Main menu
Secondary menu
You are here
The Vault Preservation Project
(Note: The title says it all. This is an attempt to *preserve* the Neverwinter Nights Vault and all that gorgeous community content)
I'm worried. <and shaken>
You got that right, pretty black bird <gee, thanks boss>
Don't get a swelled head. Compliments merely show how worried... <and shaken>
...I am. Yup.
You guys know how optimistic and positive I try to be. <and the ladies know how...>
Hush, bird. No time for banter today. <grump>
Some of you may know I submitted my first stories to the Vault in 1999 under Valen and that I've recently been trying to do what I can to revitalize it. Now I'm worried (and shaken, yes, we know Bother). The Vault is a simply huge repository of more than a decade of community effort in diversifying and enhancing NwN and NwN2. It's in serious trouble.
What I am going to do about it:
I have a domain for the next 5 years with unlimited storage/bandwidth. I will be adding a "Vault Project" content type to it to allow the archiving of content salvaged from the Vault. While the Vault is viable it is meant to be a mirror, a back up of the Vault. Should something happen *shudder*, I hope it will act like (but do a better job at saving files) the Wayback Machine.
In fact, the VPP is going to push *all* my other projects to the back burner. (I'll still work on the CCC off-line Edit: and the Q window lights :-) I like that project :-).
Once I get the nwn-cc site set up to recieve Vault projects, I'm going to start salvaging the haks, as that is my personal highest priority - the custom content.
The procedure:
- Go to the project list for the category I'm committing to. pull up the next project in the browser.
- Create a sub-directory with the name of the project. save the webpage in that sub-directory to capture the project info (and comments - there's a lot of info in the comments).
- Download all associated files (but not links to other projects) to that directory
- Repeat. (The object here is to get each project *and it's info* into local storage ASAP)
- When time permits, upload the projects to nwn-cc.
What I would like (very much!) is some help. Are there any people out there who have good bandwidth and large harddrives and time on their hands?
Caveat: this is an independent effort unaffiliated with the Vault, Maximus or IGN, with the exception that it is *not* meant to supplant or compete in any way with the Vault. It is meant to safeguard the community content.
It is not meant to compete with the Nexus or the Moddb or any of the other excellent community sites.
My part of the preservation is underway.
So I started off by using the "Save Page As" option that Firefox has available. Works well enough to at least grab the submission page and first page of comments, of course I could be wrong about that, the 9 that I have grabbed so far have only had one page of comments. And then in order to get the actual full size screenshot, I would click on the thumbnail and save the full size image. Well, that was going along great, until I hit one that had 46, yes 46 screenshots. After I finished grabbing all of those, I decided it was time to look for web crawling/mirroring software.
I am now in the process of testing that out. If, it should work out, I'll let everyone know where to grab it from.
Wish me luck...
The trick with the web-crawlers, I think (as someone who couldn't get them working) is to get some conditionals in there to a) create subdirectories for each project page and b) only save structure and content. That is build a subdirectory for a project then download the project page and any linked images/files/comments... but *not* ads.
Simply put, I couldn't do it :-P
I will go with one screenshot only that represents the entry the best. The vault can be realy slow showing the screenshots and it´s not funny to wait for 10 or so images that actuall is nothing else as the same with a different angle. Hope it´s ok;)
Hey guys, where can i then upload the hak or pakage then. When i create a new entry i can only upload an image (must be less then 10mb)??? Sorry if that is answered already somewhere!
I haven't set it up yet. I'll do that tomorrow. Just hold on to the goodies until then, ok?
GF is tapping foot, waiting for me...
Not a good sign :-P
Just had to laugh.
I saw GF and first thing I thought of was... Grinning Fool
Sorry.
She often makes *me* into a Grinning Fool, and sometimes a Scowling Fool...
But usually I just get this, like, Valley Girl accent stuck in my head and, like, totally start spouting GF & BFF and stuff.
That's when you need to just gag me :-)
:-) I'll be incorporating a colorbox-style image viewer that will make screenshots a lot easier to handle/view.
But we'll just note that Creatures may need to be revisited for screenshots later. For instance, someone's "Improved Creatures" has several different screenshots of the various goodies included (but somehow missing froggies... strange). Of course, I think that was released as a hak... which makes it my problem :-P
ok then. Important is to collect every entrys first anyway;) ...improved creatures...frogs....:D
Now, if only someone would migrate their "Improved Creatures" here...