Heliosphere

RE: https://hachyderm.io/@heliosphere/116190008742161709

It's live now! Let us know if there are any issues.

Screenshot of Heliosphere's file upload form. A file called "my mod.pmp" is selected. There is a warning that displays "This PMP contains files that are not used by Penumbra. Heliosphere filters such files before upload, so PMPs downloaded from Heliosphere will not contain them. You can upload these files as extra files that can be downloaded separately. Heliosphere can do this for you automatically if you check the box below." Below that text is a checked checkbox labelled "Upload unreferenced files as an extra .zip file attached to version 1.0.1". A text input is beneath the checkbox, and it's labelled "Name of .zip file to be created". Below that is a list of the extra files contained in the PMP, which are "dds/would you believe it.dds", "png/a loose file.png", and "png/another loose file.png".

A new feature is in the works! Check a box to have all loose files in your PMP automatically uploaded as an extra zip file.

There's the download queue by the share button, but no other lists besides that currently. Can always bookmark in your browser, too!

We now have enough people, so it's not necessary to reach out! Thank you to everyone again.

RE: https://hachyderm.io/@heliosphere/116089955173573215

Thank you to everyone who shared this and to everyone who reached out! We have now added enough people in an advisory capacity.

If you would like to be a person the moderation team asks for help with decisions made on reports, send us a quick hello and introduction via email or DMs. DM this account, @anna.lgbt, or email advisory (at) heliosphere (dot) app.

Heliosphere is looking for additional mod creators to help advise in private about moderation decisions and policies. Specifically, we are in need of the voices and experiences of people of colour. If you are interested in helping shape our moderation, please see the replies for contact information.

We've added a tab where you can upload files in the mod "Edit" page for those of you with muscle memory from other sites!

What do creators and users want from resource hosting? Pages, similar to mods, but with multiple files available to download from a list instead of the one big download button?

We've added a new button and link to the mod upload page to hopefully make managing variants easier.

Many people remember the past when Heliosphere required its companion plugin to function. It hasn't required it for a long time. Without the plugin, the big yellow download button downloads a PMP.

trans rights are human rights btw

One day...

https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:tt7gfeh3rh4jsd7fzw7w6dh2/post/3mes2gagpi22o

We appreciate all the new sign-ups!

If any of you are considering subscribing, the code WOKE is available for 75% off your first month for new subscribers. Only 10 uses available. We also offer 14-day free trials!

Did you know that Heliosphere has a function to prevent inappropriate words from being contained in mod IDs? Fortunately, people have already made lists of profane and inappropriate words, so we didn't have to come up with the list ourselves...

Heliosphere Forums Community forums for Heliosphere announcements, discussion, and support.

These feeds were added because of a suggestion made on our forums, by the way. Check them out: https://forums.heliosphere.app/

Heliosphere has Atom/RSS feeds for all new mods and for creator pages. You can plug in the home page or a creator's profile to your feed reader.

NSFW requires you to add ?nsfw=true to the end: https://heliosphere.app/feed/newest.atom?nsfw=true

Screenshot of a PMP download on Heliosphere's website. Newly added to this view are a tooltip on the icon showing what stage the download is in (currently showing "Downloading files") and a numeric progress (currently showing 2,705/12,284).

Added a tooltip to the PMP download stage icon and numeric progress below the progress bar. Hoping to make this UI even more informational and clear as time goes on!

Heliosphere Forums Community forums for Heliosphere announcements, discussion, and support.

If you ever have questions about Heliosphere's rules or policies, please feel free to reach out on fedi (@anna@blahaj.zone), bsky (@anna.lgbt@bsky.brid.gy), our forums (https://forums.heliosphere.app), official hs account (@heliosphere@hachyderm.io), or even email (rules at heliosphere dot app).

You can pet the dog on our website. If you give her enough pets (rubbing your mouse cursor around on top of her), hearts will start popping out!

The pride flags on our website up by our mascot (Sunny) will now show every unique flag available in our flag pack before allowing repeats. Before, it was true random sampling.

If you are capable of making pride flags in that style and want one added, let us know!

(Originals […]

A neat thing about Heliosphere is that it only needs to save one copy of any files that are uploaded inside mods. If two different mods share the same file, Heliosphere only keeps one copy of that file.

All told, this has saved us 743.31 GiB of storage space so far!

We have completed maintenance to migrate our database to PostgreSQL 18, which was long overdue but had complications that delayed it. This should make Heliosphere even faster! As always, please report any issues that may arise on the forums.

Heliosphere is always looking for volunteers to help improve our documentation! If you know how to use Heliosphere and would like to contribute some technical writing, please check out the link below.

https://forums.heliosphere.app/threads/call-for-documentation-contributors.5/

A screenshot of Heliosphere's extra files upload form. A PMP file is selected to be uploaded as an extra file, which has caused an orange warning box to appear with the title "PMPs as extra files is almost never right". The content of the warning: Uploading PMPs as extra files is almost never what you want to do. This usually happens when a creator doesn't know about variants. Variants allow you to upload multiple variants of a mod on the same page. Examples include separate packs for 1k and 2k textures or separate packs for different races. If you know what you're doing, you can upload this PMP file anyway, but remember that users will not receive any of the benefits of Heliosphere for PMPs uploaded as extra files.

Hard at work adding more warnings about common pitfalls or misunderstandings.

We updated the affects database on Heliosphere (finally), so mods that affect newer items that weren't being detected should be mostly fixed!

This account is now officially bridged to Bluesky, so people on there can also get Heliosphere news!

Happy holidays!