A quick request.

[Bulbatron]

Having finished and thoroughly enjoyed Amnesia, I'm well up for playing some custom levels!

Trouble is, I can't play most of the ones that are out there because I'm using the Mac version.

One user did very kindly zip his map so I could play it, and it worked a treat and was easy to download and get working.

So, if it's OK, I just wanted to make a request to anybody who is developing maps for other users to download, or indeed, anybody who already has maps available for others to download and play.

Would you be willing to pack your custom stories / maps into a zip so I can download and play them on the Mac?

I would really appreciate it if users could do this for me, and pressumably for other Mac users.

I'd love to be able to play some of the great looking maps that are out there!

Thanka for reading my plea. Sorry if it was a bit rambling.

[gosseyn]

you won't make me believe that there's no solution to extract rar files on mac.

[Bulbatron]

I'm not trying to.

It's just that I'm not very technically literate, and I found downloading the zipped map really easy, that's all.

If packing maps into zips is difficult and/or complicated, then obviously I completely understand why users wouldn't want to do this.

[Jinix]

Okay. So what is the argument for rar over zip?

What does rar-ing a file do that zipping one doesn't?

[Joseph Curwen]

.rar is closed source, .zip is an open file format. So un-raring can be quite a pain in Linux. I would like it if custom stories would be packed in a more Linux-friendly format ( .tar.gz or .zip ) but not with a windows-only installer. =(

[fenixkane]

(09-25-2010 10:58 AM)Joseph Curwen Wrote:  .rar is closed source, .zip is an open file format. So un-raring can be quite a pain in Linux. I would like it if custom stories would be packed in a more Linux-friendly format ( .tar.gz or .zip ) but not with a windows-only installer. =(

How is it a pain? Does your distro not come with an archive manager?
Just right click and extract here, no need for terminal.

I understand it's not open source but it's also really fast so.... (but if you want good compression 7z is the way to go)

[Joseph Curwen]

I think the archive manager uses some implementation of the unrar-lib that doesn't support some of the newer archives. These can be extracted with command-line tool 'unrar-nonfree'. I think thats a bit cumbersome.

[Bulbatron]

Well as I said, I'm not all that computer-literate, so I haven't understood half of what you guys are talking about.

If packing maps into a zip is a complicated or cumbersome process, then I can understand peoples' reluctance to do so.

All I know is, that I found it really easy downloading a zipped map. No extra software required; just place the unzipped contents into the right place - easy.

Perhaps when/if the Mac editor is released, then more people will be willing to zip their maps.

In the meantime, I realise that nobody is obliged to zip their maps, I'm just asking if people would be willing to do so - as a favour.

[Neurological]

The process to use zip or rar is the same, so is not any different for who release the map to zip it instead of rar it.

Surely the rar format can compress more, but I don't see any map so far that is so big in terms of mb.

[Bulbatron]

Oh, I've just discovered the Showcase sub-forum, where I was able to download one more (very good) custom story. So that's two I have now. I might have been better to start this thread there, had I known about it. Oh well.