ModDB?

If it's not ZDoom, it goes here.
Artman2004
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ModDB?

Post by Artman2004 »

Honestly, I have very mixed feelings about ModDB. On one hand, it's a pretty reliable place to find mods, especially Doom ones. On the other hand, there tends to be a lot of junk uploaded to the site, like someone's "first map" where they slap together a bunch of boxy rooms, fill it with monsters and call it a day.

What do you think about the site?
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wildweasel
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Re: ModDB?

Post by wildweasel »

It's not terribly easy to find what I'm looking for, there, even when I'm directly linked to it. A given game or mod can have any mod uploaded to it by anybody. Even if you've got a page for your own mod, any random person can upload their own file to it. It's difficult to really define boundaries with the way the site works, and any time there's something bad going on with a submission, the "Report" button doesn't give any room to explain what the report is about.

There's probably still dozens of copies of my mods floating around on there that I didn't upload or give permission for. The one time I ever asked their staff to take one down, they instead transferred ownership of the page to me and implored me not to delete it. :shrug:
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KynikossDragonn
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Re: ModDB?

Post by KynikossDragonn »

The fact that the OP says people can get away with "junk" uploaded to the site makes me wonder why those submissions aren't "archived" such that they never appear in search results as has happened to some of my things for totally arbitrary reasons.

I only really registered to ModDB just to make sure nobody can impersonate me on that site anyways.
Professor Hastig
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Re: ModDB?

Post by Professor Hastig »

The site is a complete mess. It is just a typical modern hosting site that's all flashy, putting countless obstacles between me and the data. And these unchecked downloads by unrelated people don't make things easier.
Gez
 
 
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Re: ModDB?

Post by Gez »

Artman2004 wrote: Tue Mar 14, 2023 3:04 pm Honestly, I have very mixed feelings about ModDB. On one hand, it's a pretty reliable place to find mods, especially Doom ones. On the other hand, there tends to be a lot of junk uploaded to the site, like someone's "first map" where they slap together a bunch of boxy rooms, fill it with monsters and call it a day.

What do you think about the site?
You could say the exact same thing about /idgames.

Or about pretty much any other mod hosting site, for any game really.

Ideally, the mod hosting site should just host mods, regardless of their quality, and people should find mods by using community places like forums.
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Scripten
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Re: ModDB?

Post by Scripten »

Gez wrote: Wed Mar 15, 2023 8:29 am You could say the exact same thing about /idgames.

Or about pretty much any other mod hosting site, for any game really.

Ideally, the mod hosting site should just host mods, regardless of their quality, and people should find mods by using community places like forums.
I think Professor Hastig made a very solid point about the UI on ModDB being far more interested in flash over substance, to the point of losing intuitive sense, though. Might just be familiarity, but the plaintext display on idgames makes it way easier to navigate. It would be cool to have image embedding or screenshot/thumbnail uploads, but overall, it's one of the most usable hosting sites I've ever run across. I do find most of the mods I play on here and DW, though, so maybe it's confirmation bias at work.
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Re: ModDB?

Post by Gez »

My point was basically not to even try to navigate ModDB, lol. I only go there if I follow a link that goes there.
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Scripten
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Re: ModDB?

Post by Scripten »

Oh yeah that's totally fair. I do find it annoying when all of the info for a given project is only on ModDB, mostly for the same reasons.
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Hexereticdoom
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Re: ModDB?

Post by Hexereticdoom »

In my honest opinion, I cannot say that it is a bad website. At least, I have not had any bad experience to highlight so far with it. In fact I have several mods and addons hosted on it and I have never had any serious problems. Something that cannot be said of other websites that I have met browsing around there... :nope:

It can be a bit chaotic to explore it if you don't really know what you're looking for. But otherwise, whatever you're specifically looking for, you'll find it very quickly (if it exists, of course).

Anyway, and like the vast majority of web pages, I couldn't recommend visiting it often in case you are not equipped with a good adblock tool in your browser... (Yup, I hate ads, banners and nag screens, I mostly can't stand them). :bang:
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Phredreeke
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Re: ModDB?

Post by Phredreeke »

I've considered uploading to Internet Archive as a secondary source for my upscale packs, but haven't done it out of laziness. May do so once I update the Duke ERP.

As far as ads are concerned, when I view it on my iPad (no adblocker) I don't find anything too intrusive
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Kinsie
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Re: ModDB?

Post by Kinsie »

I remember there being issues back in the day with them refusing to moderate harassment ("just spin it into promoting your project" or some stupid shit like that) and with one of their staff cold-contacting people here asking them to upload their mods there. While I tend to go there to download old Unreal Tournament mods and I'm not going to tell people what they should or shouldn't do, the place gives me bad enough vibes that I don't intend on uploading any of my crap there.

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