Mods and units should come to The Vault
The Vault on GPGnet has much potential that it isn’t living up to. Right now the only user-uploadable category it has is maps. This has done wonders for the custom maps scene in multiplayer. You actually see people regularly playing custom maps these days, which is great. And if you haven’t downloaded some custom maps yet, you should do so.
But the third party scene isn’t just about maps. It’s also about mods and units, two more categories that need to be added to The Vault as soon as possible. I can think of all sorts of great mod ideas that would make for fun and interesting gameplay, but if people don’t have a way to get them through GPGnet, they’re not very likely to be played. Ditto for third party units. There are some backroom rumors of these categories coming to GPGnet at some point in the future, so here’s hoping it’s very soon. Oh, and one more thing: mods and units you don’t have should auto-download when you join a custom game that is using them. The excuse for the lack of functionality with custom maps, that it “takes too much bandwidth”, doesn’t really fly, because mods and units are very small in comparison to maps.
June 12th, 2007 at 7:26 pm
Maps aren’t THAT big in the first place. I don’t see the big deal. Its not like we are all on dial-up.
June 12th, 2007 at 7:32 pm
Mods are coming, just wait a bit longer.
June 12th, 2007 at 7:41 pm
Good, because I have an idea for a simple balance mod that I’ve fleshed out, but I don’t feel like starting until people can actually reliably play it.
June 12th, 2007 at 7:58 pm
CW: Please keep me posted on that balance mod. I’d love to help test it out. I really liked the ideas you put forward, you going to put up a blog about it eventually so everyone can put forth more ideas?
June 12th, 2007 at 8:19 pm
ok first thing with maps i THINK that there sould be a option in GPGNET that will allow users to CHOOSE if they want other players to download the map from yourself when joining a game and IF not have a simple link in the game so u can click it and the map will auto download from the vault rather then the current quit download (hope the game is still there!) join again
in WC3 which works on the same networking princables as supcom transfers maps from player to player and if the host was allready transfering the file the second player starts transfering the file
as for bandwith ive seen maps over 1mb some upto 5mb which is a large map!!! there is no way id like to transfer that to someone so if i could set in the GPGNET options to only transfer maps that are less then 1mb (as 95% of the maps are) then if someone joins a game with a LARGE map they could download it from the vault!
ALSO means that you would see games comeing with titles like “map download” or “Zone control DOWNLOAD ONLY”
second thing i want to see is a SIMPLE patch that stops the T3 fighters flying @ full speed all the time…. i went mod hunting the other day and there must be 5 mods that JUST fix this problem!
June 12th, 2007 at 8:37 pm
Even 5 MB isn’t really that big of a file. I can download a 5 MB file in a few seconds. The real problem is that most home users have asynchronous connections, so they can’t send the file anywhere near that fast, although they can download it that quickly. So the solution is to just download it directly from GPG’s servers, which don’t have this limitation. They’d be sending the map file one way or the other anyway - either get it in the game lobby or through the map vault, it’s still the same amount of bandwidth.
July 1st, 2008 at 3:34 am
5mb is a lot if you have DSL.