In game content downloads

[Rubidium]

As of today OpenTTD supports downloading content (Base graphics, NewGRFs, Scenarios, Heightmaps, AIs and AI libraries) from a central server.

At the moment there is little that can be downloaded as nobody added his content yet. The idea is that all graphics/AI authors can upload their content to http://content.openttd.org/. Then this content can be downloaded by the clients.

This should make it easier to for example use NewGRFs in multiplayer games as people can download any missing NewGRFs as long as the NewGRFs used are known by the central server. It also makes it easier for the players to update their NewGRFs, again under the assumption that the author uploaded the new version to the system.

One may only upload his/hers own content; uploading of content of other people is not allowed as the original author might not want their content to be distributed via this system.

[Benny]

I love you, OpenTTD devs! This is an awesome feature, and will make downloading of newGRF's a LOT easier. I have been waiting for something like this forever. Hurry people, upload your stuff!
Thank you, Thank you, Thank you.

Edit: will this be merged into trunk tonight?

[audigex]

This is excellent. Hopefully it should take some of the hassle out of starting playing for newbies.

How do updates work, are the new versions forced, suggested or just "available"?
Ie does a GRF update automatically to the new version? If not, does the updater remind the user that there's an update, or is it just there in the repository if the user chooses to update?

[Rubidium]

The content server tells what content it knows about. Locally we check whether one of the e.g. GRFs has the same GRF ID but different MD5 sum and we assume that the content server then has an update. Then in the list window you can select updates, which only selected the content that we think is an update for something you have.

It will not remove anything.

[audigex]

What I mean is, does it automatically update the GRF, or does it let you know there's an update, or neither of the above?

What happens if someone updates an older version of a GRF by mistake? The MD5 will be different, but the version will be older? Or are you just assuming nobody will be that dumb?

[CommanderZ]

And you were refusing this for so long! OTTD now comes with amazing news almost every day recently

EDIT: Could you make the web interface display author's name of the file?

[ThunderAI]

all i get is bananas

[audigex]

all i get is bananas

Look on the bright side, plenty of potassium.

[555gln22]

Doesn't work for me either. Is the link live yet?

[Rubidium]

Doesn't work for me either. Is the link live yet?

There're some problems with the DNS entry somewhere. We're working on fixing it, but due to the nature of DNS it can take a while before it gets fixed at your end. You could try whether http://www.openttd.org/en/bananas/ works, however this won't work in-game.

[555gln22]

Working fine now, thanks!

[FooBar]

Sweet!

I'll be adding OpenGFX and then the rest of my own stuff.
I really appreciate this feature. And to think that it was "OpenTTD will not get an automatic download feature and that is final" not too long ago


On sidenote:
I just registered. Work fine, but after logging in it redirected me to http://www.openttd.org/nl/accounts/profile/ but that gives me a 404 error message. After manually revisiting http://www.openttd.org/en/bananas/ it seems to work fine.

[Benny]

And I guess that this is the end to grfcrawler then? =P

[DaleStan]

One may only upload his/hers own content; uploading of content of other people is not allowed

How is that prevented?

Or is it MB's job to check it on a daily basis and send a takedown notice every time he finds one of his GRFs there?

[FooBar]

And I guess that this is the end to grfcrawler then? =P

There's still TTDPatch (for which GRFCrawler was invented in the first place) which does not have such a feature. And having some sort of catalogue with images also helps picking out the grfs I like.

How is that prevented?

Or is it MB's job to check it on a daily basis and send a takedown notice every time he finds one of his GRFs there?

If the system is smart enough, he only needs to do that once. After the first time that his files are removed, they should be blacklisted.



Anyways, is there a manual on the upload function? I'm trying to upload the OpenGFX base graphics. For that I need to upload a bunch of files (obg, 6 grf files, readme etc.). Now it tells me that a zip with all in it causes some kind of unknown error, that the obg isn't supported yet and that the grf file isn't a newgrf file.
EDIT: it even tells me that the openttd base graphics file isn't a newgrf file. Last time I checked it still was one, with an action8 and stuff...

EDIT2: It probably needs to be in a tar, right?

[Rubidium]

How is that prevented?
Or is it MB's job to check it on a daily basis and send a takedown notice every time he finds one of his GRFs there?

We'll occasionally look through the added content to see whether a "wrong" author uploads something (s)he may not. Still... it's impossible to fully check whether someone that uploads it is the actual author; do you know of any reliable third party that has watched MB making his graphics and thus proving that they are his? All "we" can see is that someone with a given name (be it a real one or not) has uploaded something to the forum or a website and trust that the person is the actual author. The same applies in my opinion here.
Ofcourse we can start banning specific GRF IDs and MD5 checksums, but doing so won't make it water proof either; just change the GRF ID and both will be different.
As a final question: how does MB prevent that his NewGRF gets packaged with any of the many full TTDPatch/OpenTTD packs with lots of graphics files and the like? This system could even reduce that burden on him as there'll be less need for people to make those full packages as they can download lots of graphics from within OpenTTD instead of searching the web, forum and grfcrawler.

Anyways, is there a manual on the upload function? I'm trying to upload the OpenGFX base graphics. For that I need to upload a bunch of files (obg, 6 grf files, readme etc.). Now it tells me that a zip with all in it causes some kind of unknown error, that the obg isn't supported yet and that the grf file isn't a newgrf file.

Normal plain 'old' zip file are supported, but it might be that your tools make something that's not in the 'old' format, but rather 7zip or so. Tar files should be fine though. One small point for the OpenGFX package is that you should increment the version number in the obg for each release otherwise with multiple downloads OpenTTD will randomly select one of the packs instead of the one with the highest version.

[trainmaster611]

Great idea! Now we can use our GRF sets on OTTD servers

[Qu@rks]

Just wanted to say this is really cool and really useful, too. Great work there

[Conditional Zenith]

For all those people mentioning how OTTD would never automatically download GRFs from the server, this is different.

The suggestion that kept on getting rejected was that all necessary GRFs would be automatically transferred from whichever server they connected to. This kept getting rejected cause the person running the server may not have permission to distribute the GRFs.

This suggestion will only automatically download GRFs that the authors have explicitly uploaded to a central server for the purpose of having them distributed.

[FooBar]

Normal plain 'old' zip file are supported, but it might be that your tools make something that's not in the 'old' format, but rather 7zip or so. Tar files should be fine though. One small point for the OpenGFX package is that you should increment the version number in the obg for each release otherwise with multiple downloads OpenTTD will randomly select one of the packs instead of the one with the highest version.

Alright, let me try again then. I'm using WinZip (version 11). I suppose that should know how to create a proper zip file, but maybe it's set to create some sort of 'new' zip format. I'll create a new one first using the default settings and if that doesn't work I'll try an uncompressed one instead.

Thanks for the hint on the version number. I'm sure I would have messed that one up.

EDIT: The new zip uploaded fine. The first one I tried was probably corrupted or something. But now I'm getting this message:

Your Base Graphic pack says there should be a NewGRF file 'opengfxw.grf', which is not in the pack.

But I'm quite sure I have that one in the zip (see screenshot).

EDIT2: Maybe it does recognise the file itself, but does not recognise it as a NewGRF file, the same way it didn't recognise it as a newgrf file when I tried to upload it seperately.
The start of the NFO file is as follows:

Code: Select all

    0 * 4	 00 00 00 00
    1 * 9	 07 9D 04 \7= 01 00 00 00 01
    2 * 48	 0B 03 7F FF 80 " is not for TTDPatch. Use ttdpatch(w).grf." 00
    3 * 9	 07 A1 04 \7= "ÿÿÿÿ" 02
    4 * 9	 07 A1 04 \7> A8 2C 00 06 03
    5 * 26	 0B 03 7F 06 "0.6 (or trunk r11432)" 00
    6 * 62	 0B 03 7F "ÿRequires OpenTTD version 0.6 "
	 "(or trunk r11432) or better." 00
    7 * 9	 07 A1 04 \7= "ÿÿÿÿ" 00
    8 * 6	 07 8D 01 \7= 01 01
    9 * 12	 0B 03 7F 01 "Windows" 00
   10 * 230	 08 07 "ÿOTWOpenGFX base graphics (Windows) for OpenTTD" 00
	 "For credits, please refer to the readme.txt which came with this file." 00

It's the same as in the original openttdw.grf apart from the different title and description. Should I be changing the GRFID and not just recycle the one from openttdw.grf?