Caverns of Xaskazien II - Hosting?

[Virtua Sinner]

I've been working on my roguelike, Caverns of Xaskazien II, for somewhere around 6 years now.  It's not completely finished (what roguelike ever is?) but it's been playable for half a decade.  I keep telling myself I'll just wrap up this one more feature, then I'll release a Beta, but I've been saying that for years, and I think I'm just being cowardly about releasing.  I should just pull the damn trigger already.  I don't know anything about hosting it, though.  Are there any common sites where I can make it available to download?  It's around 740 MB unzipped...

Thanks!

[getter77]

itch.io probably?

[jcd748]

I used dropbox at the start, before I set up a domain for my own game.  You could try a solution like that?  Worked fine for me.

[akeley]

Great to see another-classic-RL-returns surprise!

I played CoX for a bit recently while adding it to the Archive and loved it...hope the sequel is as retro-cool as the original. Guess the 740 MB size is mostly due to some crazy .wav files...sound even better than in the first one? ;)

Amazing news!

[Virtua Sinner]

I'll look more closely at itch.io when I get home from work, tonight.  $3.00 doesn't seem like much to host the game, but I was hoping for some place free, as I'm giving many years of work away for free.

Dropbox might be the obvious answer I'm overlooking.  Can I make a portion of that open to the public and simply provide a link here?  And (forgive my complete lack of internet savvy) will I be charged if traffic is excessive in downloading?

Akeley: it does carry on the tradition of the original, but isn't really retro.  Has dozens of times the content, fairly pretty graphics with coloured lighting, orchestral soundtrack, thousands of sound effects and (I hope) a decent mouse/keyboard interface.

[jim]

How awesome is it when a mysterious virtuoso just rolls out of the ether and drops a gig of roguelike goodness on the world? I'm excited!

[akeley]

it does carry on the tradition of the original, but isn't really retro.

I`ll miss those funky oldschool sprites from part one, but it`s gameplay that`s most important so glad to hear you stick to the roots. Better FX is most welcome too, of course (orchestral soundtrack? Phew!)

Itch.io seems the best option since this way you can expand your audience immensely. It`s a fairly popular site and anybody looking up "roguelike"/"rpg" tags or just simply browsing will see your game. I`m not even sure if they really charge anything for uploading? That`s as opposed to just having a dropbox/similar link buried in a thread on a niche forum.

Why not use both options...far as I`m aware it should be all free, Dropbox too.

[Zireael]

IndieDB/ModDB is free as far as I know.

[Virtua Sinner]

Thanks, I'll check that out, too.  My wife has rightly pointed out that I need to hold off a short bit, however - the game is promised as an indiegogo perk to certain people who contributed to a separate project I'm involved with, so it would be kind of douchey to make it simultaneously available to the public.  Very soon, however - definitely within the next few weeks.

[getter77]

Good on ya aiming to do those folks right---bodes well for the overall success of the project in the long haul.  I mean, why not have this make a far greater lasting impact than the first CoX going forward?   

[Avagart]

IndieDB/ModDB is shitty hosting... I mean, they are good websites, but I always have issues with downloading files.

I think that - if you have not own site - best way to sharing files is dropbox (especially with orangedox extension - it provides tracking the number of downloads) or just 'releases' or 'downloads' sections on github/bitbucket.

[Virtua Sinner]

I do have my own site, but I've always understood that excessive traffic on the site will result in higher billing to me.  I could have that wrong - I'm not really that up to date on such matters, as I said.

[jcd748]

I'll look more closely at itch.io when I get home from work, tonight.  $3.00 doesn't seem like much to host the game, but I was hoping for some place free, as I'm giving many years of work away for free.

Dropbox might be the obvious answer I'm overlooking.  Can I make a portion of that open to the public and simply provide a link here?  And (forgive my complete lack of internet savvy) will I be charged if traffic is excessive in downloading?

Akeley: it does carry on the tradition of the original, but isn't really retro.  Has dozens of times the content, fairly pretty graphics with coloured lighting, orchestral soundtrack, thousands of sound effects and (I hope) a decent mouse/keyboard interface.

Honestly, I'm not sure what the dropbox policy is for excessive downloads, but I've never had to provide a credit card number, and I've never had any issues with people downloading.  But, my downloads are fairly small (the zip for each version is ~2.5 MB), so YMMV.  I've since switched over to a hosted solution where I think I have like 5 GB of space and unlimited traffic.  For my needs, with a small website and the aforementioned small binaries, this is fine.

Looking forward to seeing your game when it's released!

[Tzan]

Here is a link to the Dropbox transfer policy:
https://www.dropbox.com/en/help/4204
Free is 20 GB / day
Paid is 200 GB / day

When a web host sells you  space for $5 to $10 and says its unlimited transfer, its a lie.
Its a shared host computer and your site needs to play nice.
You cant have massive traffic like Facebook and expect to pay $5 per month, so its not unlimited.
An information site for a game is fine.

I set mine up recently with MDD Hosting and I have 250GB/month transfer, for the Basic account $7.50/month.
I have a link on my download page that grabs the file from Dropbox.
I set up Google Analytics and set an Event on that link so I can count the clicks on it.
Dropbox has NO available stats, not sure why.

I found this site very helpful.
https://www.reviewhell.com/web-hosting-guide/

You should probably read this too.
https://www.reviewhell.com/blog/endurance-international-group-eig-hosting/

[Aleksanderus]

I found this video about this game: https://youtu.be/zmcN7xNpLgY