Uploading to IDgames, a difficult and discouraging experience

[Clippy]

Thanks for the feedback guys and sorry for getting discouraged, just after struggling so hard with this, these comments got to me

 

Felt like someone was kicking me when I was down and late last night had to rant about it to get it off my chest you know?

 

This is a great place and I am glad that these are just the opinions of a select few 

 

Going to try the ftp process again, had to download ftp program on my new computer cause I lost stuff from my old one and last time I couldn't connect to the server - fought with it so much lol and the negativity got to me 

 

Some day I'll get there I hope haha

[mrthejoshmon]

Just a shot in the dark here but:

 

If you are using FileZilla as your client, you might be running into the "too many connections from you" issue when uploading the file, I found that exiting the incoming folder in the browser as you are attempting to upload fixes it, if that doesn't work then actually disconnecting from the server during the upload works too.

 

I'm sure there is an actual proper fix for this and I'm just inept but this "ghetto solution" fixes it.

[Redneckerz]

11 hours ago, Clippy said:

Honestly I been trying to figure this out for a year. I'm surprised this process hasn't been modernized with a simple upload button but still requires an ftp program, stuff I have no experience in.

You are trying this for a year?

My son, read the bottom part of this post. This does not stand. Getting into FTP isn't the easiest thing in the world but this isn't something that takes a year to figure out. It took me half an hour, but its definitely do-able.

11 hours ago, Clippy said:

Some examples:

 

"Great, now everyone is going to upload shit and fill up the archive. :\ The whole idea behind making it hard for people was to make sure that the people who could submit stuff were smart enough to figure out the process. Now that anybody can do it, anybody can upload."

I am pretty sure that wasn't the original idea behind it being an FTP server. Like the majority of Youtube comments, the bolded is also a pretty dumb thing to say - Bloodshedder and The Green Herring screen every upload and the REJECTS page exists for the very reason this individual is moping over.

 

Besides, their rules aren't that difficult - Stick a .txt in your upload and in the zip that you upload, and if you want to get it done faster, just mail us and verify your upload. You will have to do that anyway when you upload something for the very reason that this individual also mentions - People uploading shit and fill up the archive. That's their rulebook.

11 hours ago, Clippy said:

 

"I agree, this shouldn't of been made because part of the fun is trying to figure out how to upload. Plus, it keeps the inexperienced out."

 

"OMG. everyone is going to upload their first map, and fill up the archives with shit. Kind of ironic considering i'm a terrywad author, but for real."

 

"You don't realize what you may have just caused..."

Just variations of the same boring theme. I also wouldn't be too proud calling yourself an author of terrywads since Rick Ashley memes do trite-and-overused-jokes better these days anyway.

11 hours ago, Clippy said:

These comments have actually bothered me to the point I need to talk about it I guess

For all that is Doom: Don't get bothered by YouTube comments. People turn into internetwerewolves where all masks are off and its not worth bothering 99.9% of it.

 

7 hours ago, Maes said:

Heh, I've stumbled upon that name for ages and wondered what it actually did. Still, that's the exception that proves the rule: it came out when, in 2013? So that means that for nearly 20 years Doom DEH patch authors had to go the hard/legacy way

Some things are really easy in DeHacked, like converting old patches to new ones. For others, its clever usage of what is already there.

7 hours ago, Maes said:

(and there still is no equivalent native option for Linux/MacOS, I presume).

There is the Linux Doom Hack Editor which is the equivalent of DeHacked 2.3. There is also a DeHacked port for RISC-OS.

 

1 hour ago, Clippy said:

Going to try the ftp process again, had to download ftp program on my new computer cause I lost stuff from my old one and last time I couldn't connect to the server - fought with it so much lol and the negativity got to me 

 

Some day I'll get there I hope haha

As someone who has so far done 10 uploads through the FTP system and maintaining my own Doom-related FTP, PM me and ill effin' get you through it.

It isn't the easiest thing in the world, but its also far from the hardest - The primary problem is that the old FTP FAQ links to things that don't work anymore. It is still however possible to a connection up and running with some logical deduction, mind you (Hence why its not the hardest). But its not straightforward. I give you that.

 

However, if you use Filezilla, when it does work, its a walk in the park.

[Master O]

2 hours ago, sluggard said:

Yeah, fuck those guys, they're not even worth the attention they're getting. Negative nancies who only exist to ruin other people's fun and drag others down with them.

 

which brings us to the age-old maxim:

 

Don't. Feed. The. Trolls.

[DSC]

Given the nature of many of id games archives reviews, we really shouldn't be surprised. Those are a pure cesspool of stupidity.

[TheEvilGrin]

I just read those, and honestly I'm just disguted by them. It seems that -most, at least- of hose people imagine that new member = bad. Which is completely dumb, since there is a serious lack of newcomers in my opinion. Most of the main mappers we know today have been around since before I even played Doom, and a few even registered since before I was born. I'm not saying they "have to change", but preventing newer mappers to get their work valued could in the end create a serious lack of diversity in the mapping area, and I've played lots of 1st-public-wads that were really good/refreshing. Yes, there are some bad maps on /idgames, but everyone has to make shitty stuff before getting better. Do these guys think that there is an "elite" that has been granted by the almighty gods of Doom the right to upload their creations ? And the rest of us are just mere mortals, worthy only of getting a thread here, which will most likely get buried ?

Of course, simplifying the process of uploading too much could lead in a wave of trollish/spammish/edgy stuff. But there is a difference between not making acess too easy to avoid that, and -uselessly- going to town on a guy that just wanted to help.

[Vorpal]

The idgames archives do not have a mission goal of quality of content... it's an impartial collection... a repository. There is no concern about filling it with junk or cacowards only, it's just a place for people to put stuff. 

 

The process isn't arbitrarily difficult for the sake of weeding out trolls. It's "just" an ftp server with mirrors, and that's how you interface with an ftp server... with an ftp client. Also sorry to be insulting but it's not difficult to use an ftp client, if you can browse for files on your PC, and can type urls in your browser, then you have all the skills required to use an ftp client. A 10 year old child can and has figured out the process on their own and submitted files.

 

The only difficult part is probably understanding the rules, which are documented on the forum here and elsewhere, and in instruction files on the ftp servers (e.g. ftp://ftp.fu-berlin.de/pc/games/idgames/README.INCOMING). Probably the bit where everyone gets confused about is zipping their project with the text file inside, yet ALSO uploading the text file as its own thing.

[Doomkid]

11 hours ago, Maes said:

Heh, I've stumbled upon that name for ages and wondered what it actually did. Still, that's the exception that proves the rule: it came out when, in 2013? So that means that for nearly 20 years Doom DEH patch authors had to go the hard/legacy way (and there still is no equivalent native option for Linux/MacOS, I presume).

I don’t think this actually detracts from the overarching point you’re making, but I’m sure I remember messing around with WhackEd about 17 years ago, so (if my foggy memory of this era is accurate) that was only about 6 years between the final (official) DeHackEd version and exl making WhackEd.

[chungy]

3 hours ago, Redneckerz said:

Quote

 

I am pretty sure that wasn't the original idea behind it being an FTP server.

FTP was the de facto standard at the time, and it's still not bad for anonymous file submissions. I certainly appreciate that I don't need a web browser to submit files, though a browser interface as an alternative would be fine too if the idgames archive maintainers had the desire :)

[Sergeant_Mark_IV]

Isn't the point of the FTP being the easiest method to maintain and prevent security flaws?

Before asking the archive maintainers to add more modern features, it's important that you consider that they are doing it for free. Modernizing it isn't that simple when you have no money to spend on it.
Moddb for example has a modernized and easy to upload interface, but they make massive use of ads that allows them to maintain a high budget to do server maintenance and pay moderators to prevent abuse.

[Edward850]

1 hour ago, chungy said:

FTP was the de facto standard at the time, and it's still not bad for anonymous file submissions. I certainly appreciate that I don't need a web browser to submit files, though a browser interface as an alternative would be fine too if the idgames archive maintainers had the desire :)

The funny part about this is for a while, your web browser could upload to the FTP, back with Win95 to 2000 when Internet Explorer and Windows Explorer were mostly same thing. Navigating the the idgames FTP would bring up the same FTP client Windows Explorer itself had (and still does, fun fact). For some strange reason, the concept of your web browser having a proper FTP client just never got fully established, and even IE incidentally phased it out when Explorer got split up.

[chungy]

25 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

For some strange reason, the concept of your web browser having a proper FTP client just never got fully established

I don't think it's strange at all. FTP isn't the web and I'm actually glad that browsers are finally taking the step to remove the protocol :)

 

At any rate, yeah we can agree that most browsers never evolved their FTP support beyond incidental support for downloading random files.

[smeghammer]

Yeah, FTP is old school I suppose. It's straightforward enough to figure out though I think - you're just browsing and copying files to a remote filesystem - conceptually the same as if you plugged in an external USB drive and browsed it with Windows Explorer. You can even open the remote site in a GUI FTP client like FileZilla, and drag and drop from Windows Explorer. I default to FileZilla, but WinSCP or even a command prompt will do it.

 

I guess I don't see it as difficult is because I an an old bugger and also an unapologetic computer geek...

 

7 hours ago, Vorpal said:

NOBODY browsers the archive at random, with an expectation of a quality wad lol. For that a targeted search is required

 

Yes, mostly they are magazine-cover CDROM junk. Although it can be fun picking one at random and having a crack at it.

 

The only thing I found with IDGames archive specifically was that the first time I tried uploading, my WAD disappeared and I got no notification of anything wrong. The second time was fine though.

[Roebloz]

I only uploaded to idgames once (Then again, all I make otherwise are Console Doom Hacks which I upload onto romhacking.net and they probably should have a place on idgames but that's a story for another day) and my WAD went through rather fast, but the process is rather unintuitive for beginners. Otherwise there are plenty of alternatives to idgames (I even upload my recent WADs to my own section of a website my uncle maintains!) like ModDB, a link in a Doomworld thread, Doomshack, etc.

However I do agree that modernizing the uploading process would be great, because while I'm all for keeping Doom stuff traditionally 90's, (Non-livestreamed speedruns using demo files as an example) I don't think keeping the idgames uploading process to an arguably complicated process that requires uploading even more external software is that great of an idea. Plus, with all the new people coming in that probably don't even know what an FTP server is, it essentially confuses people. And I can't stress this out enough: An uploading process should be as simple as clicking the choose file, selecting your file and then press "Upload!", not an outdated process that is pretty much unused nowadays that newer people will have had no experience with beforehand. Plus, not only is the process unintuitive to beginners but most FTP interfaces are also filled with unintuitiveness. In my opinion @Maes's solution of having a program that fills out the information needed and sends the files straight to idgames would be amazing.

[RottingZombie]

7 hours ago, mrthejoshmon said:

Just a shot in the dark here but:

 

If you are using FileZilla as your client, you might be running into the "too many connections from you" issue when uploading the file, I found that exiting the incoming folder in the browser as you are attempting to upload fixes it, if that doesn't work then actually disconnecting from the server during the upload works too.

 

I'm sure there is an actual proper fix for this and I'm just inept but this "ghetto solution" fixes it.

 

I think I had this problem, and if i recall, this setting (limit incoming connections to 1) was the solution. It's been a while though.

 

 

[Bucket]

OK but I think we can all agree that the worst part about uploading to /idgames is finding a bug in your map IMMEDIATELY after you do it.

[Doom OG]

What's even more frustrating is having uploaded your levels and have them appear on here but not on the 'beta' front-end and getting no response from the administration on how to make it happen.

 

There appears not to be any review functionality on the idgames one anymore, and I can't seem to get what I uploaded on idgames appear on the "what's new" front-end for people to review my maps.

Edited January 5, 2021 by Doom OG

[Edward850]

4 minutes ago, Doom OG said:

What's even more frustrating is having uploaded your levels and have them appear on here but not on the 'beta' front-end and getting no response from the administration on how to make it happen.

You aren't going to get a personal response to that. The frontend is meant to be automated but there's presently a bug in the software that breaks the indexes of newer entries, so the frontend is presently frozen.

Edited January 5, 2021 by Edward850

[Doom OG]

3 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

You aren't going to get a personal response to that. The frontend is meant to be automated but there's presently a bug in the software that breaks the indexes of newer entries, so the frontend is presently frozen.

 

Thank you so much for letting me know.  That's all I needed.

 

They should put a note in the instructions to that effect. :/

Edited January 5, 2021 by Doom OG

[jazzmaster9]

I will say, as someone who had the issue with slow and unstable internet connection. the current method of uploading to idgames can be a nightmare at times

 

The scenario of me uploading Abysm 1, having the FTP Connection suddenly cut mid upload. Then having to contact the Admin, wait for them to remove the corrupted file, THEN upload again and pray to god the connection stays.

Also having to update existing files in the Archive for hot fixes also take a bit of time.

 

its a very time consuming process. While i would wish for a more modern system, i do understand why things are the way they are.

 

Though this is the reason why i Started uploading to ModDB and my personal Dropbox instead. Its just a lot easier to upload and update files.

I can have the bugfix done and uploaded on the same day.

Edited January 5, 2021 by jazzmaster9

[printz]

3 hours ago, Edward850 said:

You aren't going to get a personal response to that. The frontend is meant to be automated but there's presently a bug in the software that breaks the indexes of newer entries, so the frontend is presently frozen.

This is bad, because /newstuff Chronicles was also discontinued, but as a replacement we had this modern front-end as an incentive for players to try the latest releases and give their reviews. So now that it's in limbo, what do we have left? The designers themselves promoting their projects on Wads & Mods. But that is a very high traffic forum. Post today, and if you get fewer replies than others, gone tomorrow. And finally, apart from this, if you want to get your wad known in general? Talk about it at random moments. But nooo, that would be shameless self-promotion. Oh yeah, the previous forum software also allowed signatures, to post links to my stuff. Now I have to actively post such links in my messages, and that is spammy. 😟

Edited January 5, 2021 by printz

[Doom-X-Machina]

Welcome to the internet.

Please enjoy your stay.

[pcorf]

I use an old version of WS_FTP to upload to idgames but only on my Windows XP computer. I have tried Firezilla but cannot figure out how to get it to work. And I've been in the Doom community since near the beginning.

[wrkq]

Please note that Filezilla went to trash over the years.

For some time - not sure if still anymore - it was trying to trick you to agree to install spyware bundled in the installer.

 

Use WinSCP instead.

It's also more intuitive in my experience (with the only "catch" being the need to remember to choose the FTP connection type as SFTP is default.)

[Maes]

1 hour ago, pcorf said:

WS_FTP

 

Heh, there's a name that I haven't heard of in a long time. I remember my first DSL provider (or my uni) required that you use specifically WS_FTP, as the HTTP hosting space they provided wouldn't work with anything else, for some reason.

38 minutes ago, wrkq said:

Please note that Filezilla went to trash over the years.

For some time - not sure if still anymore - it was trying to trick you to agree to install spyware bundled in the installer.

It almost certainly does not do that as of recent -but almost every software I liked and used did that at some point.

 

However, it seems that it has to do more with some inflexible distribution terms that the author has to accept somehow, or by unscrupulous third-party hosters/distributors just shitting all over the installer, with very little control of the author over it -essentially, if the software authors don't have their own website/"official" download location, or produce a "portable" version of their app,  they are pretty much at the mercy of third parties, for what regards their installer.

 

Very rarely is it a case of the author fully endorsing crapware/spyware. But apparently that does happen too, sometimes. I wonder how that worked out for a certain mobile game author (?).

 

FWIW, many installers do have a "back door" for bypassing any third-party "bundled" software without wasting time dodging misleading dialog boxes upon boxes: using the "silent installation" mode, which however is only accessible through the command line with the /S switch.

Edited January 5, 2021 by Maes

[Xymph]

10 hours ago, Sergeant_Mark_IV said:

Before asking the archive maintainers to add more modern features, it's important that you consider that they are doing it for free. Modernizing it isn't that simple when you have no money to spend on it.

Finances are not a relevant factor, Gamers.org is operated by three guys with sufficient means to keep it running "forever" without ads.

 

Time and, occasionally, technical skills are the limiting factors, as the other two don't do any real work on the site anymore, and I'm spread thin enough as it is. :-) But that's just a matter of priorities.

 

Btw, yes, FTP clients that open a dozen (or several) simultaneous connections are considered abusive, it happened too much in the past (by Carlos especially), and they get (temporarily) IP-blocked within a few minutes. Set your client to 1 connection and it should work fine, as daily uploads demonstrate.

 

Anyway, I think a number of the comments here make a good case for adding a web-based upload form, possibly putting files into the same /incoming directory as via ftp so that Bloodshedder and The Green Herring won't have to change their reviewing/acceptance process. The challenge then is to design and implement it (and not have it crap out on 100+ MB uploads ;) ). Any pointers for an open source Perl/PHP approach?

Edited January 5, 2021 by Xymph

[Mordeth]

8 hours ago, Doom OG said:

 

Thank you so much for letting me know.  That's all I needed.

 

They should put a note in the instructions to that effect. :/

 

There's a bolded text on top of the file page telling you it's currently broken.

 

Quote

NOTE: There is a known issue with the most recent entries having screwed-up information and links. Some databases are out of sync and we haven't been able to fix it yet.

 

[Cruduxy Pegg]

All those comments are by idiots who used to do nothing but try and flame people 10 years ago in skulltag\zandronum. 

[Maes]

3 hours ago, Xymph said:

Any pointers for an open source Perl/PHP approach?

Wouldn't Perl/PHP require setting up an intermediary server, with its own associated maintenance issues? Besides, that'd be soooo Web 1.0.

 

I was thinking more of a purely browser-based approach a-la Web 2.0, using e.g. jsftp. If the tutorial is to be believed, making an idgames ftp spamming page is just a few simple commands away, that's why I recommended taking it easy with experimenting directly with the real deal ;-)

[Doom OG]

I'm a software engineer...I'm sure there are many with similar skills on this forum.  We could probably come up with something or fix the broken interface.  Just a thought.