Captain Jeff Silvers
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Captain Jeff Silvers | |||
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| Profile | |||
| Aliases: | Jeff Silvers, Samuel Dreamer | ||
| Real name: | Jeff Silvers | ||
| Interests: | Writing, fangaming | ||
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Captain Jeff Silvers is a global moderator on the MFGG Forums.
History
Jeff Silvers began visiting the site in 2002 and made a few posts on the EZboard as Samuel Dreamer. When the site was temporarily shut down in March 2003, Silvers registered an account with the new vBulletin forums under the screenname Jeff Silvers. The next month, he released his first fangame, Super Mario Epic. The game received mixed reactions, with some praising its use of varied enemies and level design and some criticizing Silvers' use of the built-in platform movement. Despite this, the game went on to spread quickly across the Internet with little aid from Silvers', eventually ending up on hundreds of download sites (most of which were based in non-English speaking European countries). The game won Silvers an MFGG Award in 2004 for Best Secrets.
Despite the mixed reviews, Silvers began work on Super Mario Epic 2 in late May 2003. The production was marred by problems involving The Games Factory constantly (and seemingly randomly) corrupting the source files. Silvers transfered work on the game from The Games Factory to Multimedia Fusion Express, a program that is essentially the same as TGF, but with less file corruption.
In 2003, Silvers created a pirate personna for himself when he replaced his avatar with a version edited to give him a rugged five-o'clock shadow, an eyepatch, and a bandana. He created a topic called "I'm a pirate, and you're lucky I'm not killing you." This sparked a fad wherein members edited their avatars to appear as pirates and began speaking like swashbucklers.
While still working on SME2, Silvers announced (and subsequently cancelled) what would've been his first Mega Man fangame, Mega Man Vendetta. He also released his second game, Wasted Smiley Pinball. The game was panned by all who played it, and Silvers' confidence that Epic 2 would be a success began to diminish.
Nonetheless, Super Mario Epic 2: Dream Machine was released September 11, 2004, after having been in production for a year and three months. The game won five MFGG Awards in 2005 (Best Game of 2005, Best Level Design, Best Story, Best Secrets, and Best Setting), and was nominated for two more (Best Engine and Best Usage of Resources). His remake of Communist Mutants from Space was also nominated for Best Non-Mario Game. SME2 received mostly positive reviews, and Silvers immediately began contemplating a third Epic.
After the release of Dream Machine, Silvers announced his next project: CWE BattleZone Wrestling, a professional wrestling game using original characters. Silvers finished all character animations as well as the arena before abandoning the project.
After the cancellation of CWE BattleZone Wrestling, Silvers announced in early 2005 that production had begun on Super Mario Epic 3 using a static engine. Silvers, however, had several problems with getting the engine to work properly, and the game was cancelled in February. In August of that year, Silvers secretly re-began production of Super Mario Epic 3, this time in Multimedia Fusion and this time using the platform movement extension, a powerful object that works more smoothly than most static engines. He announced the uncancellation of the project on September 11, 2005, a year after the release of the game's predecessor. The game is currently still in production.
On April 17, 2006, Silvers was sent a private message from MFGG administrator ShadowMan informing him that he was being considered for moderatorship and asking if he was interested in the position. Later that day, Silvers was made a global moderator.
Trivia
- Silvers added the "Captain" to his name during one of the many "name changing fads." While the other members eventually had their names restored, Silvers decided to keep his new screenname, as it fit his pirate personna.
