Author Topic: RTB Development  (Read 394839 times)

I don't know if this has been mentioned or considered before, but perhaps you could include a system for storing the trust list online, and keeping servers that a person has bricks on up to date with any changes in it. Sounds like it might fit in well with the additions of v5.

How will the save gallery be moderated? I mean, are you going to test every save file before it's labeled safe?

How will the save gallery be moderated? I mean, are you going to test every save file before it's labeled safe?

All the moderation you'd have to do would be verifying that it wasn't an invalid save file, which could easily be done automatically by a computer. There is no "threat" from save files.

How could a text file with placement of blocks possibly be harmful?

All the moderation you'd have to do would be verifying that it wasn't an invalid save file, which could easily be done automatically by a computer. There is no "threat" from save files.

I'm not talking about viruses, I mean what's IN the save.

How will the save gallery be moderated? I mean, are you going to test every save file before it's labeled safe?

Saves won't have to go through a moderation queue but the crap/spam stuff will obviously be taken down. I can't think of a case where something wouldn't be "safe" really. Anything outrageously offensive would be removed too.

I don't know if this has been mentioned or considered before, but perhaps you could include a system for storing the trust list online, and keeping servers that a person has bricks on up to date with any changes in it. Sounds like it might fit in well with the additions of v5.

It's something I've considered but I feel strongly like that's something that should be implemented as a default feature of the game. I do have plans to keep your trust list stored on RTB so no matter where you play, you'll have your full trust list available to you. If I ever go for something like what you've suggested it'd be trivial to make that system work given that all the info would be on RTB anyway.

It's something I've considered but I feel strongly like that's something that should be implemented as a default feature of the game. I do have plans to keep your trust list stored on RTB so no matter where you play, you'll have your full trust list available to you. If I ever go for something like what you've suggested it'd be trivial to make that system work given that all the info would be on RTB anyway.
Many features of RTB would be nice to have in the base game, especially considering the reliance on user content. As it stands now, though, RTB seems better equipped for features that have effects beyond single servers. The master server probably could be modified to send information between servers, but the groundwork is already there for RTB.

Saves won't have to go through a moderation queue but the crap/spam stuff will obviously be taken down. I can't think of a case where something wouldn't be "safe" really. Anything outrageously offensive would be removed too.

Okay.

Will there be limitations placed on the hundreds of megabyte-sized infinite mining saves that I might decide to upload?

Yeah, people will have individual quotas and the option to buy more space if they really want it.

Ok so I just got to this forum after a long stretch of staying away from this topic.  So, a question.  Will regular save uploading work like file sharing with the public and private, sort of like public/private files on rtb?

Second:  Will the basic build uploading feature cost any money without upgrading to bigger file-type-uploading versions.

I haven't really made a call on whether I'll allow people to control access to the save files they publish. At the moment they're either in your account (unpublished) where nobody can see/download them, or they're published to the gallery and anyone can get them.

As usual, all of RTB's features are free but if you want to go beyond the storage quota you've been given then you'll have to pay. I have no idea about pay structures, but the quota is not something you need to worry about really. Blockland save files obviously compress really well, and the tests I've done show about a 90% reduction in filesize only using basic gzip compression. There's a lot more I can do to bring that down further so like I said, it's not something worth worrying about. Storage quotas will be generous.

Just a suggestion if you haven't thought of it yet: if you're looking to get some information before you design this sort of feature it might be a good idea to leverage RTB itself to collect information.

I certainly don't mean to tell you how to design a feature, I'm sure you've got more experience with this sort of thing, but I figured I'd share how I'd do it anyway. I would create a simple opt-in survey where people answer a couple questions about what kind of features and how much they might use this service, then automatically collect things like the number of saves they have and how large their saves folder is, so that I can establish a baseline for hosting size. Then you can use some kind of statistical brown townysis to determine how much free space each user gets. For example, if the average folder size is 20MB with a standard deviation of 10MB, then 50MB will comfortably hold roughly 97.7% of users saves.

You probably don't want to host the default saves since that's a lot of space wasted on saves everyone already has, so you would need to filter those out. There's probably quite a few people who don't have any saves, so you might want to use the median as a baseline rather than the average. Alternatively, you could filter out people who don't have any non-default saves since they won't be using the service and therefore shouldn't really get a say in the amount of storage.

Ephi, I would happily pay you for a dedicated hosting service similar to Kalphiter's, but not involving Kalphiter in any way.

Just a suggestion if you haven't thought of it yet: if you're looking to get some information before you design this sort of feature it might be a good idea to leverage RTB itself to collect information.

I certainly don't mean to tell you how to design a feature, I'm sure you've got more experience with this sort of thing, but I figured I'd share how I'd do it anyway. I would create a simple opt-in survey where people answer a couple questions about what kind of features and how much they might use this service, then automatically collect things like the number of saves they have and how large their saves folder is, so that I can establish a baseline for hosting size. Then you can use some kind of statistical brown townysis to determine how much free space each user gets. For example, if the average folder size is 20MB with a standard deviation of 10MB, then 50MB will comfortably hold roughly 97.7% of users saves.

You probably don't want to host the default saves since that's a lot of space wasted on saves everyone already has, so you would need to filter those out. There's probably quite a few people who don't have any saves, so you might want to use the median as a baseline rather than the average. Alternatively, you could filter out people who don't have any non-default saves since they won't be using the service and therefore shouldn't really get a say in the amount of storage.

Got about a year's jump on you, Wedge :)

http://forum.blockland.us/index.php?topic=97653.0

I like the idea of using RTB to collect data but I think even just from that topic alone I've found out the highest folder sizes I can expect, and those figures actually include screenshots too which inflates the actual filesize. If the rough average is about ~50mb then we might assume about 40mb are actual saves which is then only 4mb of space on the RTB file server. Realistically 50 to 100mb of compressed space for users would be a very generous quota.

My plan is to store saves based on the content of the save file instead of what it's called, so in actual fact if everyone had the default saves on their RTB account it'd only take up as much space for me as one copy. A lot of people share and save popular builds so this enables me to make people's quotas only count towards unique save files, while also making sure I'm not wasting space storing the same file hundreds of times. There's a lot of logistics to work out there but those are my intentions at the moment.

Ephi, I would happily pay you for a dedicated hosting service similar to Kalphiter's, but not involving Kalphiter in any way.

I have no interest in running a dedicated hosting service. I don't have the availability to provide support for something people pay me for.
« Last Edit: January 19, 2012, 01:41:22 PM by Ephialtes »