Morrowind

Download system overhauled on site and in NMM

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I’m pleased to announce that with the release of version 0.30.1 NMM will now work with our new download system that was described in one of my previous news posts.

With the new download system your downloads are balanced across our entire file server network (currently 10 file servers). Non-premium members are capped at a download speed of 1MB/second (8mbit) across all their downloads. If you download 1 file, you'll be able to download at a maximum of 1MB/second. If you download 2 files, you'll download at 500kb/second for each file. 4 downloads would be 250kb/sec per file. And so on and so forth. Premium members are obviously uncapped and will be able to download as fast as their connections allow. We've also added another Premium-only download server in the US for their use.


We’ve made changes to how the Download Manager part of NMM works and also what it shows. Hopefully you’ll find the new columns available within the download manager far more intuitive than before as we’ve done away with the whole “step” system and made it more like a standard download manager. You can now more easily see how your downloads are progressing and how long they’ll take to download at current speeds.

Perhaps the only thing that needs explaining now is the “threads” column. Threads are how many separate download processes NMM is using for each of your downloads. When you download a file NMM splits the file in to smaller chunks to make things easier. It also means if your download fails for any reason NMM can resume from the previous chunk without you having to download all the way from the start of the file again. If you’re a Premium Member NMM can download multiple chunks at once, which works to speed up your file downloads and ensure you’re downloading as fast as your connection allows. If you can only download from a file server at 400kb/sec (because, for example, the file server is physically far away from your location) then downloading a single file with multiple threads will allow you to download at multiples of 400kb/sec, depending on how many threads NMM uses. 4 threads would be 1,600kb/second, for example. For normal members this is always limited to 1 thread. For Premium Members this is set to default at 4, but we’ll give you the choice to lower or raise that amount within NMM soon. And just to note: threads also apply to downloading manually through the site, so if you're a Premium Member who doesn't use NMM, compatible download managers should make use of multiple threads as well.

If you’re wondering why we show you the thread column if you’re a normal member it’s because I like the idea of you at least knowing what Premium Membership can give you. If you can’t afford it or you just don’t want to support the Nexus sites then that’s absolutely fine, but Premium Membership directly funds our work on NMM and the Nexus sites, so the more people I can tempt to become one the better! With that in mind, you’ll now find a new download bar at the bottom of NMM that will show different views depending on whether you’re a Premium Member or not. As previously mentioned, normal members are limited to downloading at a maximum of 1024kb/sec across the Nexus Sites. NMM will now show you how much of your total allowance you are currently using. If the progress bar is in the red, you know you’re using up most of your download speed allowance and Premium Membership might benefit you. If you’re a Premium Member, NMM will show you your total download speed and the percentage progress of your file downloads.

Premium Member or not we’ve worked very hard on not only improving the stability and reliability of downloading through the sites via both mediums (browser and NMM) but we’ve also enabled download manager and pause/resume capabilities for all members. On-top of that, NMM has built in error checking and retry capabilities now. If for whatever reason a file download isn’t working NMM will automatically attempt to retry your download over the course of a minute. If you get any errors now that require you to manually resume a download, or make you unable to download a file at all, it’s probably quite a serious one (like the server being down, or the file being missing for some reason) and will need to be reported.

This update to the site has taken about 10 times longer than we originally estimated it would (we thought it would take 2 weeks, it’s taken 25 weeks...) but we wanted to do it right, and at this point we’re quite happy with what we’ve done. We’ve tried to test it as extensively as possible but we can’t stress test it without putting it live for everyone to use. Our fingers are crossed that nothing major comes up because I know I’m tired of talking about downloads, as are Axel and DuskDweller, and we’re ready to move on to other features that have been waiting a long time due to the delays we’ve had with the downloads. If you do come across any problems please keep us posted in our tracker, but if you’re also noticing an improvement feel free to throw your praise at us in the comments, it’d be good to know we’ve got it right!

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  1. DrakeTheDragon
    DrakeTheDragon
    • Moderator
    • 305 kudos
  2. Teekay27
    Teekay27
    • member
    • 0 kudos
    I'm getting download errors as well, and I've tried several different mods. I've not downloaded mods before so I'd really enjoy the comfort of downloading through the manager :/
  3. Rolandito
    Rolandito
    • member
    • 1 kudos
    I'm attempting to download SkyUI 4.1, and I'm getting an error from all download servers about it being unavailable?
     
    This is a manual download attempt (I'm not using NMM).
     
    http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/3863
     

     
     

    Error

    The site has run in to a problem, please look at the error message below...

     

    Download down

    Sorry, it seems like this file server is struggling with this file at the moment. Please try downloading the file from another file server.

    Note: if this is happening on all the file servers there could be a problem! Head to the forums and let us know!

     

    Sorry for the inconvenience!

  4. Velehk
    Velehk
    • member
    • 1 kudos
    I recently upgraded to the latest, and now I get the "server is unavailable" nonsense whenever I try to download a mod... 
  5. bulldozar
    bulldozar
    • member
    • 0 kudos
    I never had problem with your site, the download speed and response time has always been fast and even when its busy the lag is reasonable just this three days, i keep getting the 500 Internal Server Error message popping up whenever I try to download something.
  6. bben46
    bben46
    • premium
    • 781 kudos
    @ebarrett85: Works for me, and about 1.5 million other users. What's your malfunction? <img class=">
  7. ebarrett85
    ebarrett85
    • member
    • 0 kudos

    It's been acknowledged in several other threads already, you're just in the wrong one. If you want a refund all you have to do is ask, and not be rude.


    Rude?People just want your program to work, ...so make it work
  8. Cardboard38
    Cardboard38
    • member
    • 0 kudos
    This really is starting to get irritating. I really hope this gets fixed soon.
  9. Illius
    Illius
    • member
    • 25 kudos

    I keep running into servers that flat out refuse to work. Many servers will state that they're ''busy or unavailable''. I was trying to streamline simplicity of one of my mods and it took me over an hour because it refused to download after I had uploaded, which made testing the improvement impossible.

    I assume it's national/location thing because the Amsterdam server seems to work flawlessly.

    But frustrating regardless. And a even bigger worry, how many other people are having this problem? If nobody can download it it kind of defeats the purpose of uploading the mod at all..


    EDIT:

    No, now it refuses to download the mod from any server. Seriously guy, this connectivity thing is killing me.


    I totally realize that Dark0ne and his team are doing the best they can, but this problem with the servers ( Although not killing me. )is freaking annoying the hell out of me at the moment. <img class="> I have been trying to download a few mods and i keep getting messages that the server could not load the page.
  10. BlackPuma
    BlackPuma
    • member
    • 13 kudos
    I keep running into servers that flat out refuse to work. Many servers will state that they're ''busy or unavailable''. I was trying to streamline simplicity of one of my mods and it took me over an hour because it refused to download after I had uploaded, which made testing the improvement impossible.

    I assume it's national/location thing because the Amsterdam server seems to work flawlessly.

    But frustrating regardless. And a even bigger worry, how many other people are having this problem? If nobody can download it it kind of defeats the purpose of uploading the mod at all..


    EDIT:

    No, now it refuses to download the mod from any server. Seriously guy, this connectivity thing is killing me.