To Torrent or not to Torrent
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To Torrent or not to Torrent
I think the penetration of bittorrent is pretty good now for it to be fairly accurate to assume that almost everyone playing games has a client already. I'm wondering if we should primarily offer binary pkgs via torrent rather than hosting it on sourceforge.
This isn't to say that we aren't going to continue work on getting a proper updater going and what not, but for distributing the initial data pkg (which i think we should separate out from normal bin releases by 0.5.1), and all the bin pkgs, we could offer torrents as an alternative to downloading from sf.net.
We'd have a data.torrent, mac.torrent, win32.torrent, tarball.torrent, deb(s).torrent, rpm(s).torrent
I wouldn't mind seeding that. Something like that.
This isn't to say that we aren't going to continue work on getting a proper updater going and what not, but for distributing the initial data pkg (which i think we should separate out from normal bin releases by 0.5.1), and all the bin pkgs, we could offer torrents as an alternative to downloading from sf.net.
We'd have a data.torrent, mac.torrent, win32.torrent, tarball.torrent, deb(s).torrent, rpm(s).torrent
I wouldn't mind seeding that. Something like that.
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It would ok but my ISP who owns most of the infrastructure here in Canada and is a traffic shaper and only sells shaped bandwidth it's before regulators ATM with even google calling them bad boys in an official submission to the CRTC
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On a similar notion, I think everyone is aware that VS is no lightweight when it comes to download size. I was wondering if it would not also be prudent to looking into "official" dvds of VS. You figure a dvd costs 20 cents or less, then the label costs roughly the same we'll say after ink and such is considered. Then mailing a cd costs at most a buck. We could pack all the OS bin installers (which would be modified to install the separate /data pkg), have the manual on there in pdf or some more open format and with any room left over (likely 3GB), we can pkg up an svn pull of either VS and data or just one or the other, depending on how much we can compress things (since the overhead of the svn trees are duplicate data, this might be doable).
So we could sell the dvd of VS release for say 2.50-3 bucks for the convenience of not having to download it. That's not a lot of money and it wouldn't take a lot of time to do once it's initially setup, people might go for it, and there is a little bit of profit to be had. Might get to put the money back into VS web hosting ...maybe even buy some off-sf storage just in case
edit:
there's still a lot of people without crazy broadband, and the prospect of downoading VS puts them off. At least by offering this option for getting VS, we're not alienating potential users simply because they can't access the game. Keep in mind, they're not paying for the game, just the dvd and time / resources used to make it and ship it. I wouldn't be comfortable selling it for any other reason other than to just provide some users who can't download it, the ability to play it. The price would only allow for a small profit which wouldn't really be profit since it would go back into the cost of running VS's web services (maybe some backup svn server in case SF decides to enact a limit)
So we could sell the dvd of VS release for say 2.50-3 bucks for the convenience of not having to download it. That's not a lot of money and it wouldn't take a lot of time to do once it's initially setup, people might go for it, and there is a little bit of profit to be had. Might get to put the money back into VS web hosting ...maybe even buy some off-sf storage just in case
edit:
there's still a lot of people without crazy broadband, and the prospect of downoading VS puts them off. At least by offering this option for getting VS, we're not alienating potential users simply because they can't access the game. Keep in mind, they're not paying for the game, just the dvd and time / resources used to make it and ship it. I wouldn't be comfortable selling it for any other reason other than to just provide some users who can't download it, the ability to play it. The price would only allow for a small profit which wouldn't really be profit since it would go back into the cost of running VS's web services (maybe some backup svn server in case SF decides to enact a limit)
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i dont know, the price difference is very small and the size difference is extreme. If it only adds a dime to the cost, but you could add an SVN repo on there then it would be more than worth it.
Having an svn pull of /data for instance would be advantageous to developers. Starting from a high rev is always better than from scratch. Though, it wont really help it when we touch every image
edit:
btw. This simple installer need to be nothing more than a program that takes a dir path and untarballs the required pkgs into that directory. It doesn't have to do anything else.
We can save the fancy smancy installer for when we get our cross-platform installer setup all finished. And then follow that up with the "updater" program.
Having an svn pull of /data for instance would be advantageous to developers. Starting from a high rev is always better than from scratch. Though, it wont really help it when we touch every image
edit:
btw. This simple installer need to be nothing more than a program that takes a dir path and untarballs the required pkgs into that directory. It doesn't have to do anything else.
We can save the fancy smancy installer for when we get our cross-platform installer setup all finished. And then follow that up with the "updater" program.
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Re: To Torrent or not to Torrent
I endorse this thread. I see no reason not to make torrents of everything big. As for CD/DVD - personally I have no use for it and mailing it to Europe would cost more than a buck and take longer than downloading on a 14.4 modem, but if someone wants to go to the trouble and do it, that's fine by me.
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Re: To Torrent or not to Torrent
I was thinking about this the other day while I was doing a P2P and bittorrent essay. Bittorrent for such a large file sounds like a lot of help for bandwidth allocation, while the new Web Seed feature would be used if there are very few or no seeders, increasing the lifespan of the torrent (and consequently VS) to almost infinite
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Re: To Torrent or not to Torrent
I'd thought this would have been a go by now - has it died out? Need a helping hand?
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Re: To Torrent or not to Torrent
The developers are MIA.
Currently nobody with any authority (or perhaps even rights on the SF.net project) seems to follow or respond in the forum.
This happens though, so they'll be back, I expect. Just no idea when!
Currently nobody with any authority (or perhaps even rights on the SF.net project) seems to follow or respond in the forum.
This happens though, so they'll be back, I expect. Just no idea when!
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Re: To Torrent or not to Torrent
Charlieg, maybe you could hound some of the lost devs by email to try and get them to appoint someone or post and supervise a sticky requesting/offering an interim project management position (hopefully with some code skills)?
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Re: To Torrent or not to Torrent
The main developers (hellcatv and ace) are not MIA but work on the sirikata that become the base for the next manger release of vega strike for hellcatv's PhD phases.
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Re: To Torrent or not to Torrent
Yeah, but doesn't that mean the whole game will have to rebuilt on top of this Sirikata engine and only after the Sirikata engine is built itself? How many years will that take? If content creation for VS will continue in that time, who will direct it?
If there is going to be a long time between now with the project adrift and the point in the future when the lead devs begin to build Vega-Strike-Specific code onto Sirikata, we should have a plan for what to do during that long time in between.
If there is going to be a long time between now with the project adrift and the point in the future when the lead devs begin to build Vega-Strike-Specific code onto Sirikata, we should have a plan for what to do during that long time in between.
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Re: To Torrent or not to Torrent
Perhaps they can at least give somebody who cares the requisite privileges to maintain the existing version?
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