ARMAHOLIC website not working

[Αplion 1122]

1 minute ago, W0lle said:

Of course he can do with his website whatever he wants. But:

 

He knew very well that armaholic was hosting a lot of unique files which are long time gone elsewhere. If you want to call it like that: He was hosting the memories and history of Arma back to the Arma1 release. At the very least he could have mentioned that he has enough and will close the site in xx weeks.
This way, everyone would have the chance to get what was important to him. Running away like this, with a slap in the face for many of his loyal visitors is just not fair. That's not the Foxhound I knew. And it makes me sad to see that he obviously knows what's going on here but yet doesn't bother to talk to us.

 

Imagine how many simultaneously downloads would be ... easily could cause network issue ... plus that non-paid downloads speed, was significant limited.

 

Fox is a reasonable guy and he must had his reasons doing something like that. But now we must go on ... either having just this forum only, or make something similar as armaholic which will hold all info we need ...

[W0lle 1050]

Not much more than in all the years back. I'm pretty sure he had his reason for what he did. Yet it's unfair.

I would have gladly driven the few kilometers to Holland and taken over the files. And had a beer or two with him. Anything would have been better than this stunt.

[-RaG- 21]

I really hope this turns in favour of history cause getting our next generations of Arma players to have the ability to try the great mods made throughout the different installments of ArmA is something i find really important as i love going back in time and play some arma 2 and 1 every now and then myself aswell 

[WGP 91]

24 minutes ago, Αplion said:

 having just this forum

There is more than just this forum.

 

__

I know the wargaming fraternity will probably hold the archives to the most past content.

Private groups is where a great deal of arma history is located/saved. Many of us care deeply about the game. 

 

One I pulled out Ext HDD = 960gb ofp/arma related content (no missions), not just AH stuff.

On another  Ext HDD, I have 860 dl's still in 7-zip or winrar form, not sure what is in there, but its all the series and a lot will be AH stuff.

[pierremgi 4879]

2 hours ago, W0lle said:

 At the very least he could have mentioned that he has enough and will close the site in xx weeks.
This way, everyone would have the chance to get what was important to him. Running away like this, with a slap in the face for many of his loyal visitors is just not fair. That's not the Foxhound I knew. And it makes me sad to see that he obviously knows what's going on here but yet doesn't bother to talk to us.

 

Personally, that's the Foxhound I knew. "The Boss" never warned for stopping without notice the members status who allowed me and few scripters to share scripts in the script library (an idea of mine Foxhound adopted). Everything went well til the day Foxhound shut down the privilege for this content without notice... To make it short, the reason why I definitively quit Amaholic and discovered BI forums (with the satisfaction to share my (almost) same library without asking permission).

That said, I'm aware the reasons for a global shut down remain unknown.

[Gunter Severloh 4056]

7 hours ago, MuRaZorWitchKING said:

DarkXess 

I think he’s on the forums?

He is and i found his profile, he hasn't been on here since August 2020, so thats a lost cause.

3 hours ago, Αplion said:

But still this is not the point as I don't think that anyone can keep alive a server with all mods, since OFP, uploaded for users. At least not without a significant cost.

It can be done, were talking many people here fond of Armaholic and the content it had, i think we can pull together and keep it alive for us and future

generations, even JerryHopper has offered to help. Whatever the cost im sure we can figure it out, the gold is the content we lose that and we lose 15yrs worth

of Arma content.

   This would be like other games, imagine for those of you whom still love and play Skyrim, and get all your mods from Skyrim Nexus, imagine if that site went down

and closed shop, ya theres the workshop but seriously theres a ton of content on there about as big as what armaholic had, and alot of amazing community creations

you let that go, you might as well uninstall the game, base game is great but the mods imo made it 100x better.

3 hours ago, W0lle said:

he could have mentioned that he has enough and will close the site in xx weeks.

Thats what im saying, after all these years, he was the carrier of the Arma torch little that everyone did know he held the master key

to everything that made this community great, aside the workshop which has its great value, regardless i think it would been a bit more fair,

and proper if you will to go out in style or at least final farewell thread, i mean i bet the community would rise up and respond like it is,

we all do that when someone dies. 

That i dont want to mention names but (George Floros) was ill before he disappeared and no word, i dont want to make the call

if you get what im saying but me thinks the inevitable has happened, may my words be false and he shows up (please) but for another subject you get my point.

1 hour ago, pierremgi said:

Personally, that's the Foxhound I knew.

In a way, i think Foxhound knew how to keep a tight rope on things, i mean he ran the site for 15+ yrs managing content his forums, and enforcing forum rules at

that, that takes a bit in itself, you need that sort of cold, professional straight forward demeanor to maintain things or you will be swayed by emotion, ill will, and stupid shit.

   Thats not to say he wasn't a good person, its just in that to do what he was doing he had to step up his game in order to make that site work, im sure he had a system

or routine to check on everything, i know i do for what i do here, none the less imo the guy was top notch, was very professional and courteous always through pm

i could go on. But aside the fact i dont really want to question his integrity as to how he ran the site, and what has happened rather i would prefer to honor, respect,

and thank him for everything that him and Darkxess and whom ever else helped run that site.

 

If its possible now to "buy" the database from him if he will respond, Wolle if you find out and he has a price, maybe we all can pitch in and buy it,

but then we need a solid plan as to how its going to be used, access, ect,. and then back it up too have a copy of the copy so that whatever happens

we still have everything.

   I dont want to keep bringing it up but my website here MissionRepository.com  has all the files on it, if i close the site, all will NOT be lost, as i have

all the files on my computer, on my google drive, and on Mega theres 2.31gb of files which isn't really that big but considering i compiled

the entire official Iron front forums content back in the day i make it personal and the game wasn't that big, anyways if anyone

knows anything in terms of the database please let us know!

Cheers!

 

[MuRaZorWitchKING 725]

3 hours ago, Gunter Severloh said:

we all do that when someone dies. 

That i dont want to mention names but (George Floros) was ill before he disappeared

This. This right here is what’s hitting me the worst right now. George was a very good friend of mine and even taught me a bit of sqf. 
 

I hope we can get it all back guys, I really do. 
 

If not, then in the end everything happens for a reason, but damn. 
 

This all still has happened so fast I’m still in awe in how to act, part of me still hopes that it’s just some sort of prank and that the next day when I check the forums I’ll see Dave Chappell’s face as a meme saying “Gotcha bitch!” Buttttt I seriously think we’re past that point. 
 

I’ll try to help as much as I can with this new Arma rising project, cause truly if we bring it back it’ll be like a damn Phoenix rising from the ashes.  
 

[jerryhopper 286]

I'm already scraping the contents.....
 

 

 

 

Whatever you do.  do NOT delete any old addons from your harddisks.  Better yet,  consolidate all the old addons so we can try partially rebuild the addon's database. 

 

Also, i still host a bunch of addons.  Since FTP support has been dropped from all major browsers, i made the ftp available via http.

http://ftp.armedassault.info/armad/

[britforce 9]

44 minutes ago, jerryhopper said:

 

 

Also, i still host a bunch of addons.  Since FTP support has been dropped from all major browsers, i made the ftp available via http.

http://ftp.armedassault.info/armad/

So your going to list those you don't have, when comparing to AH/AA site ?  (of course there will be a large overlap)

I assume the list of those missing will go up here on this forum ?

 

This is a good way of going about it.

[ContheJon 245]

I used to use Armaholic back for when I did SP ACE stuff in A2OA. Have fond memories of messing around back then, and to see all of that content just gone isn't a nice feeling. I never had any files up there myself, but that's a lot of Arma history just wiped off the map like that.

 

I didn't know the guy who ran the site at all, so I can't comment at all to who he is (but reading all of your comments he seems like he was a cool guy), but as a mod maker myself, if I thought for two seconds that my stuff was going to be gone and I wouldn't be able to keep updating it myself, I'd have made it public in different ways so the community in other areas of the net could keep it going. For him to just pull the plug out of the blue when there's content creators still posting and editing stuff there isn't a great move. I've no clue why he did, if it's like he said or if there's other issues, but you don't just pull everyone's files like that without giving them some warning first. I couldn't imagine having maps and mods I'd worked for years on just go *poof* one day, though I'm paranoid anyway so I've got backups of backups.

 

If something good comes from all of this, I hope it's that the community can source at least some of those files and hopefully start posting them to different sites so they'll stay on the net. Here's to hopefully getting as many of those files back as we can!

[blackland 26]

19 hours ago, W0lle said:

Not much more than in all the years back. I'm pretty sure he had his reason for what he did. Yet it's unfair.

I would have gladly driven the few kilometers to Holland and taken over the files. And had a beer or two with him. Anything would have been better than this stunt.

THIS! YES! That's not the kind of thing you do! 😞 We are a community, not a retail store.

[ldnsmudge 4]

15 hours ago, Gunter Severloh said:

If its possible now to "buy" the database from him if he will respond, Wolle if you find out and he has a price, maybe we all can pitch in and buy it,

but then we need a solid plan as to how its going to be used, access, ect,. and then back it up too have a copy of the copy so that whatever happens

we still have everything

It should be possible to crowd fund the buy back costs and year 1 operating costs, just need someone to make contact with Foxhound, get a price and write up the fund proposal.

[Gunter Severloh 4056]

55 minutes ago, ContheJon said:

but that's a lot of Arma history just wiped off the map like that.

Its not gone, Foxhound the man, the myth, the legend, the boss 😉 still has the database, he says so a few pages back posted on Twitter.

Its going to come down to him selling the database which imo is fine, we just need a response from him through the avenue (email)

he supplied so that those us whom wish to acquire the database for the community can do so.

    i think once we can do that we all can feel relieved that our Arma history is not gone, well a large portion of it.

55 minutes ago, ContheJon said:

For him to just pull the plug out of the blue when there's content creators still posting and editing stuff there isn't a great move. I've no clue why he did,

Can be a number of things, consider Foxhound has been running the site since 2006, basically the debut of Arma 1, contract for hosting ended, unable to afford the costs

tired of doing it, ect,. i mean the man had 20,697 posts on his site's forum, and about 16,100 posts on the forum here, so he was a very busy man keeping tabs on everything

 it became a job i would think rather then a hobby, but then that all depends on how he felt about it, im sure he was happy about what he has created.

 

Fun facts

Just something from history if you guys didn't know, back in 2012 when Iron front: Liberation 1944 released, from what

i understand Foxhound was to create a Armaholic type site for Iron front, but if i recall never went through with it dont know the exact reason.

    Thats where i came into the picture considering i was a moderator on the official IF forums then, i ended up collecting and compiling all of the missions, scripts,

texture packs, ect,. from the community that everyone released on that forum, at the same time i was doing the same for Invasion 1944 for Arma2oa back then,

ended up building a website, yes again  MissionRepository.com

  Whats funny and i literally saved the community from that loss, in 2013 i think in March or April the official IF forums went down, that was it, but ....

i had all the files 😉

 

As for the database, I would like to get an idea of:

1. How much would he ask for it

2. How big in size is it, out of curiosity (Arma1, Arma2, Arma2oa, Arma3 content)

28 minutes ago, ldnsmudge said:

It should be possible to crowd fund the buy back costs and year 1 operating costs

Ya i agree, thats the key him responding, i would hope and would think he will.

[krzychuzokecia 719]

Disclaimer: I don't believe (for now) that Foxhound intention is to sell the data he has. But...

27 minutes ago, Gunter Severloh said:

selling the database which imo is fine

...I don't see anything "fine" about selling the database. As W0lle said 2 pages back - the content there was not owned by Armaholic, in their Terms of Service I don't see anything about ceding the rights to the hosted content from author to the AH. Even the screenshots and most of the newsposts are copied from BI forum threads/other avenues (and at least a number of those posts were made by people other than Fox himself).

 

The only thing that may be legally sold by Foxhound is software/backbone and branding/logos. However, with "armaholic.com" domain being already bought-out, I think the value of "Armaholic" as a "social media brand" is a bit low...

 

Edit: I'm tagging @jerryhopper here - I just remembered, that apart from the main website, AH also hosted small sites/forums of various modding teams. Would be great if those could also be archived!

[ldnsmudge 4]

32 minutes ago, krzychuzokecia said:

in their Terms of Service I don't see anything about ceding the rights to the hosted content from author to the AH. Even the screenshots and most of the newsposts are copied from BI forum threads/other avenues (and at least a number of those posts were made by people other than Fox himself).

The problem you have here is one of expediency. If you decide to push the legal definitions of ownership and make this painful, he may decide to do the minimum, within his rights. He could just leave the site closed and the content scattered. After all content creators should have copies of their work on their own PCs. He has no legal obligation as an archivist. And lets say for arguments sake he returned the content to its 'owners', the job of then re-compiling it from them would be a nightmare.

 

Better to take the whole thing on (even with a cost)  put aside your gripes about ownership and get a speedy resolution.

[ZackTactical34 86]

I wish there was a warning at the very least...

[MarineRecon191 10]

1 hour ago, krzychuzokecia said:

Disclaimer: I don't believe (for now) that Foxhound intention is to sell the data he has. But...

...I don't see anything "fine" about selling the database. As W0lle said 2 pages back - the content there was not owned by Armaholic, in their Terms of Service I don't see anything about ceding the rights to the hosted content from author to the AH. Even the screenshots and most of the newsposts are copied from BI forum threads/other avenues (and at least a number of those posts were made by people other than Fox himself).

 

 

  To be fair with Foxhound and ARMAHOLIC uploading add-ons or content to the website is a privilege, not a right. I think it's still not the right way to end such a historic and important site, but they technically did have the right to do that. They were willing to host people's content and they were paying for it.

  I might get laughed at for using this example but think of ROBLOX. In ROBLOX you can upload your creations and games to the platform. Just because you made them doesn't mean that the administrators can't remove them from the platform. They are providing the resources to you to put it on their website. Although, the argument could be made that the people provide the money as well as advertisers, but I do respect your opinion and I slightly do agree with you. 

 

[blackland 26]

We have no right to condemn his decision, but it is a matter of honor and respect for the community. When you offer something, you have to stick to it.

[Αplion 1122]

I just wondering how many pages will be filled with comments and thoughts about Fox and his decision, before we'll start seriously think about next day, building a plan to regain what AH was offering all those years.

[krzychuzokecia 719]

10 minutes ago, Αplion said:

a plan to regain what AH was offering all those years

It's kind of hard to do anything without the access to the data.

 

That's the biggest mystery IMO in this whole mess: if reason for closing Armaholic is only financial, Foxhound could simply say that few months back: "hey guys, I'm running out of cash, can't support AH anymore". Either we would gather enough money, and/or start transfering the data to other places - just like it happened with OFPR.info (which now has at least 3 backups that I know of - and there's probably only 50 people left who more or less actively play the game). With the way it all went there's really too much questions, and not enough answers.

 

1 hour ago, MarineRecon191 said:

Although, the argument could be made that the people provide the money as well as advertisers

Yes, that's my point, even if it's a bit hidden in my message: the only reason why people flocked to AH (and other websites of it's kind before) was to get the content created by 3rd party. The whole revenue model AH had (including ads and subscriptions) was based around having that 3rd party content hosted there, to attract the "clientele".

 

Giving heads up to the people, that shop is closing soon, is something I'd expect as a basic courtesy - afterall, Arma modding is now spanning through two decades, it's not unimagineable that even still active modders could lost their oldest creations.

[Αplion 1122]

ok it is not possible to gather everything without AH database etc ... but people like Gunter Severloh have done a splendid job gathering resources ... so why not to build a new website - database, at least, keeping what we have now, on public view, by an easy way?

IMHO, as ArmA is based on people missions, so scripts resources, are more needed than mods, which can be found on Steam and again there can be also a database for every mod with Steam link plus BI forum link as well ... I'm talking in case AH database and everything can't be retrieved.

[W0lle 1050]

As Jerry mentioned above, he's crawling the wayback machine archive and creates an index of what files were hosted there.

 

With that index available, everyone can check his local files if he has one of the missing addons/missions. Then provide them and they will be hosted on a new (or existing) website. No database needed, it just takes some time because wayback machine is not the fastest.

Steam is all fine, but useless when it comes to OFP, Arma and Arma2 content.

Spoiler

Can't believe I said that! 😂

 

[Αplion 1122]

6 minutes ago, W0lle said:

Steam is all fine, but useless when it comes to OFP, Arma and Arma2 content.

 

I agree but still I wonder how many people are still looking for OFP - ArmA - ArmA2 resources ... anyway no need to reply on that ...

[MuRaZorWitchKING 725]

I would start a crowd funding type thing now @Gunter Severloh I’m not sure if it’s going to turn into a bid war or not but if you get things started we can start the funding process.

 

whether it be gofundme or patreon, whatever you think is right. 

 

This would also help with possible hardware costs for backups etc... Let me know! 
 

Glad to see everyone coming together as a community!

 

This right here is why I wish we all weren’t so far away, I’d gladly share a beer with any of you. 
 

🍻

[Sgt Smash 34]

Shame it has gone, it was my go to site for Arma 2 content. Hopefully someone cant take it over and then change the way it is stored to make the content links be more future proof.