Using Torrenting to Distribute wads?

[NEANDERTHAL]

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.

[Edward850]

Idgames isn't a single server, there's multiple mirrors of it. Strain and it "suddenly going down" are complete non issues.

[DNSKILL5]

No thank you, I prefer WAD flavored compressed files for download. 

Edited April 13 by DNSKILL5

[Stabbey]

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.

[Lucius Wooding]

It's been a complete non issue for the last 30 years.

[eanasir]

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

[Wadmodder Shalton]

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.

[Kinsie]

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

[dasho]

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.

[Doom-X-Machina]

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...

[Worm318]

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.