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Author Topic: Discussing Ideas for New(?) Lazy Newb Packs  (Read 2217 times)

jecowa

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Discussing Ideas for New(?) Lazy Newb Packs
« on: June 27, 2016, 04:35:29 pm »
A place to discuss ideas for Lazy Newb Packs.

Continuing discussions from these places:

Some ideas for packs:
(Sorry if I missed any important ones. I'll add more here if you like.)

Is there anyone wanting to maintain a pack with one or any of these as a goal(s)? Nuget102 offered to make a "bare bones" pack if anyone wanted here, but no one responded.
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Nudibranch

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Re: Discussing Ideas for New(?) Lazy Newb Packs
« Reply #1 on: June 27, 2016, 07:02:38 pm »
PTW

Personally if it was not for MacNewbie pack and DT I am not sure I would have lasted too long with DF.  I had spent a lot of time reading and researching on how setting up DF, but those made it tremendously easy as a newb to mange the simplest of things, such as settings and selecting graphics.  Even the file structure makes it easier.  A simple one stop shop launcher makes all the world of difference getting into this.

DFHack is nice as well, but for me a nice to have.
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Maltavius

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Re: Discussing Ideas for New(?) Lazy Newb Packs
« Reply #2 on: June 28, 2016, 07:53:38 am »
If the launcher could trigger downloads of supported utilities that would be awesome.

But until then for size management, just use 7-Zip instead of Zip or Rar.

7-Zip is completely free whilst WinRAR is trial software. Zip is basically supported everywhere.

The compression is about 27% better on 7-Zip versus Zip and RAR on the PE Pack and Masterworks.
Which results in about 30MB less.
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Nudibranch

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Re: Discussing Ideas for New(?) Lazy Newb Packs
« Reply #3 on: June 28, 2016, 01:40:09 pm »
Quote from: Maltavius on June 28, 2016, 07:53:38 am
If the launcher could trigger downloads of supported utilities that would be awesome.

+1 to this idea.
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Findulidas

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Re: Discussing Ideas for New(?) Lazy Newb Packs
« Reply #4 on: June 28, 2016, 11:01:27 pm »
I personally feel that downloading everything and turning it off/on like it is now is no problem what so ever. It will be the saves that take up the most space as usual for me anyway. By a large margin usually.
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Quote from: Archereon on April 08, 2016, 01:16:38 pm
...wonderful memories of the creeping sense of dread...

Dirst

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Re: Discussing Ideas for New(?) Lazy Newb Packs
« Reply #5 on: June 28, 2016, 11:13:34 pm »
Quote from: Findulidas on June 28, 2016, 11:01:27 pm
I personally feel that downloading everything and turning it off/on like it is now is no problem what so ever. It will be the saves that take up the most space as usual for me anyway. By a large margin usually.
Well, just uncompressing the download takes up a lot of space, too.  The reason the download size is important is because every megabyte of download is (1) slow and (2) for some people metered.

I don't know the internals of how the LNP self-updating works, but if that mechanism could be turned to downloading/updating arbitrary packets from DFFD, it would be freakin' awesome.  Just include a stub of each tool (version 0.0, maybe a dummy textfile for content), and let the player update the ones desired.

Some of these elements may be harder to integrate than others, and others may be too tiny to be worth tracking individually, so there might be some things that need to be downloaded as bundles.
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Just got back, updating:
(0.42 & 0.43) The Earth Strikes Back! v2.15 - Pay attention...  It's a mine!  It's-a not yours!
(0.42 & 0.43) Appearance Tweaks v1.03 - Tease those hippies about their pointy ears.
(0.42 & 0.43) Accessibility Utility v1.04 - Console tools to navigate the map

jecowa

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Re: Discussing Ideas for New(?) Lazy Newb Packs
« Reply #6 on: June 29, 2016, 01:19:22 am »
While I think it'd be nice to reduce the hard drive space used by Lazy Newb Packs, the bigger issue with file sizes is that they use up more bandwidth and take longer to download. Not everyone in the world has fast, reliable internet with unlimited bandwidth. Canada and Australia come to mind, but there's probably people in other places who are a lot worse off.

Canada's telecoms are fighting against things like Netflix and imposing bandwidth caps on their customers. If you go over your allowance, you have to pay a fee. The CEO of Netflix calls Canada a third-world-internet country. The average bandwidth cap is 200 GB per month. 200 GB isn't too bad, but that's the average; there are people who get a lot more and people who get a lot less.

The Australian ISP is good friends with the government. In 2008, 16% of Australian internet customers were still on dialup. When my friend went to live in Australia for a couple of years (2014-2015), he had 512 Kbps download speed on his ADSL internet. At 1 Mbps, it would take 20 minutes to download a 150MB (143 MiB) file.

pyLNP is 7 MB zip compressed, Dwarf Fortress is 13 MB zip compressed, DFHack with StoneSense and TWBT is 18 MB zip compressed, a "very large selection of graphics packs"* is 30 MB zip compressed. If you limit it to just the "very most popular graphics packs"*, those would only take up 14 MB zip compressed.  If you put in all those things, that's a 68 MB New Pack. If you limit it to just the very most popular graphics packs, then that would make a 52 MB Newb Pack. Then if you take out the DFHack stuff too, that makes a 34 MB Lazy Newb Pack.

*Very large selection of graphics packs (30 MB):
Spoiler: "list" (click to show/hide)

*Most popular graphics packs (23 MB):
Spoiler: "list" (click to show/hide)

*Very most popular graphics packs (14 MB)
Spoiler: "list" (click to show/hide)

Although convenient to include, Dwarf Therapist doesn't need to be installed into the Lazy Newb Pack to operate. With Dwarf Therapist getting a feature to auto-update its memory layouts soon, it would make sense to offer Dwarf Therapist as a separate download in a pack designed to help people suffering from poor internet.
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Maltavius

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Re: Discussing Ideas for New(?) Lazy Newb Packs
« Reply #7 on: June 30, 2016, 11:57:59 am »
Yes well people have limited Internet, that's always been the case.

But if you are on a metered connection, wait a few months after the latest stable release so that it gets patched. THEN download.

Dwarf fortress doesn't update that often so it should be a problem.

I'm lucky to be in Sweden. I have a 100/10 MB fiber with no limits.
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