Argh. Chalk me down for another "not really a bug but a serious-enough usability issue IMO that it goes in this particular forum" thing.

The short version is: I know a lot of folks in the Doom sphere o' life that aren't BotBrs that I keep up to speed with the latest Xasermusics, but when I link things on IRC and elsewhere, nobody can permanently save the track (except for the 2 or 3 of 'em who have accounts here). This really limits sharing and forces me to double-upload my stuff, which is going to be a real pain until I can get around to organizing some soundcloud/bandcamp stuffs.

THE_QUESTION: Can we make a change and allow guests to donload? I suppose there's a good reason why this limit was imposed in the first place (e.g. hotlinking prevention or ensuring donload count stays meaningful), but there are other ways of stopping hotlinking (see http://alistapart.com/article/hotlinking for a superquick reference) and I don't really think that unrestricting the donload counter is that bad a thing. If we'd rather just have Donloads from logged-in BotBrs count, though, that's okay too.

I guess the big monkeywrench would be bandwidth concerns if there's a legitimate fear of someone linking a song page and getting 100,000 donloads overnight... but if that's the case, that still makes me wonder: why can we -stream- the tunes but not donload 'em? Same thing, resource-wise. Actually probably less because if someone wants to replay a track a day later, they already have it on their machine and don't have to re-stream. ;)

Anyhow, those are my musings. Dunno if anyone else agrees but it's worth a bring-up since I've at least gotten multiple IRC Doomland complaints about it. :P

Maybe there could be something where you could give a download code to your friends that would be good for a couple days that they can use to download the song. Then after they download it they can listen to it all they want without using the site's resources!

One of Xaser's points is that it DOESN'T use that much of the site's resources.

I actually signed up partially for that reason: I found the .spc files, but I realized I couldn't download any of them. So I signed up partially because I really wanted to get those .spc files, as I found new authentic SNES music by anyone other than me to be a rarity.

It's honestly a good bargaining tool when I try to convince my friends to become botbrs. Allowing guests to donload would remove that leverage, also it would invalidate the "maybe because I'm a noob" line from usability.

"What is donload?"

"I wish I could donload"

What I qualify as authentic SNES music, by the way, is something that I either have tested as a conversion to .spc format or is already in .spc format. Merely using SNES soundfonts does not qualify due to possible memory overflow.

@kfaraday n' others: "More BotBrs!" is a good idea in theory, but the practical effect is the opposite. I'll post a BotB link and immediately hear some folks go "oh, I can't actually donload the track*" and lose interest in using the site because they cannot use it without jumping through a hoop. The "this is inconvenient; I'm going to do something else instead" train of thought is really common, especially for those nutty multitasking folk (like myself) who probably already have another bucket of distractions waiting at any given moment.

Similarly to this, if I ever want to share my song with a non-BotBr, I'm probably going to need self-host the track at some point, after which I'm just going to link that instead of linking to BotB, leading to less BotB pimpage. Das sad. D:

Regarding active participation, If someone wants to participate, they're going to register an account when they want to anyway. To pull in KFF as an example, I can't imagine that he never would've signed up eventually, since the reason he stuck around is because he found cool music, not because he happened to have an account regged. Relaxing the donload restriction ought to increase the number of folks who arrive by such means, since the crowd who views BotB as "that site with the awesome music" will grow to include those who aren't interested in regging (yet). Which I maintain is a looooot of people.

It's an artificial barrier, and taking it down ought to Do No Harm (:P) and increase the potential userbase, even. I do feel rather strongly about this, since it's actively been a counterproductive thorn in the side of a guy who's been trying to promote BotB. Don't make this hard on me, guys, I'm tryin' a' do good. D:


[*or "I wish I could donload," if you will ;) ]

I knew of BotB way back from when I didn't make chipmusic, but only joined to download some tracks I hadn't seen from some musicians and were exclusive to here. It took me a while to figure out what the site really did though.

sidenote: without logging on you can donload the vote- and final packs of ohcs.

I do like the (current) idea of streaming for everyone and registering for donload; that should be nice enough to keep visitors interested. It would be up to you to submit an mp3 for streaming (for your friends). Still, streaming doesn't do anything for your charts; donloading does. Lastly, anonymous donloads could be too tempting for bots, sniffers and virus-dumping-peepz I guess and increases the risk for this site being misused.

my 2 paranoia nubs

I don't think there's anything wrong about getting new BotBrs.

This is probably obvious, but if you feel like you really want to share your own music, you probably should use other solutions to do that like Dropbox or whatever you personally prefer...

i am agreeing with xaser here, i think guests should be able to donload songongongs. but maybe it could work like guests listening, you don't get any points for guests listening/downloading (i think thats how it works?)

BotB indeed wouldn't be appropriate as a platform for long-term hosting+sharing -- that's indeed what things like Soundcloud, Modarchive, Bandcamp, etc. are for -- but short-term "hey look at this thing I just did*" or "check out BotB and also this example I made" sorts of sharing ought to be easier. Also the point I made earlier about having to direct folks away from BotB when I really don't want to. >:

[*the key mental image here is some guy shouting "LOOOOK AAT MEEEEE!"]

Strong agree with Xaser. People who aren't signed up won't conduct themselves in the same way as someone who has already signed up and eagerly produces material for the website. With no prior investment in the site, they won't bother signing up just to download something only to discover how wonderful the world of BotB is now that they have an account. Our consumer-driven culture doesn't work that way.

THIS WEBSITE MUST BE ROUGH AND THORNY AND DETER THE WEAK FROM BECOMING ITS USERS.

I miss my skulls. :(

you have to be really smart to do this kind of thing in the first place

This speaks to why we just had a major battle centered on the bewilderment of a n00b. That's part of the charm of BotB...

Seriously, I don't think it's a big deal for us to use social media-driven platforms such as SoundCloud to share our BotB musics.

Anyone should be able to come to BotB and listen, but donloading should be strictly for registered BotBrs.

I dunno man, I just feel like opening it up to the "public" like that potentially creates problems. We have a Bandcamp too. I realise that's only for majors and it's somewhat limited in scope, but it at least gives BotB an "official" public face.

As far as OHB stuffs...I'm about to release a collection of my best ones. I've been wanting people outside BotB to hear them. I'm definitely not sending them here just to have them knock over lamps and poop on the carpet and cause havoc.

Those are just my random thoughtzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZzzzzzz




sorry I feel asleep

"I dunno man, I just feel like opening it up to the "public" like that potentially creates problems."

When you wake up, elaborate. I can't wrap my head around unregistered people being able to download songs being a bad thing, especially when the damage you're worried about here:

"I'm definitely not sending them here just to have them knock over lamps and poop on the carpet and cause havoc."

...can only possibly happen if they register.

botb's primary function is as a competition platform for registered users, not as a file hosting service. noobs can play renders, that should be plenty

If you wanna host songs, why not host them on dropbox or soundcloud? Setting up either of these and uploading your songs there seems to be pretty straightforward. The only pain I see in here is enduring soundcloud's horrible website layout, but that's an entirely subjective thing anyway since most people seem to actually like all these orange buttons shouting HEY!!!!!!!! at them.

Enabling donloads for guests has a reasonable chance of making BotB more costly in terms of both money and headache to maintain for our puke. I don't think it's worth the benefits.

I don't know, I sometimes feel BotB has gotten a bit too big for its own good. It doesn't help when I see people repeatedly shout "moar BotBrs" after each other, without even reasoning why it would be a good thing in the first place. ;3

The only problem I have with the current system is that people will create accounts just to download a tune or two and then ever use them again. Unused accounts make me sad. :(

I kinda like the way the barrier to entry insulates us a little. We're a welcoming community, but you have be willing to come to meet us. I like the feel of BotB as this island away from the heavy traffic. Maybe other people would like to see BotB become the hugest huge thing ever though with 1 billion users daily. I honestly probably wouldn't stick around for that, but that's just me.

Actually, now that I think about it, I know that many BotB users don't really like all their OHB entries on public display after the contest is over (not me though, I have no shame), and probably this slight inconvenience for outsiders is a small comfort to them.

There is no downside to unregistered users being able to download songs.

Like, point-blank. I don't understand where you guys are coming from at all.

(On the "why not host on soundcloud?" point: because someone being able to download a song from botb without logging in doesn't mean you're suddenly using botb as a hosting service. Streaming and downloading a song are functionally almost the exact same thing.)

if i provide a botb link from my youtube upload to show that the video upload is a botb entry (as do many other youtube-botb users), those new people introduced to botb will JUST download that song and then never come again

but you don't even need to register at ALL if you just inspect the network activity, viz. http://puu.sh/85V1V/f1a174e2b8.png http://puu.sh/85Ve3/3cbd27e943.png

EDIT: soundcloud is just same with botb, you can download these audio whether the uploader allows or not

I don't like the concept of people making accounts just to donload songs, so I'm all for guests being able to donload.

Or make it a 'premium' service even for members, only $6.99 USD for a month's work of track donloading! Sign up now!

Diez cushions, dies cushions...

Dies cushions look fabulous with new carpet.
Can we have an oh hay battle instead?
:D


(I don liek payservices... this is about fun, not prosticushions)

I'm all for an oh hay battle! ^o^

Still waiting for an official announcement by the ambassador in this subject --> http://battleofthebits.com/barracks/Profile/signup2dl--jerks/

:P

though after seeing the majority of snesology i have to agree with kff

I'm not sure if it was clear, but I'm fairly neutral on the issue. To reiterate: I think the current system is OK because I don't mind it being superficially difficult for "outsiders" to download BotB music, and I am not opposed to the proposition of change, largely because I think it would reduce annoying dummy accounts.

If I make music that I wanna share, I have other methods that I prefer to share it with. Trying to get content to non-BotBr people via BotB isn't an issue to me, because I'd rather deliver it to them by familiar/known venues like YouTube etc.

Overall, I don't think it would be a bad thing if people could share their BotB music more publicly. I was just giving reasons why it's comfortable for many of us in its current form.

but if we get rid of the download restrictions, doxic will have a significant drop in the amount of people he will be able to greet!

<Doxic> can we remove this

i verily said unto ye, that we remove doxic altogether, but none of you listened

can we also delete this thread of a non-issue

@Xaser: That's one way to put it. Plus, I felt I had finally found a place that I could produce .spc music and see how I stacked up, even though I came

This place is the reason why I'm making music for more consoles now, including the NES.

@HertzDevil: I actually almost attempted to enter SNESology, but I eventually decided it wasn't worth it for two reasons:
- They seem to use only samples from actual video games, and the games seem to be limited to some of the more common ones.
- I don't think they're aware enough of memory limitations... or on the flip side, pitch limitations (I'm not completely sure if they try to go that high in pitch, but I'm just guessing). I tried one of the songs since an .it files was available, and it failed right off the bat due to memory overflow. I actually think of my earlier songs before I could even try to convert some of this stuff mainly because of my own oversized samples and/or pattern collections... I'd have to make a whole new sound driver that can swap and/or stream data in real time. Yeah... not pretty.

I'm tempted to make one with pitch modulation and noise and see if they accept that.

snesology is not worth entering for reasons much lower than that

also honestly your source files should not be located on your computer in a more disorganized manner than the botb interface, so that you could batch share your sources (even a format-less html in one dropbox directory would do) and provide more info over what was fixated on the botb site after the ohc submission period
_{but then again i have not joined enough OHCs to have said that w/e}

non-botbrs do not need such displays of botb social networking as tags and "recent battles" if they just want to come from an IRC channel and listen to your newest music releases. botb provides streaming and file storage functionality but the interface is far from being a sole file storage service

but the MP3 donload on botb is still a non-issue for guests

Yeah... plus, making music for SNES games is ten times better. I also have my own game ideas for the SNES, and maybe I'll use the little-used Project Dev section of the forums. I already have some soundtracks developed for some of these game ideas.

My source files for Battle of the Bits are usually organized alphabetically for major battles (I usually come up with the track names after producing the song in these cases).

@HertzDevil: Hmm, knowing that you can snag the mp3 from viewing the source is helpful (thanks there), but that's still a hack rather than a solution. And it's close enough that from my perspective I'm all "aaaagh why can't we make the small change." D:

Though I don't blame folks for liking BotB the way it is, I'll disagree by default with any sort of "but exclusivity is good!" sort of thing, since letting guests do this one extra thing isn't going to upset the existing balance. The whole Usability thing has of course gotten us all thinking about how fun BotB's quirks make the site (self-faves P: ), but this isn't one of the fun ones. D:

Dunno why I'm tossing this out as well, but I don't feel as if the site needs any sort of rewrite or overhaul in the slightest. Heck, if this one thing was changed, my complaints would vanish. Except maybe that failed-upload-eats-your-description bug, but I digress. :P

[Also disclaimer and clarification: I wasn't actually properly-quoting Doxic or anything, just subtly referencing his "can we delete this" line. Which now I realize is stupid and misleading in retrospect because it looks like a misquote. Sorry, Dox. D: ]

Guests can't donload the sources OR the mp3s either? Hm. Someone should write a "botb donload" add-on for chrome and firefox, :P

It seems a bit weird for me to think that anyone who isn't persistent enough to make a botb account would have the various players and trackers on their computers to play the non-mp3 files. If you want them to be able to listen to the tracks you link, I would suggest you upload a render if it doesn't already have one :\

I don't know how I feel about this. I never had any interest in checking out BotB until i actually joined. I never came here to listen to music. Only to battle.