Subject: Is anyone up for hosting the online PG game "Schemaverse"?

From: Justin Clift <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 02 May 2025 08:23:00 +1000

Hi all,

The PostgreSQL game "Schemaverse" was removed from the PostgreSQL 
website's
links a few months ago because it no longer had hosting.

Does anyone around have spare server/vm/something that could be used to
host it (for free)?

Details in the forwarded message below. :)

Regards and best wishes,

Justin Clift

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Schemaverse
Date: 2025-04-21 13:01
 From: Joshua McDougall <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]

Hi Justin,
<snip>

To answer your question, Schemaverse doesn’t take massive power to host. 
It needs a database and a small server for the front-end, which can (and 
has) run off a single virtual machine. I think the last one was 4 vCPUs 
and 16GB of memory but we’ve hosted off smaller too.

The unique part of the setup tends to be its lacking security. All 
players are users on the database, so the pg_hba.conf needs to be 
flexible and the game needs enough permissions to create users. These 
two requirements have made most SaaS offerings non-compatible. 
Admittedly, the last time I investigated such offerings was years ago 
now, so it’s possible things have changed.

If it’s possible that we can find schemaverse a new home, that would be 
wonderful. I still get the occasional inquiry asking about it, usually 
from students, and I’d love to have it back up for those looking to 
learn from it. Regardless though, thank you for reaching out!

-Josh

---

From: Merlin Moncure <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 5 May 2025 18:15:35 -0500

> Does anyone around have spare server/vm/something that could be used to

I might be interested.  Is it difficult to set up?

merlin

---

From: Justin Clift <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 08 May 2025 22:28:26 +1000

> I might be interested.  Is it difficult to set up?

Definitely more a question for Josh (CC'd) than me.

Josh, are you ok to discuss this with Merlin (etc)?

+ Justin

---

From: Joshua McDougall <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 8 May 2025 20:52:35 -0400

Hi Merlin,

The core database portion isn’t too complicated to get setup, it’s a sqitch project. There are a couple Perl scripts that run continuously in a screen session as well. 

The web interfaces are a little dated and need some fiddling to get operational. This tends to be the most complicated part to get running lately. 

I would happily help either by answering questions, or by directly working on the system. I could also spend some time getting it all working smoothly via docker if a container was preferred. 

Thanks for your interest!
Josh

> On May 5, 2025, at 7:15 PM, Merlin Moncure <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> On Thu, May 1, 2025 at 5:23 PM Justin Clift <[email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]>> wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>

---

From: Merlin Moncure <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 9 May 2025 07:52:12 -0500

On Thu, May 8, 2025 at 7:52 PM Joshua McDougall <[email-masked]> wrote:

> Hi Merlin,
>
> The core database portion isn’t too complicated to get setup, it’s a
> sqitch project. There are a couple Perl scripts that run continuously in a
> screen session as well.
>
> The web interfaces are a little dated and need some fiddling to get
> operational. This tends to be the most complicated part to get running
> lately.
>
> I would happily help either by answering questions, or by directly working
> on the system. I could also spend some time getting it all working smoothly
> via docker if a container was preferred.
>

Sure.  FYI: look familiar?  https://github.com/merlinm/rpgame.

It should -- it was loosely inspired from your effort.   This was the
output of a SQL training class I was giving to non technical folks at a
prior gig.

You may or may not recall I was the one abusing advisory locks so no one
could play the game but me :-).  Your project is an important part of
postgres history IMO.  I have some hosting through gcp; I'll set
something up.  Out of town until late next week but I'll circle back then.

merlin

---

From: Justin Clift <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 May 2025 18:42:02 +1000

<snip>
> something up.  Out of town until late next week but I'll circle back 

Have you had a chance to investigate? :)

Regards and best wishes,

Justin Clift