A long time ago when i was playing madness servers(8.1) and the owners was closing it the whole damn time i've started playing your current madness II(8.6) and after a certain time some ppl told me you was the real creator of madness and i've asked if you could give me the version 8.1 of madness and you told me "i dont give my own copies", it depressed me a bit cause i rlly loved madness and wanted to make it running for long doesn't thinking on profit, i've continued playing it until a friend of mine give me the map of madness(8.1) with spawns(not the datapack, just the map) and i thought "I'll copy that madness and make it better!!" and what i did was update the map to 8.6 and create every action/movement/monster/spell/talkaction/creaturescript , when i started i did know just a bit of logic of programming and with time and checking scripts/functions and forums i've learned how to script in lua and how every function worked and after everything was done i've started to host it in my house with no experience in hosting and no knowledge of php/html and c++, my server console(.exe) was downloaded from some real server and after a certain time i've noticed there was a lot of features missing(like atk speed/high level cap and others) so i've started searching in how to add it to the server and i saw i needed to do some changes in source and i had no experience source editing and i had no source, then i've downloaded a free source and somehow managed how to add the libraries and i did the changes and hosted with the new console(.exe) after a certain time the server just used to crash randomly, then i paid premium on otland with the money of donates(i was running without donates, but ppl wanted to be better than others and complained for i add some things for donation, since madness is used to be very hard...) and downloaded some private rev and did some changes and day by day i was learning more and more and adding new systems and it was getting more and more similar to madness in some parts and different in others, since there was no bug to abuse like in aries...
I'm running it since March 17, 2013, 10:39 pm CET, i've bought hoster cause i was having blackouts and i wanted the best to my players and in this time i've faced ddos on hoster and i had to change it for one with ddos protection and i have yet 98.67% of uptime...
Nowadays i was working to upgrade it to 10.78 but my hdd burned and i had no time to do a backup and i'm kinda bored to start over, since players still claim for madness 8.1 and every update they keep saying "this is not the madness i've played", "i want the real madness" and things like that, i've bought the 8.1 madness from some ppl after 1 year of hosting and i saw a lot of bugs in aries and there is no released source for it(the madness one) for fix that bugs, so i couldn't host the 8.1 either for ppl stop that crying cause i didnt want to make like the others owners did(closing and opening madness server the whole time) and i didnt want to waste my time downgrading my 8.6 rev and waste months for like 10 players and them keep saying bullshits.
This is my history, thank you to "Slirpa"/"Xenochrist"/"Wiki" and "Alex" for hosting madness 8.1
Thank you to all otland players which helped me without any kind of charge and which released a lot of things for free.
Thank you to all my friends which helped me on mapping/scripting or any kind of thing when i needed.
Moder if you want an advice get a 8.1 stable source and edit it for looks like madness otherwise you wont be able to fix the bugs like(A secret bug used to crash the aries console anytime or another bug used to kill any creature anytime and others bugs like that...) good luck in your project, if you need help with any advice feel free msging me, just keep in mind if you want profit just download a run any real server, if you aren't doing it for profit, but for fun madness is the best choice!
Enjoy!