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Re: The little Inn by the wayside

Posted: Mon Aug 04, 2014 18:22
by jayenkai
Not long at all, as long as you have a starting point.
My dislike of Apple's insane number of required icons, made me create an Icon Resizer tool. Start by drawing a 512x512 icon, and it resizes it to the multitude of required icons, ready for iOS releases.
After that, I started woking on Android games, which also needed more different icon sizes.. The tool expanded.
From there, I decided it'd be nice to throw in screenshot resizing, so I could take generic screenshots and it'd spit out a bunch of different sized mock-shots, scaled for iOS, android, HDTV and more..

Then I added "features", which took the game's logo, a screenshot and the icon, flung them together, and created little headers, thumbnails, features and more for various sites and things.

Adding an "arcade papercraft" template into the mix was actually a fairly simple process, although by now, my IconResizer has become a very very personal tool!! It's most definitely unfit for general usage!!

I'm considering coming up with something more usable for others.. Will let you know if I do.

Re: The little Inn by the wayside

Posted: Thu Aug 07, 2014 20:22
by eMTe


Video from cider tasting which I attended. Interesting that watching people drinking alcohol and talking about it can be so fascinating. On the other hand, I love watching cycling, biathlon and snooker, so it's probably the same mechanics (mysterious to me). The fact that I am completely green about cider making also helps, probably.

The funny thing is, the tasting came right before Putler's decision to ban Polish (subsequently EU's) apples and other fruit and vegetables. Which inspired (the ban, not the tasting :D) this one and similar pages. An apple a day keeps Putin away. ;)

Re: The little Inn by the wayside

Posted: Fri Aug 08, 2014 20:31
by Pater Alf
I hope nobody wanted to buy sunglasses, fake Nike shoes or handbags. Deleted about a hundred spam threads and posts throughout the forum.

Think I need a beer now. :Cheers:

Re: The little Inn by the wayside

Posted: Sun Aug 10, 2014 22:10
by eMTe
Sorry for writing it in an unassuming way, but it was decided (Wikipedia would now ask "who" decided ;)) that CWF would exist no longer. I guess the end will happen 31.XII.2014, 00:00, but I'm not familiar with details. I talked to Chrolle and I decided to not pay for the site (I was the only one who considered it seriously, unless I missed something). The reasons are various, but it's not lack of activity; I seriously considered paying for site just to keep it online. Now I don't, if you want to know why and I hope you don't, just ask.

So if there's nobody who is devastated enough by this news to support CWF and Chrolle won't change his mind, it will be game over. But the overall show will go on, won't it?

Re: The little Inn by the wayside

Posted: Sun Aug 10, 2014 22:44
by jayenkai
It'll be a shame to see it go.
There's a lot of big changes happening in the world of freeware. Recent Windows editions are bombarding users with "OMG! this is UNSAFE!!" messages, and that's if the browser even manages to let the user download the bloomin' file in the first place.
Grrr..

With huge leaps in HTML5 abilities, I've pretty much changed my focus to work with that. I still include windows exe's because... Um.. I can! But the main focus is now html5, with a dashing of OUYA on the side.
For browser based games, there's oodles of sites to choose from, and there's millions of games to choose from.
A site like CWF can't really exist without the downloads, or without requiring MASSIVE server requirements to host the html5 games. It could maybe work as a "pick of the week" tumblr type thing, but without self-hosting, there's no guarantee that a game mentioned one week, will still be on the other server the next week.
It's good that html5s maturing, but we're going to have casualties along the way. Cwf's archival nature will be lost in years to come.

But sites come and go, and that's the way things are. Especially nowadays with Facebook and Twitter taking up the majority of the things we used to use forums for.
Cwf's had a fantastic time, and has brought some cracking games to my attention.
It'll be a shame to see it go.

I hope we can all keep in contact in the future, via whatever means are currently available. If you feel the need to use a forum, Socoder.net will be available until I get bored with it :)
:Bearhug:

Twitter : Jayenkai
Facebook : http://Facebook.com/Jayenkai
Gmail : [email protected]

Re: The little Inn by the wayside

Posted: Sun Aug 10, 2014 23:16
by eMTe
jayenkai wrote:There's a lot of big changes happening in the world of freeware.
Bigger than you think. Human thought became freeware. Also, our bodies slowly become freeware, unawarely for lesser sentients.

Re: The little Inn by the wayside

Posted: Sun Aug 10, 2014 23:32
by Pater Alf
eMTe wrote:Sorry for writing it in an unassuming way, but it was decided (Wikipedia would now ask "who" decided ;)) that CWF would exist no longer. I guess the end will happen 31.XII.2014, 00:00, but I'm not familiar with details. I talked to Chrolle and I decided to not pay for the site (I was the only one who considered it seriously, unless I missed something). The reasons are various, but it's not lack of activity; I seriously considered paying for site just to keep it online. Now I don't, if you want to know why and I hope you don't, just ask.

So if there's nobody who is devastated enough by this news to support CWF and Chrolle won't change his mind, it will be game over. But the overall show will go on, won't it?
Just to make sure, about what sum are we talking?

Re: The little Inn by the wayside

Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2014 0:30
by eMTe
Not the.

Re: The little Inn by the wayside

Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2014 20:01
by Tormuse
Erm... I think that if the site was closing down, there would be some kind of announcement from Chroelle. Since there is none, I don't think it's actually closing down. Anyway, even if all the regulars disappear, there will still be plenty of activity thanks to all the spammers. :P (There sure are an awful lot of them today; what's up with that?) For the record, I still visit here frequently, even if just in a lurking manner. :)

That being said, if people want to keep in touch with me...

You can find my Facebook profile by searching for my username @hotmail.com and my Gmail is my username @gmail.com

Re: The little Inn by the wayside

Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2014 22:34
by eMTe
There was announcement, but in a forum section you probably have not access to.

Re: The little Inn by the wayside

Posted: Tue Aug 12, 2014 1:10
by Pater Alf
Somehow deleting all the spam and banning the spam-bots is quite a relaxing and satisfying activity. Maybe I should keep some of the spam threads alive, so I can delete them when I feel stressed or nervous. :D

Re: The little Inn by the wayside

Posted: Tue Aug 12, 2014 1:22
by eMTe
Welcome to the world of random fu ckers. :)

Re: The little Inn by the wayside

Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2014 0:51
by Pater Alf
Is there anything we can do against the spam-bots? I just deleted several hundreds posts again. It's getting annoying, they register and post faster than I can delete them.

Re: The little Inn by the wayside

Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2014 2:15
by jayenkai
It's a phpBB issue. I recently installed one myself, and have been going bonkers trying to keep them out!!
There should be a google captcha option in the sign-up settings, along with "require email activation" and other such tweaks.
Mine's now down to about three a week .. :/

Of course, if you ARE considering closing up shop, there's always the option of disabling signup completely, until you close the doors for good.

Re: The little Inn by the wayside

Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2014 9:54
by Drasir-Vel
There's no point in people being able to register, if their posts are just gonna be buried beneath a ton of spam. So until we find a solution of being able to register while keeping the bots out, we should disable registration.

Edit: Sorry, didn't see your posts until now eMTe. If the site is going down, i think we should agree on a place to go to to keep in touch.

Here's my contact info:
Gmail: [email protected]
Steam: http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198020447810 @drasirvel
Skype: @stiven22145
Twitter: http://twitter.com/stiven2500 @stiven2500
Facebook: http://facebook.com/DrasirVel @Drasirvel

Re: The little Inn by the wayside

Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2014 13:32
by Zyx
It truly boggles the mind how crappy the phpbb's anti-spam features are and how insanely difficult it is for mods or admins to do anything about it. Eveyrthing takes at least 10 clicks.

phpbb is dead. a carcass that the spam vultures feast upon.

Re: The little Inn by the wayside

Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2014 23:38
by Zyx
Ok, I was an idiot for not realizing this before. I went straight to the database, skipping the horrible phpBB interfaces, and deleted all remaining spam accounts that were registered recently. There were over 300.

Re: The little Inn by the wayside

Posted: Tue Aug 19, 2014 22:59
by Chroelle
Hi everyone.

I finally found some time to stop by. My life has been crazy stressed recently and even though eMTe asked me on Facebook to drop in and make it somewhat more official then I haven't had time.

It is official that my involvement in CWF - though undesired as it may be - is dwindling with other things in life taking over. CWF has for a couple of years now only been a place I dropped by because you guys were there, and I wanted to read up on what was going on. I have to look at the fact though that CWF is a rather pay-heavy site if you think of it as somewhere I pay to drop by every two months or so. I have to make a decision and my decision - which I announced in the very silent crewforum was that if anybody should feel the desire to take over CWF, then I would hand it over without any huge under-the-table paying. (Some of us remember the prize a certain owner of another forum asked of a certain Darklord - i mean admin). I am not interested in this - simply the survival of CWF for what it is worth.

Should anyone want to take it over, then we need to move the sites files (database and gamefiles) over to a server owned by that new owner. This is to seperate the accounts that I use for my business and CWF's files. I have asked at the serverhost and there is no way we can split the bill or anything. They are of course willing to help with hooking the new owner up with a server. :-)

I hope that everyone knows that this is only due to a financial decision for me. I always have loved stopping by CWF and always will - when I find the time and peace of mind.

Let me know your thoughts. Oh and PA - I cant access the billing at the moment, but it is something like 100€ /year or so. It has been set to paying automatically these last years so I don't really remember. The bill comes twice a year - with one time paying for the name, and another paying for the serverhosting.

Re: The little Inn by the wayside

Posted: Wed Aug 20, 2014 13:17
by Drasir-Vel
I've been considering ways of taking it over myself. But finally decided not to. I think it would mostly be to preserve the past that we would want to keep the site. But life goes on, and there are new games being made all the time.

It's easier to just set up a new place and continue from there. And if we do happen to get interested in a game which was on CWF, it isn't hard to just post it again. A forum for me, has mostly been about wanting to share something at the moment, and not as much for future preservation. I keep an index of games in my Dropbox for that purpose.
There are also ways to stay in contact that doesn't require paying for a webhost.

Re: The little Inn by the wayside

Posted: Wed Aug 20, 2014 23:01
by Zyx
So, the question becomes, what is that you guys want to save? What are the things that should exist in the next iteration of this community? I've quite lost count of which iteration we're at. Five? (Wayback Machine links to history that will never be written down, but some might find some macabre humor here.)

The games are safe. The problem is that serving them costs money. (Storing them is practically free.)

The forum data is safe. Even the Nostalgia posts... =) The issue is that spambots love phpbb.

And yes, I've been considering keeping the site on life support. Saving the forums is not an issue, but I'm not really willing to cover the games' bandwidth costs. We're stupid and pretty much the only site that has not plastered everything with ads and hidden the games behind some scammy ads that require filling out surveys and stuff. We're also the internet's #1 stop for Queen of Fighters and that Buffy game.