Dedicated map repo and video hosting site...

Just wondering if there would be any interest in a central website where all Xon videos could be showcased//uploaded.

This would be set up using Drupal and Youtube module for Drupal. Basically the modules lets registered users upload videos to Youtube but the videos go into one channel which would be the repository. They are then displayed on the website and also on Youtube.

I can have the basic site with a basic template up fast but would have to start a Youtube account. Also the photos could be tagged with different categories likesay Duel/Minsta/Vehciles/etc...

Another option might be to get a cheap dedicated server and use Media Goblin as the video host. This option is way more expensive and harder to set up but each user would have full control of their videos. This also doesn't make us dependent on Google/Youtube which I'm not a big fan of.

Seeing how attempts at setting up a community map repository have failed, I don't expect much for this. And I'd much rather see such efforts go toward a single project, and a map repo seems more useful to me now.

Seeing how attempts at setting up a community map repository have failed, I don't expect much for this. And I'd much rather see such efforts go toward a single project, and a map repo seems more useful to me now.

How would the map repository work? I already have a vps that we are using as a map repo with 1200+ maps (Marios map collection)

Are you talking about a server where everyone can use a a repo for their server or a site that has a page for each map with screen shots?

I mentioned video as there seems to be quite a few video created by members here.

Would of course be cool to have some kind of dedicated video site, it could also highlight live streaming events, but in the end I don't think it would be particularly useful vs simply hosting your videos yourself and provide streaming through Youtube and similar services.

Regarding the map repository, you can blame me for dropping it. It was something I was interested in for a time, then realized no one has a good idea of what they actually want out of such a repository. Welcome to open source, I suppose! Anyone is free to pick up where I left off or use my prior work to start anew.

Regarding the map repository, you can blame me for dropping it. It was something I was interested in for a time, then realized no one has a good idea of what they actually want out of such a repository. Welcome to open source, I suppose! Anyone is free to pick up where I left off or use my prior work to start anew.

Yah not sure how to lay out the repo. If I do use Drupal, using the Views module I can create a filter to filter by first letter or number and if we create screen shots for each map (might take a while) they can be displayed in a grid and have a download link below the screen shot. The thumbnail can be clicked to show a bigger version of the map.

With 1200+ available maps this might take some time and not sure if doing the screen shots would be a one man job. The main time consuming thing would be playing each map and taking min two screen of the map. Processing the images after wards would be easy BUT then someone would have to go and upload each image to the node for the map.

Also I could add a rating system for the maps and let people comment on it.

Now if the map repo was on the same site as the videos when someone uploads a video they could link to the maps that were used in the video and vice-versa, the map node would show a grid of videos that feature the map.

I don' t think we want to use a CMS. A CMS needs to be updated to stay secure, and there will be a lot of time spent on developing and maintaining custom modules anyway, so we might as well do it from scratch.

I don' t think we want to use a CMS. A CMS needs to be updated to stay secure, and there will be a lot of time spent on developing and maintaining custom modules anyway, so we might as well do it from scratch.

Well for this there's aren't too many modules required so the maintenance is pretty simple. Download the new version of the module , upload and run update script.

It would require

For maps repo only

Drupal core
Views
CDN (for hosting the map files on a separate VPS/Server)
and possibly 5 star module for rating.

For vidoes
Youtube (if it included videos)

I can run the site for now since I was planning to be my own site, if I can't then I'll hand it over to someone who will continue but once its running there's wont be too many map submissions happening that often

The other option for screenshots of the maps is that players can submit their own to each map and that can become the gallery for each map.

If this truly interests you, go for it! I wouldn't get hung up too much on the manual items - they can either be farmed out to the community (if they share similar interest) or we can figure out how to automate things.

That's pretty much how XonStat got started. Create an app/site and people will come, basically!

Ok I'm gonna go head with the project but still don't know if I should do both a video showcase site and maps together. Also trying to decide on the domain name. I'm thinking of using Killer.xxx but not sure if any countries ISP's are blocking the .xxx domains. I know some where planning but there's not much info. I have some .com/net domain ideas too.

Since Mario already uploaded all of the maps that he gathered to my VPS its just a matter of creating a csv file so that the Drupal Feeds module can import the file names and create a node/page for each map. I can easily use the map name and use the Views module to automatically construct a url to the map location on the VPS from the main site server. I can also make it so new maps can up uploaded using the Drupal file uploads fields. I can also create a screen shot node (aka page) that users can create and associate with each map so that I can use the views module to show the screen shots on the map listing and on the main map page. I was going to allow the editing of each maps node like a wiki but I think that might be too easy to abuse and moderate. It would be easier to let users create their own image nodes and reference them to the map node.

But (well-packaged) maps already feature a screenshot image! Can this not be automated?

But (well-packaged) maps already feature a screenshot image! Can this not be automated?

I'm sure a someone could crate a module to extract the thumbnail but I want to do something like http://www.lvlworld.com

Ok I'm still researching on how to do this on the cheap but properly. I think I might try AmazonS3 as it can be used for the file system in Drupal instead of the VPS. Using the VPS as storage wont be as clean work flow when someone uploads a new map into the db plus I can stop leechers from accessing 10BG+ of publicly facing files and eat up the data transfer this way I can have a private file system where the file has to be downloaded from the site.

Ok so things are moving along. http://www.killer.xxx

I decided to just use my current web host and got all the maps 1200+ (10 GB) transferred and listed in Drupal. Next step it to weed out all the maps with multiple versions releases and start working on doing screen shots.

The maps will be served through Drupal so users can't leech from the server to keep the bandwidth usage sane. I'm also thinking of a public map repo that can be used by any server admin.

I'll be doing the design and the repository lay out in the next few days. I'm still trying to figure out how I can let other players add screen shots to each map if they want to. Drupal allowed for node revisions so I might go this way and it'll act like a wiki sort of, when someone makes a change Drupal keeps track of the revisions so any abuse can be reverted.

I'm also thinking of adding video uploads for the map along with screen shots. Also I'll do the video section and each video that is uploaded can be tagged with maps that are featured in the video. With this I can shows each map link/thumbnail on the video page and vice versa.

You probably already know this, but just in case, here's a big Nexuiz map database: http://maps.nexuizninjaz.com/ (that's if you want to download all of these and add them to your repo, although I guess it's not really that necessary).

I'd recommend using an extension called Linkclump (for Chrome) to highlight all the links and download them, or you can use Downthemall (for Firefox).

Also, here's the latest Xonotic map stuff (a lot of it is just updates to current in-game maps but I think there are some interesting custom ones in there): http://beta.xonotic.org/autobuild-bsp/


This is a nice website for UT games that I think would a good template: http://www.mapraider.com/

Or this one for Quake 3 maps: http://lvlworld.com


PS Could I please have a link to Mario's map collection?

You probably already know this, but just in case, here's a big Nexuiz map database: http://maps.nexuizninjaz.com/ (that's if you want to download all of these and add them to your repo, although I guess it's not really that necessary).

I'd recommend using an extension called Linkclump (for Chrome) to highlight all the links and download them, or you can use Downthemall (for Firefox).

Also, here's the latest Xonotic map stuff (a lot of it is just updates to current in-game maps but I think there are some interesting custom ones in there): http://beta.xonotic.org/autobuild-bsp/


This is a nice website for UT games that I think would a good template: http://www.mapraider.com/

Or this one for Quake 3 maps: http://lvlworld.com


PS Could I please have a link to Mario's map collection?

Mario's collection pretty much cover the Nexuiz Ninjas repo which is what I used for the repo. There's 1200+ maps but will do down a bit once a clean up the doubles with different build versions.

I'm planning on lvl world like site and I guess it'll mostly be for Xonotic atm since its the only PC game I play.

Probably do something like this for the design. Never done a red website before so why not... There wont be much for navigation, just the top navbar since the site has a pretty narrow purpose and that's mostly a database for the maps/models.

Owch, not a red background please, that's way too aggressive.

Owch, not a red background please, that's way too aggressive.

LOlL yah its crazy red.

Why is registration required to download the files?

Why is registration required to download the files?

To keep people from using it as a repository for their server. This a shared host so don't have the power of a dedicated server. The registration is simple and only takes a few seconds plus if I want comments/rating then I'd get spammed to hell with open rating/comments.

I'm looking into how I can offer a public repository for other server admins to use but there's no cheap enough option atm. If I could get 10 people to donate $5 per month then I'm sure we could get a VPS/Cheap dedicated for everyone to use.

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Ok I added a glossary feature to the map display to make this much easier to find.

Here's a new design. More dark.

Trying to get used to GIMP so limited to what I can mess with ATM. As much as I like opensource the work flow and the amount of times I have to use the mouse to select say layers sucks compared to PS. Obviously its free software vs $$$$$ but still its hard to get used to GIMP.

You could see what user-agent Xonotic uses and block that one from downloading files from your webserver (in an automated fashion, at least).

You could see what user-agent Xonotic uses and block that one from downloading files from your webserver (in an automated fashion, at least).

Thanks ...

You could see what user-agent Xonotic uses and block that one from downloading files from your webserver (in an automated fashion, at least).

Thanks ...

Slowly coming along but gonna re do the map DB and Melanosuchus was gracious enough to create a script to extract the Map Name, File Name, Image, Thumbnail, Author Name, Description of each pk3 into CVS for import. Once I get that done I'll re-import all the new stuff.

Also maybe we should come up with a way for someone to keep a copy of the site/db/maps just in case I croak one day and no one is there to pay the hosting fees