AltArc: source code released

[Fraxtil]

I'm working on a new N archive, dubbed AltArc (Alternate Archive). This project is to be driven almost exclusively upon the community's voice, so make sure yours is heard!

See my post on page 13 for the source code.

[LittleViking]

http://nmaps.uservoice.com/ This might be a good place to start.

[Manus Australis]

Hint: I'm working on a NUMA alternative and I need ideas. URL coming soon.

Why do we need an alternative to a site that is fulfilling the basic needs of users?
What is on NUMA now is the work of a guy with a job who has a wife and life to take care of. I'd say it's pretty well done for someone who has those responsibilities and is doing it all for free. Saying you're making an alternative to the site is almost a slap in the face.

Unless it's not a place to post user-made maps, in which case I'd say, "Carry on."

But yeah, the uservoice is the place to start if you want NUMA to be better. You could also work on implementing your ideas with the current site instead of making an alternative. That would not only make people more interested in your work, it would greatly benefit NUMA, instead of being all like, "Hey guys, if you hate NUMA then you should come chill with me and my awesome new site. I call it UMNM - User-Made N Maps."

yeah. Help NUMA instead of competing against it. I don't think it earns you any popularity points to do the latter.

[Atilla]

Hint: I'm working on a NUMA alternative and I need ideas. URL coming soon.

Why do we need an alternative to a site that is fulfilling the basic needs of users?
What is on NUMA now is the work of a guy with a job who has a wife and life to take care of. I'd say it's pretty well done for someone who has those responsibilities and is doing it all for free. Saying you're making an alternative to the site is almost a slap in the face.

Didn't you just answer your own question? Now, Arachnid is a great guy and we all appreciate what he's done for the community. However, if his real-life responsibilities detract from his ability to run the site, perhaps Gforce can spend more time working on the his site and thus provide a better service. It's nothing personal, it's just that there's a limited amount of time in a day.

Also, there are people who disagree with some policies which the current NUMA administration likes, or want to implement policies/features that the admins refuse. There's no reason that someone shouldn't make a site for these people. Although I appreciate what has been done with NUMA, I think it's silly to go around worshipping it as the Only True Way. I mean, take a look at commercial games. I think you'll find that any popular game has three or four different sites dedicated to distribution of content, mods, etc. The creation of alternative sites may be merely a reflection of N's popularity. In the past, there wasn't enough activity to support more than one site. Perhaps now there is.

Finally, and this is related to the previous point, Arachnid doesn't have a monopoly on the internet just because he made the community's first map archive. I mean, imagine if we all went around saying that making maps, and especially suggesting that a user-made map might be better than the Metanet levels, is a slap in the face to M&R because nobody else could ever possibly offer anything worthwhile and even talking about it is some kind of hideous blasphemy. I'd rather people try and get their own map archive off the ground and demonstrate that their policies really do work than sit around whining about everything and expecting the rest of the world to pander to them.

[a happy song]

What we really need is for one of us to take the reins fully from arachnid (server costs and all). I'd be more than happy to myself, but I'd need help with the coding side of things.

I've nothing against a NUMA alternative, but I think it would benefit the community more if we could work toward integrating any ideas you have with the current archive.

Juat a curiosity: what drove you to consider producing an alternative? Is it a problem with the administration, the functionality, or something else?

[MattKestrel]

Juat a curiosity: what drove you to consider producing an alternative?

The Curse of Evil Sire? If anyone remembered his attempt to set up an alternate forums, you'll know what I'm talking about. Not that this is anywhere near as hackneyed a suggestion. But it is kinda unneccesary.

I agree in that someone should take over the reins, a combination of atob and lord-day would work well imo, if someone could figure out the coding aspect.

I also think that there should be a link on the homepage to a queue without n-arts and ddas, or just a seperate queue entirely for n-arts and ddas (considering the discussion before)

[Fraxtil]

Hint: I'm working on a NUMA alternative and I need ideas. URL coming soon.

Why do we need an alternative to a site that is fulfilling the basic needs of users?
What is on NUMA now is the work of a guy with a job who has a wife and life to take care of. I'd say it's pretty well done for someone who has those responsibilities and is doing it all for free. Saying you're making an alternative to the site is almost a slap in the face.

Didn't you just answer your own question? Now, Arachnid is a great guy and we all appreciate what he's done for the community. However, if his real-life responsibilities detract from his ability to run the site, perhaps Gforce can spend more time working on the his site and thus provide a better service. It's nothing personal, it's just that there's a limited amount of time in a day.

That's exactly why I want to make an alternative- well, half the reason anyway. Arachnid's got enough planned for Numa, judging by the "Planned" suggestions on the uservoice page, so I thought I might try to take some of the burden by coding it myself and making a new archive.

I've nothing against a NUMA alternative, but I think it would benefit the community more if we could work toward integrating any ideas you have with the current archive.

Arachnid has stated that some of the ideas, particularly ones from the former Numa, are no longer compatible with Newma. I'm going to try to make the system fairly flexible for sorting and filtering maps, et cetera.

I only started this project two days ago (one day before this thread), and so far I've created a fairly secure login/registration system, map submission process, and "browse" function. I still need to implement a voting system, but it shouldn't be too hard as the database already supports values for "rating" and "votes".

This leads me to the question: How should voting work here? Should it resemble Oldma's increments of .5 out of 5, or should it have a new system such as percentages or "modding" (a.k.a. the system on reddit.com)? It's up to you guys.

[Izzy]

Bitesize.

[Aidiera]

I also think that there should be a link on the homepage to a queue without n-arts and ddas, or just a seperate queue entirely for n-arts and ddas (considering the discussion before)

if ddas go, I go.

here is one alternative to NUMA, as made by LV. I don't have much for the new site. try a poll with things from uservoice to see what the community desires.

[Fraxtil]

I also think that there should be a link on the homepage to a queue without n-arts and ddas, or just a seperate queue entirely for n-arts and ddas (considering the discussion before)

Or, what if each user had the power to choose what appeared on the front page for himself?

Bitesize.

I concur... but who would choose bitesizers, and according to what criteria?

[Radium]

I'm all for a new NUMA. And I'm also all for atob taking over. He seems very capable.

Also, I'm tired of the hotmaps layout. It's kinda sad to see a map you spent 2 hours on get bumped down by a map that took 5 minutes to make. I suggest 2 portals, one for new-comers and one for experienced mappers. Just an idea.

[Fraxtil]

I'm all for a new NUMA. And I'm also all for atob taking over. He seems very capable.

Also, I'm tired of the hotmaps layout. It's kinda sad to see a map you spent 2 hours on get bumped down by a map that took 5 minutes to make. I suggest 2 portals, one for new-comers and one for experienced mappers. Just an idea.

Again, something like that would come down to someone's biased opinion... which isn't really a terrible thing, but somebody could make very good maps and not be recognized as an "experienced mapper", which would be unfair.

[Aidiera]

I also think that there should be a link on the homepage to a queue without n-arts and ddas, or just a seperate queue entirely for n-arts and ddas (considering the discussion before)

Or, what if each user had the power to choose what appeared on the front page for himself?

customization is the new black. didn't you know?

I'd be all for that, the ability to pick and choose what you wanted on any given page. now that I think about it, a new NUMA is a very good idea. as long as you can round up a crew to run it, including you.

[Erik-Player]

Haven't you guys ever heard of tags?

[Aidiera]

Haven't you guys ever heard of tags?

what do you mean by that?

[Erik-Player]

Or, what if each user had the power to choose what appeared on the front page for himself?

Haven't you guys ever heard of tags?

I was referring to what is in bold.

[xVxCrushloaderusSupremusxVx]

TITLE SEARCH TITLE SEARCH TIIIIIIIIIIIITLE SEARRRRRRRRRRRRRRCH

[Aidiera]

TITLE SEARCH TITLE SEARCH TIIIIIIIIIIIITLE SEARRRRRRRRRRRRRRCH

Title Search!

Or, what if each user had the power to choose what appeared on the front page for himself?

Haven't you guys ever heard of tags?

I was referring to what is in bold.

most of the tags stopped working, and the "results truncated" is laying waste to all the other working searches.

anyway, another thing I /really/ want to see implemented is past comment archiving. I'm not the only one who has spent hours recording the perfect agd/speedrun, only forget the title/author/map number or however you remember. (I fave them. they build up after 1000). if that was added, I switch over to yours faster then you can say 'bazooka,' or 'Smith & Wesson Model 500 Magnum Revolver' if that's your preference.

[Pixon]

TOP RATED PAGE

[Radium]

I'm all for a new NUMA. And I'm also all for atob taking over. He seems very capable.

Also, I'm tired of the hotmaps layout. It's kinda sad to see a map you spent 2 hours on get bumped down by a map that took 5 minutes to make. I suggest 2 portals, one for new-comers and one for experienced mappers. Just an idea.

Again, something like that would come down to someone's biased opinion... which isn't really a terrible thing, but somebody could make very good maps and not be recognized as an "experienced mapper", which would be unfair.

Well, there could be a panel of highly-ranked members who review a user's map and decide whether they are worthy or not. Or it could be based on how highly rated your maps are, or how many rated maps you have.

I'm just tired of the fools who don't spell right and spam lame-ass maps.

[Pixon]

I'm just tired of the fools who don't spell right and spam lame-ass maps.

I think everyone is, Radium.

[Aidiera]

noobs are a part of this community; we've all been one at one point of another, and to cut them off from experienced mappers is a horrible idea. they need the moderate/experienced mappers to review their maps and help them grow in skill. otherwise they'll perpetually be noobs, which is unfair to them.

think back to when you were new. did you figure out what makes a great map by trial-and-error, by outside advice, or both? there might be less nooby maps, but the maps are there to remind us how /not/ to make maps.

what I think would be quite a good idea is a page for noobs, which would give guidelines such as not advertising their maps on others' maps (and perhaps a link to the map commenting/rating thread), what nooby ddas are and why not to make them, and the people on NUMA who rule supreme (whose rule is law). this would stand-in for george or lord_day (just to name a few) going to every noob map and giving advice.

opinions?

[Manus Australis]

If you're going to make this site you should discuss highscores/speedruns with Unreality and see if you can make Nreality compatible with both your site and NUMA.

[Blackson]

Bitesized. And if I can help with ideas or handling things, I have too much time on my hands. I'd love to actually be apart of something.

(I can't help with too much technical stuff)

[Fraxtil]

TITLE SEARCH TITLE SEARCH TIIIIIIIIIIIITLE SEARRRRRRRRRRRRRRCH

Title Search!

Haha, you guys aren't going to believe this, but I JUST finished implementing title search before reading this. ^_^

anyway, another thing I /really/ want to see implemented is past comment archiving.

I could probably work something out with that, but I don't have anything planned yet.

TOP RATED PAGE

Once my rating system is working, a top rated page would be easy to code.

If you're going to make this site you should discuss highscores/speedruns with Unreality and see if you can make Nreality compatible with both your site and NUMA.

That sounds like it would be cool... I'll talk to him about it once the site goes public.

As for Bitesized, I suppose something could be worked out. It will probably appear under a different name than "bitesize", though.

The "Browse" page is now entirely functional, with search supporting "title:", "author:", and "type:" in addition to normal tags, as well as sort=(date|title|author|type|rating|votes) and order=(asc|desc). sort=random might come later.

I mentioned previously that the login was fairly secure: the reason it's more secure than most login systems is that it uses a client-side hash on the password before sending the form, so even if somebody eavesdrops on the connection, it at least wouldn't retrieve any passwords. The server hashes that hash as well, so it's basically double-secure.

Keep the ideas coming, and I should have the site public soon (this or next week).