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<span>Running the FEDL</span>
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<div class="article-eyebrow">// DEVLOG 002</div>
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<div class="article-date">2025</div>
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<h1>Running the FEDL</h1>
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<p class="article-tagline">3,800+ verified runs, ranked levels, and a community that never sleeps. Here's how a Discord conversation turned into a full-time project.</p>
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<span class="article-tag">Node.js</span>
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<span class="article-tag">Community</span>
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<h2>How It Started</h2>
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<p>The FEDL didn't start with a plan. It started with a complaint.</p>
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<p>I was in a Discord server with a bunch of Geometry Dash players, and we were talking about the demon list — the community's ranking of the hardest levels in the game. The conversation kept circling back to one thing: there was a visible bias towards the top players. When the best players in the world verified a level, it shot up the rankings. When a lesser-known player struggled through the same level for months, it barely moved.</p>
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<blockquote>Someone said "we should just make our own list" and I thought "yeah, we should."</blockquote>
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<p>So I did. I spent a weekend building the first version of the FEDL — a simple list site with ranked levels and a submission form. I thought maybe 20 people would use it. I was very wrong.</p>
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<h2>The Time Sink</h2>
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<p>Let me be honest: maintaining the FEDL is a massive time sink. We've had 3,839 verified runs submitted and approved. That's 3,839 individual submissions that needed to be reviewed, verified against video evidence, and either approved or rejected with feedback.</p>
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<p>There are 341 ranked levels, each with their own difficulty rating, creator credits, and verification history. The leaderboard tracks unique players, their best runs, and their progression over time. Behind all of that is a Node.js backend that processes submissions, a database that stores everything, and a frontend that needs to stay fast and accurate.</p>
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<p>Some weeks I spend 20+ hours on FEDL. Reviewing runs, updating rankings, fixing bugs, responding to community feedback. There were nights I'd be awake at 3am debugging a submission pipeline because someone in Australia submitted a run at a weird time and the system broke.</p>
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<h2>Why It's Worth It</h2>
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<p>Here's the thing about building something for a community: you get back way more than you put in.</p>
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<p>The FEDL has over 3,800 YouTube videos made about it. Players screenshot their rankings and share them. People write guides about how to progress through the list. There are Discord bots that pull FEDL data. Speedrunners use it as a benchmark. It became part of the Geometry Dash ecosystem in a way I never expected.</p>
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<p>When someone messages me saying "I just beat my first FEDL level and it feels amazing," that's why I do it. The code is just code. The community is what matters.</p>
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<h2>The Bias Fix</h2>
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<p>Going back to that original Discord conversation about bias — I think we actually fixed it. The FEDL levels are ranked by difficulty, not by who verified them. A level by an unknown player sits right next to a level by a top player if they're equally hard. The submission process is blind — I review the video evidence without knowing who submitted it (when possible).</p>
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<p>It's not perfect. Nothing ever is. But it's a fairer system than what existed before, and that matters.</p>
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<h2>Technical Deep Dive</h2>
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<ul>
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<li>Backend: Node.js with Express, PostgreSQL database</li>
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<li>Frontend: Vanilla JS with GSAP animations</li>
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<li>API: RESTful endpoints for run submissions, level data, and leaderboard queries</li>
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<li>Video verification: Automated checks + manual review pipeline</li>
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<li>Stats: Real-time FEDL API tracking runs, levels, and unique players</li>
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</ul>
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<h2>What's Next</h2>
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<p>The FEDL keeps growing. More players, more levels, more submissions. I'm working on better mobile support, a proper stats dashboard, and maybe even a mobile app someday. The community drives the project forward, and I'm just the person keeping the lights on.</p>
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<blockquote>The best projects aren't the ones you plan. They're the ones you can't stop working on.</blockquote>
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