NEANDERTHAL Posted April 13 I think it would be cool if /idgames (or maybe the new downloads section) also worked as a torrent tracker for downloaded wads. This way the community could share the load of hosting these files, reducing the strain on /idgames while still keeping it to serve as the sole seeder if nobody else wants to seed a file. And, if idgames goes down, there's still an established, reliable way of distributing the most common wads. The number of seeders/leechers would also provide interesting data about a file's popularity at any point in time. 0 Share this post Link to post
Edward850 Posted April 13 Idgames isn't a single server, there's multiple mirrors of it. Strain and it "suddenly going down" are complete non issues. 6 Share this post Link to post
GibFrag Posted April 13 (edited) No thank you, I prefer WAD flavored compressed files for download. 0 Share this post Link to post
Stabbey Posted April 13 Wasn't the point of torrenting to share very large files which (through some kind of tech wizardry) was faster than everyone individually downloading them? WADs and PK3's don't tend to be very big. 6 Share this post Link to post
Lucius Wooding Posted April 13 It's been a complete non issue for the last 30 years. 4 Share this post Link to post
eanasir Posted April 14 1 hour ago, Edward850 said: Idgames isn't a single server, there's multiple mirrors of it. Strain and it "suddenly going down" are complete non issues. I mean, if a nuclear war blows all of the servers to smithereens, then maybe it's something to consider 1 Share this post Link to post
Wadmodder Shalton Posted April 14 Torrent files are only ever used by many shady pirate BitTorrent sites, unless its Internet Archive of course. So no, I don't think the idgames Archive should use the Torrent format because that just created even more wait time to download any PWAD one wants to play. 0 Share this post Link to post
Kinsie Posted April 14 26 minutes ago, eanasir said: I mean, if a nuclear war blows all of the servers to smithereens, then maybe it's something to consider If a nuclear war blows all of the servers to smithereens, you're going to have far bigger problems to worry about than whether or not you can download goatdoom.zip 11 Share this post Link to post
dasho Posted April 14 21 minutes ago, Wadmodder Shalton said: Torrent files are only ever used by many shady pirate BitTorrent sites, unless its Internet Archive of course. I don't care if you didn't mean it as a joke, this is the best laugh I've had all day. 8 Share this post Link to post
Doom-X-Machina Posted April 14 Average WAD and PK3 sizes don't justify the need for torrents. If WADs were multiple GB's in size, yes I think there would be an argument for it but when most WAD's are under 100MB, there's really no need for torrent delivery... 1 Share this post Link to post
Worm318 Posted April 14 I can see a use case for torrents: WADs and PK3s not eligible for /idgames due to filesize (and maybe other restrictions like copyright, but that's illegal :p). These kinds of WADs/PK3s can go to a variety of places like: some cloud service (Google Drive, Mediafire, OneDrive, etc), author personal website or ModDB. It can be argued that in all of these sites, the mod files can be lost: Google can ban author's account or lose the data due to technical issues, mod author could stop hosting its website, ModDB is acquired by Elon Musk, etc. However, torrents are not totally reliable for data preservation as they require people to mantain the files in their drives and their torrent clients connected to seed them. So my Brutal H-Doom mod with SLIGE generated maps and Linkin Park mp3s can still get lost if there's not enough interest. 2 Share this post Link to post