Improving this site a bit..

Butcher | 2006-07-30 18:50

Hi! ;-)

First of all, sorry if my english sounds bad because I'm a brazilian and I speak and mainly I think in portuguese... 8-P But I understand perfectly the english language...

Here are my suggestions...

Let me say that I downloaded everything from this site.... with the exception of the guides...

1 - Split or Divide the Maps, Mods, Scripts and Guides section, one for the Cube Engine and one for the SauerBraten engine, because many people here could want to download only maps for Cube or only for SauerBraten...

2 - Create a standard file naming system (SFNS)... because I found many *.RAR and other extensions like *.cgz and *.ogz (cube and sauerbraten maps)

3 - About the SNFS mentioned above something like get the *.RAR files, unpack and pack with ZIP and the same goes to the other files

4 - The same SNFS goes to the scripts/guides and mods...

5 - When I downloaded everything one of the boring things that I found was the pages of the files (16 total) with 158 files carrying about 10 each...

6 - I tried creating an account "Butcher" to see if there is an option for displaying 50 files or all the files but I didn't find an option... So I need to click 16 times to download all the files......

7 - The use of the thumbnails, well, I don't like this so much but this is a personal issue because this demand waste of the time for loading the pages... (I still have a 56k modem connection)

8 - Put a page like... the last 10 files added to each section or the last files added in the last week or the last month...

9 - This can be useful for people like me for downloading only the last maps added.

10 - Create a template Text for the maps/mods/scripts/guides and this template will inside each *.ZIP file like this

http://www.gamers.org/pub/idgames/UPLTEMPL.TXT

Because if the Cube/SauerBraten engines are good enignes, so I think that the *.cgz and *.ogz files could have the same kind of information like the...

- WAD Files - DOOM, DOOM2, HERETIC, HEXEN, STRIFE and the Rise of the Triad
- BSP Files - Quake / Quake 2 / Hexen 2 / Heretic 2 / Half-Life / Quake 3
- MAP Files - Duke Nukem 3D / Shadow Warrior / Blood / Redneck Rampage
- UNR Files - Unreal Engine / Na Pali / Tournament

And one last thing This file is missing: http://www.quadropolis.us/files/castle.zip

Please take look at the CASTLE located at the 11th page..

Thanx for reading this and my best regards!!! 8-D

Comments

thojoh370 | 2006-08-04 19:09

This is not a guide. This should be e-mailed to the admins, not posted as an entire "guide". Anyone with me?

PFL | 2006-08-04 19:14

I agree. This should have been posted to the admins. Although, I've been waiting on a reply from them myself for quite a while now...;)

makkE | 2006-08-04 23:30

1. Try "category browser"

2. People have encouraged contributors to pack their stuff in an easy way, meaning to make packages that can simply be extracted to the main folder of each game. But there´s no adminning in such a way that packages will be tested or changed to a certain standart before puplished. The idea is everyone can upload content right away, with the users building the content. The site itself only offers the framework..

3. see 2.

4. see 2.

5. I´ve heard it´s being changed in the future. Noone thought this site would be used so much ;)

6. see 5.

7. You might use a browser that lets you load pages without images if you´re on 56k. (such as opera, or firefox (it has a plugin for this))

8/9. Usually maps and other content appear chronologically.

10: Don´t really understand, but again, site admins are not controlling the content. Only the user does. So any standarts in packaging can only evolve and be established from the community.

Don´t get this last point at all. All those file formats you list are completely diffrent.

Thanx for reporting the missing file, however that´s also in the hands of the content creator.

Lastly, yes this is inapropriate as a guide.

Butcher | 2006-08-05 03:14

Let me explain why I put this as a guide...

I would like to hear the comments from the members and mainly what the members would think about my suggestions...

And about the "Category Browser", My sincere sorries as I haven't clicked that link... 8(

And I need to say that I made a post to the admins but I did not receive any answers...

Thanx and I apologize for any inconvenience about my post. 8)

_The_real_w00t | 2006-11-21 23:56

whenever i try to submit my texture pack, i always make the screenshot and thumbnail to meet the requirments. It is jpeg, but it still says its invalid when i preview it

Pxtl | 2006-11-24 15:01

I've set it as story type "None". This will preserve the comments here without losing the data, but push it out of the "Guides" list where it does not belong.

Keep in mind that neither Nieb and I are experienced PHP coders. I did a little tweaking here and there to get the propstar rating system working, but 99% of Quadropolis is a turnkey solution called Drupal, where all the customizing is gui-based. In other words: we didn't build this site from scratch, we threw it together with the CMS equivalent of a paint-by-numbers kit.

Which, of course, is why we're procrastinating on updating it. I have no idea how backwards-compatible newer versions of Drupal are - I'm worried about losing all the wonderful content sitting in the database. I mean, it would still be in the database, but if the newer version of Flexinode (the module that lets us have custom types like maps, mods, and scripts, each with their own specific fields) isn't backwards compatible, all the old content will be inaccessible. Which would suck.

And as for a "big list O maps" - there's a feature of Flexinode that allows us to display the nodes in a grid, allowing one to fit tons of nodes on the screen. This would be ideal for the desired "dense" view, with lots of maps and no screenshots. It doesn't work, and we have no idea how to make it work.

-- Single player is masturbation --

MeatROme | 2006-11-24 15:52

Yeah, I did some tweaking on propstar & flexinode too the last couple of days;
they flexinode/table stuff now works
and the propstar listing gets sorted by rank - but as of now not type-specific ... all scripts, maps, mods in one list :-/
drupal is pretty sophisticated and takes some getting used to ;-)

Pxtl | 2006-11-24 18:44

Nice to know nieb has gotten some more people involved with developing on this site. Shows how out-of-the-loop I am that I didn't even know you'd been helping. I haven't been very involved in a long time (like, since setup) and I'd like to help out more when I get the time.

Big embarrassing fact: up until recently, the "Contact Admins" button pointed to my old University of Guelph email inbox... which was cancelled by the University about six months ago. I recently fixed that - it now points to my gmail account.

-- Single player is masturbation --

Drakas | 2006-11-24 16:25

Can't you just copy over all the database data to another database (e.g. on your PC), and there try out Drupal? That would have no effect on here and would test if it is backwards compatible. You can _always_ make database backups - very easy!
Latest Drupal versions are backwards compatible, so there is no problem I guess:)

Pxtl | 2006-11-24 18:38

Well, I suppose I could give it a shot (I've got an old Linux box under my desk at home) when I get the time (a quarter-past-never). The problem is that I'm a full-time software developer with a wife and a house to take care of (last few months I've learned enough about SQL that I might be able to handle the migration - but I still don't know PHP). Nieb has more time on his hands, but he's got less technical expertise... plus, he's the one with all the access to the server. We don't know each other IRL.

You have to understand how this site came about - Nieb made a random post asking if anyone knew how to make a website for putting maps onto. I helped him throw together a Drupal site, neither of us having the slightest idea what we were doing (I was fresh out of engineering school then). In retrospect, I know a lot more and could probably do the migration... but now I don't know if I have the time to do it right. Plus, I don't even know what the new features are in the newer versions (presumably working moderation though - I still can't get moderation to behave properly in this version).

-- Single player is masturbation --

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