integrated auto-grf downloader?

[leemup]

maybe in the next version openttd we could have like a function what connects to a server desgined especially for .grf files or .tar . with like a guest upload page ....be easier to locate new grf and tar wouldnt it?

[Roest]

this thread might be of interest

[leemup]

well ive been interested in this for ages ... i mean i think i have seen some1 talkin bout it but nothin went ahead?? is ny1 interested in this?

[mph]

People are interested in this, and this question is often asked. It would be convenient, but there are reasons why it most likely will not be implemented. See the thread Roest linked to for a devs reasons for not wanting to implement such a feature.

[belugas]

well ive been interested in this for ages ... i mean i think i have seen some1 talkin bout it but nothin went ahead?? is ny1 interested in this?

Translation for those who may require it:

some1 = someone
talkin = talking
nothin = nothing
ny1 = anyone

[leemup]

thank you for da translation of my text sorry if i write like a spaz lol

[PikkaBird]

thank you for da translation of my text sorry if i write like a spaz lol

Then I suggest you stop it. Tolerance for lazy spelling is rather low around here...

[Draakon]

If i understand right, the problem is copyright, right?

If so, how can it be possible? For example we take a game called Unreal Tournament 2004. It has tons and tons of mods, textures, audio files and models available to download free from any website that hosts it or servers. If we take the copyright into action, we shouldn't not be able to download those stuff from servers. But we can. And they are free plus the authors don't care only when they haven't modified or taken some code from it for own use. But creating a add-on for it is allowed.

So, why should we need to have this limit?

[Rubidium]

Draakon, that's simple: UT had distribution before the mods got released, OpenTTD had the mods before the distribution got (will get) implemented.

Therefor for the UT case people who release their stuff have implicitly agreed with the distribution via UT. For OpenTTD there is no implicit agreement and there are NewGRF developers who have actively said they would make their NewGRFs incompatible with OpenTTD if the distribution would be added.

[Draakon]

What about then adding a new property for NewGRF that add the available for author to choose should their NewGRFs can be downloaded from the server or not.

[Rubidium]

Which means people are going to redistribute "hacked" NewGRFs with that property set.

But then... this has already been discussed several times before.

[FooBar]

Which means people are going to redistribute "hacked" NewGRFs with that property set.

Which would also happen if any GRF will be made incompatible due to the introduction of a download thingy.

Besides, almost every server uses the coop grf package; installing that is about as easy as an auto-download feature, so I don't really see the added benefit

[dihedral]

as far as i know the OpenTTD-autoupdater also has a feature (or may have in the near future) which will install/update the openttdcoop grfpack (at least for windows users - and with no offence - those are the onse with the most problems )