Repository traffic ....

That'd be awesome! Assuming I understand the idea, suddenly everyone's map sizes would drastically reduce in size. Not only does this help you guys, but it helps the people on here with slower internet connections.

 

A "common" map asset system would be great, looking forward to this

 

I'm not sure if this will help, but every time I start BeamNG 5-6 mods update themselves...every single time I open the game. Some of them are >200MB. They don't duplicate or anything, just "update" over and over.

 

How about a system that first checks witch mod has an update (like now) and then check which files are needed to update? That would obviously not work with the current archived versions of the mods, but lets say that the installer initial downloads the complete mod and then unpack it automatically. Then the client can update only the files that are needed to update. That assumes that the majority of the assets stays the same after an update, like by a small bugfix. To check if a file needs an update I would use some kind of checksum, like the file size or/and the last change date. The downside is clearly that such a system uses more hard drive space in favor of lower bandwidth. The steam update system is a good example for a system that has the same effect.

 

If a mod's ZIP file title is changed, maybe have a feature where it will check of the title is changed to avoid having a duplicate mod.

 

Why not setup an ingame P2P bandwidth sharing. Each machine donates 15kb\s for any mods they have installed. Just a random thought for free bandwidth. Would have to put a check box to allow it so the people with GB caps don't get it wasted. Just a thought but free is always better than paying

 

Seems Like France dont like in game repo

 

Not clue buddy it was just a thought to build off from. Modders could display a link where you download from another source like dropbox or googledrive to download it and put in mod folder.
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I don't know legal stuff but maybe this is cheaper for beamng and they can still control the mods but put the bandwidth on someone else for the downloads. https://www.google.com/drive/pricing/

 

To save on bandwidth usage, maybe auto-update should be off by default. There are some large maps that I have that got multiple updates in between the times I played them.

 

I wwsn'atched the thread... but why did it still give me an alert?
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Also why can't I edit my post
seriously
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I wasn't watching the thread, but it gave me an alert, why?

 

Wait, do profile posts, extra ratings, and group forums use lots of bandwidth? If so, I can start to see some of the reasoning for stuff such as cutting sigs, groups, and removing ratings and profile post

 

Bump;

With the Automation colab. update I feel that you guys are going backwards on minimizing data usage with the repository... Unless something has changed behind the scenes that you haven't mentioned yet. Those uploaded exports are a decent size in terms of file size, there's alot of them being submitted all at once, with more on the way, and plenty of people are downloading them.

@tdev any thoughts or word on that?

 

Especially with how many there are. Before I went to sleep on Friday there were 6 Automation mods. When I woke up there suddenly were 155 of them

 

Creating vehicle mods for BeamNG is hard, but very compelling and satisfying to do. Lower the barrier to entry by making it super easy for people to make mods, and lots more people will do it.

However, another potential effect is that the value of these mods (for other people) is greatly reduced. If more or less anyone can make an Automation based vehicle, what incentive is there to download someone else's mod that you have no emotional connection to. Especially when you can make your own similar version without much difficulty, and enjoy the experience of building it. And if you can make your own mods easily, you may be less inclined to download mods from the repo altogether.

So while there may be a growingly vast database of cars that people have made, chances are, very few will generate any significant traffic. Most will sit on a hdd or ssd somewhere, because there is only 1 person who cares about those cars, the author.

TLDR: The amount of traffic might not increase as much as you may expect.

 

During one day, there has been 164 people interested from my Automation car topic (or at least so many visits), there has been 50 downloads of total 3 different vehicles, but that is on forums, not sure how much people download those cars from repo:


It is not very huge bandwidth usage, especially when noting that this is still times of new car scent, after it wears off there will be less downloads.

 

And now it went from 155 to 241