So, today marks the 2nd anniversary of the public announcement of the Sylverant project. It certainly doesn’t feel like I’ve been working on it for more than two years, but that’s the way it is. It’s times like this that I like to look back and see how things have changed over time.

This time, two years ago, we were at revision 3 of the SVN repository for the server. I had basically just hacked in support for PSOv2 PAL, and that wasn’t even done yet (there was no way to have v2-only quests, for instance). I made some silly suggestion that I was almost ready to open the server up to the general public (which of course didn’t happen for quite some time after that). Basically, at that point, I had what was the bare minimum to even possibly play the game. It was buggy, and a lot of things either didn’t work at all, or didn’t work right (and possibly would cause you to FSOD or things like that).

One year ago today was the day that I finally opened up the server to the general public. We were up to r200 of the SVN repository, and all of the versions up to PSO Episodes I & II for Gamecube at least had some support in the server. PSOv1 and PSOv2 (USv1, EUv1, and EUv2) support was in a state where it mostly worked, and I was fairly happy with how things were looking. The initial public opening of the server only supported PSO for Dreamcast, but that was mostly due to the website backend code (not the server itself — All other versions of the game required then (and still do require) that you register on the website).

Then we come to today… We’re currently up to r546 of the SVN repository. All of the versions of PSO up through Blue Burst have at least some support (with the exception of PSO for Xbox). In addition, in the past few months I’ve made the breakthrough of finally defeating the HL check, so all of the versions of PSO encumbered by it (JPv1, JPv2, and USv2) can play online by using either Codebreaker codes or the Sylverant PSO Loader. In addition, at the beginning of this year, the PSO communities from Dreamcast-Talk and PSO Palace joined up with me here at Sylverant to build up the community that we have now.

All in all, this has been a wild ride for me since I started the project over two years ago. It has been one of the most interesting programming experiences I’ve ever been a part of, and I thank everyone for their support all this time. I want to take this time to especially thank those of you who play here at Sylverant. You are what makes this place what it is. Without people playing on Sylverant, I certainly wouldn’t have kept up with this project all this time! Thanks also to Impulse and Aleron Ives for their support through everything that the server has been through, and for deciding to bring their respective communities into the Sylverant family.

I hope to have many more years of celebrating the anniversary of Sylverant with everyone here!

This entry was posted by BlueCrab on Friday, September 9th, 2011 at 5:04 pm and is filed under Server News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.