So, Xelerus is (finally) dying... plans for a replacement?

[pixelfck]

Xelerus has been less than 100% operational for quite some time now. We all knew that xelerus.de would not live on forever.

Bimbel has expressed his concern on the status quo of xelerus.de and his wish to pull the plug on it, as long back as July 2013.

By now, xelerus is showing the first definite signs of dying:

So someone came into IRC and wanted to see if anyone could make ores actually show up after 1.5's new mining table completely destroyed mining. So I had a go. Here's the result (Xelerus has broken down under the weight of time itself, so I can't upload it there).

(...)

(link)

The big question is:
does anyone have a complete and up-to-date backup of all the mods, screenshots, their description, up- and down-votes, tags, etc. and all the comments?
It would be a shame if we would loose all them.(we have backups).

What about a replacement?

@George, do you (still) have any plans to build a replacement site? Or should we look at the community to try and come up with a xelerus 2.0?

~Pixelfck

[bzm3r]

Just an idea for "Xelerus 2.0".

Someone might want to create a GitHub account called Xelerus, where every mod is uploaded as a separate repository? It's easy to download stuff as a zip from GitHub, its easy to discuss issues and features, or merge updates. It also removes the burden of having to maintain a mod database.

GitHub stars could replace upvotes (there'd be no downvotes). There is no real way to sort by stars though.

So, we'd still have the need for a "frontend" of sorts, that maybe accesses GitHub as a backend?

[Ttech]

Just an idea for "Xelerus 2.0".

Someone might want to create a GitHub account called Xelerus, where every mod is uploaded as a separate repository? It's easy to download stuff as a zip from GitHub, its easy to discuss issues and features, or merge updates. It also removes the burden of having to maintain a mod database.

GitHub stars could replace upvotes (there'd be no downvotes). There is no real way to sort by stars though.

So, we'd still have the need for a "frontend" of sorts, that maybe accesses GitHub as a backend?

This is a good idea, I would like to think that putting it on the Transcendence/ repository would be better and we can do pull requests.

George - I've started crawling all the mods on Xelerus - in fact I'm taking an entire site backup, could you make a repository on GitHub I can upload this stuff to and give me access to it?
I'll upload mods on there and we can track new updates using pull requests. We won't have votes, but I can easily come up with something to replace that .

[pixelfck]

While it is clear that github has a lot of functionality, it would not be as low threshold as xelerus was.
The beauty of xelerus was that it was simple enough for everybody to understand. If we go for github, the bar will be raised quite a lot.

~Pixelfck

[pixelfck]

By now, I also have a mirror of all relevant data:

Code: Select all

xelerusSlurp.php

attempting to create or empty the data file... ok
Starting download (this may take a while)
.......... .......... .......... .......... ..........
.......... .......... .......... .......... ..........
.......... .......... .......... .......... ........
completed, 20 April 2015, 19:10 GMT: downloaded 955 mods, 530 mods no longer exist.

total size of mod meta data: 2MB (download),
total size of all mod data: 498MB.


metadata format:

Code: Select all

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<xelerusMods>
	<mod id="1">
		<description><![CDATA[This mod pack adds a Ferian Warship w/new weapon and some new Ferian hive images to the game. Written and designed by Dvlenk6. Also included is a Ferian Warship playership with a new weapon for your playing enjoyment!]]></description>
		<categories>Mod Packs</categories>
		<author>FAD</author>
		<ratings>
			<plus>0</plus>
			<minus>0</minus>
		</ratings>
		<dates>
			<added>14.06.2007</added>
			<lastUpdated>14.06.2007</lastUpdated>
		</dates>
		<gameVersion>0.98</gameVersion>
		<downloads>1805</downloads>
		<comments>
			<comment author="Iocrymdestroyer" dateTime="22.11.2008 04:19"><![CDATA[<p>I can't see the plasma shooting from the ship in the normal screen, lrs, yes</p>]]></comment>
			<comment author="digdug" dateTime="22.11.2008 13:10"><![CDATA[<p>it's because particle weapons in 0.99 work in a different way.</p>]]></comment>
			<comment author="Jackal" dateTime="04.04.2009 15:52"><![CDATA[<p>Ho do I make it work?</p>]]></comment>
			<comment author="Jackal" dateTime="04.04.2009 16:25"><![CDATA[<p>never mind</p>]]></comment>
			<comment author="Jose" dateTime="19.01.2012 21:35"><![CDATA[<p>This isthe first mod released on Xelerus :D</p>]]></comment>
		</comments>
	</mod>
	
	<!-- snip -->
	
	<mod id="1484">
		<description><![CDATA[This is a collection of mods that, in and of themselves, do not add any content to the game.  Instead, they gather information when a new game is started to collect information on some aspect of the game being started (which will include any mods currently active) and output the results to Debug.log.<br />
There are currently three mods in this collection, though more are likely inevitable:<br />
Function Help:  This mod generates a list of all of the built-in functions and outputs a list of them, along with anything that the fncHelp function will return on them.<br />
Ship Table Generator:  This mod creates a table of all ships in the game, along with many details about them.  Its main purpose is balance assistance.<br />
Weapon Table Generator:  This mod creates a table of all primary weapons in the game, along with many details about them.  Its main purpose is balance assistance.]]></description>
		<categories>Misc, Game Statistics, Development</categories>
		<author>AssumedPseudonym</author>
		<ratings>
			<plus>0</plus>
			<minus>0</minus>
		</ratings>
		<dates>
			<added>17.04.2015</added>
			<lastUpdated>17.04.2015</lastUpdated>
		</dates>
		<gameVersion>1.6b2</gameVersion>
		<downloads>18</downloads>
		<comments>
		</comments>
	</mod>
</xelerusMods>

~Pixelfck

[Song]

THe problem with Xelerus (Ttech can explain it better) is that it's using ancient, ancient code....and that code no longer runs. Currently, we are exceptionally fortunate: it's the upload function that's broken down. Downloading still works. This gives an opportunity to grab all the code off it. Of course, older mods are mostly useless (unless we have a big community Make Stuff Work bash) but the rest of it is important to try to collect.

A Kronosaur mod exchange has been mooted since ~2011 or so. It may be time to accelerate work on that so we have something when xelerus inevitably collapses completely. Alternatively, we just need a new stand-in with modern webcode.

[Ttech]

While it is clear that github has a lot of functionality, it would not be as low threshold as xelerus was.
The beauty of xelerus was that it was simple enough for everybody to understand. If we go for github, the bar will be raised quite a lot.

~Pixelfck

Sadly, most of the mods don't work anymore and have been abandoned, so this is perfect for archival purposes.

[Ttech]

Also I think there was some work / thoughts of moving Xelerus code base to Kronosaur, however that never happened.

[bzm3r]

While it is clear that github has a lot of functionality, it would not be as low threshold as xelerus was.
The beauty of xelerus was that it was simple enough for everybody to understand. If we go for github, the bar will be raised quite a lot.

~Pixelfck

I think its pretty easy to download stuff from GitHub, because there's a nice big "Download as zip" button. I agree that there's more to learn if you want to fork/branch/merge/pull, but if you are doing that sort of stuff then GitHub is just one of the best (apart from BitBucket, and so on).

So, the minimum threshold is pretty low, but I agree that there is trouble if one wants to look for a mod. How do we sort by most downloads? Or most starred? Or most/least "whatever"? Now, I might be wrong, but TTech had some idea for this -- maybe there could be a front end that is Kronosaur based, where we can do all that sort stuff, along with "low threshold" download button, but the backend can remain GitHub (unless we want to make our own git based online mod repository...which we could totally do too) for things like updating mods, fixing/issuing bug requests, and so on. This is ~sort~ of how the Ministry of Information is set up right now: we have a custom Transcendence-focused front end for reporting bugs, but the "backend" really is a GitHub repository where Transcendence's code is stored and version controlled.

...older mods are mostly useless (unless we have a big community Make Stuff Work bash)...

A Make Stuff Work bash sounds *awesome*.

[Song]

...older mods are mostly useless (unless we have a big community Make Stuff Work bash)...

A Make Stuff Work bash sounds *awesome*.

The problem is that we don't have licences on those old abandoned ones. Although admittedly, it is unlikely that people will care.

[Ttech]

...older mods are mostly useless (unless we have a big community Make Stuff Work bash)...

A Make Stuff Work bash sounds *awesome*.

The problem is that we don't have licences on those old abandoned ones. Although admittedly, it is unlikely that people will care.

Thats why I feel GitHub for archival right now is the best bet. Much like the munin exchange.

[pixelfck]

My earlier comment was mostly described my concern for raising the bar for uploading new mods. Right now, almost everybody can edit some xml and upload a mod. Simplicity is, in my opinion, one of the reasons for the success of xelerus.

~Pixelfck

[george moromisato]

I think we're going to end up with a short-term and a long-term solution.

The short-term solution is likely going to be GitHub, since we need someplace to put everything before we lose it all.

We don't yet have a long-term solution. I'd love to build something into the Multiverse, but I don't have a lot of time this year. A new system will probably have to wait until 2016 or so.

[Ttech]

I think we're going to end up with a short-term and a long-term solution.

The short-term solution is likely going to be GitHub, since we need someplace to put everything before we lose it all.

We don't yet have a long-term solution. I'd love to build something into the Multiverse, but I don't have a lot of time this year. A new system will probably have to wait until 2016 or so.

I've made a mirror of the entire site, and have all the mods in zip files (as they were uploaded) I'm going to extract them all and put them in folders and upload them to the GitHub archive for now.
It will take a few days - the extracted size is roughly as said above 500mb compressed.

[digdug]

If interested, I actually have all the mods that have been uploaded on Xelerus, since its creation. (so it includes all those that have been deleted.)
This has been done at best of my abilities to check on xelerus on a daily basis since 2007 and download everything that was posted. So I might have missed some stuff.
But in case Xelerus suddenly dies, I have a backup of the mods.

[EDIT] Didn't notice that Ttech actually mirrored the entire website. That's better !