Spring RTS Engine

Ok, I chatted with gnome and here's the story with FU. Basicly what happened is that spring streams a massive ammount of data from FU in map downloads, this accounts for the vast majority of FU's traffic, which exceeds 12mbits per second at peak. Spring alone cost FU 700gigabytes of traffic this month. Basicly what this means is they have used up all thier bandwidth for June and FU will be down until either the 1st of next month or they have enough money in donations to cover overages. In the long term this means that if spring is going to continue to grow we need more map hosting servers not being banked by the FU guys and hopefully a more efficient way of handling map transfers (possibly filesharing from hosts, we will see).

For the short term we are without FU and the only way we can help them cope is to fund them. Being that spring is non profit that means we're relying on comunity donations. If you want to help out you can make a donation at this paypal button. Unless a miracle happens within the next few days spring's map downloads and FU links will likely be down until the first, at which point we get to try to not break FU again next month. Sorry for the inconviniance.

R1ch's map mirror

Cuppies file mirror / upload to Cuppies mirror

Now I have time to lay out a few good suggestions I have been considering for a while...

1. Minimize Map Downloads
Run a Beta test for a Map before letting it go public. Don't load it to FU immediately. When you have a final version(s), release it to FU. This will reduce load by reducing sheer map download volume, and it will also make your maps a little easier to recieve into the community.

2. Minimize Mod Downloads
Run a Beta test for a Mod before letting it go public. Don't load it to FU immediately. When you have a crucial version, release it to FU. This will reduce load by reducing sheer mod download volume, and it will also make your mods a little easier to recieve into the community.

The problem is filesharing user to user isn't easy. It's much more convienient to just host a file somewhere while you PT it and have others download from there. Some spring members have thier own hosting to work with, but more are stuck using the free hosting the FU provides for them.

Maby we can get a "download from host" button added to lobby, at least that way we could share some traffic out with FU rather then smashing them repedatively.

"Download from host" meaning download the used map/mod from the game's host in the lobby? If yes, it gets my vote. Many games use that principle, rather successfully I must say.

In the meantime, R1ch, a person i dont know, offered a searchable mirror for the maps, some time ago.

http://www.ta-spring.com/maps/

Im not sure if those maps are updated/outdated, bewarn.

e: it seems to be quite up to date, about 20 days old.
e2: original post (end).

Tell R1ch he's awesome for me.

Is that where our bandwidth has been going? :S

Lets help File Universe

DONATE FTW

Just donated some....

In the meantime we could start a torrent of the most commonly played maps, this would be essential for new players and those reinstalling. I'd be willing to seed that if it was set up.

make a torrent of the most-played maps and share it!

well what are the most played maps?

speedmetal, speedmetal duo v 1 and 2

So help me there will be so much scowling if you put speedmetal or derived map in there!

SwiftSpear wrote:speedmetal, speedmetal duo v 1 and 2

Let's go back in to the past, and eliminate runecrafter before even remaking that map...

But on a more serious matter, There could be a scheme that would make the host of the battle upload the map to all players that don't have it yet before precalculating. That way we hit 2 stones with 1 fly. (allthough the option to download from FU should still be there since new maps won't be so easilly shared otherwise)

1: Fileuniverse won't be so overloaded.
2: You don't have to restart the game 50 times because the new guy says he has the map whilst (s)he does not.

plz dont forget speedrnetal

lower the file size limit for maps

SwiftSpear wrote:"download from host" button

tell me what connection speed You have ? I mean both directions : Downstream rate AND Upstream rate.
Did You ask Your ISP what xDSL tehnology he uses in his DSLAM's ?
Most users use ADSL which means that the maximum Upsream rate is no more than 1mbit/s (usually no more than 512kbit/s).

Now here's the situation: You are the host and You host a 20MB map, 4 players join You, all of them press this "download from host" button, and Your Upstream rate is 512 kbit/s ... how long do You think they will download it from You ? ... About 25 minutes, thats quite long

Im not saying that this is a bad idea but probably very few hosts (such as users of VDSL) will be allowing others to download maps this way fast

Others who dont use xDSL connections probably have similar speed limitations, ... like me

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSL - check each of the DSL technologies)

hey ask DLS_Gishank1, maybe he will be able to help...

zorbawic wrote:lower the file size limit for maps

SwiftSpear wrote:"download from host" button

tell me what connection speed You have ? I mean both directions : Downstream rate AND Upstream rate.
Did You ask Your ISP what xDSL tehnology he uses in his DSLAM's ?
Most users use ADSL which means that the maximum Upsream rate is no more than 1mbit/s (usually no more than 512kbit/s).

Now here's the situation: You are the host and You host a 20MB map, 4 players join You, all of them press this "download from host" button, and Your Upstream rate is 512 kbit/s ... how long do You think they will download it from You ? ... About 25 minutes, thats quite long

Im not saying that this is a bad idea but probably very few hosts (such as users of VDSL) will be allowing others to download maps this way fast

Others who dont use xDSL connections probably have similar speed limitations, ... like me

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSL - check each of the DSL technologies)

When I torrent I upload nearly as fast as I download. The idea is that DL from host would work along side the existing website streams. If 1-2 users DLed from the host each game it would only slow the start down a minute or two, Multiply that by however many thousand games run per day and you saved nearly 2000 map downloads from FU, that's not going to stop thier bandwidth useage compleatly by any means, but it will scale it down. Most games you run a map and only 1-2 users need to DL it anyways, with the option of FU or DL from host the choice will likely be fairly random and a signifigant chunk of usage from FU would be taken off. People could always cancel the DL from host and start DLing from FU anyways.

Torrents for maps would be good...

SwiftSpear wrote:Maby we can get a "download from host" button added to lobby, at least that way we could share some traffic out with FU rather then smashing them repedatively.

I really like this id├â┬®a, it could take some load of FU, and for hosts with 10Mbit UL (not that unsuaual in Sweden) it shoulden't be any problem. Perhaps the host even could be able to choose if he would share the map or not...

And if the map server would crash it would be a nice backup solution (and for ppl playing on the same connection, it would be great not having to download the map from the internet )

For nwo a good solution would be to offer multiple hosts, so that when uploading you can specify mirrors, possibly nto upload at all.

Also a nuisance is that when you upgrade a download to a newer version it gets a new url, and the old url becomes totally useless, I'd prefer it if it kept the same url allowing you to update without trawling through everything updating links in posts and messages.