ShadyServer was first created in December fo 2005. A group of around 10 gathered at TheIronChef’s house to partake in their first LAN party for Unreal Tournament 99. The night consisted of hours of ctf and deathmatch filled with screams of pain and joy. With old computers the group was plagued by the server constantly crashing. Mr_Potatos claimed is to be a “shady server”, and so it was born. Overall the night was a success, excpet for the router that was fried.

From that night ShadyServer began to grow, putely from the Unreal Tournament. We started our own server to hsot online games, it indeed earned the name ShadyServer as it constantly crashed. We began the site to hold the stats. We were not a clan, because those are lame. We just liked playing UT. Fromt his webspace many projects grew, and eventually we stopped playing Unreal. Here are some of the projects that sort of worked…

Shady Study
Probably one of our more successful projects. Back in our junior year of high school we decided it would be a good idea if there was a better way for eveyone to study for midterms and finals. So we created ShadyStudy. Students could share their study guides with everyone, and everyone would benefit. AT first it was just and html table and I uploaded the files and links. As comign midterms and finals came an admin panel was created and expandde to allthe grades in the school. At out peek we had over 2000 hits in finals week. Keep in mind we had a tiny school.

Halo API
Probably our most professional project to date. We offered a free API for developers who wanted to make programs using Halo 3 statistics. It actually worked really well and became popular. Sticky Keys made a script with it initially to show off to the public what it could do. It calculated how much time you waste respawning. Here is the thread. Note that TheIronChef shamelessly bumped the thread on the first post because we were afraid it would fail. Turns out it was one hell of an idea and the community loved it. We ended up making other scripts that utilized the API which enjoyed some success but not nearly such a hit. Still we are proud. However every time Bungie changed their site we would have to update the API as well. These changes became too much of a hassle and we discontinued HaloAPI. We released the source code in hopes someone would take over but nothing. Maybe someday.

Unreal Tournament Server
Back in the beginning, UT was what we lived for. The server was a wreck, but how it got to be was pretty funny. In combination StickyKeys and TheIronChef put together two old computers to form the first shady server. Word of what we were making must have gone around school because Shaun Lally gave us a computer out the back of his car. I won’t lie, it was a pretty shady deal, but we didn’t care. We later found out Shaun was supposed to be taking it to the Good Will, but what’s done is done. After adding his parts with what we had, along with windows 2000 (2x), multiple homes, and probably things we didn’t know about we ended with this. ShadyServer. Thanks to Mr_Potatos for the artwork. This was at a time the server was run from his apartment. 

I will do my best to update this if anything worth writing in the history books happens or if I just get around to writing all the stuff we have done.