Bioware forums are closing

[Legacy_kamal_]

               https://forum.biowar...ms-closing-down


My apologies for brevity as I'm on my phone....
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_henesua]

               

Never fear. There is always light at the end of the tunnel, and it is not always a train.

 

In the mean time you can hang out in the Vault with us just to make sure that that light is not a train.

 

In IRC you can even drink some tea while you wait:

/server chat.freenode.net

/join #nwvault

 

 

And there's also the Beamdog forums to check out

https://forums.beamdog.com/

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_T0r0]

               

Damn I feel old. I thought everything on the internet lasted forever .. '>

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Tchos]

               

There's also the dedicated NWN1 and NWN2 forums on the Nexus, complete with specific subforums similar to what we had here (General discussion, tech support, mod talk, mod tech support, and mod requests), running IP Board with all its usual amenities, like proper message quoting and colour-coded scripting formats.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_brgjoe]

               

Very sad to hear this.  I have been around NWN forums since they were hosted by the original Bioware website.  Then I moved to the "Social Bioware forums".  Then to this place.  Seemed like we lost a few with each successive transition. 

 

But it still has been a fantastic run.  People are still modding and playing a game that's over a decade and a half old.   Amazing.  And even though these forums will end, there will still be places to discuss this old game and it's mod's.

 

Hate to see this forum end.  Even though I had heard rumors that it's demise was near.  It still sucks to get the official word that is the case. 

 

Yet I am sure this game will continue to live on.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_henesua]

               

it certainly will. i think for a long time.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_The Amethyst Dragon]

               

Of course. Looks like I'll be spending the next couple of months archiving stuff and maybe putting some of it on the community site.

 

It's amazing how much information and creativity is on this forum.

               
               

               
            

[Baaleos]

               

Is there any automated archiving tool we can use to facilitate this, or would we have to create our own?

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_kamal_]

               

Is there any automated archiving tool we can use to facilitate this, or would we have to create our own?

The scraper written for the old Vault did get the first page of the comments for a submission. Of course the new Vault team had permission from old Vault to do scraping.

               
               

               
            

[Baaleos]

               

Since they are closing the forums, I would like to know what threat they would use to stop someone making a scraper.

Banning us from the forums they intend to shut down?

Im working on one right now.

Worked out the logic already

 

Every forum has a collection of subforums, which has a collection of topics, which has a collection of posts.

Once I get the logic working for a single forum-> subforum, then a subforum-> topic, then a topic->posts

Grabbing the info is easy.

 

So far so good - able to programmatically get the Sub Forums for the Main NWN Forum.

Now I just need to code for the sub forums to get topics, then topics to get posts.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Wall3T]

               

Just so I know for clerity the content being archived now will be placed into the new vault, or somewhere else? I've been a part of the content community for some time and hate to see all those wonderful posts vanish

               
               

               
            

[Baaleos]

               

If anyone is interested in getting a dump from my scraping efforts, let me know.

I've already got it to the point where it can iterate through all the pages on a given sub-forum and get the title and href to the topics.

 

The next and arguably final phase is to then iterate through all pages of a given topic, and grab post information.

Im also not entirely sure how much information we would want to archive.

 

I am thinking.

 

Topic Title

Which then contains a collection of posts

 Posts then has poster, post date, post content. (in text)

 Only problem with grabbing the date from posts, is that it displays the date relative to today.

Eg: It displays 'Posted today, or Yesterday' - 3 weeks from now, that wouldn't make much sense.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Faerinaal]

               

Hi Baaleos, I tend to think the date is irrelevant as a data point, myself.  It could be useful for attempts to contact a poster, but it's not as if we have their email addresses anyway.

 

Please include us in your list for a data-dump.

 

We can be contacted at projectmanager@functiond20.com, or contact@functiond20.com.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_AndrueD]

               

The next and arguably final phase is to then iterate through all pages of a given topic, and grab post information.

Im also not entirely sure how much information we would want to archive.

Am thinking best stuff for save is all fixing and setting for running new WinOS, Linux, Mac nd with many problum that video mayb has too.  That matter much for new player who try running NWN with Win8 or 10 and fancy vcard/drivers.

 

Also think all design stuff where they figger how to do tricky things shud archive.  So many script ppl post here in many years for help it sad to think all that gud work just poof away end month.

               
               

               
            

[Baaleos]

               

I've had some progress on capturing the date information.

The date information is contained in the title for each topics link on the subforum.

I just replace Yesterday and  Today with the DateTime equivalents to allow the program to parse.

 

Grabbing the Forum - Sub Forums and all the topics minus the post data is relatively fast. It completed within about 5 minutes.

Actually grabbing the post data will probably take hours. (So far I have left that bit out)

 

I think for sanity sake, I am going to pump this into a database and then provide a means for the community to access it.

That way I can leave it running overnight and not worry about having to start from scratch.