Re: robowiki are down now

> Anyway, it seems that hosting a stable mediawiki instance is a bit too much
> of a bother at current. Seems like a great idea to see if it can be exported
> to SF. If that doesn't work, then just exporting a static HTML site is an
> alternative:
> https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Publishing_from_MediaWiki#Built-in_methods_of_exporting_data_via_the_command-line

Ditching the current MediaWiki altogether seems a bit drastic. How
many instances of down-time have there been in the last couple years?
There was a big outage over the holidays in 2013 and then this one in
May. I doubt migrating the pages to a free host would work to
anybody's satisfaction. We couldn't migrate users, we have custom
MediaWiki plugins, even one that communicates with the LiteRumble
server. The RoboWiki is pretty huge and gets quite a bit of traffic.
The wiki would be a shadow of its former, uh, self. And who knows if
the reliability would improve, anyway.

Our current setup is pretty good. I use VPSLink for my BerryBots, too.
We just don't have any admins that still have the passion for
Robocode. When there is down-time, there is still the Wayback Machine
(at archive.org). If we can also offer a dump of the RoboWiki pages as
a big download, I'd be pretty satisfied with that setup.

When my passion started to fade, I made sure to give admin (MediaWiki
and SSH) access to some trustworthy folks that were still active:
Skilgannon, Rednaxela, and Darkcanuck. But I guess their passion has
faded too. (That's the same access that I have. David has that + the
admin console at VPSLink, for "hard" reboots.) Maybe someone like
Chase would be willing to step up with server admin responsibilities?
I certainly trust him and he knows his way around the wiki.

> On Mon, Jul 20, 2015 at 8:03 AM, Peter Strm <[email protected]> wrote:
> Very interesting mail thread! I know I used to be one of those advocating
> Robocode game play should stay as clean and simple as it was, but I do not
> remember ever thinking it through on a level even close to Patrick's.
>
> I'm also sure there are still major innovations to be made, even though the
> interest for the platform might fade before that happens. I can relate to
> how discouraging it could be to go about trying to compete with DrussGT and
> Diamond and realise you will have to perfect every existing trick in the
> book...
>
> Anyway, it seems that hosting a stable mediawiki instance is a bit too much
> of a bother at current. Seems like a great idea to see if it can be exported
> to SF. If that doesn't work, then just exporting a static HTML site is an
> alternative:
> https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Publishing_from_MediaWiki#Built-in_methods_of_exporting_data_via_the_command-line
>
> Regardless, when the export is done, let me know the hostname/IP of where it
> is published so that I can repoint the DNS things.
>
> /PEZ
>
>
>> On Mon, Jul 20, 2015 at 11:47 AM, fnl <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Patrick,
>>
>> Thanks for sharing your thoughts. :-)
>>
>> It would be great if we could move the RoboWiki to another Wiki or similar
>> (static pages?), e.g. using the Export feature of the MediaWiki
>> (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Export).
>> Perhaps it could be moved to the Wiki for the Robocode page on
>> SourceForge? It should be enabled first. Currently the developer pages on
>> SourceForge are down (is being restored after a disk breakdown). So I am not
>> able to see, if it is possible to import the MediaWiki export (yet).
>>
>> At least I want to let people access all the vital knowledge to make good
>> Robocode robots. And people get upset when the RoboWiki is down. But I fully
>> understand that you (PEZ) and David Alves don't what to be involved with the
>> RoboWiki anymore. The best thing would be to put it somewhere where more
>> people is able to maintain it - and hopefully without to pay for hosting
>> etc.
>>
>> When the developer pages of SourceForge (SF) are up and running again, I
>> will see if I can import the RoboWiki pages to the SF Wiki somehow.
>> I will also try to make an export of the RoboWiki pages, when I get time
>> for it (probably tonight). I expect that it will not be possible to export
>> the RoboWiki users. So this will be an issue.
>>
>> Regarding the development of Robocode. I am only maintaining the current
>> Robocode with bug fixes etc. If somebody want to add new features, they
>> should go ahead and implement these. I will help with the integration etc.
>> if the features are not too complex to handle. But I won't be the one doing
>> all the work (anymore).
>> Robocode is Open Source, so if somebody else want to take over the
>> development, they are free to do so. I just hope he/she/they will have
>> skills enough to get it in a better shape. ;-)
>>
>> - - - -
>> I am still working on a "Robocode 2", which is protocol based (on top of
>> WebSockets) making it possible to be language independent and also work for
>> web - e.g. using JavaScript. The development progress is slow as I don't
>> have so much spare time as I had 10 years ago (when taking over the
>> development/maintenance of Robocode).
>> I am not sure if I will ever finish this new version, but at least the
>> development is still ongoing. Currently it is not open source as I want to
>> make a clean core and have the freedom to change anything at anytime without
>> being forced to coordinate with other developers. I see this new version as
>> "my new baby", so it must be good enough before I let other people in.
>>
>> Best regards,
>> - Flemming
>>
>>
>>> Den lørdag den 18. juli 2015 kl. 20.04.23 UTC+2 skrev Patrick Cupka:
>>>
>>> Hey guys - late to the dialogue, but a few things to mention. (Beware:
>>> wall of text incoming.)
>>>
>>> The wiki mostly runs itself and is hosted at VPSLink, which is pretty
>>> reliable. The problem during downtime is that neither myself, who "owns" the
>>> wiki (i.e., from PEZ), nor David Alves, who actually pays for hosting,
>>> actually care so much about Robocode anymore. When your heart's not in it,
>>> there are plenty of other things that take precedence.
>>>
>>> I believe MediaWiki has a facility to export all the pages to an XML
>>> format. We could make the full archive available somewhere (eg, someone's
>>> Dropbox) every so often, if it's something people are interested in. Then
>>> you can do whatever you want with it. It strikes me as the kind of thing
>>> people say they want, then nobody would actually download it. :-) But we
>>> could try.
>>>
>>> There's certainly nobody acting as a gatekeeper here to keep it single
>>> sourced. There are no ads. PEZ and I gave a dump of the old wiki to someone
>>> upon request a while back. The RoboWiki is all about sharing Robocode
>>> knowledge.
>>>
>>> There are plenty of other programming games, but nothing in the same
>>> league as Robocode as far as number of bots or active competitions. Then
>>> again, people also complain that there is nothing new to be innovated in
>>> Robocode, so it's a double-edged sword. I like to joke that it's the "Google
>>> Reader of programming games" – it got a huge corporate push from IBM, it
>>> smothers the rest of the market (tons of bots, history, Java, name
>>> recognition), and might need to die off before all these other games can
>>> blossom - hopefully with some kind of common community, as well as
>>> communities of their own.
>>>
>>> I have my own offering: BerryBots (http://berrybots.com). You can read a
>>> comparison to Robocode gameplay here:
>>> http://berrybots.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=17 ... Or even try it in a
>>> browser: http://playberrybots.com. Primarily, it features programmable
>>> stages, walls on the playing field, and a secondary weapon (grenade-like).
>>> It also has a pretty sweet automation API with built-in multithreading,
>>> (optional) graphical form inputs, and the ability to save HTML5 replays of
>>> matches. There are only a few bots, but I'd be hella impressed if you can
>>> beat Sanic (from Frohman).
>>>
>>> The other games that have caught my eye are FightCodeGame.com, a fully
>>> web based Robocode-inspired game; and NodeWar.com, which might be the only
>>> truly inspiring / innovative gameplay I've seen. I'd also check out
>>> http://programminggames.org, which seems to be gaining steam.
>>>
>>> I sympathize with the desire to join a large, active community. But the
>>> RoboWiki might make the Robocode community seem a lot more active than it
>>> is. Good luck catching me and Skilgannon while we never update our bots. ;)
>>> At some point, we have to make something new. I suspect even "Robocode 2"
>>> will have the same problems as the rest of the new entrants into the genre.
>>>
>>> Hope that's enlightening! Best of luck,
>>>
>>> -- Patrick
>>>
>>> Sent from mobile
>>>
>>> On May 4, 2015, at 4:32 PM, Jesse Clark <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>
>>> I'll raise my hand.  I just don't know what would need to be done though
>>> since I've never done this before.  Would a service such as
>>> http://www.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Main_Page suffice?  Can anyone provide some
>>> other guidance on a good way to host that is minimal cost?  Also, how would
>>> one obtain the current wiki content?
>>>
>>> Question.  Is robocode still viable or are there other better, widely
>>> used, supported platforms along the same vein?  Please advise.  I'm looking
>>> to work with a platform like robocode to ultimately compete against others..
>>>
>>>
>>>> On Sun, May 3, 2015 at 5:57 PM, ramn.se ‘¸ <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> How do we get hold of the database?
>>>>
>>>> On Sun, May 3, 2015 at 8:31 PM, Pavel Šavara <[email protected]>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Hi everybody,
>>>>>
>>>>> it would be perhaps good idea if all people who think robowiki is
>>>>> important would try to help.
>>>>> Somebody may try to run mirror, or perhaps somebody would organize and
>>>>> run it on more stable hosting ?
>>>>> Perhaps people would donate some cash needed to pay for the hosting ?
>>>>> Just suggestions, in the end it's community project, right ?
>>>>>
>>>>> Anybody at all ? Raise your hands !
>>>>>
>>>>> Pavel
>>>>>
>>>>>> On Sun, May 3, 2015 at 11:48 AM, <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Yeah, I hope they fix it soon... It's really important for many
>>>>>> people!
>>>>>>
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
>>>>>> Groups "robocode" group.
>>>>>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send
>>>>>> an email to [email protected].
>>>>>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
>>>>> Groups "robocode" group.
>>>>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send
>>>>> an email to [email protected].
>>>>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the
>>>> Google Groups "robocode" group.
>>>> To unsubscribe from this topic, visit
>>>> https://groups.google.com/d/topic/robocode/E437YrPMZFw/unsubscribe.
>>>> To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to
>>>> [email protected].
>>>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
>>> "robocode" group.
>>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
>>> email to [email protected].
>>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.



-- 
Patrick Cupka, [email protected]
--

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "robocode" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected].
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.