Hey all,

 

In the coming days we'll be hoping to disable the ability to keep old versions of modifications in our downloads section and remove all old versions of files from our system. This feature of the IPS download system has never been fit for purpose, and hasn't really worked right from the inception, with the ability to restore old versions and download them simply not working most of the time. It is completely inconfigurable from an administrative standpoint and we've never been able to, for example, change the default action of saving previous versions to being off without making theme/core edits.
This action alone should allow us to reclaim around ~150GB of disk space.

Authors can optionally include old versions as files on their download (which is already done by a lot of authors), or they can create a new file with the old version.

If you need help retrieving an old file, please let Cyan know before the 9th November.

 

We're also hoping to streamline our upload process. We've started work on a new uploader system that we're hoping will be more reliable, provide more verbose details at each stage of the process and deal with very large files. A test of this system should be available by the end of the year.

 

If you have any objections or want to air some feedback on any of the above please just leave a comment here!

 

Cyan

 

EDIT: For clarification, the feature we are removing is this:

You won't be able to pick old versions and download them. Authors can optionally include old versions as files on their download (which is already done by a lot of authors), or they can create a new file with the old version.

If you need help retrieving an old file, please let Cyan know before the 9th November.

@Cyan This has nothing to do with your post, but when will status updates be back? The drama has seemed to die down a bit

44 minutes ago, OfficerWalters said:

@Cyan This has nothing to do with your post, but when will status updates be back? The drama has seemed to die down a bit

We haven't yet made the moderation changes we've wanted to make yet. Once we have, we'll have a discussion internally about bringing them back.

Good changes. 

Any old versions you want to be available, you can just put in the list of files. Win-win really.

 

Looking forward to the (much-needed) new uploader!

Yard1's ELS pack (GTA IV) will be screwed because of this, there's the main files and then there are four patches, which uses the "old versions" system. So unless that gets updated I guess people will be downloading the original version with bugs.

2 hours ago, Pipeline said:

Yard1's ELS pack (GTA IV) will be screwed because of this, there's the main files and then there are four patches, which uses the "old versions" system. So unless that gets updated I guess people will be downloading the original version with bugs.

 

I really doubt he's using the "old version" system for that. What Cyan is referring to is an automatic feature that IPS has where an old version of a file is retained in the server when a file is updated, and is supposed to allow members to download those old versions. If you click "See changelog" on some files, a list of versions will pop up that you can select from. You are supposed to then be able to download that old version, but it's never worked properly.

 

That's what we are removing. You should still be able to have multiple different files in a single upload.

Will there be an alternative for mod authors to provide older versions of their files? Some authors keep older versions (for older RPH versions) available when backwards-incompatible changes are made.

Other than that possible side effect, this seems like a great update - no more dealing with randoms who've managed to find some obscure six-month old version of your plugin and ask you to fix things that're fixed in the current version lol

5 hours ago, willpv23 said:

 

I really doubt he's using the "old version" system for that. What Cyan is referring to is an automatic feature that IPS has where an old version of a file is retained in the server when a file is updated, and is supposed to allow members to download those old versions. If you click "See changelog" on some files, a list of versions will pop up that you can select from. You are supposed to then be able to download that old version, but it's never worked properly.

 

That's what we are removing. You should still be able to have multiple different files in a single upload.

Oh, I see! That's absolutely fine then. Thank you for clarifying.

6 hours ago, Darkmyre said:

Will there be an alternative for mod authors to provide older versions of their files? Some authors keep older versions (for older RPH versions) available when backwards-incompatible changes are made.

Other than that possible side effect, this seems like a great update - no more dealing with randoms who've managed to find some obscure six-month old version of your plugin and ask you to fix things that're fixed in the current version lol

That should stay the way it currently is, this just affects versions that pop up when you open the changelog on the download page as those are currently still saved when an author updates the files.

As part of this change will you be fixing it so that the "last updated" date doesn't change when you just modify the description? 

I would have thought that would reclaim more than 150GB. a 1TB HDD costs less than 100 bucks...

21 minutes ago, orley said:

I would have thought that would reclaim more than 150GB. a 1TB HDD costs less than 100 bucks...

We're not exactly low on space, we just have no interest in keeping a feature that doesn't work. If $100 isn't a lot of money to you, feel free to push the donate button at the top of the site!

47 minutes ago, PNWParksFan said:

As part of this change will you be fixing it so that the "last updated" date doesn't change when you just modify the description? 

This change is mostly a database change. We'll have an additional update to the code shortly that will fix this issue.

i think its a good idea. i cant see why we would anything older than the previous versions of anything anyways.

7 hours ago, orley said:

I would have thought that would reclaim more than 150GB. a 1TB HDD costs less than 100 bucks...

not on a server, it doesn't. although, it depends on whether they're using SAS or SATA... or if they're using SSD's, and again, whether they're using SATA or PCI-E... but yeah, server space is more expensive that you might think

10 hours ago, Commissar said:

not on a server, it doesn't. although, it depends on whether they're using SAS or SATA... or if they're using SSD's, and again, whether they're using SATA or PCI-E... but yeah, server space is more expensive that you might think

Not even just that, there's also RAID setups which makes things very costly very fast. Then you've also got to find space within backup drives for this unnecessary data. 

Are we still able to see the change log or is that gone as well.