So why was the stream cancelled?

[CutmanMike]

I think enough time has passed for people to not panic...

People were sad that the MM8BDM release stream was cancelled... until I released MM8BDM early   . It seems everyone forgot about it after that, but what happened? Was it nerves? Did something come in the way? Did I get throat aids??? Here's what happened.

Me and the guys were going to do ONE FINAL test to make sure everything was fine (this was like, the day before the release). I sent it out to my friends and pals when all of a sudden one of them (HammerGuy) told me AVG was picking it up as a virus. This happened with the launcher recently, but it turned out to be a false positive caused by the new Autohotkey software. No big deal I thought, so I began compiling in the old Autohotkey so Hammy could play it. But then he tells me it's coming from Skulltag.exe. Whut?

I downloaded AVG and attempted various things to try and get AVG to quit whining about it. Nothing was working. I contacted Torr who said it couldn't be ST because it uses a friendly compression method now (not to mention no one else with AVG had that problem). So what was going on? Well it turns out that yes indeed, I had a virus. It had infected Skulltag.exe and was running in the background, sitting there mysteriously. I used all my techie know how to get rid of the bugger but it would not leave. This was nothing compared to what I was about to find however...

I did a full scan of the system. AVG picked up, and I'm not kidding, literally thousands of exe's and dll's from other programs that had been infected by this bloody thing. Cleaning these files wasn't an option, I could only send them to quarantine for deletion. I googled around and found out that this was a ramnet virus, a very dirty little bastard that hooks it's code into various exe and dll files so it can be spread around infinitely. From there it attempts to send password information to an external client. I read up and basically what it was saying was "You're fucked, do not assume that this is cleaned even after doing a full scan. Flattern (format) the drive".

OH DEARS. Not only did I have to delete a ton of crap I really didn't want to have to, but the stream and release of MM8BDM was tomorrow! Releasing an infected file to the hundreds of players waiting to play would have left a nasty stench on my site, and name, that I would not have been able to clean. So not only did not have time to clear my HD and set up the streaming software, I was stressing out over the whole ordeal (if there's one thing I hate it's reinstalls). So the stream had to be cancelled. As compensation to the fans eager to join the party, I released MM8BDM early. It sucks because I had a lot of cool stuff planned, such as a walkthrough the first chapter, a count down timer that changed appearance every minute, some cool music from various 8-bit authors to show off, and even some guest appearances.

After I released MM8BDM (thanks to mugenmidget fixing up copy of it), I started to fix up my computer. The first thing I did was format the drive, fresh new install of XP. I did make backups, so I didn't lose too much. Then I dusted off my Nod32 antivirus, updated it and did a full system scan. It picked up hundreds of dlls and exes like before, but none of them were running thankfully so I deleted them. Yes it killed a lot of programs and dlls I NEEDED for programs off, but it had to be done. Now here I am, keeping Nod32 running at all times leeching my resources like a bitch. The only thing left on my mind is, where did it come from? I browse firefox with noscript on at all times, so I couldn't have picked it up off some dodgy site. It must have been something I downloaded willingly, and not realise it was infected. Oh well.

Your lesson for today kids, is keep an antivirus on at all times. Even if you think you're smart and you've got your computer all figured out, you never know when something like this is going to happen  

[TERRORsphere]

I got my Norton running all the time. Nothing can infect me  

Don't try though...

Also sucks for you that you had a major bastard virus.

[RenzokukenL]

That virus must've been planted by one of those Anti-CutmanMike trolls, trying to destroy something else for them to hate about.

Or it was the government, trying to prevent something awesome from getting to the public.

[CutmanMike]

More likely the latter, I honestly can't see those lot fooling me into getting one somehow.

[Blueiscooltoo]

It was the government so we wouldn't get idea to try and build robots with a buster that can use just about anything for a weapon.

[Mr. X]

'Twas Capcom, trying to blow up the whole project!

[a deer]

Holy...the whole launch thing sounds amazing. I would love to see a "relaunch" after the next major update.

On a side note, will roboenza be integrated in the client later on?

[Max]

'Twas Capcom, trying to blow up the whole project!

Message from Capcom!

"WE ARE BUYING YOUR GAME SO WE CAN SELL IT FOR MORE MONEY. GIVE IN OR WE SHALL RELEASE ROBOENZA!"

[CutmanMike]

On a side note, will roboenza be integrated in the client later on?

It has to replace LMS to work, so nope

[Wil]

Norton

hahahahahahaha

At least your virus was working in the background and not being one of those obnoxious ones that pretends to be a virus checker and tells you about itself every 10 minutes

[Zellough]

What a turn of events :o i never imagined something like that could happen, ohwell i wasn't even going to be able to check out the stream ehueheuheu  :twisted:

[KillerChair]

Your pc had roboenza...

At least the virus is gone now  

[RenegadeX5]

Nothing hurts more than what you went through Mike. I know how it is. <.<

To be honest I WAS working on a fan-story of my favorite game, Unreal Tournament, when a virus hit me. I was nearly done and it crashed my entire system. I couldnt save it... TT_TT

[ficarra1002]

Norton

hahahahahahaha

At least your virus was working in the background and not being one of those obnoxious ones that pretends to be a virus checker and tells you about itself every 10 minutes

Heh, those are obvious and usually easier to kill. Simply run MBAM or something, but with the one that hides, it gets time to infect stuff, like wonderful MM8BDM! I bet he wishes it was one of those obvious ones, would have cured it early on.

[Blox]

Most likely, you happened to pick up an infected file from a normal site. Most likely because the one that uploaded it had no idea it was infected. (Read: Most likely)

So yeah, that's one hell of a story. At least it was a virus, because I once had a faulty RAM stick - while I thought it was a virus! Lucky me when I tested my way to the truth, as having 4 ram sticks means RAM being randomly accessed. And that explained the psy-random crashing patterns.
--------

I didn't know MBAM has Norton in its' virus database.. Too bad.
Also, have you tried MSE yet? It's pretty good, that is - it doesn't suffocate you in a body-size condom-for-browsing-the-badbad-internet. [/obviouspun]

Reviews say that it has pretty cool real-time virus detection, and I can confirm that. One time I selected something on another computer.. And BAM, it said it was infected. Lucky me that I selected a group of files. Oh, did I mention that it has good detection rates, while being light on the system? (Runs like a dream with other stuff on a rather slow laptop)

Cheers, hope you won't get infected another time! :P