Why are so many wads put up on mediafire, dropbox, zdoom forums etc instead of idgames?

[invictius]

It's a recipe for disaster imo, what if mediafire stops operating like megaupload did.  I guess you can say the same about idgames but they've had pretty consistent uploading for almost 30 years.  Plus it's so easy to find what you want instead of having to search or guess the locations of multiple wads online.  I know that some do eventually end up on idgames but it seems to be relatively few.

[Snaxalotl]

Uploading to idgames is a slow process and can be difficult for some. It's usually reserved for final releases of projects, then an idgames upload is considered.

[Somniac]

I only send something to idgames when I decide its finished and I want to close the book on it, and that's usually after sitting on it for a while too.

 

I wonder exactly how many files there are on there these days. The most recent thread (2015) I can find on the subject has it at upwards of 40,000 files at almost 40GB.

[Graf Zahl]

34 minutes ago, invictius said:

It's a recipe for disaster imo.

 

It is indeed. But immediate convenience often trumps common sense. It is a lot easier to upload stuff to mediafire than to /idgames. For WIP projects that is fine but I had my discussions with far too many people for which the red tape on /idgames is enough of a deterrent to not even consider it as a viable option. And the result is obvious - at some point the host goes poof and the project vanishes. Or on a site like moddb it just gets drowned in the noise, never to be found by those who try to find some Doom stuff.

 

[Clippy]

Idgames should be the absolute last stop

 

You know how many times I've had to update a file I've sent to idgames? 

 

Never amount of times. 

 

That's why I actually use Google drive personally to share my file and have people play the crap out of it and perfect it

 

I will only send an absolutely polished product to the archives as the very last step of the road of my wad's life

[Endless]

17 minutes ago, Snaxalotl said:

Uploading to idgames is a slow process and can be difficult for some. It's usually reserved for final releases of projects, then an idgames upload is considered.

Not as difficult as it used to be now thanks to the /idgames upload form, but it's still a slow process than can take days or weeks, but this is justified. Unlike the other upload forms which are personal, the /idgames archive is actually curated, so you have to follow a set of guidelines to be accepted. While I can understand it can be a little cumbersome especially if you are completely new to it, it has proven to be effective in keeping out troll/terrywads, repeated or plagiarized WADs, and malware.

 

However, /idgames is not the place to upload RCs, betas or WIPs, as it is best used as ''final archive'' where your work is already done, so some people that are still working on their WADs but want to release them early so they can ge feedback and bug finding, they use stuff like google drive and so on.

[invictius]

_

Edited January 26, 2023 by invictius

[RastaManGames]

I can be wrong, but getting on /idgames seems like a really hard quest (as for me).
And many maps can't be 100% polished and there is always an opportunity to fix one things and improve other.

Edited January 26, 2023 by RastaManGames

[DNSKILL5]

It’s mostly convenience. I think the idgames process is a bit slow, but I wouldn’t call it difficult. The instructions are quite clear and easy to follow, but it is still a long winded process compared to uploading to mediafire, google drive, or even moddb. Within the file size limits a file can also be attached to forum posts, which is probably the worst option out of the others because the thread may not be around forever, and some forums prohibit downloads from non-users which limits the reach of the file. It seems most people do a bit of all of it though to spread the file a bit more. 

Edited January 26, 2023 by DNSKILL5

[A Handsome Fridge]

I understand why the ruleset on idgames exists, but it certainly will put many people off of uploading their files there. Just upload it to a place where there are no constraints and you don't need to await anxiously whether your map is good enough for the faceless judges of Doom.

But yeah, if you want your WAD to be found easily and potentially last for the ages it's probably worth the hassle.

Edited January 26, 2023 by A Handsome Fridge

[Murdoch]

44 minutes ago, Graf Zahl said:

I had my discussions with far too many people for which the red tape on /idgames is enough of a deterrent to not even consider it as a viable option.

 

Who is actually in charge of /idgames currently? 

[mrthejoshmon]

/idgames, at least how I thought of it, always seemed like a "finished file" kind of deal.

 

Easier to post to Mediafire/Dropbox than /idgames.

[The BMFG]

its just more convenient, idgames is a slow upload and it takes a lot to get a single wad on there.

[Doomkid]

23 minutes ago, Murdoch said:

 

Who is actually in charge of /idgames currently? 

 

I believe The Green Herring and Bloodshedder are.

[Shepardus]

IMO the curation is what makes /idgames worth the effort in the first place. The process could perhaps be easier, but it's not supposed to be an arbitrary personal file store like MediaFire/Google Drive/Dropbox/etc. are. When you upload something to /idgames it becomes the maintainers' responsibility rather than your own, so waiting until you're done with a WAD before uploading it makes it easier for both you and the maintainers.

 

16 minutes ago, Murdoch said:

 

Who is actually in charge of /idgames currently? 

As per the wiki, Bloodshedder and The Green Herring.

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

Here's one for you: not everyone cares about having their stuff on idgames. I don't care about having my work "immortalized" on a curated website, so I'm going to pick whatever method involves the least amount of hassle. For more casual fans of DOOM, even "casual modders" who might still have created something really good, some of them are just going to be indifferent to it all. For example: I have almost 3000 posts on Doomworld, but I just don't care to venture outside of this community. I'd use the file attachment feature if I was uploading a wad. I made an account on ZDoom forums, but it was deactivated the next time I tried to sign in. Now they have a 20+ character password requirement. So I'm never going to make an account there. And I'm never going to be bothered to upload to idgames. If my wad gets lost, and two and a half people want to play it ten years from now, oh well. If it's worth a shit, and they've somehow heard about it in 2033, then chances are someone will be able to help them. Either way, I don't care if my work disappears. It has nothing to do with "common sense", and wads on idgames are just likely to get "drowned in the noise" as they are on the cumbersome shithole that is ModDB. If my personal work means so much to me, I'd have the common sense to make my own personal backup. I don't care what other people do with their work, it's not my business.

Edited January 26, 2023 by TheMagicMushroomMan

[Gothic]

3 hours ago, invictius said:

what if mediafire stops operating like megaupload did.

What if idgames does. Doomworld is no stranger to legal issues, and even the supposed replacement for idgames stopped being worked on. Really no site ever will be forever.

[ChaoticReverie]

1 hour ago, Endless said:

Unlike the other upload forms which are personal, the /idgames archive is actually curated, so you have to follow a set of guidelines to be accepted.

 

I knew this was the case, I always thought that the reason people avoided the /idgames archive was that those guidelines were so restrictive.

 

At least that was true way back, is that still a thing now? In fact, what are the guidelines now?

[prfunky]

1 hour ago, Graf Zahl said:

... but I had my discussions with far too many people for which the red tape on /idgames is enough of a deterrent to not even consider it as a viable option.

 

I looked into this way back over a decade ago. I think Ty was running it then? Whatever. I read

the part about no intellectual property stomps and immediately discounted the idea of ever

uploading anything there. I believe every one of my works contains some silly element of what

I call "Op-art", whether that be a graphic or a sound or ??. I don't want the idgames database to

get some cease-and-desist letter from some wacko intellectual property lawyer because of some

crap I post.

 

So, I do something that not many people think of; I actually pay for my own web hosting. I don't

mind paying for the web space or the domain either. It's a small price to pay for freedom of art.

I'm old school internet. I miss the multiple search engines which would actually give different

results. I miss web rings where people would link to websites of similar content intentionally to

widen the breadth of content available for a certain interest.

 

While I'm still alive, I'll continue to post my work on my own website and simply link to that from

boards like this and Zandronum's (since all of my wads to date are multi-player DM). I figure by

the time I die, Internet Archive will have a decent enough working copy of all of it that availability

of the wad files will continue on long after I've failed to renew the domain name or pay from the

grave for my web services.

 

Now, if you want to talk about something much more annoying than Google Drive and MediaFire

links, how about friggin' long-since disappeared images on Photobucket!

Edited January 26, 2023 by prfunky
misspelled word

[invictius]

24 minutes ago, Gothic said:

What if idgames does. Doomworld is no stranger to legal issues, and even the supposed replacement for idgames stopped being worked on. Really no site ever will be forever.

What legal issues would we possibly have?  Bethedsa issuing takedown notices for the forum logos or something?

[Graf Zahl]

14 minutes ago, prfunky said:

 

I looked into this way back over a decade ago. I think Ty was running it then? Whatever. I read

the part about no intellectual property stomps and immediately discounted the idea of ever

uploading anything there. I believe every one of my works contains some silly element of what

I call "Op-art", whether that be a graphic or a sound or ??. I don't want the idgames database to

get some cease-and-desist letter from some wacko intellectual property lawyer because of some

crap I post.

 

 

If this was enforced, a large portion the content on /idgames not consisting of single maps might have to be removed. The number of map sets that borrow resources from other games is virtually endless.

 

17 minutes ago, prfunky said:

So, I do something that not many people think of; I actually pay for my own web hosting. I don't

mind paying for the web space or the domain either. It's a small price to pay for freedom of art.

I'm old school internet. I miss the multiple search engines which would actually give different

results. I miss web rings where people would link to websites of similar content intentionally to

widen the breadth of content available for a certain interest. 

 

You say this today. But what about in ten years - or even in 25? Once you lose interest your content will disappear. On /idgames all those old maps being made 29 years ago are still available, even though most of their authors have moved on with life and many probably never even think of Doom anymore - for them it's a game from a long forgotten past.

 

[Dark Pulse]

1 minute ago, Graf Zahl said:

You say this today. But what about in ten years - or even in 25? Once you lose interest your content will disappear. On /idgames all those old maps being made 29 years ago are still available, even though most of their authors have moved on with life and many probably never even think of Doom anymore - for them it's a game from a long forgotten past.

Some of them are even dead (Dr. Sleep, Jim Flynn, Ty Halderman (who also ran idgames for years), etc.), so it stands as really all that's left of their work.

[prfunky]

15 minutes ago, Graf Zahl said:

You say this today. But what about in ten years - or even in 25? Once you lose interest your content will disappear.

 

Sir, I should be so lucky to be alive in ten years. But if, by chance and luck, I am still among you, then I ask;

What will live longer, Internet Archive or DoomWorld? As for my interest lost, I haven't since I started down

this road of Doom over two decades ago. Content release takes time and effort. With me, time is a luxury. If

I have time, I will work on wads more and when I deem decent enough work, I release something. I've stopped

bottling up levels until I have enough for a larger multi-level pack, such as with the Chap DM-series. Too much

time passed between #2 & #3 (2014-to-2021!). Now, I release each level when it's done, sometimes a little too

soon resulting in a corrective version, because of how acutely aware I am of the possibility of not being around

tomorrow. I am 55 now. At what point in time, will my mental facilities erode so much that I am no longer able to

create?

 

[Doomkid]

40 minutes ago, prfunky said:

I am 55 now. At what point in time, will my mental facilities erode so much that I am no longer able to

create?

Gamers.org / idgames has been up since 1994, Internet Archive has been up since 1997 but is constantly under attack, though I of course deeply wish it were not and donate a little here and there.

 

I think they're both fairly reliable, but I also want to say that (to me) the possibility of dying tomorrow or losing your faculties is even more reason to try and archive your stuff, for old forum buddies or strangers alike who would be interested in your works and to have a bit of yourself preserved in time for people to get some amusement out of. (I'm not trying to tell you what do do of course, this is just how I see it)

[indigotyrian]

On 1/26/2023 at 4:30 PM, RastaManGames said:

I can be wrong, but getting on /idgames seems like a really hard quest (as for me).
And many maps can't be 100% polished and there is always an opportunity to fix one things and improve other.

 

It's not that difficult. I've uploaded a WAD there myself. The most annoying bit about it (back when I did it) was getting an FTP client and going through that song and dance. It may seem daunting but really the rules are there to enforce function, not quality per se. You're right that things could always be tweaked or fixed or such but at some point an author should be able to say "I'm done" and just back away, lest you become George Lucas or something :P

 

But I do agree with the sentiment that /idgames isn't really the be-all, end-all for Doom WADs. Who decided this? Why do we need just one repository for Doom WADs? We have source ports in all the colors of skittles, multiple websites and communities within websites where Doom fans congregate, even different formats of Doom WADs themselves from vanilla to MBF to eternity to gzdoom. Why stop at just one repo? Hell, if you check Doomkid's sticky over in the WADs section you've got six entirely different places to upload your shit that aren't idgames, and that's not including general purpose file upload services or truly gremlin shit like just giving people a link to a file you threw up on Discord.

 

Point is, Doom fans like doing all kinds of things twenty different ways, why is WAD sharing any different?

Edited January 29, 2023 by segfault

[Dweller Dark]

I was always curious about that myself, but I don't really mind getting WADs from various sites as long as they're reliable, safe ones. Though I think idgames is the most convenient and reliable source, as it's been around for quite a while and you can use it with DoomLauncher without hardly ever visiting the actual site. 

 

The question of how long idgames will remain is one that I don't have the knowledge or answer for, but I hope it stays around as long as it needs to. 

 

But I did find another alternative site not long ago, if anyone wants to look into it. It's this: https://www.file.io

[Shepardus]

12 minutes ago, Dweller said:

But I did find another alternative site not long ago, if anyone wants to look into it. It's this: https://www.file.io

This seems to be geared towards one-time file transfers; its front page says that files expire after they are downloaded. Probably not what you'd want to use for sharing a WAD, unless you're sharing it with a single playtester.

[Edward850]

3 hours ago, ChaoticReverie said:

 

I knew this was the case, I always thought that the reason people avoided the /idgames archive was that those guidelines were so restrictive.

 

At least that was true way back, is that still a thing now? In fact, what are the guidelines now?

The guidelines are simply the way the files need to be packaged. They are as restrictive as a parking space (in the sense that nobody really cares what your car looks like as long as it's in the space). Your mod needs to be in a zip file, 12.3 characters in length, with the standard text file both in and outside the zip file. The mod cannot contain duplicate content from the IWADs, and you need to actually have permission for all the content (basically no commercial music you don't have the rights to distribute). If you have a mod over 50MB you need to alert the maintainers first (Bloodshedder and The Green Herring).

 

The only non-standard rule is no edits of IWAD maps and no auto generated mapsets from SLIGE/Oblige and the like, but that's simply to prevent the 5 million versions of such content from filling up the archive in 12 seconds.

Edited January 27, 2023 by Edward850

[Herr Dethnout]

1.- idgames is a pretty slow process, first you need to upload your what, then wait for be approved manually by a mod, and wait to appear on idgames database.
2.- they have plenty of rules like not copyrighted material (at least, not unedited Doom 1 nor 2 textures)
3.- Maximun filesize is more or less 50-60 mbs, so yeah, bigass GZ megawads nor Mods can be here.
4.- Once published, is almost impossible to modify the files in case of a update (It literally needed to reupload my wad like 2 or 4 times due a minuscle error), that combined with reason 1 is just a big pain. Also, the main reason why idgames is mostly reserved for final projects.

Id personally prefer to have multiple mirrors, on my first wad I have 2 mirrors along with Idgames, MediaFire and Google Drive. So if one link is down, theres a big chance that the others don't. :P

[Herr Dethnout]

1 hour ago, segfault said:

 

It's not that difficult. I've uploaded a WAD there myself.

Sorry for doubleposting, offtopic and such but...

NO FUCKING WAY THAT YOU ARE THE AUTOR OF THAT WAD! Man I still have the wad when it was released. Was really fun and liked it a lot when I was using Doomworld just for downloading wads and no talks lol

Also the MIDI kickass!