First of all, it's nice to hear you, actually we don't hear of you, most people don't know you yet, so introduce yourself first.

I'm Deen and I started the D-Netz server two years ago with Megaman, Dedo and ‘Me and since then I've been running it more or less actively.

Why more or less?

Probably more active.

(laughs) Yes, when you're on holiday, we already know that, there are no tournaments because, well, that's just the way it is. How did you come up with the idea, the four of you, how did the whole thing start?

The idea, well in the beginning I didn't know Megaman and Dedo, but `Me, we used to play on DDmax but were banned from the servers for strange reasons and then we didn't have a server to play on and Megaman just said he would like to open a new server because he's not satisfied with the server either. That's when we joined, and it's been running ever since.

Yes, wait, you should know what you were banned for and start playing here.

Multitasking is difficult.

Yes, that is the difficulty.

I got banned because I made a pretty bad joke about Zin, the admin of DDmax, he didn't like it and since then I was banned, so I couldn't play on the server anymore.

Of course, it's unfavorable. You could play but with a different name and not with your original one.

Yes, of course that was unfavorable because I was always collecting points with `Me, so we have maps (unv.) and if you can't do that with your real name it's unfavorable.

You're right, it's a bit awkward. How did you come to Teeworlds?

At that time, I had a pretty bad computer only (unv.), now still, but because of that I could not play so much and Teeworlds was just a nice game that ran smoothly in contrast to other games.

So you didn't hear about it at Giga like most people did, you just found it randomly. I just randomly heard about it at some point and it was wonderful. I didn't really play it regularly; it took me forever and I wasn't that excited to play it all the time. When I found Deweis then on DDmax server then I was already enthusiastic, and since then I was then active.

In the meantime you also host the DDMax servers and the maps.

Yes, exactly, the DDMax has been down for a year because of (unv.) attacks. (unv.) was kind enough to prepare the maps a little bit and to prepare the server and now I have just read over all the maps and they are running on our server, so you can also play old maps on our server.

Oh, it's just a pity that the old Skoss are not there.

That's right, unfortunately we can't do that.

Well, of course two different service systems, so it's clear that it won't be adopted. You also wrote the whole thing in English in the forum...

Yes, I actually wrote the post at the same time as you, as you asked me to talk about it in German, so it fits quite well that I remembered the things a bit.

Nostalgia, so to speak, nostalgia. Yes, you wrote in the forum in the beginning there were only four of you. How big has the team become in the meantime?

Oh, we have maybe five to ten testers and there is also the IMTG, which is the independent map testing group from Ildg, and they also do a lot of testing. Then we have maybe another ten moderators and we have about a hundred or so mappers. That's a lot of people who have made maps and old maps from them, there are a lot of them involved now. Developers we also have, maybe five to ten active ones that help a little bit.

Yes, that's already noticeable, 64-bit support is now included. Which I'm personally very happy about. You developed it completely on your own?

Yes, so that wasn't much to develop, that went relatively quickly.

By the way, if you have any interesting questions for Deen, just post them in the Hitbox chat or here in Teeworlds, I will record it and ask him of course. For example: How old are you Deen?

25

What do you do besides Teeworlds, if you want to tell us.

I'm still a student, computer science in my master's and I'm writing my master's thesis right now, so I should be done in about a month.

I was told that you were working on something similar to Teeworld.

A little bit.

What happened to it, if you don't mind me asking.

Nothing at all, I discarded the idea because I thought maybe I should finish my master's thesis and Teeworld takes a lot of time as it is, so I don't need another project.

Is a DDNet meeting being planned at some point, Analplug asks?

Well, it's not planned, but I've heard that the people from GB have met from time to time. That's a huge (unv.) plan with all the top players from the past.

Yeah, they're not so good nowadays, that's true.

Well, today others are good.

That's how it looks. There are always new ones coming up. Does silenthill really exist?

Doesn’t tell me anything, is it a film book?

I think they're just alluding to the game; I can't tell you. What are you actually doing you've done this part before.

Yes, I went wrong once, I think.

Yes, you just did the part twice and three times, for whatever reason. Do we have any questions in the chat, yes, in different languages? Many people are also interested in the relationship between DDnetz, Drase, clinte and the Teewordls main game. I've done a bit of research on the forum and calling the DDnet the cancer of Teeworld is perhaps an English way of putting it.

Those might be isolated voices, I don't know, I wouldn't generalise. Well, there were also developpers, so that's not the spontaneous English one, I would say.

Yes, what is your attitude towards the old Teeworlds or the attitude of the DDnet in general towards the old Teeworlds.

Well, that's the basis for DDnet, so I can't say anything bad about it. Without Teeworld there would be no DDnet.

That's right, and without it we wouldn't have had a lot of great maps and we wouldn't have spent a lot of great time together, a lot of nights together, those were the days.

Yes

Yes, that's how I see it too chelladragon! Exactly the same, he just said (unv.) Deen does what the developpers of Teeworlds don't do, he takes care of Teeworlds, he brings updates and organises tournaments. Yes, there were tournaments last year, I think one or two and Teeworlds itself and I don't know how successful it was.

That's a lot of effort, you have to understand that they don't want to put that much time into it.

Of course, it's a lot of work and that's why we're glad that there are people like you and others who take care of it and keep it alive. But the project has also become quite big. When did the homepage start, because they weren't involved from the beginning?

They were relatively early, after a few weeks I set them up and also relatively simple, without style, just so that you can see who the best ranks are and what has happened in the last few days. (unv.)

That is still the main function, but there is also the forum, where many people are active. Yes, that brings us directly to a small action or to something that keeps me busy and that is money. It always has to be financed, you also said you are a student, so I think you will have a small part-time job, I don't know, but in any case, how do you finance the whole thing?

Yes, out of my own pocket, for the most part, half of it maybe and the rest is donations and sponsored servers, that means someone has a server left and gives me complete access to it and that's how I run the Brazilian server for example or the USA server and the German one ran like that until recently and then it's covered by donations.

Exactly, that's what I wanted to get at, so people who want to support DDnet, there is a possibility to make a donation so that the servers continue to run so nicely and stably and so that we still have something from it next year and the year after. It's voluntary, no one is forced to do it, but it would be a nice thing to do, I just wanted to mention it in passing.

I have to say about the donations, 18 days ago I made a donation page where you can see how much money we need and how much has been donated and in the 18 days 200€ have been donated, that's quite a lot, that's a third of the total costs for the year, in a fortnight.

So, a big fat GZ for that and a thank you for that.

Yes, and thank you for donating.

It's been asked a lot now, so T-worlds the developers thought we'd do the whole thing on Steam. Your opinion on this, on Steam so maybe once the transition to normal T-worlds, which most do not get to install, where it is just a zip file download pack and go. And of course how does the future of DDnet look like when it comes out of Steam, because it will most likely be the 07 version and there is of course the question whether there will be support, do you already know something, have you already contacted the developers or something like that, and of course your personal opinion about it?

I don't have much contact with the developers yet, but probably or maybe the 06 version will be read now, and later the 07 version will be released on Steam. I don't think much of Steam, but the fact that a lot of players will be able to access it would be quite interesting for T-world and also DDnet.

So, let's just hope that the support that's there now will continue.

First of all, you can also play with normal T-worlds (unv.). That means that maybe we'll get some new players who want to take a closer look at it and who will also consider whether or not to put DDnet on Steam.

There you already mention the next thing I wanted to ask you and that is, I heard that you had also considered making the DDnet, the (unv.) also available on Steam.

Yes, a consideration to be able to find more players. The DDnet is somehow not so widespread, and most of the people who know the game have played Teeworlds (unv.) before and that's how they came to Teeworlds, so it would be nice if you could become a bit better known and get new players.

Well, according to the statistics you showed in the forum, the level of awareness is a fail, not exactly small actually, the record was 700 and just under 800 people who played at the same time in a tournament, which I actually think is mega, you don't really notice that there are so many when you think about it. An interesting question that just came up, namely there is a topic on the Chile server that comes up again and again, and it would be interesting to know what is meant by that.

A problem?

No, a certain name keeps popping up, I hope the question comes up again.

Doesn't ring a bell at the moment.

For those of you who are joining the livestream later, we have Deen with us, one of the initiators of DDnet, so one of four. Interesting question that's been bothering me: You said before that there are four people, so the project started with four people.

In the beginning.

What happened to the other two? Because `Me is still there, he is now in the (unv.) but there are two more?

Well, Dedo was already quite inactive from the beginning, now and then you see him and now and then a new map comes from him. Megaman has disappeared completely, I can only reach him with difficulty via Facebook from time to time, but he doesn't play any more as far as I know.

Interesting question, are there new weapons in the pipeline or mots, so new modifications in the Draces, we have Dummy, we have Solo, the Jetpacks are new. What's new in the next year, can you give us a little hint?

I don't have big plans, usually when I have a plan, I implement it directly, then it runs after a few days, or it just doesn't happen. I haven't planned that much in advance, when (unv.) 0.7 comes, we'll just have to make sure we get it running. Otherwise we have to be careful, we have a lot of features, many players don't even know about them and that leads to an overload when you add more and more things.

There are no new features planned, we're waiting for 07 and if anyone has an idea, they can write to Deen and he'll think about it and implement it. Exactly there is the question again: "Who is Lkapito?".

Well, I can guess who's asking that. Lkopito is a cube that I sometimes show, in the server, and it's actually made up of text messages, but it doesn't look like text anymore, I can try to show that on the server where I am.

That would be great and in that time, you could directly answer the next question which is: "At DDrace people have been banned, are there now also banned at DDnet, and if so how many?".

Well, originally our idea was that we have a server where people can play who have been banned on DDmax, and nobody gets banned. But unfortunately, we can't do that without banning, so at the moment there is one banned person.

May one find out why this person is banned?

For inappropriate behaviour on the servers without any insight, i.e. insults and so on.

Well, you have to play fair to the others, otherwise in the worst case there is a repeated request to change his behaviour and sometimes a ban.

Rarely but if you are really bad then yes.

You said once, so something big must have happened.

That's right, with most people you can just talk.

Yes, there is also an innovation that you only introduced this year, recently to be exact. The chetiquette, that's what we used to call it, now there's a different generic term for it, but in general that's what it's about. The idea behind it, the reason for it is that it has become so bad in the meantime that many are not so friendly to each other or is it just out of pure caution.

The tone has always been a bit rougher, in the forum, but lately it has become a bit worse, when half of the posts have nothing to do with the topic, then I think something should be done. That's when I introduced these rules to behave a bit. Most people don't need to read it because most of them behave properly anyway and the people who misrepresent themselves can be referred to it.

What interests me: "Will there be a loading stream of Savic?

No

Too bad, I thought she was doing an extra birthday loading stream, too bad.

7:30pm I heard there is something else interesting.

I heard that too, I told you, more or less. I don't know if it's true, we'll see what happens at 7:30. It's totally awesome skeletton how you translate the interview for the people, totally cool.

Are there translators?

Yes, in T-world there are translations of Skeletton that we are talking about. There's someone in the (unv.) chat who was also banned, Erics.

Yes, I meant real bans and not just five minutes. So once (unv.) been voted out by other players (unv.) Or also once by a moderator or admin.

So, by ban is meant a real IT ban? This person can't play on DDnet under a false name.

Exactly.

It's also an interesting question: "What do you think about the idea of the map rating system, which means that if you mix the map, you can give it stars and it will be used to calculate how the map is ranked.

So, the stars are supposed to indicate the difficulty, but it's still interesting if you can indicate how good a map is. We are a bit late.

You can always do that later.

Many people have already played the maps and don't want to play them again. The goal would be to give them the opportunity to rate the map when they've finished it and not just randomly have people rate it.

Miliodaffu asks if shorts always come on the race server. So, shorts are short races, things that are through within ten, 30 seconds at the most.

Well, my current plan is not to leave them, but we'll see how the server runs and then we can think about whether we want to change something or not. We don't have any short maps, we try to have longer maps, we'll have to see.

Many people are also interested in how the points system came about. It's counterproductive to the original idea that the fastest are at the top and get the most points.

That was also what I did with Me on the DDmax server, we wanted to be the fastest, but there was very little competition. I just noticed that most of the people play to help other people or because they enjoy running the map comfortably. Few play, to get to the finish quickly.

Is there a possibility to enter this afterwards? That the fastest could be rewarded with extra points. Is something like that planned?

There are several point systems on the maps, and one rewards people for completing the maps quickly.

Can you see that in the game? That might be an idea to introduce that.

Well, the idea of the points is that you can win points and you can't lose points, and that wouldn't fit with the idea that you get an extra 50 points after a good finish and if someone else is faster you lose points again. So, the points are like experience points in other games. I think why we are so successful is that we have the points and that we reward people for playing the maps and not just those who play for time.

Is the function of banning players used a lot, or is there a plan to change it, because it is often used wrongly? At least I notice that very often when I come in and am called a faker and then a ban runs. Is there anything planned, maybe with accounts, so that you can see who the person is who has behaved wrongly.

Well, accounts were an idea for the new game that was supposed to be similar to DDNet, but since that didn't happen, there are currently no accounts. The difficulty is how to assign players to their accounts. So, someone could just come in and pretend to be Deen and then they get (unv.) from me.

That would be a bit awkward.

Exactly, and I think it's nice that you can just start playing without having to worry about accounts and logging in. That has its advantages too.

We have the tournaments every weekend which is really cool, it's a lot of fun for a lot of people and it's fun for me to host it. There was nothing for two weekends because the idea of the tournaments was to be revised. Many people have complained that the maps aren't really challenging any more, or that they're nice, but they're great because most of them are known quickly because we have to bring out maps. Is there something planed regarding further tournaments, maybe also seasonal tournaments or something else.

The (unv.) from (unv.) has one with (unv.) that means he has a season where you play several normal maps during the week, and on the weekend, you would also have a tournament. The points count together, so you have to be good at everything to win in the end. That would be the next idea we would try. The really good games would then try to race the maps during the week and also at the weekend. The others who play less would watch the tournaments at the weekend and that would be interesting as well.

And are there any tournament rewards planned?

Not really. We had something like that at the first birthday and it had rather negative consequences. It triggered attacks.

In the meantime, all servers are on caution. In the meantime, DDnet has DDos prodection.

Yes, but there is no hundred percent protection.

All right, then I'm still interested in what you're writing your master's thesis about. Maybe even about teeworlds?

Not about teeworlds, no. It's about graph algorithms and differentiation of (unv.) processor maps.

That's such an awesome topic, so no. Thanks to all the viewers, we're now 20th place and have about 100 viewers watching you just trying to finish the map and answer the questions here at the same time. Kudos to you too for keeping it up pretty well, because as a player I know it's not easy and now you know what it's like. That's one of the reasons why I don't play in the tournaments. Many would like the tournaments to be moderated not only in German, but also in English. Are there any plans for more moderators to take part in the tournaments?

Well, I'm not planning any moderators, but if someone offers themselves, they can do it. So, I think you're doing a wonderful job, it's just a pity that it's in German.

Well, that's how we reach 100 people, it's not that bad. If someone wants to do an English livestream, then go ahead. From me personally I can also finally reveal with the seasonal tournaments there will also be a small change, namely I will try to keep the small maps in English. But the older ones will be in German. That means you will be entertained multilingually, except for brutal, there I will continue in German, because that takes quite a long time, and that in English will be too much. We talked a bit about the fact that it is very noticeable that there are so few DDnet videos on Youtube. Do you know where that comes from?

Not only on Youtube but also on the internet in general you don't find much. And that's also because we came out of Teeworlds, and people are more likely to make videos about Teeworlds than about DDnet.

So, guys, if you have a good run you want to present, just do it, I think Deen will put it on DDnet.

If it's good definitely.

Why are bad videos posted on the DDnet home page? What are the selection criteria for those, or is there maybe an option on the forum to say watch I have a video here, watch it and if you like it put it on the front page?

Sure. People can do that. Just put it on the forum and then I'll do it. So, the way it works is that people just send me a link and I make sure the video is ok and then I put it on the page.

So, if you want to promote DDnet a little bit, make a funny video, send it to Deen and spread the word, because the hype is not going to end anytime soon, at least not as soon as some people think or hope.

Thanks for the awesome interview.

You're welcome, it was really funny.

Anything you want to say, now to the community.

Have fun.

Deen thank you for being there. I have another question you have the (unv.) that has looked like that since forever, why that colour combination?

Originally, I just had a completely grey tee and at some point, Me got the idea that you could mix the colours.

Well, I'll dismiss you now.