soldathq.com - Soldat Files & Downloads

[Frenchie]

Hello Everyone!
I've been away for nearly a year from these forums, yet my website http://soldathq.com has been churning away in the background ever since.

As some of you might know (or remember :p ) I scripted
Frenchie's SLAP (Soldat Lobby Avec Players) A searchable player/server list - http://soldathq.com/servers
Frenchie's MAD (Map Automation Daemon) An automatic map downloading database (largest soldat map database!) - http://soldathq.com/maps
(More info on these projects can be found in the Developers Corner)

Recently I had to renew my hosting, not because the time was up. It was because the site had reached it's size limit (1.5GB) because of all the automatic downloads by MAD (maps, scenery, texture), so I upgraded to the next plan (5GB)
MAD continues to download atleast 10-20 maps a day. (At the time of posting this - it has 6866 maps)

Now this has sparked some interest for me in finishing some more Soldat related projects. (I have a little one I wish to complete)


But There is one thing I really need to work on.. And thats the template/ style of the website.
I need help with this, cause design work holds me back (I'm not too good at it :p ). So I'm asking if anyone could possibly help me by any means possible. Be it scripting, sketching, designing, advicing on a new style or template for soldathq.com  It would be greatly appreciated


PS. As I have been away/ really busy (still am )I would like to know what you think about SLAP or MAD. Any advice / comments? Please Share

PSS: Little side note, ever day over the last months the largest downloader of maps was from a polish IP using an identifier of something like 'MAD Downloader 0.1' if you know who please tell me. I'm very interested because I'm really happy that someone is taking advantage of MAD (one of the reasons I didn't block direct access to the map / scenery & texture folders.

[Bonecrusher]

are u kiddin me? create teh mappacks...

[Frenchie]

are u kiddin me?

You'll have to fill me in here, cause I don't get it.
How I am kidding you?

create teh mappacks...

What mappack?

[jrgp]

You'll have to fill me in here, cause I don't get it.
How I am kidding you?

create teh mappacks...

What mappack?

I think he finds it insane to have to download all the maps in MAD individually. He wants you to make a map pack with all of MAD's maps in it.

nice work on those sites, btw.

[Furai]

Wow, I really like SLAP. I find it very useful. Back on topic, unfortunately I can't help you with page design.

[scarface09]

This looks pretty cool...I like the list of maps and how it also shows a picture of the map.

[Frenchie]

You'll have to fill me in here, cause I don't get it.
How I am kidding you?

create teh mappacks...

What mappack?

I think he finds it insane to have to download all the maps in MAD individually. He wants you to make a map pack with all of MAD's maps in it.

Ok thanks for clearing that up. But what in the world is he going to do with nearly 7000 soldat maps.... Too many to play.
MAD's designed for players who want to find any soldat map possible without having to search the web following dead links.

nice work on those sites, btw.

Thanks

Wow, I really like SLAP. I find it very useful. Back on topic, unfortunately I can't help you with page design.

No worries, glad you found my SLAP helpful :p

This looks pretty cool...I like the list of maps and how it also shows a picture of the map.

Do you guys have any ideas/suggestions towards these scripts or the site?

[jrgp]

Do you guys have any ideas/suggestions towards these scripts or the site?

I think MAD might be better if it listed the maps like this. Notice the sorting, tiny overview clip, pagination, multiple site themes, etc.

[Frenchie]

Thanks for the reply.
I dont think this would work with MAD because, the overview clips would basically all look the same
the pagination would be pointless (too many maps... for eg. on the link you gave me, you got 20 maps per page... on MAD with 6900+ maps thats over 345 pages...)
multiple site themes: I need ideas for new themes, thats why I'm posting this topic

And the sorting, it already does this.. Using javascript, so it's real quick and it allows multiple column sorting. (Works with MAD and SLAP)

[Bonecrusher]

Ok thanks for clearing that up. But what in the world is he going to do with nearly 7000 soldat maps.... Too many to play.

create few mappacks then so i can choose which id like to have on my pc

[GSx_Major]

Specific mappacks based on gamemode, perhaps?

[Bonecrusher]

exactly

[jrgp]

Now what could you possibly do with 2000 CTF maps? I agree with Frenchie in that MAD is primarily for finding a lost old map easily and quickly.

[Setsuna]

Ok thanks for clearing that up. But what in the world is he going to do with nearly 7000 soldat maps.... Too many to play.

create few mappacks then so i can choose which id like to have on my pc

That would be a great idea since theres like thousands of map which we have to go through.

[Frenchie]

Ok thanks for clearing that up. But what in the world is he going to do with nearly 7000 soldat maps.... Too many to play.

create few mappacks then so i can choose which id like to have on my pc

That would be a great idea since theres like thousands of map which we have to go through.

I'm trying to understand the logic here: If you don't want to go through thousands of maps, what makes you think that I would?

I know I asked what you guys thought could be improved and I thank you for the replies.

I notice most replies say they want mappacks. It turns out actually I had been wanting to add a feature that would do this (and would be useful to soldat players) (Theres a post of it in the Developers Corner). I want to add a feature that allows anyone to create a mappack, just by ticking some checkboxes on maps they want. They will then get a link, that they can post online. (without having to worry about uploading maps yourself, cause they are already on MAD)

What do you guys think?

[jrgp]

I notice most replies say they want mappacks. It turns out actually I had been wanting to add a feature that would do this (and would be useful to soldat players) (Theres a post of it in the Developers Corner). I want to add a feature that allows anyone to create a mappack, just by ticking some checkboxes on maps they want. They will then get a link, that they can post online. (without having to worry about uploading maps yourself, cause they are already on MAD)

What do you guys think?

I was actually going to suggest this as I started reading your reply . Yep, I think it's a great idea and shouldn't be too hard to implement. Just take the parser/packer you currently use for one map and have it use multiple. And of course cache the generated custom map pack and make the url to download it something like: ?action=download&ids=23,50,1350,34

[Frenchie]

Yep thats what I was gonna do.
Except I was thinking more along the lines, that when a mappack is created it would have a little description page with info mappack, maps, d/l's and all that she-bang. (So the maps in the mappack would be saved in a DB)
And I wasnt planning on caching any of the mappacks (I dont do that either with the maps) because since the beginning of starting MAD, I wanted to avoid hosting duplicate files of the same thing (sceneries, textures). If I did cache every map and mappack, imagine how many duplicates there would be of sceneries/textures sitting in zips on the same server. (and the huge waste of space)

And there are quite a few more benefits of not caching in this case. I'll give a brief example (you might understand or not - check Frenchie's MAD topic in Developers Corner if you dont ) - when you download some maps, some servers do not have all the sceneries (so if I cached, the zips on the server they would be missing files) , but using my SceneryFetcher script it will go and find other maps using these sceneries. When a server is found hosting any map using a specific scenery, it will be downloaded. (So the more maps MAD has, the more powerful its sceneryfetcher gets)

[GSx_Major]

Now what could you possibly do with 2000 CTF maps? I agree with Frenchie in that MAD is primarily for finding a lost old map easily and quickly.

Sorry, poorly phrased. What I meant was specific gamemodes, like DB or TW or whatever. Modes with enough maps to be a pain to download one by one but few enough so you'll want them all. Though something like "?action=download&ids=*&name=kz_*" would do.

[Frenchie]

Now what could you possibly do with 2000 CTF maps? I agree with Frenchie in that MAD is primarily for finding a lost old map easily and quickly.

Sorry, poorly phrased. What I meant was specific gamemodes, like DB or TW or whatever. Modes with enough maps to be a pain to download one by one but few enough so you'll want them all. Though something like "?action=download&ids=*&name=kz_*" would do.

Yes I understand now
Link to post detailing how I want mappacks to be created http://forums.soldat.pl/index.php?topic=27729.msg334194#msg334194

Edit: You'd be surprised how few maps these specific gamemodes have :p
eg db maps http://soldathq.com/maps/?q=db_&o=m&t=N&w=2

[GSx_Major]

(Just noticed a search for db_ will include ctf_Stupidblum...  )