Radio F Software

J. A. Bardin, more commonly known online and offline under the moniker Radio F Software (frequently abbreviated as RFS), was one of the most influential personalities in the Robot Arena 2 community. Being the first (and last) AceUplink staff member to be fired, he went on to create RFSHQ and eventually outlived nearly every other Robot Arena 2 community on the Internet.

Timeline

AceUplink Era

During his time spent on AceUplink, RFS quickly adopted knowledge of the Python programming language as he played the game. RFS created all of his game modifications during this time period, including the RFS AI Pack and personalized components. In December 2003, JFranco, the webmaster of AceUplink, appointed RFS to work on the AceUplink Robot Database, an online encyclopedia of robotics information. With the stiff request of 1,000 articles, RFS attempted to resign from his position and when permission was denied, he simply stopped working and filled the database with entries of his own robotic creations until his FTP permissions were stripped.

Post-AceUplink/Pre-RFSHQ Era

RFS was unceremoniously fired from AceUplink staff in January 2004. To this day his account, now in the "Pending Validation" group, is the only validating account to have several thousand forum posts and be listed with the "Super Heavyweight" post rank. For several months after being banned RFS remained the top poster on the forums.

Early RFSHQ Era

The first incarnation of RFSHQ opened on February 12th, 2004. February 12th was the day that AceUplink's domain was purchased/expired, and the intent of the site was to "beat out" AceUplink. The first version of RFSHQ was used as an outlet to host all of RFS' creations for Robot Arena 2; and while partnered with TheDisturbedOne his mods were featured and other modifications were announced but never completed. Their joint-effort production name was Radio F Disturbedware and their only credit lies in The RFS AI Pack V1.5.

Post-Robot Arena 2 RFSHQ Era

With the waining Robot Arena 2 community, RFS quickly changed the format of the website to stay afloat. RFSHQ "reopened" on May 9th, 2004 as a comedy/satire website. The first article on the website was a sarcastic review of "The Adventures of Bayou Billy" on the Nintendo NES. The community kept the subforum for Robot Arena 2 and added the category for Miniclip.com's game Robot Rage. The two subforums were listed under the forum category "The Robot Overlords".

Present Day

Today, RFS is the lead content supervisor of RFSHQ which has a community of over 1,000 users and several "guest writers" on the website. He is currently contracted by the British game developer Miniclip as the position of Forums Administrator, supervising and coding for their vBulletin forums. To date, his works have been published in one compilation author book, he has hosted a podcast for the Club Penguin computer game, and has opened up several smaller websites (AceUplink.net, UpUrs.us) and production affiliates (Twilight Foundry, Channel 44, World 8-4 Entertainment).

Notable Game Contributions

The RFS AI Pack

Originally slated to be an upgrade that featured non-stock components, RFS scrapped this idea in favor of a fair all stock AI pack. The first version of the RFS AI Pack was a simple 45 robot replacement and was otherwise unimportant and made no impact on the community aside from overall well reception. A month later with the help of disturbed, a follow-up AI pack was created, but rather than overwrite the existing 45 robots from the previous version, this mod allowed 6 AI bots per team instead of the default 3, giving the user the option to fight up to 90 different robots. Two months after the release of the second version, a third version was released that allowed 30 AI teams instead of the default 15. Once again this doubled the maximum number of total AI bots, bringing the count to 180.

Personalized Components

To this day RFS hasn't created a component that wasn't based off of an existing GMF file. He was, however, the first person to take requests for personalized components. After copying the GMF for the standard Ram Plate RFS turned it into a license plate. Users were able to request one plate with the following customizable features:

• The state
• A slogan
• Up to 10 characters in the center for a message

Notable Robots

• Tha Thumperizer: A heavyweight robot with dual vertical tribar spinners. The term "Thumperized" achieved fad status on AceUplink when RFS would lock or edit out posts replacing them with "POST/THREAD THUMPERIZED".
• Rock 'N' Roller: A heavyweight robot that consisted of two middleweight robots, described as the first "multibot" robot.

Robot Combat Creations

Spanning the years 2003 - 2004 RFS was involved with real-life robot combat. His robots were entered under the team name "Newfac Robotics" and participated at five events hosted by SWARC (Southwestern Alliance of Robot Combat).