So long ago (when the 4 nations lived in harmony) Crusade was a fangame developed by 3 brothers. Due to infrequent progress and disagreements between the fanbase and the developers over the roster, in addition to a lack of interest from the developers, development was given to another person, Dettadeus. Det then created a new forum, and the game was to be completely restructured into a "community project" in which all information was public, and the roster would be voted on by the community.
Naturally, this attracted amateurs like myself to try and prove that we could do development nonsense. Way back when, Phoenix Wright was voted to be on the roster, so I decided to "try" and make him. Essentially, I stole sprites, claimed that I should be a member of the team, and then was banned for a while. I always felt I should make it up to them, so I tried to teach myself how to sprite, and helped in other, minor ways, such as making franchise icons. Due to the stalled progress on Wright's new sprites, I dove in and started working on him. This was before APEX 2013, where the first build of the "new" Crusade was to be showcased. As part of this build. Every existing character needed new animations for teching, lying down, and get up attacks. I again, tried to take charge, and started to work on those. This eventually earned the trust of the team, and I was added as a spriter. Things, however, only go downhill from here.
Because the APEX demo was to show the "new" Crusade, I decided to try and work on the single most complex character that could be included so we could "wow" people. That character was these two idiots:
So naturally, in the rush to get things done, I neglected important things like quality, resulting in animations like this:
Of course, Dettadeus, (who was also an Ice Climbers player) told me to redo the animations, or at least improve upon them. As I have recently discovered. People with my condition do not handle criticism well, and we instead take it as an attack on our person. So, I did the natural thing here: denied there were problems with the animations, and decided to respond with racist attacks. Yeah, not my brightest moment. At all. Super unprofessional. I did eventually redo them, Icies were completed, blah blah, showcase was successful, but as a consequence, I was left unfairly hating this guy.
So that March, (Yeah, APEX was in January, Icies were completed in early December 2012, I seriously held a grudge that long) I decided to leak the demo. Now, I technically should not have had access to the full demo at all. Spriters received special "test" builds with the current roster, and the character they sprited. (so I got a build with Wright and Ice Climbers, for example) However, a fellow spriter ended up receiving all the characters, so I asked (or maybe complained I don't remember which...) and got the rest. So I decided to leak the demo to get revenge. There were only 5 or so people that should have had access to the full thing, myself not being one of them. As a result, I would not be suspect.
However, I left in a file traceable only to myself. That file being a version of Ganondorf with a modified taunt animation. As a result, they temporarily banned me. I lied and claimed that the leak was because I was angry at the lack of workflow post APEX. I came back something like 3 weeks later. In body anyway. While I had made a full, honest apology video to the team, especially to Dettadeus, (which he had made a personal response to himself, which is quite commendable. I must have made him feel like trash) I never truly returned.
When I came back. I was still angsty, angry, and volatile for seemingly no reason. They had forgiven me. I should have moved on. This should have been over. However, on June 18th, one member made a remark about my animation quality. People with my condition take words as they are, so I have/had no idea if they were genuine or not. As a result, I flipped. Another problem with me is that I can go into extreme panic mode at the drop of a hat. I removed myself from the team, and threw out a joke about leaking again. With my behavior, they had reason to be suspect. I was not serious, and I felt they shouldn't have taken it seriously, but looking back, yeah, it was a pretty inappropriate remark. I was banned, this time indefinitely, I was told not to come back until I had recovered.
Despite this, I returned in mid July, still angry and volatile. I worked on Tingle during this time, and later went to SKTAR 2 for another showcase demo, but things felt different. I couldn't put my finger on it, but nothing was right. The truth was that the team no longer trusted me, and felt I could leak at any time. Turns out, they were right. I told one guy that I was leaving, and closed my account. However, for reasons I cannot explain, I was drawn back. I logged into the chat, and I found out the truth. Again, I flipped, and I leaked shortly afterward. I was IP Banned something like 30 times, they covered the leak by releasing the APEX Build as "0.9 TEST" the next day, and that should have been the end.
I sent numerous (actually quite insincere) apologies. The purpose of these apologies I now realize, was to return things to the way they were. This was obviously, quite impossible, and I see that now. Regardless, I did something shortly afterward that rendered all apologies null and void. In September 2013, I raided Dettadeus's (admittedly insecure) website, and downloaded Tingle's files and the Crusade character compressor. I then added Tingle to the game, and released that build. Needless to say, that did not go well.
And that brings us to the present. It's been almost 2 years, and while I know a lot more about myself, I always have reservations about messaging them. They (intelligently) ignored me then, why would it be any different now, especially 2 years later? They've moved on, and I want to as well, but I can't shake the feeling that I need to thank them. I would not be who I am without this experience, and I feel they need to know that. One thing I was told, is that if you feel like you should say thank you, it probably means you should.