I definitely think that’d be a step in the right direction.
If anyone has any ideas, and anything I can contribute (granted not a ton) to financially, let me know. Ultimately, preserving the heart of what this has allowed us to do benefits all of us.
I’m definitely well aware it’s a thankless task, so should someone step up or should we find a method for a lighter-weight alternative, I’m all ears. Anyway I can help, I’ll gladly do so.
Although I like itch, it seems to have limitations. The last time I compiled a game with images, it refused to work properly on itch without being downloaded onto people’s personal computers rather than being played online (the online version of cage break is currently linked over to dashingdons rather than directly playable from itch). It used to work (the older compiled games are still fine), but the last game I compiled and uploaded there refused to play properly when compiled via hosting on itch directly). I think there is another way of doing it without placing the images within the game as scenes, but I haven’t had a chance to work it out yet. I’m guessing newbies are going to find it even more challenging than a ready made host like is currently available on dashingdons. It’s just another hurdle.
I’m also guessing people won’t easily be able to access code on itch? That is something that can be quite important to beta testers.
Agree with adrao, massive thanks to dashingdon for managing a free hosting service for so long.
By the way of update, I did briefly look into my suggestion above. I looked at two potential services: itch.io and GitHub. Unfortunately, the former doesn’t seem to have an overly extensive API (someone please correct me if I’m wrong), but rather relies on a CLI application to do the automated game uploading for you.
GitHub on the other hand is significantly more comprehensive, and I think with GitHub Pages you could feasibly get things uploaded and “published” mostly via the API (perhaps with some account config). I stopped short of creating a PoC, because I think that will be rather a lot of work, at least initially. As GitHub is probably a little much conceptually for your typical CS user, you’d really have to spend some time thinking about how you could squash the various steps and concepts into something more digestible, and how that should be presented as a UI.
I was also a little wary of the scope of permissions such an app might require (though I didn’t look too deeply here).
I can’t commit to implementing this unfortunately, but if anyone is interested in investigating further, I’m happy to give you something of a primer.
EDIT: Alternatively if anyone can identify a simpler (but well known/reliable) service with the necessary API support, let me know.
does anyone know how long approximately it’ll be before dashingdon or moody go down?
No specific date. They are still being hosted for the forseeable future, but won’t be updated or actively maintained anymore, so they will eventually break.
Zaxwlyde, thanks for bringing up this topic. Honestly, wasn’t even aware it was an issue - and a pretty huge issue it is, as most of us do not know how to host these games without Dashingdon. I know a few years ago we could post our games much more easily without the whole “compiler required” problem, not sure what changed but with the compiler required not really sure how to host these on our own. Really hope this all gets resolved.
Has anyone contacted him about taking over dashingdon? I run several PHP/Apache/MySQL servers for work, and as long as there isn’t a ton of coding that needs to be done, managing one or two more wouldn’t be a big deal for me.
I just don’t want to stick my nose in if others are already involved. I’d hate to see dashingdon go away, since all WIPs can be put there.
If I remember correctly, Don mentioned that anyone could reach out if they had experience and would be interested in taking over the project.
I might be misremembering (in the midst of something so unable to double-check yet), but it should be in the other thread for Moody and Dashingdon themselves!
I have reached out, but was waiting to learn more about PHP and Java Script before actually requesting to take over Moody.
It honestly wouldn’t be a bad idea to have a small team of 2-3 people to run the site (or both sites… whichever is best).
Where I work, I’m more on the admin side of things, keeping the servers up and running, managing the dbs, testing code before pulling it to production to make sure everything works as expected (and I’m a master at breaking people’s code to find bugs) …keeping the front end working. I can edit PHP code, but it’s a pain in the ass and I’m slow as Christmas at it.
I’m not sure where he has it hosted, but AWS is pretty cheap, even for a pretty solid setup, as long as you don’t resort to RDS for the database side of things (RDS costs a damned fortune, but we’re forced to use it where I work for security reasons).
I’m willing to manage the servers and fund it (accepting donations from anyone who wants to chip in), but if the code needs updating, I’ll need help. If we could find a couple of devs who know enough about PHP/java to handle that side of it and keep the code on github (or a couple of people who are willing to learn PHP/java to handle the code), then things would run a lot smoother.
Sorting a few things out financially in this month and the next, however come October I would be able to provide a monthly donation to help with financing server costs without hesitation.
I’ve worked with PHP in the past, though I’d have to scrub the rust away, and I currently work with JavaScript/TypeScript/Node. I’d be able to provide some support, but honestly I don’t want to commit to a fixed responsibility.
I think open-sourcing the site would be best, so anyone could contribute in as much as they can, either fixing a bug or proposing a new feature. It would still need someone or a “steering committee” to orchestrate different efforts. So I don’t know how that could work.