Who will be voted out tonight???

(hi guys)

Heyy, I'm marshmelow (I know it's misspelled--my 8 year old self however didn't, and I'm sticking to it lol).
I absolutely loved PR2 as a child and into my early teens, so I was delighted when I found that there's a download and that servers are still up.
Though I have to say, I'm feeling mighty inadequate now at level 34 lol. Seeing level 80+ is crazy... If memory serves me right, intrpd was one of the highest level players back when I was active, and he was in the high 40s or something...

I focused mainly on art and making levels (though my art wasn't nearly as good as I thought back then >.>). There doesn't seem to be many people playing anymore, but it'd still be fun to get back into things and make a level or two.

If anyone happens upon this and feels like answering a couple questions I've got rattling around, it'd be appreciated:
-How many people are still around? I've logged in a few times, and it varied. At one point there was like 20 something across different servers, and another point like 3 people.

-Does my old nemesis, the art limit, still exist? I remember being thwarted by it many times in the past and had a lot of levels never finished due to it.

-And finally... how long have these forums been a thing? Were they around in 2008? I seem to have missed its heyday unfortunately, but I've always loved forums, so I'm shocked I never learned of this until now. If they've been around awhile, guess I was too busy on Kongregate to notice.

Oh yeah, before I forget--if there's an admin that could assist with some account/login related issues as well, it'd be nice.

I used to play platformracing 2 way back when. It recently came up in conversation with a friend, and so I am here to see if there is a possibilty to recover my account. Fingers crossed. I want to replay the tracks I made.

if anyone remembers how i used to type, chat ,race ,and act please let me know im curious about who  has memories about me and how i was like

I don't know if this will reach anyone that will be interested, but I might as well try.

There's a new abstract board game that's simple but deep. If you like Chess or Go or anything similar to that, or just interested in math and patterns, you might be into it.

It's called MigoYugo:
https://www.migoyugo.com/

The entire game is digitized. You can play against an AI and the level 3 and level 4 AI are decently strong. Will probably defeat you a lot if you are new.

The Rules of the Game are:
- You play on an 8x8 board (A chessboard will do)
- Each player takes turns placing 1 stone somewhere on the board (These stones are called 'Migos')
- Once a player gets 4 allied stones in a row, either horizontally, vertically, or diagonally left, or diagonally right then all the allied Migos in that row disappear and the final stone placed is a Level-2 Stone. (These are called 'Yugos')
- The first person to get 4 Yugos in a row wins... If neither wins this way then, when the board is full, we go to a tiebreaker where whoever has more Yugos win.
- There is one extra rule: You can never make a line of more than 4 pieces in a row. So no 5, 6, 7, rows etc.

---
The community is too small right now. Probably only a dozen players and a few active players. I want to see it get bigger, maybe have a tournament or something one day.

It's surprisingly deep. There's probably a lot of fundamental Tactics in it. Some Chess Tactics that carry over to it are Forced Moves, Tempos, Overloading, Chains, Simplifying the Board, Zugzwang, etc. Strategy is probably about controlling the center and making your pieces aligned, but since it's a new unstudied game who knows.

If you're not the competitive type, which I'm not completely, it's just cool how patterns emerge from it. A lot like Go or Conway's Game of Life, although this is definitely a lot more convoluted and less predictable. If you're into math you might find things to study or interest you in it. I might write about it later if anybody is interested/show some of my diagrams.

Two days ago, a slightly more naive @bls1999 set out to fix PR2 verification on the JV Discord bot. In order to do this, I needed to update the framework version I was using. No problem.

When trying to update the framework version, I learned that it isn't supported on the version of node I was using. No problem, I'll just update node.

When trying to update node, I learned that it isn't supported on the version of Linux the server hosting JV is running. It also just so happens that the version of Linux the server is running is 7 years old, had EOL'd 3.5 years ago, and had been surpassed by 4 major OS release versions since then.

Mistake number zero:
- What I should've done: regular updates.
- What I did: ignored OS updates for 5 years.

Mistake number one:
- What I should've done: stop, back everything up (including taking a snapshot with my hosting provider), prepare for the update, announce downtime.
- What I did: "Who needs a backup anyway? We're due for an upgrade anyway."
(I did back up the databases. This is important later.)

The first version upgrade goes somewhat well, but JV is now inaccessible via the internet.

Mistake number two:
- What I should've done: stop, fixed the issue, backed everything up.
- What I did: "That's fine, right? I'll just do all the updates and then fix everything."

The second version upgrade bricked SSH. For those who don't know, SSH is the conventional, main method of accessing your server. Without this, you can't get into the server to see any of the files or run any commands.

And remember the database update I did earlier? Yeah, I exported that to the local filesystem on the server, meaning I couldn't access that data either.

"****." What had started as a small fix had spiraled into a potential data loss scenario.

Okay, time for damage control. Turns out my hosting provider has something a fail-safe mode of sorts, where it boots another OS onto the server, sends you a password, and you're able to access all of the files. Excellent! From here, I downloaded the entire server partition onto my local machine. I decided that, since I had all the data and files, the best route would be to wipe the OS and restore the data. That way, I wouldn't have to deal with fixing broken things on a 5-year-old OS, I could just start fresh.

I did exactly that, installed and configured the latest versions of webserver/php/db, and went to jiggmin2.com. Nothing. Turns out, the firewall was misconfigured. I fixed that. Went to jiggmin2.com, nothing. Webserver was misconfigured. Fixed that and went to jiggmin2.com, got a MyBB error saying it couldn't load the database plugin. Turns out, the file permissions were wrong. Fixed those, went to jiggmin2.com; I was greeted by a mess of errors on the homepage and the forums not even loading.

"****." Even though the data was all there, nothing was working.

Through hours of painstaking trial and error, I figured out that not only were my webserver/SSL settings still misconfigured, the PHP version I had installed wasn't supported by some of the MyBB plugins I'd been using.

Mistake number three:
- What I should've done: checked to make sure everything was compatible with the latest versions of the webserver/PHP/db software.
- What I did: downloaded the latest versions, because new software is best software right? just look at windows 11

I downgraded PHP, fixed the webserver/SSL configuration errors, and we have the place up and running again.

So, morals of the story:
- Do software updates incrementally so each one isn't a huge leap
- Always back up critical services before performing major updates
- Warn stakeholders (you!) about potential downtime before maintenance begins
- Use a hosting provider that has a fail-safe mode
- Make mistakes in a lower-stakes environment

Two fun fights this weekend - you had Jake Paul vs. Anthony Joshua and Andrew Tate vs. Chase Demoor. One guy got his ass whooped and received a BROKEN JAW, and the other guy got rocked and battered with a BLOODY BLACK EYE. The Jake Paul fight is on Netflix and the Andrew Tate fight is on Rumble Premium. For those of you who don’t want to pay a dime for the Andrew Tate fight, watch it for free, here. The Rumble version has a lot of lag issues, so thankfully someone was gracious enough to record it in the front row with their cell phone.

Just hurry up and download it because Rumble has gotten pretty vicious lately about people who uploaded it on YouTube, and they’re having it taken down, too. For me, personally, I bet on the Jake Paul vs. Anthony Joshua fight on Draftkings. Everyone made money on that fight, including me. If you betted for those wrong person, I feel for you.

I got some great feedback here, so I am putting out a call for action from the community to help solidify what you would like to see this time around. (Season 1)

Things I would like to keep:

The 3 week, weekly structure of the event.

The prize structure which awards duck times, weekly leaderboards and lowest overall time.
stat total limit

The rules against glitches and clipping through blocks.


Things I would like to be different:

Too many levels. 30 was clearly too many. I have 9 new ones complete and have had a bunch in the works, but if we would like it to be over the holidays again, I am going to need to bust my but to get a few more finished.

I would like the players to recommend cosmetic rewards as prizes

Overall cumulative time will not be the grand prize this time around. Should it be most duck points? Most world records? or a life round? Grand prize being duck points would be another built in mechanism to keep players from hiding strats until the end.

It could be cool to have a live race as another category or even the grand prize. Maybe not the grand prize because it is a different skillset. The issue would be finding a time that works for each qualified player.

The posibility of using the 8p client because of its' ability to time with frames.

The Stat Total Limit. Some players have recommended 190 total instead of 200. If we use the 8p client, then level won't be an issue, but I am also not convinced that more is better. I want the stat total to keep the game feeling like pr2.

I would love for the players last year to assist me by creating a more clear comprehensive ruleset about glitches. what is/should be allowed and what is not. I do not know this game well enough. obviously.




Keeping duck times for season 1 levels claimable would be a good idea for those who didn't play last year.


One issue i can see with the 8p client is that it would reveal runs on the leaderboard. One way to stop that could be to put a finish by each start to spam the leaderboard with fast times to help hide the runs until the leaderboard update. The other option would be to embrace it and not have the 3 week structure.

when should the event be? I am not exactly ready, but I could get it together if I need to. Starting on a weekend again would be a good goal. so the 19th or 20th could be a good time to start unless doing it over the holidays was not a strength of season 1.
Or, we could have the event another time. Maybe over spring break or in the summer.

I have a couple season 1 levels that have rewards and are up for only one week

I could bring in some existing levels that were not built for the duck campaign projet that would be good to speedrun to help fill out the roster. Like Dusk Raiders by Overbeing.

Stunt offered to make a better spreadsheet for season 2... Is that offer still on the table?


Recap. I would love feedback, and for people to volenteer to put together a council of experts for help solidifying the ruleset that you lot would like to compete under as well as the prizes that should be given out.

Quack Quack!

Hi J-Town!

I left without warning some time ago, but I do think about everyone in this community here during my daily life. Truth be told, the recent attack in Sydney is part of the reason I'm posting this. I'm not sure if it's international news, but it's the deadliest Australian mass killing in about a decade, and I was actually in that place a little while before the attack albeit a bit earlier in the day. It's the closest I've ever really come to any sort of tragedy, and it did put things in perspective a bit for me. Part of that is that I never said any sort of goodbye to the community here. Truthfully, this is the first real community I ever knew. You all played a big part in my childhood, and especially the years which followed as well. Thank you for that, it holds a lot of weight for me.

On a serious note though, I think I should clear up a few things first. To be completely transparent, for many years I had a bad habit of telling white lies regarding personal information. It's somewhat tough admitting this, even though it seems so insignificant at the same time. I guess that's because I didn't have the courage to tell the truth for a long time, despite having a presence here. Nevertheless, I want to clear some things up as I value this community highly and never had any malintent. I guess it's akin to tying up loose ends.

n the beginning, it was mainly in order to protect myself online, as for some of the years I frequented PR2 I was considerably young. I essentially made up these little stories that highly contradicted who I actually was. I was pretty naïve back then with no real understanding of the internet, so in my mind what I was doing was genius and allowed me to freely befriend anyone without consequence. If asked personal questions, I would draw from people, places, and things which I had no connection to whatsoever in an effort to be fanciful and interesting. How very!

This whole thing somewhat backfired as I eventually made proper friends and connections. It's certainly nothing criminal, but I do feel bad for keeping on these stories about being from places I'm not from and living a different, more interesting life than the one I actually lead. So, I thought I'd fix up the story. No lies.

My main account on PR2 was always geminij, and if you knew me at basically any point, you may have a completely different idea of who I am. In actuality, my name is Jack and I'm from Brisbane, Australia. White, brown hair, nothing special. I'm currently working on a Master of International Relations at the University of Sydney; for my bachelor's, I went to the University of Queensland. I think the field is right for me, but only time will tell. I've worked in retail/sales for a long while now, furniture and homemaking specifically. Of course to support myself while studying, but I also enjoy helping people along with their decorating, planning, et cetera. I'm definitely far removed from the more extreme, result-oriented ideologies of the industry; it's not my forever. I have a girlfriend of almost three years, too. She's great, and she could be the one, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it!

So there you have it. Much love to those who've sent messages, I'm just fine. For now, I'll be around for a while like a true Villager, or whatever we're called.

~ gem