News - ModBlog

11 comments by stenchy on Feb 25th, 2008 digg this super bookmark

Now that I've recovered from the fallout of GDC, it's time to get on with the next episode of the newly named "Modcast" - Mod DB's feature podcast that covers news from within the modding and indie development community. Moving forward I'd like to make this a bi-weekly thing starting out and arrange guests for every show. This show aims to be more then just the rants and opinions of a couple of people. We want to share the perspectives and knowledge of some of the most active developers within our community.

That being said, I would like to annouce the confirmed guests for the next show. Daniel Menard and Marc Möhrlin from the Eternal Silence team will be joining us to share their thoughts and (hopefully) reveal some more information about their upcoming 3.0 release. If you guys have any questions of you own that you'd like to ask, post them in the comments and we'll try to get to them in the show. Stay tuned modders!

10 comments by INtense! on Feb 7th, 2008 digg this super bookmark

For a while now the Mod DB upload system has been fairly limited, slow and error prone. Hopefully these days are over thanks to a BIG upgrade just deployed. The following core changes have just been made:

• Tons of behind the scenes bug fixes which should make the system quicker and stable.
• When adding images to your gallery, you can now add up to 10 images at a time, saving you the hassle of adding them one by one.
• When adding downloads or videos, you now have the option to "upload from url". This means we can mirror files quicker than ever before. Simply enter in the direct URL to the file you want Mod DB to have, and our server will grab it at speeds upwards of 10mbit a second (2gig in a couple of minutes). This should help out many of the BF2 mod teams who seem to produce massive mods.

As always, let us know what you think and any bugs you run into (if you are experiencing issues, make sure you refresh the upload page to ensure you are running the latest Mod DB code). This system combines Javascript, PHP APC, WGET and AJAX meaning it is quite complex but appears to work well in every browser but Safari (which works 90% of the time).

23 comments by INtense! on Jan 19th, 2008 digg this super bookmark

One of the hardest things to do as a mod / game development team spread all over the world is to keep in touch and keep conversations running in an orderly manner. Hell, it is even something we struggle with behind the scenes at Mod DB which is why we put a LOT of thought into the just launched private messaging system.

So how will it help with inner-team conversations and what is different from the old v3 private messaging system? Quite a bit actually:

• Threaded conversations: Private message conversations are threaded, which means they are essentially private little forum threads between you and the receiptents. This means that you could start a private conversation between all of the modellers on your mods team so that they can share and show off the work each other has done. It also means gamers can easily contact your mod team, and you know if someone from your team has already answered the question saving you doing so also. It also keeps all of the messages in one organized group, and not spread among 50 different email messages
• Group contact: Now that Mod DB has groups, you can contact any group linked with any game, mod, engine etc and all of the members who are in that group and ranked "contributor and above" will receive the private message, saving you the hassle of hunting down individuals to contact
• HTML support: Full HTML is supported, so you, your friends and fellow developers can send images, detailed updates and more to one another
• Email notification: If you are offline and receive a private message, an email notification will be sent (which you can turn off in your profile settings), so you never miss an important message again
• Autosuggest friends: When sending an private message your friends will appear in the TO box so you don't have to remember their exact username
• Search / filterable: You can search and filter PMs you have both sent and received, so you can find exactly what you want without wading through heaps of old crap.

To get started using the PM system you can view your inbox, sent items or compose a new message. Just look out for the "little message" icon on the top left corner of Mod DB, which indicates how many unread PM's sit in your inbox. Oh and no PM's from Mod DB v3 have been copied over because they don't use the new threaded system. If you would like your PM's, please contact us and they will be restored.

18 comments by stenchy on Jan 10th, 2008 digg this super bookmark

As some of you may have noticed already, I've been active behind the scenes here at Mod DB for a little while and we've decided to formally make it known that I've been recruited as the Editor-in-Chief. So this is me - stenchy aka Ryan - saying hi. Hi, how ya doin'?

One of my main roles here at Mod DB is to manage and produce content. Expect to start seeing stuff that's a step up from what you have been used to around here, we've got some surprises in store. I plan to focus on the creativity at the heart of this community and hopefully spur many of you forward with the resulting inspiration. There's a lot of great work being done in this community, some of it recognized and some not. Mod DB should be all about getting together to let others know about our creations. I'll be digging around to make sure all the best works have a voice and are appreciated, as well as going behind the scenes of some of your most favorite mods. I hope you guys enjoy all of it.

Know of a released mod that deserves some attention? Mod leaders, feel like you want to let more people know about all the hard work you've done? Then ping me via ryan(at)moddb.com - I'll see what I can do for you. Also, don't forget to watch my blog, as I'll be posting up some insider content and interesting tidbits from time to time on there. Happy modding folks!

34 comments by INtense! on Dec 10th, 2007 digg this super bookmark

One of the new v4 features which we have been hard at work on for a long time now is the ability for mod and game developers to upload videos to their mod, game, engine, group and personal profiles for people to view YouTube style! Our video rendering and delivery server is now up and running, and ploughing through the waiting videos.

We encourage you to start uploading videos and audio to your profile for your fans to watch! For those that want the technical details of our implementation, we are using the open source program ffmpeg to render all videos using the Sorenson H.263 codec. This is the same codec used by YouTube, but our own tweaks mean that you'll get much better quality from us. In the near future (When support for it becomes more commonplace) we'll be moving to the even higher quality H.264 codec, making videos on Mod DB an amazing way to showcase your work.

Now for a few demo embedded movies:

As always let us know if you have any problems with this feature and we will investigate. Enjoy the media (note. because it takes a good 10 ~ 20minutes per video to render, it will be a while before our servers catch up and all videos are playable, approximately 12 hours)