Thread:Flockky II/@comment-26388711-20170509010015/@comment-26388711-20170617031611

'''I also have a story to tell you. Please note that it is a very long message, but I encourage you to read it fully. It will be an exciting mini-story.'''

'''You can also share your stories in Candy Crush and go on chat once more before you are gone for good. I can even give you something that was once unseen in this wiki!'''

Before Candy Crush, the games I put serious playtime to are: Backyard Monsters, Empires and Allies, Army Attack (MAY 2011 - SEP 2012). Especially during the 2011-2012 winter and 2012 summer I also regularly visited the Empires and Allies wiki (Jianhui, another former admin here was also admin in this wiki). It is this wiki which made me want to investigates the internal workings of the game and inspiring me to leak and analyze elements.

I quitted all three games and deleted my first facebook account *cold turkey*. I am getting a little tired from losing game friends and having the game itself lose its former popularity.

At that time Zynga was the top online gaming company on Facebook. I noticed Candy Crush slowly rising up the ranks until this game became the most popular Facebook game. I also noticed that the games I once played were gradually losing in popularity, and so I eventually stopped playing it since it could get boring. I also expected that they might eventually close once the games lost enough of the active players. Around mid-2013, development of Backyard Monsters have came to a standstill, and Empires and Allies was closed permanently. I only tried this game once some time in May 2013, but I am completely uninterested in it. My sister also tried this game once.

At the time I got another facebook account, I tried Candy Crush again, along with other mobile games. I tried Candy Crush circa October 2013. Interestingly, it is not the candies which make me attracted to Candy Crush, but the numbers and statistics behind it, especially scores and comparing/analyzing numbers with my friends (it is also probably the reason why CCS got so popular). There were 500 total levels and no Dreamworld at the time. I also found ways to override lives, the theoretical most hated element on both web and mobile. But even that does not mean I am dedicated to this game. Do you know what got me into this game?

''The wiki itself. It shows the progression of this game as it unfolds new levels, elements, and combinations''

This wiki, along with my interpretation of Candy Crush as a mathematically challenging game, allowed me to become an active player. Initially, I was an anonymous user, who voted on polls of notable levels (such as 147, 350, 500). Then I created a new profile, -Mâck Mulligan- (now renamed) on February 23 2014, but I only made around a hundred edits within the span of one year. I still regularly visit this wiki along with a variety of other wikis (mostly anime, Star Wars, and a few other games), but I do not have any important things to edit there.

During the days before Mulliganaeous, I was not into this game continuously. In fact, I have been inactive from this game for months: I have only been active playing this game from OCT 2013-JUL 2014, a short time in 2015, the 2015-2016 winter up to APRIL 2016, and FEB 2017 onwards. The mobile games I mostly played are: Flappy Bird, 2048 (actually a clone of Threes), Threes, Doodle Jump (a classic), DIVE (harder, more creative than 2048 and Threes), and Free Flow. On the desktop, I played hardcore Facebook games including War Commander, Battle Pirates, and Vega Conflict. I managed to reach to the mid-levels in War Commander (Level 29) and Battle Pirates (Level 26)! Again, as always, I regularly read the wikis regarding the games I played, provided that the wiki is good.

Around April 2015, I am surprised that Dreamworld is ending, which I thought was totally unexpected. As a fan of heavy and extreme metal music, I created this account and put a satanic pentagram as my profile picture, alluding to the relation of 666 and the end of Dreamworld. Initially I was only active for a short time at the time Dreamworld ended, but I decided to spring back into activity around August 2015.

This is the beginning of my first active streak. It officially lasted from October 2015 to April 2016, and I made many edits every day. It is also the time I got my 100-day streak, but I narrowly missed the 200-day streak. Unlike now, many of my edits are either in the mainspace or forum posts in the Local Games board, and I often used VisualEditor rather than source editor. I participated in the ßan the Person Above You and Count to 699 game. I also got the Rollback position at that time, and continued to play the game while assuming as an ordinary user. Template and more important edits are not a thing of me yet, but my most significant contribution is the posting of leaked level previews.

And after April 2016 I became more inactive. Interestingly I attained Content Mod status around October 2016, but I have been relatively inactive for over 6 months, not to mention that I also barely played this game during that time. Even one person noted that I was about to get inactive when I was nominated for Content Mod.

Despite my semi-inactivity, there is some thing that continues to inspire me to stay on this wiki. Leaking levels, analyzing the internal structure of the game, and providing statistical analysis, all at the same time letting me rapidly build my programming and computer science skills.

I decided to rise back to activity at FEB 2017, both on the game and on the wiki. I also made a User Activity blog post, and attained Adminship soon after on MAR 17 2017. But this time it is entirely different. I no longer spend my time on local games, except for level design contests and a few other stuff there. I am here to program software that can extract configs and player scores directly from the game, as well as converting these extracted txt files into datastructures and matrices. I used these datastructures and matrices to extract information for each of the levels and the scores of a sample group of players, which then would be used for statistical analysis, categorization, and enumeration. Initially, my activity level is compromized by *university debt* and many other unfinished assignments, but I have became particularly active during MAY 2017.

There is one terrible news here: Dreamworld was officially discontinued on MAY 17 2017 (Also exactly the finish of my 2nd month of Adminship). It was completely against my expectations. Dreamworld indeed got the 666 treatment.

Also, I noticed that King is gradually losing creativity in the designing of levels and maps. Many episodes do not feature any entirely new elements, and element introduction droughts can get quite long. Many levels are starting to look a little generic despite its complexity. King is also starting to provide static cutscenes (happened soon after the end of Dreamworld), repeat episode pathways, and reuse characters. The highest levels released by King is also attaining legendary off-the-scale difficulties, with two of then having averages above Extremely Hard!

But that doesn't stop me from programming more CCS-extracting programs! Unlike the last facebook games I played, I will continue to be active in Candy Crush until the the game itself got the 666 treatment!

'''Sorry about that though, but at that point my story already got 1200 words (exactly 1201)! This is probably the longest ever comment or user wall message I ever posted! I did not have time to revise it, since I wanted to send to you right when you replied on my thank you note, but you should give a constructive rating and criticism on my story. ^_^'''

I posted several content that involved my program:
 * My Scorecard
 * Difficulty/Reality
 * Table of difficulty distributions and means by episode
 * Final Dreamworld information
 * Enumeration of Order Levels, along with order type (as of early June, printed directly from my console)
 * Star requirements chart

'''I also have several questions to ask you. You only need to provide approximate answers.'''
 * How many levels have more than 50 moves?
 * How many levels have all 162 jellies?
 * What is the average number of ingredients needed to collect in this game?
 * How many order levels require orders of a specific kind?
 * Candy colors
 * Special candies
 * Striped+Striped
 * Striped+Wrapped
 * Wrapped+Wrapped
 * Striped+Colorbomb
 * Wrapped+Colorbomb
 * Colorbomb+Colorbomb
 * Non-spawning candy colors
 * Which levels have one-star reqirements below 10000?
 * Which levels require millions of points?
 * Is there any error or inconsistencies in the number of levels by type in this wiki?
 * Blockers
 * How many order levels require unassisted colorbomb+colorbomb comboes?
 * Important Question! Did you see any of the content of that type before I posted them?