| bookofjude @ 2008-11-28 18:48:00 |
Nocturne Alley Offline is released! (Version 1)
Mood: 
Here's version 1.0 of na_offline. It's currently hosted on donated webspace. It might not last long! Let's see:
http://akaviri.com/na_offline/na_offlin
To open the file, you will need the 7-Zip program.
For Windows: This can be found on the 7-Zip website, or directly from here. Once you have installed it, go to the location where you installed it (The default is C:\Program Files\7-Zip) and run the '7zFM.exe' program.
Once in the program, browse to where you downloaded the na_offline_v1.0.7zip, double click, select the na_offline folder, and extract it to a location. Then follow the instructions at Entry points if you want to start straight away.
For flavours of Unix: On Ubuntu, 7zip can be found in the 'p7zip' package in aptitute. Binaries and source code can be found on the 7zip website (linked above). Once installed (or if already installed) use the command 7z x na_offline_v1.0.7zip to extract the na_offline folder into the current directory.
Further operating system binaries etc can be found on the download page linked to on the 7-zip website above. I believe the instructions would be similar or identical to those for Unix for Mac and BSD systems.
For Mac: this seems to work quite well, though I haven't personally tested it. You'll need to rename the file from '.7zip' to '.7z' for it to actually uncompress it, otherwise it tries to compress it again! Silly programs not paying attention to header information.
File info:
The only version currently available is 'the whole shebang', which is a little over 40 megabytes. However, I will, if enough people want cut down version, make available the following:
na_offline_images.7zip (18mb) (contains external images)
na_offline_navigation.7zip (122kb) (contains frame-based navigation)
na_offline_posts.7zip (6.8mb) (contains posts, icons, and indexes)
na_offline_supplement.7zip (16mb) (contains supplementary material)
Obviously, na_offline.7zip contains all of the files offered above. If you want any one of the above archives, drop a comment and I'm willing to upload it for you. Obviously, individual archives are modular and can be combined with each other.
The posts archive would, however, be essential.
Those files are:
icons/
-All talk-page icons and userpics.
images/
-All externally referenced images and mood themes.
index/
-Index pages for each and every character.
navigation/
-Navigation pages for a chronological read-through including placemarking.
posts/
-The actual posts.
supplement/
-Supplemental material (externally referenced websites, two 'lost' journals (including Draco's "sekrit" journal), and other material found on the wayback machine).
Entry points:
This is probably what most of you people are looking for.
User-based entry points (or in simpler terms, places where you can start reading the game), are found in the folders: index/ and navigation/.
index/ contains a chronological index of all posts, including an entire index (nocturne_alley.html), and character-specific (character_username.html) indexes.
navigation/index.html (or more specifically, top.html and bottom.html) is a chronological, full-game, JavaScript and HTML frames navigation page (or series of pages).
This presents the page in the following configuration:
---------------------------
| Navigation bar |
|--------------------------
| Journal post |
| -> comment 1 |
| -> comment 2 |
|--------------------------
etc. (This being top.html, the configuration reversed in bottom.html)
The navigation bar has 'forward' and 'back' links (don't try using them on the first and last posts; it will break and I have already uploaded the file so I can't be arsed to go and fix it now and have to re-upload), the username (and community), the timestamp of the post, the subject, and a 'bookmark' link.
You can copy and paste this into your address bar to come back to the exact point in the game that you were at, at a later date. You can also right click on the link and go 'add to bookmarks' to bookmark your point in the game.
Plain bookmarking the page will not work, as it will take you back to the first page ever.
Errata:
I'm sure there are lots of mistakes. Please leave a comment if you see anything out of the ordinary. However, some things that I know about and that I'm not going to fix at the minute are:
* Non-player indexes in index/ (an issue with the username base I used to build the index, based off comments on each and every page)
* Previous and next links don't work on the very first and the very last posts.
* Missing images appear with 'LOST'; if you right click and 'view image' (in Firefox), you'll be taken to images/lost.gif?url=
* Missing links will take you to lost.html?url=
* nocturne_alley_8259.html somehow has the wrong icon/username, should be 'darque_pansy'.
* There was an issue with navigation bookmarks in the initial version that I posted. Either download the update or the next version to resolve it.
If there's anything you note not on this list, comment!
Comments:
| tabiji @ November 28 2008, 09:36:45 UTC |
I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you.
I think I'm going to cry. This is incredible...more awesome than I imagined it would be. To think that I can carry the entire run of NA on my thumbdrive and have it safe forever and ever?
And to have it chronologically with the original icons AND EVEN THE ICON KEYWORDS and all the images the characters posted? sfjsljfljflsjflsjfjlf! Oh, and maybe the best thing...NO COLLAPSED THREADS!
You are so brilliant I don't even have the words. Thank you thank you thank you thank you, Jude from the bottom of my obsessive little heart.
| tabiji @ July 9 2009, 02:33:44 UTC |
Hey...I need to talk to you. And akshully, you are wrong.
(parent)| portkey @ November 28 2008, 12:34:44 UTC |
So this is basically amazing.
.. I'd forgotten how polite Harry was.
| star_watcher81 @ November 28 2008, 13:48:51 UTC Thanks from an nraged lurker |
This is fabulous! Thank you so much!
(parent)| bookofjude @ November 28 2008, 14:00:36 UTC Re: Thanks from an nraged lurker |
You're welcome!
(parent)| ungemmed @ November 28 2008, 14:15:45 UTC |
EEEE OMG ILU ETC.
Seriously, this is amazing. Thank you SO much.
| bookofjude @ November 29 2008, 00:47:29 UTC |
Of course! Go check out supplement/quidditchislife also! I still need to work out how the darque_pansy post got screwed...
(parent)| trowa @ November 28 2008, 18:55:40 UTC |
this is made of awesomesauce, with a side of extra awesome
(parent)| alas_earwax @ November 29 2008, 02:01:41 UTC |
amazing. i'll get to downloading eventually, just wanted to say thanks for now. :)
(parent)| bookofjude @ November 29 2008, 02:17:40 UTC |
Sure: if you need a small version due to dialup hell, let me know and I'll put the individuals up.
(parent)| gracefulfool @ November 29 2008, 21:43:48 UTC |
Oh, my gosh, you are amazing! Thank you SO much for taking the time to put this together! :)
(parent)| blue_raven @ November 30 2008, 02:05:24 UTC |
You are the best twitface EVER. This is so many flavours of awesome, I hope you know. ♥
(parent)| brimtoast @ January 13 2009, 00:14:43 UTC |
Never mind!
Much less suavely done than your way (since after I DLed the files I fixed them mostly with huge-scale find/replaces), but I got a lot of practice at regular expressions! :)
| bloodybrilliant @ December 2 2008, 06:07:58 UTC |
Jude ♥ there really aren't enough ♥ in the world for this. You are awesome *_*
THANK YOU SO HARD.
Also, I just dl'd the 7zip thing and I'm sure it'll work and all but I'll totally pester you if I can't figure out the How To Open and How To Navigate stuff. XD But I think I can handle it. JUST IN CASE though. XDDD
| bookofjude @ December 2 2008, 07:10:02 UTC |
:D! You know where to find me if you've got problems.
(parent)| lazy_daze @ December 2 2008, 22:30:38 UTC |
Dude. AWESOME. Part of me wants to, like, quit my job just so I can have endless hours to go through all this again :D :D :D OH NA. Though just knowing it's there and safe on my computer, now, if I want to, is awesome enough. THANK YOU.
(parent) |
Anonymous @ December 12 2008, 04:31:37 UTC |
I haven't downloaded this or looked at it yet as I just found out about it, but this is pretty fantastic just in existence.
Do the images in this rely upon the existence of NA.net or are they uploaded within the file on their own? I ask this because I'm wondering if it means I can, without too much guilt, stop paying to keep NA.net up. I realise that you, Jude, are the only one likely to see this comment, but it's something I deliberate often and the only people whose opinions I ever get on it are people who were also in NA. I feel bad about the idea of breaking all the images, but on the other hand, is it worth it to keep paying the money just for nostalgia's sake? Jude, apparently I rely on you for these answers.
| bookofjude @ December 12 2008, 04:45:44 UTC |
There are still a few problems with the file that I need to get off my lazy arse and fix, but...
All of the images that I could get off NA.net are included in the file: this means that all of the images that are linked to which were hosted on NA.net are in the file. So, in theory, you could stop the hosting if you wanted to. To be honest, I hadn't really expected NA.net to hang around for quite so long, and was quite surprised to find as much on the site as I did.
So, to sum up: you won't break the images in the offline version. So you don't need to feel bad about that.
I'd be a little upset to see NA.net go, but if you were willing to send me a copy of the site in a zip file or something (or at least the publicly accessible bits of it), I'd include it in the next version.
| bookofjude @ December 12 2008, 04:46:15 UTC |
And I told you I'd get around to it one day! Mwahaha!
(parent)| bookofjude @ December 31 2008, 05:25:45 UTC |
About four days? There are still errors. The longest part was actually fetching the data; once that was done, writing the code to put it together all pretty-like was actually surprisingly easy. I need to properly migrate it to a better code-based, though.
(parent) |
Anonymous @ January 6 2009, 15:21:43 UTC |
Holy crap. I'm impressed. I never got to read a lot of the early NA. I joined the game way later and I missed some important things relevant to my character. It'll be interesting to look back on it all. Thank you so much for all this work.
(parent)| kat99999 @ January 25 2009, 16:08:02 UTC |
this is ABSOLUTELY brilliant. I am reliving the NA love, thank you so much!!!!
(parent)| comava @ January 26 2009, 16:50:43 UTC |
This is amazing and you are top-notch awesome for doing this. I'm going to have a sleepless night ahead of me, I can tell!
THANK YOU!!!!!!!
| mizzy2k @ July 16 2009, 23:15:20 UTC |
fank yu i rilly apeshiate seeng orl my ole frends paostin n stuf.
:-----------------------D
| supershay @ July 17 2009, 22:58:53 UTC |
this is the most awesome thing that has ever awesomed. you're my hero! <3
(parent)| bookshop @ July 25 2009, 03:38:25 UTC |
oh my GOD i am only just now seeing this and i am enraptured. OH JUDE. *GLOMPS YOU SILLY*
| treelines @ July 28 2010, 00:38:05 UTC |
Oh my gosh, I have heard about this game for years and years and now I will get to read it all from the very beginning all in one place!
:D
This is really wonderful, thank you. It's hard when you're getting into new material in old fandoms, and you see a whole bunch of links are dead or 404'd. I am so happy to find something as epic and rec'd as this game all intact, all in one place. Thank you. So awesome. I am really looking forward to this.
| bookofjude @ July 28 2010, 02:57:11 UTC |
Excellent! Let me know if you have any issues with this, as it's been a while since I worked on it.
(parent)| treelines @ July 28 2010, 05:27:43 UTC |
So far, things are running smoothly! I'm going to work using the nocturne_alley.html page from the /index file, and I'll let you know here if I come across anything that's broken. If you don't hear from me, it's because everything is working and I am twirling in delight. Thank you again for putting this up.
(parent)| myr_soleil @ February 23 2011, 18:50:52 UTC |
Oh man, this is great! I was looking for exactly this! *settles for happy hours of reading*
I was wondering: where does the stupidpotter journal fit into the timeline? I'm sure someone mentions it somewhere, but... there's a lot of info around this corner of fandom! So sorry about that.
| bookofjude @ September 24 2011, 11:16:28 UTC |
I suck for taking so long to actually respond to this comment! From what I remember, stupidpotter is actually completely separate from the game. The only reason I know anything about it is because a fellow fan tracked it down based on something that one of the players said. I thus added it to my list of to-archive, to make sure it wasn't lost!
Hope that clears it up for you, and I hope you enjoyed it :)
|
Anonymous @ April 13 2011, 19:12:04 UTC Can't wait to make a contribution |
Hey - I am really glad to discover this. Good job!
(parent)| gossymer @ March 16 2012, 10:36:34 UTC |
Hiiiii, was wondering if any mirrors could be posted for the files (mediafire?) since all the links are down :( Thanks so much btw!
(parent)| bookofjude @ March 16 2012, 11:09:57 UTC |
Bah! Goddamn things dying. I'll try to get around to it this evening sometime -- I have all the files, so it shouldn't be too much trouble!
(parent)| bookofjude @ April 14 2012, 01:48:51 UTC |
Forgive me so much! I can't believe I actually forgot about this thread. I'm just re-uploading it as we speak.
(parent)| bookofjude @ April 14 2012, 01:55:11 UTC |
http://wxwhatever.com/na_offline/na_off
| bookofjude @ April 14 2012, 01:55:04 UTC |
It's now being hosted on another website! I'm not sure how long it'll last, what the bandwidth, etc, is! But if it stops working give me a poke and I'll press-gang another friend with webspace!
http://wxwhatever.com/na_offline/na_off
| catiadoodle @ February 21 2015, 19:09:02 UTC |
Years after the fact, someone is still here to THANK YOU !!! <33333
(parent)| vanouria @ March 30 2017, 18:53:49 UTC |
years after the fact you commented here but wondering if you had it still, for an old fan who has lost laptops with relics like this on them? :)
(parent)| vanouria @ March 30 2017, 18:53:07 UTC |
i'd be shocked if you still had this but i'd love it if you did!
(parent)| bookofjude @ April 3 2017, 06:45:26 UTC |
I don't seem to have a copy to hand. The webhosting on that domain has apparently expired so I'm not able to get a backup copy off it. I can't find backups on my spare hard drive but that's a more recent purchase so I'll keep looking for my older drives. Meanwhile I'll contact a few people I'm still in contact with who might've downloaded it to get a copy.
(parent)| bookofjude @ April 3 2017, 07:06:12 UTC |
Okay, so, I've moved like three times since '08 and I'm afraid that the drives this is on are in storage somewhere. I don't know where or when I'll be able to find them, so main contingency is on 
tabiji having a copy around as I, very stupidly, last month, deleted the main wxwhatever.com backup file for space thinking that, since having switched to new hosting, everything was already copied over. I feel dreadful now -- as there will have been other things uploaded there which are now also lost.
There are enough people out there with copies, though, and I intend on making multiple redundant backups this time around.
| vanouria @ April 3 2017, 14:05:52 UTC |
that's all right, you're wonderful for checking! thank you so much, though i'm so sorry you've lost things that were uploaded :( <3
(parent)| bookofjude @ April 21 2017, 06:19:14 UTC |
The good news is that, thanks to the help of a seasoned explorer, I've discovered the location of my old laptop which I did most of the work on, and, it has the entirety of the na_offline project -- including the original source code!
The majority of the source code is completely invalid and useless now, and judging by how the frame-based navigation works (well, rather, doesn't work), there are some compatibility issues going forwards.
I'll be setting up a torrent and I'm almost finished uploading the original 7zip file to separate hosting (so the URL will be at the end of this comment).
Going forward, I'll probably re-learn everything about the new LiveJournal layouts and see if I can't get a thorough backup of 
nraged as well, because honestly, that's half of the game, really...
New URL: http://akaviri.com/na_offline/na_offlin
Instructions are the same as at the top of this post.
| tabiji @ April 19 2017, 05:07:05 UTC |
You asked me about this a couple weeks ago and I promptly forgot! I'm so sorry! I am certain I have multiple redundant copies. I will go look right now.