I used to play Total Annihilation online back when I was in secondary school in the late 90s<p>We'd hang out on IRC, and people would host a game on their IP.<p>Eventually I got into creating new units for the game. You had to animate them with a C-like language, and I was trying to teach myself C at the time so that was part of my programming journey.<p>The 'Swedish Yankspankers' were a clan that had a channel on the IRC server, and my recollection, which may be wrong, is that they started building an app, 'TAreplay' that we could use to record and rewatch tournament games. People used to pass the exe around - not very secure, but those were the times!<p>It's amazing to me that those players hacking little apps together for themselves, have spawned a lineage of RTS engines and games that are still going all this time later.<p>A small but incredible example of hacker culture.