since it's been a circulating topic of discussion the last few weeks, my removal from NFSCars, I thought it would be useful to point out some facts.
as of late it seems that even the NFSCars faithful are starting to realize it's an overall losing battle. I would like to reflect on last year's happenings first, with the dismissal of Greger as site administrator. at this point I was a "moderator" (the site software actually treats all roles the same, strangely), and had no idea how the site software worked. Azrael had some availability and knowledge to share, so I appointed him to administrator. other people began volunteering to help out with moderation tasks like approving uploads and moderating showrooms and whatever else the kids are into these days. as far as I could tell, this little system I engineered was working.
the site, however, was not. after various measures we'd taken to curbing the massive influx of fake (bot) accounts registering, and trying to come up with a solution for getting the Forums active again, it was ultimately decided that all of these problems would persist and would be impossible to correct without updating the site software.
amidst Greger's firing and subsequent tantrums about Mike Geise is the worst person on the planet, I would like to point out that I always defended Geise by saying there could just as easily be no NFSCars at all. I don't remember the context of why the Greger thing happened, it's irrelevant. what matters is we managed to squeeze another year of life out of NFSCars.
back to pointing out facts: I knew how to remove bot accounts and tried changing Forum settings. I knew how to appoint people to superuser status. I knew how to ban people if necessary. what I did NOT know how to do was make news posts, edit thumbnails, or impersonate users in the shoutbox. I did rib a lot of people in the shoutbox, and then afterwards peace would be made and then they would be on our side. that's been a staple of mine for a very long time now.
so I can understand at pure face value going on the site and seeing F-body Faction banners posted everywhere that there would be some assumption I had something to do with it. I didn't. so whether my account was deleted or the password was changed (sidenote: the lost password script is broken, attention) is irrelevant to me. I have no desire to go back to NFSCars. for at least the last 9 years I've been accused of many things there that I wasn't even present to do, or have outright had credit for positive actions I've brought about stripped from me. it has been a great 18 year run there (well, honestly, only about 5 of those years were actually notable) but it's time to move on.
any future mods that I release will be NFSAddons exclusives, until inevitably they're probably stolen by people for GTA mods or whatever people are into now.
I would like to extend thanks to all the volunteers that worked with us in keeping their machine turning, but like I said, it's time to move on.
After being around here also for nearly 20 years, I think of you as (co)creator of beautifull firebirds & camaro's and a lot of words.
You give us an inside look of how it is being an administrator. As far as I can understand (english is not my native language) you were treated unfair.
I hope nfsaddons gives you a more friendly enviroment to work.
It's really sad to read that NFSCars is going down, i really liked that website back in the days, but with their new design that page is lost for me
Quote from: NFSCars https://www.nfscars.net/articles/regarding-the-forums/1147, March 8th 2019
Regarding the forums
March 8th 2019
As some of you may have noticed our forums are unavailable. [...] In the meanwhile you can still use the Shoutbox to discuss topics and thoughts you have and the showroom to share things (keep it ingame please) with the rest of the community and use the comments to interact. Apologies for the inconvenience and have a great day!
NFSCars staff
Sad indeed, to see this backbone of the NFS modding community break apart. According to the citation above, the forums are shut off for almost 2 years now.
Guess Mike Geise has no interest/motivation in continuing the site...
However, someone is still paying the bills for hosting so far.
Out of curiosity - do you have insight how many files (or overall data size) NFSCars accommodates?
Greetings
My faith in nfscars got lost when Greger itself (or it was Ti-Sonic?) told me foums were unrecoverable even as a plain text backup. There was a lot of useful (and not so useful) data from pre BlackBox games. From there (and some time before) I call here home.
And now we're being pushed away by BlackBox era games here too, it dissapoints me a bit since this were our place. But I know this is for good. At least we have the forums n.n
Quote from: Zipper on Dec 27, 2020, 6:38 AM
My faith in nfscars got lost when Greger itself (or it was Ti-Sonic?) told me foums were unrecoverable even as a plain text backup. There was a lot of useful (and not so useful) data from pre BlackBox games. From there (and some time before) I call here home.
And now we're being pushed away by BlackBox era games here too, it dissapoints me a bit since this were our place. But I know this is for good. At least we have the forums n.n
And the site's kinda becoming boring too. I hope someone (an admin) from NFSCars views this and make this site back on track soon with the same activeness (i.e. informing us about new exciting screenshot contests and reopening of forums and posting some NFS related news regularly etc.)
QuoteOut of curiosity - do you have insight how many files (or overall data size) NFSCars accommodates?
Unfortunately back then when i was pretty young i didn't split my archive up in websites.. But i can honestly say that it had at least as many car mods (talking about nfs4) as NFSAddons. Fortunately i was willing to save all the NFS4 car mods from that website..
the forums have been deactivated because the server software is out of date. there are no protections against spam bots at all. to run forums, not only do they get immediately overrun by fake accounts, but it slows the site to a crawl. if they just updated it would be good again. (theoretically)
as for why the site is still operational, it has ads. I never noticed, I have been using adblockers for years now.
half of an NFSCars is still better than no NFSCars I guess.
Hi, I don't know much about why nfscars.net is in so much trouble, from what little I have read is because the software is outdated and is being attacked by spammers.
For 4-3 days there is no access to the page, an error appears that says: 504 Gateway time-out.
What do you know about this, the site is completely dead, there is no way to save some of your files?
Hi, what happened to the nfscars page? It says error 504 gateway :(
I found mods from nfs underground 2 on a facebook page
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/zmd0v01u0dup3/NFS_U2_Mods?fbclid=IwAR16yFv2UbZm_puLVJLnmMbIX0QMBjAxBNUIhN5SDdC3-6jy8x8YdFvo06g
oh hey, NFSCars is back to full operation.
Quote from: mecha on Mar 17, 2021, 3:01 PM
oh hey, NFSCars is back to full operation.
Well, that is a relief to hear, thanks.
I just couldn't really imagine the entire collection disappearing without so much as a warning.
Still, a good reminder (to myself, at least) that any site, even one of NFSCars' stature, may be gone tomorrow.
and it happened again :'(
That a RIP but i also can't access to nfscars too what happened?!
I don't know maybe my connection or the site is down? maybe so
Not the first time site is down.
And will not be the last time.
oh thank god is not the last time when nfscars is down thank you for asking :)
Same thing happened. IDK why NFSCars is down ATM.
Maybe they should upgrade the site engine or something. It crashes for me too((
Quote from: EvoX on Dec 01, 2023, 6:34 AM
Maybe they should upgrade the site engine or something. It crashes for me too((
At this point I highly doubt the website will be upgraded.
If original owner does not care about it's status, then there is no hope for website.
Quote from: LRF Modding on Dec 01, 2023, 6:39 AM
Quote from: EvoX on Dec 01, 2023, 6:34 AM
Maybe they should upgrade the site engine or something. It crashes for me too((
At this point I highly doubt the website will be upgraded.
If original owner does not care about it's status, then there is no hope for website.
Pity...😟
Oh boy... The site will be no good if it ain't upgraded...
that's gonna be rough for nfscars :-X
yeah man i should ask you something do you start saving an nfs:iii mod right now?!
i already start saving an NFS:III And NFS:HS Mod From NFSCars About A Year Ago Just Incase Of Any Disruption Of This Site
Ok that good so how many mod do you saved now?
i save more than 300+ mods before the site goes down
Impressive Isdea! Are you willing to upload the nfscars mod to nfsaddons just incase of any disruption?!
yeah i might do that but i don't have time on something else like researching on mclaren m8d or fixing the carp.txt from older car mods so if i have time on that i would transfer my archive mod to nfsaddons
Back in 2021 a dude archived a big chunk (https://ounapuu.ee/posts/2021/03/01/my-attempt-at-archiving-nfscars.net/) of NFSCars including downloads here (https://archive.org/details/nfscars.net.2021)
the site is finally up!
Yeeeeaaahhhh♥️♥️♥️🏁🏁🏁
Don't know much about owning a website, but can it be possible, if the certificate has expired for the website, can it shut down from that?
NFSCars certificate expired little over a month ago, November 27 I think.
What has nfscars to offer the last couple of years? Maybe I'm to focused on nfs4 but I don't see much new additions. Also the forums are not accessible.
Quote from: noise on Dec 09, 2023, 3:45 AM
What has nfscars to offer the last couple of years? Maybe I'm to focused on nfs4 but I don't see much new additions. Also the forums are not accessible.
A large chunk of mods?
The best mods are already available here.
based on the ancient history lodged in my brain, NFSCars and NFSAddons have unique mods to either site. so one doesn't really have the advantage over the other. the mismanagement of NFSCars in the post-2011 dark ages has shifted the balance more this way I guess, given this site actually functions as it should.
both NFSCars and NFSAddons hate me for all the wrong reasons. I have no intentions of uploading new car projects until these are resolved.
I use both of them. Sometimes I may lose a car and then download it again from nfscars/nfsaddons. Nfscars has some cool early nfs mods, too.
Quote from: EvoX on Dec 10, 2023, 3:26 AM
I use both of them. Sometimes I may lose a car and then download it again from nfscars/nfsaddons. Nfscars has some cool early nfs mods, too.
it was amazing circa 2000-2002, but so was NFSGarage. it's too bad EA stopped allowing mods out of the box after High Stakes.