Nifflas' Support Forum

Released Games => Knytt Stories => Topic started by: egomassive on January 24, 2018, 18:41:14

Title: levels.egomassive - a KS archive
Post by: egomassive on January 24, 2018, 18:41:14
Lately I've been revamping the Knytt Stories portion of my website to contain a repository of Knytt Stories related programs. This was spurred by the recent deletion of Nifflas's own website. Part of this web-project is the creation of a levels archive, just my favorites. It's still a work in progress on both the posting of levels and hammering out the site code, but the basics are there.

levels.egomassive.com (http://levels.egomassive.com)

I'd be glad to hear opinions and criticisms. Also, if I've accidentally posted something with a copyright violation please let me know. I started with the beginning of the alphabet and I've already had to sadly reject THE RECKOMING by bradf and Night SE by Chezzy for copyright infringement.

Note: As it fills up with levels, they will appear in pages of 20. I've only posted 12 so far, so that feature is not evident.

todo list:
Title: Re: levels.egomassive - a KS archive
Post by: SC on January 25, 2018, 00:19:44
This is COOL!! :D Reminds me that I have to (eventually) revamp the Juniverse levels page with on-site download links and tidied-up button CSS...
Title: Re: levels.egomassive - a KS archive
Post by: scratskinner on January 25, 2018, 07:25:50
So how much overlap will your level archive have with knyttlevels? I see, for example, that Dark Sky of Wish Mountain and Outsider are not on knyttlevels. (Unless there's been some title/author munging somewhere.)

Also, you say this is just your favorites. Will you be using different grades of favor, ex. "ego", "ego+", "ego++", etc.? (A couple hundred is an awful lot of favorites...)

Also also, while you might not happen to have any of these (https://nifflas.lpchip.nl/index.php?topic=6782.0) levels, you don't suppose you could crosscheck your mental list of "levels I'm pretty sure I got off mediafire or whatever" with "levels I'm pretty sure aren't on knyttlevels"? (after "infringing levels" and "way too big levels" of course.)

Spoiler: Minor typo in your post (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: levels.egomassive - a KS archive
Post by: egomassive on January 25, 2018, 14:08:15
@SC: I like your site too. If I include a link-list to other Knytt Stories related sites I would add yours, but I'm really leaning away from the idea altogether. Reminds me too much of web-rings from the ancient days of the internet. *gets chills*

@scratskinner: I haven't made a final decision on the inclusion of a rating system, but I don't think it's needed. I only plan to include levels that I think are worth having, and the descriptions should warn you if they have issues. I'll probably make a tag for the absolute best levels, but I don't know what I'd call it.

@scratskinner also: I have two of your missing levels. I've added one of them to the next batch of uploads to my archive.
Title: Re: levels.egomassive - a KS archive
Post by: sergiocornaga on January 25, 2018, 15:47:44
Quote from: egomassive on January 25, 2018, 14:08:15
Reminds me too much of web-rings from the ancient days of the internet. *gets chills*

Well! Remarks like that are sure to get you excluded from SC's web-rings!
Title: Re: levels.egomassive - a KS archive
Post by: ixMarcel on January 25, 2018, 16:57:52
Quote from: egomassive on January 25, 2018, 14:08:15
I'll probably make a tag for the absolute best levels, but I don't know what I'd call it.

Legendary. Best of. Exquisite.
Title: Re: levels.egomassive - a KS archive
Post by: egomassive on January 25, 2018, 21:37:43
Quote from: sergiocornaga on January 25, 2018, 15:47:44
Quote from: egomassive on January 25, 2018, 14:08:15
Reminds me too much of web-rings from the ancient days of the internet. *gets chills*

Well! Remarks like that are sure to get you excluded from SC's web-rings!

Just to clarify, I'm not accusing SC's site of being like an early 90's personal webpage. It's quite mid 10's actually. ;)

@ixMarcel: Ohh! I like legendary!

I spent too long today playing levels instead of posting them. It's an unavoidable danger. Hugely disappointed that Diago's levels have stolen audio. I spent a long time looking for a replacement for S.A.D. by MoozE from the Stalker OST so I could post Oil by Diago. I'm not sure what genera that is, but I've had my fill of spacey droning ambient for now.
Title: Re: levels.egomassive - a KS archive
Post by: sergiocornaga on January 25, 2018, 22:27:26
That is a shame. Why do you feel the need to rigorously adhere to copyright, if you don't mind me asking?
Title: Re: levels.egomassive - a KS archive
Post by: egomassive on January 26, 2018, 12:20:15
Quote from: sergiocornaga on January 25, 2018, 22:27:26
That is a shame. Why do you feel the need to rigorously adhere to copyright, if you don't mind me asking?
It's not necessarily that I agree with all the extremities of copyright law, but I do believe in owning your works. Honestly I'm more concerned about my server space being shut down by the corporate androids that I rent it from than any lawsuits. In the case of S.A.D., the song is given away freely for personal use. There's certainly no harm in having it in a non-profit work, but the laws disagree. Once I break the law I have no defense or recourse no matter how unreasonable the law might be in a given situation.

The culture around copyright is evolving, but being an American, I'm not taking any chances. The FCC wont allow a DVR for over-the-air broadcasts to be sold because the broadcasters don't want you to have them. All American brand computer manufacturers provide sound-card drivers that have "record stereo-mix" disabled, because the recording industry demands it. My government sides with the corporations, and the corporations sue people like me. This is not a safe place to break copyright law.

That said, I play abandonware. I download free streaming content. If I feel it's ethical then I'm fine with it, but re-distributing is a line I haven't crossed yet.
Title: Re: levels.egomassive - a KS archive
Post by: scratskinner on January 26, 2018, 19:11:24
So, hopefully this isn't entirely off-the-wall, but...

What're your thoughts on bundling what you can (easily) find of a level's context with it? Probably at least the blurbs you have on your site, but, like, stick a text file in the world folder and stuff it with reviews or development logs or whatever. For example, I know with Endless Winter there had been plans for alternate endings that got scrapped because of (if I recall correctly) exhaustion and wanting to finish. (Not to mention the worldbuilding stuff.) I know this because I'd read the round robin topic*, and it'd be nice to know that this sort of information would be available to anyone playing a level in the future, even long after it's been wiped from the Web. A time capsule, of sorts. (It's interesting to play Don't Eat the Mushroom and see a picture of a forum that no longer exists.)

(Obviously, this would all be going forward, if you wanted.)

*In collabs rather than level previews, I think. Unless there was another one in level previews.
Title: Re: levels.egomassive - a KS archive
Post by: StraightFlame on January 27, 2018, 00:14:22
When i clicked the download link for The Extinct Birb, i got a thing that said "multiple choices".
Title: Re: levels.egomassive - a KS archive
Post by: Vegetal Gibber on January 27, 2018, 00:49:14
Pretty cool idea, and there are quite a few levels on your list that I haven't tried yet :O

I found it a bit weird that you could filter levels by category/difficulty by clicking on the listed tags, but not by entering that same exact keyword in the search field, unless the keyword happens to be mentioned in the description text. It's not a big deal, though.

Quote from: StraightFlame on January 27, 2018, 00:14:22
When i clicked the download link for The Extinct Birb, i got a thing that said "multiple choices".

The link to that level seems to be broken (my guess is that the file was renamed to fix the incorrect ".knytt.knytt.bin" extension, but the link wasn't updated afterwards). Fortunately, the server gives you a link to the correct file on the error page instead of just giving up, which is pretty neat.
Title: Re: levels.egomassive - a KS archive
Post by: egomassive on January 27, 2018, 02:55:55
@scratskinner: This is already a lot of work. It sounds like a neat idea, but I'm struggling to write some of those blurbs. The idea of summing up every level's development history is overwhelming. If you like that sort of thing check out the Deesgeega levels. One of them, I forget which, has a whole bunch of test screens.

@StraightFlame: Fixed the link. Thanks for letting me know.

@Vegetal Gibber: The search and tag stuff is standard Wordpress.org software. I may look for more powerful tools, but I'm just glad it works.

Title: Re: levels.egomassive - a KS archive
Post by: scratskinner on January 27, 2018, 19:04:08
@egomassive: I'd been thinking less trying to process into something clearer and more just copypasting the relevant forum topic (like the topic (https://nifflas.lpchip.nl/index.php?topic=6708.0) for Who Kidnaps the Knytts) and maybe other bits on the forum (like fubaka's review (https://nifflas.lpchip.nl/index.php?topic=6604.msg71078#msg71078) of WKTK) and stuffing it in a text file.

Though I can understand why that would also be added hassle. Suppose I did it on my own. If I posted/attached text files of such efforts, would you bundle them, or would they be the straw that breaks the camel's back?

Also, would you be wanting help writing those blurbs, or is this a case of
"They're my favorites, therefore I need to describe them"?
Title: Re: levels.egomassive - a KS archive
Post by: egomassive on January 28, 2018, 06:48:54
@scratskinner: I could set up an author account for you. You could make posts all by yourself. It's pretty easy. PM me your e-mail. ... As for backing up info from this site onto my site, I think this forum is more likely to last than my website. What do you think about providing links to the relevant topics? Discussion on levels like Endless Winter go on and on. If someone was really interested in that, then a summary wouldn't cut it.
Title: Re: levels.egomassive - a KS archive
Post by: scratskinner on January 28, 2018, 12:41:24
It's probable that this forum will outlast your site. But it is not impossible that your site will outlive the forum. (If Nifflas had still been hosting the forum when quitting the web, your site would likely postdate it, if you'd have made your site at all.) Or that a level saved to someone's hard drive will outlive both. (See also YellowDuck's epic KS levels dump.) Certainly it is not guaranteed that this would preserve the context, but it's not guaranteed your site will preserve the levels on it, either. At any rate it's less backing info up on your site and more backing it up in the levels themselves.


The "link to relevant topic" thing sounds fine, even if it turns out to be an "instead of" rather than an "in addition to". As for my email, would saying it's EDIT3:(snipped on the off chance that was dumb) suffice? (assuming bots can't read backwards here.) EDIT2: If you're emailing me, post to let me know.
 Was that a yes or a no on the blurbs? if so, got a list of your backlog? (I was offering to help under the assumption that I'd have played some of the same levels you had. Probably not much help past that point. But I also assume others would be willing to help here.)
  What's having an author account entail, exactly?

I'm wondering whether we're talking past each other. A summary certainly wouldn't cut it, but I'm not suggesting summaries, just stuffing whatever can be found in a textfile in the world folder and let whatever amateur historian that decides to poke around there sort it out. (A textfile mostly because I figure there'd be minimal impact on size that way.)

Also I'm noticing a discrepancy between dessgeega's Fossil on your site and on knyttlevels:

your site fossil 0.0 mb
knyttlevels fossil 264k

EDIT:Oh, hey. A new page.
Title: Re: levels.egomassive - a KS archive
Post by: egomassive on January 28, 2018, 22:51:38
@scratskinner: Sent you an e-mail. The Fossil file size was a mistake on my end. Check out the website's dashboard. If you're not into being an "author" you can PM me blurbs and summaries here instead. Any help on a project this big is welcome. By the way, I've completely forgotten to tell you how to log-in. levels.egomassive.com/wp-login

If anyone else is reading this stuff and thinking they want in on authorship, PM me. If you have a good posting history here, I'll probably give you a pass.

Title: Re: levels.egomassive - a KS archive
Post by: scratskinner on January 28, 2018, 23:58:57
Got it. Did quick test login/logout. Will figure things out tomorrow. (Hopefully I have lesser privileges if my account gets subverted or whatever.)
Title: Re: levels.egomassive - a KS archive
Post by: scratskinner on January 29, 2018, 12:59:17
@egomassive: PMed you.