Pork has been around in this community for quite some time, but it wasn't until a few years ago that him and I really connected and became good friends. He, like 100 people before him, said he wanted to learn to code and do a big project, like scripting a quest line. Like the 100 people before him, I laughed, said good luck, but feel free to ask questions.
Like the 100 people before him, he dove right in. This usually lasts like 2-3 days of 3000% frustration with something brand new, and everyone gives up. A week later, he's still going strong... likely at about 90000% frustration, but learning and pushing forward. I'm still skeptical.. cause well, that's part of who I am, and he literally has a picture of a pig as his icon. Who can trust something that tasty?
Around that time, many years ago now, him and I started talking pretty much every day. Shortly after, he joined our Raid force on Drunder. Between raiding, character maintenance, coding, and just general friendship, we were in vent talking every day.
Pork and I made an excellent team. He took it upon himself to focus on aspects where I wasn't an expert at. This meant we could do more things, and push progress like never before. I used to LOATHE dealing with EQ2's UI. Reading, interacting, touching it, even the thought of it made me want to punch a wall. Pork created a tool for us to use, that made this process nearly painless (when you hate something that much, even an easy tool has pain... ). Without this, a bunch of the features Ogre has using the interface would not have been possible... but lets not talk about how he named these files...
Ogre affiliates / Autoquest - Unlike the 100 people before him, Pork actually finished a project. A major, major fucking project. It was so massive that I literally had to create ogre affiliates just for him. Most people will never realize how much time and work this project took.
Instance Controller - One of the biggest projects we've ever taken on, likely would not have happened without him.
Even many features would likely have never happened without him. We worked on so many little things together. We'd each take a part, merge them, then boom, we have a new feature. I was dreading creating the Overseer feature. You want to talk about dealing with the UI... we're now talking 98.4% of code dealing with the UI. Pork and I sat in ventrilo and pulled information, and before long we had enough information to create Overseer..
Even though Pork and myself are very private people, when you talk to someone every day, parts of your real life "slip" in. I've known for a long time that Pork's health wasn't the best. The end of 2019/start of 2020, Pork became sick, I assumed the common cold, but I didn't know. He then didn't show in vent, or on discord. Of course, I sent him a smart ass message, and hoped he was resting. Then days went on without hearing from him, then a week, then two weeks. I leveled up Stalker mode to 99999999. Used every trick I had to find his name/location, called hospitals, look up obituaries. Nothing, could not find anything. But.. nothing was good... right? He's just sick and resting, he'll be back.
Three weeks had past without hearing from Pork, then last night, I get a message from him, saying he's in vent. I wasn't home, but I dropped what I was doing and went straight home.
This was one of the hardest conversations I've ever had. The short of it is, his health isn't doing well, and we had our final good byes.
As hard as this conversation was, I'm so grateful to have had it. To talk to my dear friend one last time. To make sure he knew that while we joked all the time, I valued his friendship unlike any other.
Pork wanted me to thank everyone who sent him messages.
To keep true to my smart assery, I'm not going to admit I miss you, but I will say, I will never forget you, this community will never forget you.
Rest well, Pork.