The Anybody left from the 2003 crowd post got me thinking about how some of us have been visiting this site for a very long time (a decade, for those of us left from the 2003 crowd!). That, in turn, got me thinking about how some of us have probably come a long way in the time that we've been using this forum.

So I thought it might be fun to share our (possibly embarrassing) first posts! I'll kick things off by posting my first ever post: Making Screen Savers. I was in my early teens and I only knew C++ well enough to copy and paste NeHe's tutorials into my copy of Visual Studio 6 (I think it was 6, at least). I vaguely remember wanting to make a screensaver. Oluseyi kindly helped by Googling my question for me . In the following few days I went on to ask questions like "how do you do the halflike like looking around" and "how do you texture terrain."

We all have to start somewhere.

I hope some of you guys find your first posts and post them here! I found my first post by going through the NeHe forum pages around the date October 21, 2001 (which is the day I joined) and looking for my name. Searching didn't seem to return any results from 2001, so I had to do it manually. If you have an easier method of finding your first post, please share!

The first post I started, I think, is this one: http://www.gamedev.net/topic/448976-c-input-help/

I was just learning C++ and was writing a Guess The Number game. Definitely have come a long way since this post.

Easiest way I found to find mine was to go to the user menu at the top and go to My Content, then go all the way back.

The first post I started, I think, is this one: http://www.gamedev.net/topic/448976-c-input-help/

I was just learning C++ and was writing a Guess The Number game. Definitely have come a long way since this post.

Easiest way I found to find mine was to go to the user menu at the top and go to My Content, then go all the way back.

Kudos on the proper grammar and correctly spelled words in your first post

For me, the My Content page only goes back to 2004 (40 pages worth). So if you have less than 40 pages worth of content, it's definitely the easiest way to find your first post. If you have more, like me, you might have to do the manual search.

The first post I started, I think, is this one: http://www.gamedev.net/topic/448976-c-input-help/

I was just learning C++ and was writing a Guess The Number game. Definitely have come a long way since this post.

Easiest way I found to find mine was to go to the user menu at the top and go to My Content, then go all the way back.

Kudos on the proper grammar and correctly spelled words in your first post

For me, the My Content page only goes back to 2004 (40 pages worth). So if you have less than 40 pages worth of content, it's definitely the easiest way to find your first post. If you have more, like me, you might have to do the manual search.

I believe, at that time, the editor was having issues with me typing C++ into it, so I had to type "C plus plus". :D

My first post seems to be the last post to:

http://www.gamedev.net/topic/602148-creating-a-complex-evolution-simulation/

Im surprised at how many replies ive made before even starting my own topic, but this seems to be the first topic started by me:

http://www.gamedev.net/topic/610341-best-way-to-create-objects-dynamically/

Other topics started by me since i thought itd give a better picture to have many topic titles xP:

//I started by messing with openGL, a lot of time was spent thinking about renderer design and how it works in code etc.

http://www.gamedev.net/topic/610402-can-someone-explain-projection-matrices/

//I felt the c++ standard file system API didnt seem complex enough for my vision of a CPU rendered voxel world

http://www.gamedev.net/topic/610822-what-to-use-for-file-io-in-c/

//Problems with my fixed point arithmetic class (i felt floats were not fit for representing positions - that varying precision... and it was practise too i guess)

http://www.gamedev.net/topic/612053-using-array-of-templated-class-inside-templated-class/

//People seem to be annoyed about me not posting the actual code (like in the above topic) :P

http://www.gamedev.net/topic/612253-unres-ext-symbol-with-function-decl-in-header-and-definition-in-cpp/

//Nothing special...

http://www.gamedev.net/topic/619982-specializing-method-of-class-template/

//Here i invent imposters to find out they already exist

http://www.gamedev.net/topic/620746-not-rendering-complex-objects-every-frame/

//Figuring out organization

http://www.gamedev.net/topic/622556-how-to-properly-organize-parts-of-my-program/

//Wanting theoretical knowledge on high level code structuring - learning through experience would require making ugly systems, dont want.

http://www.gamedev.net/topic/623069-any-reading-on-renderer-design-or-just-on-how-to-design-systems/

(here i omited a lounge thread as well as one about renderer design...)

//Here im intending to render a giant voxel world on CPU using raycasting or something and then stream to GPU. Never did the voxel world part. I made a trippy rainbow drawn on CPU using trivial arithmetic that then flowed across the screen...

http://www.gamedev.net/topic/624920-streaming-image-to-a-texture/

I was expecting a lot of threads about win32 because the only thing i remember well is figuring out how to draw a window and stuff in win32. Mustve been before i joined gamedev or i didnt feel the need to post about it.

Huh, that's weird. The My Content list doesn't show my earliest topic; the earliest topic of mine it shows is for an old tutorial I wrote for creating isometric wall graphics: http://www.gamedev.net/topic/266748-new-tutorial-isometric-walls/ But I am pretty sure the first topic I ever started was this one, a rambling question about Diablo 2 style pathfinding: http://www.gamedev.net/topic/172148-questions-about-pathfinding-in-diablo-esque-games/ If that's not really my first post, it's at least early enough that the difference would be very slight, and it's the earliest one I remember making. Plus the time-frame is right, just a few weeks after I created my account; I lurked for a few before I got brave enough to post, and that doesn't count the couple years I had already lurked as an anonymous.

I'm pretty sure I've started a few more than 6 topics (although probably not all that many more) but that's all my history shows so maybe I hallucinated the rest. Of course, there have been a few forum migrations since I joined, so it's understandable that a few things have slipped through the cracks. And holy heck, it feels like it's been a lot more than ten years since I made that post. It feels like it's been a lifetime or more. How profoundly things have changed since then, not just in gamedev bu in the world at large. This internet fad thingy seems to have taken off somewhat.

Incidentally, does anyone else get logged off when searching through old content? I got logged off about 3 times trying to find my earliest post.

Huh, that's weird. The My Content list doesn't show my earliest topic; the earliest topic of mine it shows is for an old tutorial I wrote for creating isometric wall graphics: http://www.gamedev.net/topic/266748-new-tutorial-isometric-walls/ But I am pretty sure the first topic I ever started was this one, a rambling question about Diablo 2 style pathfinding: http://www.gamedev.net/topic/172148-questions-about-pathfinding-in-diablo-esque-games/ If that's not really my first post, it's at least early enough that the difference would be very slight, and it's the earliest one I remember making. Plus the time-frame is right, just a few weeks after I created my account; I lurked for a few before I got brave enough to post, and that doesn't count the couple years I had already lurked as an anonymous.

I'm pretty sure I've started a few more than 6 topics (although probably not all that many more) but that's all my history shows so maybe I hallucinated the rest. Of course, there have been a few forum migrations since I joined, so it's understandable that a few things have slipped through the cracks. And holy heck, it feels like it's been a lot more than ten years since I made that post. It feels like it's been a lifetime or more. How profoundly things have changed since then, not just in gamedev bu in the world at large. This internet fad thingy seems to have taken off somewhat.

Incidentally, does anyone else get logged off when searching through old content? I got logged off about 3 times trying to find my earliest post.

Got a copy of that tutorial? Slightly relevant to me, now. :)

This was my very first post on the forums: http://www.gamedev.net/topic/596647-getrendertargetdata-issue/

I still had my old crummy laptop at the time

11 October 2010. How dreadfully boring a first post.
http://www.gamedev.net/topic/584651-requesting-help-with-a-simple-model-viewer/

Huh, that's weird. The My Content list doesn't show my earliest topic; the earliest topic of mine it shows is for an old tutorial I wrote for creating isometric wall graphics: http://www.gamedev.net/topic/266748-new-tutorial-isometric-walls/ But I am pretty sure the first topic I ever started was this one, a rambling question about Diablo 2 style pathfinding: http://www.gamedev.net/topic/172148-questions-about-pathfinding-in-diablo-esque-games/ If that's not really my first post, it's at least early enough that the difference would be very slight, and it's the earliest one I remember making. Plus the time-frame is right, just a few weeks after I created my account; I lurked for a few before I got brave enough to post, and that doesn't count the couple years I had already lurked as an anonymous.

I'm pretty sure I've started a few more than 6 topics (although probably not all that many more) but that's all my history shows so maybe I hallucinated the rest. Of course, there have been a few forum migrations since I joined, so it's understandable that a few things have slipped through the cracks. And holy heck, it feels like it's been a lot more than ten years since I made that post. It feels like it's been a lifetime or more. How profoundly things have changed since then, not just in gamedev bu in the world at large. This internet fad thingy seems to have taken off somewhat.

Incidentally, does anyone else get logged off when searching through old content? I got logged off about 3 times trying to find my earliest post.

If you read through the massive wall of text in your first topic it's actually a pretty interesting problem.

Also, I too get logged off while searching through old content.