32 réponses à ce sujet

[Sunjammer]

Argh ... the memories ...

 

Well you'll be glad to know that Dragon Age Project Preservation Society is one character too long for a group name so we'll have to think of something else. Suggestions welcome.

 

In other new last night I wrote an application that can log on to the legacy site and today I am making it iterate over all 9000+ potential project entries and extract key information (name, owner, category, description, etc.) and the project page URL. Ultimately it should be able to download images and files and back them up somewhere.

 

Thinking about it I guess there are 4 steps:

• Index all projects: this is what I'm working on now, it will be automated and produce a list of key information for every project on the old BSN
• Refine the index: this would be the next step and would be a mix of automated and manual tasks with the goal of making the initial list useful by categorising and/or tagging projects so that modders/players can more easily find what they want (a precursor to this would be deciding on categories/subcategories/tags etc.)
• Publish the index: the third step would be to generate the content for a wiki page or pages and, could be almost entirely automated but the quality of the index would depend very much on the previous step
• Preserve the projects: using the information from the second step back up the files and images a community repository

And because lots of text is boring here's an ugly work in progress image ...

 

 

Perhaps it's time to filter out all those "An Error Has Occurred" entries!

 

Getting back on track does anyone want to brain storm/bullet point the content of the new stickies? Ideally I think we should ask to get rid of all of the current ones and replace them with a single sticky in each sub-forum ensuring they have a consistent look/feel and server as an introduction both to that forum and that area of modding. Thoughts?

[mousestalker]

What about the Dragon Age Mod Preservers? It even has a self-deprecating acronym (D.A.M.P.).

[luna1124]

What about the Dragon Age Mod Preservers? It even has a self-deprecating acronym (D.A.M.P.).

I like this. Dragon Age Mod Preservers

What about all the projects that were abandoned? Some have been in planning since 2009. Or will all the projects be added regardless of status? And possibly sorted out later?

[Karma]

I know I'm going to get boos and hisses from the guy doing all the work, but is it possible to catalog the links for the mods from other DA mod hosting sites (e.g. Nexus) as well? Some mods were released on other mod hosting sites but not on BSN for various reasons. Obviously, it's unnecessary to keep copies of the files hosted outside of BSN because those projects are probably not in any danger of being lost, but having a searchable or categorized list of as many DA projects as possible would be really useful for players looking for new mods.

[Sunjammer]

... is it possible to catalog the links for the mods from other DA mod hosting sites (e.g. Nexus) ...

 

A quick look at Nexus suggests it would be possible (it's a data driven site so the HTML well structured) however it would require an entirely new set of XPATH commands to locate and extract the nuggets of information that we are interested in. It would add over 4000, many of which are duplicates. That said Nexus has better categories so there might be less/no manual work other than identifying the duplicates (which is easy if they are named the same).

 

I was also tempted to look at BSN blogs since a lot of useful information was posted in user blogs early on and never really made it to the wiki.However this is a trickier proposition since I don't think there is anything to identify the DA:O ones from everything else.

 

On the subject of the Group name how about the Project Preservation League with the slogan "by the PPL, for the people"!

 

*ahem*

[Tchos]

Well, one nice thing about this new forum is that I can easily see new posts in more subforums than I've been using for the past couple of years, so I see this now.  I haven't been active in DA, but I'm glad to see Sunjammer here, who helped me in my DA:O modding and later in my NWN2 modding, as well as others who also helped me.  Alas, my memory of some of them has faded.

 

Even though I'm not active in DA:O, I'm still a DA:O modder, so I'll stick around and maybe learn more over time.

 

We can easily create a community project index that is more accurate, up-to-date, less divisive and ironically more open that one.

 

Would it be bad to ask what was divisive about it?  Whoever was handling it was very polite and reasonable when asking me if my work could be included in it.

[DarthParametric]

I remember there was a schism of sorts over access to mod source materials. If I recall correctly, some of the Open House group members were tied up in that because of their stated goal of freely sharing resources. I'm not sure if that is what Sunjammer is referring to.

 

By the way, if we are going to be asking mods/admins to delete old stickies and create new ones, perhaps we could also suggest moving this sub-forum? Either up one level to the root of the Origins sub-forum, or across to the root of the DA Fan Creations sub-forum (so it is clearly visible either way). Fan Creations seems more appropriate, given that it already houses a modding/projects sub-forum.

[Sunjammer]

I've created the Dragon Age Community Content Curators group so anyone interested in discussing indexing/classifying/preserving all the wonderful community content on the Legacy BSN (to start with) should head on over and post their thoughts and ideas.I also mocked up a basic.

 

 I had a quick look at the current stickies (or lack of stickies) in each of the current sub-forums. I think the following are potential candidates for the new stickies. Certainly they should be preserved although the wiki might be a better place for them.

 

General Discussion

• The toolset doesn't have to be hard

Level and Area Creation

• Good starting articles (and videos)
• Configuring the Lightmapper and Python

Custom Content

• n/a

Cutscenes

• Cutscence samples thread …

Audio

• n/a

Project Announcement & Recruiting

• The List of currently available game mods and List of projects containing new playable content threads could be replaced with a link the new project index (once it is created)

Other Ideas

• Tools of the trade: links to useful utilities