Given the apparent volatility of Spherical hosting until this point, it would behoove us to have a consistent place to host the downloads formerly available on-site. We have a mirror on TenguDev thanks to DaVince, but we can't rely solely on one person to have conveniently downloaded and hoarded all there is to download.

So! I'd like to propose hosting the actual downloads themselves, along with their appropriately formatted documentation on a GitHub repo. sphere-projects has been created with this purpose in mind. Any Sphere developer here who has a GitHub account and would like to add projects to it let us know here. DaVince will curate it as he has done previously and anyone who needs the documentation format can get it from him for now.

@DaVince - I recommend putting up the documentation format on a thread so we all have something to refer to. The GitHub repo's README can also explain the documentation, so feel free to update it since I gave you push & pull permissions (and will give you admin privileges on that repo shortly). Also, please let me know who else was supposed to be able to write to it so I can add them to the repo admins once I confirm the existence of their GitHub accounts.

Also! Along with using a GitHub repo for downloads hosting, I'm going to implement embedding GitHub Gists into posts here. If a mod exists and it's extensible, maybe we can even embed jsfiddle and CodePen samples and such later on. If a mod doesn't exist I'll have to make one and it'll take longer to add other pastebin embedding.

Eww, using GitHub as a file hosting service. Isn't there something else designed for that purpose, like say Google Drive? I think Google, being awesome, gives you 10 GB of space.

Well, given that they're scripts, presumably they would be versioned. So I think GitHub is a fine choice. The downloader/editor/whatever-gets-the-scripts could even check and see if they're up-to-date.

Alternatively you could do that with Google Drive and zsync or something, but then you lose the ability to roll back to previous versions.

Well, given that they're scripts, presumably they would be versioned.

Yeah, but we're talking about full games. I guess for a small community it's not so bad, but a public GitHub account is not private, and so it limits what people want stored on there. Furthermore, it would for the most part act as a database and for many things just to host them, as in projects not in active development like trial and error. This is something we are just going to have to do for ourselves. Really! RMN doesn't do this, so we don't have to either.

Alternatively you could do that with Google Drive and zsync or something, but then you lose the ability to roll back to previous versions.

I'm not sure how much benefit the ability to rollback versions would be in this context.

Sorry for all the lack of activity here - my life has gotten more busy!

But agreed: something akin to Google Drive would work better than GitHub. Not sure if Google Drive is the exact best solution to go with, though I have to say it definitely works for me when using it for school-related work.

I'll set some time apart tomorrow for writing up what kind of documentation should go with game/resource zips. I might do it on Google Docs for some collaborative thinking and editing, though.

Hang on a sec...y'all have given me an idea...

One of the things Dom has given me for the resurrected Spherical is a Google Apps account for spheredev.org. I just checked and it seems it also includes Google Drive usage! @DaVince - I'm going to PM you account details and you let me know who else should have them for downloads management via GDrive.

I'm not sure how much benefit the ability to rollback versions would be in this context.

I was thinking along the lines of "this new script has a major API change and breaks my game, I want to go back to the old one". But if it's going to be games and not scripts it probably isn't worth being able to rollback.

We'll use GitHub Gists for individual scripts once I set up a mod.

We'll use GitHub Gists for individual scripts once I set up a mod.

Alright, that won't be so bad.

We'll use GitHub Gists for individual scripts once I set up a mod.

Alright, that won't be so bad.

Gist embedding now available! I may even attempt JSFiddle and CodePen embedding soon

We'll use GitHub Gists for individual scripts once I set up a mod.

That seems like a good solution.

Also the Gist embedding is awesome.

How is Gist embedding done?

How is Gist embedding done?

See http://forums.spheredev.org/index.php/topic,18.msg216.html#msg216
Basically it's just [gist]GIST_ID[/gist]