Star Alliance bites the dust

[IskatuMesk]

While a few of us have known for quite a while, and I'm sure anyone could have guessed just by trying to go there, Star Alliance (samods.org) is confirmed for deceased. I had a chat with magic last night when I was looking for stories from the forum to regale to weedlords.

That leaves Campaign Creations as the sole surviving Starcraft customs website that is as functional as it is. The only other two websites I know of are SEN, which hasn't seen customs activity since the Maplantis incident and whose site is an embarrassing trainwreck, and Sc2mapster, which was stillborn along with sc2's release and became entirely unusable for even mundane purposes following Curse's catastrophic update some time ago.

A very, very large amount of individuals have contacted me over the last year asking about CC's website, thinking I had some kind of say over that due to my activity at GP, but I don't. I've offered to do work on the site when it's actually functional in terms of adding content and stuff, and I'll still probably do that if the site ever actually goes up again. But I don't really know what the progress or intent with that task is, other than that due to being burned countless times by false promises from would-be webmasters that Lavarinth would rather learn how to do it himself even though it's clearly taking a very long time.

For the uninformed, Star Alliance was actually a site that had content on it a very long time ago, before Xaran and PCM decided to throw it all out for inexplicable reasons. Magic didn't want to pick up the site again when he punched them out over the internet, and has since moved on from gaming/modding as a body after leaving Codemasters quite a while ago. I'm not sure what the old site even had anymore, to be honest.

[typhoon]

Not that anybody asked for my advice (and not that this is necessarily in your control), but if it's taking this long to restore the Campaign Creations web site, you guys are probably making it too complicated. Since this isn't a site with a ton of activity anymore, you realistically don't even need a content management system. You could put up static HTML pages, and it would be a lot better than nothing (in that it would make all the old campaigns and information readily available again). Someone could probably scrape all the old pages off the Wayback Machine and put those up as plain old HTML, and again, it'd be an improvement over the current situation.

Or you could do what we did over at Antioch Forever and put up a wiki. It's a very one-size-fits-all CMS solution and may not be as nice in many ways as a more bespoke system, but it can work quite well if people are sufficiently motivated to populate it with content (and it sounds like you are). You could even use the exact same wiki we do (...though you probably shouldn't 'cause there are better ones out there).

Anyway, I'm not trying to dump on you guys, but it's a bit sad that, as you note, this part of the internet is slowly withering away. I've tried to collect some old Antioch-related community sites and re-host them on our current server for the sake of posterity. If anybody has any CC- or SA-related sites that they want to zip up and send me, I can put those up as well. If you guys need any help restoring the CC web site, you can e-mail me if you like.

[IskatuMesk]

I've offered to set up the site using a clone of mine which would be extremely simple to do, I could have it done in a day, but that offer wasn't taken. Lavarinth is pretty set on doing it his way.

/e

I'm pretty sure several people possess all of CC's content and porting it back to the site would be extremely easy. Lavarinth told me he spends some time each week working on the site, so I know it's still making some kind of progress.

I don't have any of SA's assets that I can recall, though. Someone else might. I'd be willing to post them if I had them given the original authors are highly unlikely to be able to be contacted anymore.

As an aside, here's the infoceptor warcraft TC for Starcraft. I always distribute this given the chance. I think this may be the only archive of it online that's this "recent".

http://www.gameproc.com/meskstuff/wc3tc.zip

[RazorclawX]

I have *a* version of the web site from years ago, but I couldn't tell you if the directory structure of the site is the same as it was back then. The only pages I regularly updated are for the Wanderers of Sorceria page so that's the only thing I know that reliably works (consequently it's the only part of the web site I know still works)

The thing is I have no idea how to make a web site outside of using a basic text editor so my input on how to get the site back up is pretty useless.

[IskatuMesk]

Eh, most sites only really need a text editor. It'd be enough to just have access to the various campaigns and stuff.

I have no idea which part of the site was giving Lavarinth trouble at this point.

[ShadowFlare]

I found out about the site at samods.org being gone just recently when I was updating my web server (and had to update some scripts on my site as a result) and spotted some old links still pointing to shadowflare.samods.org. I decided to check the main domain and found there was no longer a site there. I haven't updated the links yet, though shadowflare.samods.org still works for now. I should probably update those links in case the domain expires. Besides broken links, I don't want someone to get directed elsewhere if someone buys it up.

Looks like my avatar rotation still works on here. It's been so long since I changed anything with that. lol

[IskatuMesk]

shadowflare!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

lol

[Saladin]

The only other two websites I know of are SEN, which hasn't seen customs activity since that horrifying Maplantis incident and whose site is an embarrassing trainwreck, and Sc2mapster, which was stillborn along with sc2's release and became entirely unusable for even mundane purposes following Curse's catastrophic update some time ago.

Wait a sec, what happened to SEN and what about a "Horrifying maplantis incident?" Also, what happened to SC2mapster? Can someone give me info on that?

Also, should I keep bashing Laverinth for motivation? Would that help?

[IskatuMesk]

The Maplantis incident was some years ago. Someone told me the details a while back but unfortunately I can't recall the precise content of it. In essence, individuals interested in pursuing custom content made a sister site called Maplantis for some reason, but it later dissolved back into SEN and most of them left or quit. The small community left is almost exclusively shitposters now. There's a few people who still make sc1 content but generally stick to the shadows.

Mapster was a site started by Curse in an effort to get a quick zero-effort cash grab. Those assigned moderator and admin roles didn't even have access to basic moderator functions of the website and no one in the community actually wanted to make custom content other than a handful that jumped ship when it became clear Blizzard wasn't interested in pushing Starcraft 2 as a custom content platform. To make matters even worse, Mapster was left in a state of completion comparable to CC's current website - ergo, unusable, with many individuals who did want to post content on it faced with inexplicable bugs and download issues from start to the finalle when Curse decided to apply a global update to all their sites that prohibited most users from even so much as posting or accessing their profiles on mapster anymore. I hear you need a Twitch login for the site now, too, which is rather baffling and ensures I will never so much as give them a unique visitor hit ever again. That anyone would even hint at endorsing a platform as blatantly toxic as twitch is reason enough to stay far away.

The highlight of Mapster has to be the shills trying to pass off as Blizzard employees trying to sate the growing hatred for the company back when people still vainly hoped for some kind of update from them.

[UntamedLoli]

Amazon bought Curse through Twitch. They changed the login system to use Twitch's.

That's why.

[Saladin]

The Maplantis incident was some years ago. Someone told me the details a while back but unfortunately I can't recall the precise content of it. In essence, individuals interested in pursuing custom content made a sister site called Maplantis for some reason, but it later dissolved back into SEN and most of them left or quit. The small community left is almost exclusively shitposters now. There's a few people who still make sc1 content but generally stick to the shadows.

Mapster was a site started by Curse in an effort to get a quick zero-effort cash grab. Those assigned moderator and admin roles didn't even have access to basic moderator functions of the website and no one in the community actually wanted to make custom content other than a handful that jumped ship when it became clear Blizzard wasn't interested in pushing Starcraft 2 as a custom content platform. To make matters even worse, Mapster was left in a state of completion comparable to CC's current website - ergo, unusable, with many individuals who did want to post content on it faced with inexplicable bugs and download issues from start to the finalle when Curse decided to apply a global update to all their sites that prohibited most users from even so much as posting or accessing their profiles on mapster anymore. I hear you need a Twitch login for the site now, too, which is rather baffling and ensures I will never so much as give them a unique visitor hit ever again. That anyone would even hint at endorsing a platform as blatantly toxic as twitch is reason enough to stay far away.

The highlight of Mapster has to be the shills trying to pass off as Blizzard employees trying to sate the growing hatred for the company back when people still vainly hoped for some kind of update from them.

WOW!


Okay, long story short, it fell HARD! I get it, I guess. That's probably a very bad understatement.
You know, back then we used to have a StarCraft section for heavengames, but I think because of the number of competing (used to) sites back then, I guess, they took it off. I'm just saying. Anyway, any hope there is still people making SC1 content, if any?

[IskatuMesk]

There's still people making SC1 content, including individuals like Nieve (Neive?) and iquare making reverse engineering research. There is more knowledge readily available for low-level modding of the game than there ever has been, but it takes finding and talking to the individuals to get to it.

[BounceHimUp]

Dang. Pour one out for the homies. I cut my teeth on the Star Alliance forums many years ago as a teenage Starcraft modder who spent way too much time finding his way around iscript.bin. Great memories.

I really appreciate that CC is still around and that you OG's are still out there. I still check in here and SEN periodically to see if there are any developments with modding Starcraft Remastered, and I just wanted to share some love for y'all.

—EBC

[IskatuMesk]

Starcraft Remastered is a total dud. It's locked down and very hardcode-heavy. Most of the existing stuff you could do in 1.16 is not possible in remastered. I don't know of anyone who bothers with it.

[Saladin]

So StarCraft: Remastered is un-moddable... I figured that might happen. Anyway, so why hasn't SEN (almost dead) not had any custom campaigns/scenarios for so long still? No one wants to contribute anymore whatsoever?

Also, I actually had an interest in making SC1 protoss and (MAYBE) Terran RPGs maps for a while, but since I discovered SWGB Clone Campaigns and Age of Empires, (yes, I know they're different games and SWGB was made from the backbone of AoK) I really haven't caught up much with the idea. If I started making campaigns, would CC here on this site be the best place to have new SC1 content?

Also, StarCraft 2 is unmoddable and there is no map making for the game? Are you sure? Because I can't play the game because I don't have the specs to handle its graphics, among other things so someone has to be specific, cause I don't know how the game plays.

Another thing to ask, even thought I really don't think it's needed; what about StarCraft:Legacy? Are they different? like the site wasn't for SC1 content or?
... Nevermind that last question.