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triplea-game / triplea

TripleA is a turn based strategy game and board game engine, similar to Axis & Allies or Risk.
https://triplea-game.org/
GNU General Public License v3.0
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WarClub Website Future / Migration #1037

Closed DanVanAtta closed 8 years ago

DanVanAtta commented 8 years ago

The warclub website, a PHP code base, lacks admin and development support. The website provided some interesting features. Here we are looking to see about migrating these features to newer technology stacks, and/or integrating them directly into the game.

3+4 are perhaps easiest to tackle. A&A.org will host PBF, so we reduce down to only one forum that supports PBF. For 4, we consolidate the forums to the sourceforge (AKA nabble forums), and split that with github issues.

1+2 are the trickiest. For 1, we can augment the lobby backend and integrate game play more with remote communicate back to the lobby server. To do this, it would probably make sense to migrate from Derby DB to a MySql or Postgresql DB first. Then we can make heavier use of the server DB, which could support the tracking requirements of a ladder and challenge system.

For 2, a challenge system, we can augment the lobby windows with new tabs perhaps, and allow folks to post/view challenges. To another extent, it might make sense to postpone ELO ratings until after we have everything else done. That would allow us to see how the other features are turning out, and the best way to incorporate it. Regardless, we can still discuss how to incorporate ELO..

ZjelcoP commented 8 years ago

Sorry to hear you're aiming at shutting WarClub down and really urge you not to. Personally I'm aiming at upgrading the site. This has been my goal for quite some time now and am still working towards that. In this discussion: http://tripleadev.1671093.n2.nabble.com/TripleA-Website-tp7589306p7589309.html I described some of my ideas on it's future. As I said there my life got very busy with lots of big changes but fortunately now is settling in a position to get back on this. As the new GitHub site is great for providing a showdisplay, central hub, info and downloads i feel it offers nothing in terms of community binding. That is my main goal with the Warclub.

In my promotional activities I've been visiting GTO forums quite a bit and though the game play itself may have been seriously limited, it had a very busy competition field and loyal community, even willing to pay a decent sum to be able to play there. What I believe is one major key to this success is the ladder being integrated in the game. The game was being played through the website, so those two environments were essentially one.

One of the main things I'd like to see is some form of integration between website and lobby. Tie those two together so a visitor to the website will see activity in the lobby. Also a visitor to the lobby might become more active in forums.

So as you're suggesting to integrate ladder and challenges with the lobby that sounds great. What I'd ask is to tie this also to the website.

If at some point the sourceforge forum/functionality would be integrated as well that will in my view only strengthen the community. As the core development discussion has moved to Github, what remains seems suitable to be moved to the WarClub. By combining all this in one warm, happy and vibrant place I believe the TripleA Community will only get stronger and much larger.

Some issues: -Server costs: I believe those are well manageable and am willing to pay for those in full if necessary. Also am confident donations will keep covering those costs as they have in the past. -Who will work on it? As said I'm aiming at putting work in this and messaged Bung about this. Many others have also volunteered. Problem is that many offers as has mine fell to deaf ears in the warclub. I'm still thankful to Bung for keeping it up for as long as he has, but he seems to be a hard man to reach and doesn't seem to visit the Warclub at all. What is needed is someone to take the lead, and accept and direct the help offered. -A building plan. One of my questions as being pretty new to programming and websites is what should the new building blocks be. At first I was focusing on PHP and MySql, to be able to work on the site as it is, which would be fine by me. Many times i hear that its current design is completely outdated. I can learn and am learning all kinds of tools but what are the right tools for this job so I can focus on those. At the moment I am unable to answer this. Of course this also depends on what the final functionalities will be so that will have to be determined.

The minimum result I'm going for is keeping the warclub alive and slowly improving it as it is. If that means finding a new server and paying for that I will do that. But I hope we can get a lot more out of this.

RoiEXLab commented 8 years ago

@ZjelcoP I think what @DanVanAtta is trying to say, is that there's no unified forum for triplea. The nabble forum is used for development topics while the Warclub forum is user for other topics. IMO the big goal shouldn't be to shut the website down, but to have one forum (domain name to be discussed) for all topics and to have a download website (gh-pages triplea-game.github.io).

Cernelius commented 8 years ago

You are missing the most important feature, that is the ability of moderators to secretively talk with each other. Lacking a secreted forum (accessible to moderators only), I believe it would be advisable removing all Mod positions and all lobby rules. I believe the preconditions for having moderators is having:

  1. An active leader supervising and directing them.
  2. A secreted forum where the active leader supervises and directs the moderators, and where the moderators report all actions taken. Lacking any of the above elements, it is my belief that the whole Mod and ban/mute/boot system should be dismantled, since it would become merely arbitrary, and chances are that it would turn abusive. I'm not sure whether or not Deltium (the new leader of TripleA, after Bung) is fulfilling point 1.

@ZjelcoP I see you are a "Registered Users" only in the WarClub. Unless I'm missing something, I have no clue how you want to tackle any issues without being a "Webmasters" (needed to have access to the Blocks etc.). I guess they should have made you "Support Staff" already, but you need at least "Senior Staff" or "Lobby/Forum Mods" to even access the secreted Bunker.

I'm personally against having a competitive system integrated in Lobby. Also, that would definitively require both a competent moderator staff and a very active leader behind it, otherwise you are just creating issues; and even if at a point in time TripleA might have it, you should not add stuff relying on conditions that are not going to be necessarily verified, in a purely volunteer based structure. To be clear: TripleA is not GTO, and it would be definitively a bad idea to try to turn it into something like GTO (even tho it might work for a while, until the conditions are met). Moreover, you cannot even start thinking about a real time competitive system without having a fully working timer system. But, admittedly, I'm biased on this point, since I just dislike competiveness (ladders/tournaments/etc.) in games. Thus, you can just remove all ladders etc., for all I care. I would rather never see a dumb competitive system integrated in lobby, as well, but that's just me.

Cernelius commented 8 years ago

@ZjelcoP What I mean is the the WarClub is searching for a webmaster for more than 4 years, by now. If ZjelcoP or anyone wants to volunteer, I think they will give you access (making you part of the "Webmasters" group) pretty easily.

http://www.tripleawarclub.org/modules/news/article.php?storyid=4 http://www.tripleawarclub.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?start=0&topic_id=1531&order=ASC&status=&mode=0

And, yes, it is more than 5 years that the WarClub is mostly lacking a developer. Nevertheless, it is currently running on a recently updated PHP5.

Here there are some info regarding the latest PHP etc. updates (secreted in Bunker and not accessible to regular Users): http://www.tripleawarclub.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=2297

I should not copy-paste secreted info out of Bunker to be viewed by random people, but hopefully noone will reprimand me:

Websites

I upgraded to PHP5 and did a Xoops upgrade from a very old version to a new version, the combination of updates required a number of code changes to fix pages and modules that wouldn't render because of errors.

The news module had to be replaced entirely. The ladder module ( which was custom built by someone else originally) had many pages didnt render anymore but are fixed. I also added some better $_REQUEST/$_POST/$_GET validation to avoid security problems but I would still recommend more code be reviewed. Same thing was done to the dice server.

There is no copy of the code on github, nor was subversion used, it was just one developer for the last years so no need to go overboard. I just did backups every couple months when I remembered.

(Bung 2016/06/27)

Cernelius commented 8 years ago

As said I'm aiming at putting work in this and messaged Bung about this. Many others have also volunteered. Problem is that many offers as has mine fell to deaf ears in the warclub. I'm still thankful to Bung for keeping it up for as long as he has, but he seems to be a hard man to reach and doesn't seem to visit the Warclub at all. What is needed is someone to take the lead, and accept and direct the help offered.

The main leader of TripleA is not anymore Bung, but Deltium. He can make you a "Webmasters" in the WarClub. He has also access to the linode.com account, root level access on the server, and godaddy domain ownership.

I don't know if you already mailed Deltium too; anyway, the ownership passage to Deltium is an info secreted in Bunker only, as far as I know, but he opened a related Topic here, upon taking the leader role: http://www.tripleawarclub.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=2295

ZjelcoP commented 8 years ago

@RoiEXLab I totally agree with and share that goal of unification of forums.

@Cernelius Good to hear Deltium took over. I will email him. I had seen the cleaning up of issues that were bugging me in the Warclub some time ago. Must have been Bung implementing new PHP and Xoops then.

As to competitive system in lobby: Though I don't play competitively either there are many people that do like it. I believe the current process of keeping up scores is somewhat cumbersome and will keep some people from competing. Also the competitions and ladders that are running are not visible to any players visiting the lobby. Some might not even know they exist.

From what I've seen there are quite a few Moderators and enthusiastically organizing people in ladder and tournaments. I believe those requirements will be met, but the only way to really find out is to give them the means to make it happen.

Though many have requested a timer and I see the use I don't see how it is imperative. Many tournament games are also played live in the lobby aren't they? What I was mainly thinking about is the game automatically reporting the results (after admitting defeat) to the ladder, tournament or whatever competition that particular game is part of.

To be clear: TripleA is not GTO, and it would be definitively a bad idea to try to turn it into something like GTO (even tho it might work for a while, until the conditions are met).

I didn't know GTO very well, only visited the forum. What was GTO according to you and why is it a bad idea to try to turn it into something like it? Not that that is my goal, I'd merely like to pick out one aspect that i believe helped make it a lively community. What happens if the conditions are met? What conditions you mean?

RoiEXLab commented 8 years ago

A small suggestion regarding the "elo" aspect... A possibility would be to implement a statistic system for lobby games. Something like games won/lost, time played etc. Those statistics could be used to calculate a rank and displayed on a forum next to a users profile - like a wins/losses rate or similar.

RoiEXLab commented 8 years ago

@DanVanAtta imagine the case, in which all triplea forum websites would have been deleted completely... How would you start another new forum?

RoiEXLab commented 8 years ago

@ZjelcoP btw FYI if you need a hand with the Warclub website I could jump in for some things... If you get root access, please change the permission of the profile picture folder to www-user or whatever user needs the rights, so that we can finally upload profile pictures again!

Cernelius commented 8 years ago

I meant you would need having an active leader and a competent mod staff, which you can have at some point, and not have anymore at some other point, because everything is volunteer based. Now Deltium took over, but the WarClub and all the mod staff has been leaderless for more than 2 years, since Veqryn went afk forever... What I meant no systems should be made requiring an active leadership and willingly mods too much, or it may very easily crumble in the future. And, no sorry, I've no GTO experience. Just guessed you were very into it. I just meant TripleA can't be like something professional, and stuff should be bad-times safe, to some extent.

ron-murhammer commented 8 years ago

Well lots of good ideas here. I think my big take on things is I'd like to see some further consolidation to reduce maintenance. Currently, we have warclub website (ladder), new website, old SF website, SF dev forums, warclub forms, and lobby. I'd like to move to 1 website with 1 forum. Then we can think about potentially more integration between that site/forum and the game itself.

Forums: I think we should move the SF dev forum to consolidate it with the warclub forum. If the easiest answer is just moving it all to warclub for now then I'm fine with that. If we'd prefer a new forum and moving them both there that is fine too.

Websites: I think we should either move everything to the new github based site or to the warclub site. I don't think there is much benefit to having them split. The warclub site is stuck on pretty outdated tech but has a lot more functionality currently. It is also hosted on server which runs the lobby as well. My thought is to essentially rewrite the current warclub site using a newer tech stack and integrate much of what we put on the new github hosted site.

DanVanAtta commented 8 years ago

I carved off two topics from this thread:

1040 - Moderator Secret Communication

1043 - Game Ladder

Let's continue discussing here:

DanVanAtta commented 8 years ago

@RoiEXLab @ZjelcoP

PHP is a bit broken: https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-php-singularity/ https://eev.ee/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/

If the warclub website were integrated with the game engine, lobby, or a lobby database, then it will drag everyone in to dealing with PHP integrations. To illustrate, let's say for example that some value from the lobby is displayed by PHP. If a dev changes the way the lobby handles that value, then either they will break the website or will need to update with the PHP. Let's be clear that updating PHP would involve:

PHP being an older technology stack, those steps are not terribly streamlined.

@RoiEXLab @ZjelcoP , hopefully this is convincing reason to not invest more in the PHP code base of warclub. It seems we would get a lot further, faster, by investing in a new tech stack, like Jekyll+Javascript. There are a number of other tech stacks we could use, for example there are many interesting javascirpt based ones out there. For now I think we are best focusing on using the new github website to show data that can be found in the lobby database. There is plenty to do there while we focus on integrating more features into the game.

DanVanAtta commented 8 years ago

What do people think of this as a plan?

Longer term, we could introduce a new technology stack to completely replace warclub and the (new) github IO website.

Short to medium term we put a link to the new github IO website on the warclub home page. Implied in this plan is that we focus on using warclub as a place to have a chat forum, with new efforts going towards a more modern technology stack (which can be something that also maybe replaces the github IO stack)

RoiEXLab commented 8 years ago

@DanVanAtta we might take a look at nodebb a Node.js based forum software which is paid normally, but has a free "developer edition" available on github. We could host this on a subdomain of Warclub until it's design is final... Notepad++ uses this software in their forum

DanVanAtta commented 8 years ago

A couple of things I'm still not a huge fan:

@RoiEXLab - nodebb looks to have more than we really need. I'm not sure if a brand new forum is necessarily better than consolidating from 2 to 1. Seems like we should consolidate to either the source forge nabble or the warclub forum. As a third alterantive I think we should consider, github issues can accomplish everything forums can. Only question I have there is it feasible to migrate both forums to a github issue queue?

ZjelcoP commented 8 years ago

From Redrums post which I just about completely agree with:

I'd like to move to 1 website with 1 forum. Then we can think about potentially more integration between that site/forum and the game itself.

I believe this would be the biggest win for TripleA, one central spot.

Forums: I think we should move the SF dev forum to consolidate it with the warclub forum. If the easiest answer is just moving it all to warclub for now then I'm fine with that. If we'd prefer a new forum and moving them both there that is fine too.

Must say the Warclub forum is a pain in the ass to work with, so if you're suggesting migrating into the current Warclub tech I'd definitely would advise against that. Maybe i misunderstood.

My thought is to essentially rewrite the current warclub site using a newer tech stack and integrate much of what we put on the new github hosted site.

I believe this to be the best approach.

On the techstack I'm easily convinced to drop PHP. As said I'm unable to judge all options properly. As long as the new Techstack can provide any future options that might want to be integrated it is fine. And for this i believe an broad and open vision of the future should be applied. Look not only at what functionalities there are now, but also at what might be added in the future, particularly integration with the game.

@DanVanAtta

For now I think we are best focusing on using the new github website to show data that can be found in the lobby database.

What data do you mean by this?

What do people think of this as a plan? deprecate the sourceforge forum, consolidate to the warclub forum. feature freeze on the warclub website/code Longer term, we could introduce a new technology stack to completely replace warclub and the (new) github IO website.

I'd say first new technology, then move Sourceforge forum and github IO website. Current warclub seems unfit to accept these functions.

We're still hosting a website, server, which has its own admin costs. A cloud-based forum like nabble is very nice, no availability requirements.

Can you explain this for me? Are you talking about finances? What are availability requirements?

folks that do not have a war club login will need to create one, folks are really not a fan of this.

After integration of all parts yes. As I was hoping for further integration, is 1 single login for the website and lobby feasible? That would make many people happy.

My thought on future integration would be that you can open the game/lobby in the website. (just meaning the website would open the game in a window fitting into the site). People would come into the website, check the forum, see who now leads the ladder and won the finale of the tournament and then check the lobby for a game. It could become usual for many people to start their TripleA session by opening the website. Integrating ladder and competitions into the lobby would be great, but people will also need a forum to discuss what happens in there. Have those functionalities separated by a single click in the website.

My main motivation for being involved in this is that i believe the player base of TripleA and community activity has great potential for further growth. This is mainly due to the exceptional effort that has been put in by all developers and mapmakers to make the high quality and diverse game TripleA is today. What I feel is holding it back is the presentation and the community being spread around.

DanVanAtta commented 8 years ago

Responding to your questions/points @ZjelcoP :

@DanVanAtta

For now I think we are best focusing on using the new github website to show data that can be found in the lobby database. What data do you mean by this?

The current github website read data that is pushed ot it. Users on the other hand cannot submit data via the website. So we can use our current github website to for example to report ladder/lobby statistics and other info. WE cannot though use the website to say accept challenge or something like that. Ignoring that limitation, we can get a lot of mileage out of the current github website.

What do people think of this as a plan? deprecate the sourceforge forum, consolidate to the warclub forum. feature freeze on the warclub website/code Longer term, we could introduce a new technology stack to completely replace warclub and the (new) github IO website.

"I'd say first new technology, then move Sourceforge forum and github IO website. Current warclub seems unfit to accept these functions."

I would tend to agree the current warclub is not very fit for the functions. I am not fond of the idea of us building yet one more website, and doing yet one more migration. IMO we should use the current github IO website as much as we can until we find some real limitations. Then a newer technology stack can provide any missing funcionality, and it will then be a matter of integrating the two. Github IO should be able to integrate pretty easily, and for the most part it is the newer tech stack that we have been wanting.

We're still hosting a website, server, which has its own admin costs. A cloud-based forum like nabble is very nice, no availability requirements. Can you explain this for me? Are you talking about finances? What are availability requirements?

Availability requirements. If the server goes down, our website goes down, one of us needs to get up and do stuff. On the other hand, if someone else is hosting the website, like github, then there is a ton of work that they will be doing for us for free. The operational cost of making sure the host is running well, has disk space, is not over capacity, is avaialble, etc.. is all overhead that we would do well to avoid. Those overhead costs would be excellent to avoid, as they are our largest costs. In fact, recently with the SF setup, we had so much admin overhead I don't think it was really possible for an admin to do anything else other than make sure things kept running. It's much better if we can shell out the admin pieces to cloud hosting options, that lets the admins focus on other stuff, like maps and code improvements/game features.

folks that do not have a war club login will need to create one, folks are really not a fan of this. After integration of all parts yes. As I was hoping for further integration, is 1 single login for the website and lobby feasible? That would make many people happy.

They are two different DB's right now. The lobby login I think would be easily compromised from the warclub. I don't think we'll get ahead of the bots/spammers, one more reaosn to look to cloud solutions. Ideally IMO we would have just 2 logins, github login and a lobby login.

My thought on future integration would be that you can open the game/lobby in the website. (just meaning the website would open the game in a window fitting into the site). People would come into the website, check the forum, see who now leads the ladder and won the finale of the tournament and then check the lobby for a game. It could become usual for many people to start their TripleA session by opening the website.

We might be able to open some views in the website - so people can maybe view stats or screenshots. Getting it so the game is launchable or even playable from the website would almost require a rewrite of the game. It's too much to tackle, I don't think we can successfully complete that project.

Integrating ladder and competitions into the lobby would be great, but people will also need a forum to discuss what happens in there. Have those functionalities separated by a single click in the website.

Well, we kind of have to have some integration in the game. Otherwise the website is just completely add-on and has no relationship to the actual game. If we get some sort of tie in with website+game, then we would not want to force people to head out of the game, to a website, to then log their stats.

My main motivation for being involved in this is that i believe the player base of TripleA and community activity has great potential for further growth. This is mainly due to the exceptional effort that has been put in by all developers and mapmakers to make the high quality and diverse game TripleA is today. What I feel is holding it back is the presentation and the community being spread around.

The only area I disagree is that the game mechanics are too slow, it's too difficult to complete a game, to start matches, and playing matches is just slow. IMO a challenge system, and lots of work for a more streamlined PBEM will go a long way. In addition more features that make the actual game play faster, like for example, a "yes to all" button when doing bship bombards (it's slow picking where each of 20 bships will bombard), a purchase planning feature, etc... though we are quickly getting off topic.

DanVanAtta commented 8 years ago

Okay, I'm not terribly convinced the warclub is the better of the two forums. Does anyone still think it is better to merge the source forge forum into warclub?

IMO we should migrate the warclub forum to source forge. After that, we can then maybe think about replacing the forum with just github issues. Having 3 or 4 different places to check up on communication is burdensome, and makes things very confusing. It's also really hard to effectively have documentation in one place that people can find.

Thinking about documentation, we have a lot more of it on source forge than we do warclub. I think that is more weight for migrating/merging to the sourceforge forum. I'll also remind that the sourceforge forum is WAY cheaper (in terms of labor and operations cost - we do almost nothing to maintain the source forge forum, only just need forum admins. Contrast that to having our own custom PHP login system with custom PHP lobby code, running on a server that we maintain whose availability we ensure, none of that is needed in the SF forum).

RoiEXLab commented 8 years ago

@DanVanAtta NodeBB looks very promising to me, as it has a modern design and a good working UI (Text editor etc.) which also works excellent on mobile devices. If you want a cloud based solution there are many possibilities which are sort of recommended by the creators... Yes, NodeBB has a lot of features, but it's still a forum software which allows for custom Themes - the only thing we should (we actually don't need to) care about is to create a good looking tripleA themed Theme. Updates can easily be pulled via git. Plus you don't have to create an extra account for it: You can log in via Facebook Google+ or GitHub (I think it supports other login services like Steam etc. as well, but I didn't saw any option other than the above when logging in into the demo Forum). Thoughts?

TL;DR NodeBB could be a simple, modern (and cheap) solution

Deltium commented 8 years ago

Hi - this is Deltium, and I've taken over the responsibility from Bung for hosting the server at Linode. I've been actively playing on TripleA for only about 2 years, but before that I was playing on Game Table Online for many years. I have been consulting and chatting with many TripleA members, and I can summarize the feedback as follows:

(1) both live AND PBEM play. I emphasize PBEM, because there are many players that can ONLY play PBEM, and this is actually a big part of the community. So, BOTH are really important.

(2) Tournaments AND rankings. There is a material % of the community that are highly competitive, and that enjoy the tournaments and ELO ratings. I strongly encourage the developers here to keep these features integrated into the software and/or website.

(3) Forum: The forum creates an opportunity to chat about strategy, discuss upcoming events likes GenCon, or simply allow people to chat about relevant topics, etc. This is really important to keeping a vibrant community and people coming back.

I'd like to highlight that the PBF feature can be discarded. It's really not needed, and if people really want to post their games, they can save the file, and post in the forum, which is far more effective. I also understand that these PBF games take up a lot of storage, etc., and it should be removed.

My last topic for discussion is the issue of users. We have 50,000+ users, and there are probably less than 500 that are active users. I'd therefore request that we create an absolutely new login mechanism for each and every member and require all new members to sign up again.

Lastly, I'd like to emphasize that a few users and I are willing to put our money on the table to encourage the developers to make these changes. At the moment, we have a combined total $2,000 I know that it is not much, but we want to emphasize that we appreciate your time and effort, and we want to help you guys make these positive changes long-term for Triple A.

While there are strong voices in favor of keeping the website, I have personally noticed that many players don't even know that the website exists, as they just use the online software. Coupled with the maintenance and administrative burden of the website, we should strongly consider integrating the two, BUT we must ensure that the important features listed above are clearly included. The risk in not doing so is that we are going to lose more users.

Please feel free to write to me directly at 5683deltium@gmail.com, or feel free to post here, and we can chat further.

Cheers, Richard (Deltium)

ron-murhammer commented 8 years ago

@Deltium PBF is the most important game type and probably most used for human vs human. The fact that you don't acknowledge that is troubling. PBF has essentially made PBEM close to obsolete. Please rethink your post.

PS. Also the fact that you don't mention http://www.axisandallies.org/ just makes me wonder as its probably the most active site related to TripleA and Axis and Allies.

Deltium commented 8 years ago

@Ron - if it is important to you and/or to other users, it is fine to retain. Let's keep the focus on the main aspects of my post. I don't have anything against PBF. Cheers, Deltium

ron-murhammer commented 8 years ago

@Deltium I'm not sure I understand what your main points are? The general goal of this thread is to discuss what we'd like to have in terms of website(s) supporting TripleA.

Deltium commented 8 years ago

@Ron - my understanding of this thread is to both discuss the website and/or its migration. I am in full support of the website, but acknowledge its challenges, and the associated opportunity to migrate the core features which I alluded to above into one platform. Personally, if we could re-vamp the website cost effectively, and with little maintenance, I'd be in full support of that. I'm an active user on the website, and you can see that I am playing often, so any decision by this working group to maintain the functionality for the users if fine by me. My goal of my post was to highlight those features which a vast majority of users feel strongly and passionately about. For emphasis, these features are:

(1) both live AND PBEM play. I emphasize PBEM, because there are many players that can ONLY play PBEM, and this is actually a big part of the community. So, BOTH are really important.

(2) Tournaments AND rankings. There is a material % of the community that are highly competitive, and that enjoy the tournaments and ELO ratings. I strongly encourage the developers here to keep these features integrated into the software and/or website.

(3) Forum: The forum creates an opportunity to chat about strategy, discuss upcoming events likes GenCon, or simply allow people to chat about relevant topics, etc. This is really important to keeping a vibrant community and people coming back.

Let's all stay focused on deciding what platform is best to accomplish these goals, and any other priorities, given the limited resources.

Thanks, Deltium

DanVanAtta commented 8 years ago

Moving these topics to different issues: (1) both live AND PBEM play -> https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/issues/1049 (improving PBEM) (2) Tournaments AND rankings. -> https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/issues/1043 (ladder)

Continue Discuss here: Website technology + Forums

DanVanAtta commented 8 years ago

For forum, perhaps the most important question is if we are going to move to a new forum entirely. If so, I would look to stuff that attaches to Github IO. The jekyll+javascript+ajax stack we have there can do everything we want, and I'm not aware of anything that is going to be much better, and nowhere will we find better integration (meaning this is as good as it gets when it comes to maintenance and config).

Deltium commented 8 years ago

agreed.

yamamot0 commented 8 years ago

I think everything is said:

After being trying(!) to mod the website for years I can only confirm that the site should provided the features:

  1. ladder (ELO Rating)
  2. tournaments (somehow automatical: same date each, palyers get an email, pairing automatical and so on)
  3. PBEM + PBF + forum game Challenge thread, ie: post your challenges here
  4. Forum for getting help, discussing strategy and finding oponents for casual games and so on I think a secret mod forum should be easy to make- not a big item for me

But the site also needs traffic, a lot of traffic. So I am following zjelcop 100% wenn he says: "One of the main things I'd like to see is some form of integration between website and lobby. Tie those two together so a visitor to the website will see activity in the lobby. Also a visitor to the lobby might become more active in forums." Integration between website and lobby: Best would be wenn all persons, who want to play on the server, have to make an accout in the warclub. And first then using the account in the warclub they can play on the server (probably complicated). This should of course first be incorporated wenn a good working gamingsite is running.

Zjelcop: If you like - and I hope so -, you can pm me. I should be able to give you admin access on the warclub, so you can look into it.

best regards

RoiEXLab commented 8 years ago

@DanVanAtta

For forum, perhaps the most important question is if we are going to move to a new forum entirely. If so, I would look to stuff that attaches to Github IO.

What do you mean exactly by attaching to GitHub IO? If you mean to have a forum based on client side javaScript, I think we shouldn't go for that... There is a Forum Software for Jekyll but it's not very extensive e.g. it has not many features.

I couldn't find better alternatives - there seems to be no such thing

ZjelcoP commented 8 years ago

Short story: http://atwar-game.com/ (Thx for that link Deltium!) This is a prime example of what i believe would be a giant leap for TripleA community. It has all functionalities in one place. It looks attractive, amazing and full of action. You can almost hear the dice rolling, smell the smoke and feel the mud and metal!

Though some do not give a #*!@ about those aspects, I believe many others do and will be attracted. Most of all people who do not know TripleA yet and come into contact in any way. Not for the Veterans but for all the newbs who will be the Veterans of the future!

As others have disagreed with me on this in the past, I hope the view you apply on this is not that of personal preference or needs but that which will be most advantageous to the TripleA community as a whole.

yamamot0 commented 8 years ago

http://atwar-game.com/ looks great, but I would think thats to much for a start :) First of all it integrate the server with the forum - most importent for the traffic! daak.de is a very simple example of a playingsite for A&A, which have all functions a player needs, but it doesnt integrate the warclub with the software (they use a very obsolet tool called ABattleMap). I have played there a lot, because they have an extreme good tournament- and laddersection - I only stopped because they still use ABattleMap.

ZjelcoP commented 8 years ago

Long story:

We might be able to open some views in the website - so people can maybe view stats or screenshots. Getting it so the game is launchable or even playable from the website would almost require a rewrite of the game. It's too much to tackle, I don't think we can successfully complete that project.

Being playable from the website/being web based was definitely not was I was suggesting. But the website launching the game would require a rewrite of the game?

As far as I can see now the free forums/websites do have quite some limitations.

The current github website read data that is pushed at it. Users on the other hand cannot submit data via the website. WE cannot though use the website to say accept challenge or something like that.

From Github:

We recommend GitHub Pages users follow these limits: GitHub Pages source repositories have a recommended limit of 1GB . Published GitHub Pages sites have a 1GB recommended limit. GitHub Pages sites have a recommended bandwidth limit of 100GB or 100,000 requests per month. GitHub Pages sites have a recommended limit of 10 builds per hour. If your site exceeds these usage quotas, you may receive a polite email from GitHub Support suggesting strategies for reducing your site's impact on our servers, including moving to a different hosting service that might better fit your needs.

Besides that the look and feel of Github issues is far from what I'd like to see for a future website. (see above post).

Using a paid server will give complete freedom to create what we want how we want it. Admin costs and availability requirements: -My belief is that the knowledge base in the community to perform these tasks is much larger than that to work on the TripleA game-engine. I also believe the willingness from other members of the community to perform these tasks is underestimated. I cannot prove these points or even explain exactly why they are my beliefs. Hopefully others would like to comment on these points. I do understand a small group of developers can't do everything and see your motivation to reduce overhead. But there might be other ways than putting all that workload on that small group.

I also think this doesn't all have to happen on a very short notice. I sure know I can't make it happen. But by looking further ahead, making a decent plan and then build it right the first time I think it would play out the best.

http://atwar-game.com/ looks great, but I would think that's to much for a start :)

I know it's quite a goal to set but I'm merely putting it up there as that, a goal for the future which will hopefully influence the choices in the present.

RoiEXLab commented 8 years ago

I totally agree with @ZjelcoP

Deltium commented 8 years ago

Excellent discussion, and it is good to see. I'd like to be mindful of a couple facts:

A few questions:

Thanks again to all who are advancing this discussion. Warm Regards, Deltium

prastle commented 8 years ago

Yes I Also agree with ZjelcoP. Many of the points that have ben discussed by the mod team for years have been covered here it seems. This is good.

One point I would like to repeat that has only been briefly mentioned is the user/login database. Lobby moderators have a huge headache with this. For the Triplea community that mostly play PBEM or PBF it is a problem that isn't generally noticed. If it is to much of a headache to create a single Login through the warclub that accesses the game that way. Then how about as a simple fix for now we just require all to rejoin the game when the next release comes out and delete the database of all old names. This would eliminate the 50 000 names. Hopefully a 24 waiting period so a new name could be checked by a mod could be setup somehow as well.

One request that has been asked for years is to make a notation beside any name that is noticeable by all if the user is an anonymous login. Or remove the button entirely. This has been discussed many times over the years. Just my two cents worth.

GLHF Pras

Cernelius commented 8 years ago

I don't understand most of the stuff or why PHP is bad or whatever or even why it is so needed to remove the WarClub (I'm sure there are good reasons, if the developers say so), so I shouldn't even talk in here, but since often stuff stays unfinished for a long time, and there are so many issues open and more keep coming, I just think that the WarClub, despite all its problems, should not be switched down till everything to substitute it is fully done and most agree that it is great. I just fear that we might end up with no WarClub and no better alternative. Also, if the developers would be a bit more present in WarClub, it might help to get an idea about where to go for the new stuff to replace it, just saying. As said, this is not really based on anything, so feel free to ignore me. I realise it is just a vague suggestion from somebody with no insight.

RoiEXLab commented 8 years ago

@all If we go for a complete rewrite of the Forum, I'd like to sum up the benefits of nodeBB: NodeBB is a node.js based forum software (Free and Community developed). I installed a local version on my PC and it really blew my mind - it's working perfectly and has tons of pre-built features

Benefits:

Mods/Admins:

Easy to use: New categories can be created and edited via settings page (for example dragging to reorder) Users can be deleted or banned via the settings page Posts can be deleted or filtered with a variety of plugins

Developers:

A plugin system allows to create simple extensions to filter some text or to perform specific actions on some events (see the official Page for more information) When downloaded via git, a simple pull on the weekly branch keeps nodeBB updated nodeBB uses Node.js instead of PHP (see @DanVanAtta's links to this topic) -> more dynamic Webpages

General: It has a modern Design with can easily be changed with built in designs or additional CSS. It includes toggleable social media buttons and has a intuitive text editor (it's supporting Markdown as well)

etc. etc. etc.

Downside: It uses a NoSQL database like Redis or MongoDB -> not compatible with MySQL

If you are not conviced, you may look at the various suggested ForumPages on the official nodeBB site (scroll to the bottom of the Page) or try it out for yourself Installation instructions

Just for the case we are going for a "rewrite" I think this would solve a lot of problems which were mentioned I'd appreciate if you could bring in your thoughts on this...

Deltium commented 8 years ago

Hi All - just a gentle reminder to ensure that we include all key users and moderators in any and all key decisions BEFORE any changes are made. I want to personally thank everyone who is contributing to this project, and we appreciate your efforts therein. Thanks Deltium

DanVanAtta commented 8 years ago

@prastle let's clean up the login database after 1.9 is out. We already want to switch the DBs that support that, if we go to new MySql DB then we simply do not migrate the existing user accounts. We'll need to come up with a list of mods and create those accounts. Some additional thought should be put into the login requiremetns. I've always appreciated tripleA not requiring an involved registration. But, if we do require email, we'll have to take a look at some security considerations to make sure that we don't lose everyones email addresses to hackers.

@RoiEXLab - how would nodebb be hosted, could you open a new issue to talk about nodebb, and also please take a look at alternatives and compare and contrast them. We should choose the right tool.

@Cernelius

"Also, if the developers would be a bit more present in WarClub, it might help to get an idea about where to go for the new stuff to replace it, just saying."

I sympathizes with the sentiment, part of the problem is there are about 5 or 6 different places for the development team to be present. I'll try to check out what is happening on warclub a bit more often.

"I just fear that we might end up with no WarClub and no better alternative."

WarClub is likely to be frozen in favor of investing in more productive alternatives. If we do keep the warclub code live, it's not going to be integrated with the game engine anytime soon. That is because of the sheer complexity of updating the game engine code appropriately, and having that play well with PHP. Regardless, it introduces integration challenges, which makes the PHP code become an even larger problem. This is one reason we should look to alternatives to accomplish anything that we wish to do today with the warclub PHP.

Otherwise, there is no solid reason right now to turn off warclub. We need to migrate the features out first. Just be aware that updating warclub is not very feasible, and the picture is even worse than you would think. Let's say we did want to integrate the lobby + warclub. In that case I would love to participate, but currently most of the features in warclub are broken. For example, I get an error message whenever I click "profile", and I get error messages for most of the links. We would need to fix these issue as well, not to mention the technical challenge of integration and doing so in a way that would work and not require lots of maintenance (with current state of the engine code and warclub code, this does not seem possible)

So, bottom line, we are looking to see what warclub provides today, and finding better ways to accomplish that. Then we'll have a look at how to do any further migrations once we get to that step.;

RoiEXLab commented 8 years ago

@DanVanAtta Created #1067 to discuss this topic

DanVanAtta commented 8 years ago

Okay:

After looking at the discussion in #1067, I think there is some consensus around this plan:

So new features will be built with a newer tech stack, slowly replacing war club. With this plan we will be leaving behind the final remaining source forge asset, and warclub will be around for some time to come as we migrate/replace features with a new tech stack.

To finalize and move forward, we need to agree on merging sourceforge with warclub. Let's track the details of that migration here: #1071

DanVanAtta commented 8 years ago

Okay, here is the list sub-tasks and projects to tackle:

I think we have some consensus on the future of warclub and migration path for it. Namely new features will be built on a new tech stack with an eventual transition to a new tech stack.

Any thoughts on this overall plan at this point? Otherwise will close this issue and leave it to the sub tasks to complete the rest of this project.

DanVanAtta commented 8 years ago

Summarizing, there is concensus here to: