Spring RTS Engine

TasClient betas (springdownloader) and SpringLobby are using downloader system to automatically get correct version of mod or map you need to play game.

Once next version of spring is released, this will become standard way to get maps/mods.

System is using torrents (gets data from people who allow sharing) and existing websites.

But map/mod is invisible for the system until it's "registered". So to add new file to the system you have to click register button in springdownloader and add it (or do similar thing in springlobby).
It only uploads very small chunk of data containing checksums of the file, not the data from file itself.

Once the mod is registered, system will periodically check websites for copy of the file and people can start downloading directly from your pc (if you have sharing enabled).


If you made a new awesome map and want to be sure that people get it at top speeds, upload the map to as many spring related websites as possible and then register in downloader.
Downloader will use all sites at once.
Only site that is not used is spring.jobjol.nl, because as a primary site, it's bandwidth is reserved for traditional way of map/mod downloading. So uploading just to jobjol is not enough (at least until jobjol distributes it to its mirrors).

If SpringDownloader shows text like "Your files: 823 (to register: 2)" above register button, don't hesitate to register them! But please, do not clutter the system with useless "temporary" work versions of maps and mods you dont really wish to share with others.

Very cool. Definitely makes Spring a little more newb friendly. Will sharing be enabled by default?

Yes, only at 5k/s limited upload though - to prevent connection overload for people who miss the sharing/speed limit settings.

BTW licho, you need to allow it to see .sdd's

Simply creating the directory causes it to hash.

SDDs over the p2p system is a bad idea. They're designed for facilitating development, not distribution.

It cannot seed .sdd because its multifile - it needs torrent to represent one file (to allow easy webmirroring)
Therefore .sdd wont be supported.
It can see them it just ignored mods/maps that consist of multiple files.

I had to delete whole database because of this: viewtopic.php?f=12&t=16516

So please re-register your maps/mods

Yeah, how about instead of FORCING these dubious addons onto people, how about a tickbox so we actually have a bloody choice in the matter?

How about CHECKING for checkbox before making such DUBIOUS posts.

Hmm, someone registered maps on old(or new) version of engine .. so whole system is broken again because all maps and mods exists with 2 hashes..

Is it really usefull to be able to register same file name several times with different hashes ? Maybe you could use a most-common-hash broadcast for each filename instead of all-file-hash broadcast...

System does not allow registering of already registered object.
Objects are identified by hash.

Name is not used for anything and cannot be, else you could "lock out" mod.. like you could register next version of BA now and lock it out from system.

Also about 50 maps exist in several versions with different hashes but same name.

Since duplicated mods in system completely confuse new autohosts, one more purge + register again

PLEASE DONT REGISTER MODS/MAPS WITH OTHER VERSION OF SPRING THAN OFFICAL 77b4

idea:
mark a few files as being definitely bad,
if these bad files get registered by Mr.X discard everything else that user has/will register.

How do you tell which are bad? Someone would have to manually mark hashes as "faulty" ..
Who will do it and how will you recognize faulty hashes now?

Please, register files only with current spring version (b5), registering with other breaks autohosts since they dont know which "hash" of mod is "right one".
(Like it has 4x BA6.5 and does not know which one to pick to be in sync with players)

is there an easy way to keep files from being registered since im beta-ing several mods?

Yes, dont register them

Why are you using the hashing method spring returns and not some external hashing method like doing a sha1 on the file? The hash shouldn't depend on the engine version at all.

If you change this, you fix the problem with registered broken hashes as well as making it possible for older engines to upload maps to new ones (and vice-versa).

Because I need to download what user needs to join game - so I have to use same hash as lobby does.

Lobby tells me map hash in unitsync format and i must use it to locate file.