remove reliance on map/mod hosts (Aka Unknown files)

[ZellSF]

Uh, why wouldn't BitTorrent be usable? Player joins a game doesn't have map, host automatically starts trackers and seeds map, tells all clients to seed map also and the people who don't have the map downloads from the peers. Status report in it's own loading screen message.

You don't need port forwarding for bittorrent to work, unless at least one client has ports forwarded (and the host always will).

After everyone's loaded, all the torrent capabilities are turned off.

Not saying it would be easy to code, I just don't see any network/interface/performance issues with it)

[Licho]

Because BT is phail if you have to host 1000 files .. just try it it eats too much resources.

And BT network just with host is useless.. there are too many people with just dial up hosting etc..
And even non dialupers to the east from me rarely have upload speeds higher than 10k/s

[ZellSF]

Because BT is phail if you have to host 1000 files .. just try it it eats too much resources.

And BT network just with host is useless.. there are too many people with just dial up hosting etc..
And even non dialupers to the east from me rarely have upload speeds higher than 10k/s

Uh, A: you only want to be hosting 1 file
B: I didn't say that just the host should upload (though as a last resort, that would happen). In your average game, there most likely is more than once person with ports forwarded. Unless it's a 1vs1. Using a good server as a universal seed would solve that issue anyway.

[Pxtl]

Well, the fact is that hosting is a service that costs money - so why beat around the bush? Centralized web-based tracker, but it only actually seeds torrents if you pay it to. Otherwise, it's up to you to seed it yourself (if you're the file provider). Play it like unknown files in every other respect. If you host a game with a file that is available on the tracker, the client automatically connects you as a seed to the tracker until the game starts. If you're a client who has the file, same deal.

Thus, the main host loses the task of hosting files for free, which is the chief problem.

Otherwise, we're trying to get something for nothing here.

[CarRepairer]

These are excellent ideas. There is no need to think in terms of massive torrents with 700 map files. The client just needs to integrate filesharing so a host can send a map to all the players in his game directly. It's just better than the roundabout [I don't have this map and UF is down, upload it to a web filehost so I can downloda it] thing.

Even BT is not a problem since the game host's client just creates a tracker (I don't know the details of how that's accessible, I guess HTTP), then seeds and the players in the battle room connect. No centralized database required. But obviously that would require more work.

I really think until then, direct file transfers through the spring client should just be there as an option. Spring players have developed a lot of patience necessary to start games.

[Pxtl]

The tracker format is HTTP - and a lot of ISPs frown on users receiving requests on port 80, since they generally make more money selling web-hosting services. Really, for an ad-hoc P2P network between the members of a battleroom, the naked unmodified bittorrent format isn't really functional. It'd take some hacking to get the tracker format to tunnel through the game-hosting port (8452).

[ZellSF]

uh, hosting a tracker on a different port than the default shouldn't be too difficult. Since lots of people already have 8452 forwarded, just make having ports 8452-8454 for example required (tracker, torrent client, game).

Also, the most common default tracker port is 6969, not 80.

Though I really don't want to see effort being used on adding a torrent client to the engine..

[BrainDamage]

it won't work that good

a rough estimation is that less than 1/4 of the players has enough knowledge to open the necessary ports in their router/firewall, that means that almost no direct connection between peers can be made, also implies that the host has already downloaded the map & mod elsewhere before starting the game.

let's bring out a case example:

an 8 players game (including host)

1/4 of them has ports open (2 players)
half of them doesn't have the map which is 30 MB (4 players)
all of them are using an asymmetric connection, where upload bandwith is something like 30 KB/sec

only 2 people can upload to the swarm the files (because they have the opts open and people can connect to them), and 4 people have to download, that means that each player will download at a speed of 35 *2 / 4 = 15 KB/sec
for a 30 MB file that means an ETA of 30*1024/15/60=35 mins while even those free hosting services would give you decent speeds in the hundreds of KB range

[ZellSF]

At the cost of download limits, usually, which makes free http file hosting a bad option too.

an ideal solution would be a http seeds, and an up to date list of which http seeds are available is distributed automatically through the players.

Still as there is now, there's no last resort option. Not that I see why we really need one.

[Licho]

Ok I will look into this
http://caspring.org/wiki/CaDownloaderMapDownloads

[CarRepairer]

Don't be concerned with bandwidth. If direct transfer is the only option then it's better than not playing at all. And it's not necessarily true that someone got the map/mod from a website if they created it. And the website could be temporarily or permanently gone (which is why we're having this conversation)

If I made a Starcraft map and log onto battlenet, it gets sent to whoever joins my game. Simple.

[Pxtl]

Don't be concerned with bandwidth. If direct transfer is the only option then it's better than not playing at all. And it's not necessarily true that someone got the map/mod from a website if they created it. And the website could be temporarily or permanently gone (which is why we're having this conversation)

If I made a Starcraft map and log onto battlenet, it gets sent to whoever joins my game. Simple.

Starcraft maps are tiny, since they're just a list of tiles and a few features. If you're a UMS mapper, they're a pile of script on top of that, and maybe a few WAVs bundled in. Still a few hundred K, tops.

Meanwhile, Spring maps are 50-meg monsters, especially if you are dealing with artsy mappers.

[smoth]

the problem with torrent is that players want to play and use their bandwidth to GAME not distro files. If file distro can lag people then people will not do it and it will lag people. If it is throttled to not slow/lag people then it would be very slow.

[CarRepairer]

Don't be concerned with bandwidth. If direct transfer is the only option then it's better than not playing at all. And it's not necessarily true that someone got the map/mod from a website if they created it. And the website could be temporarily or permanently gone (which is why we're having this conversation)

If I made a Starcraft map and log onto battlenet, it gets sent to whoever joins my game. Simple.

Starcraft maps are tiny, since they're just a list of tiles and a few features. If you're a UMS mapper, they're a pile of script on top of that, and maybe a few WAVs bundled in. Still a few hundred K, tops.

Meanwhile, Spring maps are 50-meg monsters, especially if you are dealing with artsy mappers.

I'm an artsy mapper and I use tiling to reduce it to a fraction of the size

Your points are correct. But the fact remains that it already takes upwards of 45 minutes sometimes just to get a game started. No one's in any hurry. A click of a button to send a map (be it 10 or 30 mb) is a better solution than telling the host to log onto whatever, upload the map to a webhost, get the link, paste to the room, then people can download it. No weeding through file names, no downloading to the right spot, just a button click in your battle window. I am willing to bet that this convenience would still save time, regardless of internet speeds.

Edit: Forget the host. How about a right click on any player in the battle you're in, with a context that says Send this map to player.
Any player can send to any other player. Forget the torrents. Most maps are under 20 mb. It's not a big deal and the convenience benefit would be huge.

[Pxtl]

the problem with torrent is that players want to play and use their bandwidth to GAME not distro files. If file distro can lag people then people will not do it and it will lag people. If it is throttled to not slow/lag people then it would be very slow.

If you want to play a free game that involves downloading about a gig of files over the course your gaming career, then you've got to start thinking about who's gonna pay for that gig.

Obviously, if the torrent system interferes with the gameplay, then it's a problem - but if it's integrated into the client in such a way that it gets turned off while playing, that's a whole other story.

[smoth]

I know pxtl, but don't call "cheap" on me, I spend more time developing content then I do playing and have given a lot to the community.

[Pxtl]

I know pxtl, but don't call "cheap" on me, I spend more time developing content then I do playing and have given a lot to the community.

Well aware of that, and not calling you cheap. I'm not talking in terms of principles, but in terms of realism - we can't expect some angel to come up and say "Hey, here's unlimited bandwidth for you to host files for free!". So, P2P solutions look good - particularly since this is a free game, and I'm sure many of it's players are willing to donate bandwidth and dev-time much more readily than they are willing to donate money.

[smoth]

I'm an artsy mapper and I use tiling to reduce it to a fraction of the size

Tiling only partly works, just like the low jpg compression also works and like low compression you are left with a lot of crap in your file in the way of loss due to poor tiling. There is no MAGICAL method of tiling and the only reason tiling appears to work is because the shitty compression of mapconv kinda works if there is an asspile of redundant texturing. It does not work on things like... oh say DASHES ON A STREET, I know! Furthermore many of you tile evangelists never run without detail textures to see how shitty the texture truely is.

Edit: Forget the host. How about a right click on any player in the battle you're in, with a context that says Send this map to player.

And wait for 3 hours.

Any player can send to any other player. Forget the torrents. Most maps are under 20 mb. It's not a big deal and the convenience benefit would be huge.

Most SMALL maps. Any map that is going to be of the right size for my project is going to be larger then 20 megs.

much more readily than they are willing to donate money.

well with FU, nexus explained that a short term surge in payments would not make much of a dent but uf's adds payed for it's bandwidth and then some. I remember cuppy saying that. There is just a hickup right now because cuppy cannot spend more time taking care of uf and we need someone on that more then anything. The adds pay for the bandwidth, we need a volunteer to take care of the server side work.

[very_bad_soldier]

Lets get concrete: About which amount of monthly bandwidth are we talking?

Since spring community isnt that big and consists of a lot of geeks I think we could get that thing running based on donated bandwidth.

[CarRepairer]

Edit: Forget the host. How about a right click on any player in the battle you're in, with a context that says Send this map to player.

And wait for 3 hours.

Any player can send to any other player. Forget the torrents. Most maps are under 20 mb. It's not a big deal and the convenience benefit would be huge.

Most SMALL maps. Any map that is going to be of the right size for my project is going to be larger then 20 megs.

I'm talking in general. Most people have decent connections. Most maps are small enough to be sent directly. The direct transfer option would help the general populace. That's reason enough. And I'm sure it's simpler than fancy torrents.

And even 3 hours is shorter than waiting a week for UF to come back up. If people don't have to click links and weed through files all the time, I'm sure the rare scenario of downloading your giant map from the web would not be a big deal, once in a while.