From:
[email protected] (Frans P. de Vries)
Subject: The idgames Archive hits 1 Gigabyte
Newsgroups: rec.games.computer.doom.announce,rec.games.computer.doom.misc,rec.games.computer.quake.misc,comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action,alt.games.doom
Followup-To: rec.games.computer.doom.misc
Date: 23 Jun 1996 23:58:26 +0100
Keywords: idgames archive milestone
One DOOMed Space Marine, and the Terror He Spawned
The idgames Archive hits 1 Gigabyte
California, June 23, 1996--A remarkable point in the history of games
was reached today: the primary Internet FTP archive of add-ons for the
wildly popular 3D action games DOOM, Heretic, Hexen and Strife (all
based on the DOOM-technology) reached the 1 Gigabyte milestone.
This archive, to be found at
ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/idgames/ but
commonly known as just "ftp.cdrom.com", carries the collective results
of over two years of developing, hacking, designing, programming and
building add-ons by game fans throughout the Internet community. No
other game family has spawned such a large collection of add-ons, and
it still keeps on growing.
And what could be more appropriate than this event coinciding with,
and being invoked by, the release of Quake shareware, id's next game? :)
()()
A short history of the events leading up the current milestone:
Dec 93 - DOOM is released; add-ons appear at various FTP sites, such as
wuarchive.wustl.edu and ftp.uwp.edu.
Mar 94 - First DOOM FTP archive at ocf.unt.edu, maintained by Barry Bloom.
May 94 - UNT administrator pulls plug on ocf.unt.edu as DOOM FTP site.
Backup infant2.sphs.indiana.edu (Jim Pitts) now becomes primary.
Nov 94 - Infant2 goes belly-up. ftp.orst.edu is temporary DOOM FTP site.
Dec 94 - Walnut Creek (ftp.cdrom.com) becomes primary DOOM FTP site and
joost schuur takes over maintenance.
May 95 - Jeff joins to maintain the 'lmps' section; the archive is 400 MB
Dec 95 - Frans joins after he can't take the 600+ files backlog in
oldnewstuff anymore ;)
Jun 96 - The cleaned-up archive makes the 1 Gigabyte watermark at the
instant Quake shareware is released.
()()
What is the current contents of the archive? This listing shows the
amount of Kbytes occupied by each directory in the archive (some subtrees
snipped for brevity):
6052 deathmatch
3515 docs
35047 graphics
20918 idstuff/doom
2183 idstuff/doom2
153 idstuff/dwango
9054 idstuff/heretic
23180 idstuff/hexen
6611 idstuff/idsirs
1866 idstuff/imagery
10 idstuff/misc
24212 idstuff/quake
988 idstuff/source
89177 idstuff
3 incoming
19310 levels/doom/deathmatch
137353 levels/doom
170949 levels/doom2/deathmatch
348242 levels/doom2
5444 levels/heretic/deathmatch
15565 levels/heretic
3551 levels/hexen/deathmatch
11061 levels/hexen
592 levels/reviews
1 levels/strife
512821 levels
13245 lmps/COMPET-N
1899 lmps/H2HMud
19010 lmps/dht-exams
12 lmps/dmk
2517 lmps/doom
22633 lmps/doom2
4 lmps/forms
5 lmps/heretic
17 lmps/hexen
462 lmps/incoming
2 lmps/newstuff
59809 lmps
1553 misc
15732 music
12989 newstuff
9806 roguestuff
107056 sounds
5654 themes/TeamTNT
32298 themes/aliens
4186 themes/apt
4046 themes/barney
12140 themes/bnb
1537 themes/chook
5009 themes/drwho
7374 themes/mm
3546 themes/omf
6101 themes/simpsons
4858 themes/startrek
20631 themes/starwars
3718 themes/twc
3604 themes/university
2259 themes/wtf
25329 themes/x-rated
4019 themes/xmas
146311 themes
7359 utils/exe_edit/patches
8350 utils/exe_edit
10162 utils/frontends
3524 utils/graphics_edit
18976 utils/level_edit
3456 utils/misc
1041 utils/network
687 utils/randomizers
1444 utils/save_edit
2561 utils/serial
1443 utils/sound_edit
6202 utils/unix
2215 utils/wad_tools
60063 utils
1060722 .
The total number of files in the archive is 13962.
()()
Of special interest might be the number of level files (left columns)
and the total number of maps in those files (right columns):
CountLevels v2.0, files & maps in the idgames/levels tree
(c) jun '96 by FPV (
[email protected])
Doom Doom 2 Heretic Hexen Regular
========================================================== *******
0-9 24 57 0-9 25 48 0-9 2 2 0-9 0 0
a-c 169 371 a-c 216 430 a-c 10 16 a-c 8 13
d-f 135 375 d-f 161 369 d-f 8 28 d-f 1 1
g-i 93 149 g-i 93 148 g-i 25 34 g-i 24 34
j-l 54 82 j-l 70 124 j-l 4 6 j-l 3 17
m-o 96 231 m-o 126 293 m-o 10 26 m-o 2 2
p-r 81 122 p-r 86 180 p-r 9 13 p-r 0 0
s-u 172 259 s-u 176 332 s-u 12 18 s-u 1 2
v-z 47 181 v-z 43 56 v-z 3 3 v-z 1 6
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
871 1827 996 1980 83 146 40 75 1990 4028 (grand)
Doom Doom 2 Heretic Hexen DeathMatch
========================================================== **********
0-9 9 17 0-9 49 284 0-9 1 1 0-9 0 0
a-c 50 77 a-c 303 581 a-c 24 25 a-c 5 14
d-f 60 112 d-f 315 819 d-f 16 28 d-f 9 9
g-i 18 27 g-i 197 434 g-i 29 46 g-i 48 55
j-l 31 35 j-l 110 260 j-l 7 10 j-l 4 4
m-o 30 31 m-o 165 250 m-o 6 6 m-o 2 2
p-r 27 77 p-r 144 336 p-r 14 18 p-r 2 7
s-u 45 65 s-u 246 416 s-u 12 12 s-u 6 21
v-z 13 45 v-z 89 165 v-z 9 9 v-z 2 2
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
283 486 1618 3545 118 155 78 114 2097 4300 (grand)
()()
But perhaps most impressive is the sheer volume of data that is being
transferred in and out of the archive each month:
Month Files Megabytes
=============================================
August 1995 892,560 108,557
September 747,047 99,521
October 669,028 184,132
November 802,803 161,312
December 710,606 125,095
January 1996 770,969 130,160
February 712,700 151,331
March 969,110 227,530
April 803,054 192,327
May 687,285 156,299
()()
In closing, the archive maintainers would like to thank:
- Walnut Creek for their support and the disk space to keep the archive
- All FTP sites around the globe that mirror the archive
- id Software, Raven Software and Rogue Entertainment for developing the
games we all enjoy so much
- All Doom/Heretic/Hexen/Strife fans that made this archive into what it
is today, and who keep us from having a life ;-)
We hope to continue this service, and expand it with the idgames2 archive.
--
[email protected] (joost schuur)
[email protected] (Jeff Makaiwi)
[email protected] (Frans P. de Vries)
