Blacktown

About Us:

Blacktown was founded in October 2008 by Adrian “Cyberwolf” K. and Michael “Darkknight” K, we were both quite young - but this wasn’t a problem for us to set up the project. The whole story of Blacktown started with an IRC-Server which means Internet Relay Chat. We set up our server to communicate with each other. In general we wanted to know more about the technology which made the IRC-Chats possible. But that wasn’t enough for us, so we connected our Server to several other IRC-Server and through that an IRC-Network was built. The biggest Server was called IRC-Town, just to refer to the significant one.

At this time I was a member of a Clan, which played the game “Command & Conquer” - Zero Hour. To communicate with each other, we used the voice communication tool called “Teamspeak 2”. This was quite necessary as you can't start writing during a game to discuss the strategy. Later on we closed down our IRC-Server, as it was not needed anymore.

So in January 2009 we decided to install an computer with Windows XP. We configured it respectively so that it was accessible from the internet, that was also an new experience for us. This computer was set up and running in one of our houses. Furthermore we installed on the computer the Teamspeak 2 Server. We did know about that kind of tool from my current clan. What is Teamspeak 2 exactly and for what reason is it used? To describe it in a few simple words, TS2 exists of two components, an Server and an Client - so you need both of them to get it work. It is used to communicate with your voice, this enables you to talk while you’re playing a game. This is quite a big improvement for clans, because they haven’t to type anymore. From now on we had our own Teamspeak 2 Server, so we’ve learned quite much about the administration of an server.

In March 2009 we renamed our project to Blacktown-Sponsoring. So we started to offer free Teamspeak 2 Server to Clans/Communities and Guilds. Within this step it was necessary to register our own Domain (www.blacktown.eu) in May 2009. Through this new domain and webspace we thought that it would be nice, to offer some free webspace or hosting of CMS (Content Management System). This was started in October 2009, but a few months later it was cancelled, because it was too time-consuming for us.

In January 2010 the new release of the Teamspeak Company was published - Teamspeak 3! The product was still in a beta stage, so we had a deep look at that tool, and we decided to offer free Teamspeak 3 Server as well. A few months later, we had less users on the sponsored Teamspeak 2 Servers, because everyone wanted to have an TS3, because it came with some really practical functions with it (e.g. File Transfer, better Voice Codec). Therefore our conclusion was to discontinue the sponsoring of TS2 Servers in the end of June 2010.

In the middle of June 2010 we re opened an clan called “Prog” (= Performance Racing over Germany). Within this we were the official sponsor of this clan. We've set up an own TS3 Server for this purpose and furthermore configured an Trackmania Server for the clan. Through this we got much more attention for our Blacktown-Sponsoring project, because the clan participated in several events and was playing in the ESL (Electronic Sports League) quite sucessfull. Through all those changes the requirements for our server ncreased heavily. Now the time was right to get our own root server which is hosted from a dedicated provider in a Data Center. The Server location changed happened in October 2010.

Unfortunately we had to close the Performance over Germany (Prog) Clan due to less activity and some disputes within the clan members, this was at the end of December 2010.

During a long time there was not much new to tell about the Blacktown-Sponsoring Project. On the 1st of August 2011 we opened our “Team Blacktown”, the founders were Adrian “Cyberwolf”, Marc “renki”, Joscha “Transporter”, Seb “pro2type”. This clan existed until the 10th of November 2012, it was closed because of inactive members and the reduced players in the Trackmania Nations Forever section.

On the 1st of December the Teamspeak Company published some new rules with regards to the NPL (Non Profit License). Through this it was not allowed anymore to sponsor Clans and Communities. Unfortunately we were forced to stop the sponsoring of our TS3 Servers. That was quite a hard step for us, because we sponsored servers since a long time. The question was now how to go on with the Blacktown-Sponsoring…

I (Adrian “Cyberwolf” K.) took over the complete Management of Blacktown.eu, this happened in February 2013. The initial step was to rename Blacktown-Sponsoring into Blacktown Community as the old name was misleading by now.