Tags:

XBUC History

lefos Aug 3, 2012

  1. le

    lefos Newbie
    0/47

    Joined:
    Jun 6, 2011
    Messages:
    40
    Likes Received:
    37
    Trophy Points:
    0
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    Massachusetts, USA
    Console:
    Xbox
    So, XBUC has been around for a long time. I wanted to compile as much history as we can, or at least since I have been involved.

    Pre 2009.. XBUC scatter across several free domains, no replication and they would go down/pop up on different links from time to time.

    Middle of 2009, I sent an email to the current XBUC team, offering a more stable hosting environment. Since no two XBUC sites would replicate to each other, and there were approximately 4 XBUC sites at that time.

    xbuc.clanvids.net was born. The developers threw their application on the server and seemed to just leave.

    July 2010 I tried contacting the guys who setup xbuc.clanvids.net, but had no luck. I was closing clanvids.net and wanted to keep xbuc alive. I purchased xbuc.org through bounceweb and got it online over there, just by moving the files.

    August 2010, the code took a major overhaul, from migrating from SQLite to MySQL, removing dead PHP code to doing many other things, the code was renewed.

    September 2010 something really weird happened. I got a charge on my credit card for dogsrus223.com being activated on my hosting plan. Obviously something was wrong. I contacted the host, xbuc.org had been taken offline, someone had my passwords.

    I lost all access to my emails and servers and without any contact from who did this, or why, someone seriously took down what I would have considered the main XBUC portal. Also I noticed all of my bank accounts were drained and that was no good.

    First thing I did was look for other live XBUC sites, and one popped up that I found kind of weird. Xboxmodder.com was running the same XBUC code that was on XBUC.org. There was a syndicate file that I had never updated with the move to XBUC.org and it was pointing to xbuc.clanvids.net. The syndicate.php on Xboxmodder.com's also pointed to xbuc.clanvids.net, they were identical.

    A few weeks later I got my accounts all back, and everything was well. I went into XBUC's access logs, and noticed someone from New Bedford(the city where Xboxmodder.com's storefront is located) had logged into my FTP. Whoever did all this, gave the XBUC code to Xboxmodder from XBUC.org and moved on.

    Shortly after all this, JQE360 swallowed Xboxmodder's marketplace and modified the XBUC code to do what they want to do.

    After all that happened, I had no contact from the webhost and xbuc.org was still taken as a domain name. So xbuc.net was registered at a much more legitimate host, Hostgator and lives from there on.

    August 2012 the site got some much needed improvements and joined up with XPGameSaves.com Still no contact as far as I can see from whoever hacked me almost two years ago and that is good news. JQE360 is still developing their XBUC site separately for FSD use and everyone seems happy.
     
  2. ticallion

    ticallion Member
    25/47

    Joined:
    Jan 24, 2011
    Messages:
    308
    Likes Received:
    30
    Trophy Points:
    25
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    Bavaria - The Beer Heaven
    Console:
    Xbox
    thx for the history lesson
     
  3. le

    lefos Newbie
    0/47

    Joined:
    Jun 6, 2011
    Messages:
    40
    Likes Received:
    37
    Trophy Points:
    0
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    Massachusetts, USA
    Console:
    Xbox
    If anyone knows who or how it started, I would love to add it. But when I came around this project seemed to be pretty much dead =/ But like anything, it has history
     
  4. Bu

    Bullet Guest

    You certianly been through the ringer. Its good to see you stuck at it. XBUC is the place for TUs.
     
  5. po

    pogowurst Newbie
    0/47

    Joined:
    Feb 16, 2013
    Messages:
    24
    Likes Received:
    18
    Trophy Points:
    0
    Console:
    Xbox
    Hello,

    Just stumpled accross this thread and i think that i could contribute something to this summary.

    First, i'm very impressed and proud what size this idea has grown to.

    It was in the 5th semester at university, we were three students in computer science. It was december or something like that (atleast it snowed). We were outside after lecture, got some coffee and smoked a cigarette and i was a bit unhappy that my xbox 360 console could not connect to live and i wanted that Risen Title Update which added a slider for controlling the brightness (without TU it was still to dark even with max brightness on TV). We talked a bit how updates could be easily exchanged to allow others without access to LIVE or their Xbox not connected to the internet to use them. The idea of XBUC was born and just after smoking another cigarette i began writing some code and creating a very basic database schema.

    Yep, database was SQLite and to my defense i have to admit, that XBUC was never ment to get that huge. I think i even missed adding indexes to the schema, did i? SQLite was good for portability and for hosting the site on free services. But if i remember corretly, atleast i used PDO for database access so moving from SQLite to MySQL should not have been that hard.

    The whole code was a total mess. Little to no OOP, no documentation except a few comments. But hey, the damn thing already worked just after some hours. Here i also have to thank free60.org for the description of the container format. Joergstorch got the ball rolling on a german board and xbuc got some visitors on the first days. After 5 days the site was mentioned on a english xbox forum and the whole thing exploded. Later i added game description and cover from amazon via their great API. Many visitors came to share their updates or download them. I added CDN links to ease the burden on the free host but we were still kicked by every freehoster we tried to host the site on after short time. Clanvids contacted us about hosting the site on their server and i was really happy to have a stable place for the site now that i didn't had enough time for the project anymore.

    Having not enough time anymore was the reason why development stalled and i retired from the project. Now, years later i work at a nice and creative company, making websites and stuff and also games for the indie market on PC and XBOX. In my spare time i also work on my own projects. After completing the last one i would really like to develop the XBUC further.

    Here are some things that i would like to add or change:
    • Completly rewritten in Python using the Django framework
    • New, responsive and modern design using Bootstrap
    • New file uploader using HTML5
    • Check uploaded TUs if they were altered somehow
    • Better searching (live search, autocomplete, etc.) and browsing
    • Better game specific data (from thegamesdb.net or something else instead of amazon)
    • Community features like comments and user contributed changelogs
    • Say "thank you" and Flattr the uploader of the TU
    • Top contributers list, charts and statistics
    • Subscribe to games and get an email when a new update is released
    • Backward compatible API
    • Open REST-JSON API for the XBUC Utility (see below) and other tools
    • XBUC Utility (name may change):
      • Written in C# .NET / Mono
      • Connects with your XBUC account
      • Synchronizes all updates from games you subscribed to and saves them to your XBOX 360 USB Stick
      • Retrieves new updates from the usb stick and uploads them to XBUC automatically
      • If you have savegames on the stick, the utility will auto-subscribe the corresponding game and will auto-download new updates
      • No other tools needed anymore, yeah
    So, how do you think about this?
     

    Attached Files:

    • xbuc.jpg
      xbuc.jpg
      File size:
      142.4 KB
      Views:
      456

Share This Page

Close