10 replies to this topic

[kharan5876]

Not sure where to post this but would it be a good idea to share these mods on bittorrent? It might be faster than the mirrors and would save some bandwidth. People would just have to keep the rars of the mods they play on their machine and seed them.

Edited by kharan5876, 20 November 2005 - 10:37 AM.

[sadun]

Good idea. But as far as i know, we need to create a torrent file for each file and i dont know how to do.

[ronin]

We would also have to have a tracker for them.

ronin

[SConrad]

I'm not quite sure if bittorrent would have the desired effect. While it's entirely possible to have torrents which includes more than one file, I think it would be difficult to be able to put together a 'package' with files, since different people chooses different mods to play (not everyone wants to play BP-BGT-DSotSC, but maybe only BP-BGT). So, in this case, it would probably be necessary to make separate torrent files for all the different components. And that wouldn't make things much easier in the long run.

And yes, we'd need a tracker.

The main point, however, is that I don't think there would be enough people in order to be able to maintain the torrent's activity. You would need people to seed 24/7 for a long time, since I imagine the demand of a BP torrent isn't very high, and thus the natural 'regeneration' of the torrent would be negated. At best, I think we'd only see a week or two before the torrent dies because of lack of seeders.

[Archmage Silver]

I'm not quite sure if bittorrent would have the desired effect. While it's entirely possible to have torrents which includes more than one file, I think it would be difficult to be able to put together a 'package' with files, since different people chooses different mods to play (not everyone wants to play BP-BGT-DSotSC, but maybe only BP-BGT). So, in this case, it would probably be necessary to make separate torrent files for all the different components. And that wouldn't make things much easier in the long run.

And yes, we'd need a tracker.

The main point, however, is that I don't think there would be enough people in order to be able to maintain the torrent's activity. You would need people to seed 24/7 for a long time, since I imagine the demand of a BP torrent isn't very high, and thus the natural 'regeneration' of the torrent would be negated. At best, I think we'd only see a week or two before the torrent dies because of lack of seeders.

Have to agree with that, it's better to deal them in the traditional way.

[kharan5876]

It would probably be better to have each mod as one single torrent. Maybe the files on the mirrors could be used also so the mirrors are always seeding.

It would require some dedicated folks to continue seeding the mods. The modders themselves who make them would probably be seeding them. You'd never see a high number of seeds on a specific mod tho.

Edited by kharan5876, 20 November 2005 - 06:39 PM.

[ronin]

You can put multiple files or directories in a torrent file. If the tracker is setup correctly you can even download only the files you need from the torrent file.

A good site as an example is www.demonoid.com

ronin

[seanas]

the point sconrad makes is a good one:

The main point, however, is that I don't think there would be enough people in order to be able to maintain the torrent's activity. You would need people to seed 24/7 for a long time, since I imagine the demand of a BP torrent isn't very high, and thus the natural 'regeneration' of the torrent would be negated. At best, I think we'd only see a week or two before the torrent dies because of lack of seeders.

given the relatively low demand for BP mod files, it's faster to have them - as they currently are - on an ftp site, rather than as a torrent. torrents work best when there are many seeders, and work least efficiently when there are few seeders - which would be the situation with mod torrents, i would have thought. there might be an argument for making a torrent available of the final release of KD's conversions, as demand for these might exceed the number of connections possible on TheWizard's server, but as a general rule, i don't think torrents are an effective method of mod delivery.

[Chevalier]

given the relatively low demand for BP mod files

Once BP-WeiDU is out with a small download and not needing to install all of SoS, TDD, and TS, BP will be in high demand!!!

[Ascension64]

It really depends on how large the IE community still is, and whether the locations and convenience of the community allows 24/7 seeding and tracking. My main concern with the use of BitTorrent, hence, is the seeding portion. Unless IE modding has very large and widespread popularity, it will be a difficult ask for people to seed as much as they can and over extended periods of time. The major issue is the idea of sustainability in seeding. New mods out there (say, for example, some UT2004 mods) have a fairly solid seeder base when it is first released, but over time when things start getting old (the entire UT2004 game, for example), seeders will drop off, downloads will fall, and you are stuck with an ever increasingly idle tracker. The vision of BitTorrent I see is that it allows decentralised (although, it still needs a tracker), *secure* (now why would we consider sending viruses and malware?), TRANSIENT availability of files REQUIRED IN HIGH VOLUME, after which the .torrent files and corresponding content then sit there to rot.

I am definitely not for temporary hosting in such a manner.

[SConrad]

Once BP-WeiDU is out with a small download and not needing to install all of SoS, TDD, and TS, BP will be in high demand!!!

But if it's such a small download, wouldn't it be much more convenient to have it on a mirror somewhere?

In any case, I still believe that torrents wouldn't be that good idea for mods, for the reasons I specified. As both me, seanas and Ascension64 said, it'd die quite soon, since it wouldn't attract enough traffic to keep it alive for a very long time.