I realized today that I should have done this many years ago, but I finally did it. FreeSpace 1 was the second game I ever played, and that was probably 12 years ago in elementary school. It took me until high school to discover you guys, and I'm incredibly happy I did, I'm still not sure why it took me so long to make an account, but in spite of how busy I've gotten, I keep coming back here for a respite and to see what you guys are up to, and every time, I find something new to be impressed by.
Some cutesy facts:
I started playing FreeSpace with a trackball mouse (and have returned to that). In the interim I used the weird joystick/mouse thing in the middle of old Lenovo/IBM laptop keyboards to play (you'd be surprised at how well this works, along with the trackball).
I'm a game design student and I run a tiny, insignificant Youtube channel where I try and spread some discussion around the internet <30 views at a time and videos when my schedule allows.
https://www.youtube.com/c/FiresteelGameAnalysisEDIT: Wow was I tired when I wrote this last night. It felt so much longer. I guess I should say a little more in retrospect. Way back before I discovered HLP, I tried making mods (and were they terrible, but hey, I was 10 or 12 back then). Seeing the work being done here, and studying computer science along with game design, has certainly re-sparked my interest in FreeSpace modding, as I might actually be able execute on concepts now that I wasn't when I had no clue what I was doing.