You know what I'd pay for?

[rubeszilla 12]

Hiya,

Y'know downloading and installing a gig of plugins is - as y'all know - a royal pain in the sittin' cushion. Many Baters have themed work and it would be so nice to get all of their work in one download/install then doing it individually.

Many of us have high speed broadband these days and so the STEX CD's have no real appeal. It's faster and just as easy to download content then it is to wait for a CD to arrive. However, if the Simtropolis STEX CD/DVD compiled the small numerous files of each Bater into one large one, then that would be very appealing.

Go download all of Goofyguytpa's wall to wall buildings, as I did recently, for example, there's half a day just there. One zipped folder, "The Goofyguytpa Collection", unzip into your plugins folder, walah! one minute.

I'd happily pay for that.

[T Wrecks 10,209]

On the other hand, personally I only wanted one or two of goofyguytpa's buildings, and I wouldn't appreciate a huge all-in-one pack at all. Not to mention that I'd cause 95% of the d/l traffic for that all-in-one pack for nothing.

The STEX is not prepared for such large files, either, and it's not supposed to become an exchange for paid content. In fact, I've seen how paid content has led to huge arguments, quarrels and endless bickering in the Sims scene, so 'Im glad that things are free and peaceful for SimCity.

Etiquette is another aspect - would you consider it nice if someone took and bundled all your creations and offered them somewhere? Not to mention if someone made money with the stuff you made?

Now you might say "Of course the money should be collected and transferred to the rightful creator", but have you ever thought about creators that are no longer active in the scene? And what about teams where the work was distributed over several people? Who gets the money, and how much of it? 50:50? 70:30? 20:20:25:15:10:5:5 in case of a bigger team? Who will handle all the infrastructure and workload you would need to process these payments?

Don't forget that the time you spend to click a download button and unpack a ZIP file is ridiculous compared to the time and work that content creators put into their creations, and to the ongoing work and dedication of those people who run the sites from which you download comfortably. Just how much work was downloading and installing all of goofyguytpa's stuff really, if you're honest? One hour to download, half an hour to unzip? Congrats, that's probably the time goofyguytpa spent to model the general outlines and shape of one building that would take him some more weeks to finish modeling, texturing, tweaking, nightlighting, exporting, modding, packaging, documenting and uploading. Or the time spent by the admins of this site to fix one stupid STEX bug.

[SpokaneFlyBoy 2]

As T Wrecks points out, there would be a lot of issues with it being a paid service, but I do like the idea. Several authors have done similar, such as LBT packaging all their hospitals or SimGoober and JBSimio packaging all their schools. It would be safest to leave it as it is — up to the authors — but I would encourage authors to package more of their themed bats into single download files, and perhaps Simtropolis will allow them to keep the individual downloads available for those that only want pieces.

A thought just occurred to me. There's a thread asking for ideas on improving the new STEX. Perhaps drop a suggestion for a way to link files that are considered a themed set and a system that can combine the .zips into one archive (I've been to sites that auto-archived multiple items before). On a file's page, it might say something like "This file is part of a theme", and be a clickable link that takes you to a page that lists all of them, then at the time have a "Download all sets in theme" link.

Having never approached a system like that in my web building, I'll admit I'm not sure how complicated it might be, but it is a thought.

[rubeszilla 12]

Thanks for your replies but you may have misread me. I was talking about the CD/DVD's that we donate for to keep Simtropolis running not the online STEX.

"Perhaps drop a suggestion for a way to link files that are considered a themed set and a system that can combine the .zips into one archive (I've been to sites that auto-archived multiple items before). On a file's page, it might say something like "This file is part of a theme", and be a clickable link that takes you to a page that lists all of them, then at the time have a "Download all sets in theme" link."

Now that is a brilliant idea for the online STEX SpokaneFlyBoy!

I'll certainly suggest it.

(merged the two posts. Try not to double post)

- On second thoughts, this wouldn't make much of a difference, as developers zip their uploads individually anyway. Some mix installers with zips as well. So you would still have to wade through the folders individually.

Nope, this is really a developer's choice in the end.

I still stand by my initial statement though; I have no interest in a STEX DVD other than to support Simtropolis, but if Dirk did actually get permission and had the time to repack plugin sets into uber singular files then I would definately fork out $$ for such a DVD.