A few site updates, web space available
I’ve made some more changes to the site (sorry, no new content yet — I have the files in place, but I just have to take the time to write up the relevant articles for them), and have added a couple new categories. First, I’ve restored the Orphanage, this time as a part of the site rather than as its own subdomain.
I’ve moved all the relevant projects into the Orphanage, and the usual rules apply: if you’d be interested, O Reader, in picking up the files for one of the projects and trying to move its development a little further along, feel free to do so. Just let me know when you do, so I can at least move projects around between site categories.
Secondly, I’ve created a new category, the Graveyard. This is a repository for all the Ultima projects that stopped development prior to releasing any files.
I’ve also updated the FAQ with all the details behind these two new categories.
So in case, O Reader, you suddenly can’t find the project you were looking up a couple of days ago, try the Orphanage or the Graveyard; you may just find it there instead.
Also, some news that may be of interest to current or discerning remake project leaders. My web host just boosted the size and scale of my account, so I can now host up to 1.5 TB (yes, terabytes) of files, and I have a cumulative total of 5.2 TB of transfer available to me each month. Additionally, I can add on 98 more domain names to my account.
So if you were looking, O Reader, for some web space for a project website, kindly let me know, because I haven’t the first friggin’ clue what I’m going to do with all this space (not that I’m complaining that I have it, mind you).
🙂 WtFD
‘Sound of jaw dropping to the ground!’ :(========)
1.5TB(!) of web space 😯 with 5.2 TB of bandwidth to spend per month(!)!!!
Do you happen to be a millionaire by any change? :p 😉
How on earth did you manage to get that without selling your soul to the devil (aka Bill Gates… you didn’t, did you?)? Most non-commercial sites I know struggle with web space from few hundred MB to few GB and few GB at most of transfer capacity per month(and if exceeded they get shut down for the rest of the month or have to pay atrocious amounts of money to stay up).
My site has measly 100MB of space (My ISP also provides few web spaces but what would use their 15MB per web space for? :p Funny thing is my primary and secondary E-mail box have 0.5GB and 1GB while again boxes given by my ISP have the same 15MB.) available :p and even my computer has only bit over 900 GB 😀
Oh, btw. Do you want Old Lazarus Trailer back from 2002/2003 (the release date went bit wrong :p “Coming 2003â€)?
I also have newer version of Ultima IV : Virtue of Humility with U5 tileset released back in last September (version 6.0925, quite a jump in version number for just one bug fix). Don’t have the updated U4 tileset U4VoH unfortunately and wizardportal has been down for some time now. Oh and shouldn’t you remove the VoH World Editor you have available as U4VoH have it (plus town and dungeon editors and name generators) incorporated in the zip; not to mention it’s older than the one in the zip?
And there’re also a link to nice fan made Lazarus DVD case inserts and a CD label.
I just uploaded U4VoH and the Trailer to my site so feel free to get them from there (Links -> Ultima).
Good luck figuring out what to do with all that space and bandwidth! 😀 :p
I am not a millionaire, and last I checked I still seem relatively firmly in possession of my soul. Oh, it’s a bit battered and slightly worn around the edges, but it’s intact and fully functional.
Kind of like my laptop, actually. Except that it’s my soul, not my laptop.
Now, as to how I have that much space…well, that’s just the deal the hosting company I’m with gives me. I don’t know how they do it, but they don’t charge me lots of money to do what they do: I pay $7.95 USD/month, plus the yearly fee for the domain name ($10 USD).
Canaca.com if you’re interested, based out of Toronto, Canada.
Most non-commercial sites I know struggle with web space from few hundred MB to few GB and few GB at most of transfer capacity per month(and if exceeded they get shut down for the rest of the month or have to pay atrocious amounts of money to stay up).
I think they gamble a bit, to tell the truth. I notice that periodically I hit an “out of disk space” error when attempting to FTP files into place, so I think they must use some sort of virtualization to only release to me the portion of drive space I’m actuall consuming (around 10 GB, currently), and then they release more as I need it, based on usage trends most likely.
Trends which I of course exceed IN SPADES when I upload things like…oh, I don’t know…Lazarus. Or an archive of 400 photos to my blog.
But yeah…basically they have this massive secure building in Toronto that is just full of drives and routers, and they sell the space cheap. I’ve been with them for almost four years now, with few issues.
I think a lot of “local” hosting companies simply struggle for the space necessary to not only incorporate a sufficient quantity of drives, but also the necessary servers, load balancers, routers and switches, and HVAC systems necessary to effectively run large-scale, large memory volume hosting packages.
But when you’ve got a converted warehouse in downtown Toronto? You’re set.
Now, as to some questions you had:
Oh, btw. Do you want Old Lazarus Trailer back from 2002/2003 (the release date went bit wrong :p “Coming 2003â€)?
Sure, why not? In fact, I’ll see about enabling some FTP access for you, if you like. Use the Contact Form to send me an email and we can continue that discussion.
I also have newer version of Ultima IV : Virtue of Humility with U5 tileset released back in last September (version 6.0925, quite a jump in version number for just one bug fix).
Ah, that would be good. I still need to update some of the project files here, but that one’s website is, if I am not mistaken, currently down.
Don’t have the updated U4 tileset U4VoH unfortunately and wizardportal has been down for some time now.
Natch.
Oh and shouldn’t you remove the VoH World Editor you have available as U4VoH have it (plus town and dungeon editors and name generators) incorporated in the zip; not to mention it’s older than the one in the zip?
I’ll do that tomorrow, thanks.
And there’re also a link to nice fan made Lazarus DVD case inserts and a CD label.
Oooh…this is at your site? I’ll have a gander.
I just uploaded U4VoH and the Trailer to my site so feel free to get them from there (Links -> Ultima).
Or…yeah, I could just do that. 😀 But if in the future you think you might benefit from FTP access, I’ll see about setting it up for you.
Good luck figuring out what to do with all that space and bandwidth! 😀 :p
Well, my fiance and I are going to set up a website for our wedding planning and then for family use once we’re married. Beyond that, I’ve got a few DVDs I’ve made of picture slideshows for my Scout group…I suppose the .iso versions of those discs would fill up a few GB each.
…possibilities!
Ken, I don’t know if you noticed, but some material has indeed survived from the Exile project:
http://exile.shiftedphase.com/media/
It’s not quite the module, but even a few screenshots and music that have survived are precious when a project no longer exists. I’ll probably add them to my web directory (which, coincidentally, also has a graveyard :P)… it wouldn’t be a bad idea for you to add them to your graveyard as well.
Btw… thanks for suggesting your webspace provider. I thought shiftedphase’s host was amazing… but yours is far beyond. Once shiftedphase closes down (which will probably happen eventually… basically I’m not the one paying for the webspace but I’m the only one using it) I’ll probably shift to Canaca.
Hey Dino, nice to see you around!
Firstly, good recommend on the Exile files; I’d forgotten that he had released some of that stuff. I’ll add it to the site here when I get a chance.
Secondly, Canaca has been good to me, it’s true, and I am happy to recommend them. The only caution I ever give people when they take an interest is that for some reason, Canaca seems to see a need to run their PHP in safe mode. For 90% of things, this doesn’t get in the way of normal site operation (witness Aiera). In fact, about the only thing it gets in the way of is my attempts to install Gallery2 on the server, since G2 insists on being on a non-safe-mode server.
So I just use the Coppermine gallery instead, which has built-in safe-mode workarounds. WordPress is pretty much unaffected by it, and on the odd time that I use Mambo for a site there are workarounds for it as well that I can use.
So that’s the one caution I offer, and overall it’s a minor one. And to be fair, it shouldn’t be an issue for you either, since there was a time when you ran Dino’s Ultima Page off of the Time Immortal domain.
However, if this is something you can foresee as being a “make or break” issue, I can make an additional recommend — my boss has generally had good experience with Bluehost (another Canadian company), and we’re even evaluating them at work here as an alternative to our current web host.
Of course, given that I have no friggin’ clue what to do with one and a half terabytes of space, and given that I can still host 98 domain names out of my current hosting package, I could just let you camp out on the domain here at no charge. Heck, you could even register a domain name ($10/year) and we could point that to your space on the server here.
Thanks for the offer. I’ll definitely consider it when the time comes to leave shiftedphase. I may be hanging around shiftedphase for the next few months until Eric (owner of shiftedphase) decides whether to renew the account or not.
Bluehost, by the way, is the webspace provider of shiftedphase. 🙂
Back to the topic of Exile file releases, I have a proposal to make. As you probably know I have an old ‘Web Directory’ of Ultima sites:
http://dino.shiftedphase.com/ultima/webdir/
This web directory is falling apart. Two pages in this web directory are dedicated to Ultima projects (Remakes and Spin-Offs). Clearly Aiera is much more up to date and organised in these areas. However, my web directory has some files that Aiera does not, mainly surviving stuff from some old projects.
I also have the 50MB trailer of Adventures of Blackthorn that I did not upload to Dino’s Ultima Page due to bandwidth reasons.
If you are willing to host the screenshots, documents and other surviving information that I currently host, you may take them over. They would be more at home at Aiera, the chief site for remakes, than on a declining web directory that will soon cease to exist.
All remake information would thus move to Aiera where it belongs. Dino’s Ultima page will continue to host the Graveyard of dead Ultima websites, but dead remakes are Aiera’s domain (especially with the new Orphanage and Graveyard). I will also simplify the design of the web directory and bring it up to date eventually.
Bluehost, by the way, is the webspace provider of shiftedphase.
Heh…well, how about that?
Now, as regards the proposal…that’s actually a really neat idea. Sure, we could do that, and fairly easily. I’ll configure an FTP account for you to upload things — like that trailer — with, and I’ll set about grabbing files from your directory as well.
I’d almost totally forgotten about AoB. And I’m certainly willing to host files, screenshots, documents…whatever you have on hand that you think is relevant to Aiera. I’ll also have to give you access to the gallery that runs behind Aiera for the screenshots in that case.
OK… sounds good.
By the way… I don’t know if DOSBox is already on Aiera but I haven’t been able to find it. It would make a fine addition to the General Utilities page. They’ve just released version 0.70. Nuvie also seem to have updated their snapshot… I don’t know how old yours is (it might be helpful to site visitors if you added a version or date to your downloads, so they know whether you have the latest version or not).
Another thing… you can remove the link to my forum. It won’t be back for a while. Although I do plan to restore the forum eventually, it won’t happen anytime soon.
I was just thinking that I should add DOSBox…I thought I had it up at one point, but evidently I either took it down or am simply mistaken.
I’ll grab the latest version presently.
Also, my Nuvie snapshot is current as of about a week ago. I’ll check if they’ve updated since then. Thanks for the tip!
And I am experimenting with a couple different WordPress modules to handle downloads more effectively…if I can come up with something that works, I’ll gladly implement that.
WtFD, I managed to dig up the Ultima IV : Virtue of Humility site. The address is http://66.159.225.58/ .
Also VoH has been updated twice since its domain stopped working. Current version is 7.0317.
Changes since September
U4 version 7.0317
-May have fixed flicker by adding code to Y/ell command – try the Y/ell command and type in sync. If not, try
looking at Z/tats and see if that works.
U4 version 7.0308
-Fixed delay on startup
-Changed game resolution to 1024×768 due to many video cards not supporting 800×600 on widescreen LCD
Also it appears that the U4tileset version isn’t available any more.
Wow, thanks Petrell. Good work!
I’ve got marriage prep classes all weekend, so I’ll have to add this to my to-do list for either later on Sunday or during the day on Monday, but I’ll definitely be sure to get VoH up to date at first opportunity!