Early Boom
The Early Boom is a period of DiamondFire RP history marked by increased interest in the Executor RP supergenre outside of the Kingdoms 1 player base. It occurred throughout mid-2018, and had no clear start or end. It is noted for bringing early innovations to Executor RP games; most notably, the Afterlife genre traces its origins to this time period.
Context
During the gameplay of SenorConejo's Kingdoms 1, the game had developed sustained interest among its player base but did not garner a large amount of spectators. Most of the influence of the game was limited to the 4-5 players that played Kingdoms 1 for most of its duration. Being the only Executor RP at the time, this meant that most players in the DiamondFire community were either oblivious or uninterested in Executor RPs. There were three events that introduced Executor RPs outside of Kingdoms 1, any of which could be considered the start of the Early Boom:
- The creation of _leopardcat_'s first game, Apocalypse;
- The start of a series of early experimental Developmental and later Afterlife genre games by Tinted_Air (then known as EchoPlayz17) and UltraBigRat (then known as UltraCraftGames), referred to broadly as the Echo-Ultra bubble as it lived separately from the Kingdoms 1 player cohort;
- The creation and brief demise of clumsycapy's (then known as thecoolkid26) first completed project, Lands of Tckia.
Apocalypse
Apocalypse is one of the earliest known DiamondFire Executor RP projects, and the first game to directly succeed Kingdoms 1. Created by _leopardcat_, the project did not garner significant interest with the exception of an unknown player who briefly played the game. It is the earliest candidate for a starting point to the Early Boom.
Echo-Ultra Bubble
The Echo-Ultra Bubble was created by Tinted_Air and UltraBigRat, two spectators of Kingdoms 1 who did not play the game but instead made their own projects. Their games brought additional interest to Executor RP games, although they remained removed from the main circle of future Warlords players for some time. Although their earliest projects were a core part of the Early Boom, the bubble outlived the Boom and persisted in some form up until the creation of Warlords 1.
Lands of Tckia
During a lull in SenorConejo's activity, clumsycapy created a separate project directly inspired by Kingdoms 1. The game, Lands of Tckia, had a doubled player count (from 4 players to 8) and garnered a large audience during its brief hosting period. The game was accidentally deleted during a prank by SenorConejo; some players and spectators of Lands of Tckia would go on to participate in the Early Boom.
Early Boom
Despite its name, the Early Boom was not characterized by a large amount of player-created projects. In absolute terms, the player base for Executor RPs on DiamondFire was still a tiny sliver of the wider DiamondFire community. Although the full number of games is unknown (Warlords players were not notable participants of the Early Boom outside of the Echo-Ultra bubble), no game achieved levels of recognition seen in later periods of DiamondFire Executor RP history, such as during the Loria Boom.
Of the games observed by Warlords players (primarily clumsycapy), Early Boom-era games could be categorized by those that pertained to the Echo-Ultra bubble (i.e., games hosted by Tinted_Air or UltraBigRat) and those that were not. Of the latter category, the only recorded group were those who created and played Proto-Afterlife games.
The Proto-Afterlife Community
Other than clumsycapy's recollections, there exists no record of the Proto-Afterlife Community. The term is used here as a broad categorization of players who either hosted or played short-term games where, instead of a country, they would be in control of a player in a simple setting. It is not known what the first Proto-Afterlife game was; thus, the creator of the Afterlife genre remains unknown.
One of the games that clumsycapy had played involved players starting in a classroom: the goal of the game was presumably to escape the school, though players would interact with each other and explore the school, as the game had a fog of war mechanic. The game was non-rigid and likely lasted just one playing session.
Tylerz's Dungeon Game
The last game that clumsycapy observed within this community was a dungeon game created by WaveCollapse (then known as tylerz_world), which shared many of the same characteristics as the aforementioned school game, but instead took place inside of a dungeon. The game functioned as a sort of non-rigid dungeon crawler, and is likely the earliest example of a dungeon crawler game in DiamondFire-Warlords history.
Although brief, clumsycapy would later cite this game as the most direct inspiration to their next completed project, Afterlife, which would later become the namesake of the Afterlife genre. During early recollections of DiamondFire history written a year later, clumsycapy would mark the end of the dungeon game as the end of the Early Boom. When Afterlife was active and during the period thereafter, there were no recorded Proto-Afterlife games and the games instead took on a style more closely resembling Afterlife. Thus, the end of the Early Boom also marks the start of the DiamondFire Afterlife Boom.
