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Imback55

Nothing New On idgames Lately

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I've created this thread because I thought there wasn't one(because I wasn't looking hard enough) and was hoping to get some answers on what's going with idgames. At the same time, I also worry about Ty and hope he's ok.

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Glaice said:

Question, what will there to do if something did happen to Ty that was serious (but not fatal) and couldn't really do much more with /idgames/ anymore? Who (or group of people) will do the painstaking task of downloading everything from the archive and backing it up for the replacement?

There's probably little on ftp.gamers.org that isn't already mirrored elsewhere or sitting in somebody's off-line backup. Though the archive itself doesn't necessarily have to be moved, just new administrators appointed to manage it.

Be well Ty, wherever you are.

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Who could be appointed the new manager and possibly a co-manager from this community? I'm not sure fraggle would want to on top of the burden with him working with Doomwiki.

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I came here curious whether Ty Halderman had perhaps left a message about his absence, but see only lack of information, speculation, and concern. I can address much but not all of that.

Gamers.org (originally DoomGate) was launched in 1994 by Kapi, and John and I joined in 1996. We're basically three old geezers and -- though less so nowadays -- gamers who own and operate this site ourselves, as a hobby that -- for the past 15 years -- costs more money than time. We soon embarked on a separate adventure called 3DGamers.com which ended in 2007, and that explains why the Gamers.org website still looks so last century. :-) Myself, I maintained the idgames archive on cdrom.com for about a year until Ty took over in February 1997.

In Fall 2001 when cdrom.com no longer supported community archives, our mirrors of the idgames, idgames2 and unreal archives were upgraded to be the new master repositories, and Ty continued to maintain the idgames one with very few interruptions. As some of you pointed out, the major one was hurricane Katrina striking his (then?) hometown New Orleans, but that's about it.

On April 4, Ty last logged into our server for idgames maintenance. A week later we had a small disk problem that accidentally caused the idgames/incoming tree to be deleted, but I restored and re-opened it within a day, with only a handful of unprocessed files being lost (people so affected are welcome to re-upload). Noticing that Ty didn't return to process the incoming stuff, I mailed him twice to no avail and also tried a phone call yesterday, but the contact information we have of him is outdated. Hence I don't even know whether he still lives in New Orleans, although his profile here still says so.

So yeah, I also hope he's okay, but I know him long enough to be sure that he'll let us know what's going on once he is able and willing to.

However, the purpose of the little history lesson above is also to reassure you all that idgames is not going away, after two decades there's no reason to stop now. :-) The main purpose of Gamers.org nowadays is to preserve and serve historical gaming archives, idgames most of all, and there are not only multiple public mirrors but also redundant private backups, to restore them in case of calamities like our December 2013 RAID crash and server move (http://www.gamers.org/doomgate/whatsnew.html).

I'm not going to speculate what will happen should Ty not return in the long run, but we'll figure that out with the Doom community if and when the time comes. Until then, please be patient and don't engage in any needlessly drastic actions.

Thanks,
Frans

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Thank you xymph, for bringing some sanity to this thread :P

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Well, that was reassuring. Now we can all go back to mapping without any worries (except the well-being of Ty, of course).

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Hey,

Xymph said:

I came here curious whether Ty Halderman had perhaps left a message about his absence, but see only lack of information, speculation, and concern. I can address much but not all of that.

Gamers.org (originally DoomGate) was launched in 1994 by Kapi, and John and I joined in 1996.


DoomGate! I remember that fondly. Even though I think I only visited it once. But it was a memorable visit!

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Glaice said:

Who could be appointed the new manager and possibly a co-manager from this community? I'm not sure fraggle would want to on top of the burden with him working with Doomwiki.


This is an accurate representation of how I imagine the decision-making process will go down.

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Glaice said:

Who could be appointed the new manager and possibly a co-manager from this community? I'm not sure fraggle would want to on top of the burden with him working with Doomwiki.


I'll solve the problem. I appoint myself the new manger and I...

*Gets Killed by 100K of every projectile ranging from imp fireballs to BFG blasts*

...

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I was a bit concerned when I didn't receive the email (I actually thought that it was automated until he actually sent an explanation of why /idgames is not a place to put betas) and guessed that the service was actually down, I didn't actually think it could be as bad as it possibly is now. But hey, saying we don't actually know what has gone down, he could just be having one hell of a vacation for all we know (Deserves one too I guess).

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You guys have been saying exactly what I've been thinking: Could Never_again be the new manager of the Idgames archive, along with a few other guys?

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It's gonna be a pain in the ass with the backed up queue Ty will have to deal with when he returns.

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Yeah I remember Doomgate well, as it's the first place I downloaded some WAD files from back in the 1995 (shortly after getting dialup Internet). Well, actually I did manage to grab a few WAD files off a BBS the year before, but I can't even remember anything about those, or even if I managed to get them to run.
Anyway, I hope Ty is chillin on some tropical island with those Duke3D chicks...

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My next wad (Doomed Space Wars) will be released/uploaded to my website if no idgames activity in a few months time.

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fraggle said:

This thread just serves to demonstrate how accurate his sidebar custom user text is.


Indeed. And it also demonstrates why something as important to us like idgames shouldn't rely on a single individual. If and when something like this happens, what are we going to do?

Glaice said:

What could be in place of /idgames/ temporarily?


Doom Wad Station and Wad Archive may be the most logical choices.

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Glaice said:

What could be in place of /idgames/ temporarily?

One interim solution would be an "/incoming" thread in Wads & Mods, where mappers could post details and download links (to their personal webspace or a reputable hosting service) for their latest masterpiece.

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Maybe constructing an archive closer to the community would be a far safer plan in the long run.

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Alright, this isn't funny anymore Ty.. We promise we'll appreciate your work more from now on. Just come back!

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Glaice said:

nearly a month

It's already been more than a month since April 4th, actually.

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Jaxxoon R said:

Maybe constructing an archive closer to the community would be a far safer plan in the long run.

Two of the official mirrors are run by forum staff, though one doesn't accept x-rated wads so that narrows the field a bit. Not that I think we need a new master server, the current one's fine, just not much happening there right now.

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