Hey guys,
Was hoping you could educate me a bit on history of the different eras of the SLeague, and if anything was lost over each transition. I was chatting with @Solver a while back and he mentioned that he was looking to restore his backups of some of the Poly hosted sites including the old SL. I pointed out to him that he'd best speak to you guys first as you may not want that that plus there may not be any point since the SL was rescued and lives on at CFC so his copy would be inferior anyway. However I'm starting to suspect I was mistaken on that last point and that even an older copy may contain things you guys would like access to.
The reason I doubt myself is during my current forum history search I found an old forum post at Poly where St Leo posts a link to a Heroes of Might & Magic (a topic of great interest to me) full unit set and that gif file is hosted at the SL in 2003, thankfully I found a webarchive backup of it's old SL page so I've got the file. However I thought "what the.." when I saw this as I'd already done a pass on the current SL site unit collection and never saw that in there. I also noticed a substantial change in the content in the units section when comparing various eras at Poly, so even before the site was moved off poly I can see stuff disappearing. So now I'm wondering are scenarios and modpacks from the old SL site not on the new one too? Were there several huge site moves/rebuilds where the SL curators at the time had to manually move heaps of stuff over so they didn't bother with everything? If someone remembers all the old war stories, I'd love to know.
I'm not sure what backup Solver has, it may just be the final version of the site before the CFC move, so it may be similar to the existing CFC one (making it rather useless), but I think he said he had the pre-wiki one. If there are indeed big content differences between the Poly eras then you might find what's on webarchive very interesting. I haven't started testing all the downloads in these backups yet but some of that possibly lost content might be not so lost after all, but I'm not getting my hopes up too much.
At the very least my work below might be a fun nostalgic trip back in time for you guys haha. Some of you may have recently seen my History of CivFanatics thread where I went from Thunderfalls humble 90s Geocities page all the way to the current era via archive backups. Well now it's time for the SL history and episode of 'this is your life' haha!
(Click on thumbs to expand screenshots & click on links to browse yourself)
Era 1 on Gamestats 1998-1999 run by Blackclove, Mark Lannen & Mr Temba
The super early Poly merger days on Gamestats. Highlights include the 'SLeague Wants YOU!' article asking for help and kicking everything off in 98 and the 'Happy Birthday SLeague!' in Oct 99 celebrating your one year anniversary, nawww.
Sadly many of the modpack & scenario downloads appear to be not backed up, but some might work.
https://web.archive.org/web/19991004230954/http://civilization.gamestats.com/sleague/
.
Era 1.5 Apolyton 1999-2002 run by Blackclove, Cam Hills, William Keenan & Stefan Härtel
Calling this one 1.5 as SL is still on Gamestats but SL & Poly now have your own domain name and there's been lots of little design changes here and there including a new logo but no huge changes. Most downloads still don't work sadly.
https://web.archive.org/web/20020223001706/http://sleague.apolyton.net/
.
Era 2 Apolyton 2002 run by St Leo, Warvoid, Markos Giannopoulos, & Dan Quick
Saint Leons Petrazickis takes over the SL and things become.. orange.. very orange lol, the new logo is accompanied by a rather hilarious slogan "Proud Home of the Worst Colour Schemes Ever! We Mean It!"
. The first issue of the SLeague Magazine is released! All the pre-2000 scenarios/mods appear to be lost here, but a legacy 2000-2001 area is kept while a new downloads area is started (some of them work!).
https://web.archive.org/web/20020925171342/http://sleague.apolyton.net/
.
Era 2.5 Apolyton 2002-2005 run by St Leo, Warvoid, Techumseh, Case, & Gothmog
Calling it 2.5 as the site is mostly the same and still has the funny slogan, but sanity prevails and the SL takes on a nice grey scheme haha. The site gets a lot bigger content wise (eg lots of graphics downloads many of which work) and there's even a Sim City 2000 section. @techumseh joins the official staff list to work on the SL magazine while @CurtSibling and other familiar names start to appear as contributors to the sub sections.
https://web.archive.org/web/20050409080338/http://sleague.apolyton.net/
.
Era 3 Apolyton wiki 2005-2007 run by St Leo and you guys!
The SL becomes a wiki and is titled "The grand league of scenarios reborn!". There's no longer a staff list but I see from the names across the main page and articles that this was a transitional period from the St Leo era to you guys taking the helm. This marks another huge change with content having to be built from scratch again. A link to the old SL is kept for a few years but it appears that some of the downloads from the old site never quite make it across to the wiki version.
https://web.archive.org/web/20070220071022/http://sleague.apolyton.net/index.php?title=Home
.
Era 3.5 Apolyton wiki 2007-2010 run by you guys!
Calling it 3.5 as the wiki continues but there's some main page layout changes. St Leo's name has stopped appearing about the place and @McMonkey 's has started appearing instead. Massive increases in content! Obviously this was also the end of the Poly SL era as everything was about to go to hell there.
https://web.archive.org/web/20101013002417/http://sleague.apolyton.net/index.php?title=Home
.
Era 4 CivFanatics wiki 2011-present run by you guys!
The SL is rescued and moved to CFC where it has resided and continued to be updated to this day.
https://web.archive.org/web/20110926065429/http://sleague.civfanatics.com/index.php/Main_Page
Live site https://sleague.civfanatics.com/index.php?title=Main_Page
This has all revealed quite a few new things to me eg different eras of downloads and links lists etc so I'll have to make some updates to my big Civ2 website archive list to reflect all this new info and possible new sites I don't know about! It's possible Solver may even have backups of the older Poly eras as I'm pretty sure he said pre-wiki, I'll have to ask him! Like I said at the start I'd love to hear from those that were there through each of these era changes, why they happened, which era you think was the best, what you think was lost etc and no doubt there's a few things I may have misunderstood that need to be corrected. Hope you enjoyed the nostalgia trip!
.
Was hoping you could educate me a bit on history of the different eras of the SLeague, and if anything was lost over each transition. I was chatting with @Solver a while back and he mentioned that he was looking to restore his backups of some of the Poly hosted sites including the old SL. I pointed out to him that he'd best speak to you guys first as you may not want that that plus there may not be any point since the SL was rescued and lives on at CFC so his copy would be inferior anyway. However I'm starting to suspect I was mistaken on that last point and that even an older copy may contain things you guys would like access to.
The reason I doubt myself is during my current forum history search I found an old forum post at Poly where St Leo posts a link to a Heroes of Might & Magic (a topic of great interest to me) full unit set and that gif file is hosted at the SL in 2003, thankfully I found a webarchive backup of it's old SL page so I've got the file. However I thought "what the.." when I saw this as I'd already done a pass on the current SL site unit collection and never saw that in there. I also noticed a substantial change in the content in the units section when comparing various eras at Poly, so even before the site was moved off poly I can see stuff disappearing. So now I'm wondering are scenarios and modpacks from the old SL site not on the new one too? Were there several huge site moves/rebuilds where the SL curators at the time had to manually move heaps of stuff over so they didn't bother with everything? If someone remembers all the old war stories, I'd love to know.
I'm not sure what backup Solver has, it may just be the final version of the site before the CFC move, so it may be similar to the existing CFC one (making it rather useless), but I think he said he had the pre-wiki one. If there are indeed big content differences between the Poly eras then you might find what's on webarchive very interesting. I haven't started testing all the downloads in these backups yet but some of that possibly lost content might be not so lost after all, but I'm not getting my hopes up too much.
At the very least my work below might be a fun nostalgic trip back in time for you guys haha. Some of you may have recently seen my History of CivFanatics thread where I went from Thunderfalls humble 90s Geocities page all the way to the current era via archive backups. Well now it's time for the SL history and episode of 'this is your life' haha!
(Click on thumbs to expand screenshots & click on links to browse yourself)
Era 1 on Gamestats 1998-1999 run by Blackclove, Mark Lannen & Mr Temba
The super early Poly merger days on Gamestats. Highlights include the 'SLeague Wants YOU!' article asking for help and kicking everything off in 98 and the 'Happy Birthday SLeague!' in Oct 99 celebrating your one year anniversary, nawww.
Sadly many of the modpack & scenario downloads appear to be not backed up, but some might work.https://web.archive.org/web/19991004230954/http://civilization.gamestats.com/sleague/
.
Era 1.5 Apolyton 1999-2002 run by Blackclove, Cam Hills, William Keenan & Stefan Härtel
Calling this one 1.5 as SL is still on Gamestats but SL & Poly now have your own domain name and there's been lots of little design changes here and there including a new logo but no huge changes. Most downloads still don't work sadly.
https://web.archive.org/web/20020223001706/http://sleague.apolyton.net/
.
Era 2 Apolyton 2002 run by St Leo, Warvoid, Markos Giannopoulos, & Dan Quick
Saint Leons Petrazickis takes over the SL and things become.. orange.. very orange lol, the new logo is accompanied by a rather hilarious slogan "Proud Home of the Worst Colour Schemes Ever! We Mean It!"
. The first issue of the SLeague Magazine is released! All the pre-2000 scenarios/mods appear to be lost here, but a legacy 2000-2001 area is kept while a new downloads area is started (some of them work!).https://web.archive.org/web/20020925171342/http://sleague.apolyton.net/
.
Era 2.5 Apolyton 2002-2005 run by St Leo, Warvoid, Techumseh, Case, & Gothmog
Calling it 2.5 as the site is mostly the same and still has the funny slogan, but sanity prevails and the SL takes on a nice grey scheme haha. The site gets a lot bigger content wise (eg lots of graphics downloads many of which work) and there's even a Sim City 2000 section. @techumseh joins the official staff list to work on the SL magazine while @CurtSibling and other familiar names start to appear as contributors to the sub sections.
https://web.archive.org/web/20050409080338/http://sleague.apolyton.net/
.
Era 3 Apolyton wiki 2005-2007 run by St Leo and you guys!
The SL becomes a wiki and is titled "The grand league of scenarios reborn!". There's no longer a staff list but I see from the names across the main page and articles that this was a transitional period from the St Leo era to you guys taking the helm. This marks another huge change with content having to be built from scratch again. A link to the old SL is kept for a few years but it appears that some of the downloads from the old site never quite make it across to the wiki version.
https://web.archive.org/web/20070220071022/http://sleague.apolyton.net/index.php?title=Home
.
Era 3.5 Apolyton wiki 2007-2010 run by you guys!
Calling it 3.5 as the wiki continues but there's some main page layout changes. St Leo's name has stopped appearing about the place and @McMonkey 's has started appearing instead. Massive increases in content! Obviously this was also the end of the Poly SL era as everything was about to go to hell there.
https://web.archive.org/web/20101013002417/http://sleague.apolyton.net/index.php?title=Home
.
Era 4 CivFanatics wiki 2011-present run by you guys!
The SL is rescued and moved to CFC where it has resided and continued to be updated to this day.
https://web.archive.org/web/20110926065429/http://sleague.civfanatics.com/index.php/Main_Page
Live site https://sleague.civfanatics.com/index.php?title=Main_Page
This has all revealed quite a few new things to me eg different eras of downloads and links lists etc so I'll have to make some updates to my big Civ2 website archive list to reflect all this new info and possible new sites I don't know about!
It's possible Solver may even have backups of the older Poly eras as I'm pretty sure he said pre-wiki, I'll have to ask him! Like I said at the start I'd love to hear from those that were there through each of these era changes, why they happened, which era you think was the best, what you think was lost etc and no doubt there's a few things I may have misunderstood that need to be corrected. Hope you enjoyed the nostalgia trip!.
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