ArmadaFiles.com now online

posted on August 17th, 2015, 2:25 pm

As discussed previously, i've been working on archiving the files from the defunct Armada2Files.com. The site is now in a usable state for public consumption.

The archive contains 3183 files including their full descriptions and screenshots recovered from Armada2Files as well as over 20.000 user comments for these.

I have registration and user comments disabled for now. There are still some minor layout issues on the site. I'll fix these when i have more time to work on the site again.
Search is currently not integrated yet as well. Fow now may have luck using google once it has completed it's sweep of the site.

Have fun!
http://armadafiles.com/

posted on August 17th, 2015, 2:50 pm

Excellent work! Makes me wish this site had a like button.

posted on August 17th, 2015, 3:42 pm

Wow, looks great. Good work, Doca.

posted on August 17th, 2015, 4:03 pm

Only 20 comments? I would think there would be a lot more than that.

Sorry, I couldn't resist! I interpret the period as a decimal place by default and the comma as digit grouping. Anyways, thanks for the site.

posted on August 17th, 2015, 6:05 pm

oh wow just done a quick browse and found files i forgot i even uploaded the memories

anyway good work looking forward to see future progression
will there be a link on here eventually (like on the homepage)?

posted on August 17th, 2015, 9:22 pm

Thanks. Glad you guys like it.

No particular planned features for the future so far For now i am happy that the A2F files are all on the server and once again downloadable by anyone.
Still, the files and descriptions would need some cleanup here and there. I'd like to also add an updated list of missing files to the site later. Some - mostly minor ones - weren't available on the filefront server anymore.

posted on August 18th, 2015, 12:38 am

Thank you much for your efforts Doca. Sorta felt lost there for a bit while we couldn't access anything.

posted on August 18th, 2015, 9:24 am

posted on August 19th, 2015, 9:09 am

Hi. Congratulations for the hard work. It's good to know that we could use a large database with Armada 1 and Armada 2 files to create new mods or just upgrade the existing mods and just share our work with other players :-) Congratulations my friends :-)

posted on August 21st, 2015, 11:22 am

There appears to be a problem with case sensitivity. Two entries with the same name but different capitalization link to the same file page. Thus, one of the two is not accessible. See f.ex. the "Klingon Ship Pack" files here: http://armadafiles.com/files/armada-2/s ... gon/page-6

Could you look into that?

posted on August 21st, 2015, 11:48 am

Thanks. Fixed that.
There might be more occurrences like that. This happens when there is a download with the same name in the same category. I was too lazy to write code to handle that when i was filling the database. Should be quite rare though.

posted on October 27th, 2015, 9:47 am

I learned a "trick" recently. Much of FileFront's file count (if not all) is still stored on GameFront. It's cringy to navigate, but games like STA still have their categories and subcategories there.

Just so you can archive stuff easier

P.S. Were those kickass recreations of STA2 stations and ships from 2012-2013 (forgot the guy's name) salvaged? They would be a good start for a non-FO mod.

EDIT: It was dan1025, his stuff is already on the site. Now to find those legendary Donut ships

posted on October 30th, 2015, 9:16 pm

I learned a "trick" recently. Much of FileFront's file count (if not all) is still stored on GameFront. It's cringy to navigate, but games like STA still have their categories and subcategories there.

Basically, before Break media came onto the scene everything was stored on an inhouse system which was then outsourced to a content delivery network for a number of reasons. The remaining files you refer to are those published before the date the sites downloads switched to the CDN years back. It is not a complete list.

Those files are also likely to remain active for about as long as the management people at Break's parent company realise they are still there.

I think I can reasonably claim to be an authority on A2files, and in my opinion Armadafiles.com is hosting all of the available files that A2files originally hosted in the same file structure that we used on A2files (including the Donuts. http://armadafiles.com/files/armada-2/s ... ts/details) so it should be considered the sucessor to A2files as far as downloads are concerned.

posted on October 30th, 2015, 10:24 pm

Wow. That'll make things slightly difficult. I saw a Klingon station pack 2 by Aad Moerman from 2012 on AF, but his 2013 pack 1 (reupload?) is missing. Though, IIRC, the main Filefront indexes (of all sections) would usually display late 2011 data before you refreshed it X times, which was about the time a shift in ownership took place, if I'm not mistaken. Could that be linked to what you're saying?

Archive.org has done an unexpectedly good-ish job at archiving portions of A2Files, as broken as it was in its last years, and while the download links will lead to nowhere, you could ask some people who added their emails in the descriptions to send them to you.


BTW, AF runs happily on mobile. And thanks for the donuts, they're as tasty as they were before

posted on October 31st, 2015, 9:55 am

The problems occoured about a year after the shift of ownership and after we had shifted to the CDN for downloads. Basically, the existing system that was being used to run the network was a broken shambles which was incapable of hosting additional sites.

To take the network forwards the network needed to open additional sites and basically move forwards with some additional features etc. This was all budgeted, signed off and had frankly the best team of developers that the network had ever seen assigned to worn on it. They did a massive amount of work on it, and accomplished exactly nothing other than the downloads shift to the CDN due to an old filefront network rule that if you fixed one problem in the CMS code, you'd create another two. They spent longer working on the filefront network than they did on the gamefront site, and yet acheived little on the network.

The agreed course of action between the filefront network management and the head of gaming at Break was basically to write off the existing network and run the existing network sites on the old system with no further development and then develop the required functionality on the main gamefront site to the point of being able to replace the network by a number of required and agreed milestones. This is the system that your looking at.

Unfortunately, this plan was scuttled by Break ending up subsumed into Defy, and Gamefront & Filefront went from being the gaming flagship of Break to a wasteful duplication of other gaming properties held by the portfolio.

A2files was totally dead by Jan 2015. No new files were submitted in 2015, and both 2014 and 2013's files fitted on the last 50 files page. While Armada files may be missing the odd file from 2010 it certainly has the substantive majority of the files that were hosted, and all of the irreplacable ones from a decade ago are there. The handful remaining added in the last days that aren't listed can be recovered by asking the authors, who are still contactable for the most part.