Xelerus will no longer function from 1st September, 2017 [Edit: Actually it will, but we're replacing it anyway]

New releases and announcements from George and the staff.
EditorRUS
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Anyways, here's a complete dump of all function-related pages of Xelerus.

https://mega.nz/#!ew1Q1CYb!Kn78vtM8t_pF ... Ll9V5hO1Yo

Start from index.html.
Search button does not work. If people want, I can create another parser and save all functions in json.
Jay2Jay
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I'm gonna miss Xelerus. Transcendence was the first rogue-like I ever played, the first game community I got involved with, the first game I modded, and the first game I played with mods.

The loss of the more traditional black, white, and yellow scheme of the forums because of the switch was tragic, since it was such a big part of my childhood. And the loss of Xelerus? I'm not even prepared to cope with that...

It might sound ludicrous, but like I said this forum and Xelerus have a lot of sentimental value to me. I don't even recognize Transcendence anymore, which isn't a bad thing since there have been nothing but improvements, but I guess Xelerus is the last important thing I have from my past.

Can I still visit the site after whatever happens... happens? I know that it won't work anymore but can I at least... open it and look at it?
bluesaberist
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EditorRUS wrote:
Thu Aug 24, 2017 12:05 am
Wolfy wrote:
Wed Aug 23, 2017 7:57 pm
-- Flat is better than nested --
The point would be to do things like avoiding having to store the files on the server's storage system (as this can be more expensive or have other drawbacks)
Then why not simply request files directly from this other server and avoid having to set up a proxy in the first place? It's still technically requesting from "xelerus.de/mods/something.zip", not "someserver.blah/.../something.zip".
There are several reasons one might set it up that way. One is logging. It's difficult to accurately log download counts without it going through your server. Other reasons include authentication (probably not the reason here), issues with cross-origin requests (again, probably not the issue here since it's a simple download link), and user trust (Dropbox, similar sites, and download-specific site URLs are particularly suspect, as those are exactly the types of links used by compromised and "evil" sites. Using your own domain makes you look much more legitimate).

@Jay2Jay

If nothing else, you should be able to view it in the Wayback machine. Also, it doesn't seem like anything in the OP suggests that the website itself will drop, just that the mod hosting will break.
If you drop a bar of soap on the ground, is it dirty?
If a person is legally blind, and can suddenly see, is he breaking the law?
If a friend says he's going outside to get some air, what was he breathing before?
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shanejfilomena
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EditorRUS wrote:
Thu Aug 24, 2017 2:12 am
Anyways, here's a complete dump of all function-related pages of Xelerus.

https://mega.nz/#!ew1Q1CYb!Kn78vtM8t_pF ... Ll9V5hO1Yo

Start from index.html.
Search button does not work. If people want, I can create another parser and save all functions in json.
WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thankyou!!!!!!!!!!

I seriously need such cool toys as you have over there....

Also - I put a copy on my Google Drive ( the only real use for the Drive is hold some Transcendence stuff, and since it's free it's for me :)
Later I will get the copy of that other download from yesterday on the Drive as well )

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing
Flying Irresponsibly In Eridani......

I don't like to kill pirates in cold blood ..I do it.. but I don't like it..
EditorRUS
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bluesaberist wrote:
Thu Aug 24, 2017 12:14 pm
There are several reasons one might set it up that way. One is logging. It's difficult to accurately log download counts without it going through your server. Other reasons include authentication (probably not the reason here), issues with cross-origin requests (again, probably not the issue here since it's a simple download link), and user trust (Dropbox, similar sites, and download-specific site URLs are particularly suspect, as those are exactly the types of links used by compromised and "evil" sites. Using your own domain makes you look much more legitimate).
It's difficult to accurately log download counts without it going through your server.
Pretty easy here. When you press download, it appends &d=1 to the link and the index.php script increments downloads value. You can check it yourself -- even if you decline downloading, it will still count as a download
Image
Image
Image
Image
user trust (Dropbox, similar sites, and download-specific site URLs are particularly suspect, as those are exactly the types of links used by compromised and "evil" sites. Using your own domain makes you look much more legitimate)
Pretty unlikely. It's a small game community and from what I see, it's been this way since the beginning. I doubt the author of Xelerus made it this complex.
EditorRUS
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shanejfilomena wrote:
Thu Aug 24, 2017 2:32 pm
EditorRUS wrote:
Thu Aug 24, 2017 2:12 am
Anyways, here's a complete dump of all function-related pages of Xelerus.

https://mega.nz/#!ew1Q1CYb!Kn78vtM8t_pF ... Ll9V5hO1Yo

Start from index.html.
Search button does not work. If people want, I can create another parser and save all functions in json.
WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thankyou!!!!!!!!!!

I seriously need such cool toys as you have over there....

Also - I put a copy on my Google Drive ( the only real use for the Drive is hold some Transcendence stuff, and since it's free it's for me :)
Later I will get the copy of that other download from yesterday on the Drive as well )

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing
Those toys are a Firefox addon named Scrapbook -- for recursive web scraping. This got me the functions.
And Python 3.5, a few years of programming experience and a brain -- for hand-made web parsers. This got me the mods and data about them in JSON.
bluesaberist
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@EditorRUS

I just listed some possible reasons why someone might want to setup a proxy for downloads. An accurate download count doesn't seem to be terribly important for Xelerus. The way it (apparently) counts is not a particularly accurate way to do it. It would be easy to save the direct download link (e.g., xelerus.de/mods/1583...zip), and those would not be counted. So what's actually being counted is how many requests are made to the download page. So accurately counting is most likely not the reason, since it's not accurate as setup.
EditorRUS wrote:
Thu Aug 24, 2017 3:43 pm
user trust (Dropbox, similar sites, and download-specific site URLs are particularly suspect, as those are exactly the types of links used by compromised and "evil" sites. Using your own domain makes you look much more legitimate)
Pretty unlikely. It's a small game community and from what I see, it's been this way since the beginning. I doubt the author of Xelerus made it this complex.
As a web developer myself, I would definitely consider doing it for this reason (small community or not), were I building a similar site utilizing a download source on another (sketchy sounding) domain. Setting up a proxy is rather easy anyway, not something you would avoid because it's complex (though there might be other reasons).

Anyway, I don't want to argue, and it doesn't really matter. The reason may have been as simple as the author felt like doing it that way when they did it. In any case, it was setup this way, and knowing why now doesn't help with the situation at hand.
If you drop a bar of soap on the ground, is it dirty?
If a person is legally blind, and can suddenly see, is he breaking the law?
If a friend says he's going outside to get some air, what was he breathing before?
-Brad Stein
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digdug
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We knew it was coming. It was only a matter of time :( It lasted 10 years, that's pretty good :D

I used to do periodical dumps of Xelerus functions, this is my most recent one (pretty old, but might be still useful):
https://www.dropbox.com/s/02cx39ou2hgtl ... t.txt?dl=0

Btw, these dumps I have are generated by Xelerus itself (yes Xelerus has some extra functionality that is not available to normal users)

Regarding deleted mods, I have saved everything I could in the last 10 years. However, there are mods I missed here and there. If I find a moment to put in order the stuff I have, I could make an archive with everything. (put in order might take some time, I make periodical backups of my transcendence folder, and the lastest ones are in the order of ~20 GB each...)
EditorRUS
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digdug wrote:
Mon Aug 28, 2017 8:46 pm
We knew it was coming. It was only a matter of time :( It lasted 10 years, that's pretty good :D

I used to do periodical dumps of Xelerus functions, this is my most recent one (pretty old, but might be still useful):
https://www.dropbox.com/s/02cx39ou2hgtl ... t.txt?dl=0

Btw, these dumps I have are generated by Xelerus itself (yes Xelerus has some extra functionality that is not available to normal users)

Regarding deleted mods, I have saved everything I could in the last 10 years. However, there are mods I missed here and there. If I find a moment to put in order the stuff I have, I could make an archive with everything. (put in order might take some time, I make periodical backups of my transcendence folder, and the lastest ones are in the order of ~20 GB each...)
Ok
EditorRUS wrote:
Wed Aug 23, 2017 2:14 pm
I've done a complete dump of all xelerus mods as of 23.08.2017 (1007 still available mods out of 1586 signatures)

Download the archive from here: https://mega.nz/#!r9FlnIzD!841GZDL4wJp9 ... eCvtc4mEC0

xelerus_dump.json contains following information: mod's name, description, category, author's name, game version, zip file name, upload date.
Didn't bother with comments, if you need them for whatever reason, use archive.org then.
I'd be rather good if you could send mods that are not present in this archive (were removed) to me.

As of functions, here.
EditorRUS wrote:
Thu Aug 24, 2017 2:12 am
Anyways, here's a complete dump of all function-related pages of Xelerus.

https://mega.nz/#!ew1Q1CYb!Kn78vtM8t_pF ... Ll9V5hO1Yo

Start from index.html.
Search button does not work. If people want, I can create another parser and save all functions in json.
NIGHTHAWK620
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Owners of mods hope y'all copyrighted your stuff. This may be a way to steal mods..... don't mind me I'm paranoid remember TRON!!
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Song
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NIGHTHAWK620 wrote:
Wed Aug 30, 2017 2:06 am
Owners of mods hope y'all copyrighted your stuff. This may be a way to steal mods..... don't mind me I'm paranoid remember TRON!!
We have, as a community, quite strong common-sense policy regarding unauthorised re-uploads of mods.

While many modders have, historically, released their code into the public domain or granted a rather expansive license (or, like myself, had openly stated policies regarding code becoming freely available for use in the event of leaving the community for an extended period), in general failure to allow this is respected. People can, and will, maintain old mods that are considered critical. Sometimes these patches are released publically and this does raise questions regarding respecting licenses, but I have yet to see any case of a mod being re-uploaded with a false claim of authorship. Indeed, many treasured old mods are no longer available in working versions entirely because the lack of an open license has been respected and, as such, no changes have been made to keep the old code working (also, speaking pragmatically, because most of us like creating rather than maintaining).

In addition, due to the small and fairly close-knit nature of this community, disputes of this type (generally involving new modders using someone else's code as a template without permission) have been rather rare historically and are generally resolved rapidly. With the planned introduction of Multiverse this approach can be continued once George implements moderation controls.

Further, as complete archives exist for comparison in the case of any future disputes (and most code on Xelerus is non-functional or out-of-date in current versions anyway) this is not something that people need to be concerned about. It is incredibly unlikely to happen and very easy to detect and resolve if it does occur.
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EditorRUS
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As of September 4 it still works fine.
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Song
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EditorRUS wrote:
Sun Sep 03, 2017 11:30 pm
As of September 4 it still works fine.
It would seem, then, that Bimbel did workaround the problem silently at some point (which we thought might have happened, but didn't know for certain).

Regardless, with multiverse functionality opening up, it's still time we wave goodbye to xelerus. It has done well, but we need to let go.
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JohnBWatson
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EditorRUS wrote:
Sun Sep 03, 2017 11:30 pm
As of September 4 it still works fine.
That's pretty funny. Looks like it isn't the end of an era after all.

I'd love to know how the hell that workaround ended up working.
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Song
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Regardless, it rather is the end of an era, just in a different way. Xelerus works, but Multiverse is now an option. It's not quite ready yet, but George is making good progress. We have a replacement for xelerus, and we can say goodbye to it....without it dying completely just yet (personally I'd prefer that it did die, but hey, we can't have everything).


This thread has served its purpose, and will now be locked. :)
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