Community Mod Repository and The Majiir Challenge

[SirCmpwn]

Tiberion said:

You can do it either way, but I wouldn't make it automatically update in any case. If the author can't take 1 minute to login to the 2nd site and hit an "update" button to synch the mods, then they might need to refine their schedule a bit. That eliminates any issues of pounding github (or any other site) with update checks completely.

Pounding GitHub isn't a concern with web hooks. Web hooks are made for this sort of thing. They notify you when something changes, so you don't have to keep hitting their servers.

Speaking of web hooks, I set up [snip] with one so that it redeploys itself whenever something is pushed to master.

Edited August 21, 2018 by Snark
Removed reference to defunct website that's now taken over by malware

[Devo]

After returning from a long break and seeing the Spaceport obliterated and replaced with Curse... I just am going to host my own mods from now on in one location. I think a community driven spaceport is a good idea and I'd be more than happy to post mods on it, but I am going to give Curse a miss, plenty I could say about it but if Squad listened (actually listened) they would have done something completely different in the first place.

[Virtualgenius]

It wasnt from lack of trying to make them listen after the fact they just up and did it without even asking what we really wanted

Edited June 9, 2014 by Virtualgenius

[Devo]

It wasnt from lack of trying to make them listen they just up and did it without even asking what we wanted

I never said we didn't try

[Virtualgenius]

Its nice to have you back Devo being a fellow Aussie

[O-Doc]

Are you guys making progress on this so much has been lost by spaceport going to Curse I hope you guys have something basic up soon

I'm still pushing my effort forward almost daily. I have been distracted by other work that's come across my desk but, it's still ticking over. I've got project display, user authentication and profile/project management. I just need to do the category browse and project(module) search implementation. The search is the major step, everything else is fully connected minus some client-side validation routines.

Good to see other projects moving along nicely too.

[FEichinger]

The problem with making a "single collaborated effort" is that we have a lot of people here who are hasty, overly enthusiastic on the one end, and people who are grossly inexperienced on the other. And then we have people with a massive lack of time. The result is that I can almost guarantee that getting everyone to work on one project will be near-impossible, and leave a lot of very obvious flaws purely by the nature of team work with such a difficult team. Not to mention that a lot of us have very different ways of going about this kind of stuff.

But, again, any mod creator can feel free to contact me about Spessport and we'll get it set up and sort everything out that you need.

[Tiberion]

The way I see it, there are two paths here.

A: You don't really care about the "Majiir Prize" of the hosting/infrastructure. You're making your own repository site and you're only using the design documents to get a feel for what people might want, but you aren't concerned will fulfilling all/most/some of the requirement/recommendations. You'll launch it when you're ready on your infrastructure and try to drum up users to form a "community" that uses your site.

B: You are working on your project with the intent of "competing" for the Majiir Prize. You're using the design documents and the feedback from this thread to at least guide what features your adding, now or later. At some point you'll be done enough that you can soft launch and begin being evaluated as an active site-in-testing, perhaps taking feedback to refine or tweak things. At some point you'll be compared to other projects, and the best/most popular project will "win" and enjoy the support of the modding community and hopefully Squad in whatever way they see fit.

At some point there will have to be a "winner" even if that just means the site that has become the most actively used during the testing/evaluation period. There's certainly not any official "judging" criteria set up, but it'll happen naturally if nothing specific occurs.

Technically completing the code isn't the end of the road, its the beginning - you'll still have to work on the "service" side of things and deal with legalities and support setups and moderation, all the "people stuff" - you'll need to decide if you're going to do it all alone or bring other people in to help you. The organization around the site is probably just as important as its technical prowess when it comes to satisfying users, and when you open the doors, even in a limited fashion, people will need attention.

Now isn't the time for impatience, but it also can't drag on forever. There is a certain about of extra attention around this due to spaceport closing, but it won't be there indefinitely.

It might be useful for developers to write up and update of your progress and how far on your roadmap you are. Especially if you're a 'prize seeker'. And if you need help on something, or feedback, or testers then speak up, don't just wait for people to volunteer.

[O-Doc]

The problem with making a "single collaborated effort" is that we have a lot of people here who are hasty, overly enthusiastic on the one end, and people who are grossly inexperienced on the other. And then we have people with a massive lack of time.

That and ultimately, software development boils down to one or people at the core. That has been my experience, even on the most complex systems. I'd be happy if someone else develops a site that Majiir wants to host but, so far, every site has show-stoppers. I know that if you don't get the information architecture and database structure right from the get-go it's a massive uphill battle to roll in "new" features that are really just core requirements.

To me, mod versions and dependencies are the big ones that need to be designed into the table schema from the beginning. I haven't seen them on other projects. CRUD is pretty simple but I don't think that fills the core requirement.

[AlamoVampire]

okay, i know this has probably been answered, but with the BS going on with my origin account, my minds too burned up to forum fu this, so, I will be blunt. Is there a site that is NOT STEAM OR CURSE that will or IS housing Mechjeb <the real mechjeb by r4m0n>, Lazor Docking Cam, Procedural Fairings, Novapunch and any other mods?

[Tiberion]

This really isn't the place to ask, but...

Mechjeb has its own repository, which is linked from the MJ forum thread (the dev builds link): http://jenkins.mumech.com/job/MechJeb2/

You should already know that my forum thread always has the links to the downloads in it, they have ALWAYS been there, even when it was also hosted on Spaceport.

The Procedural Fairings forum thread has a link to Github, which is where it is hosted now.

I really don't know anything about LAZOR anymore or if Romfarer's version on Curse is the most up to date.

[AlamoVampire]

This really isn't the place to ask, but...

Mechjeb has its own repository, which is linked from the MJ forum thread (the dev builds link): http://jenkins.mumech.com/job/MechJeb2/

You should already know that my forum thread always has the links to the downloads in it, they have ALWAYS been there, even when it was also hosted on Spaceport.

The Procedural Fairings forum thread has a link to Github, which is where it is hosted now.

I really don't know anything about LAZOR anymore or if Romfarer's version on Curse is the most up to date.

I wont use Curse for personal reasons, which is why I asked. Like I said in my opening, my mind is kinda burned down atm so hehe I went with what looked like a good place to ask lol

[avivey]

(Feel free to ignore this unsolicited advice, because I have contributed just about nothing to the whole event)

I think the most important feature of a repository is that there's only one of it, and that's where everyone goes to look for stuff. But in order to build only one thing of something, somebody needs to make a decision to choose A over B.

The issue is - and it's true for every community such as this, where everyone are equal - is that nobody is "in charge" and can make a decision.

That's why I propose to come up with a Committee, made up of "respected members of the community", that will give some framework for the project and make decisions.

It would, for example, encourage contributors to help existing projects rather than starting new ones, and merge similar efforts.

Since everybody here are on the same side, it might actually work.

[Majiir]

I think the most important feature of a repository is that there's only one of it, and that's where everyone goes to look for stuff. But in order to build only one thing of something, somebody needs to make a decision to choose A over B.

The issue is - and it's true for every community such as this, where everyone are equal - is that nobody is "in charge" and can make a decision.

I have not offered hosting for every half-baked repository site that comes around. Hosting is contingent on the quality of the produced site. If someone thinks they can self-host, then they can "compete", but in a sense there is already a decision-maker here.

[SirCmpwn]

Update: you can now download the mods you upload. They're also versioned, though you can't upload new versions yet.

Example mod: [Link removed by moderator:  original site defunct, now taken over by malware]

I read the past few replies and saw the extra emphasis on dependencies. I'll support that the next time I do some work on the site. It'll be a good excuse to get more milage out of Twitter's typeahead.js.

Edited August 21, 2018 by Snark
Link removed by moderator; original site defunct, now taken over by malware

[Justin Kerbice]

The issue is - and it's true for every community such as this, where everyone are equal - is that nobody is "in charge" and can make a decision.

That's why I propose to come up with a Committee, made up of "respected members of the community", that will give some framework for the project and make decisions.

It would, for example, encourage contributors to help existing projects rather than starting new ones, and merge similar efforts.

Since everybody here are on the same side, it might actually work.

Unfortunately, no such model seems to work after having more than a given amount of members, for example, Debian model should work on paper and may have work for a while in the beginning (there is one project leader elected by "debian developpers", whose supposed to lead)

But the fact shows a lot of flaws: some devs violate the whole validation process to put their early alpha buggy package into testing distribution (here "testing" doesn't mean full of more or less easy to spot bugs not yet found) leading to missing dependancies and lot's of serious issues, the project leader is just like a scares-crow who scare no-one, have no real power and do nothing, and the system has the heavy weight of a bureaucracy as a bonus !

"Dictatorship" seems a better way to make things work, at least consistently in one single way, bad or good. Such a dictator just have to care more about the project itself and listen just enough some advices from people around .

[Grijze Pilion]

I've suggested this before.

Someone should set up a 3rd party modding site as both a message to Squad and a spiritual successor to Spaceport (Pi, 10-6-14, 13:01)

Not that Curse is that bad though, but I just feel Spaceport with some fixes and tweaks would have been much better. Basically Curse, but tailored to KSP and with more relevant page design.

[Virtualgenius]

I quite like that [snip] website as it refers to everything, craft files, plugins, mods, etc as a user of spaceport alot it fits quite nicely with the theme

Edited August 21, 2018 by Snark
Removed reference to defunct website that's now taken over by malware

[MacTee]

Update: you can now download the mods you upload. They're also versioned, though you can't upload new versions yet.

Example mod: http://www.kerbalstuff.com/mod/1/Super_Cool_Mod

I read the past few replies and saw the extra emphasis on dependencies. I'll support that the next time I do some work on the site. It'll be a good excuse to get more milage out of Twitter's typeahead.js.

Hi SirCmpwn,

here are my results of the second test of the upload workflow:

• This time i went through the registration and verification without any problems =).
  (I don't know if you have deleted the old accounts, but i could register me again with the same EMail and UserName)
  
• Making my Profile public works without any 500s
  
• During mod creation i have uploaded a 2.5MB image.
  I think you should set a maximum size for images.
  
• The Mod upload failed again
  I have uploaded a ~2MB zip archive and at about 50-60% i got navigated to an empty site ("Site is not available").
  (You should know that my upstream is very slow!)
  

@All site developers:

Two things:

• Till now all Spaceport replacement sites i have visited seems to be optimized for a 1920 x 1080 resolution.
  Sadly my wife or my son are sitting on my PC and playing some stuff, so i have to use my old workhorse (a Leptop with a max resolution of 1366x768). It would be great if the sites would scale smothly to smaller resolutions the 1920 x 1080.
  
• As an author of a mod managing tool it would be nice to get some API function that offers me mod information without the html crap. I have no problem to parse me through the html and get what i want, but it would shrink the traffic of the site a little if i don't have to =).
  

Edited June 10, 2014 by MacTee

[SirCmpwn]

Hi MacTee, thanks for the feedback.

here are my results of the second test of the upload workflow:

• This time i went through the registration and verification without any problems =).
  (I don't know if you have deleted the old accounts, but i could register me again with the same EMail and UserName)
  
• Making my Profile public works without any 500s
  
• During mod creation i have uploaded a 2.5MB image.
  I think you should set a maximum size for images.
  
• The Mod upload failed again
  I have uploaded a ~2MB zip archive and at about 50-60% i got navigated to an empty site ("Site is not available").
  (You should know that my upstream is very slow!
  

The upload limit is 50 MB for both images and videos. Images and videos are hosted off-site on https://mediacru.sh (another website I made). If you're able to reproduce the issue of uploading a zip file, could you do it again with the developer tools open, specifically the network panel? Press F12 to see these tools. If the error occurs again, right click and copy as curl, then give that to me (privately! anyone who sees that string can log into the site as you).

Till now all Spaceport replacement sites i have visited seems to be optimized for a 1920 x 1080 resolution.

Sadly my wife or my son are sitting on my PC and playing some stuff, so i have to use my old workhorse (a Leptop with a max resolution of 1366x768). It would be great if the sites would scale smothly to smaller resolutions the 1920 x 1080.

I just tested at a bunch of different resolutions, including that one, and it looks great. Here are the results: https://mediacru.sh/6ef37eb94c8a

• As an author of a mod managing tool it would be nice to get some API function that offers me mod information without the html crap. I have no problem to parse me through the html and get what i want, but it would shrink the traffic of the site a little if i don't have to =).
  

I hope to provide that as well as some sort of GitHub integration to smooth the workflow.

[FEichinger]

Two things:

• Till now all Spaceport replacement sites i have visited seems to be optimized for a 1920 x 1080 resolution.
  Sadly my wife or my son are sitting on my PC and playing some stuff, so i have to use my old workhorse (a Leptop with a max resolution of 1366x768). It would be great if the sites would scale smothly to smaller resolutions the 1920 x 1080.
  
• As an author of a mod managing tool it would be nice to get some API function that offers me mod information without the html crap. I have no problem to parse me through the html and get what i want, but it would shrink the traffic of the site a little if i don't have to =).
  

Spessport is optimized for any width > 500px (and width < 2400px), but there's even more to be done for that. As for API functions, I'm actually working on some of that right now.

Edited June 10, 2014 by FEichinger

[SirCmpwn]

Updates to Kerbal Stuff today:

• Installation instructions removed
  
• Mod authors can now preview their mods before publishing them
  
• Screenshots are no longer required
  
• List your mods on your user profile
  
• When setting your KSP forum username, it doesn't screw it up and lets you autocomplete forum usernames
  
  • Related: kerbal stuff now hosting a simple API endpoint for this task
    

Tomorrow I think I'll work on letting users follow mods they like, and then allowing modders to upload new versions of their mods. Hopefully I can use this opportunity to implement emailing users who are following mods when their mods update.

[MacTee]

...

• Till now all Spaceport replacement sites i have visited seems to be optimized for a 1920 x 1080 resolution.
  Sadly my wife or my son are sitting on my PC and playing some stuff, so i have to use my old workhorse (a Leptop with a max resolution of 1366x768). It would be great if the sites would scale smothly to smaller resolutions the 1920 x 1080.
  

...

... I just tested at a bunch of different resolutions, including that one, and it looks great. Here are the results: https://mediacru.sh/6ef37eb94c8a

Spessport is optimized for any width > 500px (and width < 2400px), but there's even more to be done for that. As for API functions, I'm actually working on some of that right now.

Sry i should have been more precise.

My concerns are more about the height of the sites.

In my opinion the first page of a web site should show all information without the need of scrolling. Most KSP replacement sites have one "very" big picture of a featured mod on the first page, which takes about 2/3 of my screen. To see the following (more interesting information) i have to scroll down. A smaller or resizing "featured mod presentation" would be nice. Maybe a support for tablet or mobile resolutions would be nice too.

But hey, this is just some frontend tweaking which isn't really necessary at this point. A feature complete backend is way more important

[SirCmpwn]

Added support for uploading new versions of your mods, including changelogs. Users can view and download any previous version. live demo

[SirCmpwn]

I know SpacePort's search was pretty hated, so I've made an effort to do better than that. I've set up some rules by which search results are weighted, how does this look?

def weigh_result(result):
    # Factors considered, * indicates important factors:
    # High followers and high downloads get bumped*
    # Mods with a long version history get bumped
    # Mods with lots of screenshots or videos get bumped
    # Mods with a short description get docked
    # Mods lose points the longer they go without updates*
    # Mods get points for supporting the latest KSP version
    # Mods get points for being open source
    score = result.follower_count * 10
    score += result.download_count
    score += len(result.versions) / 5
    score += len(result.media)
    if len(result.description) < 100:
        score -= 10
    if result.updated:
        delta = (result.updated - datetime.now()).days
        if delta > 100:
            delta = 100 # Don't penalize for oldness past a certain point
        score -= delta / 5
    if len(result.versions) > 0:
        if result.versions[0].ksp_version == _cfg("latest-ksp"):
            score += 50
    if result.source_link:
        score += 10
    return score

Results that have higher followers and downloads, a longer version history, lots of screenshots/videos, support for the latest version for KSP, and are open source are given a higher score. Points are lost for going too long without updating your mod, or for having a short description.