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The History of BCS
All information quoted here is factual and is what has happened to BCS on the route to where we are now....
July 2006
BCS, The early days - In July 2006 I went to a LAN event in Tunbridge Wells, in the UK with some friends and we played
CSS, WOW and some other games. It was a great event and that’s what gave me the
idea for the BCS LAN event in August 2007. We played a racing game which was
free called TMN and I was hooked from the 1st moment I played it.
What entranced me was the wacky looping and crazy speeds you could reach, oh
and the fact that you only had to use 4 keys, up, down, left and right on the
keyboard… That to me was heaven… As most games I played involved 20+ keys for
FPS. (First Person Shooters.)
August 2006
I officially started playing TMN in August 2006 and it
soon became apparent that people had their own servers and teams and that UK teams were very few. I raced on
several servers to start with but settled on ‘W4, DFA and UKR servers, as they seemed the best at that time.
September 2006
The main server I raced on was DFA, it had a good mix of
people and I found them to be friendly and quite open. It was in October after
playing the game for a month that I decided that I wanted my own team, but
could not think of a name for it. So like most people, I stayed in and watched
a film on TV, got drunk and wrote down a name.
October 2006
BCS was born at that point… Thanks to watching Austin Powers International Man
of Mystery. Team: Bestcarshaguar was born, later shortened to BCS as a tag ingame for TMU.
After playing on DFA servers, I got to know a few people on there and found it
easy to talk to certain members who were happy to talk back to me. I got on
really well with Matt at DFA and asked him that if I started a team, would he
like to join. He said he would and that’s what started having me banned from
DFA servers, and rightly so. I made a big mistake by recruiting on DFA servers and
realised afterwards that I then had no server to race on and had to go to other
servers and just keep my head down.
A few weeks later; one of the Administrators at DFA
allowed the ban to be lifted and I was allowed to race again on the servers,
but it was never the same again and I was watched closely by members of that
team. I understand why now and I am very sorry.
November 2006
In November 2006, I approached DFA~Sloth to help me
configure a server for myself and to help BCS have its own server. I was
expecting him to laugh in my face, but he did not and was happy to help me out.
Within a few weeks BCS had a server running from my home PC and BCS was alive
and running with the packs on the UK cluster.
After a few weeks of having a server which lagged like
hell because it was being run on my own home computer. I asked Sloth if I could
rent server space from his server, because he had a dedicated box and that
would allow us to run on BCS much faster and he agreed, but within 4-5 weeks of
use, we began to eat into DFA’s usage and Sloth had to let us go… I thought
that this would be the end of BCS, but Sloth came to our rescue again and
helped me setup a server of our own. DFA~Sloth – Thank You.
December 2006
In December 2006, I heard about TMU and decided that is
where I wanted BCS to be and moved the team over there. We lost 20+ players on
TMN who didn’t want to come over and started BCS with 6 members on TMU and
officially started on the 12th December 2006. It was the start of many great
things and some very bad things too.
January 2007
All my thanks at the start of the BCS campaign go to BCS
drivers and core members Dizzy, John, Zev & Esswhy and Admin member Rayes who joined me
from nations for the TMU saga.
Whilst travelling around Europe earlier on in my life I met some zany
people from Sweden, who were using a content
management system called Mambo, later a splinter cell formed away from
that particular
CMS and called itself Joomla. I was amazed with the potential aspects
of what this
(Content Management System) could do and started making some small
websites for
friends and family members, and because I had setup BCS as a team, we
also
needed a website and purchased our team domain name which had
everything to do with who were going to be and who we were going to
become. www.bestcsarshaguar.com - The BCS showcase! was released onto
the waiting TMU world.
Some interesting Facts about the BCS website!
1. Its domain name has something to do with the actual team name!
2. The core components, modules and bots are Joomla based!
3. BCS has two coders in the team who write in HTML and
PHP which are Rayes & Primal
4. The site has been heavily enhanced by the team creator, Santino who has worked with many joomla core members.
5. The site cost nothing in money terms to create bar the domain name to purchase and the website hosting!
February 2007
Teamspeak is introduced to the team thanks to Mikky & Sid
who join us from a nations team called .vG (Vanished Gaming) which
later literally vanished, but
before it did. We were lucky enough to get Fluffski, NME, Crazyhorse
& Bazz
as well.
Crusard from TMN works with me to release the storyboard track for the
BCS Community based on Austin Powers, which turns out to be a huge
success and inspires Santino to make a lot more tracks for the team
including Reverse Psychology and [PF] Spin Doctor.
March 2007
We got our 1st shared server, which lagged a bit, but it was
better than nothing and the team started to grow beyond the realms of
what BCS
once was.
Recruitment drive starts to get more members into the team and we
recruit
22 new people of which, 19 stayed in the team, Santino also raises the
age
entry to 17 years of age due to the adult nature of teamspeak and forum
discussions. we also recruit one of our now admins, Janine who takes
over the forums and makes a huge impact to the team.
April 2007
DaveDread made an intro for one of Santino’s tracks: Reverse
Psychology which took him 23 hours and over 5 weeks to make and lasts
less than
10 seconds... Also in that month. BCS had a gaming policy of not
allowing other languages to be spoken in our servers, but we soon
realised that we were cutting ourselves off from other english speaking
foreigners from joining the team, so this rule was relaxed and we now
have many great people from all over the world in BCS.
May 2007
We start to work on the new BCS website which is completed in less
than 2 weeks give or take a few days and we open our first forum open
to
everyone without any private, member or admin sections.. Big mistake
but we learned
from it, Then in May, team UKR got themselves banned from our servers
for one of its players being abusive. Santino being a bull in a china
shop banned the whole team instead of the "one" team member.... But
soon realised his mistake and unbanned them all within days.
June 2007
The team creator decides on three new user groups within the team:
Standard Member, Core Member & Admin - to help administer the team
more
efficiently and to offer a kind of long term infrastructure within the
team
hierarchy and puts in place a joining fee due to the amount of work
Santino is now putting into BCS for servers, forums and website and all
recruitment in the team.
July 2007
BCS pays 4u servers £714 for a year’s server and gets ripped off
when the server host company goes bust and gets liquidated and BCS loses all
its money!
The website team start to work again on the site so that our forums
are private and for members only... Invision Power Boards are added to the
website and a special section for Guests, Special Guests and Trialists are
added to the portal.
August 2007
BCS has its first LAN event in the UK, players come from Denmark and around the UK, a few drop out at the last
minute making numbers dwindle from 14 to 9. It was still a great event and one
that will be matched in March 08 with more people coming. Special thanks to
BIGBAZZ & his family for getting the hall booked and setup!
September 2007
Santino releases [PF] Spin Doctor on TM-X and soon the PF only
track has 118 awards with thanks to Fluffski & Firestarter for all the MT work undertaken.
October 2007
BCS gets its own dedicated server from 1&1 internet and
surprising opens 9 server channels on TMU. (Stadium, Wacky Races,
Rounds etc), Also after waiting several weeks in suspense Zede from the
website; Car Park; shows me the finished Shaguar that I asked him to
make for BCS. 12 weeks in the making and well worth the wait.
November 2007
BCS has a huge leadership changeover. Santino and Mikky step
away from leader & co-leader roles, and create a group of admins all equal
to each other, so that decisions can be made faster with or without mikky or
santino’s input.
December 2007
BCS comes of age and turns 1 year old - We've come along way in a short
space of time.
January 2008
Everyone starts playing other others and the team starts to drift
apart, Santino pulls the team back together with a team expansion into
other games, which does not go the way Santino expects. 10 members
resign and go off to another group and the team remains in limbo for a
month or so.
February 2008 (BIG MONTH)
When Mikky, Janine and a few others depart the team this allows Santino
to re-focus the team and start to move the team forward again. Losing
two admins in one hit was bad enough, but then losing 8 other members
as well was enough to drive any team leader to dispair.
Alnitak and Quaker join as full Admins for BCS, they were Core members
already and moved up with natural internal selection. Both have a lota
wealth of experience in server admin control. Soon the servers are
running at 100% effeciency again.
F.E.A.R is added to the dedibox with 1&1 Internet and COD4 also is added which starts to build up a nice following.
March 2008
Santino starts a recruitment drive to get the team back on track and it
works. 628 people in one day visited the BCS website with an average
unique visitor statistic of 245 people every day coming to the website
and forums to check out who we are. Some of those will be members,
special guests etc, but the unique visitor statistic shows an avg of
245 people daily, which aint bad is it?
April 2008
BCS is at a stage of big thoughts for Santino!
Does he make a BIG change to the website, colours, forums, team tags
etc. Or should he just carry on with the grey//orange team colours that
are now the known colours for team: Shaguar. Santino asks the team what
they think about a colour change. 1st orange and blue is discussed, but
the team settle on white//blue as a comprimise and because their is now
no committee that Santino has to agree everything with, the change is
instant.. and happens within a few days with no issues from anyone.
May 08
The new colours seem to be a success especially for the trackmakers of BCS who can now add the colours of the team into the actual tracks they have made. So that people can see who has made them. The issues we had before with the grey was that no-one could see the track name, so that part of the change was superb. white//blue was banded around and white and red and white and black, but Santino took it upon himself to choose the light blue as a good neutral colour. The change over is a success and the new website colours and choice seem to be working as well.
June 08
The 17 age bracket seems to be working well, but we now seem to have kids wanting to join the team by lieing about their age just to get into BCS, not sure how we will tackle this one... Due to the impossibiliy to check ages. Time will tell, maybe forcing everyone to come on Teamspeak and meet the team could be a way to testing this method of madness. Time for a cup of tea and a digestive biscuit break. :-)
July 08
No Update ass to busy with job and working to targets to earn money to go on holiday.
September 2008
This is a very late update for 2008, but I have been very very busy with everything team wise and all of a sundry.
After very careful consideration of what has been happening to BCS for
over 3 months. Santino changes the way recruitment and some of the
membership is done so that we can get more members into the team.
Teamspeak is now for everyone. People who want
to just use our servers with a BCS tag and use our forums under
standard membership rules will be able to join for FREE. If they want
to pay the £10 as a standard member then they are upgraded to CORE
within a few months of standard membership criteria. As a core member
you are given better perks with the role of a 2nd tier membership
status.
October 2008
BCS start gaming a lot with a team called [Z] Clan which is where FireStarter came from in the early days of joining BCS. They then join us on our teamspeak and we start top have a good laugh, we start using their servers to game and play COD4 and FEAR and they use our servers for TMU and Teamspeak etc. It becomes apparent to Santino that using two servers for two teams is a waste of resources and money and asks if they want to use our servers only, or we use theirs only..... it is left for awhile whilst Kickker, Sticky and Hellbabe consider the logistics of what to do.. Then after a month or so, Kickker approahces Santino and asks if the two teams can merge into one under the BCS banner, which brings two thoughts to Santino's head.This is a fantastic solution and everyone benefits from the merger and oh dear another team is joining and if one decides to leave then they may all leave like [Vanished] Clan didwith Si, Mikky, Fluffski, NME etc did B4. Santino takes the plunge and puts his trust in his new friends and the merger happens.
Nov 08
The [Z] clan merger is a success and we are on our way again to better times....
I must say that I was a tad afraid about the merger due to what happened B4 but they are a super bunch of people and each of them very special. I am delighted to have them in the team with us.
December 08
More members start to join and the two week trial process of getting people in to assess suitability grows well with 9 new members in two weeks. 1 is declined membership due to abusive swearing all the time on TS, CU** this, CU** that was enough for me to say no thanks after talking to him in one day on TS, but the overall recruitment and teamspeak process starts to lift off and we all have a merry Christmas.
January 2009
Santino creates a new team called Speeedgods.com which forms the BCS junior team who are aged between 13-16 yeras old to try and combat the ever increase of kids joining BCS on teamspeak and our forums which becomes almost impossible to handle. Santino also devises a plan to give each admin a task to do on a long term basis. Carty and Skysurfer join the admin team to bulster our top tier ranks and they are given specific jobs to do in the team.
February 2009
Speeed clan lifts off to a great start but soon the issues arise where their members are swearing on their forums, treating BCS like shit and are generally being kids, which is nothing short of what we expect from them..... but as this happens it starts to have a knock on effect to BCS and Santino steps into speeed to organise ranks, and forums and the whole process of recruiters, leaders etc. It all starts to work again until some of the members start being idiots again and organised chaos turns to anarchy. Santino ponders whether to close the speeed team or let it carry on. Santi lets the team carry on for now.
March 2009
Santino starts to look at the website itself which is a dark blue to black and ponders the idea to change the colours from black website and very dark forums to white//blue to bulster the colours of the site and keept he branding in check. Santi starts to lay foundations and plans to completely upgrade the website and forums and decides to start on it in April 09. Alnitak also writes a PLUGIN for the FUN server which allows us to have ingame messages and he also writes a cracking program and plugin for banning, blacklisting and erasing all records for hackers. Which is a phenominal success!
THANK YOU ALNITAK!!
April 2009
The BCS LAN event goes ahead and is a good laugh with 6 people using one of our members house as a LAN PARTY! To the amusement of neighbors who have loads of cars turn up.
The team debate whether to turn the rounds server into a dedimania channel which we have wanted to do for nearly a year but due to time allocation from admins to design and integrate it. It goes on hold indefinetely... One of the CORE members Alex who is very good with server configs takes it on himself to open up a test channel and put dedimania on it and it works really well, before we know it its transferred to the BCS Stadium Rounds server, and we are deliighted with the results and everyone starts using it every day. SPECIAL THANKS TO ALEX AND THE ADMINS FOR ADDING THIS.
Going into May 2009
Santino decided to close Speeed team due to the issues faced with Speeed members dissing BCS members ingame, and certian speeed members calling two of the BCS core members: liars, this was also down to several complaints recieved by Santino from CORE members in the team and from actual guests who like racing on our servers, but as a sidenote... Santino has allowed a few members from Speeed who are mature in age to join BCS and be part of the BCS Junior team for the under 18's. The team has also increased the age from 17 to 18 for joining. There is still a two week trial period but the BCS junior team now have permanent blue//white colour tags and the BCS seniors have a white//blue colour tag which so far is working well..... X speeed members who are already using TS are Rock99 and Posieden.
We have come a long way and gone through some serious challenges but we are still here and have delivered to date what Santi has wanted which is:
Standard Protocols
1. New website and forum to match white//blue TMU tags
2. Increased age to BCS to minimum age of 18
3. Created a BCS junior team who use blue//white tags
4. Integrated [Z] Clan into BCS - Best thing this year!
5. Out of pure luck had a Car Modeller join the tea, Moog
Extra special thanks goes to: Alnitak, Skysurfer, Carty and Kickker for all their help in keeping the servers operational and helping with payments to BCS Servers!!
For the whole year I wish to thank the CORE team especially Gunner71 who won the CORE seat as head of that group to have weekly meetings and discuss team changes and events. It has been a success and is due to the members of CORE making it such. Many ideas and ongoing commitments put forward by the core are in the process of being implemented into the team infrastructure. GREAT JOB GUYS!
As a final mention to the longest members of the team who are still here with me from Nations. Dizzy and John thanks for putting up with my bullshit and staying here in the team.
Many thanks to everyone else for making BCS a success.
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