zex20913
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1723
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

284 demos in the queue!

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zex20913
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1723
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

All cleared. Thanks!

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kieranmillar
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 2842
Registered: 07-11-2014
IP: Logged

Was gonna make a new thread but thought repurposing an old one would do just as well.

The RPG Spider has died again. Someone turn on the seeding beacon.

mrimer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 5134
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

Thanks for reporting this. Did it get fixed?

____________________________
Gandalf? Yes... That's what they used to call me.
Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.

kieranmillar
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 2842
Registered: 07-11-2014
IP: Logged

Yes

uncopy2002
Level: Smiter
Rank Points: 431
Registered: 07-28-2014
IP: Logged

The spider has been down for at least half a day. 392 unverified demos.

Doom
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 3303
Registered: 07-05-2004
IP: Logged

Spider is slacking off again

Down for a couple of days now. Up to 500+ unverified demos.

edit: Fixed!

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[Last edited by Doom at 04-21-2017 07:02 PM]

Insoluble
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1639
Registered: 09-04-2014
IP: Logged

Apparently it's been down for half a day or so. Only 60+ unverified demos. Still might be good to give it a swift kick.

____________________________
Links to neat forum tools that I always have trouble finding:

kieranmillar
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 2842
Registered: 07-11-2014
IP: Logged

The RPG Spider is down again.

kieranmillar
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 2842
Registered: 07-11-2014
IP: Logged

The RPG Spider is dead.

Perhaps it needs a way to auto-restart it every week or something.

kieranmillar
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 2842
Registered: 07-11-2014
IP: Logged

kieranmillar wrote:
The RPG Spider is down again.

maryfink
Level: Roachling

Rank Points: 10
Registered: 07-26-2018
IP: Logged

____________________________
I'm a student)

Dragon Fogel
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 2467
Registered: 06-21-2014
IP: Logged

162 demos in the queue, I think the spider may be down again.

kieranmillar
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 2842
Registered: 07-11-2014
IP: Logged

kieranmillar wrote:

kieranmillar wrote:
The RPG Spider is down again.

Insoluble
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1639
Registered: 09-04-2014
IP: Logged

Looks like the spider took some time off to ring in the new year. 255 demos in the queue.

____________________________
Links to neat forum tools that I always have trouble finding:

zex20913
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1723
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

This may be a continuation of the previous spider down alert, but there are currently over 6000 demos in the queue.

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Insoluble
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1639
Registered: 09-04-2014
IP: Logged

Yep, still the same outage. The spider has been down for about a month now. Hopefully everything is okay in DRODland? I think the folks in charge are aware of the issue at least?

____________________________
Links to neat forum tools that I always have trouble finding:

disoriented
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 2401
Registered: 08-07-2007
IP: Logged

One of the key benefits of being a CaravelNet member is being able to compete on scores and challenges.

Not to be a Pessimistic Petunia, but it’s really quite unfortunate how long it’s taking to fix this. Schik has been away from the site a while, which probably explains things.

Is no one at Caravel able to restart the spider besides Schik?

Was there a falling-out of some kind between Schik and another team member?


____________________________
34th Skywatcher

Best to PM me, since I might miss your message on CaravelNet chat.

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[Last edited by disoriented at 01-29-2019 01:47 AM]

mrimer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 5134
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

I agree it would be good to get the spider going again, as a core component of CaravelNet service. I believe Schik runs the spider on a personal computer. I'm unaware of any issues between any team members. I'm assuming Schik is simply busy with other issues at present. I'll reach out to him about it.

____________________________
Gandalf? Yes... That's what they used to call me.
Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.

disoriented
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 2401
Registered: 08-07-2007
IP: Logged

Hi mrimer,

Have you heard back about this issue?

Thanks!

____________________________
34th Skywatcher

Best to PM me, since I might miss your message on CaravelNet chat.

mrimer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 5134
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

disoriented wrote:
Hi mrimer,

Have you heard back about this issue?

Thanks!

I did reach out to Matt via email a week ago. I haven't heard back.

____________________________
Gandalf? Yes... That's what they used to call me.
Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.

Dischorran
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 3414
Registered: 09-10-2005
IP: Logged

Is there a backup plan?

____________________________

mrimer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 5134
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

Dischorran wrote:
Is there a backup plan?

Unfortunately, no. It seemed that Matt really wanted to own the operation of the CaravelNet components.

____________________________
Gandalf? Yes... That's what they used to call me.
Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.

disoriented
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 2401
Registered: 08-07-2007
IP: Logged

This is really, really unfortunate.

____________________________
34th Skywatcher

Best to PM me, since I might miss your message on CaravelNet chat.

skell
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 3764
Registered: 12-28-2004
IP: Logged

mrimer wrote:
It seemed that Matt really wanted to own the operation of the CaravelNet components.

I don't think it's a fair assessment of Matt's approach to Caravel Net, at least not in my experience working with him, even before we became friends. Matt always cared a lot about the quality of the work done on the backend, and over the years that I worked on the forum and other components he never had any problems delegating stuff to others, provided they were serious about helping and weren't planning to jump the ship the second they are expected to actually do something.

So to the best of my knowledge it wasn't that he wanted to own the operation of CaravelNet but rather no one, to the best of my knowledge, ever suggested to take over those tasks or serve as a backup.

____________________________
My website

mrimer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 5134
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

Oh, pardon if I misspoke. You're exactly right. I appreciate you pointing those things out. It's not my intent to mischaracterize Matt's approach to CaravelNet. I completely agree Matt is passionate about the quality of his work, in all areas, and it's always been a pleasure to collaborate with him on all the projects we've worked on together.

I'm not saying Matt doesn't want to delegate. What I meant to describe, and apparently did so poorly, is that I did briefly discuss the possibility of sharing the maintenance and execution of the spider at a couple points, some years back, and at the time I recall Matt indicating he wanted to keep running it himself. I was fine to let him do that, because he had a proven track record and seemed in earnest. It's possible I'm misremembering, and it's also possible Matt won't even remember having the conversation, because it was so brief.

I'm not saying that's Matt's approach or intent, and I apologize if I came across as over-generalizing. Matt hasn't raised the subject of changing any roles or responsibilities. I'm not trying to read anything into the situation here, because I don't know anything other than that the spider is offline for about a month. I expect he's just busy or has something urgent to deal with.

Would you be interested in reaching out to Matt to see what the situation is?

____________________________
Gandalf? Yes... That's what they used to call me.
Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.

---

[Last edited by mrimer at 02-06-2019 07:44 PM]

Schik
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 5419
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

So, the spiders. Back in late December I had a catastrophic hard drive failure. Somehow, the source code for the spiders never made it into our code repository. I lost everything. I don't even have a dev environment that can build DROD at the moment.

My personal life and work life have been very chaotic lately. That, combined with the feeling that DROD was basically abandoned, has made it hard for me to find time or motivation to work on recreating spiders. I'm afraid I don't have a quick fix. Well, or a slow fix. I'm going to have to lean on Mike here and see if he can find a way to get things working.


____________________________
The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way it treats its animals.
--Mahatma Gandhi

mrimer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 5134
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

Thanks for the update, Matt!

Sorry to hear you lost everything on this computer. Also sorry to hear about the chaos in your life. Hope you're able to get things back in order soon.

While I'm personally no longer actively involved in DROD development, I don't feel DROD is abandoned. For instance, I'm still paying for and maintaining the Caravel server and web domain, which keeps this amazing forum online and all our other site resources. While it's not a ton of money, it's not exactly cheap either. Also, we continue to provide CaravelNet services to our loyal customers, who help support the site through paid CaravelNet memberships. I would like us to keep providing these services while DROD has fans and subscribers who want to be here, use these services and support the site. If you'd like to handle things a different way, please reach out to me with your thoughts and plans ahead of time so that I can be aware of them and plan for any changes in operations.

I'll see whether I can find a copy of the spider source code that you may have provided me at some point. I share others' hopes that we can get it up and running again.

____________________________
Gandalf? Yes... That's what they used to call me.
Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.

---

[Last edited by mrimer at 02-09-2019 10:23 PM]

Dragon Fogel
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 2467
Registered: 06-21-2014
IP: Logged

The spider is working again! Unverified demos are down to about 4000 (they went over 10000 earlier) and the challenge page is up-to-date for me. I'm also seeing verification icons for a few scores in Floating Friendship Facility, so it's not simply getting that by discarding demos.

I don't know exactly what you guys did, but much thanks to everyone involved in getting this working again.

averagemoe
Level: Smiter

Rank Points: 493
Registered: 03-22-2012
IP: Logged

Let that be a lesson to anyone who maintains a web service. Use multiple servers.

____________________________
The internet is no place to act like a wild animal.