Forums to be shutdown

[Karl]

Due to constant hacking/dos/spam attempts we are going to shutdown these forums. Please use https://steamcommunity.com/app/41300/discussions/.

We have added new firewall rules and removed most of the functionality of the forums in hopes that they will stay around for a while as a read-only resource while you guys make the migration over to the Steam forums.

Thanks!
Karl

[mikesol]

R.I.P. - sad to see this go away but I definitely understand the reasoning. Been a really enjoyable ride here and I'll always treasure the memories / friends made on these forums.

[Winters Ark]

Thanks for all the hard work you guys. You the best <3

[sunshineduck]

i do not think anyone on the history of earth has ever been as sad as i am in this moment

[leggomyeggo]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTWuzbgMLmI

[Hollywood]

As always, thank you Karl and Lamster for all of the support, happy moments, and competitive experiences.

[Clam]

(:|)

It was the clammiest of times, it was the clamurst of times.

Raise your excurrent siphons for one last kf̶a̶p̶pop gifalong

to the warm silicone beat of clamela anderson's f̶a̶r̶t̶ heart

[estguy]

nothing can beat this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jex5rtwx94k
sad and relaxing

[Void]

It's been fun

[Aki1024]

o7
charschars

[blln4lyf]

Welp. Well it's been a great ride, thanks for the hard work Karl and Lam.

[TRUEPAiN]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2WH8mHJnhM

[CmdrNoval]

The end of an era...

Thanks to Karl & Erik for... everything.

Thanks to the community for making me laugh... Especially Leggo & Duck, who's sarcasm never ceased...

Thanks to Mike, Dem, DN, & others for keeping things civil for so long...

And there's Vanishing, LewisH, biell, & others for keeping Alti on life support...

Here's to all of you!

And last but not least... Long live Tadow!

[TRUEPAiN]

Is there an Altitude Discord server?

[Hollywood]

This would be that.

Originally Posted by VAN1SH1NG

We are using text and voice chat app Discord which is cross platform (desktop, mobile, and browser). Like Pushbullet, it is used to help get ladder started. We use the @everyone command which notifies everyone in the server who is running the app when ladder is starting (notifications can be disabled if you don't want them).

Here is the invite link: https://discord.gg/0Y1LuusCQauSOloe

If this link ever stops working please check https://planeball.com/ for updated Discord invite.

[XX1]

I feel sick

[Slender]

[tomato man]

Very sad to lose this treasure, it's like losing a family album

Thanks to all the great people that made this community an awesome and fun place, thanks to all the moderators who helped in the last 8+ years and infinite thanks to our Gods, Karl and Lamster!
<3

[Loquacious Bum]

Its been a fun ride xD so its sad to see these forums go :*( <3 you all

[Oyster]

Wow guys ... Very sad to see this go. Always felt a digital home here in the forums and have checked this daily for many years. I've spent countless hours reading every post in this forum... Spent countless hours in the map editor section. It's honestly been one of the highlights of my life being a part of this community and I just want to say thank you everyone. It's been an honor to play this great game for so long together.

Where are we migrating to now?

[CmdrNoval]

Sorry to be the one to have to say this... But someone has to...

And to those who might not want to read any further,... now is your chance to skip this post.






My feeling is, this will be the last of the Alti community, as we know it.

To put it simply, this forum has provided us with a singular place, to communicate with our brethren... There will be no migration.




The Steam forums are a flotsam. To re-invent what we have here, is simply impossible.

When Karl & Erik finally shut this down, the most important part of Alti will be lost forever... Us.




Many, like myself, have the standalone version. Many of us are not Steam members. Those who wandered away, will have no real way to find their way back.



I tell you all, take note of your friends, find them on Steam, or in RL, if you haven't already...

Hold on to what you can...



'Cause this ride,... is over.



(The only way to preserve what we have, involves upgrading the software and trying to transfer the data...

I can tell you from experience, that is not going to happen. The amount of time and energy it would take is... cost prohibitive.

It is highly unlikely Karl & Erik would even attempt it. Even if they did, more would be lost, than could be saved.

The result would be a hollow shell of what we had... A disappointment to even the newest members of our community...)




In the spirit of keeping the Alti community in contact,... Anyone searching for Alti members on Steam are welcome to visit the Tadow! Steam Group here:

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/Tadow

Most of our members have been around for ages... You will be able to find most Alti people within our friends' lists.



Without a functional forum message system, any of those wishing to be found, should post Steam ID's or emails within this thread.
Those Alti people who haven't been on Steam in some time, might want to reinstall... (Ark, Chesspig, Gizmo, Leggo, MoonCheese, Tricky, etc, etc.)


Oh, and will somebody scream at Nikon... He's been MIA for far too long...


Clear skies to all of you.

[tomato man]

Must agree with ya Cmdr
I'll join the Tadow steam group later!
A question: What do you mean with "standalone version"? I'm looking for a way to save some discussions with the same graphic of the forums. Any tip?

[CmdrNoval]

There was a time, before Steam integration, that Alti was sold directly.

You received what we call a "standalone" version of Altitude via direct download from Nimbly games.

This all changed when Alti was released on Steam. The fair majority of Alti users now, got their copies on Steam.




As far as your question,...

Saving the data from this forum, in this format, is best done by screenshot or Window's snippet tool. It will take some doing.



(It is technically possible to acquire the data via FTP transfer. However, with the new firewall in place, you'll need Karl & Erik's direct permission. But without the forum messaging system, you have no real way of asking for it. (Short of emailing them at Nimbly's website...) Even if you got their permission and access to the FTP side of the server, the data would not 'appear' as you're seeing it now.)


If anyone else would like to chime in with an idea to save some of these threads, now would be the time,...

Personally, I'm at a loss... the shear amount of it... Seriously, there's almost a decade of posts contained here...

I've been trying to figure out how to migrate some of the top guides, server set-ups, troubleshooting posts, etc. over to the Steam discussions.



But without Karl's help, we will likely lose it all.

[LewisH]

A mirror of the static version of the forums: https://altitude.xa1.uk/forums/
There are no images, formatting, etc, just plain text.

[Oyster]

Someone should at least preserve the skyleague results and some of the guides, like my map editor guide!

[estguy]

i still don't understand your map editor guide, had to learn it myself

[Kafka]

Originally Posted by LewisH

A mirror of the static version of the forums: https://altitude.xa1.uk/forums/
There are no images, formatting, etc, just plain text.

Awesome!

Someone should make a thread on the Steam discussion board with links to old content from here.

Originally Posted by CmdrNoval

My feeling is, this will be the last of the Alti community, as we know it.

I have to disagree with you Cmdr... I don't believe that this is the end of Alti as we know it. Plenty of people still play, people who were never active on the forums. Ladder is active pretty much daily and there's usually an Official server filled nightly (US night time). Add in Ledows being filled during the day and you've got a relatively active community. We can make it through this tough time guys

[wolf'j'max]

Oh man, decided to check the forums again to see what's going on. Sad to see this happen, but I suppose it was unavoidable.

It might be strange to say, but this community made me the way I am. I grew up while playing this game day and night, it made me survive the incredible dark times I went through as a kid, and I'd like to thank each and all of you for that.

I suppose most of all I should thank all of you for putting up with my **** way back when. However you did it, by making a joke out of me or muting me whatever. At least I felt accepted here. Thanks everyone.

[Duck Duck Pwn]

Damn .

[tomato man]

Well seems the steam forums is living since 2012! It wont be like this but with time we'll adapt, let's move there and for all the people that still havnt get Discord app and join alti group!
I know it's annoying for who doesn't use steam to dowload it, but it's a good solution to stay in touch and also it's an easier way for new players to connect with the community.

DDP come there

[REDDRAGON]

Originally Posted by XX1

I feel sick

I feel sick

[CmdrNoval]

Originally Posted by Kafka

I have to disagree with you Cmdr... I don't believe that this is the end of Alti as we know it. Plenty of people still play, people who were never active on the forums. Ladder is active pretty much daily and there's usually an Official server filled nightly (US night time). Add in Ledows being filled during the day and you've got a relatively active community. We can make it through this tough time guys

I understand your point Kaf, the game itself isn't dead...

What I see us losing, is the intimacy we have enjoyed here.

Mafia thread, Music threads, Birthday threads, the recent Cooking thread... hell, the entirety of the Water Cooler subsection.
Those are things that remind me of how close we have all become over this last decade.

I just can't see those things surviving. The Steam forums are a mess. And we have little control there, as we enjoy here.
Here we have Mike, Dem, & others to keeps threads & posts where they belong. Our kind moderators, our friends, have kept this forum tidy.

I believe we can all see what the transition to F2P, has done. Simply, it has diluted the community. This has been the only vestige of the true Alti community.

I see the Steam forums as diluted, unorganized. A flotsam of random posts without order.


And then, there's the Alti history... From nearly day one to current is contained here. And there's no way it's going to survive the transition.
We will have to start again. Without the benefit of our friends, our moderators, to keep things together.


Perhaps I am getting sentimental, in my old age. Perhaps I am too stubborn to see any light at the end of this tunnel...

[ledow]

I haven't used the forums in years, but it's sad.

I know myself that any forum (phpBB, VBulletin, whatever) needs a lot of updating to keep it running.

I don't think it will be the end of the community but it is another wound, certainly.

While we're talking about "death of Altitude", I haven't received a reply to a number of messages I've sent to the Nimbly guys - I would like to seriously discuss the possibility of keeping Altitude alive in a bigger sense than just keeping it ticking over.

[VAN1SH1NG]

Originally Posted by CmdrNoval

I see the Steam forums as diluted, unorganized. A flotsam of random posts without order.

That is because it was never the main forum of Altitude. It was mostly random people from Steam occasionally posting who were unaware of this forum. Karl has added subforums so it can be just about as organized as here.

At first I was thinking I'd host a forum if we lose this one. But it may be good for Altitude to have a somewhat active Steam forum where half the posts aren't complaining about the game having a toxic community. Most of our new players are surely finding the game on Steam and many will take a look at the forum before deciding if they will download and try Altitude.

[XX1]

Originally Posted by Karl

you guys make the migration over to the Steam forums.

Can we not?

There is so much left here, would you be willing to transfer over the forums or give out the data base and web files?

[CmdrNoval]

I second that...

What LewisH had posted eariler gives us something...

But, as I said eariler, it is only a hollow shell of this forum.
Only the text...

Anybody have a guess on how big a drive would be necessary to store everything, intact..? 10Tb, 20Tb...?

If we could get our hands on the entire database, I would be willing to purchase an array large enough to hold it.

At least then, it could be preserved until such time as it could be transferred...

[Fluffy]

sad times. But I agree with whoever said it; someone should take record of the league results and such as an archive, would be a shame to see all known record of that stuff vanish

[biell]

Originally Posted by CmdrNoval

Anybody have a guess on how big a drive would be necessary to store everything, intact..? 10Tb, 20Tb...?

If you change your TB to GB, you are more on the mark. It wouldn't surprise me if all the forum data, including the database wasn't less than 10GB. If I am wrong, it is still going to be tens of GBs, not 100s of GBs or TBs. Things like that don't take up much space.

To properly archive the forums would require access to most of the underlying metadata. To make them able to continue interatively, just about everything except maybe passwords would be needed. Then, we would need to follow an upgrade process for vBulletin to get it to a modern version (5.3.0) which is more resilient to attack. That upgrade/conversion process may or may not be easy, I don't follow vBulletin enough to know the answer. Without the underlying data, any archive will be difficult to use and navigate.

If karlam were willing to willing to entrust the data with a community member, I would be willing host a modern vBulletin and try to upgrade the existing data into it. I am very confident Vanishing is also willing to do the same. If you know the authors, or know someone who does, please reach out to them and see if this is something they would consider.

[VAN1SH1NG]

Yeah I am admin of another game's forum which has been up since at least 2008 and is more active than this one. Database is only 650mb.

[CmdrNoval]

In my estimate, I was attempting to factor in:

(In an effort to archive everything, from the current forums & all web sources)

-User Accounts
-Text
-Links
-Photos (non-linked)
-Photos (linked, pulled down off web)
-Maps (linked, pulled down off web)
-Map archives (linked, pulled down off web)
-Video Guides (linked, pulled from YouTube)

Leaving room for:
-vBulletin (current version)
-vBulletin (any more secure version)

So I had time to play with it. We have already lost a bunch due to links that are no longer active, imgur images that are no longer available, etc...

Plus, creating an archive would give us a hardcopy backup, in case there were some sort of attack on Steam...

It stands to reason that transferring to Steam is going to take some time.

We are also going to need to ask Karl to create a subsection for Clan Organization on Steam. (Nowhere to transfer that, atm.)

I figured 10TB would be enough to hold all the above mentioned data. 20TB was a stab in the dark.