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gb 
PostPosted: 05 Jul 2016, 11:54 
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On Saturday Management had a meeting, mostly because for various reasons it looks like we'll have to move down from two server machines to one at some point. We talked about a load of stuff, Green took some notes here.

Please read the full notes if you missed the Sunday meeting but the tl;dr in terms of games is -

- We're dropping the Red Orchestra 2 servers. The 2x64 slot servers take up a huge chunk of space on the machine, nobody from the SpA community uses them any more and in the two year they've been up as far as I can tell only one person that actually uses the servers has come here to say hi, so it doesn't make any sense to keep them around.
- Minecraft is being reduced from 16gb to 12gb of memory to help with the transition. This should have virtually no impact on performance.
- TF2 will go to 1 vanilla server and 1 MVM server, with the Events server coming in and out of hibernation as we need it.

So that makes the merge from two machines to one technically possible without having much overall impact.

Donations!

The other thing we need though is donations. Moving down to one machine reduces costs so we're looking at 120/euros a month total. Saint is happy to keep paying half of that, so we're aiming for 60 euros/month from donations, or in other words 10 people paying 6 euros/month (which atm is almost exactly £5/month), which we thought sounded pretty reasonable and achievable as a minimum. More would be better of course, particularly because the hardware's getting pretty old and it may or may not survive the transplant to a new data centre that's coming up somewhere down the road, so having a bit of cash spare for upgrade would be really handy for the future. Saint's looking into getting the finances sorted so we have an easy way to set up monthly donations for anyone who would like to help out, but if you've got any methods that you would like to use then let us know.

Questions we have for everyone!

Like I said, all the details are in the google doc (and if there's anything that needs clarification let me know) but to boil everything down to some questions we need to ask you guys:

- We talked about setting up a Discord for us to use: if people were active on it then it would be an easy way to get in touch with everyone at the same time. There seems to be some interest in this so far, so who else would use it?
- How can we make the baseline 60/euros a month thing work? What platform would you guys like to use to make recurring donations?
- What else could we use SpA for? Think of it less as an exclusively gaming platform and more as a webspace for people to use for whatever personal projects they wanted to run with. For example, if I keep making youtube videos for a year or so and I get a community forming on my channel then I might want to use SpA as a base for that community, or do a related blog here, or something. The possibilities are basically endless here and I think it's going to come down to what individuals want to do, but if there's anything that anyone wants to try out we'd probably be excited to run with it!
- Not so much a question as a discussion points: games tend to be moving away from community-hosted servers toward quickplay/matchmaking type things hosted on the developer's end. SpA used to grow (in MC still does I guess) through randoms joining a particular server and integrating into that server community. So we have to think about how people find and join the community in the future: for example in Overwatch, yeah we like to play games together and fill out a team of 6, but we should also look for opportunities to have people join our group and have wider connections forming. Zombakias is work on some marketing/advertising stuff, which the Clans are part of. We should also be looking for more opportunities to do things like Cards Against Humanity, Jackbox games and other stuff that doesn't require everyone having the same game installed to play, meaning the people who play different games aren't exclusively on their own little islands all the time and have a chance to hang out with the rest of SpA.

I think I got the most important stuff, if anyone else at the meetings spots anything I missed then please cover my ass :mrgreen:

Cheers, Byte Me who I guess is speaking on behalf of management :ugly:

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us 
PostPosted: 07 Jul 2016, 22:29 
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Does Minecraft or something... (1323)
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Discord - I've briefly used the platform and found it good at what it wants to achieve. The many platforms it works with helps out here, meaning you're not required to download the desktop app every time you're on someone else's PC and you don't have to always come back to the desktop version to check activity - there's mobile apps for it. I think it's worth a try, keeping Mumble up would still be a good idea in the case users find it easier to use that but I believe it's worth trying out Discord.

What else could we use SpA for? - As said I think allowing personal projects to be show off through the site would be a good idea. Personally I know I have a few programs that I would like to offer up to the public and I have to use file sharing sites that are really shady, so I would love the ability to share files and other projects through the site with the ability to make separate pages for projects - and the forums we already would be a great place to discuss those projects. I could explain that idea in greater detail but for now I want to get on to answering these questions.

Donations - I am not entirely sure on how any of that works, but I do plan on donating as soon as I have some sort of income beyond just money for fuel.

Future growth - The clans project is taking off and that hopefully will gain attention as time goes on. In the same way we plan on recruiting people for the clans I believe we need to just step out of our bubbles and invite people to join the community or to come hang out with us. The more people we talk to outside of the community and tell about the community the better. Also, we can run campaigns on social media but the chances of that bringing in good traffic is slim. There is targeted advertising and while I think that may help I doubt it would have the effect it needs to justify the cost. There are many ways to get the community out there, but word-of-mouth is the best I can think of at the moment.

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-Christopher Parker


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us 
PostPosted: 07 Jul 2016, 23:53 
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Sorry I've been inactive :(

I got some things to write out about some thoughts, but for now I set up a Discord "Server"

https://discord.gg/CujWEJF Join juncos instead.


Last edited by [SpA]bubbajim3 on 09 Jul 2016, 22:46, edited 1 time in total.

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nl 
PostPosted: 08 Jul 2016, 11:43 
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SpA Fookah (4459)
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Was there a problem with mumble?
What's the advantage of discord over mumble?

Afaik, Mumble is pretty well supported and lot's of possibility to tweak. For example, the choice of very high audio quality.

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cz 
PostPosted: 08 Jul 2016, 15:42 
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We talked about this on the meeting.

Basically Mumble needs a client, Discord can work off browser.

If you give somebody "come join us on mumble" they have to:
a) download mumble
b) click on your link and hope it associated correctly
c) get forum account (if they want more than be moved around by others)

+ bonus:
d) text chat is useless in Mumble

If you give somebody "come join us on discord" they have to:
a) click on a link

with Discord you have both chat AND voice, you have channels (like IRC). And heck, you can connect IRC to Discord...


Disadvantage?
not FOSS, hosted on their servers (I can definitely understand why).

Mumble is not going anywhere, at least for now, though.

_________________
Lovable big-boned fluffy fox. Call me Ashlee or Ashley.


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nl 
PostPosted: 08 Jul 2016, 17:53 
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[SpA]Ashlee wrote:
We talked about this on the meeting.

Basically Mumble needs a client, Discord can work off browser.

If you give somebody "come join us on mumble" they have to:
a) download mumble
b) click on your link and hope it associated correctly
c) get forum account (if they want more than be moved around by others)

+ bonus:
d) text chat is useless in Mumble

If you give somebody "come join us on discord" they have to:
a) click on a link

with Discord you have both chat AND voice, you have channels (like IRC). And heck, you can connect IRC to Discord...


Disadvantage?
not FOSS, hosted on their servers (I can definitely understand why).

Mumble is not going anywhere, at least for now, though.
Whats FOSS?


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nl 
PostPosted: 08 Jul 2016, 23:49 
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SpA Fookah (4459)
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[SpA]Ashlee wrote:
We talked about this on the meeting.

Basically Mumble needs a client, Discord can work off browser.

If you give somebody "come join us on mumble" they have to:
a) download mumble
b) click on your link and hope it associated correctly
c) get forum account (if they want more than be moved around by others)

+ bonus:
d) text chat is useless in Mumble

If you give somebody "come join us on discord" they have to:
a) click on a link

with Discord you have both chat AND voice, you have channels (like IRC). And heck, you can connect IRC to Discord...


Disadvantage?
not FOSS, hosted on their servers (I can definitely understand why).

Mumble is not going anywhere, at least for now, though.

Sounds like a lot of advantages. Hope the sound quality will be good.

_________________
M.A.S.K. , is the mighty power that can save the day


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cz 
PostPosted: 09 Jul 2016, 08:23 
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[SpA]SaintK wrote:
Whats FOSS?
Free and open-source software

Sound quality is good.

I presume they use the same sound codec as Mumble does (and so does TS btw).

Also most people are familiar with TS instead of Mumble. But Discord took off very quickly and it's much more known.

_________________
Lovable big-boned fluffy fox. Call me Ashlee or Ashley.


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us 
PostPosted: 09 Jul 2016, 14:18 
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[SpA]Ashlee wrote:
We talked about this on the meeting.

Basically Mumble needs a client, Discord can work off browser.

If you give somebody "come join us on mumble" they have to:
a) download mumble
b) click on your link and hope it associated correctly
c) get forum account (if they want more than be moved around by others)

+ bonus:
d) text chat is useless in Mumble

If you give somebody "come join us on discord" they have to:
a) click on a link

with Discord you have both chat AND voice, you have channels (like IRC). And heck, you can connect IRC to Discord...


Disadvantage?
not FOSS, hosted on their servers (I can definitely understand why).

Mumble is not going anywhere, at least for now, though.
Not to mention, there's also a very user-friendly UI to it. It's easy to get an account set up and join in a chat. I believe there is a way to make users have their account verified by email before being allowed to send messages in the server as well. There's also roles which allows admins to assign users to groups, which I believe those roles are visible to everyone which would allow users to easily tell when an admin is online if they need help.

_________________
Procrastination is like a credit card: it's a lot of fun until you get the bill.
-Christopher Parker


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cz 
PostPosted: 09 Jul 2016, 14:27 
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I wouldn't say "very friendly UI", it took me far too long to find the Settings button :)

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Lovable big-boned fluffy fox. Call me Ashlee or Ashley.


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gb 
PostPosted: 09 Jul 2016, 16:28 
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Yeah I think we had some productive talks in mumble. As far as donations and the fate of MrWhite goes we'll have to work out those details in the near future based on the conclusions we came to.

I think Discord looks great. What I'll probably do is set us a server up and test it with some people to see if it meets our needs and then switch from away from Mumble and make Discord our primary voice/chat client if we like it. Link it in with IRC too if that's still possible. Mumble won't be going anywhere and will stay up for all the concerned SpA grandads :wink:

TF2 has just had a significant update and it may change quickplay and TF2 forever. It's not clear if these changes will deliver the killing blow to community servers, or actually give them a fighting chance. Too early to say. I'll be looking into our tf2 and will get back to people on that. It looks to me though that this is a negative change that is going to further isolate players from eachother and the servers they use. Moving away from hosting to more of a clan or community focused thing might be the best path for us, we shall see.

Also I believe the correct term for ketchup with noodly pasta is sketti :ugly:


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fi 
PostPosted: 09 Jul 2016, 17:04 
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[SpA]JuncoPartner wrote:
I think Discord looks great. What I'll probably do is set us a server up and test it with some people to see if it meets our needs and then switch from away from Mumble and make Discord our primary voice/chat client if we like it. Link it in with IRC too if that's still possible. Mumble won't be going anywhere and will stay up for all the concerned SpA grandads :wink:
Guess I'll have to install it :ugly: The overlay seems better than Mumble's (seeing as the latter's rarely works anyway).
EDIT: Well, Discord's overlay doesn't seem to work either.
[SpA]JuncoPartner wrote:
Also I believe the correct term for ketchup with noodly pasta is sketti :ugly:
Praise be to His Noodly Appendage.

_________________
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL502D6BAD7E3A5EB8 – My compositions :U
_____

“If I myself had to portray the term 'people' by drawing it, I'd draw a mere gaping mouth, a clamouring mouth.” ― Pentti Linkola.


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cz 
PostPosted: 09 Jul 2016, 17:52 
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[SpA]JuncoPartner wrote:
I think Discord looks great. What I'll probably do is set us a server up and test it with some people to see if it meets our needs and then switch from away from Mumble and make Discord our primary voice/chat client if we like it. Link it in with IRC too if that's still possible. Mumble won't be going anywhere and will stay up for all the concerned SpA grandads :wink:
bubbajim already did, you're free to join.

Only downside is that Discord "servers" are invite only, cannot search for them or anything, need an invite code.

Can be added to the top menu :ugly:

_________________
Lovable big-boned fluffy fox. Call me Ashlee or Ashley.


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gb 
PostPosted: 09 Jul 2016, 18:14 
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Yeah sadly GB is offline, I can't really do anything with his server :ugly:

Here's my test one, but at the moment it is purely for testing and looking at the features.
https://discord.gg/bpA36


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us 
PostPosted: 09 Jul 2016, 22:45 
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I was betrayed :ugly:

Deleted my server to avoid confusion. :5:


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