bbb on 7/5/2004 at 11:58
epithumia:
All really good points. I know from doing 2 missions that at the end all you want to do is get it posted already. Actually, I think you get these posted really quickly and can't see how anyone has a complaint (and at the prices you charge this is a GREAT deal!!!!!!).
Before I released Mighty Joe Young, I had a great crew of testers who came up with lots and lots of suggestions and because I listened to them, my mission was so much cleaner and a whole lot better.
BBB
ps: Thanks to you and all the others who volunteer their time to keep the misisons coming. We don't often enough say thank you!
Ottoj55 on 7/5/2004 at 20:54
i've noticed that there is a lack of consistency in the file names. the file i submitted to jason for hosting was left with the name i gave it, but the file on komag's site was renamed. this was true for a large number of missions and created some confusion with determining if i already had a mission when searching both sites. i would like to suggest some kind of naming convention in common between the keep and cheap missions to avoid conflicts in the future.
mopgoblin on 7/5/2004 at 22:06
Yes, the renaming of the .zip files is quite annoying. I recall that it made sorting out my fileserver for #thief-fms rather more annoying than it could otherwise have been, and it has resulted in accidental duplicate downloads of a FM from various sites.
The best "naming convention" is not to rename them at all, and leave the name the author provides. However, occasionally there'll be a mision with an identical or similar name to an older mission. If the new mission accidentally gets given the same filename, that's a problem.
In theory, giving each mission a uniqe ID number (seperate from the filename, perhaps in a textfile with a specific name in the .zip) would be a good solution. However, there are a couple of problems - the IDs wouldn't be visible in a directory listing (nor in DarkLoader, unless there was a new version with such a capability), and all past missions would need to be given an ID, which of course wouldn't be recorded in currently existing copies of missions that everyone has already downloaded. There'd also need to be a known number of people assigning these ID numbers to avoid conflicts.
epithumia on 7/5/2004 at 22:10
I try not to rename files unless what the author sends me is unworkable in some way; in that case I ask the author if I can use a different name. And if I pick up a mission from another archive site I never change the name.
bassmanret on 14/5/2004 at 03:30
Yes, I agree with every point made by epithumia!
That said, I'm on my second round of betatesting my first FM, and I'm feeling the suspense and anxiety not unlike that of a first father of the 50's outside a birthing room, awaiting the doctor's (betatester's) proclamation, "It's a boy!", or "It's a girl!", ...the equivalent in this case, to "It's bug free!". The symptoms must be the same....sweating profusely, pacing the floor, checking email every 5 minutes.... If I were a smoker, I'd be sure to go through a house-payment's worth of tobacco in a day! Since I'm not, though, the cocaine won't last long......just kidding! ...it will last a long time..... Kidding again!!!
My point, I guess, is that while I agree with everything epithumia said, I can also completely understand why some authors are recklessly ambitious to release their mission at the earliest possible moment. .... I'm one of those "nervous fathers"!
I hope I'll avoid the traps of anxiousness! Wish me luck!
....but... it's ....just.... sooooo... close....... ......must ....not. .... release. ....until... ...ready....
Mortal Monkey on 14/5/2004 at 14:35
I want to see more torrents.
epithumia on 14/5/2004 at 20:50
Torrents are OK, but they're most useful for the initial distribution of large missions where I would prefer not to take the whole bandwidth load on my own.
The big problem is that I can't run BitTorrent on the network connection that serves thiefmissions.com since the protocol is firewalled. That is an incredibly high-bandwidth connection. Since I can only host torrents on my home cable modem which doesn't have the best of upstream connection speeds, it would take a whole lot of people participating in the torrent cloud in order to get anything close to the bandwidth available at thiefmissions.com. So for most folks, BitTorrent goes slower than just getting the file directly, and they complain. Plus it's complicated, has firewall interactions and occasionally just doesn't work for some people.
So when there are plenty of simultaneous downloaders, BitTorrent makes sense. But that only makes works for a day or so.
TF on 14/5/2004 at 21:31
Already knew all those myself, all I have to do is have an actual mission to use them on. (working on this thing feels like making a cloth out of 20000 patches)
Mortal Monkey on 15/5/2004 at 00:27
I see your predicament. It's a real shame, torrents are always fun.
Hatching-a-plan on 16/5/2004 at 02:56
Everything here is seconded by me. I have filed all this info away in memory. When things come to a close on the current FM I have been working on I'll keep this all in mind. Epithumia, keep sending this kind of stuff our way so we know wat to avoid doing. Sometimes we are moving so fast we forget about the other ppl it affects.
