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CMMODS shutting down...


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How many people here use newsgroups, NNTP?

They are an excellent vehicle for the mass distribution of files, but they require the use of a binary newsreader to decode larger files. Upload once, and everyone can download from a common source at very fast speeds. They could work very well here.

So how many people are familiar with newsgroups? It is worth pursuing?

Scott Fraser

Calgary

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I am familiar with newsgroups. Not every ISP carries them - particularly binary newsgroups. Even if you get it set-up and you have people with ISP's who allow binaries I am not sure that all ISP's take all possible newsgroups.

Given that the number of people downloading is probably a small number of all players it may be excessive effort for reward for those who upload.

Whether it is a suitable time for someone/group to bite the bullet and rationalise what is available and then what is worth spreading further. I find it hard to believe that all the mods are of equal value.

In any event the number of people who are holding copies of all that was/is on CMMODS is several hundred percent more than it was three weeks ago : ) So organising a distribution system and organising how to deal with uploads seems a more manageable area of activity.

WeBoB has a complete [virtually] set of the mods and metadata. Organising distribution and archiving in a club with 200 members should be relatively easy as an infrastructure exists. Other clubs will no doubt be similarly capable.

For those not in a club the pinning of permanent notices to the forums may provide guidance to where they may be downloadable. BFC? for gridded terrain which must be the most useful of all mods for those who fight battles. : )

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Usenet (nntp) isn't any good. Even ISPs that carry it have a 2 GB download limit, and if you have your own service you pay $10 for 10 GB/month or so. That isn't practical to distribute a thing once, but that is some dozen gigabytes.

I have a machine with a couple terabytes transfer volume prepayed that I can't use up. I think the best solution is that (some of) the CD/DVD recipients use bittorrent.

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Most ISPs ban running peer-to-peer servers, which includes computers using torrents. They are also inherently insecure and parasitic. Torrents might work in the short term for distributing the current archive to various depositories, but they are essentially closed to the public, unlike a website.

And what happens with new mods? Does the end of CMODS mean no more new mods? How will they be distributed beyond the "club"?

A replacement for CMMODS is the best solution, IMHO.

Regards

Scott Fraser

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Usenet (nntp) isn't any good. Even ISPs that carry it have a 2 GB download limit, and if you have your own service you pay $10 for 10 GB/month or so. That isn't practical to distribute a thing once, but that is some dozen gigabytes.

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Now that your disks have arrived, please see my previous note about three files that did not download properly - download these yourselves and include them in your new disks.

Thanks

Could yuo please tell me again which mods didn't download properly? I know I have read that note when you poted it but can't find it anymore... sorry. :(

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I noticed that some have begun uploading CMBB mods to the Repository. I am adding new categories to the CMBB folder for better sorting/searching. Looking at what's up there, it seems that currently only "Mods" and "Scenarios & Campaigns" is needed. If you have any suggestions or requests for specific categories (usually only makes sense if there are MANY different files for a given category), don't hesitate to email martin@battlefront.com.

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Most ISPs ban running peer-to-peer servers, which includes computers using torrents. They are also inherently insecure and parasitic. Torrents might work in the short term for distributing the current archive to various depositories, but they are essentially closed to the public, unlike a website.

And what happens with new mods? Does the end of CMODS mean no more new mods? How will they be distributed beyond the "club"?

A replacement for CMMODS is the best solution, IMHO.

Regards

Scott Fraser

We should probably move the discussion to email to make for easier CC'ing of people.

We are really facing two issues here:

  • Distribution of the full dump of existing mods in a mass "thing", be it disks in snail-mail or Internet based.
  • What do we do with new mods?

Discussing the first issue:

I have a torrent tracker on a "real" internet server. Only a small minority of ISPs do anything against torrent and those who do merely slow it down.

There is nothing in bittorrent that is insecure or parasitic. All it does is that people who have already downloaded a thing contribute towards the speed of new downloaders and take some load off the initial offerer. And they do that only as long as they want (as long as they leave the program up) and every torrent client has a simple slider to adjust how much of your bandwidth you want to contibute.

Just surfing the web in Mickeysoft Internet Exploder is 10 times more dangerous and parasitic than any up-to-date torrent software.

This is for the "one-time" dump of existing mods.

Now for new stuff. As I said, let's email instead.

I haven't received the disks yet, but what we almost certainly miss so far is the "metadata". Data that was manually entered into form fields when the mod was initially uploaded. Namely the country, type of unit, unit name and mod titles in long strings.

Re-hosting the contents of the old cmmods should certainly allow you to search by the above fields and I don't think we have them. We can get them two ways: 1) crawl the original CMMODs, which is still up or 2) re-try to convince COHG to give us a dump of the database tables.

As long as we only have the zipfiles with no metadata we should just dump them in mass distribution as people have no way of selecting the right zipfile for download as long as we miss all the metadata search fields.

I think that if somebody want to host a new CMMODs there should probably be a way to just buy the whole thing from COHG. Although email attempts to contact him seem to have failed I am sure somebody's got a phone number or something. Whether that then gets integrated into an existing website with unified login/registration is a different matter. (Personally I think we should condense half of the clubs and ladders every time the player base shrinks by half, but that's a different matter).

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Redwolf... me and a few members of the FGM have started uploading files to my website. It is a slow process but at least it gives us somewhere the files can be stored and downloaded from.

An area has been set up for this and you can see how it will work below.

The first section allows you to choose which version of CM you wish to download from.

cm1.jpg

When you select which version you want... it opens this area which allows you to choose Maps, Mods or Scenarios.

cm2.jpg

Once selected (Mods) you can choose what type of mod your looking for.

cm3.jpg

And this opens up the mod area with a thumbnail of the mod.

cm4.jpg

There is also a general search function where you can type in a designer or unit you wish to see mods for.

You have to join FGM to view this section (much like CMMODS) so if anyone wants to lend a hand uploading give me a shout.

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I see that GreenAsJade is offering to host cmmods - see over at Scenario Depot.

On a similar point can we host all the old scenarios as well? A pack was posted in the BFC Repository but the poster was shot down in flames and withdrew them. The old rescue files from the Scenario Depot Mk1 do not suffer from the copyright issues that brought this about so they could be hosted as well?

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. . .

We are really facing two issues here:

  • Distribution of the full dump of existing mods in a mass "thing", be it disks in snail-mail or Internet based.
  • What do we do with new mods?

Discussing the first issue . . .

This is for the "one-time" dump of existing mods.

Well in hand, and many thanks to all involved.

Now for new stuff. . .

. . . metadata . . .

. . . a dump of the database . . .

Clearly, COHG is preoccupied with more important things at the moment. We must reconcile ourselves to waiting until he finds some daylight. My hunch is that he will be willing to help, so long as it does not interfere with his real-life priorities.

Patience is the watchword. Over the years COHG has put much effort into CMMODS, and I expect that he will not want that lost if there is a way to continue the site elsewhere. But we have to accept that this is a very difficult time for he and his family, and we must stand away until he is ready to respond.

We may get the metadata and a clone of the database, or we may not. If we do, all is good. If not, we are faced with a choice: do we rebuild the database and re-enter metadata to build a new website? Or do we reconcile ourselves to grabbing a 4GB torrent and then going on a needle hunt for any new mods?

I think it is too soon to draw any conclusion. We need to hear from COHG and get him onboard to transfer all the data to a new site so we can carry on without his participation. I think he will be happy to assist, but have to remember where he is right now.

This is a man who has devoted many hundreds of hours to maintaining CMMODS, to our great benefit. He is now preoccupied with his lady's recovery from serious illness. CMMODS is totally off his screen right now, no surprise --- I would feel the same. "My wife is sick. What do I care about some stupid game?" I pray for him, and his wife, and their family. I trust I am not alone.

So let the dust settle for a bit, and see how he responds. Hopefully we can get it all, and simply transplant it to another server.

Regards all

Scott Fraser

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You are sending the original "Master" disks around? That is, the original disk of mods should be used to copy the mods to each person's hdd and the "master" should be posted-on. If not, quality control will fail, as the copies of copies run the risk of accumulating errors.

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Have downloaded new versions of the corrupt files.

It is already done, only took two hours or so.

All the ones I have tested worked fine after download, so looks like error was in my downloading. But error rate is 3% so put it down to lack of sleep or cramp.

Redwolf do you want a set or are you doing it yourself?

cheers

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