Thread:Deathstalker666/@comment-1496755-20180827202615/@comment-3547390-20180830230133

Sounds wonderful indeed. I actually took off the day tomorrow since the traffic will be so bad, so I don't need to work until Tuesday. Not sure when you wanted to start playing with the server, but I am pretty available.

I know that is the case with mods and probably the case with shareware levels. What makes it confusing is that these were levels specifically made for the shareware releases to the point that they don't work unless you convert them using a special program you hopefully have on hand (thank goodness for shovelware and digging through them to find random tools of varying levels of usage). That implies there is a way to bypass it, but I am not sure how. I know id Software didn't want people doing it based on some of the first levels chronologically, they state that there are no safeguards but that id wants you to register.

Precisely the benefit of the Wikia. The Mediafire links are pretty straightforward, I chose it since it usually allows for the quickest downloads and the least amount of hassle. No pushing a button and waiting 30 seconds if you are a free user nonsense. Navigate to a page, see a level you like, be able to download it. Be able to sort by date, by level type, and by other data. Guides for the level, information if the level is broken and impossible to finish (pretty nice to know that stuff), and whatnot. Some fan sites get close, but especially for old Multiplayer levels, there just isn't much support. Now, mods, I am not sure where to put the link due to a lack of infoboxes. At the bottom might make sense, but that might just be buried other other potential links. Do note I am uploading raw files to retain timestamps and to keep it original, which means the user would need to know what to do with them to get them to work with the game. For the server we will be getting fixed up files, files that have been converted, and whatnot so things actually work without the server crashing on us. Sadly, I have no idea how to get the DOS exclusive levels to work in later source ports.

I think we got a good system going, we got dates very similar to Doom's system (except, you know, on an actual site as opposed to youtube video playlists) to easily navigate to files. I changed the navigation bar on top since Quake Champions means the top bar made less sense in its old format. I decided what should be promoted on the top should be one of the biggest features of Quake and probably lesser accessed areas normally, mods and custom files. Needless to say, very easy access to all of it to cut down on needing to navigate a lot of buried categories. Enemies is useful primarily as the main link shows that custom enemies exist, in turn promoting we have custom pages for various things on top of original content, separate and yet equal. Since game pages allow quick access to game content, it makes sense for the navigation to cover those things that might not be as easy to reach.

As for my folder organization, I believe I described it. Folders based on level type, which is also organized on the Wikia. It is all designed for dragging and dropping so that we could easily make lists on the server based on what we want to play.

Sounds less severe than I thought. People have made it sound like certain sites are quite impossible to access if you are in Europe. Such sites include our barely touched "competitor", Quakewiki (really, the mindset is entirely different, they are about technical editing details and archiving some old websites). One real shame about being on Wikia is that a lot of people really dislike Wikia and I can't blame them based on the forced stuff. You can't make the site look the way you want, a lot of stuff would go against TOS, which is why "the way it is supposed to look" isn't even the way it looks, because I had to take out portions that were in violation. Combine that with the site being a nightmare if you don't have Adblock and other annoyances (I wish I could get rid of the Create Blog Post as well as the unnecessary line beside it, but it appears Wikia once again limits you to either using their formatting or have some ridiculously oversized avatar that would look horrible in the smaller scale title page). Combine that with their questionable moves in the past in regards on making things worse for desktop users, it is no surprise people dislike Wikia and we get a bit of a bad name in some communities. Not much we can do, since leaving Wikia would result in a lot of broken templates and based on reports Gamepedia can be negative as well, and hosting is nothing either of us wants to do. Perhaps one person will be crazy enough to want to do something if they ever see the level of detail we provide that can't be found elsewhere (there has to be people crazy like me, right?), who knows.

Oh yes, timestamps are a way to determine level age, but of course timestamps can vary and can thus be quite the frustrating mess. The Wikia is luckily a lot easier to correct issues than Youtube; moving things in playlists can be less than ideal, especially since updates have made it a bit more clunky and it is just getting worse. Same file under different names can be a bit annoying, I remember that happening in Q2 with a random SOLO file and Entering Fiend Attack. There is also the horrible Earth's Crust / Entering Devil's Watchmen fiasco; because the levels are treated as different entities we have essentially identical pages. Note the main reason they are separate is because they are treated as different entities by the source, Q2. Quake102 just gets redirects since they come from different locations. Then we got Deamon's Gate, which is just a broken version of Demon Gate. At least everything Dark Hour going forward has been a distinct entity, though of course we had some Aftershock exclusive variants due to the retexturing for its levels. Plus Dark Hour apparently had two levels which were modified levels of shovelware levels, but include Enemies and in the case of Welcome to the Arena! (Dark Hour), is a lot more playable due to not having a giant gaping hole that breaks the level.

Compilation WADs luckily won't be much of a thing, but we do have random CDs that aren't really Quake related, but have a few random Quake files. I decided to dig into one of the numerous cover cds out there to not get into something big before we started the server. Main benefit is we could have a lot of fun with Basic Castle, perhaps even try to brute force it out of determination to beat it somehow.

Luckily, I don't have the issue of passing out. No idea how, but I cannot sleep unless I am lying down, meaning I never have fallen asleep at my computer no matter how tired I got.

Don't worry, they got a guy yelling in them. You know he is just putting on an act for ratings, nobody could possibly be like that in real life.

I figured as much, we needed an overhaul, especially since there was a lot of bugs that were pretty much left when Wikia broke stuff on us in a "we had it good, but it is messed up due to them, so we will just keep it like it was". I decided to try getting things to look better for the general user as well as how it is supposed to look. Combine the lack of Quake Champions being mentioned and we were falling behind. Recent activity can look a bit small, but this is case of trying to keep it relatively the same size as the Recent Images, plus the length of the name can make it larger, meaning four large names take up a lot of space. Essentially, it is designed around a more worse case scenario than before, where large names could break the main page. It is also nice not needing to scroll to find anything.

I should mention that personally, I never saw the use of Recent Images. The "add an image" button is entirely pointless, since it advocates putting buttons that have nothing to do with content. Furthermore, you get the exact same info if you click on New Files, except without needing to wait for a slideshow and getting far more than 20. The original plan was to not include it at all, but I decided to retain it since I remember how much of an advocate Raadec was for it. As it is, we got the best of both worlds, there for people who want it but hidden from those who don't want 20 image updates every time they edit the main page with images that were non-discriminatory and thus likely to include some templates or something. Can't say I like it, but at least this is a way it can work for the Raadecs out there.

Oh, I didn't alter the soundtrack page. I altered audio links themselves, been fighting a lot with the Wikia's CSS (it is very slow to update and can be less than communicative if anything was changed, so it isn't a quick thing to deal with). Basically, when you clicked an audio link before, it would come up in a box with a couple options such as About File and Download Link. The problem was that the formatting of it all was horrible, it would make a giant open area for what was a small box, totally ruining any sort of container I put it in when opened. Essentially, now you can click sound files without destroying the look of the page, making it far less intrusive (I always hated how sound files worked, but never had a proper solution for them before).

I would suggest getting a copy of GLQuake 0.98 just to be safe... but I doubt compatibility issues. Raadec once upon a time was on the server and if I remember right he used WinQuake.