Re: [Freecol-developers] Project looks abandoned due to presentation issues
Hi guys, Quick updates... As promised I've located all the damaged news items Winter talked about and completed the fixes to them. I've also fixed the oversized pages he mentioned too. Pull request is submitted and ready for you guys here:https://github.com/FreeCol/freecol/pull/50 Have also put together new text (using the better project description from your website) similar to the welcome thread for your sourceforge front page summary area with critical links included. I tested them on a sourceforge project front page I have admin rights on and it worked great. Obviously I need David, Mike or one of the other admins to implement these changes so I've put the text and demonstration images in a post here:https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/discussion/719661/thread/42b0844f/#a702/9e85 Also in that post I discuss how these days Sourceforge has a nice features list section (you can see it in example pictures attached to post) on project front pages where you can list all the cool stuff about the game. Listing what's great about FreeCol increases interest and convert lurkers to downloaders. Here's some I can think of off the bat but there's definitely more 'sexy features' we can all think of as you guys know your project better than anyone! Improvements to my wording could use some suggestions too (not sure what the character limit is in those little fields but hopefully the map one will fit). - Play classic Colonization games- Play huge extended Colonization games- 8 player games (12 with mods)- Multiplayer Support - Huge maps of America, Africa, Australia, and more! - Map Editor- Mod Support Once finalised this simple but 'sexy' feature list would probably work well in other places such as the welcome thread and on the freecol.org website front page too. That way everyone who visits the project on either site will quickly know (without ANY clicks) what its about, what makes it cool, why they should try it, where to go to try it, and how they can help make it better. Regards Blake On Monday, 9 December 2019, 07:15:33 pm ACDT, D Blakeley via Freecol-developers wrote: David:> This means that we should have our nightly builds available: https://github.com/FreeCol/freecol/releases Thank you so much David this is great news. Now that we're changing all these places to tell people to about the nightly releases it's good that they'll see a nice new one there. I've downloaded it and look forward to mucking around with it. Thank you again so much for applying the sticky and announcement flags to the welcome thread. Mike you're off the hook for that job lol! (BTW I'm Australian too :) )https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/discussion/719661/thread/2d0063a3bc/I've put in a nice HD picture there and in the future will likely add some more multimedia there to show off the game when people are passing through. I've really gotta get off my butt and finish editing that FreeCol HD tour video I made a year ago. I've got some holidays coming over January so my plan is to get it sorted then and use it to market the living s*** out of your project across all the Col & Civ forums and social media groups I'm at. Anyway I'll keep looking at making improvements to the Welcome/Info text to make sure people are going to the right places. Let me know if you you guys want anything changed. Although presumably admins can edit other peoples posts so you can change anything you want in it anyway. Winter: > As for the website itself, every time I look at it I find more broken >things.> There are many old news items with missing text, but luckily there >are overview pages> containing the missing content.> The way to fix this is to >search files for pages below news/ containing:> "You are not authorised to >view this resource. > You need to login. "> Then search all other pages for the page title, >especially any named> "news/page-*.html" or "news/*/page-*.html" and >copy-paste the missing> html+text from each item into each broken single >page.> Blake, could you help with this? I would be grateful, if you did. Yeah sure mate I'm happy to help with that although I'll need some more hand holding from you on getting started with this to make sure I'm looking in the right places and do it the right way (I'll email you separately about this). Also I'll be busy the next few days at work but can be back on deck to help on friday.Also David's asked for my help on "spitting out the website code from the main freecol git repo into the dedicated Github repo so that we can make faster website updates" here:https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/discussion/719661/thread/42b0844f/#f215 However I'm pretty sure this one is beyond my limited talents being that I'm not a programmer and I only just started learning how Github works haha. So maybe if I can take most of this annoying broken links job away from you that'll free you up to help him with that problem? > The page navigation partial
Re: [Freecol-developers] Project looks abandoned due to presentation issues
David:> This means that we should have our nightly builds available: https://github.com/FreeCol/freecol/releases Thank you so much David this is great news. Now that we're changing all these places to tell people to about the nightly releases it's good that they'll see a nice new one there. I've downloaded it and look forward to mucking around with it. Thank you again so much for applying the sticky and announcement flags to the welcome thread. Mike you're off the hook for that job lol! (BTW I'm Australian too :) )https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/discussion/719661/thread/2d0063a3bc/I've put in a nice HD picture there and in the future will likely add some more multimedia there to show off the game when people are passing through. I've really gotta get off my butt and finish editing that FreeCol HD tour video I made a year ago. I've got some holidays coming over January so my plan is to get it sorted then and use it to market the living s*** out of your project across all the Col & Civ forums and social media groups I'm at. Anyway I'll keep looking at making improvements to the Welcome/Info text to make sure people are going to the right places. Let me know if you you guys want anything changed. Although presumably admins can edit other peoples posts so you can change anything you want in it anyway. Winter: > As for the website itself, every time I look at it I find more broken >things.> There are many old news items with missing text, but luckily there >are overview pages> containing the missing content.> The way to fix this is to >search files for pages below news/ containing:> "You are not authorised to >view this resource. > You need to login. "> Then search all other pages for the page title, >especially any named> "news/page-*.html" or "news/*/page-*.html" and >copy-paste the missing> html+text from each item into each broken single >page.> Blake, could you help with this? I would be grateful, if you did. Yeah sure mate I'm happy to help with that although I'll need some more hand holding from you on getting started with this to make sure I'm looking in the right places and do it the right way (I'll email you separately about this). Also I'll be busy the next few days at work but can be back on deck to help on friday.Also David's asked for my help on "spitting out the website code from the main freecol git repo into the dedicated Github repo so that we can make faster website updates" here:https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/discussion/719661/thread/42b0844f/#f215 However I'm pretty sure this one is beyond my limited talents being that I'm not a programmer and I only just started learning how Github works haha. So maybe if I can take most of this annoying broken links job away from you that'll free you up to help him with that problem? > The page navigation partially remaining from the former CMS is giving me >headaches. > I also found more broken and missing content and navigation links.> I'd love >to get rid of it and just have link lists to single news items with a >backlink,> but I don't have the time and it depends on the fix mentioned above >being done.> It might also be slightly worse from a user perspective to always >click an additional link? Yeah I haven't really complained about this as I'm >guessing one of you guys put this news system together but OMG are you making >life hard for yourselves. Or at least it looks that way. Eg when you add a new >news item do you have to then manually move other older news items across the >1-10 pages of news? Or is there some clever code setup that moves things >around for you? If not then OH MAN do we need to change things. Two ways to solve this.. 1 Adding a blog to your website using an existing 'pre-made' blog/news service (eg Wordpress) which then takes away all the news page list content, news categories, who posted the news (usernames), and link updating issues in the future as it does all that for you.https://www.shoutmeloud.com/how-to-install-wordpress-manually-web-hosting.htmlSo the only nasty time consuming job would be moving all of the old news content over to new blog service. However anyone can do that so I could do this for you guys. I've been using wordpress for years and I've just discovered they do allow backdating of new posts to previous months and years (which we'd need for all the old news). https://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/how-to-back-date-your-wordpress-posts/It would just need one of you guys to set it up on your site and then 'let me at it' lol (I'd still need access to the old replaced news pages and I'd obviously be updating links in every news post while porting them over). OR 2 as Winter suggested we switch to simple 1 page with a list of news items with nothing but the titles and you click on them to see the news item (I'm sure they'll survive the horror of having an extra click step haha).Eg your counterparts in the opensource C&C/Red Alert remake wo
Re: [Freecol-developers] Project looks abandoned due to presentation issues
Hi, nice that you got the nightly builds running again. I see you got some extracted commits on the github website repo already, not sure if that is the whole history without checking. I guess, you did some magic using git filter-branch, but don't have the script anymore? :( It was years ago, I used this for something simple only and sadly don't remember any details. As for the website itself, every time I look at it I find more broken things. There are many old news items with missing text, but luckily there are overview pages containing the missing content. The way to fix this is to search files for pages below news/ containing: "You are not authorised to view this resource. You need to login. " Then search all other pages for the page title, especially any named "news/page-*.html" or "news/*/page-*.html" and copy-paste the missing html+text from each item into each broken single page. Blake, could you help with this? I would be grateful, if you did. The page navigation partially remaining from the former CMS is giving me headaches. I also found more broken and missing content and navigation links. I'd love to get rid of it and just have link lists to single news items with a backlink, but I don't have the time and it depends on the fix mentioned above being done. It might also be slightly worse from a user perspective to always click an additional link? There are a few pages too wide for the background, which might need either some extra line breaks, css fixups or adding some scrollable box around some parts (like embedded code). Examples: http://www.freecol.org/roadmap.html http://www.freecol.org/news/production-depending-on-difficulty.html Pages are still XHTML1.0 transitional and I did not check if they even are compliant -- would be great to upgrade to HTML5, but I think that can wait. I'll add the 2017 news item in a minimally invasive way and wait with another until the broken stuff is fixed. There must be broken remains of former pages on the webserver, which are not inside git, for example, http://www.freecol.org/bugtracker/ which could only be fixed with direct access to the server. >From a quick look at the website script, it seems dependent on some settings of Mikes computer. Greetings, wintertime Gesendet: Sonntag, 08. Dezember 2019 um 10:03 Uhr Von: "David Lewis" An: "D Blakeley" , "Michael T. Pope" Cc: "FreeCol Developers" Betreff: Re: [Freecol-developers] Project looks abandoned due to presentation issues Hi all, I haven't had a chance to read through all of the replies yet, but just wanted to send a quick update. I got the merges back on track, so master and slim branches are now updated from Sourceforge, and the Travis-CI builds are now working again: https://travis-ci.org/FreeCol/freecol/builds This means that we should have our nightly builds available: https://github.com/FreeCol/freecol/releases The only repo I haven't updated yet is the website repo. I know we had discussed it in the past, but the migration to Github was postponed until everyone was on board and we released the 0.12 update. But I haven't tracked the status of that. Also, @Michael T. Pope, I've added you to the Github org project team. Please let me know if you have access to it. David On Sat, Dec 7, 2019 at 10:23 PM D Blakeley via Freecol-developers <freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote: Winter: > thank you, Blake, for helping. > As written on GitHub, I used most of your changes for the website, > with a few tweaks: https://github.com/FreeCol/freecol/pull/49 Thanks Winter! I'm glad my efforts weren't a waste haha! I see you found a nice icon for the nightly release download too. Looks good! People will now being going to the right places to download and contribute. Just need to sort out the sourceforge info areas, however I'm guessing you're not an admin there meaning I need help from one of the other guys. > Double-checking and a few more suggestions are welcome. ;) Well I think I said this before but a videos section on your website would be really good. Whether its a separate section on the main menu or you rename screenshots to "Media" and have a new videos page as a subsection to it I don't know. I can gather all the videos out there and embed them, I just need a working page to put them into. Not game to try creating it myself as I have no idea how to mass implement a menu change to every page of a website on github lol. I don't normally have to worry about stuff like that as my website is still in the dark ages and uses frames so I only have to update one place when I make a main menu change lol. > What I still want to do is add the forgotten news item > https://sourceforge.net/p/freec
Re: [Freecol-developers] Project looks abandoned due to presentation issues
Hi all, I haven't had a chance to read through all of the replies yet, but just wanted to send a quick update. I got the merges back on track, so master and slim branches are now updated from Sourceforge, and the Travis-CI builds are now working again: https://travis-ci.org/FreeCol/freecol/builds This means that we should have our nightly builds available: https://github.com/FreeCol/freecol/releases The only repo I haven't updated yet is the website repo. I know we had discussed it in the past, but the migration to Github was postponed until everyone was on board and we released the 0.12 update. But I haven't tracked the status of that. Also, @Michael T. Pope , I've added you to the Github org project team. Please let me know if you have access to it. David On Sat, Dec 7, 2019 at 10:23 PM D Blakeley via Freecol-developers < freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote: > *Winter:* > > thank you, Blake, for helping. > > As written on GitHub, I used most of your changes for the website, > > with a few tweaks: https://github.com/FreeCol/freecol/pull/49 > > Thanks Winter! I'm glad my efforts weren't a waste haha! I see you found a > nice icon for the nightly release download too. Looks good! People will now > being going to the right places to download and contribute. Just need to > sort out the sourceforge info areas, however I'm guessing you're not an > admin there meaning I need help from one of the other guys. > > > Double-checking and a few more suggestions are welcome. ;) > > Well I think I said this before but a videos section on your website would > be really good. Whether its a separate section on the main menu or you > rename screenshots to "Media" and have a new videos page as a subsection to > it I don't know. I can gather all the videos out there and embed them, I > just need a working page to put them into. Not game to try creating it > myself as I have no idea how to mass implement a menu change to every page > of a website on github lol. I don't normally have to worry about stuff like > that as my website is still in the dark ages and uses frames so I only have > to update one place when I make a main menu change lol. > > > What I still want to do is add the forgotten news item > > https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/news/ > > and some new news-item announcing the website update. > > I kept these for last, cause of the many internal links, > > which as you noticed need updating when adding more news. > > Would you believe that all these years I've been visiting the sourceforge > page I hadn't noticed it had its own news section lol. However yes, fixing > up the news situation on the main freecol.org website is important. > Copying David's 2017 post over there would be a good start, then maybe my > draft pre-12.0 post after it or some things you have in mind. BTW I forgot > to mention this before but when you're updating the website news with the > new stuff you're planning you might also want to do something about that > download link on the current latest news post as it says 11.5 when its > actually meant to be 11.6. Typo has sat that for over 4 years haha. Not > much point in me doing it if you're about to update that whole area but > personally I'd remove it or make it generic without a version number. Like > I've said before there's just too many references to 11.6 all over the site > which just adds so much extra work when you're updating the place. You guys > must look at it and think "uuurrrggghhh" every time there's a release > version update lol. > > > Fyi., text-only is still preferred for the mailing list, I think. > > Yup I know, that's why I sent url's to the images in my message instead of > embedding them. Surely urls are fine though? as I see you're using them and > its the only way to get people to places they need to see lol. > > *Mike:* > > ATM there is a dodgy script (bin/website.sh) but I am not sure what > > the permission required is. I know it works for me. > > bin/website.sh does not handle a multiple commit backlog very well, > > but I think I have worked around it, so the website should be updated. > > Thanks Mike, definitely worked as I can see my modified download page on > the live site. :) > > > You might be surprised how low the bar is there. Currently anyone with > > time is better qualified than I. > > Thanks, well since I can't help with the game dev I at least want to help > with other stuff. :) Unfortunately I can't fix some of the sourceforge > visitor info without you or one of the other admins help though sorry. > > Regards > > Blake > ___ > Freecol-developers mailing list > Freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freecol-developers > ___ Freecol-developers mailing list Freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freecol-developers
Re: [Freecol-developers] Project looks abandoned due to presentation issues
Winter:> thank you, Blake, for helping. > As written on GitHub, I used most of your changes for the website, > with a few tweaks: https://github.com/FreeCol/freecol/pull/49 Thanks Winter! I'm glad my efforts weren't a waste haha! I see you found a nice icon for the nightly release download too. Looks good! People will now being going to the right places to download and contribute. Just need to sort out the sourceforge info areas, however I'm guessing you're not an admin there meaning I need help from one of the other guys. > Double-checking and a few more suggestions are welcome. ;) Well I think I said this before but a videos section on your website would be really good. Whether its a separate section on the main menu or you rename screenshots to "Media" and have a new videos page as a subsection to it I don't know. I can gather all the videos out there and embed them, I just need a working page to put them into. Not game to try creating it myself as I have no idea how to mass implement a menu change to every page of a website on github lol. I don't normally have to worry about stuff like that as my website is still in the dark ages and uses frames so I only have to update one place when I make a main menu change lol. > What I still want to do is add the forgotten news item > https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/news/ > and some new news-item announcing the website update. > I kept these for last, cause of the many internal links, > which as you noticed need updating when adding more news. Would you believe that all these years I've been visiting the sourceforge page I hadn't noticed it had its own news section lol. However yes, fixing up the news situation on the main freecol.org website is important. Copying David's 2017 post over there would be a good start, then maybe my draft pre-12.0 post after it or some things you have in mind. BTW I forgot to mention this before but when you're updating the website news with the new stuff you're planning you might also want to do something about that download link on the current latest news post as it says 11.5 when its actually meant to be 11.6. Typo has sat that for over 4 years haha. Not much point in me doing it if you're about to update that whole area but personally I'd remove it or make it generic without a version number. Like I've said before there's just too many references to 11.6 all over the site which just adds so much extra work when you're updating the place. You guys must look at it and think "uuurrrggghhh" every time there's a release version update lol. > Fyi., text-only is still preferred for the mailing list, I think. Yup I know, that's why I sent url's to the images in my message instead of embedding them. Surely urls are fine though? as I see you're using them and its the only way to get people to places they need to see lol. Mike:> ATM there is a dodgy script (bin/website.sh) but I am not sure what > the permission required is. I know it works for me. > bin/website.sh does not handle a multiple commit backlog very well, > but I think I have worked around it, so the website should be updated. Thanks Mike, definitely worked as I can see my modified download page on the live site. :) > You might be surprised how low the bar is there. Currently anyone with > time is better qualified than I. Thanks, well since I can't help with the game dev I at least want to help with other stuff. :) Unfortunately I can't fix some of the sourceforge visitor info without you or one of the other admins help though sorry. Regards Blake ___ Freecol-developers mailing list Freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freecol-developers
Re: [Freecol-developers] Project looks abandoned due to presentation issues
On Mon, 2 Dec 2019 14:14:36 +0100 win...@genial.ms wrote: > I'm not sure if there is a script updating the website from git or if Mike > has to > upload it manually? This would be good to know beforehand. ATM there is a dodgy script (bin/website.sh) but I am not sure what the permission required is. I know it works for me. On Thu, 5 Dec 2019 00:41:51 -0800 David Lewis wrote: > I would like to add all of the FreeCol contributors to the project space on > Github... IIRC my github username is mpope...@gmail.com. HTH. On Fri, 6 Dec 2019 10:49:06 + (UTC) D Blakeley via Freecol-developers wrote: > I think that sounds bloody wonderful David, but I'm not a member of the team > haha! You might be surprised how low the bar is there. Currently anyone with time is better qualified than I. >[git commits from wintertime and blake] bin/website.sh does not handle a multiple commit backlog very well, but I think I have worked around it, so the website should be updated. Cheers, Mike Pope pgppD6j8x_izD.pgp Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ Freecol-developers mailing list Freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freecol-developers
Re: [Freecol-developers] Project looks abandoned due to presentation issues
Hi, thank you, Blake, for helping. As written on GitHub, I used most of your changes for the website, with a few tweaks: https://github.com/FreeCol/freecol/pull/49 I've also gone through many other pages and corrected/updated them. Double-checking and a few more suggestions are welcome. ;) What I still want to do is add the forgotten news item https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/news/ and some new news-item announcing the website update. I kept these for last, cause of the many internal links, which as you noticed need updating when adding more news. When everything is done, an update of the real website would need to be triggered by someone with access. Fyi., text-only is still preferred for the mailing list, I think. Greetings, wintertime ___ Freecol-developers mailing list Freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freecol-developers
Re: [Freecol-developers] Project looks abandoned due to presentation issues
Hi all, *FreeCol Website* As promised I spent a day figuring out the joys of Github (with some help from Winter) to try & help out and have made changes to a number of pages on the website. I removed version numbers from current status and main index home page to reduce places that 'age' the site and make the project look abandoned and also reduce website update work when new versions are released. But more importantly I've done a major update to downloads section that features the nightly releases plus critical links and removed some duplication issues. You can see it all here: https://github.com/FreeCol/freecol/pull/49 Before image:https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/26017445/70330473-8e97f480-188d-11ea-9c9b-931f07fd1c99.png After image:https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/26017445/70330526-abccc300-188d-11ea-9811-3af5ebc38815.png No doubt you guys will want to further alter and improve my suggestions and Winter mentioned something about pushing out his own changes this weekend (he's putting a nightly release link on the index home page which I hadn't got around to doing yet) but hopefully I've helped get the ball rolling. I believe Winter is also hoping to get more feedback on making changes to the website from you guys before he does anything more. I didn't mess with the website news area as that's a bit beyond me as I noticed its built out of lots of broken up html files I'm too scared to mess with lol. I think Winter asked in a earlier message for some text to make a news post out of so here's something below that I made up using some of the good stuff in the github info area. I've already sent him a copy but realised I prob should have to sent it to the whole team sorry, as no doubt you guys will want to modify this into something better! I saw in some of the old non-release posts news items were just called "Project Status Update" so I just went with that. - Project Status Update 06/12/2019 Apologies for the lack of recent news. Do not worry, the FreeCol project is still alive and well! If you would like to contribute to the up and coming FreeCol 0.12.0 release you can: - Download the latest nightly release and play the game. - Report any bugs you find to our Bug Tracker. - Suggest features or improvements in our Improvement Requests Tracker. - Discuss FreeCol on our Forums. - Contribute to our code base by Forking and submitting a Pull Request. See Creating a pull request from a fork. See our developer document for more details on contributing to the FreeCol project. - *FreeCol SourceForge Page* I have also created that welcome / information & links thread I've been talking about on the sourceforge forum here: https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/discussion/719661/thread/2d0063a3bc/ I used the project intro/description from the website and the contribute info from the github again. Presumably you guys will want to modify it to your liking, and possibly copy & paste it into your own post so its from an admin account. I STRONGLY recommend setting it to announcement to ensure any lurkers in any forum there see this critical info when they sign in. I also recommend the same text & links is put over on the FreeCol sourceforge main page as the description text there is not as good as the website one I used above. The critical links should really be there too just to be safe (although there may be a restriction on urls in that box, can't remember lol). Oh and if no one's played with admin forum sticky/announce controls there before then I attached a guide image in the thread here:https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/discussion/719661/thread/2d0063a3bc/2036/attachment/Admin.png *FreeCol IndieDB Page*I'm going to leave this for now and see what you guys wanna do with the above stuff and other updates etc. Once all that's sorted out I'm happy to port over as much as I can (without admin control) to that old abandoned IndieDB page. Hope all this helps. :) Regards Blake On Friday, 6 December 2019, 09:19:06 pm ACDT, D Blakeley wrote: > Hey all, > Yes, just been super busy with work stuff... I have a merge that broke the >nightly builds because I have separated the website from the game code into >different repos. The update to the website has some merge > conflicts that I >just have not had time to go through and fix to get the nightly merges back on >track. > I would like to add all of the FreeCol contributors to the project space on >Github and tried to do that so we could move our codebase over there. We can >also get the nightly builds back on track and put in a build to do > >auto-merges if we're still wanting to publish to SourceForge. > Let me know what you think, > David I think that sounds bloody wonderful David, but I'm not a member of the team haha! I do want to try and help you guys more though instead of just barking suggestions lol. I'm not a programmer nor do I have a grea
Re: [Freecol-developers] Project looks abandoned due to presentation issues
> Hey all, > Yes, just been super busy with work stuff... I have a merge that broke the >nightly builds because I have separated the website from the game code into >different repos. The update to the website has some merge > conflicts that I >just have not had time to go through and fix to get the nightly merges back on >track. > I would like to add all of the FreeCol contributors to the project space on >Github and tried to do that so we could move our codebase over there. We can >also get the nightly builds back on track and put in a build to do > >auto-merges if we're still wanting to publish to SourceForge. > Let me know what you think, > David I think that sounds bloody wonderful David, but I'm not a member of the team haha! I do want to try and help you guys more though instead of just barking suggestions lol. I'm not a programmer nor do I have a great understanding of github however I'm not to bad at html and now that I know your website is on github I can try and fork some of your website pages, make some of the changes I'm suggesting and then presumably I then hit a button to submit and then you guys choose whether to implement it or not? That would save Winter some work and time on the website. I could also make the 'announcement level' info/links thread for the sourceforge forums and then one of you can decide if you want to keep/change/remove stuff and then make it announcement thread for all to see. Once again that saves you guys work. Regards Blake ___ Freecol-developers mailing list Freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freecol-developers
Re: [Freecol-developers] Project looks abandoned due to presentation issues
Hey all, Yes, just been super busy with work stuff... I have a merge that broke the nightly builds because I have separated the website from the game code into different repos. The update to the website has some merge conflicts that I just have not had time to go through and fix to get the nightly merges back on track. I would like to add all of the FreeCol contributors to the project space on Github and tried to do that so we could move our codebase over there. We can also get the nightly builds back on track and put in a build to do auto-merges if we're still wanting to publish to SourceForge. Let me know what you think, David On Wed, Dec 4, 2019 at 8:59 PM D Blakeley via Freecol-developers < freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote: > > If Mike+David are ok with it being added THAT MUCH too late, I could add > it to the website > > code in git soon? I'd also add the link to the front page. > > I didn't realise the website was on your github accessible to the current > team, that's good. > > > I looked at the github repo and it seems he did a merge to the slim > branch there > > on 2019-11-08, which should be the manual trigger for another nightly > release, > > according to the news item he wrote. > > It just seems there were no files/release produced, which I would guess > means > > David would be needed to debug the travis stuff. > > I had wondered why it had been so long since the last nightly release > (when I can see you guys have been still actively working on the project > over the year), hope you guys can get it working again. > > > Still the january nightly is much more up to date than 0.11.6 and gets > about as many > > weekly downloads. With a website update more people might find it. > > Greetings, > > wintertime > > Yup that's a big part of the main point I was pushing in my 'novel' lol. > There's needs to be a link to the nightly releases in all high traffic > areas such as website homepage, website news, website about/current status, > website downloads, sourceforge homepage, and sourceforge forums (via pinned > announcement thread). > > More prominent links to discussion forum and where to report bugs in all high > traffic areas is also HIGHLY recommended too. > > No ones mentioned the Indiedb so I'm guessing the left over team don't > know who was running it? the files in the downloads section don't have > versions numbers but they are dated 2010 so you can bet they are super old! > Anyone can add files to it thankfully so I could copy 0.11.6 there and then > the latest nightly release too. But it would be better if the current team > can regain full control of it. > > https://www.indiedb.com/games/freecol/downloads > > > Regards > > Blake > ___ > Freecol-developers mailing list > Freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freecol-developers > ___ Freecol-developers mailing list Freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freecol-developers
Re: [Freecol-developers] Project looks abandoned due to presentation issues
> If Mike+David are ok with it being added THAT MUCH too late, I could add it > to the website > code in git soon? I'd also add the link to the front page. I didn't realise the website was on your github accessible to the current team, that's good. > I looked at the github repo and it seems he did a merge to the slim branch > there > on 2019-11-08, which should be the manual trigger for another nightly release, > according to the news item he wrote. > It just seems there were no files/release produced, which I would guess means > David would be needed to debug the travis stuff. I had wondered why it had been so long since the last nightly release (when I can see you guys have been still actively working on the project over the year), hope you guys can get it working again. > Still the january nightly is much more up to date than 0.11.6 and gets about >as many > weekly downloads. With a website update more people might find it. > Greetings, > wintertime Yup that's a big part of the main point I was pushing in my 'novel' lol. There's needs to be a link to the nightly releases in all high traffic areas such as website homepage, website news, website about/current status, website downloads, sourceforge homepage, and sourceforge forums (via pinned announcement thread). More prominent links to discussion forum and where to report bugs in all high traffic areas is also HIGHLY recommended too. No ones mentioned the Indiedb so I'm guessing the left over team don't know who was running it? the files in the downloads section don't have versions numbers but they are dated 2010 so you can bet they are super old! Anyone can add files to it thankfully so I could copy 0.11.6 there and then the latest nightly release too. But it would be better if the current team can regain full control of it. https://www.indiedb.com/games/freecol/downloads Regards Blake___ Freecol-developers mailing list Freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freecol-developers
Re: [Freecol-developers] Project looks abandoned due to presentation issues
Hi, > Gesendet: Montag, 02. Dezember 2019 um 21:30 Uhr > Von: "Michael T. Pope" > An: freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net > Betreff: Re: [Freecol-developers] Project looks abandoned due to presentation > issues > > On Mon, 2 Dec 2019 14:14:36 +0100 > win...@genial.ms wrote: > > sorry I could not participate much last years, cause I had to concentrate > > on other things. > > I still tried to keep up with reading all new messages. > > I'm also kind of sad that no new release got out meanwhile, as last news I > > read on it > > there were only 2 bugs blocking it. > > I regret this too. My involvement has been cut drastically due to a > family health issue. I remain hopeful to get back to FreeCol after > Christmas. I wish you all the best. > > I found this news item: > > https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/mailman/message/36041651/ > > I wonder why it was never added to the website, to tell about the nightlies? > > If Mike+David are ok with it being added THAT MUCH too late, I could add it > > to the website > > code in git soon? I'd also add the link to the front page. > > Additionally/Instead, maybe another news item about how work the 0.12.0 > > release is going > > would be nice. I'd need a few lines of text for that though. > > Are the nightly builds still running? David has been quiet too. > > Cheers, > Mike Pope I looked at the github repo and it seems he did a merge to the slim branch there on 2019-11-08, which should be the manual trigger for another nightly release, according to the news item he wrote. It just seems there were no files/release produced, which I would guess means David would be needed to debug the travis stuff. Still the january nightly is much more up to date than 0.11.6 and gets about as many weekly downloads. With a website update more people might find it. Greetings, wintertime ___ Freecol-developers mailing list Freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freecol-developers
Re: [Freecol-developers] Project looks abandoned due to presentation issues
On Mon, 2 Dec 2019 14:14:36 +0100 win...@genial.ms wrote: > sorry I could not participate much last years, cause I had to concentrate on > other things. > I still tried to keep up with reading all new messages. > I'm also kind of sad that no new release got out meanwhile, as last news I > read on it > there were only 2 bugs blocking it. I regret this too. My involvement has been cut drastically due to a family health issue. I remain hopeful to get back to FreeCol after Christmas. > I found this news item: > https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/mailman/message/36041651/ > I wonder why it was never added to the website, to tell about the nightlies? > If Mike+David are ok with it being added THAT MUCH too late, I could add it > to the website > code in git soon? I'd also add the link to the front page. > Additionally/Instead, maybe another news item about how work the 0.12.0 > release is going > would be nice. I'd need a few lines of text for that though. Are the nightly builds still running? David has been quiet too. Cheers, Mike Pope pgpfn2b2gcdXX.pgp Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ Freecol-developers mailing list Freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freecol-developers
Re: [Freecol-developers] Project looks abandoned due to presentation issues
Hi, sorry I could not participate much last years, cause I had to concentrate on other things. I still tried to keep up with reading all new messages. I'm also kind of sad that no new release got out meanwhile, as last news I read on it there were only 2 bugs blocking it. I found this news item: https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/mailman/message/36041651/ I wonder why it was never added to the website, to tell about the nightlies? If Mike+David are ok with it being added THAT MUCH too late, I could add it to the website code in git soon? I'd also add the link to the front page. Additionally/Instead, maybe another news item about how work the 0.12.0 release is going would be nice. I'd need a few lines of text for that though. I'm not sure if there is a script updating the website from git or if Mike has to upload it manually? This would be good to know beforehand. Greetings, wintertime ___ Freecol-developers mailing list Freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freecol-developers
[Freecol-developers] Project looks abandoned due to presentation issues
Hi guys, Apologies if this this is a bit long winded but it’s a 1/3plea for change, 1/3 offer of help, and 1/3 resume/portfolio to justify saidhelp offer lol. The word count merely shows how much I care about your projecthaha! Lone Wolf suggested I post here instead of in the forums. Imade a thread a while back here... https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/discussion/719661/thread/42b0844f/ ... that discussed the presentation issues of your projectleading to misinformation and confusion. I like so many others thought yourproject was dead due to the freecol.org website not being touched in nearly 5years. The sourceforge page did little to change that view as it offers thesame old version for download and there is no mention of the nightly releasesanywhere. After checking for years I eventually got lucky and saw a threadwhere someone was asking if the project was dead and one of you replied with alink to the nightly releases. I keep seeing others having the same problems andin other communities I’ve seen people say FreeCol has been abandoned for years.Your indiedb page hasn’t been touched in 9 years while your main website and sourceforgefront page lack the crucial information on where to get latest dev builds and helpthe project. This means countless people (eg sourceforge says 500 just this week alone)are downloading an ancient version of your project, not knowing how to help,and thinking your project is abandoned & dead! Last year (when I finally did find the latest releases) Iplayed a huge game of Freecol, had so much fun and fell in love with your project.I also posted number of bugs and feature requests that Mike and others kindlylooked at. I made a nice HD video and took a whole number of sexy HDscreenshots showing off your game that I’ll be posting on the net soon as partof a huge Civ & Col tribute website and youtube series I’m working on. I’d love to help you guys however I’m not a programmer andmy art abilities are limited to simple pixel art stuff (eg I’m the creator ofStar Trek Doom, Quest for Glory IV 3D Hexen, Star Wars Civ2, Heroes of Might& Magic 2 Civ2, C&C Civ2, Red Alert Civ2, & more retro mods) so it wouldseem I’m not much help to you other than testing and maybe the occasional picturealteration. However there is another area I can properly help you with. Thereason I’ve barely finished any of my own mods is because I devote HUGE amountsof time to promoting other people’s fan game & mod projects relating to myfavourite games. I do this on my retro gaming website and youtube channelshere: http://blakessanctum.x10.mx/ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeUnV5Eh4pPQUjeodp7ZZiA In some cases with projects I’m super passionate about I goa step further and directly help out with development feedback and doing theirpromotional work and community admin work (freeing the Devs up to concentrate on the developing instead of wasting time on marketing and customer service). For example I run the indiedb page,twitter, forum and facebook pages for the Starflight Remake project where Icreated detailed dev diaries of the devs work that are posted on the indiedbhomepage brining a lot of attention to the project: https://www.indiedb.com/games/starflight-the-remaking-of-a-legend I created all the promotional media (pics & vids),install guide and run the moddb page, sourceforge page and sourceforge forum forthe Babylon 5 Civ4 mod project (which sadly the dev has gone inactive on): https://sourceforge.net/projects/babylon5mod-for-civ4/ I’ve also helped out and created all the promotional media(pics & vids) for the Starflight Lost Colony and Starflight Heroes of Arthproject moddb/indiedb pages too. I am a moderator of several forums and facebook groups. Ialso created and run a number of facebook groups for gaming communities who’sforums are mostly long gone and needed a new home such as Starflight, Master ofMagic, and Freelancer which now have member bases expanding into the hundreds(& hopefully one day thousands haha). Realising that Colonization is in thesame boat I recently created a new Colonization facebook group too that I planto use as a platform to heavily promote FreeCol and other Colonization relatedgames and fan projects: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ColonizationGame/ If you’re willing to let me I would love to help yourproject similar to how I helped others and fix up your public image a bit. Ifyou make me an admin for the sourceforge page I can do some of this stuffmyself. Either way here are my suggestions below: *1 Sourceforge fixes* - Edit the front page to have similar critical links &info to what’s on your github page here: https://github.com/FreeCol/freecol#contributing As the first thing people should see are links tohomepage/last stable release/github test releases/forum/bug reporting/featurerequests/source files - Update the pictures and add a youtube video as the currentstuff is ancient. I can supply
