Well, the team has made great strides in the last few days putting most of the finishing touches on the demo. We are just waiting on the big 5 minute cutscene and final versions of the maps with minor improvements and adjustments.
Today I went through a major house cleaning project with the demo to remove all the files that were not critical to it functioning and brought the size down by about 20 MB. Currently, the demo is 112 MB . . . without the 5 minute cutscene. I expect that to add another 20 MB to the demo, so I'm guestimating that the 3 level demo will be about 130 MB.
I did a test build just to figure out how to pack it all up, and it looks we'll have about 6 ZIP files that are about 20 MB or so each. What is your opinion on this? I know it's a lot to download for dial-up users, but there isn't a way around it. Would 6 20 MB files be easier to download or should we just bundle the whole thing into one giant 130 MB zip file?
Hopefully the game magazines will pick up the demo and distribute it on CDROM, so the whole problem would be solved by that.
I'd like to hear your thoughts on this so I can prepare the best way for you to experience this mod.
thanks
Darth Linux
Personally I would rather be able to get it on one big shebang. I am on a 56k here (for now), and I need to get a friend to download it for me. The easier it is to do that the better (and no matter how easy it is to download 6 files, it is easier to download 1). And when/if I do get cable here, it won't be a problem for me to download 130 meg or more file.
I'm putting this up on the website poll, in the hope of making it more democratic :)
I think a big package sounds good for me but I have cable so others may need a smaller package. Maybe both, 1 ZIP for high bandwith, and 6 for low bandwith.
I've got cable now, but even back when I had 56k I'd have prefered the big file; you can just set it up and let it download overnight or while you do something else for a long time. However, this assumes that the entire thing downloads without messing up anywhere along the way. Users with unreliable ISPs (like the free one I had for about half a year right before I got cable) might not appreciate having to start the download over and might not be able to get the big file at all (some (very few) might not even get the 20 meg files on the first try)
What I'd suggest is getting it on Gamespot's DLX service (dlx.gamespot.com). I'm not sure how to do so, but it appears to have mods and other user-created content in addition to official downloads. Also, for downloads, I find it to be worth its included annoyances (free sign-up, small required software, file-sharing automatically turned on (you can turn it off in the software's options)) because it lets you pause and resume downloads and has higher speeds than any normal server I've downloaded from thanks to file-sharing (whether or not you have it turned on).
Can't believe the demo's almost here!:D
I don't really care that much (I just REALLY want it) but I'd lean towards one big file (I love my high-speed cable internet ;) ). I wouldn't have to check back after each download is finished and start the next one, and so on and so forth.
I use dial up and only get 26.4 connections where I live. The only way I would get to play it would be in 6 different files. Then It would still take forever to download all 6 files but at least I would get it. I'm excited about the new demo. The Dark Forces mod is a great idea. :)
As long as I dont have to sign up for some stupid ridiculous download webpage (I just wanna click the link to the file and download right away, no signing up crap) Im happy either way~
I'm on 128k dial up, so I'm fine with the bigger file.
Even when I had a 24k connection (about 4kb/s d/l) I'd have preferred one big file. If you use a download manager such as GetRight, FlashGet or GoZilla you just have to wait, if you get disconnected you just resume.
Hopefully, as with the previous demo, we should get mirrored by about 10 other sites (including all the major file distributors). Finding a reliable service should be no problem - the file will be hosted using a direct link on our webpage, and on LucasFiles, so you don't have to sign up, unless you go hunting for mirrors. I think the EchoNetwork should also be mirroring for us too, again, no need to sign up for anything. If you use a decent download manager, you shouldn't have a problem, regardless of the speed of your connection. If we get hosted by FilePlanet again, they do a "make CD" option, so there really should be no excuses! And now that most magazines do cover DVDs, the large size of the demo should not be a barrier to ending up on a cover disk.
We can always offer the 6 smaller files on the main website, no mirrors are going to mirror the 6 files, only the big one.
So, as far as I see it, no-one has an excuse for not playing this demo :D
I agree with The_One. One big file is good enough. It makes no sense uploading 6 big files. You can get Getright, Flashget, GoZilla or Download Accelerator Plus (that I'm using), and it's the same, because seems like all of them have the resume download function, so you can start and stop downloading whenever you want. So 1 file seems the best choice. And if ppl don't know about the existence of these free softwares, they'll surely have friends that will download the file for them. After all cable is spreading fastly.
I also like to download just one big file. The only disadvantage that I could imagine is that if you download the file and somehow the file gets corrupted (it happens sometimes to me) you have to download the whole file again. When you split the file you only have to download one little part again. This problem is really rare, but it could be very annoying for the one of us who don't have a flatrate.
I use 56K and I don't have a problem waiting to download arbitrarily large game files. Of course I have an app to resume downloads; I wouldn't have made it through 1998 without one. Mainly Monica on MacOS, and Wget on Windows.
I believe I'm with Suprosa on the ridiculous webpages. An FTP server would be ideal for people who have a resumable FTP client but not an HTTP download manager. You might also consider mirroring it on a BitTorrent server; Red vs Blue did.
If bandwidth on any of the mirrors is limited, you should probably have one of those warnings against download accelerators that open multiple download channels to hog more than their share of bandwidth.
[first post on lucasforums]
One big file but like Bond pointed out, it sucks if you have a 56k and the file gets corrupt. That happened to me quite often when getting mods for MotS that were over 20mb and I was quite pissed off....
And no, I'm not a figment of your imagination. I'm actually dropping in here. I'm gonna snoop around for a while and see what you guys have been doing since I left :D
1 big file. People need to download all of them anyways (use apps to resume as some may have pointed out already)
Use WinRAR instead of WinZip as it uses better compression.
Using WinRAR I was able to get 3GB of data to fit onto 2 CD-R's, uncompressed the data would have needed 5-6 CD-R's, Using WinZip I would have needed 3 CD-R's.
No, do not use stupid rar files.
@TK-8252
I don't understand why you call RAR-Files stupid. I also appreciate ZIP-files, because of the good compromise between compression and speed. But the problem here is to compress the size of the big file as much as possible, and using Win-RAR is a good solution, because of the better compression. There is no reason to underestimate the force of Win-RAR, young Padawan ;-)
There is no need for us to use RAR (although it has its own advantages over ZIP) because the files are all already compressed in PK3 files, which use ZIP compression!
The Demo pack will simply be an envelope, it could be even an EXE! Recompressing ZIP is futile...
As you wish! :deathii: ;) I've forgotten the part with pk3, but I've noticed that there are possibilites to recompress a compressed file with a better compression, I think it was with ACE, but I'm not sure. But I think it wouldn't make much difference in our case. I hate to decompress a compressed file, just to unzip it again.
I downloaded a rar program once... and it took over literally every, every file extension that was undefined as to what program to use.
Not everyone has a rar program, but everyone has a zip program. There's a nice simple one built into Windows. There will be so many people pissed off if the demo is only in a rar file and they can't extract it.
As I said, I'm also a fan of Win-ZIP, but Win-RAR is for me the number two, and also standard. For people who doesn't have Win-RAR there is the possibilty to make a self-extracting file, like in Win-ZIP, too. There is also the possiblity to repair a damaged RAR-file, if you have compressed a file with this additional function.
Originally posted by J_Bond
(it's no problem to download it in this case)
Except that it takes over all your undefined file extensions.
In the danger of making this thread even more off topic than it already is ;) let me just say this: Powerarchiver (
http://www.powerarchiver.com) is your friend.
Originally posted by TK-8252
Except that it takes over all your undefined file extensions.
Actually that's not right. When I installed Win-RAR it has shown me a list of all file extensions with a checkbox for each extension. Some, or all boxes are marked from Win-RAR, but you could uncheck the boxes for the extensions you don't want to assign to Win-RAR. If you missed this part of the installation, you could correct this in the preferences (at least in the newest version of Win-RAR).
But we should end this discussion about compression utilities for the demo, because it isn't necessary to use one of them as Fracman already said above.
Jeez, stop arguing amongst yourselves.
The release will either be a .zip file or an .exe. With either of these, anyone can play the mod.
End of discussion.