Hard Light Productions Forums
Site Management => Site Support / Feedback => Topic started by: The E on May 07, 2012, 12:44:08 pm
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As mentioned in this thread (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=79191.0), the indie space sim known as Starshatter has been open sourced. As an interested little fellow, I grabbed the code, and put it on a google code (http://code.google.com/p/starshatter-open/) repository.
Now, as you may have heard, the former starshatter community hub, starshattermods.net, seems to suffer from an acute case of not being reachable by anyone, and has been for a week now. In keeping with our motto of bringing modders together, I would humbly request a subforum for Starshatter development on this here board.
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I second this winning proposition!
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I third this.
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I am not familiar with Starshatter. How does it compare with FSO in term of mission-building capabilities/tools, and modding capabilities in general ? Are the assets free to use in any fashion as well ?
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There are some FreeSpace mods for this pretty cool looking game as well.
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More and more this is becoming a community about modding and not about modding Freespace...
Which is a good thing. For so many reasons.
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Yes this is much good thing :yes:
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Hmm. Do any HLP members actively mod for Starshatter?
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Someone awesome did a Blue Planet mod for it, I think it was rxc
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It was not! I believe rscaper is working on something, however.
Matth, Starshatter, like FSO, is not and never will be perfect, but the game engine is set up inherently different than FSO's. Gameplay is centered around a type of dynamic campaign system. It can't compete with the complexity of something like Falcon 4.0, but then again, now that it's open source, there may be ways of making it better still. The engine allows for single, scripted missions as well, but I do not believe it's nearly as sophisticated as FreeSpace in this regard...
Then again, FreeSpace won't let you re-program your own mission objectives and waypoints, jump to other planetary systems around a star, or launch from your carrier, break from orbit to do an atmospheric strike, and then fly back to your carrier... much like a boss.
:D
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yeah same guy
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Considering you can get the full game for free and its source code can be tampered with, I suppose it'd make an excellent addition to HLP. Perhaps a year from now HLP might have substantial Starshatter community. Of course, spreading the word that we have one is important for it to succeed.
I also hope there is much to learn from Starshatter source code that might be useful in providing insights into development of FSO. And vice versa. Perhaps one day FSO can do what Thaeris described two posts back.
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So, who ultimately approves this? Goober5000? FWIW, this has my vote. More community, more good fuzziness... or was that Snuffelupagus?
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I haven't seen anything AGAINST the idea at least.
What do we know about the Sharshatter fan/modding community ? Are they cool guys, are they a bunch of morons ? That's something to think about for a sec or three too.
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What do we know about the Sharshatter fan/modding community ? Are they cool guys, are they a bunch of morons ? That's something to think about for a sec or three too.
This would be the only reason against it that I could see, although it would be a HLP forum and HLP rules would be applied. I think we've got a (reasonably) good track record of keeping people on the straight and narrow though. That said, if there are any very prominent members of the starshatter communities who are massive tools, it might be worth knowing in advance.
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So, who ultimately approves this? Goober5000? FWIW, this has my vote. More community, more good fuzziness... or was that Snuffelupagus?
What am I? Chopped liver?
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Errm... I don't see you stating your approval before this post...
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I've already had that conversation with The E.
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I'm not opposed to this per se, but as I said I'd like to find out if there are any active Starshatter modders on HLP first. Is it only this rxc guy, and if so, is he registered on HLP?
Previously, we have successfully branched out into new modding avenues using HLP members as seed starters -- witness MechCommander OmniTech. But this sounds more like attempting to bootstrap a Starshatter branch out of thin air. That would be a lot more difficult. And if there is next to no overlap between the two communities, then there may be significant cultural or organizational differences between them.
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no, rscaper
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The problem is that starshattermods.com is down, and that its administrator is seemingly unavailable at the moment, thus making it a bit difficult to contact the preexisting community.
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Well, I don't know, but I think it's worse than that. The website's 404 page (http://www.starshattermods.com/function.main) seems to indicate that the domain name has been bought out by someone else..
Maybe I'm just a paranoid snuffleupagus, but I thought it was worth mentioning..
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Assuming there's an existing community to "integrate/ingratiate" with our own, I'm for it :yes:
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Can't we just assimilate the Starshatter community and add their technological and semantic distinctiveness to our own?
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Can't we just assimilate the Starshatter community and add their technological and semantic distinctiveness to our own?
Yes, we can!
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HLP, the Borgs of the modders community :P
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The problem is that starshattermods.com is down, and that its administrator is seemingly unavailable at the moment, thus making it a bit difficult to contact the preexisting community.
Difficult, but not impossible? Because this request presupposes the ability to tell them about HLP...
I think we ought to hear from a few senior members of Starshatter before speculating further.
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I think it would be great to have Starshatter here at HLP. My WiH project has stalled a little due to problems I've been having with the engine. Things like shields and ai acting like wussies. Once the project is here I'm sure people will follow. I can post at all the boards that I frequent and drum up some people. The only person from SSmods that I know is here is Brad but I don't know if he can get in contact with others.
http://youtu.be/okWp4ph7dxc (http://youtu.be/okWp4ph7dxc)
Here's a vid that I made to show some of the progress I made with WiH. There's some vexing problems with ai aggressiveness in that they don't shoot back unless they launch from a ship or jump in. And for some strange reason if you launch from a ship you have to charge your shields manually.
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That's freakin' great, Good Sir!
:yes:
As far as the AI is concerned, even on SS mods the full extent of the ship tables/definition files were not explained. If there's not enough data in the previously supplied documentation, you might want to start looking through the "Ship" code in the Stars45 directory (if you have a copy of the source code). Those files should be listing every entry type SS is capable of reading from a .def file - I'd like to think the "avoid ship" entry ties into the AI performance, etc., etc.
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Well, if enough people mention Starshatter and the website, starshattermods.com , then Google will bring all of the ones thoughtful enough to search to our waiting
assimilation tubules arms...
EDIT: Created a thread (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=80813.0) to attempt to grab anyone unfortunate enough to be stuck in the vastness of space, searching for their station. Please review for any search terms I might have missed and feel free to add them.
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Okay, it's been a week. I have not been contacted by any members of the starshatter community, nor have I been able to find anything elseweb regarding the status of starshattermods.com.
I would like to renew the request for a subboard.
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I have not been contacted by any members of the starshatter community, nor have I been able to find anything elseweb regarding the status of starshattermods.com.
That would seem to support not giving them a board, though. If nobody in the Starshatter community wants to come here without having a board, then why should we do them any favors? And if you haven't been able to reach any Starshatter people so far, then what are your chances of reaching them if the board is in fact created?
Before you think I'm being a negative Nellie, consider that the discussion would be quite different if we had a swarm of newly registered Starshatter fans in this thread saying "Yeah, wouldn't it be great if we had a new forum in HLP!" or "Please help us, we have nowhere to go with Starshattermods down!" But that hasn't happened.
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If nobody in the Starshatter community wants to come here without having a board, then why should we do them any favors?
:confused:
Why would we expect the starshatter community to visit a Freespace forum for reasons other than Freespace when there are literally hundreds of thousands of other forums on the internet they could visit for reasons other than Freespace? I wouldn't think hosting a Starshatter subforum would be a favor as much of another reason for people to come to HLP. In fact I don't think I'd want to visit a place online where people act like they're doing me a favor by giving me a place to talk about things that interest me. I would love to see a Starshatter forum here, though I'm not an admin and wouldn't have to put up with the maintenance implications that brings.
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I don't understand. The fact is there are quite a few people here that want this to happen. MatthTheGeek was allowed a board for HWBP when the project was just him. Why can't Starshatter get the same consideration?
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HWBP is an offshoot of an existing project, not a brand new project. And certainly not a transplant of an entire community from one website to another.
As has been mentioned before, HLP is not a democracy. Just because a bunch of people like something doesn't necessarily mean that will happen. There need to be good reasons for it. I am not opposed to a Starshatter board per se, as I've said before; it sounds like a cool idea. But cool ideas don't go anywhere if they have nobody to move them along.
The core problem is that The E wants this to be a transplant of an existing Starshatter community, but he has no way to contact any of them, and none of the existing Starshatter community members have shown up at HLP anticipating an imminent move.
I haven't seen anyone give a satisfactory answer to the problems I raise. In fact, I think this effort would succeed better as a new hosted project request than a community transplant. If so, then The E would need to approach this like a new hosted project application, demonstrating internal organization, a staff, a website, and verifiable progress, like others have had to do.
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Why don't you just create a space for starshatter and come August 2012 if the space goes dead just remove it?
If no one is active in the space, no one will care about the board getting deleted.
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If no one is active in Starshatter, then they won't care about the board not getting created in the first place, will they?
And so far that appears to be exactly what is happening.
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Wait, I just posted an example of my WiH starshatter mod. Not to mention I wouldn't call The E a casual poster around these parts. The interest and support are there. So what exactly is the magic number?
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rscaper, you were far more active in the Starshatter community than I was - Braddw has posted here and was a senior member on their boards. Perhaps you could consider e-mailing him to determine if he could find a few more of their community members that might be interested in re-assembling the community here on HLP?
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Why don't you just create a space for starshatter and come August 2012 if the space goes dead just remove it?
If no one is active in the space, no one will care about the board getting deleted.
If no one is active in Starshatter, then they won't care about the board not getting created in the first place, will they?
And so far that appears to be exactly what is happening.
:wtf:
Am I missing something here? I thought the Starshatter community was active up until their website broke. It's like not rescuing a drowning man because dead people don't care if you didn't rescue them.
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Have anyone from the Starshatter community come on this very topic or anywhere else in HLP to show their interest ? No, they didn't. That's what Goober is talking about.
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Other than The E and rscaper, you mean? Don't tell me you actually expect people to find this thread randomly, that's totally absurd. I don't know how visible it would be, but doubtlessly a subforum would be far more visible than this thread.
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Of course we don't expect them to show up randomly. We expect them to be recruited to this thread through whatever communication methods are still in use now that the site is down.
Yet again I will say that if you can't get in touch with the community before the board is created, the board itself won't make a difference. If you want to bring the community here then you need a way of contacting them.
If you want to start a brand new Starshatter project with just HLP people, and hope that old Starshatter people will eventually find their way here, then that has different selection criteria. But nobody has actually said they want to do this.
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For those interested in/concerned about Starshattermods, I just heard from Wdboyd. Apparently he was attempting to update the site, and somehow the database got lost and was not backed up so the database for the site is gone for good and can't be restored. William does have all the files in the download section and I asked him if he would allow then to be hosted at annother site should such a place become available. I have yet to hear from him on that one, but I anticipate a response soon.\
As for starshattermods, it looks as though it's run has come to an end. William had been disappointed with the level of participation for quite some time, and has decided this is the time to bring it to an end, so no further attempt will be made to revive the site. A sad day to be sure, but anyone who enjoys the game Starshatter owes a great debt of gratitude to wdboyd for maintaining starshattermods and keeping the game alive for so long. While I am quite sad to see SSMods come to an end, I look forward to what may come from the source coding that is now in its infancy, and I am still willing to help out in any way possible to further that effort.
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well, i guess there goes another mod community sinking. :(
(http://www.austradesecure.com/radschool/Vol32/images/Taps.jpg) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wn_iz8z2AGw)
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That's very sad. :(
I look forward to hearing back from braddw25 about this William though.
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william == wdboyd, in case that wasn't clear.
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I think it would be great to have Starshatter here at HLP. My WiH project has stalled a little due to problems I've been having with the engine. Things like shields and ai acting like wussies. Once the project is here I'm sure people will follow. I can post at all the boards that I frequent and drum up some people. The only person from SSmods that I know is here is Brad but I don't know if he can get in contact with others.
http://youtu.be/okWp4ph7dxc (http://youtu.be/okWp4ph7dxc)
Here's a vid that I made to show some of the progress I made with WiH. There's some vexing problems with ai aggressiveness in that they don't shoot back unless they launch from a ship or jump in. And for some strange reason if you launch from a ship you have to charge your shields manually.
Dang, how long did it take to kill a perseus???
Anyway, I am a leader on a completely different board. I understand the logistics of this kind of decision-making, and I know that while community feedback is appreciated, this is not a democracy.
That said, I am highly in favor of setting up a board for Starshatter, under the philosophy that "if we build it, they will come." I mean, think about it. The central hub of communication and regular home for these people just imploded. Unless the entire site operated an email/cell phone network or a facebook group or alternate forum before the collapse, there would be no way to get a hold of each other.
For example, as far as HLP goes, I have a very dated IM address of... JR2 and Turey and a very dated email address of... JR2. If HLP goes down, I would have no way to get in touch with ANYONE else, and those that I do have are very iffy. With no message board and no PM system, the infrastructure simply isn't there. I would have to resort to periodically googling "Freespace 2 mods" and hope a community like this someday pops up again.
Therefore, if we build an entire sub-board for Starshatter, and it slowly creeps up in the google results, then over time I imagine old modders that get nostalgic and throw out random google searches will begin to trickle in. As we spread word about the internet, people will become aware.
When you build a homeless shelter in the city, most people don't go around polling the homeless to find out if they will use it. It's sorta assumed that if they know about it, they'll come.
So, IMO, it's all about getting the word out in frequently visible places on the net AFTER we get the system set up.
That's my 2 cents.
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So basically the only minor objection I had (what if the Starshatter community see this as some sort of takeover event) is nullified. If the Starshatter community are so disorganised that they can't be contacted, it's going to be pretty hard for them to rise up against us. :p
Which means I'm in favour of setting up the board now despite Goober's objections. Hopefully this will help the Starshatter community organise. If it doesn't, maybe it will help set up a new community. Even if it doesn't do that, having HLP become the place you go to get a free open-sourced space sim game isn't going to hurt us when it comes to distributing our other free open-sourced space sim games (like TBP, WCS and Diaspora).
Given that the worst case scenario is that we simply end up archiving the forum next year, I can live with the risk/reward ratio.
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For example, as far as HLP goes, I have a very dated IM address of... JR2 and Turey and a very dated email address of... JR2. If HLP goes down, I would have no way to get in touch with ANYONE else, and those that I do have are very iffy. With no message board and no PM system, the infrastructure simply isn't there. I would have to resort to periodically googling "Freespace 2 mods" and hope a community like this someday pops up again.
In that scenario, just for giggles, the IM address wouldn't do any good unless I happened to have an insane inkling to pop back on (I used to keep all of my IM accounts up using Pidgin, but I've dropped the habit). Depending on the e-mail address you have, I may or may not get your e-mail, and it may or may not be a month or two later (if it's my infrequently used accounts, like AOL or MS Live/Hotmail).
So, yeah, in that situation, you would be hoping Turey's info was still up to date and that he still actually used it with any kind of frequency. (I don't think your chances would be good.. last I knew IIRC, Turey had R/L issues that were occupying most of his time.)
So..
There you have it. 90% chance (IMHO) you'd be Googling up the creek without a paddle hoping for a new FS2 site to come online or this one to finally get fixed.
Aside from that, does anyone who was a part of their community know .. how much of a community they had? Like, I mean, were people involved (hanging out and chatting or what have you) besides purely to troubleshoot or grab the latest update for the SSMod(s)? EDIT: Just curious, nothing to do with hosting/not hosting (I support hosting, however I see Goober's point, but then again I'm hoping the SSMod folk are tenacious enough to find their way here).
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For example, as far as HLP goes, I have a very dated IM address of... JR2 and Turey and a very dated email address of... JR2. If HLP goes down, I would have no way to get in touch with ANYONE else, and those that I do have are very iffy. With no message board and no PM system, the infrastructure simply isn't there. I would have to resort to periodically googling "Freespace 2 mods" and hope a community like this someday pops up again.
In that scenario, just for giggles, the IM address wouldn't do any good unless I happened to have an insane inkling to pop back on (I used to keep all of my IM accounts up using Pidgin, but I've dropped the habit). Depending on the e-mail address you have, I may or may not get your e-mail, and it may or may not be a month or two later (if it's my infrequently used accounts, like AOL or MS Live/Hotmail).
So, yeah, in that situation, you would be hoping Turey's info was still up to date and that he still actually used it with any kind of frequency. (I don't think your chances would be good.. last I knew IIRC, Turey had R/L issues that were occupying most of his time.)
So..
There you have it. 90% chance (IMHO) you'd be Googling up the creek without a paddle hoping for a new FS2 site to come online or this one to finally get fixed.
Or just:
irc.esper.net
#hard-light
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Point. IDK if SSMods used IRC though. You're right; esper would work splendid for us in a similar circumstance. I would have remembered that... eventually. :P
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Not to mention Sectorgame.
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And all of us who are friends with each other on Steam, and the Facebook group, and so on. :p
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Hello to all involved in this thread,
I guess I wanted to throw my 2 cents into this discussiona about Starshatter modding and the potential of setting up some kind of space here for it. It looks as though I have inherited the role of leader of the Starshatter modding community since William (Wdboyd) has at least for the time being moved on to other pursuits. I am currently in the process of trying to round up as many of the more active modders from the old site as I can find. I just started over the weekend, and so far I've only been able to come into contact with 2 other members. I know that doesn't sound like many, but the abruptness with which SSMods disappeared is hindering the process. All the email addresses were available previously on the site, so I never stored them anywhere else. SO I have had to go creeping all over the net to find folks. I anticipate hearing from more of the folks in the near future, and I intend to tell all of them to come over here and check out Hard-light.net. The two members that I am in contact with both agree that we should try to find somewhere on the web to preserve the modding community and knowledge base that was accumulated at SSmods and in my opinion, hard-light.net would be a great place to try to start something like that. I had considered buying my own domain space and trying to make a new site on my own. Since I have never done anything like that, it would have been a while until such a site was established. If it's possible for us to have space here in an already existing and thriving community like this one, then I am all for it. I can't speak for everyone else, but I'm betting that they would be as well.
One thing about our little community at SS:mods. The level of activity over there for the past couple of years was sporadic. There were times when things really took off such as when guys like Wdboyd, Achilles, and myself were all producing mods at the same time. It would be kind of contagious and spread to other guys being more active. Once the mods were completed, then we would have a few months of less activity. We were in one of the periods when the site went down, so I'm betting that there are many folks who were out of the loop and have no idea what happened. It's those folks that I'm hoping to find and bring here if you guys will have us. I do have to check with the other members as I do not wish to speak for them without asking first, but I think they will be in favor of what's left of our group coming here as well. Thanks for considering bringing us on board. I will do what I can to get more SS folks coming here.
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Okay, this is a good post. :yes: This is encouraging news -- at least about a potential move; it really stinks from the point of view of the SSMods site. :(
Given these new developments, my issues (I wouldn't call them "objections") have been satisfied, so I am willing to approve the hosting.
Looking at the hosting policy, SSMods seems to have comfortably filled the criteria for a hosted project -- there's certainly significant progress, a website, and staff organization. And The E seems very motivated to work on the source code aspect.
What exactly is desired for project hosting? There's the subforum, obviously. But is SSMods going to have an entire category of Starshatter expansion packs/source code modifications to download? If so, it sounds like they may want to consider requesting space on Sectorgame or FSMods.
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Personally, I just want a place on this board to discuss and promote this thing. It was never my intention to use HLP as a file hoster (Because, let's be honest, we're not in that business). No offense to Sectorgame, but I am far more comfortable here :)
As for hosting downloads, I am sure that arrangements can be made with FSMods (or, for that matter, ModDB). The source code will remain hosted at google; I see no reason to move it.
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I Agree with The E. At this point, the main thing I'm looking for is a place for members to be able to meet and discuss projects. Once that is established we can find somewhere to host all the files. Speaking of the files, they have been preserved and I have obtained permission from wdboyd to download all the files that were hosted on Starshattermods.com. There is A LOT of stuff there and it will take some time, but I'm going to get as much of it as I can and attempt to preserve all the mods, tutorials, tools etc that had been collected on the old site.
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Since the StarShatter is actually completely free, you should be able to use gameupdates.org as a backup location for people to get the goods until you find somewhere else. Alan Bolte uploaded some of the files there.
I still have on my hard drive:
SCP_505.zip
SSTGS.zip
SS_Reborn.zip
vox.7z
I'll put them on the tracker jr2 posted, but if you want me to upload them elsewhere, PM me.
EDIT: here's the torrent: http://gameupdates.org/details.php?id=5035
EDIT: Not much, but it's been downloaded 23 times since uploading, so that's good. :)
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Why don't I solve the issue and just create an area on SpaceSimCentral for Starshatter, I already had a download area with the game files. So here it is, http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=85
Enjoy :) and if anyone has any of the mods feel free to upload them to the download area as well.
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Why don't I solve the issue and just create an area on SpaceSimCentral for Starshatter, I already had a download area with the game files. So here it is, http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=85
Enjoy :) and if anyone has any of the mods feel free to upload them to the download area as well.
Thanks very much, Darkone. I will be sure to take you up on that offer. I have some of the mods already on my computer at home. I'm in the process now of acquiring the rest of them from wdboyd. I will upload the mods I have first, and then I will start uploading some of the modding tutorials and tools that were available at starshattermods.com. Thanks again for providing some space for us.
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As nice as that is, I still want Starshatter on Hard Light. First and foremost because SSC's somewhat scattershot approach is not really my thing, the more focussed atmosphere here suits me much more.
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As nice as that is, I still want Starshatter on Hard Light. First and foremost because SSC's somewhat scattershot approach is not really my thing, the more focussed atmosphere here suits me much more.
As far as I know, the intent is still to have Starshatter here as well. I see no reason why it can't be hosted on both sites if both are willing to have it there.
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I'll go ahead and create a Hosted Project board and membergroup this evening, if another admin doesn't get to it first.
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Awesome.
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http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?board=234.0
Board's done. Do you actually need a member group/private forum?
Also if you want a name/tagline change, tell me what they should be.
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Ackpth. Karajorma didn't set the Allowed Groups checkboxes correctly, so I fixed that. :p I also added The E and braddw25 as moderators.
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How's about you actually document the procedure then so we don't end up having to guess it every time we add a new board or usergroup? The threads on the admin board are either confusing or old.
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Well, you could have looked at any other public board on HLP to see how a finished board should look.
But documentation is A-1 SUPAR. I'll make a post about it.
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/me eyeballs the Hosted Projects dropdown list and notes it's out of date.. :nervous:
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As for hosting downloads, I am sure that arrangements can be made with FSMods
Yes this can be done. If anyone is interested in pointing me to them I'll get on it ASAP.