Rework of mission pbo's

[mr.g-c 6]

Hello, Arma2 is called the "next generation game", so why not boosting the mission pbo also into "a next level"? Currently there are IMHO two major things which should be changed for Mission-PBO's:

- Automatic including of used 3rd party addons, means mission makers who uses addons such as weapons, cars, planes, buildings, editor-upgrades, islands, enhancements, etc. should be sure, their used addons are packed into the mission-PBO and will be used automatic by the server and the clients who loading this mission.

EDIT: This should be choose able by the mission maker, so for example when saving the mission finally (to make it as a pbo in editor), there could be a prompt asking "do you want to include your used addons in the mission into it?" or something like that.

This has another advantage: Mission makers could now decide to only use parts of a addon (for example only one of 10 packaged weapons), by making a "own" addon with just such a part of a addon, then putting it in the mission and the clients and servers which run that mission, are no not forced to use/download a large addon-file, but the stripped-of parts the mission-maker builds-in in his mission.

Of course i know that their are mission files which could then be up to 1GB large, so there should be also a server-setting which the admins can choose to let the connecting clients not download such a mission from the server (as this would producing heavy lags), but to display a message like "To play this mission you need to download it at "hxxp://www.xxxx.xxx""

Or any other workaround to avoid a downloading of such a large mission while playing it on a server.

- Compression of PBOs.

Mission PBOs should be compressing their including files. Currently i can compress script-files and mission.sqm by more than 90% with winrar - why making PBOs not capable of compressing to make mission PBOs faster to download?

What do you think?

Best Regards, Christian

[simonwa1 0]

I agree.

[smellyjelly 0]

Sounds good to me, especially the addons idea. I would still want to use my own though, so maybe when saving it could also ask if you want to allow the player to use his own addons or disable them.

I also think all of BIS's missions should allow them.

[dm 9]

Thus making all missions in the 10's or 100's of megabytes?

Would you really want to download an addon EVERY time it was included in a mission? Even partial addons (although that would produce ridiculous problems with versioning and content control). On top of that, many many community configs are a long way away from being "easily" segmentable, requiring a lot of human input in order to separate things out. Also, consider how big your game folder would be if the addon was downloaded every time it was included in a mission.

A much better idea would be to have an automatic content updater, coupled with an enhanced version of requiredAddons. This would then check for installed addons, and ignore those, then poll some established servers (or even the game server its self) for the remaining content.

As for compression, no no no no no, you couldnt have it more wrong. Everything that is compressed in the pbo has to be decompressed on load, if everything was compressed to the maximum level in pbo, then load times would be vastly increased. It is much MUCH better to use minimum compression at the pbo level, and maximum compression at the distribution level (i.e. rar or 7zip) Anyone with a basic understanding of file structures would know that...

[baddo 0]

I gotta say the idea of including addons into mission PBO's has crossed my mind too, some years ago, but I rejected this idea quite soon. Because people are going to misuse that kind of feature by putting too big addons inside mission PBO's. For very small addons it would be okay to do but for most addons not.

In case of script addons (the small addons mentioned in previous paragraph), a solution to avoid the need for addons is to just put the scripts into your mission PBO instead of making an addon out of it.

[mr.g-c 6]

I repeat myself here:

Quote[/b] ]....This should be choose able by the mission maker, so for example when saving the mission finally (to make it as a pbo in editor), there could be a prompt asking "do you want to include your used addons in the mission into it?" or something like that.

So you can decide to include it or not......

Quote[/b] ]As for compression, no no no no no, you couldnt have it more wrong. Everything that is compressed in the pbo has to be decompressed on load, if everything was compressed to the maximum level in pbo, then load times would be vastly increased. It is much MUCH better to use minimum compression at the pbo level, and maximum compression at the distribution level (i.e. rar or 7zip) Anyone with a basic understanding of file structures would know that...

Well im talking about a compression of the sqm and script files which is a thing of seconds, as its only plain text

[dm 9]

I repeat myself here:

Quote[/b] ]....This should be choose able by the mission maker, so for example when saving the mission finally (to make it as a pbo in editor), there could be a prompt asking "do you want to include your used addons in the mission into it?" or something like that.

So you can decide to include it or not......

Why, when it's just not necessary? By packing the addons into the mission pbo's, not only do you duplicate addons AND massively increase the filesize, but you also cause huge problems with versioning, config conflicts and a whole host of other problems.

Well im talking about a compression of the sqm and script files which is a thing of seconds, as its only plain text

Text or not, it still takes time to decompress. Like I said, its MUCH better to impliment some form of compression on the distribution level, not on the game's local data.

[.kju 3241]

Good idea. You can always limit the max size of the addon(s) or

the type of files allowed (text only for example).

Quote[/b] ]Why

Addons are NOT used in MP play apart from a few private servers.

The overall solution would be a proper addon download management system integrated in ArmA2 of course.

Still this would be nice addition, if it stays within useful limits.

However for that the engine needs to be able to build and update configs dynamically. That would be very really useful alone of course.

[sanctuary 19]

Quote[/b] ]

Addons are NOT used in MP play apart from a few private servers.

You remember CTI gametype in OFP ?

As you remember, it became the most popular gametype in OFP with MFCTI, at some points it was not just public servers, but even squad tournaments were made using CTI.

and CTI , in its basic version needed some self made addons to work correctly.

[.kju 3241]

hello Sanctuary good old friend

Well it took like 3-4 years (of the 5 years of OFP life span, if you

count to the ArmA release).

Same is true for ArmA. No popular mp missions makes use of addons.

You can ask Zap, why he didn't introduce one for berzerk2.0.

The transition is way too long and you split the community apart

for a long time.

Same goes for league play.

It took them 4 years to introduce addons. One big aspect was that

it would cut of public players from league maps being played on

public servers.

PS:

As far as I can remember, CTI didn't need an addon at the start.

People played CTI in leagues before the addon version was out.

And the league people made CTI missions require an addon,

as they wanted additional objects like walls etc.

[mr.g-c 6]

I just want to bring that old topic back into discussion...

What you guys think could/should be improved in mission pbo handling?

Regards, Christian

[Dwarden 1124]

due to fact that engines needs to compile addons (if i remember right) e.g. cpp while starting it's NOT possible to load addons with missions later

would simply mean total change in way how engine is coded (major rewrite) ...

i remember the compression of PBO was removed (it was there in OFP as form of LZH) due to way how streamed data are used and as it caused load on engine ...

BUT ... now please let the .PBO idea fade away and concetrate on same aspect but from different angle :

distribution

mission PBO files could be compressed (LZMA from 7-zip, http://www.7-zip.org/sdk.html ) on server for delivery before send to client and decompressed on client into MPmissioncache after download done

now this could be even more improved with URL forwarding (so let say arma2.info / ofpec.com holds major huge ultra fast FTP/HTTP server cache with multiple worldwide mirrors full of missions which clients will use to download from (told by server, used e.g. MD5/SHA1/SIGNature hash)

and now about mods / models / maps etc PBOs ...

to avoid rewrite of engine all what game needs is LOBBY running prior game itself and server reporting correct hashes of PBOs needed

the lobby could be used for usual stuff like server listing,chatting and !!! stuff downloading prior joining server + correct mods usage (thanks to file hashes it prevents duplicates in cache or using same name and different content etc) ...

if You want to understood what i mean i suggest You check RTS open source Spring

http://spring.clan-sy.com/

they use own lobby system

http://trac.springlobby.info/

http://spring.clan-sy.com/websvn....ient%2F

they even have 'module' plugin which uses allows use of Bittorrent (and optional HTTP) to download/upload content

http://trac.caspring.org/wiki/sd

ofcourse this lobby must be integral part of game since day zero

what i'm trying to say there are very effective routes w/o need to overhaul way how engine works and rewrite whole engine