First forum post yay!

Anyway, I first used BotB around 2017 while teaching myself how to use DefleMask. The Lyceum was about the only place I could find a comprehensive list of effect commands.

On a side note, there was a YouTuber who posted OPL3 music pretty much exclusively, who had an MLP profile pic. They mentioned Winter Chip in a couple videos, and for the longest time I thought BotB was a Brony thing

the description to kot bruhman's 'rush into' botb entry on youtube

playing hertzdevil songs on clone hero

the descriptions of the videos of Abstract64, kot bruhman and pixelated brought me here.

iirc from a Chiptunes = Win Facebook post in 2012

i remember it like it was yesterday: this video

exposed me to this beautiful track

, and in hope of finding more like it i scanned through its description for links which led me to its original submission page which is how i found myself on BotB.

once signed up, however, i discovered that several BotBrs were actually already in my extended online social circles and i'd just somehow managed to continually dodge any mention of this place. when i think about how i could have been here years earlier i wail, gnash my teeth, etc.

This year's Super MAGFest - Defense Mechanism had Puke7 join him on stage to loblast some stuff in collaboration live. Then they reached out about Battle of the Bits coming to MAGFest, so I gave it a look. I honestly love what I've seen here. Hope enough of you folks join Puke7 in applying to super MAGfest's chipspace.

I discovered BoTB when i was trying to learn how to make chiptune around new year's eve of 2023. Found a song in Newgrounds that i cant quite remember that sent me to Winter Chip XIX or something. The song that hooked me to this place was Lunar Loft by Arcane Toaster, cause it was exactly the kind of music i wanted to make.

My high school friend Talin129 showed me the site because we both were making electronic music. He found out about it through listening to kfaraday. I remember my first battle was azurglade's lime picture battle 9 and it was so chaotic and confusing and I thought everybody on the website was really weird. I'm pretty sure more stuff on the website was intentionally misspelled at that time, too.

It was 12 or 13 years ago. raphaelgoulart presented this site to me and our friends on a Skype group chat

I saw Galgox on the Mod Archive spotlight, and he mentioned BotB somewhere in his profile. I didn't join then because I was afraid of it being gatekeepy and my music was ass, so it was probably for the best. Years later I was recommended this video

which led me here after searching for the song in it (and then I installed Arch and used it for three years). Lazy Dayze probably also inspired me to make my first entry, which I made on 1/17/2020 for some school thing.

see also https://battleofthebits.com/academy/GroupThread/40834/

i don't remember tbh. i think it was thru the keffie-adjacent cult of the past, i'm not 100% sure. i definitely got roped into my first ohbs thru dhe, though

Aquellex's songs in stepmania style VSRGs

https://battleofthebits.com/academy/GroupThread/40834/how+did+you+arrive+at+BotB%3F/#post201396

i already answered this in damifortune's thread from last year, so to summarize:

• picked up famitracker after listening to a fearofdark song and started making music for the first time
• three years later, discovered flde (the guy who made this thread lmao), started using furnace, and through there, found abstract 64
• found botb through a64's songs, made an account, and promptly forgot about it
• later that year, pixelated and roostersox invited me to collab on an entry for summer chip xiv, which ended up being my first entry
• belatedly realized that literally everyone i listed as part of my journey was here the entire time

since flde is here, i'll take this opportunity to say thanks for indirectly leading me here lol

rip yeah i forgot there was already one of these threads. still fun to bump!

i honestly can’t remember. i just know i kept seeing a bunch of botb links in youtube video descriptions and i was like “well i might as well” so i made an account back last year. this place honestly has been super great for me, i feel like i’ve become more confident in my ability as a musician and have been able to try new things, like LSDJ.

I'll reiterate what I said in the other thread on this topic with just one name:

Thingerthing

need i say more
golgi's song "neboke"

also from the same author sidewalk chalk crimes and summertime roses
only mentioned botb but never get to discover botb until late 2022

i think it was by googling the musicians from this album https://inpuj.bandcamp.com/album/dear-future-self/

I actually discovered BotB as I browsed around YouTube discovering some of the tunes many years ago, yet never particularly joined at the time. Until a few months from now, I rediscovered BotB after the Yea Videogame entires and finally decided, 'perhaps I'll climb aboard'. Still love this website, btw!

went to hit up my favorite 100% bonus harian gambling site, and BAM! I fell in love with something else instead
:)

It's been a while, so I don't remember all the details, but it all started in 2016:

I think I first learned about Burrito Galaxy, when looking for interesting indie games being developed. I really liked its music, and then saw some stuff about BotB in keffie's SoundCloud uploads. However, at that time, I think I did not look into it at deeply.

Not long after that, during my time as a SRB2 developer, a community map project was started, which had unusually strict rules regarding custom music: the norm was to use MP3/OGG files, but this project would only allow MIDI files or "module" music to keep the total filesize down.

At this point, my only experience with MIDI music wasn't great (I hadn't heard CRT MONITOR LIZARD yet), so I wanted to learn what was going on with those "module" things. While the Mod Archive was linked, and I found some cool stuff there, it's around this time that I really looked into BotB through the tinymod categories.

Since then, I've made accounts here in 2016 and 2018, joined a single OHB with the latter, joined at least one keffie-adjacent Discord server where I sort-of met BotB users Sintel and wooxer, but never really dove too deep due to a combination of being busy with SRB2 and feeling insecure about my musical skills (and new social interactions).

During the pandemic, my memory is especially blurry, but I do remember joining the Sample Pack Contest a couple of times, after hearing about that and VGMusic for a long time due to some SRB2 co-developers being active in those circles. From there, I learned about Maj7 as well, but again felt too insecure to really participate or even stick around.

Then, early last year, I finally decided to be more active here, creating this account and joining my first major due to the traNce163 concept really speaking to me. From there, I joined more OHBs, and learned a lot more about trackers, MIDI and creating music in general.

While I do regret not being more active earlier, "better late than never", right?

back in late 2022 i got a youtube recommendation for lftkryo's 256 byte c64 demo (a mind is born), and from that i somehow ended up finding about bytebeat. found it fun and did some stuff on it, even using it to do most of a mandatory project in middle school. i think i was listening to the library of tunes the dollchan editor has and sometimes checking out the source links when i found some stuff that was subbed to botb (oldest mention of botb i could find in my discord dms was me linking this entry). i don't think i looked at stuff too much, maybe the site was perplexing to me, just like everyone else here lol. and well, last year i think i stumbled into botb again and decided to actually join. and now i'm here

I looked for websites for discussing Deflemask and found the BotB thread about its official release being paid. Coming from the world of DAW production, I found it really funny that some consider $10 to be a steep price for a program.

I joined because I had a loosely-winter themed chiptune ready just in time for Winter Chip XVIII, and I had nowhere else to post it.

i already answered in dami's thread but i went on to archive.org to remind myself of what the ucollective website looked like that i discovered some botb artists from, and now you can too

I think it was around erly 2010? when NTRQ was new at the time. I have found out about it back in the days of 8bitcollective in 2007? but I didn't have the time to look into it.

I dont remember exactly how I discovered BotB but I decided to join when somebody sugested me that my style could work here and well here I am!

My memory fails on that question
BotB burf was obv march 2020 but I've probably known the site for a while longer. Probably stumbled over it at yt chip&tracker videos and I also can recall keffie's music being talked about all over music theory discord

At the time my online presence was limited to a few discord servers, mostly yt music theory. I'm mostly a shy presence anyway. Was working on my composition game at the time and took part in some challenges here and there, cuz it kept me finishing things instead of creating sketches or studies aka just fool around

Since I was always interested in, but sucked, at tracker & chiptune music I must've decided to join BotB and work on something for Spring Tracks IX, which I then submitted. Shortly after life changed quite a bit, and I ended up in another town with a life that was way different, and had way more social obligations & pressure than what my brain was used to. Hence why I probably forgot about BotB and music was happening more in meat space anyways.

Time skip ahead five years into the future - while my life deflates back to it's previous size and relocates back to "home", remembering BotB was a good happening! It's funny how it's been one of the first online coms that I reengaged with. XHBs are a totally different challenge. Now, one of the things I love most about making music is trying new workflows, tools and rules, which BotB concentrates with all its format variety & battle concepts. I just love it. maybe I should've made a new acc, my statistics are all fucked now

Sometimes it feels like I'm smhw brought back in time and the last five years have just been a dream, or a nightmare, depending on teh perspective. My body doesn't seem to agree with this theory tho

I'll be honest, my memory plays tricks on me
For a while I though it was thanks to Chibi-Tech, one of my fav chiptune artists out there. Problem: this artist isn't part of BotB.
I really can't remember where I heard about BotB in the first place!

kfaraday's soundcloud. probably found out about that the same way as 9sphere, haven't thought about burrito galaxy in a long time, looks like that project is dead.

This exact video.

Specifically, Velathnos' Super Anthropomorphic Space Turismo. Was looking for authentic SNES music one day, ran into that video, and subsequently ran into the website.

On a different note, I've heard of Burrito Galaxy (and even made a Famicompo Pico entry using a parody of that particular name)... and Battle of the Bits is the main reason why I dabbled around in more than just the SNES, though admittedly with the exception of the SNES I did eventually effectively move on from a bunch of them, as there's only so much I could make on them. The SNES just felt like it had more variety to it... and I was occasionally coming up with new tricks here and there, effectively making it my own version of a chip I could do demoscene-esque stuff on.

i don't actually remember how i found botb, which i kinda love the idea it just appeared in my life one day in early 2023, though i remember when i did find it, i became obsessed with the idea immediately. i can find chats of me talking about it with friends when i found it, though no hints on how exactly i found it

though honestly, i've always been a fan of tracker chiptunes, so it isn't surprising to me i found my way to it (however i did). i had a slight phase where i got real obsessed watching documentaries/interviews of creatives, and i think i may have stumbled upon the BotB testimonial video.

was confused on why there are oscilloscope views with botb in the title so i went on the entry page of triangle in the club.nsf

when i finally discovered it my first thought was that battle of the bits lowkey sounds like an object show name

this ytpmv

by Zillah.

although, i feel like i was vaguely aware of botb existing a couple steps away from ytpmv for a while before then, demoscene and tracker music was already pretty adjacent

The entry of the day made me remember that I discovered BotB beacuse of this entry I was looking at the description for a way to download it

some website called chip player JS had a botb song bank

around 2014 (yes, 2014) i started listening to fearofdark through youtube uploads, and that strung me over to here so i could proceed to download every entry he had ever submitted. i also poked my nose around some other accounts, but for the most part it was out of sheer fandom for FoD.

later, being the naiive teenager i was, i got more into chipmusic through soundcloud uploads, never really thinking to seek out the source for any of those. through this i got into many of our oldheads, knowing them as "soundcloud chiptune" and not "botbrs"

later down the line, in 2016, i start trying to make my own "soundcloud chiptune"

, and it was around this time that staffcirc was taking off.

feeling like hot shit, i sent a twitter DM to kfaraday, with a link to my soundcloud, asking if i could be in the new staffcirc. they politely declined, but told me to check out this cool website!

it was then that "Bloobop" dropped a few submissions, but really my teenage self just didn't have the kind of dedication to keep at it. i went back to tangentially caring about this world through soundcloud uploads for almost a whole decade, only occasionally creating more stuff for my own soundcloud.

fast forward to 2022, and i decide "fuck it, why haven't i started practicing piano every day? i've always wanted to be able to play." so i hustle a little, and eventually start a jam group with my friends. we all learn a bit more and more about music together, and i learn it's not so hard to work gradually at it.

and with that newfound skill, newfound diligence, and social incentive to upskill my composition chops, i've decided "man how have i NOT been participating in botb"

and here i am :) feels good to actually be here, for once

I've always been a SMW romhack (lets play) enjoyer, and I think I heard uhhhh, something Sinc-X made? in a romhack? on a video? and so I end up listening to SMW romhack soundtracks, and eventually search up the name of these artists and find the YT channel, and then I came to this site. Turns out a lot of good music is here, and I made an account to download some of it

I found found Puke7 on Twitch, which led me back to here... which was then a bit silly because there are other people on here that I've been familiar with for a while from YouTube.