Komag on 15/6/2005 at 23:57

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hehe ;)

If one of the points of having IBTs is to save mission loading time, then having an installer that has to compile the ibt will kill that point, so we might as well not even consider user-end compiling of IBTs, unless there is no other way to play maps than with an IBT (and gmp of course).

After all this (good) discussion, I would say I'm leaning toward large filesize fully compiled IBT downloads. It sounds to me like any other option adds too much complication to the issue, and we can just suck up the filesize issue and deal with it.

Who knows, maybe in 3 years I'll offer a KomagHDDVD or KomagBluRay burning service :D

Crispy on 16/6/2005 at 08:30

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Making the game generate the IBT files itself (and then reuse them later) sounds like a great idea at first, until you realise how much complexity is involved. How does the loader know when to turn block file writing back on again? Does it keep checking the file system every minute (potentially lagging the game, I might add) to see if the IBT file has been generated? It would probably work, but it would be slow and messy.

When does T3 read the INI files? Every time it needs the data from them, every time you start a mission, or every time you start the EXE?

On an entirely different note: Someone mentioned Bittorrent. I second that suggestion. :) Many people (myself included) get free upload bandwidth, so seeding the download via Bittorrent is a very effective and cheap method. Plus, Bittorrent speeds up the download by spreading the bandwidth load around, and using multiple connections. When you think about it, there's really no reason not to use Bittorrent for large downloads...

(Well, okay, there is: Some people don't know how to use it. No reason you couldn't supply a traditional download as well, though; heck, you could probably use the same file for ordinary and BT downloads, so extra storage space would be minimal for a large bandwidth saving. I'm not sure how BT downloads are set up, but I'd be very surprised if you couldn't do this.)

nobody on 16/6/2005 at 15:42

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on a quick aside, Z, if you think that mission was substandard then I really want to see a mission you consider good. also, how can the very first FM be substandard? by definition it IS the standard no matter how good or bad. In all seriousness though it was a good little mission and deserving of wide release.

back on topic, while I have the editor installed on my computer I also have a seperate install for just the game with the minimalist project and some of John P's texture mods. when I downloaded his mission all I did was back up my files and unzip what he released into my game file (as per the read me instructions provided with mission) and everything worked perfectly. I had no clue what to do if annything had gone wrong; still don't. I'm about as low-tech and uninformed an end user as you are all likely to see. I did some fooling with Dromed back in the day but I know nothing about this new editor other than it's on my hard drive. I don't want to do any fancy work to make FM's play I don't want insanely long load times but I really don't care whether my computer compiles, decompiles, compresses, or converts an type of file as long as the interface I use to get it done is simple and easy to understand. I think most average users will agree with me, so please, make it efficient and simple as much as possible.

Ziemanskye on 16/6/2005 at 17:01

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But if you dl a gmp + resources, over about 6 or seven levels you hit not only a lot of redundancy (which is the argument for here) - almost everyone is likely to use either CityWatch or Hammers, and a lot of conflicts - where people have reskinned smeshes differently, or added new Trigger Scripts, and across a long enough timeline you end up with all the 'basic resources' as though you'd just downloaded the editor anyway.

Creating .ibt files is just a user.ini switch and waiting for it to load, so it's not hard from a FM creator point of view.

Also - I've suffered a broken ibt file that needed to have extras shipped over with it to make it run. A 50Mb ibt file (when zipped!), that then needed about that again in extra resources to actually run.

Shipping the resources rather than the ibt only really works (IMO) if you just cheat and say: get the editor, and all these missions add nothing at all(not even scripts).

Dark Arrow on 16/6/2005 at 17:34

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My mistake. I should have been more clear on what I was writing about. I meant .gmp+custom resources. The original resources would be handed out in a basic resource pack (which you would have to download). Custom resources would include gamesys and triggerscripts(? and what else?).

We are talking about a similar situation that it is with Dedx. Dedx is huge resource pack for Thief 2. Players that want to play an dedx FM will either have to download dedx (only once), or the FM with the dedx materials added to it (In T3 these FM .zips would be sort of like .ibt files). :weird: Ok so not exactly like the .ibt files, but...well.. you know.

To show your own stupidity, just keep explaining the same thing... :p