Released: Blades Forge

[Nioca]

I get a Page not Found error when I try to log in.

 

Additionally, the Live Feed is failing to load (though this may be on my end).

[Ephesos]

The Ermarian Network is currently offline due to some problem with the dreamhost server Aran uses. He's not sure what's up yet, but he'll work on it as soon as he can access it. But it's not his fault.

[Nioca]

Yeah, I had read about that a couple minutes ago.

[The Almighty Doer of Stuff]

It's back up.

[Aran]

I'm getting pretty irked about this. I'll contact support this evening to see what's happening on the server. If it's my fault, I may have to slow down PPP archiving which could become a real burden when the forum is very active.

[Celtic Minstrel]

I was wondering, why can only logged-in users see the comments? Is this done for a good reason that I don't know about?

[Aran]

No it's not, and in fact no longer the case. Thank for the alert.

[Smoo]

Quote:

Originally written by Arancaytar:

http://blades.ermarian.net/lyceum/csr

So, where's Echoes: Renegade, Canopy, Xerch'de, Death at Chapman's, Kill Ogre, Win Prize and Za-Khazi Run?

[Aran]

Joyous day!

 

I contacted Support about the slow server. At first they tried to give me their 101 "you lose for using shared hosting but you can get OMGDEDICATEDSERVER for so cheap" pitch, but when I quoted them the server's load stats of between 25-50, apparently they saw sense and fixed whatever caused it. The upshot is that my Drupal sites are now lightning fast, loading in under 1 second in many cases. I'm very happy, and I'm glad I switched to DH. I doubt this would have worked so quickly with my last host.

[Aran]

Also, use some detective work. All of the titles contain non-alphanumeric non-space characters. Apparently I need to expand my regex.

[Celtic Minstrel]

Quote:

Originally written by Arancaytar:

Slight change of plans: To avoid confusion, please use the newly created "Resource" type for anything that isn't actually News. Allowed extensions now include zip and several more.

Apparently not. My zip file failed to upload.

[Aran]

I checked and couldn't find out what was wrong. Could you quote the error message (removing file paths if they exist )?

 

The only problem I could possibly see is if your file is larger than the 4 MB limit. I've raised that to 6 just in case.

 

Also, new features.

 

- Next to the CSR score and rank that is already displayed on scenario pages, there is now a link directly to the corresponding topic on the Lyceum. Besides convenience, scraping the data without advertising the origin just would not be polite.

 

- Below the scenario, a list of the topics that reference it (by full name, in the topic title, correctly spelled) in forums 7, 15 and 18 is displayed. This list is pulled off PPP and cached for a day because of the long time it takes to process PPP searches.

 

I was planning to add a post search (with even longer caching times), but that will have to wait until PPP's post search stops sucking by searching signatures. Scenario titles are listed in signatures enough to render the search useless.

[Celtic Minstrel]

The error message:

 

Quote:

The selected file Templates.zip can not be attached to this post, because it is only possible to attach files with the following extensions: jpg jpeg gif png txt doc xls pdf ppt pps odt ods odp.

[Aran]

Apparently I only changed the default and did not see that the "authenticated user" role used another setting that overrode the default. Silly. It should function now.

[Celtic Minstrel]

It works now. A minor oddity though – the teaser is completely ignored on the main page and the full description is shown. Nothing serious though.

[Aran]

That's easy to explain, but tough to fix.

 

- I use Views to show graphics and scripts in tables. These are shown with a brief description .

- When adding the "body" field of a CCK node (which all of these are) to a View, this body field will include all the other fields of the node (thumbnail, script source, etc.), which would look stupid in the table. There is no way to access only the text of the node.

- To solve this, I make the View show only the teaser of the node, and make CCK hide the other fields in the teaser.

- The result is that the front page (also showing only teasers) will display very little information.

- To solve /that/, I replace the front page with yet another View that shows the entire node.

 

The end result is that the front page displays full nodes, and ignores teaser cut-offs. I have a few vague ideas how to work around this, but haven't yet tried any of them.

[Lazarus.]

It appears that the Lyceum page doesn't like scenarios with scores of 10. Every scenario with a 10 as its max rating is missing.

[Aran]

More's the trouble; about half of all submitted scenarios have lost their taxonomical classification (content rating, game platform). I have no idea how that happened. Looks like I'm going to be debugging for a while.

[Aran]

The error appears to have been one-off as I can manually restore the scenarios. As this is my mistake, I'm going to go through the affected scenarios tonight to give them the proper ratings as set in their binary files.

 

• A Good Beginning
• El Presidente
• Embers of Rebellion
• Kill Them Dead
• Kingdom Hall
• Roses of Reckoning
• The Nephil Search: Escape
• Where the Rivers Meet

Sorry everyone, especially Nikki and Thralni seeing as most of these are yours. =P

[Aran]

In other news, 10 is now accepted as a valid CSR score, which means the previously missing 6 masterpieces are now included.

 

Code:

- '/^ *([A-Za-z0-9,:\' -]+) - ([0-9](\.[0-9]{1,2})?) (\(([0-9]\.[0-9]{1,2})\/([0-9]\.[0-9]{1,2})\))?$/'+ '/^ *([A-Za-z0-9,:\' -]+) - ([0-9]{1,2}(\.[0-9]{1,2})?) (\(([0-9]{1,2}\.[0-9])\/([0-9]{1,2}\.[0-9])\))?$/'

I am looking at recognizing empty rating threads so I can link to those too.

[Niemand]

A new error for you, Aran:

Code:

warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in {path redacted}/software/drupal/addons/modules/contemplate/contemplate.module(589) : eval()'d code on line 6.

This appeared when I hit the 'Preview' button on the scenario submission page. It may have been caused by the fact that I entered only a space in the tagline field, because Stairway has no description, thus I didn't really want to add a tagline. However, it didn't go away when I gave in and entered some actual words.

 

EDIT: Added a linebreak to cut down on screen streching.

[Aran]

"Parsing error in eval'd code" errors always mean that I made a typo while entering code in a dynamic template, that I noticed it a few moments later, but you had the misfortune of loading the page in the two minutes before it was fixed.

 

---

 

Also,

 

 

Although the forum is almost assured to remain empty forever, at least it now looks a bit like a forum and less like a blog trying to dress itself up as a forum. Many thanks to Michelle for the advanced_forum module.

[Ephesos]

I demand a .pancake file type!

[Celtic Minstrel]

Is there a reason why the Blades Forge forum does not display my avatar? Is it too large or something? I could probably scale it down...

[Aran]

You are using a space in your file name. I spent all evening yesterday trying to work around it, then I tried to run a bulk rename on the site that removed them, but when neither worked, I gave it up. Take out the space and you get an avatar.

[Aran]

Also, I have just realized that in adding avatars to the forum, I have wreaked monstrous havoc on the front page by placing avatars there too - including Nikki's, in all its full-page glory. I'll have to cut down those sizes somehow, and probably remove them from the front page to improve load times.

[Nioca]

Um, yeah, it's not just on the front page it's doing that. It's doing it on the Scenario pages (see AGB\'s entry for a particularly nasty example), on the scripts pages, and on the Graphics pages. Yikes.

 

The latter two (scripts & graphics) aren't that bad a problem, but on a scenario node, it'll compress and shove text aside. With a small avatar, this is a mere annoyance. With a larger one... well, it isn't pretty.

[Aran]

Policy 1: Avatars are now limited to 80x80, scaled on upload. I know that gigantic avatars can be fun, but I think this is a pretty sensible limit.

 

Policy 2: Avatars are only displayed next to comments or blog/forum posts. This will avoid collision with the complex scenario page template, and clutter on the "utility" nodes of graphics and scripts.

[nikki.]

I liked my massive Kate Nash avatar.

[Aran]

It was very You, to be sure.

 

(And part of the reason for the mass rescaling, admittedly...)

[Celtic Minstrel]

What, was it bigger than mine? I think mine was 150x150 pixels...

 

Edit: I wish the Recent Posts page would tell the absolute time of the post, rather than the relative time (or both, I suppose). (eg, "February 7, 2008 at 6:18" instead of "1 hour ago".) Is that doable?

[Aran]

Nope, not really. The relative times are deeply in core, and can't be replaced.

 

Also, Nikki's avatar was 450x450. Beat that.

[Niemand]

Quote:

Nikki's avatar was 450x450.

Uh, I assume you're working on this, but I think you mean is. At least, it still is on the front page. Although you have successfully banished a number of people's avatars, including mine.

[Aran]

Sorry, not reproducible. I logged out to make sure, and see all avatars at their new rescaled size - yours is working too.

 

Have you tried clearing your cache?

[nikki.]

I checked, and it was tiny, too. To be honest, I'd assume it would be scaled automatically. I just rathergleefully didn't tell anybody that it wasn't.

[Aran]

Quote:

That's easy to explain, but tough to fix.

- I use Views to show graphics and scripts in tables. These are shown with a brief description .
- When adding the "body" field of a CCK node (which all of these are) to a View, this body field will include all the other fields of the node (thumbnail, script source, etc.), which would look stupid in the table. There is no way to access only the text of the node.
- To solve this, I make the View show only the teaser of the node, and make CCK hide the other fields in the teaser.
- The result is that the front page (also showing only teasers) will display very little information.
- To solve /that/, I replace the front page with yet another View that shows the entire node.

The end result is that the front page displays full nodes, and ignores teaser cut-offs. I have a few vague ideas how to work around this, but haven't yet tried any of them.

By fixing a bug in the Views module , I have been able to get rid of all this mess. The front page now displays teasers as it should.

[Aran]

With any luck, the release of Drupal 6 will soon receive a good deal of online publicity. However, if you are wondering when it will be deployed on the Blades Forge (currently on the Drupal 5.x CVS branch), the answer is unfortunately not very soon.

 

Firstly, I'm waiting for the CCK and Views modules to be ported - those are two hugely popular addons that the Forge is using to provide all those content types (Graphics, Scenarios, Scripts, etc.) along with the overview tables to search the site.

 

Secondly, there is a good deal of smaller contributed modules that will take some time to get ported.

 

Thirdly, I've written tons of custom code myself, which won't be easy to update for the new API. And that doesn't even count the five core "hacks" (/~username URLs, say) I've had to place in the code in order to get it to do what I wanted when writing a module was not possible.

 

In short, expect the entire Ermarian Network to be on D6 before the Forge is, and expect it not before July. But I will work on it soon.

[Aran]

Just a heads-up due to everyone re-releasing their scenario without spaces in the filename: The bug was supposedly fixed, so that scenarios with spaces now work just fine. If it's still not working for some reason, there is another unknown bug, and if you actually encounter it I'd like to hear more. Thanks.

[nikki.]

Yeah, they weren't showing up, but no error was being displayed, hence me re-releasing. I assumed that the fix was for new scenarios, and not one of the old ones.

 

Anyway, if I clicked on to one of my scenario releases, it showed me the file sizes for both the Mac and Windows download, but not the actual links.

[Celtic Minstrel]

A minor thing...

 

I loaded a page while logged in, then left and came back later (leaving the page open). I decided to post a comment, but it turned out that my login had expired. Rather than presenting me with the option to log in, it simply reloaded the page – losing the comment box and adding a message at the top saying I was not validated to post comments (because I was no longer logged in). The problem here is that the comment I was going to post was lost.

 

Now, this isn't a situation that is likely to come up very often, but I would expect that if you try to do something that you need to be logged in to do, and you aren't logged in, it should present the log-in screen and then allow you to proceed with whatever you were doing.

[The Almighty Doer of Stuff]

Quote:

Originally written by Celtic Minstrel:
A minor thing...

I loaded a page while logged in, then left and came back later (leaving the page open). I decided to post a comment, but it turned out that my login had expired. Rather than presenting me with the option to log in, it simply reloaded the page – losing the comment box and adding a message at the top saying I was not validated to post comments (because I was no longer logged in). The problem here is that the comment I was going to post was lost.

Now, this isn't a situation that is likely to come up very often, but I would expect that if you try to do something that you need to be logged in to do, and you aren't logged in, it should present the log-in screen and then allow you to proceed with whatever you were doing.

I disagree. In my opinion, not only should what happened to you continue to happen, but the Blades Forge should draw a number from 0 to 4 every time you try to post something, and if it's less than 2, it presents you with a screen that says "Ha ha! Idiot!" and makes you do it again.

[aka Ravenwing]

Quote:

Originally written by The Almighty Doer of Stuff:
I disagree. In my opinion, not only should what happened to you continue to happen, but the Blades Forge should draw a number from 0 to 4 every time you try to post something, and if it's less than 2, it presents you with a screen that says "Ha ha! Idiot!" and makes you do it again.

Someone's been spending too much time with UBB.

[Aran]

Unfortunately, this is beyond my ability to fix. Drupal 6 has better form handling, but (see above) it will be quite a while before the Blades Forge is ready to be upgraded.

 

I could place the comment form on a different page, but that would require an extra page load whenever you want to post - not worth the slight chance of being logged out in the mean time, I think. If the form page has been open for a long time, you should reload to make sure the form is still available - normally sessions don't expire that quickly.

[Celtic Minstrel]

What is the session expiration time? All I know is that I get logged out overnight. I didn't expect to get logged out in 3 hours. (Or maybe it was 4.)

[Celtic Minstrel]

In addition to the question above, I have a question about the Pied-Piper project. In the event of edited posts, does it keep a copy of the old version of the post, or does it replace it?

[Aran]

They replace it, and the old version is not kept. There are a few problems that make keeping revisions very impractical.

 

• Edited posts are more or less found only by accident, as I only re-archive threads when someone's bumped them. And multiple edits before the next re-archiving wouldn't be saved. So even if I did keep revisions, they would be unreliable and incomplete.
• Signatures are archived as part of the post , and this isn't easy to fix. If you changed your signature, all your posts would be saved as new revisions. Lots of clutter.
• The ppp_posts table is 1 GB big as it is, and only navigable through heavy indexing and optimization. Putting old revisions in it would make it too hugemassive.
• If content is deliberately censored (through editing, not pruning) from the forum, it will disappear from the archive. If it were kept, I'd have to take a more active role in moderating it.