Backup of the original Steam Forum

da_raabi wrote:

if we can get the html uploaded somewhere, we should be able to do a site

I have a personal website - nothing to do with Stalkersoup, but I would be happy to put your HTML pages up there temporarily so you can see what they look like.

OK guys this looks good, I have no idea how you managed to copy 60% of the old forums so quickly!!!

The example looks fine.. we can edit it an fix it up better later... At lleast with have the text in searchable format. thats the hard part already conqured!!!

We should definately take up the amazing offer from pchester... I have problems viewing the files on dropbox.

Ok, once I do some basic editing I'll get the file over to pchester for testing.

And all the credit goes to Toony for finding the old posts. He's been a real champ getting that done. He sent me an email update today and I was like DAAAMMNNN!!!

Now perhaps 90% saved, could be a little more than 105 pages at the end.
Pages from 1 to 101 (posts from 8 january 2011 - 20 december 2016) are
complete now without missing posts in between. I send to you, da_raabi.
Can work with it, only missing posts at the end can be added later, i hope.

Thank you for your work and thanks to you, who like it.
I will be happy to see the final result.

I got to the end. The rest is in one text file with posts from 20 december 2016
to 1 June 2017, i think then the old forum went offline.

Unfortunately there are about 250 posts missing in my last file.
But overall from 1757 pages there are 1740 saved.

The original page numbers of the missing posts are
1688,1689,1692,1698,1706,1707,1709,1715,1716,1721,1724,
1725,1727,1728,1729,1730,1733

I´m not able to find them, perhaps someone other can.

Sorry about that, it makes me mad      

I think your determination deserves special reconition here.

I will try to find the spare pages, but its likely that they will be long gone.

I found page 1688...
Pm me your email address and we'll see what we can do...

Toony wrote:

I got to the end. The rest is in one text file with posts from 20 december 2016
to 1 June 2017, i think then the old forum went offline.

Unfortunately there are about 250 posts missing in my last file.
But overall from 1757 pages there are 1740 saved.

The original page numbers of the missing posts are
1688,1689,1692,1698,1706,1707,1709,1715,1716,1721,1724,
1725,1727,1728,1729,1730,1733

I´m not able to find them, perhaps someone other can.

Sorry about that, it makes me mad

I have pages...
1668, 1669, 1715, 1716, 1728, and 1733.

that leaves us with...
1692, 1689, 1692, 1706, 1707, 1709, 1721, 1724, 1725, 1727, 1729, and 1730 still to find.

Thank you, Steve!

I checked you email and could find

1688, 1715, 1716 complete
(1728 and 1733 are shorter as they should, but better as missing)

So we still need...
1689, 1692, 1698, 1706, 1707, 1709, 1721, 1724, 1725, 1727, 1729, 1730
and the rest of pages 1728 and 1733

Missing posts are now less than 200 from estimated 26.250, sounds ok!

So 200 posts are missing from a total of 26,250... You realize that means you found 99.24% right? That is seriously intense!

I've got everything except that last extra page Steve found. I'll be tackling this tomorrow. I'm really trying to figure out if I can set up a macro to format everything as a batch... but we shall see. Keep fingers crossed!

Wow, now I don't even have to ask questions on the forums!

da_raabi wrote:

So 200 posts are missing from a total of 26,250... You realize that means you found 99.24% right? That is seriously intense!

I've got everything except that last extra page Steve found. I'll be tackling this tomorrow. I'm really trying to figure out if I can set up a macro to format everything as a batch... but we shall see. Keep fingers crossed!

How did you find them?
I found Yandex.ru and Yandex.com were the best sources for me.
I tired all the major engines, yahoo, bing, google, yandex, and ask.com

I was about to resort to instal yacy, as its a peer to peer search engine, but if we already havee 100% then I won't need to.

Very impressive, I'm surprised steam wouldn't just give us a zip file...

I suppose many people can use it to search for game problems that still exist in the game. When we didnt have this, I noticed many repeated requests for problems that need to be worked on. it highlighted the issue for me very clearly.

Moving on.... now that were so good at pulling old forums, as a group effort, I woundered if people would rise to the challenge of copying the GSC forums.

Many of the pages there hold valuble modding information and tutorials which are extremely hard to find.

GSC has new forums now, but they still allow the old forum to be accessible..
My concern is that GSC still owns the rights to the Stalker francise, but actively invests all of its time and resources into other games created by GSC.

(this decision is based on sales of the other games and so Stalker never took priority for the company.)

My only worry is that GSC is based in Ukraine (which is at war). and I wonder what will happen if GSC suddenly becomes less interested in maintainiing a forum that doesn't actract any revenue. I'm also worried that GSC may shut down thee forum for economic reason, but also due to the unstability in the country.

If this information is to be preserved, now is the time to do it.

I'd recommend a new thread on the GSC forum to keep things clean here. Sounds like a good idea though!

So... I am in the process of doing some VBA coding right now in Excel to run through the text of what I have and auto-format some things.

and....

I HAVE A MACRO WRITTEN!!!!

I was able to achieve in seconds what it took me an hour to do manually! I'm still working on it, but it should add some nice line breaks for html and remove some of the extra crap (from the downloading process) as well.

I'll update as it comes together.

Working with pchester, we have gotten a sample page online for everyone to look at. We were debating the merits of 12pt and 14pt font and I decided to go with 14pt to make things easier to read. My eyes are not terrible, and 12pt was rough to read through.

I'd like everyone's honest opinion on formatting, length, etc. Please keep in mind that what is posted is only the first page of ONE HUNDRED. So the final page will be 100 TIMES LONGER!!!!.

Is this going to be a problem, or do we want everything on one, central page?

Honest feedback is welcomed before I get too far doing the editing!

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da_raabi wrote:

Working with pchester, we have gotten a sample page online for everyone to look at. We were debating the merits of 12pt and 14pt font and I decided to go with 14pt to make things easier to read. My eyes are not terrible, and 12pt was rough to read through.

I'd like everyone's honest opinion on formatting, length, etc. Please keep in mind that what is posted is only the first page of ONE HUNDRED. So the final page will be 100 TIMES LONGER!!!!.

Is this going to be a problem, or do we want everything on one, central page?

Honest feedback is welcomed before I get too far doing the editing!

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Hi da_raabi

What a brilliant job you've done so far! My only recommendations, in order of importance, would be

1. Add at least one line space after the time of day, so that the text reads more clearly underneath the contributor, date, and time

2. Because this document will be read worldwide, change the date format from, say 11-06-2011, to 06 Nov 2011. This may also make searches easier

3. For the same reason, change the current time format to the international 24 hour format I.e. 12.07 AM would become 00:07

I know this would be extra work, but you're doing such a superb job, and this document would be forever

Looks good!!

If you ask me, i would prefer one page with all content.
I agree with point 1 and 3, Sword mentioned
A little more space between the lines would it make easier to read,
but perhaps the document would be too long?

Here is something wrong in your example (the "transition" -don´t know
the right word- between the two posts):

Spoiler:

@Steve90k

You asked how to find the pages. After i searched for the cached ones with bing,
saved what i could find and recognized, that many are missing, i tried web.archive.org
(if i knew, i should have started there and saved many hours of work...)

Here is a way to reproduce my results:

Spoiler:

Here is another version incorporating a couple of the requests above:

Line space added after name/date line
text line-spacing changed to 1.5 x normal

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I'm not sure that da_raabi can do much with the date format. He is editing a very long, plain-text file at this stage, so he is pretty much limited to global find-and-replace and simple macros. Of course, he may prove me wrong...

Toony wrote:

If you ask me, i would prefer one page with all content.
... but perhaps the document would be too long?

I have mixed feelings about very long web pages; people tend not to scroll very far before losing interest. However, as the info on this page is mostly going to be found using search engines, you will be taken straight to any matching term(s) irrespective of the page length. Having a single page would also mean that we would be able to use ordinary find-in-page searches (Ctrl-F in most browsers).

We can try creating the archive as a single page and see how we go. If we encounter any problems due to page size, we can decide what to do at that time.

Well I can tell you that the original combined text file I had created before Toony sent me the last couple hundred posts was around 11Mb. That's a big friggen txt file. I have no idea if an html page can handle that or not...

I am sure some graphic-rich web pages will be larger than that. AFAIK there is no physical limit to an HTML page size, but the more MB, the longer it will take to load. That could be a problem over a slow connection, but if someone wants the info badly enough they will hopefully be patient.

I don't think search engines would have a problem with it. I have read that they may push a page down their results list if they find something they don't like, but I can't find anything to suggest that they have a size limit.

pchester wrote:

Here is another version incorporating a couple of the requests above:

Line space added after name/date line
text line-spacing changed to 1.5 x normal

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This is so much better! You're doing a brilliant job between you. Most of us thought that this info would be lost forever...

What you're doing requires much more than skill, but dedication and determination to see it through to completion...

Once we make the text file downloadable in the Game Guides section of this forum, and a valuable part of every true Stalker's armory, I hope we can find a way to give you a permanent credit for your work

Sword2012 wrote:

make the text file downloadable in the Game Guides section of this forum, and a valuable part of every true Stalker's armory

Toony and da_raabi have done the most of the work, they are the ones who deserve any bouquets that may be handed out!    We have actually been working toward creating a web page that (we hope) can become part of TB's Stalkersoup site. However, da_raabi will be creating a text file as an intermediate step, so it could be held in both places. We aren't expecting it to change once it is complete.

Quick update:

I have been having good luck with my formatting macros so far. I've got txt pages 1-10 (of approx 100) into an html page, which I have sent to pchester for upload/testing. As I progress through these files it may start to take a bit more time. Some of the later files changed format significantly, meaning I will need to write all new macros. I've already run into this once in the first 10 pages.

Oh, and 10 pages =  37,443 lines of code in html! Wow!

I'll keep y'all posted as I progress through the files.

Link to most current file, as provided by pchester:

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thats awesome that your trying to recover the old thread, once google search finds it players can use it for reference when they need help

Still working. I decided to go back and add extra line breaks to help maintain the original poster's line spacing. I noticed (particularly when people posted error code snippets) that my previous formatting was very difficult to read, as the code treated everything as one long line. This resulted in massive paragraphs. While the pages will be much longer this way, it will make reading waaaaaay easier.

Also, I am thinking about breaking this into three pages. This would limit (somewhat) the sheer volume of posts per page and make things a bit more stomach-able. After only 1/3 complete the html was already 6mb of pure text. That's a LOT of text!

da_raabi wrote:

After only 1/3 complete the html was already 6mb of pure text. That's a LOT of text!

It certainly is. About six standard novels. The text in the game is only around 4Mb...

You're doing a great job, da_raabi. Please see it through to the end!

Here it is! The first real test page! This is parts 1-50 of approximately 100. The page is 10mb, so it takes a bit to load on mobile devices.

My thoughts are to decrease the number of spaces slightly, and see if I can get rid of some of the extra "45 von 71" extra text found throughout.

What do you all think thus far?

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da_raabi wrote:

Here it is! The first real test page! This is parts 1-50 of approximately 100. The page is 10mb, so it takes a bit to load on mobile devices.

My thoughts are to decrease the number of spaces slightly, and see if I can get rid of some of the extra "45 von 71" extra text found throughout.

What do you all think thus far?

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Nice work da_raabi!
My feeling is that you could safely eliminate all the space above the Member's name at the top, close the space between the Member's name and the Date/time, and close the space a little between the Date/Time and the message body - in that order of importance

There'd still be some international confusion with the dates, being in the US format, but this is not so important

You're the expert at this and you know the limitations of the tools you're using, so these are just hopeful suggestions. But if nothing else I'd definitely remove the space above the Member's name

However, the layout is currently looking so neat that I actually want to read it right the way through!

da_raabi wrote:

What do you all think thus far?

Looks very good!  

Perhaps you can insert a short intro at the top of the first page
-this is the complete Stalkersoup forum....years 2011 to...
-blah blah blah
-what you can find
-Search with Strg-F / Start at bottom to get newest results / ....

The guide only goes up to 2013?

Amazing work BTW.