google. That hit me, I narrowed my brainstorming down to names for guys powered with electricity. That’s how I stumbled upon my current username, Taser. Ofc, that meant that I had to change my pfp, so I just made a sprite. Which looked like this.
Now, lets go back to Coder King. Coder King eventually finished its course on Nov. 11 2021, with @danger_kitty emerging on top. Seeing the huge hype around CK1, I decided to continue the CK series from there, successfully pulling off CK2 and CK3 (with a bumpy ride along the way). CK4 being underway as of this very moment. However, little did I know that I essentially started a golden era in unofficial Makecode competitions/Game Jams; this resulting in the emergence of The UAT.
Now, you read up to this point? Congrats! This essay is absurdly long, however do u want to know the origins of my infamously titanic essays? See, there was this topic in the Forum Feedback Category called “New Trust Level?” Which states, and I quote: “So I was thinking, maybe we should have a 3rd trust basic trust level, for people like @Sarge and @PixelDoodle, since they’ve contributed so much to the community. Just a thought I had.”
Plenty of other people had responded to this topic before me. However, I figured that I ought to submit something too. I had a lot of free time on my hands, so I went overboard in typing out my response. Doing a ton of scientific research while typing. And somehow I became a certified essay-writer on the forums, funny, huh?
(My essay)
During the summer of 2023, I decided to learn more coding in Makecode. So that my programming skills won’t forever be remembered as some lowly modder. I learned a lot of stuff through modding and the Black Rocket course. And, on Jan. 2. 2024. I published Snowmobile Madness. A fake 3d infinite runner game that I made from scratch (no, not that coding platform). The traction it gained was quite decent too, so thats something.
I also received some rare badges during my 3 years on the Makecode forum, such as:
(ranked by rarity)
Around one year after all of that happened, I decided to change my pfp yet again since I didn’t really like the pixel art of the previous one. It kind of looks weird that the image is cropped in my profile. But here it is. (quite recent as well)
I also haven’t checked the forum leaderboard for quite a while now. However, when I saw it, it was quite a shock. I placed in the top 10 of the most popular users in the forums in the All Time category, #8 in fact. That’s a pretty good accomplishment if I ever saw one.
And thats essentially where I am today.
Welp, that was a very long read, sry abt that. This is probably my largest essay to date. However, I do have to say one last thing before I end this behemoth of an essay.
After being on here for 3 years. You know what I have to say abt y’all?
You’re all a bunch of great people, I sure of it.
Also, a second thing real quick. No, I am not retiring yet. I feel like I still have something else to accomplish before I leave the forums.
You know, tbh, we as the great makecode community have definitely come a long way, since like 5 years ago where the forums were only first created. We accomplished so many great things together. We did what we initially thought was impossible a very long time ago. We saw powerful limit-pushing Makecode recreations of the big professional games. We earned the badges once thought impossible. We made professional-looking games in Makecode. We conquered through the tough times (The Makecode Exodus which we dare not talk about). We saw small/medium-sized games become almighty behemoths (totally not staring at Mono, Card Delver, Zombies of GOD, Deliverimania, Cybershift, Roller, and Pixel Smash rn).
Even doing and seeing after all that stuff, it’s hard to believe that I reached this status in this community. Going from a forgotten guy to one of the most-well-respected people in the forums. The forums is a very large place, however you eventually get used to it. And for the 938237394829283379823733373th time, I’d like to thank the entire community for getting me to where I am today and I hope that you will do the same to many other new makecoders.
Dr. Taser
Signing Off!