Author Topic: Keeping records of all our lost time...  (Read 4221 times)

ItsDenton

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Keeping records of all our lost time...
« on: 2020-08-28 10:35:36 »
Hi. Nice to talk to you all1!

I've been thinking about something relatively serious related to FF7 modding and this community, but it probably2 requires Admin authority.

The thought I've been having is,
Quote
"Every time I get back into modding FF7, more and more of the links to the tools are dead, missing, or both."

I'm sure you've all noticed it, right? This time, I was looking for Palmer, and found another dead website. We have a lot of those around the forum, now. And the situation is getting worse (Particularly with certain filesharing websites going down)... It's a bad situation, and it means a lot of work is disappearing.


An Idea on (briefly) stemming this tide of loss

I don't know for sure if this has been suggested; At the very least, I couldn't find it.

Have you guys heard of "NexusMods.com"?
It's a modding website that's been around since the mid 2000s and is still going strong, started as exclusively Elder Scrolls mods related but hs now expanded. It stores tools, mods and more, some of the uploads are well over a decade old and the links and downloads still work fine.

Nexus Mods has a section for FF7 mods now, and given their track record of keeping mods online I think if we start uploading mods, tools, and such to their databanks, it'll stop the trend of people's hard work disappearing over the years due to data loss and personal websites going down.


Now, I'm not an admin3 But if we had an official sticky thread on this site, linking to a NexusMods page that has all of the Qhimm tools on it4, it'd really help people looking to download the old tools and get back into the FF7 Modding Scene.
We can ask the people who still regularly come to the site if they're okay with their projects being put as part of the "Official Qhimm Toolset" available for download, and encourage them if they don't want to be a part of the Qhimm Toolset to upload the files on there for safekeeping under their own username. Not compulsory, of course.


Now, the next part would definitely require Admin permission
For files where the original creators are sadly unavailable, we could make it an "Opt-Out"- we upload the program, and put a note on the sticky thread saying "If you do not want your tool as part of this package, please contact an admin and request it to be removed" so that if they show up again and don't want their work to be on the official page, they know what's going on. Keeping the mods online and in public viewing as their legacy, in case the original site they uploaded to goes down (Or has already gone down).

Anyway, that's my proposal. Tell me what you think.


1 As opposed to lurking for like, a decade and a half
2 Definitely
3 Nor do I play one on TV
4 Listed by an official qhimm account

sithlord48

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Re: Keeping records of all our lost time...
« Reply #1 on: 2020-08-29 19:03:14 »
I don't like how nexusmods forces an account to download.
For my tools anything not directly pointing to github / sourceforge  will be almost instantly out date.


ItsDenton

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Re: Keeping records of all our lost time...
« Reply #2 on: 2020-08-29 22:35:40 »
Yeah, I can see that. Sourceforge might be a good idea, too, as long as we don't lose the links or anything like that.
I'm mostly just concerned about how easy it is to lose a lot of good programs due to servers disappearing.

MysticLord

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Re: Keeping records of all our lost time...
« Reply #3 on: 2020-08-30 11:40:25 »
Making it easier to find and understand the data/code/assets/whatever these tools modify is a good first step.

sithlord48

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Re: Keeping records of all our lost time...
« Reply #4 on: 2020-08-31 03:39:30 »
Yes i agree getting the wiki fixed and updated would be helpful.

obesebear

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Re: Keeping records of all our lost time...
« Reply #5 on: 2020-09-01 00:08:41 »
Yes i agree getting the wiki fixed and updated would be helpful.
This is something sl1982 is working on, but it requires Qhimm finding the time to set everything up.

MysticLord

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Re: Keeping records of all our lost time...
« Reply #6 on: 2020-09-01 09:19:59 »
You could use a github account to host plain text files as such:
https://pastebin.com/GBWJ7yen

Should be perfectly adequate for data, disassemblies (one hopes with comments), file format descriptions, and of course source code.

It's definitely a half-assed solution, but for some use-cases (getting tons of data in one easily downloaded and edited location) it has a big advantage over a wiki. Concatenating a bunch of text files together is easy; grabbing tens of thousands of commented disassembly snippets from wiki and putting them in a single text file is not.

Anyone can edit it, there are unlikely to be spammers on Github, you don't have to pay to host it, you can seed compressed archives of various versions of it. The only disadvantage is being forced to use Git instead of Mercurial.
« Last Edit: 2020-09-01 11:55:27 by MysticLord »