ID:266078
 
So I've got a first crack at a game that I wanted to add to the Hub. I seem to have successfully added it, but the documentation seems a bit lacking, at least at the newbie level. Some things that weren't inherently obvious to me:


  • What's the Download Zip field for? Since there's a browse button, I kind of assumed it's so that my zipfile gets uploaded to somewhere on dantom.com so that the game becomes available via Dantom's server. But near as I can tell, nothing was uploaded, and there isn't much of an explanation on that page.


  • Login URL: Navigating strictly on the BYOND website, I had no clue what to put for this. I thought perhaps if the above zipfile thing actually uploaded, maybe Dantom's server would take care of unpacking it and making everything happen automagically. But what I got initially in my Hub entry was something like seeker://hub#29 (can't remember exactly), which didn't do much good for trying to actually login to the game. Finally, I fired up Dream Seeker and based on a link waaaay down at the bottom of the hosting details page, headed over to byond://dantom. The introduction there gave me enough information to upload my files and determine the Login URL, but not without a fair amount of hunting.

Once you've done it a time or two, I'm sure all of this makes complete sense, but I just wanted to point out that it's not quite newbie friendly yet. And while I'm just getting into BYOND (finally), I'm not exactly a complete newbie since I know Tom and talk to him on a fairly regular basis about BYOND (albeit not on a very detailed level). I wonder how well a real newbie would fare...


Just some constructive criticism... ;-)

Hi Air-Mapster,

Your questions should all be answered in the next release. The hub, it seems, is more advanced than the current client, so some of the entitites don't work in the current system (like the seeker:// and the zip stuff). This is what happens when we wait to long to put out a new version, but hopefully it will all be worth it.
Part II of the Ongoing Saga of My Own Stupidity:

Tonight it took me forever to figure out that I needed to go to byond://dantom.com:6002/airmapster/tools/admin to see my files. This was based on a tip in Dan's post the other day. Based on that message, I tried byond://polaris/airmapster/tools/admin:

<font color=red>Connecting to byond://polaris/airmapster/tools/admin.
There is no registered information for 'polaris'.</font>

Hrm. Ok, how about byond://dantom?

<font color=red>Connecting to byond://dantom.
There is no registered information for 'dantom'.</font>

Nope. Then I search some more and find this post, which contains another clue in my quest for the treasure. Polaris may be cached in cfg/hosts.txt, eh? I have a look, and sure enough, my old cfg/hosts.txt says "polaris byond://dantom.com:6002", giving me the missing piece.

My question is, what obvious source of information did I miss? I may be dumber than the average newbie, but surely you don't expect them to all go through this treasure hunt to manage their hosted files? I suppose documentation is forthcoming, in which case, ignore this whole stupid post.
In response to Air Mapster
On 3/26/01 9:17 pm Air Mapster wrote:

My question is, what obvious source of information did I miss? I may be dumber than the average newbie, but surely you don't expect them to all go through this treasure hunt to manage their hosted files? I suppose documentation is forthcoming, in which case, ignore this whole stupid post.

Hmm .. I'm not sure why 'polaris/airmapster/...' didn't work for you, since you apparantly had it cached (the similar scenario did work for me).

Dan is, I believe, updating the system so that the host sites will function like hub entries, so in the future it'll be something like:

polaris.host/airmapster/...

(I'm not sure of the exact notation at the moment)

We'll keep you posted.
In response to Tom H.
On 3/26/01 9:57 pm Tom H. wrote:
Hmm .. I'm not sure why 'polaris/airmapster/...' didn't work for you, since you apparantly had it cached (the similar scenario did work for me).

It was cached in my old 275 installation of BYOND that I had a backup copy of (when we were testing the memory leak stuff). Just not in the current "fresh install."

Dan is, I believe, updating the system so that the host sites will function like hub entries, so in the future it'll be something like:

polaris.host/airmapster/...

(I'm not sure of the exact notation at the moment)

We'll keep you posted.

Alrighty. Just ignore me, I'm having a stupid night (must be the antifreeze). I also can't seem to figure out why I can only get to a super-old version of Una, but it's probably just me again. I'll come back to it a little later.
In response to Tom H.
On 3/26/01 9:57 pm Tom H. wrote:

We'll keep you posted.

FYI, I just found out that the notation appears to be:

dantom.host.star.polaris/[yourname]/tools/admin

where 'star' can be 'moon' or 'launchpad' or one of the listed host sites.

I'm sure there is a shorter notation, because that's pretty horrid. More later.
In response to Tom H.
On 3/26/01 10:16 pm Tom H. wrote:

I'm sure there is a shorter notation, because that's pretty horrid. More later.

And there is! Dan just forwarded me the many emails in which we discussed this very thing. Try:

dantom.space.airmapster/tools/admin