Reply With QuoteWhat's wrong with Shock Unlimited?
I have been working on setting up another shock mod forum.
Tell me what you think about it:
http://www.strangebedfellows.schwarzsilber.de/http://www.systemshock.org/
Also any help with uploading more Mods is appreciated. There's not too much up there by now since I have been mostly busy with forum-updates, themes and the like.
Kolya
Last edited by Kolya; 2nd May 2011 at 10:03.
What's wrong with Shock Unlimited?
I don't want to point out here what I think are the advantages of SBF over SU.
First I think the shock community will benefit from having more than one mod forum.
Second: I hope you will come and see for yourself.
I've been a moderator at SU. But it wasn't anything personal that made me quit eventually and start another Shock mod forum.
I had many ideas about what could be done to keep the forum alive and working. Maybe I just had more time than the others. But at one point I started thinking: The only way to do this right would be to do it myself.
Apparently SU has many more Mods atm and that will make them the first choice for people looking after a certain mod for some time.
But I started SBF with many things in mind and I'm only just beginning.
Kolya
Hooray for fractured community!Originally Posted by Kolya
I don't think it will break the community's back you know.
Kolya
well, thanks
Now that I'm thinking about it--
The general Shock discussion forums on Shock Unlimited and Freylia are unquestionably dead. But there's a decently high level of activity here at the TTLG Shock forums. So it's reasonable to conclude that the Shock community is best served with a centralized point of general discussion.
Mods, on the other hand, do need their own private discussion forums. Community-building isn't relevant in this area, so I'm all for increased choice when it comes to mod forum hosting.
Finally, there's the separate issue of mass file archiving. Mods, music, fan art, etc. We've seen a lot of these come and go, but I've yet to see one that really does it right. The forum-based approach of Wuggles Unlimited (RIP) and Strange Bedfellows is easy to use, but scales badly. The categorized system of Shock Unlimited scales better, but is clunky to use. What we need in this area is a searchable, browsable, database-driven archive system. Not the sort of thing that would be hugely difficult to implement-- just so far nobody's had the time or inclination to do so.
I agree. I wouldn't know how to write one, though. If someone wanted to, that would be great, and I'd have no problem continuing to host that as well as all the files.
Sorry Averroes, that was just ill-phrased. What I mean is a forum where people can upload mods to. I know that with freylia you're doing a lot for the community without receiving the attention your site deserves.
You know what? I'll send you 50% of my users.
TNT, you heard it. Please log on to freylia.net.
Kolya
Well, my favourite so far was the original Wuggles Unlimited. I can understand why it changed to forum-based, and it made sense, but the original was basically the one I got working the easiest. For anyone who's ever helped me upload a file, you know I'm pretty damned useless at that side of the internet, and WU's old version made it easiest for me.
God I need a sig quote
Would be nice if it could index files on different websites. Is that what you mean? Some sort of central Mod Index?
Kolya
No, I mean all Shock-related material on a single site, with each file having a database entry tagging it by game, type (fan art, mod, FM, video, etc), author, file size, yadda yadda-- then just let people run arbitrary queries on that database, sort by whatever column they want, etc.
TNT, you heard it. Please log on to freylia.net.I was already well aware of those forums, ain't you seen the URL of my non-Tripod site?
And why are you picking on me?
<small>Weird, I thought I registered at the forums when I stumbled across them, but . . .</small>
She's not a maniac, a raving thing, she just goes a little mad sometimes.
I'm not suffering from insanity; I enjoy every minute of it.
Sounds good. But the shock-material folder on my harddrive weighs in at 1.18GB and I'm sure I don't have everything since I never was into making FMs and I might have skipped or overseen some things. If JediK can really host all the files, that certainly would be great.
TNT, I'm not picking on you. I just didn't have much of a choice since I know JediK is registered at freylia.net already. You see?
Kolya
Hmmm, I think I get it. Although, I have a nasty habit of lurking rather than posting. Only place I've registered where I've actually chatted a while is that Yahoo group I'm a moderator of.*cough* Other than that . . .
There's no way in hell that I have everything, especially on my computer, one of the reasons that I made Shock Unlimited in the first place, to house everything.Sounds good. But the shock-material folder on my harddrive weighs in at 1.18GB and I'm sure I don't have everything since I never was into making FMs and I might have skipped or overseen some things. If JediK can really host all the files, that certainly would be great.
In a perfect world I could set up an FTP account where people could upload but not delete and go along with the idea that ZB has to make the big database of things, and have people be able to add, but not delete. Sadly, as I said, I wouldn't know how to go about doing it.
I was at Freylia before ANYONE...except averroes, clearly.TNT, I'm not picking on you. I just didn't have much of a choice since I know JediK is registered at freylia.net already. You see?
[EDIT] By the way
Last I checked, mine was between 4 and 6. O.o
Last edited by JediKorenchkin; 22nd Feb 2005 at 12:42.
About the size of the "high-res" cutscenes pack, eh?
*Looks at Linux server with 20GB of disk doing almost nothing*
In a year or two, I might have a decent personal Internet connection. So I won't have to explain massive uploads to the University's network authorities.
When this happens, I think I might be able to run a Shock Files Hub. By then I might be able to afford an Opteron 200-series server, too.
We don't need a place to store them, we have Freylia, SBF, and Shock Unlimited. It's too bad that Sshock2.com has such a piece of shit ShockEd section, or we'd have that too. We just need a better way to organize them.
I agree. What do you have in mind?
Kolya
Word.
Just for the sake of argument/brainstorming, what data would the ideal System Shock tracking database contain? Off the top of my head, I'm thinking--
Game (SS1/SS2/either)
Asset type (patch, mod, FM, fan art, fanfic, music, utility, etc...)
Title
Description
Author(s)
Preview images/sounds
Version
Comments
Some sort of rating
Anything else?
Yes, a rating feature would be cool.
Also:
Format (conventional/ss2mod)
And maybe special instructions on installing for conventional format but that might go into comments.
Kolya
All SS2 mods are installed basically the same way though-- Unzip using folder names. The description field would be the place for install instructions. I'm thinking normally this would just contain a copy of the mod's readme.txt anyway.
But yeah, an "SS2MOD" field would be useful.
We could just rewrite them all as SS2mods and kill a few birds with one stone.
[EDIT] Oh, listing "Size" would be good too, for dial up users. And, since we'll have one site, we could list mirrors, possibly, for the three different download areas?
Last edited by JediKorenchkin; 23rd Feb 2005 at 12:57.
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