TT's Mod Releases - Development suspended till further notice

[kiwiak]

is pitch vector engine much less functional without joystick?

[Starwaster]

You know you could upload instead to another site, and/or the community mod repository (there's like six projects now in progress; people hate Curse enough that that's actually moving along now).

I mean, I get you're pissed at Squad, but the question you have to ask yourself is "do I want people to use my mods," and if the answer's yes, you should find a way to make that happen. Sure, find a way that doesn't make Squad feel good about Curse, but...what is your goal in modding, after all?

QFT

And to chime in, the vast majority (and you know that's not an exaggeration) of downloads there (can't call them mods) are worthless junk that someone uploaded upwards of a full page or more worth of uploads (sometimes several pages) with nothing more than a 'selfie' by way of a photo. Spaceport's signal to noise is totally shot to hell and I don't even go there if I can help it. And if there's a mod I like using that's hosted there, as Nathan says, if it's worth a damn they'll re-host elsewhere. I won't miss Spaceport one damned bit.

[Deadweasel]

QFT

And to chime in, the vast majority (and you know that's not an exaggeration) of downloads there (can't call them mods) are worthless junk that someone uploaded upwards of a full page or more worth of uploads (sometimes several pages) with nothing more than a 'selfie' by way of a photo. Spaceport's signal to noise is totally shot to hell and I don't even go there if I can help it. And if there's a mod I like using that's hosted there, as Nathan says, if it's worth a damn they'll re-host elsewhere. I won't miss Spaceport one damned bit.

That "signal to noise" aspect is probably the best way to describe it. Too many little idiots posting pages of nothing useful to anybody. In fact, I discovered one set of five "crafts" whose "preview image" was nothing more than a ripoff from one of those custom blueprint images I'd posted months ago of my ship design! Cheeky little sucker...

And I don't care how many people can describe to me how to game the search system; it simply does not work intuitively. At all. In fact, you know your site's search functionality is broken beyond hope when visitors take the time to use Google to search the site instead (much as I already do with these forums).

I'm hopeful that the move will result in a cleaner collection, and since there's been no evidence of moderation of any sort on SpacePort, I'm really looking forward to a properly-moderated submissions system. When I go looking for a mod, gorram it I want to be able to find it without navigating dozens of pages of useless "lookit me I'm on the internet" crap.​

[MonkeyLunch]

I don't want to use curse either, and probably will avoid mods that only have upload links from there. I have been hoping modders use mirrors like github or whatever. A lot of people don't want anything to do with curse, they don't have the best rep. So I understand your dislike completely. But...

The community will be who loses out, if you bail. I encourage you to stay, and just use alternative download options. The people who love your mods will appreciate it, and squad will get the message by you not using curse. I hope you choose to stay, and let your displeasure over Curse be known by simply not using it. Please don't penalize the community, or yourself, because of Squads decision to use Curse.

Edited May 14, 2014 by MonkeyLunch

[Deadweasel]

I don't want to use curse either, and probably will avoid mods that only have upload links from there. I have been hoping modders use mirrors like github or whatever. A lot of people don't want anything to do with curse, they don't have the best rep. So I understand your dislike completely. But...

The community will be who loses out, if you bail. I encourage you to stay, and just use alternative download options. The people who love your mods will appreciate it, and squad will get the message by you not using curse. I hope you choose to stay, and let your displeasure over Curse be known by simply not using it. Please don't penalize the community, or yourself, because of Squads decision to use Curse.

Very much this. While your decision to protest is absolutely yours to make, there's no difference from Squad's perspective if you simply choose your own host instead. You're not providing Squad with content; you're enriching the player experience.

Now, perhaps it's your point of view that even doing that is further supporting the game -and by proxy Squad itself- and that's what you're really trying to stop. If that's the case, again, it's absolutely your own prerogative and right, but you should know that most players won't understand that. They know mods come from fellow players, and all they'll really take away from the event is that one of their favorite mods has fallen away.

In the end, they'll adapt to playing without it, and Squad will continue on as they will, because hey, let's face it: unless the majority of modders follow your lead, nothing about their vision will be changed. You'll have honored the demand of your conscience, but unfortunately the method you're choosing is only going to deprive your fans of sharing in the beautiful results of your work.

I get your frustration at seeing Spaceport go away, but from a technical standpoint there's no way to translate it to another system, and it cannot stay live. Seriously, it's running on Wordpress, and really close to vanilla install, at that. It's not using ANY of the necessary security practices or plugins, and is standing wide-open to anybody with the experience and motivation. At least one of the plugins it uses to modify post organization and display is vulnerable to SQL injection attacks. To top it off, there's a massive botnet currently attacking Wordpress sites, stepping into the admin mode within minutes of focusing on a host. In Spaceport's case, it'd probably take that botnet about two minutes to hammer out the admin password. Why? Because one of the security practices is to remove the "admin" named account, and Spaceport hasn't done it! There's another plugin to blacklist IPs committing brute-force attacks on the login, and Spaceport doesn't have it. These are only two of many big security holes existing on the site. Usability, stability and actual overall content quality are barely worth mentioning in light of them.

Bottom line: if I didn't care about the community and the game, I could almost literally walk into that admin panel, install a database viewer plugin, and copy the whole shebang down to my system. From there it'll take my local network only a few days to start breaking password hashes. From there, I'm only a few cups of coffee away from walking onto peoples' email accounts, because you know darned well they use the same username and password for them, too.

I get that you don't want to see the whole thing just vaporize into obscurity and lose all the useful parts of the content, and efforts are underway to preserve it for preservation's sake, but we can't expect Squad to shoulder the costs of continuing to host it. From a business standpoint, there's no use in maintaining it and spreading out points of access. Given the vulnerable state of the site, there's also some risk involved in continuing to keep it public, in that there could easily be malicious links posted there. It's not moderated, so who's been there to see if that's true or not?

Also, thanks to Wordpress' horrid database structure, it can't simply be converted for use with another file host (unless they too are using Wordpress, in which case what's the point of changing at all?) and no respectable host running their own dedicated software would be willing to assume the work, responsibility and risk of converting a Wordpress database to conform to their own system's structure.

So again, I'm joining among the voices imploring you to just choose your own host instead. You'll still be satisfying your choice to protest Squad's decision, while at the same time keeping your efforts firmly ensconced in our game through every update, and protecting your fans from the pains of bad security practices and/or seemingly-blind marketing decisions.

[mike9606]

I need some help, I'm trying to install the Mk3 Cockpit interior, but whenever I copy the files to my GameData folder there is a ding noise and the files inside the MK3 IVA folder in the Touhou Torpedo folder don't copy. Can anybody help me?

[shynung]

If you're on Windows, the 'ding' is an error indicator, which means it failed the file copy from the compressed download file. I'm guessing a corrupted RAR/ZIP file.

Try downloading again (and hurry, before Spaceport deorbits), and try copying again.

[Galane]

Anything special needed to get the wheels mod to work in .23.5?

[TouhouTorpedo]

Anything special needed to get the wheels mod to work in .23.5?

Read the download page or included readme file, it's explained there.

[White Owl]

That MK3 cockpit is a masterpiece!

I've been slowly figuring out how to modify the layout of cockpit props to make another mod more usable with RasterPropMonitor. Your MK3 cockpit has this digital altimeter done in exactly the same style as the stock ledPanelSpeed... How could I add that one instrument to something else? Is it possible?

[JewelShisen]

Do the Omni wheels still work in 23.5?

[TouhouTorpedo]

That MK3 cockpit is a masterpiece!

I've been slowly figuring out how to modify the layout of cockpit props to make another mod more usable with RasterPropMonitor. Your MK3 cockpit has this digital altimeter done in exactly the same style as the stock ledPanelSpeed... How could I add that one instrument to something else? Is it possible?

The panels which are based on ledPanelSpeed are actually included in RasterPropMonitor. I haven't made those.

Do the Omni wheels still work in 23.5?

Yes.

[mike9606]

I re downloaded and the ding sound is gone, but the files still don't copy over. I'm believe this may happen because it seems sometimes Spaceport corrupts downloads.

[anarkhon]

"any chance on a Modular Multiwheels update?" +1

Still the best wheels in the game. (sorry for saying that but maybe squad cant program wheels physics?)

[mike9606]

The spaceport mods were actually backed up, and not deleted. Does this mean that since the content still exists that these mods will live on?

[Pondafarr]

Modular wheels REALLY needs an update to align with current mod best practices (such as being installed to the gamedata folder and career mode compatibility)

Great stuff!

"any chance on a Modular Multiwheels update?" +1

Still the best wheels in the game. (sorry for saying that but maybe squad cant program wheels physics?)

[shynung]

The spaceport mods were actually backed up, and not deleted. Does this mean that since the content still exists that these mods will live on?

Nope. The license forbids redistribution by anyone else other than TouhouTorpedo himself.

I'd consider this mod dead, now that TT has that signature...

[mike9606]

So even though the stuff wasn't completely deleted he refuses to maintain it because squad switched websites from a buggy one that had a problem with corrupting downloads. I'm not gonna say more because I'd end up in a massive rant.

[TouhouTorpedo]

Spaceport mods are only backed up on Squad's own offline backup. Assuming it actually exists. Either way I still have my own local copies and development sources. Although I like a lot of what the community has done using my mods over time and I'd like to keep seeing it, I also don't want to support Squad at this time as I think they're going down a road which will benefit no one in the long term.

Before you say it I don't care that it's Curse, what I care about is only a 1 month warning to deleting a year and a half of community work, when really since they commited to providing a service to the community in the first place, they should have kept up with that. Strangely reminiscent of the Resource mining feature which vanished after a huge amount of the content was already finished. "We didn't think it was fun" well a lot of people might not find rovers fun and ever use them, doesn't mean this was a good choice, especially with the sheer amount of dev time and user hype wasted.

Unfortunately you've not been around long enough to see them at some of their best or worst, but I've seen too many dumb blunders from Squad and I'd like to see them actually inspire me with some confidence again. Maybe doing an update with a deadline and fixed goals. Although, as a whole the community hasn't got that frustrated yet that Squad would do this, and if the PR ever got that bad, I think they'd just pull the plug on everything instead anyway.

[Zero266]

This is absolutely sad, This has rocked by faith in squad.

[mike9606]

Also, I do not believe the forums will be replaced with reddit. The forums work fine as of right now. The problem with spaceport was when they decided to shut it down it WAS quite buggy and it did sometimes corrupt downloads.

[TouhouTorpedo]

I'm not saying I specifically think that reddit will replace the forums, I could've written Curse... You misunderstood the statement. The point is that it isn't possible to trust they will maintain services as they are in the near future. They've lost forum data before (6 months of it, a few months before you joined) as they messed up on the backups. Although Squad has said the modders have made a significant contribution to the success of their game, Squad doesn't respect our contributions in any way shape or form to the game and they've proven that through deleting content, banning certain streams of development discussion, shunning popular belief of good directions for the game to go, and not backing up services sufficiently.

I wouldn't be surprised to see a lock on this thread fairly soon, as that'd fit the policy nicely.

Also in my experience, a lot of "corrupted" downloads were actually the end users fault. Typically mac users using the built in decompression software which is absolutely dog aweful.

[mike9606]

Actually I think I may have been mistaken on the corruption part. Turn out the issue I had with installing the MK3 IVA was that the windows file thingy does not like copying files out of a zip folder within a zip folder.

[wasmic]

To be fair, SpacePort wasn't a very good software, and much of it was low-quality crap. However, the grace period should probably have been quite a bit longer, and it's sad with all of the abandonware that will no longer be available. However, The Great Kraken Attack of April last year wasn't SQUAD's fault, AFAIK. It was an accident - hell, a lot of accounts were eaten, so I don't think that SQUAD did it on purpose. And while it might seem like SQUAD is shunning the community's advice on how to develop the game, that's just because we're an unpleasable fanbase. Seriously, I have seen multiple instances of people complaining over SQUAD not working on x, and when it's finally implemented, other people rage because SQUAD should be working on other things. There are even people who think that SQUAD shouldn't be working on career mode right now, because it doesn't have any contents for veterans.

[somnambulist]

Also in my experience, a lot of "corrupted" downloads were actually the end users fault. Typically mac users using the built in decompression software which is absolutely dog aweful.

Not trying to get fighty here, but OS X's Archive Utility just uses 'unzip' which should handle any standard zip just fine. If Mac users want something more capable/robust they should install [The Unarchiver. The bigger problem for Mac users is the Finder's non-intuitive handling of merging folder structures without overwriting the whole thing.