What about a texture exchange server?

[teedyo]

What is it they say about putting all of your eggs in one basket? It actually sounds like a pretty square deal. What kind of connection bandwidth do they advertise?

[Tsar Hoikas]

They don't give a number, but their network has been given awesome ratings... I did like this though:

the outgoing traffic travels via Teleglobe, Videotron, Peer1 and TorIX using the shortest route. For inbound traffic, all available providers are used, Teleglobe, Videotron, Peer1, TorIX and Cogent. During an outage affecting a high quality network provider, the unmetered network can be used to ensure service availability. All this in order to ensure 100% uptime of the network access and prevent saturation of certain access links.

[tachzusamm]

Thank you, Tsar, for poking around.
So, because you've started to talk about costs, here's what I found on the web to be good for a first and cheap start:
Virtual server with full root access, 40 GB space, but unlimited traffic, hardware raid-1 (mirror), UPS, 24/7/365 reboot-function and -support, 99.9% availability, uplink 1Gbit. Hosted by an established award-winning company. About $40 per month, rent on monthly basis (no need for 1 year subscription, good to give it a try). But located in Munich/Germany. Oh, we should talk about who does the admin.
Yours sounds pretty good as well.

But I think we need to determine first how much GB we would really need. Any idea how to calculate this more practical?
Do all textures have to be full-res photos? And what about models - what size do they have?


Regarding Windows-gameservers: Yes, there are some around. But AFAIK the costs will be calculated based on playerslots (not sure what this means).

[Tsar Hoikas]

Your server sounds really good actually. A lot more affordable also.

The differences that I see are: The server I found is dedicated where yours is a virtual one ,this isn't a big issue... I really like yours' unlimited traffic, but 1500GB is a lot... I really like the uplink yours has. The only major issue I see is the disk space, but you make a great point about how it would be a great starting point. Perhaps it would be best if we go your route and see if their policy on adding more space is friendly. On the server I found, you start with 160GB and practically double the space for $10 each level. How does yours look in that regard?

As to where the datacenter is... It doesn't really matter to me as long as it's a respected company. The server I found would be in Montreal.

Edit: The "player-slots" are the amount of players that can be online at once. Though for Uru, a company probably wouldn't allow their typical game server service... I don't think that running a MORE Shard is a big priority for us, it looks rather unfufilling compared to my time running an Untìl Uru Shard.

[Chacal]

I'm kinda on the staff at Defender Hosting/ PowerVPS. I may be able to get an interesting deal. The network specsare impressive.

[Tsar Hoikas]

Ouch

Looking at the prices, they're a bit steep (To get something similar to tach's virtual server, we'd be looking at $150/mo)... The network does look pretty awesome, I will give it that much.

I you could get us an "interesting deal" that might be... Interesting (for lack of a better word).

I hope you don't take any offense from that. I'm thinking from the standpoint of "this is a hobby" and "how much is unreasonable to Hoikas on his tiny paycheck" ... Admining a single server for an Africa-based company doesn't bring in much.

[di gama]

Then, webdesign and software. I think we cannot just install a forum software - but maybe as well. A forum software would lack of a lot of functionality. E.g. to add tags to files. Handy uploads. Search for tags, and such. So, does anyone of you have a recommendation or an idea if there is already a ready-to-use (and free) software package around? We could write the whole thing by ourselves, sure, and I have some MySQL and PHP programming skills as well, but I would prefer to concentrate on the project itself.

Don't worry about that. I eat PHP for breakfast. I can whip something decent up in, oh, a day? Finally gives me something useful to do around here (who am I kidding with my attempt at Age-building talent?).

Finally, is somebody interested in doing a more specific description about the categories, tags and areas we would need? I already made a start and had a talk to some 3D people in my circle of friends, and maybe I will come out with some description next week, but I'm still a bit confused because I fear I'm not enough involved in the whole age building process to fully understand the needs - and help is always appreciated.

I was just looking at CGTextures.com (PS: good free texture site), and they have a pretty good image hierarchy and tag format, although we usually lean a certain direction (away from the mundane) so they aren't a perfect fit. I think it would be relatively easy to add new tags as well, so you needn't worry about accounting for every possibility at this point.

[tachzusamm]

[..] Perhaps it would be best if we go your route and see if their policy on adding more space is friendly. On the server I found, you start with 160GB and practically double the space for $10 each level. How does yours look in that regard?

Yes, that's a valid point and a good question. I fear upgrading to more space is'n possible with mine. Anyway, nothing is stated about that on their webside - but maybe I could call them on the phone and ask directly. Oh, well, upgrade IS possible (change vserver to rootserver, with 160GB, 320 GB or 500GB), but then it will cost a lot! (starting with 149,- EUR per month - too expensive for me).
But maybe I will just rent a vserver for a month or two, to let us have a playground for development in a sandbox for the first start and see how the project grows.

Don't worry about that. I eat PHP for breakfast. I can whip something decent up in, oh, a day? Finally gives me something useful to do around here (who am I kidding with my attempt at Age-building talent?).

LOL, and great! You guys are awesome!
So let's work together with the webinterface part, di gama. I could do a bit PHP too, and some of the MySQL part.
When I read this, I was immediately starting to write down lots of ideas regarding the structure of the server, textures, tags, and such.
I think I will come out with some document in text form which decribes it. Stay tuned.

I was just looking at CGTextures.com (PS: good free texture site), and they have a pretty good image hierarchy and tag format, although we usually lean a certain direction (away from the mundane) so they aren't a perfect fit. I think it would be relatively easy to add new tags as well, so you needn't worry about accounting for every possibility at this point.

This is really cool. A great texture site. Thanks a bunch, man.
Now I get a much better idea about what we would need, the site helped me in the learning process and understanding.
And how the search function on this site (http://www.environment-textures.com/3d_models_textures-513) was realized, gave me some additional ideas.

*runs off to start writing the preliminary documentation*

Oh, any ideas about a better working name or domain for the project? Texture Exchange Server (TextURU) was good for textures, but if we want include sounds and objects as well... but I will stick to this name until we have a better name because I still like it.

[Tsar Hoikas]

Might be worth noting that some people may want to share more than textures

[Chacal]

Actually I never even looked at the prices...
What are our requirements? I'll see what I can do.
Also I'm willing to pitch in for the cost, either in $ or in sponsored servers.

Another point: it would be possible to have mirrors for parts of the data. We could have a front-end and put the actual data on other servers.
Thus we could spread costs and maintenance overhead. For instance, I could provide some gigs of data storage and deal with maintenance and backup (and cost) of that particular part of the system.

It is a question a determining the pros and cons of having a monster centralized system (for simplicity) or distributed system (for lower cost).