A plea to the developers of mods, walkthoughs and other add-ons.

[poprune]

I can't speak for other users of the site, but I hold anyone who make a positive contribution to the site and our enjoyment in the highest regard; that's original developers and the people who spend their time to entertain us us with mods, walkthroughs and other add-ons.
However (that had to come didn't it?), on the behalf of those users who, like me, tend to trawl through the postings and pick out things that they like and have often found themselves with a directory full of files labelled 'walkthrough' or 'mod', or maybe just 'pc' with no idea just what they are (and with contents that offer no help) can I plead to all producers of mods, walkthroughs and any sort of add-on files to label them (externally or internally and preferable both) with at least the name of the game to which they apply and, if there are version requirements, the version affected. I know it's a chore and a damned nuisance and I appreciate that; perhaps you could look at it as 'the professional thing to do'.

It really would help. And save my carpet from being chewed...

Thank you all for reading this.
Regards and stay safe; don't let the bug bite.

 

[anne O'nymous]

[...] can I plead to all producers of mods, walkthroughs and any sort of add-on files to label them (externally or internally and preferable both) with at least the name of the game to which they apply and, if there are version requirements, the version affected.

Yes you can and, personally, I'll try to remember this in the future.

 

[poprune]

Yes you can and, personally, I'll try to remember this in the future.

Thank you most kindly.

 

[polywog]

It really would help. And save my carpet from being chewed...

I get where you're coming from, every file on the internet should have a unique filename, but it's not a perfect world.
So as a work-around for dealing with all the incompetence out there, here's what I do when downloading...

I copy the thread title - [RPGM] Roundscape Adorevia [v4.8] [Arvus Games]
create a folder, and paste the name.

Then I put all the downloads in that folder. game.rar, walkthrough.pdf, gallery mod.rar, bugfix,zip
and if there are other install instructions, or cheat codes, etc. I save a screencap as well...

Then everything in that folder is related to that game, and ready to install.

 

[poprune]

View attachment 657215

I get where you're coming from, every file on the internet should have a unique filename, but it's not a perfect world.
So as a work-around for dealing with all the incompetence out there, here's what I do when downloading...

I copy the thread title - [RPGM] Roundscape Adorevia [v4.8] [Arvus Games]
create a folder, and paste the name.

Then I put all the downloads in that folder. game.rar, walkthrough.pdf, gallery mod.rar, bugfix,zip
and if there are other install instructions, or cheat codes, etc. I save a screencap as well...

Then everything in that folder is related to that game, and ready to install.

View attachment 657231

No, it's not a perfect world and rugs aren't carpets. Still, as the wise man said: 'aim for the stars but don't be surpridsed if you trip over a match-stick'. I do wish people would stop throwig matches around...

 

[Sphere42]

Maybe you're talking about collections in google drive or MEGA but for typical game downloads just use the "Extract to <folder with name of archive file>" option. 7zip has it on Windows and is good to use overall. Then if you download other files from the thread such as saves, walkthroughs, mods, maps or the like just dump them in the folder you automatically had created while unpacking the game.

In the specific case of save files NOT renaming them actually tends to be preferable as different games/engines use different, usually hardcoded, naming schemes for their saves. If the original name is kept the save will work immediately once dropped into the correct location (which the provider should indeed specify) and only those who fail to organise their downloads properly suffer from confusion. If the file is renamed everyone needs to pay attention to the proper naming conventions and you will still need to change it back to "save.dat" in order to actually use the file.