LNP does look for newer versions of LNP if that's enabled. If you want to assemble your tools yourself, rather than using PeridexisErrant's services, checks on the tool level would be useful. However, if you have a poor connection/low bandwidth/high price for bandwidth used, you probably don't want tools to try to use that connection for constant checks.
I'm not opposed to a smörgåsbord approach where you select which parts of the LNP you want to download, but that would be additional work for PeridexisErrant to firstly implement, and then to maintain. That approach would probably also lead to additional support requests, as people start to mix old versions of tools with newer versions of other tools and DF in an effort to save on bandwidth, but without enough knowledge to actually get compatible combinations every time.
Bandwith should not be a problem today.
If people think Dwarf Fortress packs are "large downloads", maybe they should learn how to handle 7-zip instead.
Masterwork uses .RAR because Meph gets to many support requests for how to unzip a .7z when it was in 7-zip format. For masterwork that saves about 30MB on each download.
The savings is about the same for "PeridexisErrant's Starter Pack". About 30MB. That makes the starterpack a 110MB download without counting the extra 360MB you need if you want to use Soundsense.
Bandwidth is a problem for some people. I would say that starter packs tend to be pretty large, at least when it comes to download size. PE's pack has grown to almost 140 MB, which is over 10 times larger than a DF download. It's understandable that people with slow or expensive connections would want a preconfigured option that isn't this large, especially if they don't use all of the utilities that are bundled in.
Well then, if it's a problem ask PeridexisErrant to have a 7-zip version of the pack, that saves 30MB of the bat. That's probably something PE can do without too much trouble.
But asking him to solve a problem that we have no data on how many it's an issue for?
The only thing I can see as redundant in the pack is that there are three different Legend Viewers for a total of 15MB.
Other big things are Amrok Vision and ISO World (70MB)
Other than that, graphics are 50-60MB. But graphics is what most people expect to get with the Pack, so throwing that out seems rather stupid.
If you throw out Amrok Vision and ISO World plus all but one legends viewer you can get the pack down to 80MB (7zip) or 100MB (zip on ultra). That's still 8-10 times the original download size, but I don't know how you can expect to get all the graphics and bells and whistles without it.
If people are having issues with bandwidth, there is nothing stopping them from downloading each part by them selves and putting it together, or for someone here
to provide such a pack. But don't put that on PE.
(Maybe this discussion should be it's own thread).
Author
Topic: Dwarf Therapist (Maintained Branch) v.37.0 | DF 42.06 (Read 1001795 times)