Executive Summary
I have tried to make this as interesting as I can. For most, this is the definition of TL;DR. I am namely writing this for all of GDU’s previously active members who contributed to our community. There are bound to be a few interesting facts in here!
2006
First forum
GDU’s original name was RPGXP Unlimited and it started out on free forum hosting on 8 May 2006. That original forum can still be seen at the time of writing this.
The forum was inspired by another RPG Maker XP focused website, Creation Asylum, which was a giant player at the time. RPGXP Unlimited tried to copy every aspect of Creation Asylum that it could.
I recall really enjoying the community aspect of Creation Asylum and helping people out in the support / resource request forums. In that regard, Ravenclaw105 and SCMike (later known as EmilyAnnCoons) played a bit part in motivating me to create the initial forum.
Starting again with proper forum software – start of RMXP Unlimited
On 3 October 2006, I managed to get my hands on free hosting and the then latest version of Invision Power Board. GDU would go on to maintain the same database for the next 12 years.
The new forum launched as RMXP Revolution but I have no idea how that lasted (presumably a very short time). Very soon after this, the forum became know as RMXP Unlimited and was accessible via rmxpu.110mb.com and later rmxpunlimited.trap17.com.
The hosting was free with a catch – you had to post on their forums otherwise your hosting would get shut off. Accordingly, there was downtime all over the place.
2007
This was an eventful year. In April 2007, RMXPU expanded beyond just a forum by launching a Joomla!-powered website which was fully integrated with the forum. It finally had a homepage and a point of difference.
In late June 2007 Mark took a break from RMXPU and it was lead by EmilyAnnCoons, Leon and Noob Saibot who had offered to host the website for free and registered rmxpunlimited.com. In fact, the understanding was that Mark was not going to return and the site was EmilyAnnCoons’ to keep or otherwise.
Later in the year with Mark gone, activity started to drop-off and Noob Saibot offered to the host the website. He would later lose interest due to falling activity and delete the site from his server. Noob Saibot would later go on to be an active member of the site for many years, but in those days he was emotional and erratic and would publicly flame basically everyone. It was a dramatic time on the site.
It is not clear how long RMXPU went down for when the site was deleted, but we have no data from October 14 2007 until its restoration by Mark on November 15 2007. Following would be a period of relative stability with Mark back at the helm consistently from this point.
Total new members: 652*
Total new posts: 5,232*
*Excludes lost data between 14 October – 15 November 2007.
2008
In February 2008, our first and only ever paying subscriber RaptorMoonX subscribed to the forum by paying $16.00 and with that money I registered our first proper domain name, rmxpunlimited.net.
After a huge number amount of downtime and changing domain names, the forums were finally stable after isaacsol offered to host the site for free.
Total new members: 2,741
Total new posts: 5,282
2009
In 2009 RMXPU announced itself as a serious player in the RPG Maker community and the forums were booming.
Total new members: 4,761
Total new posts: 18,104
2010
This was RMXPU at its peak. Business was good.
At the end of 2010, Mark began working on a new concept for the website. In essence, this was GDU – a website for general game development that was not limited to RPG Maker XP, which was plummeting in popularity following the release of RPG Maker VX in February 2008. GDU would be released in September 2012 (as discussed below). RPG Maker XP was still largely preferred by many due to the style of graphics, but the website clearly failed to build a user base for RPG Maker VX.
Total new members: 5,216
Total new posts: 20,371
2011
text
Total new members: 3,812
Total new posts: 15,808
2012
GDU went live on September 11 2012. The Joomla-IPB integration was scrapped and an amazingly ambitious project was launched – Game Dev Unlimited. The initial launch looked something like this:
GDU was built with a PHP framework called Hydrogen PHP and integrated into the Invision Power Board forum. The initial integration was sloppy and caused a number of issues, but these were eventually fixed by changing the integration method.
In December 2012, there was an issue with the website’s hosting and it went offline from 5 December 2012 – 17 December 2012 as a result of isaacsol’s unavailability. The website took a massive hit from Google by falling off search rankings and it wasn’t until the end of that month until regular traffic was restored. At this time, Mark was working part-time as a web developer and had access to free hosting. The website was saved by moving to a new host.
A summary of 2012 was posted here.
Total new members: 2,465
Total new posts: 9,481
2013
In June 2013, Mark announced that he was stopping development on the GDU and effectively retiring. This topic received a large number of responses in support of keeping GDU going. Soon after, Mark was try to find a new admin to run the site without success.
Mark would, however, find his way back into development the site after being motivated by a “Games Section” concept. This was initially developed as part of its own website, called GDU (remember, at this time the website was known as RPG Maker Unlimited or RMU).
The day before Christmas, 2013, the GDU Games Section was launched. In effect, this was a content management system for members’ games with a lot of design customizations available, as well as general comments.
The Games section would be a significant new addition to the website. Mark would go on to make upgrades over time and more and more members posted their games, with a handful of really great games / pages added to it.
Total new members: 1,384
Total new posts: 4,726
2014
In February 2014, Bob423 and Omar510 were appointed as moderators in place of Dolarmak and Chigoo. Omar’s stint as moderator wouldn’t last long while Bob423 would remain consistently active.
In May 2014, Mark posted another “I want to close this website” topic. In a poll, members voted 8 to 1 to not close the website.
In December 2014, GDU was redesigned to this:
Total new members: 1,350
Total new posts: 4,360
2015
Not a whole lot happened in 2015 on the website development wise. Only some minor things such as release of an upgraded RMXPU app, Project Cards v3.
In October 2015, RPG Maker MV was released. The website’s categories and forums were updated accordingly.
Total new members: 1,321
Total new posts: 3,183
2016
In May 2016, GDU celebrated its 10th anniversary.
In October 2016, the GDU Refinery was launched and replaced GDU’s homepage. GDU refinery is a custom web app for GDU users to show off various snippets of works, namely related to game dev. It looked like this:
The Refinery had some initial success, but slowly weaned off in terms of activity in conjunction with the website overall. The Refinery was a reasonably significant development project, and Mark’s hope was that it would be new community platform which would breath new life into the website. It wasn’t to be.
Total new members: 1,070*
Total new posts: 1,387*
*7.5 days worth of data was lost when Mark unsuccessfully attempted to upgrade the forum software.
2017
2017 was beginning of the end of GDU. This was a very quiet year and a busy one for Mark outside of GDU.
In January, Mark announced that he was working on a complete redesign of the website. This included stripping out all of the Bootstrap CSS/JS and replacing it with UIKit – a very significant change. This wouldn’t be launched until April 2018, and scrapped entirely in December 2018.
A GDU Discord server was launched in May 2017, with some members preferring to post there rather than the website.
Total new members: 690
Total new posts: 802
2018
In March 2018, Mark launched a half-finished redesign of the website which the intention to finish and upgrade it over time. This did not eventuate due to work commitments, and the redesign was eventually rolled back in December 2018 (the same day as this was written).
On 6 June 2018, Mark announced his retirement from the site and that no further development would be done by him. In effect, he was throwing in the towel. It was too much work for too little reward. Without any contingency plan in place and with active members preference for Discord, the site’s traffic and activity steadily dropped off to the point where it was clear it was time to close the doors.
In December 2018, the decision was made to close GDU given the falling activity and no other members available to step up into a management role.
Total new members: 340*
Total new posts: 481*
* as at 8 December 2018