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An appeal for files

Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2018 4:24 am
by JackGriffin
Over at OldUnreal there was a good discussion on how to best save the files for Unreal. The community is withering away and the people remaining are starting to age out of interest in gaming (yours truly for instance). A bunch of ideas were kicked around but no really good winner emerged. I went out into the larger games community and talked with them about how to best protect Unreal from becoming a 'swiss cheese' of lost files and mods.

One of my posts got the attention of a major gaming website and to make a long story short they are offering to host the archive. I explained how large it would be but these guys are used to dealing in that sort of scale. This might be the last chance we have to make a single-spot, massive collection of Unreal files.

I have set up a simple FTP server here:

<server closed, see edit>

If you have any old Unreal files sitting idle in your personal archive folder would you consider sharing them with me? I'm assembling as comprehensive as possible archive of everything Unreal I can get my grubby hands on. I'll uploading everything to them and they will be hosting a public-facing archive for everyone to use.

Thank you for considering this!

-Kelly

Edit: Thank you to everyone for such a great response. I'm packaging the files for upload to GameFront and as soon as its all done I'll post a link. This has been exhausting work so I don't think I'll be doing UT's version of a repository. If someone wanted to step up and do it then you probably should. I can give your contact information to the people at GF if you are serious. It's quite tedious work and will require a lot of your time to do correctly, and you probably need to have a large working knowledge of past UT projects. Without that it will take you ages to check and sort even a portion of files.

Thank again everyone.....Now, where did I put that lurker cloak? Time to wear it again...

Re: An appeal for files

Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2018 7:23 am
by UTPe
Hi Kelly, long time no see, hope you're well.
I think yours is a good and useful idea. my actual ut file database (files, not maps, they are stored apart) is about 50GB, it contains everything related to ut99 (mod/mutators, models, voice packs, docs, mapping and dev tools, extras, etc) I've been collecting over the last 15 years. I think I surely have something old and valuable that I can upload to yout FTP. Let me check what I can find and then, if this is ok for you, I could upload a single zipped archive organized by args.

greets,
Pietro

Re: An appeal for files

Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2018 3:39 pm
by JackGriffin
Thank you P. You upload any way you want. I'll take raw files, whatever. I don't mind to do the legwork organizing and compiling if it saves you the trouble. I know pretty much everything at a glance so it goes quickly. Thank you for considering it!

Re: An appeal for files

Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2018 5:00 pm
by RocketJedi
what makes this different from lets say ut-files.com the medor.no-ip.org site, and unrealtournament.99.free.fr/utfiles/ ?

Re: An appeal for files

Posted: Wed Sep 19, 2018 1:21 am
by JackGriffin
That's a really good answer, and honestly I'd like to hear yours if you have a better one. I asked a bunch of people and even sought out some long term storage solutions (Amazon's Glacier for instance). The end result of everything is either:
-Cost
-Access
-Requires a caretaker

UT-Files is low cost but requires a caretaker to keep the site up and active. It's really no different than this forum for example. It works but only as long as Shade decides to keep it that way. If Skillz quits or Medor moves then those could go away tomorrow. That's already happened to a bunch of places and there's no reason not to think it won't happen again. Using a ultra low cost long-term storage like Glacier is attractive BUT it makes accessing the files too hard. Nothing really checks the boxes for a long-term, low/no cost, self-perpetuating solution.

UT still breathes a little life but Unreal is very much gasping at this point. Just yesterday Hyper's machine died and his server is down. That's going to keep happening and the guys still active are old enough to just go "Ah fuck it" and not put things back. I'd like to gather what I can and try to get it archived the best place that is available given the circumstances. I've shared almost everything I have with several people here so I've been trying to do this sort of thing for a long time. Remember that Unreal and shortly following was UT and those were at the very vanguard of FPS games. There's real history here and it shouldn't get lost.

So these guys are offering a forward facing download spot for most of the files. Anything suffering copyright issues or if Epic deems them as something that shouldn't be shared (like early pre-release builds I have) then they will keep hold of it all in a private repository, but it will ALL be retained. Think of this as a sort of seed vault for Unreal files. It's not meant to be a solution, it's meant to guard against catastrophe.

BTW, interest was expressed in doing the same for UT. That's a conversation for another day though.

Re: An appeal for files

Posted: Wed Sep 19, 2018 11:52 am
by Carbon
Count me in Jack. I am just wondering exactly what files you are looking for? It sounds like Unreal and UT, both of which I have a lot of stuff which I'm happy to upload. I have files from across the series, so if those are also desired...?

Concerns: First, is there a limit on space? Second, do I need to zip everything or just load it up (things are fairly organized, but maybe only to me, if you know what I mean). Finally, I'm sure I have a ton of duplicates, as I have always kept everything; things that may have the same name but differing sizes, I keep. We are all aware of the number of non-functional or archives with missing dependencies, of which I always think perhaps one of the copies I have may be complete. This might be folly, but anyhow, I keep everything.

Anyhow, I'm happy to get on it this weekend.

Re: An appeal for files

Posted: Wed Sep 19, 2018 3:54 pm
by JackGriffin
It may be easier for you and I to use BTSync rather than FTP because I'm sure your collection is massive. The drive has almost a terabyte of room and I have several back-up drives as well. Space won't be an issue. I'll meet you wherever it is easiest for you and I'd take everything. I'm uploading my UT stuff to them too but for now I'm publicly appealing for Unreal files.

Don't worry either about organizing anything. I've started the process myself of getting my repository lined up and it's been interesting. A couple of days ago I found a mod that has been joked about for years in the Unreal dev community but never thought to actually exist. Turns out I have it, who knew lol. I have no idea where I picked it up at. It's those things that shouldn't get lost.

So anyway I'll meet you wherever is easiest for you and I'm unbelievably thankful for your help.

Re: An appeal for files

Posted: Wed Sep 19, 2018 6:44 pm
by darksonny
Jack pass me some paypal link and I leave some money for the investment, im interested in helping you

Re: An appeal for files

Posted: Wed Sep 19, 2018 11:28 pm
by Carbon
Not sure if it's a question of money darksonny, but if it is, then I'll do what I can as well in that area.

I am behind on my UT99.org support, so that's a priority for me. :)

Re: An appeal for files

Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2018 4:08 am
by JackGriffin
I've never taken money. I don't even have a paypal.

I wouldn't like anything from anyone aside from any old zips of mods you might have stored up. I really just want your files if you think you might have a unique or seldom shared package.

Re: An appeal for files

Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2018 4:52 am
by Gustavo6046
I'm young, though. I could try and make a big archive to hold Unreal stuff, and save our little world.

But... ehhh... you know... it's probably way more than just 600 GB, so it might take a while.

Re: An appeal for files

Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2018 8:26 pm
by darksonny
hi all
well, Im trying to help you out, I though the cost (im still thinking but...) about maintenance for gigas and gigas of files (by the way, only ut99, why not ut2k3-4 and ut3 contents as well?) is the weak part for the whole theme. I will see what unique content could I find in my archive, mine is not alike medor, or my beloved Carbon here, anyway if positive I will upload for community and you. :tu:

Re: An appeal for files

Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2018 3:48 pm
by JackGriffin
Someone from South Africa uploaded a ton of maps yesterday. I have no clue who it was but if it was you then THANK YOU!

I'll be closing the FTP server to uploads this weekend and start packing the files to be sent to GameFront. They will live on here:
https://www.gamefront.com/games

The owner of GameFront is a very nice guy who understands the need to archive things and he's attempting to create a pretty comprehensive catalogue. Getting the Unreal (and then eventually UT) files into that is great news for everyone. We spoke about the need for a more private spot too for the sensitive files (copyright issues, anticheat, exploits) and there will be a private area for that.

Re: An appeal for files

Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2018 8:00 pm
by darksonny
I thought gamerfront were closed long time ago...im confused

Re: An appeal for files

Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2018 8:23 pm
by papercoffee
darksonny wrote:I thought gamerfront were closed long time ago...im confused
yup and nope ... stay confused. :mrgreen: