Nifflas' Support Forum
General => About Nifflas' Website and Forum => Topic started by: Miss Paula on February 17, 2009, 13:31:17
-
The reasons for the recent crash are pretty much unknown, unfortunately. What IS known is that the forum's database has "suddenly" shown up a "severe error", that was on Thursday, 12th Feb. In the course of trying to fix this, there have been more errors and the Admins decided to go for a clean start/fresh SMF (forum software) install. The old forum is set as read-only and can be found here (http://nifflas.ni2.se/forum2) for reference, but note that it's pretty screwed because of the database faults, so finding stuff may be difficult or even impossible. It's presumably going to stay online for about a month.
As you can see, some things here have changed:
- The News section got removed/replaced with that neat news bar
- "Forumgames and Competitions" underwent a slight change of rules (and name)
- "About Nicalis" replaces the former "Night Games and Nicalis related", mainly to get the whole topic organised better
- "Forum and Site Issues" changed its name
- We set up a new category called "Being Creative". We thought that it was worth it, because this community around Nifflas is a pretty creative one. X) This category has the forums:
- Creativity Support (basically equivalent to the former "Creativity-related Discussions")
- Development Showcase (hasn't really changed)
- Collaborations (cf. "Community Projects & Fan Games")
- Knytt Stories Level Editing Support (this is a bigger difference. Instead of being a board in a whole category "Knytt Stories" of its own, now the former "Level Editing" goes here.)
- Nifflas' Sources (wholly new, but relatively self-explanatory)
- The "Games in Development" currently only contains "Night Game", but starting with this Board you will see a neat little modification that LPChip implemented: The snazzy board icons, pictures made by Ponto. :)
- Also note that the small sidebar on the right of this image will change colour when new posts are made in that forum or the child's subforum.
- I am pretty sure that "Released Games" and "Abandoned Projects" with their respective Boards don't need any explanation. X)
And now to the biggest change: The KS-Level-Submission forums are gone. They are going to be replaced with a rewritten/extended version of knyttlevels.com, where you will be able to submit your levels to in the future and receive comments and ratings. User-made tilesets and custom objects will have their place over there too.
The reason for this is that the KS forums just were too many in relation to the rest of Nifflas' games. We decided to shift the balance back to having a Support Forum for all of them mostly equally. Because of this, you can't post levels on this forum anymore for discussion, you are going to have a place for that at the Level Archive (http://knyttlevels.com/) soon enough. Also read LPChip's post (http://nifflas.ni2.se/forum/index.php?topic=40.msg233#msg233) on this matter.
Previews of levels can still be posted and discussed in here (http://nifflas.ni2.se/forum/index.php?board=37.0).
-
I hope this is the right place to respond because I wish to extend my congrats and thanks to all of those folks who put in a lot of hard work to rebuild the forum.
The forum looks great at first glance. Lots of changes and it appears to have better organization.
The big difference is, as you said Paula, the removal of the KS level submission forums. Looking forward to a re-designed knyttlevels.com. I'm sure that will result in much reduced traffic here as I suspect most members are like myself in that they play levels but don't make them. I'm still fiddling with the level editor! :crazy:
-
It is very appreciated to receive at least some thanks for the forum's rebuild. ;)
Thank you. :D
-
All I can say about it: yay!
I do really like the organizational changes. Congrats to LPChip, Paula, and the supermods for the new forum! :)
-
There are some things i find confuzzling about the new layout. For example, why cant Level editing and Level previews be child boards to the KS board? I think it would make more sense, but I'm just nitpicking. :)
-
Because the staff basically thought there were too much subsections to the knytt stories board and they'd keep the Nifflas-related stuff (the official levels and the editor support) there and the user-made content would then be moved to creativity -related discussions. I think it fits any of those, really, but we simply chose the "light" format. :P
-
Yay, the forum is back :D.
But now i need to start all over and the DWYW data is gone :sigh:. nevermind.
-
...I like the new little icon dealies down the left side of the main page, but I miss having the little WaDF ball that shows whether there are new posts or not. :/
-
See the little bar to the right of the picture? Same thing.
I personally wish there were a way to turn the icons off though; I'd like them if they were for every forum, but having them peppered with the tiny little WaDF balls just makes them disruptive. :/
-
See the little bar to the right of the picture? Same thing.
Yeah I know but I like the little WaDF balls better. 9_9
-
Oh. You mentioned their ability to show the new posts which implied that you didn't see...aw, screw it.
We want an option!
-
Awesome. good work getting everything back up, it seemed to be pretty much a huge pain in the ass. :)
Layout changes seem to make sense, though I suppose nobody can be sure if they'll be successful until they are in use for a while.
-
Great to see the forum back up, good work remaking it so fast!
-
The bright light is blinding me. Are there any other available themes yet?
-
Yes. Click the (http://nifflas.ni2.se/forum/Themes/Nifflas/images/english/profile.gif) (http://nifflas.ni2.se/forum/index.php?action=profile) button to go to your forum profile. From there, click "Look and Layout Preferences". In the "Current Theme" area, click "(change)" and select a new theme from there.
Currently, there's only one other theme, entitled "WaDF edition" (basically an enhanced version of Fasty's theme from the old forum).
-
I can't really add support for toggling images on or off, unless I would literally copy the themefiles and extensivelly edit it so that the support is gone for them. Simply having it optional is hard/undoable for me.
-
This new forum was well worth the long wait. Thank you Paula, LPChip and Ponto for rebuilding the ruins! It must have been hard work to get it running, preserve the looks and feel of the old forums, and make the cool new additions work well too - but you guys (and gal) pulled it off! Congrats!
I wonder, if the problem was database corruption, wouldn't it have been possible to drop the tables and restore the whole thing from an earlier backup (assuming that there was one to begin with... X-P )?
Anyway, it didn't take long to get used to the new system, with the possible exception of Knytt Stories 3rd-party stuff relegated to an external site, but that discussion is better reserved for another thread.
Thanks for bringing one of my favorite online places back! :)
(On a second thought... are the forums really ready to go public? While trying to post this message, I got a server overload error: http://host95.hostmonster.com/highload.html?action=post2;start=0;board=6 )
-
Perhspas it is mentioned somewhere before, BUT PLEASE - will be it possible to put somewhere link to the Old forum to give poeple chance to download some of their materials ? (levels which are not in KS archive, tilesets, Custom object, some links, gradients etc etc...)
Personally I do not have all these on my hard disk, so I think you understand me, why I am suggesting this. thanks
-
The old forum is set as read-only and can be found here (http://nifflas.ni2.se/forum2) for reference, but note that it's pretty screwed because of the database faults, so finding stuff may be difficult or even impossible. It's presumably going to stay online for about a month.
Did you actually read the first post, Drakkan? :moody:
Thanks SiamJai. X) The server overload error occured on the old forum too, occasionally. I don't think there is much to be done about it, neither a severe problem to worry about, as it just seems to come and go, though.
There have been backups, but it was decided to start freshly, like mentioned in several places (<_<), because that way it would be rather sure that merely fixed/circumvented (by lack of knowledge about their cause) faults would accumulate over time and lead to a big crash in the future.
-
All righty then! Thanks for explaining, Paula (and sorry if I made you repeat old stuff - everything is new to a newbie. :P).
-
The old forum is set as read-only and can be found here (http://nifflas.ni2.se/forum2) for reference, but note that it's pretty screwed because of the database faults, so finding stuff may be difficult or even impossible. It's presumably going to stay online for about a month.
Did you actually read the first post, Drakkan? :moody:
perhaps not Paula, because there is milion of new topics and lots of reading and I really havent time to read all of that, so I was just asking. SORRY if bothering you.
-
I can't really add support for toggling images on or off, unless I would literally copy the themefiles and extensivelly edit it so that the support is gone for them. Simply having it optional is hard/undoable for me.
Okay then, that's fine, I'll get used to it pretty fast :)
-
The new forum looks good - I like the icons (although representative icons for non-game threads would be nice, to even up the overall appearance. Is this something to be considered? I'm happy to attempt a few example icons if any mod, etc is interested...)
As for the Knytt Levels database - will it be connected / integrated to the forum in some way once the discussion parts are finalised?
-
The icons for the games are more like an icing, not meant to entirely replace the ball images. I don't think there will be many more significant changes to this aspect of the forum.
Read this post (http://nifflas.ni2.se/forum/index.php?topic=40.msg233#msg233) for some information about the connection/integration with the forum. :)
-
EVen Nifflas himself suggested to add icons for it. And although creating images for most forums is easy, it will make adding a forum in the future hard. If you now add a forum, it simply gives the ball indication. If all forums have an image, then when we add a new forum in the future, it will be required to add an image to that forum aswell, which can actually prevent us from adding a forum because we cannot find a matching image. Having all but one forums have a nice looking images is weirder than what we chose for now.
-
The forums still look nice, especially the released games section.
-
I think my personal text pretty much sums up my feelings on theserve's crash. <_<
-
I don't know if this has been mentioned before but everytime I quit Mozilla and like open it again and go here, I have to keep login in again, I should stay logged in.
I do have the "Always stayed logged in" button checked as well. :P2
-
hm...do you have cookies enabled? that's the only thing I can imagine having to do with that problem.
-
First I'd like to congrat and thank LpChip, Paula, J and all other people that worked to set up a whole new forum. I guess that was a lot of work, and I'm happy seing the forum back :D .
But I'm not convinced with the new KS Third party level reorganisation. I guess the Knytt Stories Level Previews section will soon become a mess, as it presumably is the equivalent to the old "Preview/Showcase" section. Also, what made the Niff forum so popular was the ability of posting your own levels on it. I think that relegating this on knyttlevels.com, and as so making such a separation between Nifflas's work and people's work is a great mistake.
Most people won't understand why you have to go to 2 different websites, and this might discourage many.
-
First I'd like to congrat and thank LpChip, Paula, J and all other people that worked to set up a whole new forum. I guess that was a lot of work, and I'm happy seing the forum back :D .
But I'm not convinced with the new KS Third party level reorganisation. I guess the Knytt Stories Level Previews section will soon become a mess, as it presumably is the equivalent to the old "Preview/Showcase" section. Also, what made the Niff forum so popular was the ability of posting your own levels on it. I think that relegating this on knyttlevels.com, and as so making such a separation between Nifflas's work and people's work is a great mistake.
Most people won't understand why you have to go to 2 different websites, and this might discourage many.
Please understand one thing here... We didn't removed it from the forum because we don't want it here. We moved it to KnyttLevels.com with a new system, so it will actually become easy to search for levels and so. With a forum system I simply cannot add support for filters/rating/proper searching/grouping levels by member/etc.
It'll be for the best, really.
I don't know if this has been mentioned before but everytime I quit Mozilla and like open it again and go here, I have to keep login in again, I should stay logged in.
I do have the "Always stayed logged in" button checked as well. :P2
Clear your cookies, close your browser, reopen and try again. If something like this happens, then the cookie file somehow is locked and cannot be written in. Clearing your cookies will force it to be removed so it can be readded again.
-
i really like the small changes to the forum, but it sucks we lost all the old posts. these things happen, i suppose. i'm just glad it's back.
-
I really like the new tweaks to the forum. :) I'd just like to thank LPChip, Paula, and any others who helped to get the forum back up. It sounds like you guys (and girl) put a lot of work into it. I'm not sure if this was mentioned, but the Other Free Games board seems to also have been removed. I liked it, but I guess that's what indie game sites are for. :/
-
Great. Nice work, waiting for new version of KS Archive
And I have one question, how to public tileset/custom object?
-
That will also be on Knyttlevels.com.
-
Ok, and will be there something like on old forum ? - writing about level by level players, writing about level by level players, esc
-
I think there will be a comments system. Not a 100% sure though. (about 98% :P)
-
okay, since it seems that some of the less regular members kinda skipped noticing that the forum crashed and now are puzzled by their account not existing [anymore], I suppose it doesn't hurt to sticky this.
-
So here is because of what I could not login...
I thought, my account was deleted, owing to absent me un forum about 2 months.
Thanks for scattering my doubts.
-
So here is because of what I could not login...
I thought, my account was deleted, owing to absent me un forum about 2 months.
Thanks for scattering my doubts.
it does say at the very top of the main page about this whole thing, with a link too...
-
So here is because of what I could not login...
I thought, my account was deleted, owing to absent me un forum about 2 months.
Thanks for scattering my doubts.
it does say at the very top of the main page about this whole thing, with a link too...
You must realize, old forum members aren't necessarily familiar with that bar, so they won't come to the forum with the mindset, "Huh, something isn't right, lets check that news bar that didn't exist previously..."
Not attempting to sound snobby if it comes off that way, I'm just simply stating that a few things have changed since the crossover.
-
The changes are big enough to notice that something changed. If people can't read, then I can't tell them anything, cus they won't read it anyway.
-
The changes are big enough to notice that something changed. If people can't read, then I can't tell them anything, cus they won't read it anyway.
Honestly... you would be amazed the things people can overlook. XD