The Vault Preservation Project

[Legacy_Eric of Atrophy]

               Reading all this, one has to ask ... the harvesting scripts are working as they should, yes?  If so, are we still wanted to harvest things on our own?  I have been grabbing willy-nilly as I can, but was just wondering if individual efforts are still warranted, or would be mere redundancy.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Eric of Atrophy]

               By the by, don't know if I've said this before, but I think it is absolutely fantabulous that folks are willing to pull together to preserve content from a game more than 10 years old!  Makes me all misty-eyed and reminds me of why I like to hang around NwN in the first place!  Sooo ... thank you everyone for the directed efforts to keep access to all that CC, and of course to Rolo Kipp for pressing forward with the Vault duties!  Huzzah, y'all.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Rolo Kipp]

               <cross...>

At this point, the harvester is working pretty good and we *may* have found a decent host through Michael Darkangel's efforts... still testing it for now.

So, thank *you* for stepping up. That really meant a lot to me personally to see so many people of good heart. However, put your own harvesting on a backburner, if you like. It is redundant for now.

On the other hand, I suspect I will fill up my terabyte external before I finish just the NwN stuff.

<...ing his fingers>
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Bannor Bloodfist]

               I think this was mentioned elsewhere in this thread, but what about the Nexus Mods for Neverwinter as a hosting site?  You might/likely would, have to discuss it with them.  But I am fairly sure they would be open to the idea of having the files posted there, after all, it would mean much more traffic for them in general.

Of course, you would have to have the Vault's permission to re-post the files elsewhere I guess...
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Rolo Kipp]

               <admiring the pretty view...>

Currently, we're operating with IGN approval and within the IGN terms as a volunteer, community-driven effort to preserve and upgrade the Vault.  

I think trying to host the files on an external site that *some* people may think competes (for the record (as I've said before), I firmly endorse redundancy!) with the Vault may cause the whole effort to get scrubbed from the IGN end. I *like* working *with* approval ;-)

There's also the small problem (and I mean small) of getting the Nexus Mods site to allow us to run our harvesting scripts and giving us direct FTP access to the resulting directories. Not a big deal, but a trust issue we don't have if MDA's connection works out.

<...seen from the very edge of the cliff>
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               

Bannor Bloodfist wrote...

I think this was mentioned elsewhere in this thread, but what about the Nexus Mods for Neverwinter as a hosting site?  You might/likely would, have to discuss it with them.  But I am fairly sure they would be open to the idea of having the files posted there, after all, it would mean much more traffic for them in general.

Of course, you would have to have the Vault's permission to re-post the files elsewhere I guess...

FWIW, Dark0ne contacted Maximus directly about this around 6-7 months ago and Maximus indicated that he was still intent on keeping the Vault going.  You can find more in the thread in the NWN2 forums about the creation of the Neverwinter Nexus, I don't have the link ATM. 
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_acomputerdood]

               

Rolo Kipp wrote...

At this point, the harvester is working pretty good

*ahem*

PRETTY good?

*grumbles*
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_henesua]

               Heh...

The harvester is doing Good by operating well.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Rolo Kipp]

               <beating a dead...>

acomputerdood wrote...
*ahem*
PRETTY good?
*grumbles*

Well... for some reason the "Get Last" function is returning zilch for modules. *Only* for modules. Very strange.
When I get done with the other categories, I'll try it with a set $last.

Other than that, it's been Pretty Damned Good ;-)

<...module>
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Guest_orizvi_*]

                Has this project died with the hosting issues?

I might be able to assist with the hosting.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par orizvi, 06 mars 2013 - 02:04 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_painofdungeoneternal]

               Not dead, undead. You can't stop the community, even after the IGN, Bioware, Atari, EA, Obsidian all give up on us as dead, we'll still be coming up with new ways to keep ourselves moving.

I am combining forces, scraping the vault for my own apps purposes, and actually am going to use his server for Never Launcher. Different original purposes, but so much synergy, in that my scraper creates a manifest which can be later used to download, install and merge the original custom content, and I am doing an API to list all the available manifests - which is aimed at being open so others can develop tools using it as well, and i can also setup a drupal integration with that data.

Part of my goals are syncing for authors, so they can easily upload to the vault or nexus just by hitting a button, and likewise downloading for end users ( kind of have to do both to get both using it ). If users want to back up portions of the vault to their hard drive, and the vault goes down, we should be able to then re-upload that content to where it's available and change the manifests so it's still available ( or do a peer to peer sharing system, or perhaps various drop boxs and similar ). I actually hope this never happens though. My preference is for authors to use my tool to download their content from the vault, then transfer it to the nexus, or for new content to upload to both at the same time ( perhaps even adding new places it puts stuff as well ). Regardless, i always hated uploading things to the vault, and intend to make the process hassle free for both authors and end users ( I am lazy enough to do a lot of work to make myself do less work )

And the nexus module manager, which is a mirror of what i am doing, it does not support nwn, nor does it support anything but windows, this should allow such features to work with both the vault, the nexus, and also self hosted content. If they nexus does actually turn on this feature, i should be able to integrate my app with it ( as it's an also open API ).

Lot of pieces to all this, which I have to do one at a time, but the vault is not down yet, and quite a bit is already downloaded via perl scripts.

Might be able to use some bandwidth though for the mirroring some content, as there is no real unlimited bandwidth out there, and we need redundancy. Probably need to discuss more with Rolo about that, big thing is to just get a copy on some hard drive, which we can get a copy of later.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Rolo Kipp]

               <stirring his...>

As Pain said, rather like a certain dracolich, we have a phylactery now (about 700gb) and will recover from any rampaging band of adventure... er, difficulties.

We actually have two hosts at the moment, with a third being resurrected and my personal Baby Vault external.

That being said, we would love to have you join us!
There is so much to do before the VPP is a usable mirror and we are all quite busy with the RL that makes our NwN obsession possible ;-P

I urge you to register on the neverwintervault.org and bring your ideas and enthusiasm.

Although it looks like not much is happening, that's my fault, as I haven't posted any updates since last year. I am just getting to the end of an insanely busy period and should have more time to devote to this in a couple-three weeks.

<...old bones>
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Rolo Kipp]

                <shifting his...>

*moved from the CEP/Q thread because I'd rather not derail that :-P

OldTimeRadio wrote...

Rolo Kipp wrote...
...and (if I can interest someone who has already demonstrated a java3d model viewer into figuring out a web embedded version... ;-) even a model previewer.

See, this is a great idea but...Well, I tried this sort of thing out two different ways in the past and IMO, it's one of those "better on paper than in practice" ideas, IMO.  I came at it from both VRML and using Acrobat 3D, FWIW.  What happens in both cases is you wind up going through a lot of bandwidth, in the form of streamed data or filesize, just to duplicate content (models, textures) that you're not really getting all that much of a payoff for duplicating.  

IMO, as pedestrian as it sounds, a good 3/4 isometric screenshot made with something like NWN Explorer Reborn with the appropriate "Initial viewing angle YPR" settings (in options) is going to net you something almost as good as a full 3D model with just a fraction of the bandwidth/processing power.  And that work can also be crowdsourced much more easily, to boot.

Ok. I can accept that.

But how about a batch viewer that will take a model filename grab the model & textures and produce an index screenshot from a command line (so our indexer can call it to snapshot content as it indexes)? Basically a NwN aware renderer; input a model name (model & textures in temp folder), output a 3/4 iso pic?

While crowdsourcing will eventually provide much higher quality pics with, perhaps, details enlarged and anims captured mid-swing, Having a tool to add default, basic images to the catalog would be a fantastic boon. And the tool would only need to run on the indexing machines, so we wouldn't need to require plugins for browsers or anything restricting like that.

What do you think? More probable? Possible? My black hen?

<...relative ground>
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Rolo Kipp, 09 mars 2013 - 03:10 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               In NWN Explorer Reborn, you can right click on a model in the tree list on the left and select "Export as TGA" and it will load the model with your YPR view angle settings in options, etc., and export a screenshot.  Takes a little fiddling but it's not that bad.

In 3DS Max there's probably a way to batch out screenshots with a custom MaxScript and the bonus there is you get full renders if you want.  I'm not volunteering to do it but if you look through the various scripts that come with NWMax and VelsTools (i.e. Portrait Maker plugin, IIRC), you could probably cobble something together which did it for ya.  IIRC, NWMax does not have any problems with memory leaks when loading models so you can probably do as many as you like in a batch.

Edit: Remember, 3DS Max is more like a 3D-oriented operating system than just a 3D modeling program.  There is all kinds of things you can hook into or out of with it, using MaxScript.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par OldTimeRadio, 09 mars 2013 - 03:23 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Rolo Kipp]

                <sneaking in a little work...>

I can now say the VPP is minimally functional.

• Artists can create projects or write articles of various categories.
• The projects and posts can have images or files attached and formatted.
• Both images and files may be uploaded from the artist's machine, transfered in from a URL or FTP'd to the site dropbox and attached - all without requiring intervention from (sometimes absent-minded) moderators.
• The forums work (still have to fix the editor background :-P ).
• The Contact form works.
• The indexing and search works.
• And the chatroom works (barely).

The biggest thing still to do, of course, is to migrate all the old content from IGN to here. Still working on that.
Lots of theme issues, but they are mostly cosmetic.

Special thanks to acomputerdude and Meaglyn for their scripting expertise, Tarot for keeping at me and Kamal & Sagard for letting me experiment with their projects :-)

<...between hours of..., er, work>