Cannot Locate Certain Mods

[MoLAoS]

I did some forum and google searches and wiki searches, but people keep posting to sites with short hold times, so its almost impossible to find downloads for certain factions.

I've been digging through the mods section trying to find some factions with good quality models and a semi-compatible art style to magitech to flesh out my kingdom simulator demo. I'm pretty far behind code wise although I added and de bugged a shit load of features, but the file was supposed to go up thursday but some sneaky errors and lack of models delayed it.

Anyways I was wondering if anyone had these factions saved or if they actually exist:
Undead
Grey Elves
Orcs
Goblins

Also is there a version of the Elves faction with properly textured Sanctuary and Lore Hall and Ents and what not. Both files I found, 8.7 and 9.7 display as improperly textured in the G3D viewer.

Also is anyone aware of any other fantasy or fantasy related factions with quality models under a free license?

I currently have:
Imperial/Warlords
Solunar(Moon only)
Elves(buggy displays on many units)
Dwarves
Dark Magic
Magitech

Thanks for any help you can give me. I dug around for about 2 hours but I really have quite a bit of programming to do. I still have a couple behaviors to add to the AI and to debug a few things. I also have to dig around and create a faction setting to cancel the original AI, the new AI can currently only work in a scenario with two "player" factions. Disable AI cancels my AI for some reason and standard games the old AI currently overwrites the new agent/behavior based AI.

[Omega]

Anyways I was wondering if anyone had these factions saved or if they actually exist:
Undead
Grey Elves
Orcs
Goblins

There's a download for the undead faction on the wiki's Mods/List page, but it was never properly finished. They grey elves were never released, so you'd have to PM wciow about that. The orcs were also never finished. A beta was released, but the link has since died and the mod was abandoned. At any rate, its creator has been absent for over a year. Goblins was started by the same author as the elves, and were meant to counter the elves, but it was never finished, nor do I believe it was even released.

It really is getting to be a problem hosting mods. On the wiki's mod list, we're currently missing downloads for Animal Cruelty, Malevolent rising, Magitech refit, elves, and woodmen. Of those, the only ones that particularly concern me are the missing elves and woodmen factions, since animal cruelty was considered a low quality beta, malevolent rising had loading issues for the majority of people, and magitech refit was early beta. I have copies of the malevolent rising, elves, and woodmen factions, so I'll upload those three myself, but I'd still like to see the other missing downloads fixed.

Also at the moment, all the works of eliminator and tiger are unavailable. If softcoder, eliminator, or tiger happens to be reading this, please confirm your site is working, as I was not able to access the downloads for the vbros packs or africa techtree.

I'd really like to see a safer, central location for storing Glest mods. MG has some, but it's incomplete and doesn't have non-MG mods. I could purchase server space, but I'm concerned that basic personal hosting wouldn't be enough for the size of these Glest mods (MG devs, if you're reading, do you have bandwidth stats for the MG download center?).

At any rate, the mods that you're looking for, MoLAos, are pretty much all incomplete. It'd be nice to have their media, as all of them had been started, but the authors of the mods haven't been active recently, with some being gone for over a year.


Previous discussion considered using github as a repository for Glest mods, which could allow all media to be downloaded on whim, but it ran into a number of problems. First of all, git was incredibly difficult to learn, even with all the help that was provided. There was just little to encourage modders to learn git. Secondly, while it was possible to download entire folders from git, ensuring we'd have the most up to date files, they were difficult to download, and could only be downloaded as zip files (as opposed to, say, 7z, as could be allowed if we used a different host).

However, as it stands, link rot is a serious problem with glest mods, which often get abandoned by their authors, so when a user further in the future wants to download the mod, the link has already expired. Filefront was a big issue there; it seemed like the perfect host for a while, but when they moved their site, most of our downloads have been broken, and only one filefront link on the wiki still works (and that'll need to be moved to mediafire or similar less the link expire). To date, I've found mediafire to be the best host, as the majority of Glest mods that were hosted there seem to have valid links. Mediafire no longer allows anonymous uploading, but the free accounts are stated to have "limited" long term storage, meaning that an inactive account could be removed (although I can't find details about how an account would be classified as inactive). Further, mediafire's free accounts only allow a maximum filesize of 200 MB. Enough for most mods, but some larger mods might not fit in that. With that being said, membership is reasonably priced ($1.50 a month prevents link rot and allows up to 1GB per file; unlimited files), but we can't force users to sign up for a site, and I'm sure it's against their ToS to share a non-business account.

There was also a big spurge in using personal hosts like dropbox for a while, but while there's an unlimited upload size, you can only share download links for small files (I think it was 100 MB or less?). Dropbox is also more intrusive in terms of use, so less practical for someone who just wants to use it for Glest mods. Google Drive is a new, similar site available, though, which was not around during the original discussion. It allows up to 10GB per file and the files never expire. I can't find a restriction on download size, and getting the download link seems a bit less user friendly than, say, Mediafire (here's a guide). Of course, it also needs a Google account, although since that's the same account as used by Gmail or Youtube, it's no more intrusive than Mediafire.

With all that being said, though, I'd still like to see a "central" source. I've considered putting together a basic site which would host all glest mods (and tilesets, maps, etc). However, I'm unfamiliar with how well it would work on "cheap" hosting, such as JaguarPC. They claim unlimited bandwidth, but we all know that unlimited isn't actually unlimited. Having seen personal sites be brought down by simply appearing on a site like Reddit, I'm not sure if such a basic host would be able to keep up with the bandwidth needed to reasonably download mods, which can range from 15 to 300 MB for a techtree, up to 5 MB for a tileset, and an inconsequential amount for maps (all sizes as compressed by 7z). So, yeah, MegaGlest mod center, how's the bandwidth on that holding up?

[tomreyn]

We currently have limited statistics only (I could grep the logs but I guess the following gives a good enough picture already).

Here's the top downloaded files,by filesize, from megaglest.org and its subdomains in october 2012:



Since other files are missing here due to the "top 10" limitation my guess is this would amount to 50 GB / month. The actual file sizes are way smaller, so it shouldn't pose any issues to host something like this on a small virtual server (plus you could also host a gameserver there) for ~ EUR 5/month or on paid-for cloud storage space or just standard web hosting.

If unsure whether the amount of bandwidth you'd cause is acceptable to the host, just contact them and tell them what your plans are. It's in their own interest to tell you whether or not they can accept some amount of bandwidth with a given offer or whether they want you to make use of some other offer then (in which case you can still check with their competitors).

The terms which apply for hosting mods on the MegaGlest servers:

MegaGlest mods which are added to the Game Mods menu are automatically eligible for (optional) free hosting at megaglest.org (just contact us). MegaGlest mods which are not ready to go into the Game Mods menu, yet, can still be mirrored on megaglest.org if they are not a pre-release version ("alpha", "beta" or similar) and licensing terms allow for mirroring them.

Exceptions to this rule are possible. Generally I'm fine with hosting any files which have a certain quality, i.e. are worth preserving. If they are in a format which can make them reusable for MegaGlest (possibly after applying some modifications) then I'm happy to host them, too. I assume (I'm not not enough into modding myself) this means GAE mods will work, too.

For everything else:
I'm surely not interested in mods being lost, so for everything not matching the above criteria I'm happy to keep copies in a location which is safe (at least way safer than your average free file host) to preserve them for the future. Those can then be made available on demand for at least as long as I'm involved with MegaGlest.

[Omega]

Thanks Tomreyn. I've contacted the web hoster with some questions regarding their plans, but am interesting in creating a host for Glest mods of all types. It'd also be worthwhile to move the wiki to a separate host, as Wikia keeps screwing around with their user base. Approximately 50GB/month fit within my 10-100 GB estimate, and should be fine based on the plan details. If I get such a host running, it'd differ from the MG host in how it'd be run server side (with a web interface), allow modders to directly upload and edit details for their mods (username + passwords), and I'd add an "incomplete mods" section for storing media related to mods that weren't completed (the models could be used for later projects).


PS: On the side note of how compatible GAE mods are with MG, it depends on what features the author used. Basic features like tooltips can be added to mods without impacting its MegaGlest compatibility. Similarly, you could add an emanation to a unit and MegaGlest would still be able to use the XML, simply ignoring the unit (or at least it should; I never tested it, but invalid, unnecessary XML content should be ignored or thrown a warning, not a crash). Vice versa, a mod could have AI control information in its faction XML and GAE will still load the faction fine, ignoring the extra content. However, if a GAE mod uses the modified upgrade or level syntax, it's likely incompatible with MegaGlest. Outside of scenarios, I don't think there's any MegaGlest features that would outright crash GAE. If any of the following GAE features are used, MegaGlest should crash:

• Guard/Patrol command (simply remove the command)
• New upgrade syntax (MegaGlest is also non-modular with the stat modification tags, so all those must also be there)
• The leveling syntax is a toss up (what's normally a closed tag in MG has children in GAE)
• The load/unload skills (simply remove them)
• Water units (the entire unit would have to go, though I'm hoping to see water units in MG soon)
• The teleportation command (again, ditch the command)
• Build-self skill/command (would have to go; be replaced by traditional be-built)
• Cast spell skill/command (against an enemy, it might be possible to replicate to a degree with attack boosts, but no friendly casting)
• Generate command (replace with producing a size zero unit)
• Earthquake function (it doesn't even work right; you shouldn't be using it in the first place)

Features like cloaking or emanations can be safely used in MegaGlest with appropriate downgrading. Subfactions would technically be ignored by MegaGlest and should load fine, but trying to play a faction that uses subfactions in MG would likely seriously mess up the game. At any rate, it's easy to get the passive features of engine specific mods to work fine on multiple engines, such as the translation abilities. Both engines allow techs to be translated (and GAE has tooltips as well), and while they do so differently, you can use both features at the same time and they'll work on whichever engine runs them.

But, yeah, off topic.

[wciow]

Contrary to to Omega's suggestion the Undead faction was basically finished. As of the final release there were a couple of minor tweaks needed but it is a totally playable faction.

The Grey Elves faction was never officially released but I still have the models that i finished if you want them.

Also I announced a Storm Raven faction a while back. This will get released at some point in the next couple of months.

If anyone has the Animal Cruelty mod I would appreciate a download link. AC was a great original idea but the release lacked polish and many features that have been added to the engine since its release would make it better. 

[Omega]

Contrary to to Omega's suggestion the Undead faction was basically finished. As of the final release there were a couple of minor tweaks needed but it is a totally playable faction.

Oh, my bad. I must have missed a release.

The Grey Elves faction was never officially released but I still have the models that i finished if you want them.

Could you upload the models, then, so future users may be able to use them, please?

Also I announced a Storm Raven faction a while back. This will get released at some point in the next couple of months.

[MoLAoS]

I did manage to dig up the undead mod link. Its highly useful. I also got a few others like roman and greek where although units are mostly not useful, almost all the buildings are.

Shouldn't you be able to host mods on sourceforge? They have a good mirror system iirc and I don't think it would cost a lot if anything.

[Omega]

Well, I updated the wiki page with working links for elves and woodsmen, but undead might have an outdated link, animal cruelty and magitech refit are still missing, and the whole list needs an update, as mods like Annex aren't there yet.

[MoLAoS]

Does anyone have an elves link where the textures are sized properly and therefore appear in the game? I resized the tree texture for the lore house but it still doesn't work, presumably it fails to link properly if you do that.

There are still a few decent buildings, although for the forge the swords don't get textured. That's also why I couldn't use any elves units.

[Omega]

Does anyone have an elves link where the textures are sized properly and therefore appear in the game? I resized the tree texture for the lore house but it still doesn't work, presumably it fails to link properly if you do that.

Try the one linked to from the wiki. It's been a long time since I've played the elves, but I don't recall seeing such problems.

[MoLAoS]

That one doesn't work. Also I have 2 versions of elves and neither work. I believe the problem is the tree textures being not multiples of 2.

[MoLAoS]

Okay. I have successfully integrated 5 models to my faction. They have a special default xml with just be_built stop and die skills and no commands and their stats aren't set but I needed to make sure they appear properly in the game which they do.

So far 2 from solunar 2 from undead and 1 from dwarves are in, all building types. I need to add about 10 more buildings I think, putting the total up to 20.

Man going through and setting up the final xmls is gonna be a pain but since its more of a city builder/kingdom sim than an RTS you really do need that many structures.

I think that from the 7 or 8 factions I was able to download I have enough art assets, but a repaired elves faction or the grey elves models would make the number of modelling styles less myriad which would improve the look of the demo.

Hopefully we can actually get the idea of a permanent storage space for all mods up and running because I checked literally 50 broken links trying to get downloads.

[tomreyn]

Thanks Tomreyn. I've contacted the web hoster with some questions regarding their plans, but am interesting in creating a host for Glest mods of all types. It'd also be worthwhile to move the wiki to a separate host, as Wikia keeps screwing around with their user base. Approximately 50GB/month fit within my 10-100 GB estimate, and should be fine based on the plan details. If I get such a host running, it'd differ from the MG host in how it'd be run server side (with a web interface), allow modders to directly upload and edit details for their mods (username + passwords), and I'd add an "incomplete mods" section for storing media related to mods that weren't completed (the models could be used for later projects).

Which web hoster are you referring to? JaguarPC, the one hosting Glest.org (i.e. are you planning to have a separate account with them)?

A mod uploading / hosting / downloading site would be great to have (I was thinking about it, too, but just lack the ability to develop this in acceptable time with acceptable quality). If you are going to develop this, please do require that uploaders declare licensing terms and list all copyright holders, including for textures "found on the Internet". Since only then their work will be reusable by others and it will be clear whether this work (or derivatives/modifications/improvements) can be bundled with the games.

It would also be helpful to have a compatibility matrix then, i.e. which game (Glest, MegaGlest, GAE, Madate) and which version (!) it was tested with and is known to work and where it is known to not work. It would also be great if such a service could do what modders dislike to do and what is difficult for them to get right: packaging mods properly for a given (when downloading) game and version, after removing superfluous files where possible (*~, .Desktop, .DS_Store, *.bak, files not referenced in XML, etc.).

Should we all end up migrating off Wikia then it would be the right time for MegaGlest to think about whether or not it makes sense to have a separate wiki from those of Glests and GAE. I think it does make sense for MegaGlest in the long run, since Glest is dead and GAE is different (and not progressing, too, lately, as far as I can tell), so it may be better to present MegaGlest modders only the information relevant to them. Put the ther way around, while I like the idea of growing, having and keeping a larger community I think it is not as easy for MegaGlest modders to get started as we'd like it to be (and as we tend to say it is), since even though (most of all) you are doing a great job I think it's still a daunting task for someone who wants to mod for MG to get an idea of what is going to work how in the current version of MegaGlest (not GAE, not original Glest).

You're doing a great job maintaining the projects' documentation and gardening the wiki, and, if this separation should actually take place, it would be a loss should you decide not to continue to help out with a wiki primarily focussed on MegaGlest. (Note those are my personal thoughts exclusively.)

If any of the following GAE features are used, MegaGlest should crash:

If you could bring this up in a feature request with test data, I think it could help making MegaGlest handle wrong / unexpected data even better than it already does now, so you could possibly try loading GAE mods in MG.

[Omega]

Yes, I am planning to host a site myself as an alternative host for all Glest mods, although it'll have to wait until I get some time to develop the site. I would also like to migrate the wiki to this site, eventually, since the company that hosts our wiki is pretty evil and the ads on the site (when not logged in) are awful. Migrating wouldn't be too hard; set up Mediawiki (same as Wikipedia) on a server, export the content of the Wikia site, then import it on our new site. A bot would have to be used to move the images. Some addons would be necessary to allow friendly links (wiki/My_page versus index.php?title=My_page) and the use of tags such as the beloved <math> tag (LaTeX).

Should we all end up migrating off Wikia then it would be the right time for MegaGlest to think about whether or not it makes sense to have a separate wiki from those of Glests and GAE. I think it does make sense for MegaGlest in the long run, since Glest is dead and GAE is different (and not progressing, too, lately, as far as I can tell), so it may be better to present MegaGlest modders only the information relevant to them. Put the ther way around, while I like the idea of growing, having and keeping a larger community I think it is not as easy for MegaGlest modders to get started as we'd like it to be (and as we tend to say it is), since even though (most of all) you are doing a great job I think it's still a daunting task for someone who wants to mod for MG to get an idea of what is going to work how in the current version of MegaGlest (not GAE, not original Glest).

Ah, I thought we'd be hitting this point sometime. Please see this topic. Also on a side note, is there any interest in MegaGlest adopting the "Glest" name (with permission from the original Glest team)? It would have the benefits of being simpler, having a better placement in search results, and being better renown. However, it would only work if the Glest team was also willing to part with control over their website, which would allow the site to offer the correct download (we STILL get people downloading vanilla Glest and coming here to complain about bugs or lack of mods). That choice would, of course, be up to the Glest team, but with all due respect, vanilla Glest is dead. In my humble opinion, it's time for MegaGlest to be the "Glest 4.0".

[tomreyn]

Yes, I am planning to host a site myself as an alternative host for all Glest mods, although it'll have to wait until I get some time to develop the site. I would also like to migrate the wiki to this site, eventually, since the company that hosts our wiki is pretty evil and the ads on the site (when not logged in) are awful. Migrating wouldn't be too hard; set up Mediawiki (same as Wikipedia) on a server, export the content of the Wikia site, then import it on our new site. A bot would have to be used to move the images. Some addons would be necessary to allow friendly links (wiki/My_page versus index.php?title=My_page) and the use of tags such as the beloved <math> tag (LaTeX).

If this mod hosting site is going to make a clear distinction between engines and you could (in a additon to an engine adnostic front page, I guess) use URLs to pre-select filters for a given engine (so that we could have a better "MegaGlest mods" link on megaglest.org) then I'll be happy to offer hosting for such an application (assuming it's written in PHP, Python or Perl), its database (assuming MySQL) and the mods and setup/grant FTP(S) or non-privileged system-level access (allowing for SFTP and/or SCP/SSH).

Ah, I thought we'd be hitting this point sometime. Please see this topic. Also on a side note, is there any interest in MegaGlest adopting the "Glest" name (with permission from the original Glest team)? It would have the benefits of being simpler, having a better placement in search results, and being better renown. However, it would only work if the Glest team was also willing to part with control over their website, which would allow the site to offer the correct download (we STILL get people downloading vanilla Glest and coming here to complain about bugs or lack of mods). That choice would, of course, be up to the Glest team, but with all due respect, vanilla Glest is dead. In my humble opinion, it's time for MegaGlest to be the "Glest 4.0".

Thanks for bringing up the discussion about the future of GAE and the presentation of the three projects. I don't want to join the GAE discussion before its developers have had a chance to do so, so I won't post there too soon.

About Glest vs MegaGlest: We've asked a couple times whether it would be possible to have a link set, on the Glest.org website, to GAE and MegaGlest. I don't think we ever got a positive reply on this, and clearly it hasn't happened, so I'm not going to assume that there can be any chance to get to a point where MG will be regarded as the follow-up Glest. This also lead to the development of a separate project name which involved quite some work (to make it known), just like it did for Glest inintially, I guess, and while MG is still not anywhere as widely known as Glest is, it's come a long way by now. By now, even if there was an offer to continue under the name of "Glest", I don't (personally) think it would make much sense anymore. Surely making it easy for Glest.org visitors to learn about new projects based on Glest would still be very appreciated (but I don't see this happening).

Regarding the forums, I don't see much use in a forum for a project which is basically dead for years (I'm talking about original Glest here), but I'll be happy to host a MegaGlest centric forum and (if there is no objection by the original Glest team) all archives if it will be available (happily in addition to other hostnames) under the megaglest.org domain name. Much of the discussion going on here is specific to MegaGlest by now, and as such I think it would be good to have this contribute to building a better name for MegaGlest. So I'd also be happy to offer hosting a copy of these forums, if they can be rearranged to focus on MegaGlest primarily.

[Omega]

If this mod hosting site is going to make a clear distinction between engines and you could (in a additon to an engine adnostic front page, I guess) use URLs to pre-select filters for a given engine (so that we could have a better "MegaGlest mods" link on megaglest.org) then I'll be happy to offer hosting for such an application (assuming it's written in PHP, Python or Perl), its database (assuming MySQL) and the mods and setup/grant FTP(S) or non-privileged system-level access (allowing for SFTP and/or SCP/SSH).

To be honest, I was planning to purchase my own hosting for such a site, simply because I like to have direct FTP access to major web design projects, but it could be run on the MegaGlest site, too. I've gotten pretty good with PHP and MySQL, so, yes, such a tool would run under them. Essentially, each mod would be stored in a MySQL table, storing data such as the author, a description, etc. I'd personally like to add an ability to rate the mod, but would understand if the community wouldn't want such a thing (it's a bit touchy, but does offer the ability to sort mods by quality). The first version would likely have mods uploaded by a single person, but eventually, I'd add an account creation ability (there's no way to link it to the accounts on the forum, however, as I don't have direct access to the database the forum uses).

Anyway, it wouldn't be hard to allow engine filters. Or filters based on any type of data stored in said database (so it'd be possible to sort mods by submission date, rating (if we use one), author name, etc.

Although I'd have to mention that this mod distribution center may take a while; I'm currently weighed down heavily in my classes (I'm a CS major; maybe one day I'll have the skill to directly program those wanted features into MG myself, rather than just arguing for the validity?). Come December, I should have more time on my hands.

Regarding the forums, I don't see much use in a forum for a project which is basically dead for years (I'm talking about original Glest here), but I'll be happy to host a MegaGlest centric forum and (if there is no objection by the original Glest team) all archives if it will be available (happily in addition to other hostnames) under the megaglest.org domain name. Much of the discussion going on here is specific to MegaGlest by now, and as such I think it would be good to have this contribute to building a better name for MegaGlest. So I'd also be happy to offer hosting a copy of these forums, if they can be rearranged to focus on MegaGlest primarily.

It'd be reasonably easy to setup a clone of the forums; I've done it myself on a local host. Install SMF, apply the theme, and restore a backup of the databases. However, a lot visitors still come to the Glest boards from the Glest site, so it doesn't seem very practical to move the forums for the time being. Personally? I'd rather try and convince the original Glest team to allow us to take over the site. That's just me personally, and of course, not everyone might agree, but if we had control over the site (in all honesty, the Glest team isn't exactly benefiting much from the site; there's no revenue from the ad free site and it's pretty much all outdated. As you mentioned, it doesn't even make reference to the existence of MG). Yeah, there's no particular reason to believe they might give it up, but if it were a possibility, I'd consider it preferable to trying to move the forums to another site. The problem is that we'd still see potential Glest enthusiasts download vanilla Glest, whereas with control of the site, we could transform it into the MegaGlest site, ensuring that players always get the most "up to date" version. (Yes, this might be a controversial view, it's just me, and I don't plan on forcing it on anyone, just putting it out there).