Castle Paradox

Inferior Minion · Posted: Thu Jun 09, 2005 5:01 pm Post subject: CP News

Castle Paradox News isn't very informative if the server goes down.

After a few refreshes, you determine the site is down, but don't know why. A few users join IRC and ask me, or I get a flood of AIM messages relaying the same info. To counter this, I've set up a news page. Right now, it's still on CP. However, plans are already in the works for mulitple servers to mirror this news so if my connection at home dies, you still recieve the same information.

The news url is http://news.castleparadox.com/

In order to actually reply to this service, you have to use a newsgroup reader (such as Outlook Express), connect to news.castleparadox.com, and subscribe to the various newsgroups.

Cube is currently setting up a server at his house and using this Usenet system, we plan to feed the news back and forth, using DNS to determine which server you visit when loading news.castleparadox.com. This way, if CP is down, the news will still work and users aren't left in the blank.

No one can post to CP newsgroups, but anyone who bothers to set up the newsgroup reader can post to OHR groups.

Hopefully this system will keep the information flowing, even if forum dies.

~IM
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Mike Caron · Posted: Tue Jul 12, 2005 7:23 pm Post subject:

Looks like this didn't help very much... I had no clue what was up with CP until I happened to remember IRC...
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Inferior Minion · Posted: Wed Jul 13, 2005 4:34 am Post subject:

Yeah...sorry about that. The CP news page was up for about 2 days, running off my laptop. Finals ended and I ended up in Queensland visiting relatives and am still up here.

For those of you who don't know, CP's DSL modem died. I contacted my ISP, which then ran some tests and after determining it was my modem and not Verizon's phone line, sent me a replacement.

To be safe, a new router was also purchased and everything was finally up and running earlier today.

Cube's server is still being built, we're working on getting a mirrored version of CP up, but have very little progress in that respect.

Sorry the site was down, but it was really out of my hands.
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Bob the Hamster · Posted: Wed Jul 13, 2005 7:43 am Post subject: Gamelist mirror

I finally have a little server space to spare, and I would like to maintain a mirror of the gamelist. I am working on generating it with httrack. I'll show you the script I am using when I get it working right.

I was thinking of updating the mirror once a week. Do you think that is too often, or not often enough? I don't want to waste your bandwidth with excessive downloading.

Raekuul · Posted: Wed Jul 13, 2005 11:28 am Post subject:

I'd say every two weeks, but then again 50 people could upload games one week, and the next the server'd be down for a week. Go with what seems best.
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Bob the Hamster · Posted: Wed Jul 13, 2005 3:17 pm Post subject:

I am having good luck mirroring using the starting point http://castleparadox.com/ohr/search-gamelist.php?games_per_page=99999 except for the minor problem that the screenshots are all missing from that page.

I will have an demo of the mirror up on http://mirror.motherhamster.org/cp/ shortly

Inferior Minion · Posted: Wed Jul 13, 2005 6:13 pm Post subject:

Thanks very much, James. I've fixed up that page for you, didn't realize it wasn't working until you pointed it out. Every week should be plenty. New games aren't released all that often.

I might end up setting up a separate page for you to mirror from so your weekly updates don't alter the download counter, but thank you very much for mirroring.

~IM
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Mike Caron · Posted: Wed Jul 13, 2005 7:31 pm Post subject:

OMG, what if more than 99999 games ever get released???

I know, I know, it'll never happen... (but then, we'll never need more than 640k either)
_________________
I stand corrected. No rivers ran blood today. At least, none that were caused by us.

Final Fantasy Q
OHR Developer BLOG
Official OHRRPGCE Wiki and FAQ

Bob the Hamster · Posted: Thu Jul 14, 2005 7:54 am Post subject:

The mirror site is now up at http://mirror.motherhamster.org/ although I don't have it fully automated yet. (the screenshots are still missing, I haven't re-run the mirror since you fixed the problem)

A special gamelist page for mirroring would be great. I hadn't thought about screwing up the download count.

As for the games_per_page=99999 the number is ignored. Try visiting http://castleparadox.com/ohr/search-gamelist.php?games_per_page=3 and you will see all games rather than just the first three. Specifying *anything* after the ? tricks the search script into not showing the search form.

http://castleparadox.com/ohr/search-gamelist.php?mirror=true looks a lot nicer.