Omnimaga introduces Minus World on forums

[DJ Omnimaga]

In Super Mario Bros for the NES, when you perform the glitch to go through walls in level 1-2 then enter the first pipe without making your way until the end of the level, it leads you to a copy of level 2-2 called -1, referred to by the gaming community as the "Minus World". Because this level is not intended to be played through normal means, it is glitchy and in this level case, entering the pipe at the end sends you back at the level beginning until you die. In the Famicom version of the game, you go through a bunch of glitch levels and finishing -3 sends you back to the title screen.

Since last evening, Omnimaga also has a "Minus World" too, sort-of, and like the SMB1 one, it is somewhat glitchy as well. As you saw a few days ago, the topics and messages from the old Invisionfree incarnation of Omnimaga were all merged into one single SMF database and, for the most part, sorted into their appropriate categories. The short-terms plan was to have them as a read-only archive available through the board index in the same format as the current site then eventually link both sites together. There were slim chances that eventually the entire database merges with the current ones, assuming a solution was found to avoid bumping current threads and messages ID numbers. Well, finally, Netham45 decided to go through with the merge plan immediately and went around the ID/sorting problems in a rather unconventional way: Giving the old threads and replies negative ID numbers. For example, here is a link to a very early Omnimaga thread from Summer 2005: http://www.omnimaga.org/index.php?topic=-2062.msg-52051#msg-52051

To Netham45 surprise, this method, which required some database edits, actually worked, and when members noticed the negative topic and message ID numbers, they immediately refered them as Omnimaga's "Minus World", in reference to the famous Super Mario Bros glitch. But since those old messages were converted from Invisionfree pages' HTML code, BBCode was not converted, and as a result, certain old messages might not display correctly or might look weird, especially those using QUOTE tags. Also the search engine doesn't work yet with those posts.

Anyway, in summary, the Omnimaga merge with the old board has finally been accomplished, after over 3 years of wait, and all old topics are now available in their appropriate categories instead of a standalone archive! This should explain why the post counts for each section suddenly went up like crazy. Since back then there were no gaming, web design, computer programming, music showcase, anime and humor sections, moving the topics required extra work and there are still some topics located in the Miscellaneous and non-calculator sections that still needs to be moved, but in general, everything is now together. Also a nice touch by Netham45, who re-assigned all old posts to their respective authors, so those no longer show as guests.

Special thanks to everyone who helped allowing this merge to happen, and even though it is now possible to post in 2005-08 threads again, please remember to not do so unless you have something constructive and relevant to add, otherwise such thread necromancy is considered as bad netiquette and spam.

P.S.: Because the database was finally merged with the current board instead of being kept separate, this would have left the newly created v5 Retro theme unused. So to prevent that work from going to waste, that theme has now been integrated into the current board. Simply click the thumnail below or select v5 Retro (2012) at the bottom of the Theme chooser on the front page or at the bottom of the board index to use it!

[Stefan Bauwens]

YES! I was hoping I could use the theme.

[Juju]

Yay new cool theme and minus world

[DJ Omnimaga]

Thanks

[Radical Pi]

Negative board/topic ID's? That is a hilarious and clever way of reintegrating all the old boards

And I'm really liking this new theme!

[Eiyeron]

Damn, I'm stuck!

[DJ Omnimaga]

Sorry to hear Eiyeron. I thought we had the japaneese Minus world, though?

[Jim Bauwens]

The theme is very nice

[DJ Omnimaga]

Thanks. Of course we have to thank Master Jc to a certain extent, though, because the theme is inspired from the 2006 Omnimaga theme, which he created the images of. The new theme is the same images as the 2010 theme, just with the old colors.

[Jonius7]

It'd be good to know the topic id of the first minus ID topic

EDIT: It seems to stop at topic=-2067
However that doesn't seem like the first topic.

[DJ Omnimaga]

It could be due to deleted topics. When we moved the old posts here, I wiped the entire downloads and links section from the old board. That was around 800 threads and posts.

Also I noticed something: On the old board, there is no rickroll...

[Jonius7]

Topic -2066 does sound like it's somewhere at the beginning of Omnimaga, with Omnimaga hiring new staff. http://www.omnimaga.org/index.php?topic=-2066

[Juju]

I think it's more like -2459. Note that the IDs aren't in chronological order in the Minus world.

[DJ Omnimaga]

It was even older than that Juju. In fact it was 3 years before it even existed online.

But including the old board only, I'm betting the first topic was actually a part of the downloads section, since back then the downloads section was made with topics, sub-forums and categories as part of the forums. Then I posted a news about the site testing.

[Jonius7]

I think it's more like -2459. Note that the IDs aren't in chronological order in the Minus world.

But I think they mostly are though. Just that some are deleted, and don't exist.
ie. they follow a general trend of some sort.