Really excited to have found scriptcraft

[Noobot]

Hi All,
Thank you to Walter for putting together scriptcraft it is a brilliant add-on to the Spigot Minecraft Server.

My son (14) wants to begin modding / hosting MC, and Java at this time is not really approachable.   I've been really excited with growing popularity behind Javascript and one evening later we were running Spigot MC with scriptcraft  and modding the arrows example mod.  Wow! mind blowing.  

Another evening spent and I sorted out some event handling and calling the API.  Fantastic.

Surely something this awesome must have many scripts written already.  Is there a hub or repo of user contributed scripts?

Cheers

[Landru 27]

Hi Noobot -

Tony / Captain Starbuck had begun an effort to build a website, one purpose of which would be to act as a hub for user contributed scripts.  I wrote to Tony via his blog to offer a host for hosting that webserver, which is one of the things he said was blocking him.  But, I have heard nary a whisper in reply.

Tony -  If you are still reading this Google Group, and if you see this, I'm still very open to discussing this.

I don't want to trample on Tony's current effort to stand up a website, since I imagine he's put a fair bit of work into it already.  Pragmatically, I also don't want to start again from scratch if I don't have to.  But, like you and I think like several people using ScriptCraft, I would be excited to have a way to share with each other what we've created, and I'm willing to stand up a website (or some other solution) for that.

I've written a plugin that expands the Minecraft magic system by allowing the player to cast specific item enchantments, to cast from a spell book spells that act like potions, and to create wands that cast offensive spells, useful for combat.  All of this expends lapis lazuli, redstone, and spell-specific reagents, for game balance.  But I'm sure it could be improved by others looking at it, by my looking at what others are doing and how, and hopefully it would help others if I could share it in some community place.

I'm also using ScriptCraft to teach my children and some friends' children programming, and as part of that I want them to be able to share their code and see the code of others.  Code sharing is an important aspect of current software development practices, so having a way to do so makes sense to me as part of their learning.

Is anyone else aware of the current status of the website Tony is building?

- Andrew

[Ken VanDine]

This is exactly why we need the hub! I just read what you did to my son and he really wants that for his server. Until we get the hub up, could you please share your script? Ideally on GitHub in case I find the spare to to contribute to it.

I'm not familiar with the plans for this hub, but I think what we want is a hub that provides a sort of registry of scripts with links to GitHub repositories. This would not only make the scripts discoverable, but also encourage people to actually fork the repositories and modify them. It could become a very organic thing.

Cheers,
Ken

[Walter Higgins]

Hey,

I've created a ScriptCraft issue where you can share your scriptcraft scripts. https://github.com/walterhiggins/ScriptCraft/issues/360

Walter

[Landru 27]

Hi Ken -

I read your reply on my way out the door to work this morning and my initial thought was "Sure thing!  I'll send a reply when I'm back at home this evening."

I was going to initially just post a link to my personal GitHub repo for ScriptCraft stuff, but then, as I thought about it more during the day, I realized it's not that hard to just set up a Github repo just for this, and with all the features that GitHub offers, that repo can be the core of a full website.

One thing at a time, though.  I've set up a GitHub account, scriptcrafthub, and made an initial repo for sharing plugin scripts called, unimaginatively enough, plugins.

... While I was doing that, Walter himself has opened an issue in his ScriptCraft repo for sharing scripts.  I personally am pretty neutral on how we go about doing this as a community, but using a full repo for this offers many more features and possibilities.  I also imagine that over time, it could expand to more than one repo; one day we might have repos for user-contributed modules, companion utilities, etc.

I'll be adding my enchantment / spellbook / wands plugin to the scriptcrafthub/plugins repo shortly.  I hope your son enjoys it!  I've put it through its paces, but I'm also sure it's not 100% bug-free, so feedback on fixes it needs, or enhancements he (or others) would like to see would be welcome.  As a repo (as you noted), it will be possible to open issues for particular scripts or just particular bugs, open pull requests in order to offer feedback in the form of code updates, fork the repo for derivative work, etc, etc, etc.

First, some dinner.

- Andrew

[Landru 27]

Hi Walter -

I've created a full repo for this sort of user-community sharing of scripts (and, in the future, potentially more).  See my reply to Ken in this thread.

As I note in that reply, I'm fairly neutral about how we go about this.  I am willing to put in the time to keep the scriptcrafthub repo(s) active and current.  And, I can add collaborators if the activity gets to be too much for just one maintainer to handle.

I know you just recently created it, but what do you think about posting a message to the issue you just opened in your repo, redirecting folks to scriptcrafthub/plugins instead, where they can open a pull request in order to contribute?  Does the scriptcrafthub/plugins repo seem like a viable approach to you?

- Andrew

[Landru 27]

Hi Ken -

I've added my enchantments / spellbook / wands plugin to the scriptcrafthub/plugins repo I mentioned, as "crimsonmage.js".  (Crimson Mage is a silly wizard name from my D&D days.)  I already have tweaks I want to make, not the least of which is not having yet implemented the "healing aura" area-effect spell, because that needs something more than the straight-forward potion effect of the other spells ...    I'll continue to update it as I continue to refine it.  And again, if you find errors or areas for improvement, just let me know.  (Opening an 'issue' in the scriptcrafthub/plugins repo would be most efficient.)

... Anyway, I also wrote up an initial README for the scriptcrafthub/plugins repo.  From here, there is open road ahead.

- Andrew

[Captain Starbuck]

Replying to the OP here but general response to the group.

HI !  :)

I've been very busy, and as Walter will attest, life pulls us away from passions like this project. However, here is my current status relevant to ScriptCraft:

I still maintain the @ScriptCraftJS pages for Facebook and Twitter though have not been as attentive as in the past.

I also maintain the scriptcraftjs email @gmail.com (separated here to avoid spam) but everyone is welcome to contact me there.

All notes through those vectors for Walter will be passed to him (there are few to none so far beyond the occasional public thanks). My goal is to create this hub we're discussing, not to filter anything intended for our hero. The difference between these vectors and Walter himself, as I'm trying to work it out, is that I'm trying to make @ScriptCraftJS itself an entity beyond the one author, so that we can all be @ScriptCraftJS as a community and ecosystem. I'm just performing the service of front-ending enquiries. Walter is the author and main developer and whatever he says is law. If there is any question about how I'm approaching this, if I'm over-stepping, slacking, whatever, let's work it out for the good of the project.
 
The new site = portal = hub has been created, but yes, server limits have precluded going production.However, I've just recently decided to fund servers on my own and will deal with the budget through other efforts. For example, if I publish another site and get some ad revenue then that will help to fund our site. Bonus!

I also intend to have occasional sponsored ads on our site and will try to keep them as minimal, relevant, and age friendly as possible. I will try to eliminate all or specific kinds of ads for specific age groups. I will approach business entities in the Minecraft industry and ask them if they want specific placement. This is a chicken-and-egg thing - I needed funding to start the site to get people on and active, but sponsors won't fund a site unless it already has a verified following. I decided to go with the chicken, fund it myself and then my job as a marketing guy will be to get sponsorship and seek out some eggs. :)

Someone could reasonably ask "I don't get it, what else do you need but web pages, what's the thing with funding?"

• A shared host is cheap but has hardware limits.
• I really do want and expect this site to have a good number of visitors and registered users. The more people we have hitting a site, the more it consumes CPU and RAM/memory. (Disk too but disk is cheap and not really a factor for our purposes.)
  
• In addition to an expectation of user load (hoping for worldwide visitors hanging around on the site for some period of time), we have a Lot of features in the site. The more features we have, the more code that gets executed per transaction, and that equals more RAM and CPU.
• When we hit low limits in shared hosting, things simply stop working for a few seconds. Add more memory with virtual hosting and things don't break.
• In a shared host hundreds to thousands of people are hitting the shared server in other sites hosted there, and that consumes CPU resources, making any site on that server slower during peak periods. With a separate host the CPU time isn't as fragmented amongst visitors.
• So with a small business that's going through some growth, now hosting several new sites in addition to this one, I've been compelled to shift some existing and new sites to cloud computing. Specifically I'm using OpenStack technology which allows me to spin up more resources and shift around applications as required. I've been spending a lot of my time learning how to do this all properly, setting up secure web services and monitoring load to preclude failures due to resource limits.

With that, I'm again working on our site (and others), shifting them to these new resources, bringing back functionality that I had to turn off, and continuing where I left off a few months ago.

What functionality? This is documented in other notes here in the forum. General discussion, groups with events and specialty forums, a plugin "marketplace", wiki, guest blogs, and more.

Aside from all of this, I'll comment on usage of GitHub in another thread. For purposes here, I believe that topic compels us to move forward with a site-based repo system rather than GitHub or other similar sites.

So that's my story and I'll stick to it. :)

Regards to all. Questions welcome.

T = CS

[Landru 27]

Hi Tony -

I think you and I want the same thing, and I'm glad to hear your ScriptCraftJS website effort is still alive.  I totally get it regarding life pulling one away from one's passions.  It's happened to me many times.

That, and the funding issue, are primarily why I went with GitHub.  It's core is collaboration, which helps insulate the effort from one person being sideline by life.  It offers the bulk of what you and I and the ScriptCraft community are looking for, either directly or an indirect but still natural way.  And you can't beat the $0 price.

That's also why I wrote to you about providing a host.  (Did my message to you via your blog make it to you?)  What I had in mind was a minimal server on DigitalOcean, and starting with the minimum necessary feature set to get things rolling.  (e.g., some static web pages generated by Hugo, or something like that.)  There's your egg.  With ad revenue, it could even perhaps pay for an upgraded VM.  And if the egg does not hatch -- if the actual traffic we experience does not overtax the system, then there's no actual need for a larger (read: more expensive) VM.

But all I really want to do is contribute.  I'm just as happy to contribute to an effort you are leading.  It's just that there hadn't been an update in a while, and I didn't hear back from you.  Again -- I totally understand how "life happens", so in no way is that a judgement nor a criticism.  I was simply stepping in where it looked like there was a need.

Looking forward to what you are building!

Cheers,

- Andrew

[Noobot]

What a fantastic response.   I hope it was simply a matter of a well timed question to bring this back to the surface.

I'm looking forward to more, I hope to help out too.   Learning Javascript, sharing that with my son, and having fun with Minecraft is such a win win win situation.   With this community and this great response I couldn't be happier.

Thanks all, and I'll keep in touch.

Noobot (Billy)

[Captain Starbuck]

Billy, your feedback on my new thread about GitHub is most welcome.
Glad you're pleased with the resurge.
Best,
T = CS

[Captain Starbuck]

I hear ya man. Please email me for info and let's chat about specifics in the (almost unused) ScriptCraftJS Slack team. Rather than this being a project for one person or another to do or not, I will welcome collaborators so that "we" can do this together.

To be clear, yes, I'd like the privilege of continuing (to contribute to) the effort. But yes, if I don't hold up my end I completely encourage someone else to do it. This project deserves that.

I'll setup something so that we can monitor progress, or lack thereof, so decisions can be made accordingly.

Thanks for the nudge and your offer to contribute - I feel the same way and made Walter the same offer. :)

Best,
T = CS

[Captain Starbuck]

Oops, that should have been posted in response to Andrew....