Post by Edmonton Oilers on Apr 11, 2023 8:55:44 GMT -5
Hello, friends.
This is a hard message to write. Perhaps it's a hard message to read. So I'm sure you can guess where this is going already...
Super short, Unsentimental Version
Our sim program has become irrevocably broken. We have tried many work-arounds, but nothing will fix it. We have looked into other options, and anything we can do (like building a new sim program from scratch), will take much longer than an "off-season". As such, with great pain, we are forced to announce the closure of N90, the sim league.
"Short" Sentimental Version:
When Mike and I talked about launching one last hockey site, one last time, we knew it would be a lot of work, and we knew for it to survive, we would have to have fun and enjoy ourselves. We knew what killed us, and our sites in the past, was trying to appease everyone, and do everything we could to make everyone happy. We decided to launch with the inside slogan of "Hashtag 6" - which we would use to remind ourselves of the founding principles of this site. In a nutshell, we said we would run the site as long as we were having fun, even if that meant we only had enough members for an original 6 league. And we knew we could do that if it came to it. When times got hard, or we found ourselves in prolonged struggles with each other, or with you folks, or whatever else, we would just drop a quick "#6" to one another to remind ourselves that it was about the fun, and even if we were alone with only 4 other people, we would have a fun last hurrah.
What I don't think either of us expected was that you guys would turn out hard and fast, and stick with this thing as lovingly, and as passionately, as you have for the past 3 Years, 4 Months, and 2 Days. Our disagreements here have been amongst the best disagreements I have had to deal with in our sim site histories together, in that you guys were respectful and your arguments were very reasonably and well-presented. On top of the normal "it showed that you were passionate and cared", you also routinely showed you were thoughtful and understood what we were all working towards, as a community and sim site.
Though we will miss this, anyone who wants to can keep the community vibes going by linking up with us on ManMMA, or through our Twitch stream, or even our stream's Discord server. There are no real rules on any of those, so if you want to just exist on one casually as acquintences or whatever, please do not hesitate.
Thank you gentlemen again for absolutely everything; it's been a privilege flying with you.
- Jusin and Mike
Long, Technical Version of Why We R.I.P. now.
The sim program we used for this site was built into, and hosted on, a website. Mike discovered this site sometime around 2012, and ever since then he was one of their most active, enthusiastic members. Mike often worked closely with the creator of UHS to get new features built in, helping him adjust the program, guinea pigging it, etc. We used it for various sites, including Budget league, ManNHL 1990 (the original one), and many others right up to this one. It has been our go-to simulation program because it's basically been tailored for exactly our sim purposes. The ease of copying and pasting erased the need to do Excel write-ups with manual inputting from XBox and Playstation. It had lots of versatility, and it came with wonderfully weird idiocyncracies (like how Crosby and Ovechkin hate playing together lol)
But over the years, it was made clear to us that the creator had some ongoing medical concerns. These escalated, and eventually he made it known that he was basically running the site/program until he felt he couldn't, or didn't want to dedicate time toward it anymore.
For a time, he was exploring the options of selling the site, and by extention, the program. We looked into this and seriously considered it. Until he revealed his asking price was "in the 6-digit range". We continued with what we could, hoping the program, and our site, would last for years before his site, and he, passed away.
Last January, amid growing health concerns, he shut down his twitter, closed the discord channel for UHS, the forums, etc and told everyone "the servers will run until they don't anymore."
Around this time, we began trying to get one of Justin's programmer friends on board to clone, or build a new simulator program. We did not have productive talks with him, as he knows little about hockey, and we never really got a good, involved sit-down conversation going. Plus, he continually reiterated how much easier and better it would be if he could just work from UHS's existing code.
After lengthy discussions on what to do with this community that we loved so much, we decided to ride it out in silence, and not panic anyone. We knew announcing things would inevitably affect trades, and dedication, which we did not want, especially since all indications prior to the creators departure were the site should last for years prior to slowly imploding. (Plus Justin was still holding out hope we could work something out with his programer friend) Mike was still paying an annual fee toward the servers and hoped others were as well. But as of April 1st, it looks as though a crucial portion of the site (which allows us to make trades, advance seasons from pre-season to regular and view all stats histories) are no longer operable.
Mike reached out to the creator and did not receive a favorable response (he reiterated the 6-figure sum he wanted to forward us the code to continue forward with a new programmer).
The absolute last Hail Mary attempt Mike tried was a full-blown, 100% reboot, loading the original file to try and essentially reboot the site to season 1 and clear out any and all issues with a fully blank slate. But the same issues persist in that file as well.
And so here we are. Justin still holds out the long-as-fuck shot that his programmer friend can work something out, but knowing that fella, if we do, it will be a year or more for the program to be made. (If you have emails enabled, or link up with us on our Discord, or migrate over to ManMMA where we can still be in touch with you guys, we can let you know if we can work anything else out).
We want to thank you all for being on this wacky journey with us, which some of you have been riding for 15+ years. It has been a pleasure. We have had a lot of fun and hope you all did as well.
We'll take the 3 years, and 21 seasons and call this site a success. Though we are both a little sad we didn't get to complete the masterpiece that was Justin's Stanley Cup. But we've added the empty years now, just for completion's sake, so you can at least see the marvel it was going to be when completed
Thank you all again and please do not hesitate come visit us and hang out sometime on our stream, our Discord, or over at ManMMA.
- Mike and Justin
This is a hard message to write. Perhaps it's a hard message to read. So I'm sure you can guess where this is going already...
Super short, Unsentimental Version
Our sim program has become irrevocably broken. We have tried many work-arounds, but nothing will fix it. We have looked into other options, and anything we can do (like building a new sim program from scratch), will take much longer than an "off-season". As such, with great pain, we are forced to announce the closure of N90, the sim league.
"Short" Sentimental Version:
When Mike and I talked about launching one last hockey site, one last time, we knew it would be a lot of work, and we knew for it to survive, we would have to have fun and enjoy ourselves. We knew what killed us, and our sites in the past, was trying to appease everyone, and do everything we could to make everyone happy. We decided to launch with the inside slogan of "Hashtag 6" - which we would use to remind ourselves of the founding principles of this site. In a nutshell, we said we would run the site as long as we were having fun, even if that meant we only had enough members for an original 6 league. And we knew we could do that if it came to it. When times got hard, or we found ourselves in prolonged struggles with each other, or with you folks, or whatever else, we would just drop a quick "#6" to one another to remind ourselves that it was about the fun, and even if we were alone with only 4 other people, we would have a fun last hurrah.
What I don't think either of us expected was that you guys would turn out hard and fast, and stick with this thing as lovingly, and as passionately, as you have for the past 3 Years, 4 Months, and 2 Days. Our disagreements here have been amongst the best disagreements I have had to deal with in our sim site histories together, in that you guys were respectful and your arguments were very reasonably and well-presented. On top of the normal "it showed that you were passionate and cared", you also routinely showed you were thoughtful and understood what we were all working towards, as a community and sim site.
Though we will miss this, anyone who wants to can keep the community vibes going by linking up with us on ManMMA, or through our Twitch stream, or even our stream's Discord server. There are no real rules on any of those, so if you want to just exist on one casually as acquintences or whatever, please do not hesitate.
Thank you gentlemen again for absolutely everything; it's been a privilege flying with you.
- Jusin and Mike
Long, Technical Version of Why We R.I.P. now.
The sim program we used for this site was built into, and hosted on, a website. Mike discovered this site sometime around 2012, and ever since then he was one of their most active, enthusiastic members. Mike often worked closely with the creator of UHS to get new features built in, helping him adjust the program, guinea pigging it, etc. We used it for various sites, including Budget league, ManNHL 1990 (the original one), and many others right up to this one. It has been our go-to simulation program because it's basically been tailored for exactly our sim purposes. The ease of copying and pasting erased the need to do Excel write-ups with manual inputting from XBox and Playstation. It had lots of versatility, and it came with wonderfully weird idiocyncracies (like how Crosby and Ovechkin hate playing together lol)
But over the years, it was made clear to us that the creator had some ongoing medical concerns. These escalated, and eventually he made it known that he was basically running the site/program until he felt he couldn't, or didn't want to dedicate time toward it anymore.
For a time, he was exploring the options of selling the site, and by extention, the program. We looked into this and seriously considered it. Until he revealed his asking price was "in the 6-digit range". We continued with what we could, hoping the program, and our site, would last for years before his site, and he, passed away.
Last January, amid growing health concerns, he shut down his twitter, closed the discord channel for UHS, the forums, etc and told everyone "the servers will run until they don't anymore."
Around this time, we began trying to get one of Justin's programmer friends on board to clone, or build a new simulator program. We did not have productive talks with him, as he knows little about hockey, and we never really got a good, involved sit-down conversation going. Plus, he continually reiterated how much easier and better it would be if he could just work from UHS's existing code.
After lengthy discussions on what to do with this community that we loved so much, we decided to ride it out in silence, and not panic anyone. We knew announcing things would inevitably affect trades, and dedication, which we did not want, especially since all indications prior to the creators departure were the site should last for years prior to slowly imploding. (Plus Justin was still holding out hope we could work something out with his programer friend) Mike was still paying an annual fee toward the servers and hoped others were as well. But as of April 1st, it looks as though a crucial portion of the site (which allows us to make trades, advance seasons from pre-season to regular and view all stats histories) are no longer operable.
Mike reached out to the creator and did not receive a favorable response (he reiterated the 6-figure sum he wanted to forward us the code to continue forward with a new programmer).
The absolute last Hail Mary attempt Mike tried was a full-blown, 100% reboot, loading the original file to try and essentially reboot the site to season 1 and clear out any and all issues with a fully blank slate. But the same issues persist in that file as well.
And so here we are. Justin still holds out the long-as-fuck shot that his programmer friend can work something out, but knowing that fella, if we do, it will be a year or more for the program to be made. (If you have emails enabled, or link up with us on our Discord, or migrate over to ManMMA where we can still be in touch with you guys, we can let you know if we can work anything else out).
We want to thank you all for being on this wacky journey with us, which some of you have been riding for 15+ years. It has been a pleasure. We have had a lot of fun and hope you all did as well.
We'll take the 3 years, and 21 seasons and call this site a success. Though we are both a little sad we didn't get to complete the masterpiece that was Justin's Stanley Cup. But we've added the empty years now, just for completion's sake, so you can at least see the marvel it was going to be when completed
Thank you all again and please do not hesitate come visit us and hang out sometime on our stream, our Discord, or over at ManMMA.
- Mike and Justin