I somehow can't believe how far we've been come and how long this page already exists. Furthermore this is also a reminder of how old I am already (being 32 years old) and mapping now for almost 20 years... what a terrible beautiful waste of time. It was over 20 years ago when I first got my hands on a Doom addon disc called "Boom - Neue Waffen & Monster" (new weapons and monsters) in a german electronics shop. I can still remember that the disc obviously had some problems as my Quad-Speed CD-ROM had troubles reading it, but still I was able to play old '94 maps of all kind, some of them with even new graphics and monsters - sprite replacements obviously. That was the moment that made me start it all, playoung around with DETH and Wadauthor for the first time, taking ages to build the first room, understanding on my own what "upper, lower textures" are, what a sector is, how to draw rooms and all that crazy things. It was "learning by doing", there hasn't been any documentations and the Internet was something only wealthy people could afford - 56K modems to be precise.

Fortunately times have changed and so has the quality of the releases in the past years. Sourceports are able to do things that haven't been even imaginable in the late 90's, people come up with crazy hacks and ideas that push the id engine to the limits and still amaze me - as a player and a mapper in both ways.

I have to say that the Realm667 wouldn't be possible without the persons visiting it, the persons maintaining it and the persons supporting it through donations. But that's not all: I also want to thank my family that they always accepted me spending so much time in front of the computer - I would never have been able to build all this shit and later work as a graphics designer and photograph in a media agency ;) Anyway, enough blabla, Happy Birthday and back to Blade of Agony - Cheers!