Current State of AWBW (January 8th, 2014)

First topic message reminder :

So.  To clear up a bit of possible confusion right off the bat:

Best Sakuya NA = Mori (Mori2, etc)

I don't use the same handle in all places, which sucks.  Probably should have planned that one out 10 years ago, whoops.  Anyways.  


A lot of people are probably wondering why the forums are down.  Or why the map committee has like 4 active members on a good day.  So here's what I know, from my limited knowledge as head of Map Committee.  

• I can't fix the forums, that's something that is out of my power to mess with, and out of my expertise to know how to fix it even if I did have access.
   
  
• I can't reliably add new members to MC without a bit of coordination and communication from other AWBW users, but that one is doable.  So we got that rolling somewhat if people are interested.  I won't add anyone who isn't willing to dedicate a ton of time to AWBW, and has the knowledge and experience to actually help the MC.  So chances are slim that I will add anyone new, but there is always potential if people show the willingness to work and contribute to the mapping end of AWBW, and also are not jerks.  
  
  
• I can edit the Global League maps, and map categories/rankings in general.  I'll keep updating the rotation based on what I see is popular in games, primarily high level games but rest assured I do actually take the time to look through as many active and finished League games as possible (Sidenote, that's the kind of dedication I would expect if I would add you to MC).  So that is still working just fine.  
  
  
• I can still start public Z Games, or M Games, whatever you would want to call them.  I've just been very busy with life recently.  That's a poor excuse though, so I will try to get them rolling as soon as I can this week and stay on top of starting games and generating them regularly.  If anyone else on the MC wants to help with that, please message me, you all have like 2 or 3 different ways to contact me at least, haha.
  
  
• I can edit anything on this website, for what that is worth.  I am the current admin of this url, so I can ban people, add forums, all that stuff.  Vilearbiter, Pfhantom, and Napoleon can moderate a few things as well.  
  

So dark times for AWBW in general.  But the game still works, and there's still content creators and we still want you guys to be able to go to AWBW and have fun.  That's generally the objective.  If you have any suggestions on what direction I should take in assisting in that, I'll listen to them here.  Otherwise, I'm just going to keep on doing what I've been doing, just like other Map Committee members did before me.  

-Mori 

Not the inner stuff... just the website. It was completely shut down yesterday.

It had the mySQL errors a few days ago, then was completely fine for a little less than a day, then the errors came back, then the site got shut down, now its back with the errors.

Thanks for contacting amarriner! Did he say anything about what was going on?

I wish I can tell you guys more, but the only way I'll be able to address those errors is if I have access to the site itself. Then I will be able to go through and see exactly what is wrong. Currently, I have no further details on what is happening with AWBW.

If I happen to get amarriner again, I will be sure to shoot these questions his way. I guess stay tuned for further information on it...

To expand on what JSR said, we (the Custom Wars: Tactics team) are currently trying to acquire AWBW. This was Amarriner's response when we contacted him about the site being dead:



So basically, AWBW's going to die pretty soon. Our hope is that we might be able to keep it limping along a little longer until we can get CWT into a playable format. We've used a website copier to save most of the AWBW website; worst case scenario, we'll be able to save the maps and re-use them.

That being said, even if we do acquire the website and manage to keep it running, y'all are going to have to understand that we cannot promise that AWBW will ever be fixed. Amarriner won't do it himself, our team can only address it as a second priority, and frankly the site is in such bad shape that it would be easier to just make a new game at this point. The only guarantee I can make is that we will forestall the inevitable, if and when we acquire the site.

I wish I had better news for y'all, but unfortunately, this is how it is.

Nuuuuh. Mah maps D:

It's cool, we can always make more. Look on the bright side guys, AWBW might be dying despite Ammarriners best efforts (and I do very much appreciate them), but CWT is doing a really good job of keeping stuff rolling. So this sucks, but let's stay productive and stay on course. The objective here is to have a working AW game. As it stands right now, CWT is definitely that.

I have very few talents, but I'm very good at those few, so I'm going to focus on those. Here's what I've got. I have enough theory-stuff I've written down, saved and whatnot to keep on cranking out maps pretty much forever. I'd honestly be fine literally making an entirely new set of ladder-style maps for CWT based on a core set of ideas from some specific maps (Shangri-La, All Roads Lead to Sol, and Blood on my Hands come to mind, as do plenty more but those are three pretty big ones). All I've ever done in any community I've done (generally) is make maps for competitive games. Without any offense intended towards the rest of the AWBW Map Committee, I'd say that the only person active on this site that knows as much as me about map balance for AW games is...Walker maybe? Airob, Headphone, and MorganLeah are also really smart guys on that front.

So what I'm going to do is start a CWT thread on specifically what would be smart to preserve from Global League, if that's alright. Ideally, all of the Global League maps will be saved, but there's definitely some maps that are more important than others for focusing on making a new and improved selection of testing maps. There's also non-global league maps like Masked Fury that are super smart, or maps styles like Color of Envy that are extremely important for analyzing High Funds in the future, but that's not really as important right now, just a sidenote.

What I could honestly use is some way to physically see the Global League maps, since it's a bit hard to see that on the AWBW site right now. Secondly, I'd like to know where I can start working on CWT maps, but that can be addressed in the second thread I'll be starting I guess. The sooner I can work on getting some basic (but balanced) test maps up, the sooner older AW players will be motivated to play CWT, the sooner we can get a solid playerbase on an AW game. Yay planning.

  

Well that's certainly a depressing sounding update from amarriner. Obviously there's only so much he can do and we are a pretty small community these days. At least it sounds like we have a good backup plan for when AWBW does finally kick the bucket. I will be sad to see a lot of the multiplayer/non-league maps go, though. They may not be as well balanced or designed for "competitive play" but there are definitely some good multiplayer ones and also some more obscure concept-type maps that are really fun to play on as well.

Oh well, it is what it is. No sense gettin too upset about it.

"All right, you heard Billie-Jean King. No crying in the breast milk."

It's sad to see it go, but we have to admit it's been an awesome ride.

While I'm certainly no Mori or Walker, I can try to help with maps, and playtesting said maps.
Quick question: How many of the maps will be saved? All, or a select few?

I guess I'll leave this here: Direct Link To CWT Forum

It may look dead, but that's only because it's not our primary means of coordinating the team. We're all active and able to respond within 24 hours of something getting posted there.

I've found that you can your user profile and access maps from there. I've been opening my maps and saving printscreens of them (saving the map image renders the properties as black squares) so I have them in the future either for posterity or in the event that a map editor becomes available on the CWT site. I can access my design maps page sometimes too, and while I can't log out to access my other account, I can (usually) view the account pages of other users. Alternatively, accessing the specific map link by works well too, but that means you have to already know the link or what number the map is

Moral of the story here is think of maps you want to save! If you know who made them, go to that profile and save an image. I'll be doing that for all of mine and some of my personal favorites as well. If everyone, or more realistically "some people", go through this same process it should ensure that some of the best maps are preserved according to the users themselves, and most importantly, the MC members. I know there is an effort to recover maps already, but this may help make sure that we recover what we want, even if it is crude.

In case you don't have the link memorized like I do (I'm not obsessed >.>) here it is:

http://awbw.amarriner.com/profile.php?username=USERNAME

Also:

http://awbw.amarriner.com/prevmaps.php?maps_id=MAPNUMBER


I guess I should add: Thanks to the CWT team! You guys sound like you have been really helpful, even if most of the technical stuff is a bit over my head. I really appreciate your efforts to save as many maps as you can, it just sounds like you run into the same problem I do when saving the image files. This is just my attempt at a small scale workaround. Thanks again!!

Xmo5 wrote:I guess I should add: Thanks to the CWT team! You guys sound like you have been really helpful, even if most of the technical stuff is a bit over my head. I really appreciate your efforts to save as many maps as you can, it just sounds like you run into the same problem I do when saving the image files. This is just my attempt at a small scale workaround. Thanks again!!

No problem. The whole point of CWT is getting the Advance Wars community engaged in the game again. We'd be hypocrites if we didn't try to preserve as much of said community as possible.  

Thanks Xmo5, good find! I happen to have most of my newer maps already saved as .txt files (made with headphone's map maker) but I'll definitely take print-screens of all of my decent maps to save them.

With regards to AWBW dying, it's sad but it's been a long time coming. I'm just glad we have another group of people willing and able to put in time and effort to keep the game alive in some form. My personal opinion is that most of AWBW can be lost without much problem; the only things worth keeping are user content. I.e., maps (and only the good ones, really) and strategy/theory. Don't know what can be done about most of the theory stuff, but as long as there are people around it isn't completely lost.

Cheers to the CWT team, thanks for your efforts!

I am totally in for this next project if you guys need my help. I think i have quite a few years-experience to help with stuff.

Though i will mostly be active during  the months of  december through march and june through early september. It´s been a long-good run guys.

Also marasargon, i tried joining the site, but it said the username "airob" was already in use though inactive apparently, and that my email address is also used, though i made that email like 5 months ago and this is the first time i see that site hahaha.

@airob: You are officially activated according to the account. So try logging in :-)

Yeah, if anyone is having problems signing up for the cw forums, please send me a pm so I can resolve the issue. Thanks :-)

Something has changed, right?

I can log in now, I can see my games (my turn games too), but I can't open any game. (Fatal error: Call to undefined function session_unregister() in /var/www/game.php on line 69)

Yeah its the same for me. It seems to be moving in the right direction.

Now I can access gamepages. Is it possible to play? ( = can I end my vacation? )

Yeah I was able to take my turns for now so I would think its safe to end your vacation as long as you don't have *too* many turns to take, just in case the problems resurface.

Be cautious getting your hopes up. The errors are as often a result of "bugs"' as they are of low server space (the latter being something one does not simply go in and "fix").

Looks like it's back to broken.

Hello, first I would just like to thank Xmo5 for telling me about this site. When AWBW went down, I had no idea what was going on, and for a few days it stayed like that. Then I remembered that Xmo5 had his email on his profile and I promptly emailed him. He got back to me and told me what had happened and told me to go here! So how about a round of virtual applause fo him! (clap clap clap)

Also, thanks to the CWT team! When I first joined AWBW it was just to play a single game with some classmates while our teachers weren't looking. Now, if the CWT team is successful, everyone can continue playing Advance Wars, and that is just great.

Best Sakuya NA wrote:I've been losing internet consistently thanks to this snowstorm, sorry I haven't been responding to a lot of stuff but it's not by choice.  Hopefully it clears up soon.

I'll be helping the CWT with organizing stuff as soon as I can stay connected to the internet consistently for more than an hour during the evening (seems to work fine earlier as well as super late at night but I'm often busy then). It sucks pretty bad. Blame the snow I guess.

Best Sakuya NA wrote:

Best Sakuya NA wrote:I've been losing internet consistently thanks to this snowstorm, sorry I haven't been responding to a lot of stuff but it's not by choice.  Hopefully it clears up soon.

I'll be helping the CWT with organizing stuff as soon as I can stay connected to the internet consistently for more than an hour during the evening (seems to work fine earlier as well as super late at night but I'm often busy then).  It sucks pretty bad.  Blame the snow I guess.

Every little bit helps, take your time.

Why was I randomly kicked from the chatroom a few months ago? I thought we agreed that I would be given a chance?

Fuck you for going back on your word! Give me a good reason not to ruin this place!

sulla wrote:Why was I randomly kicked from the chatroom a few months ago? I thought we agreed that I would be given a chance?

Fuck you for going back on your word! Give me a good reason not to ruin this place!

With an attitude like that, I'm sure you'll go far... far away, that is.