Yup, I'm having the same problems as you two.
Man do I hope that PsiCorps comes back.. I've tried Pm'ing him but I'm guessing he has forum email alerts disabled.
There appears to be a multitude of serious issues with the latest release:
The first issue is hosting/downloading..
Link 1 takes you to megafileupload, a horrible old hosting site well past its prime, and the owners know it hence why it's filled with so many more invasive adverts these days, they don't even care how dangerous some of them are. When you click on the free download button the download doesn't start and you get hit with advertising windows. If you keep clicking on the button bringing up more and more evil advertising cr*p it eventually starts the download. However when it finishes chrome immediately blocks the file saying it has detected that it is harmful. If you override it and try to access the file you get hit with the second issue I'll get to in a min.
Link 2 takes you to a mod description page with an outside link to a sourceforge page. This is much better and should be the first primary link to protect your fans from all the horrible mega upload stuff. HOWEVER this link to the sourceforge page files area is broken and incorrect. In the end I had to do a google search for the b5 civ mod Sourceforge page just to get to it the correct way. I was able to download the file without any evil advertising and I didn't get any harmful file warnings however once again I was hit with the second issue below..
The second issue is the 7z download file itself as is either damaged or tampered with..
When I finally got the file from both different sources and tried to open it in 7zip I got a "cannot open this file as an archive" message rendering it useless. Nor was I able to find any alternative downloads via google. Since no previous/older versions are available for download this latest broken release has essentially terminated the life of this mod. The project is possibly dead now and can't be kept alive by its fans unless the author returns and fixes these issues.
Possible solutions:
Options if author PsiCorps returns..
1. Fix the link to the Sourceforge files page (making sure you test it before posting it) and make it your first primary download link instead of that god awful spamming megaupload. Soureforge is great for hosting multiple versions of the same mod meaning that if a new release is broken users can simply download the most recent version before the broken one. If you get hit a by a bus or you randomly disappear of the face of the internet right after a broken release, your mod & hard work will live on.
2. Create a ModDB page for your project, trust the guy who literally tributed hundreds of fan projects on his website and has seen what the guys who got it right did and the guys who got it wrong didn't do lol. ModDB is what most people use these days for their large scale mod projects, it's like a file hosting blog that makes a fan project look sexy. You can post news, it hosts videos, pictures and most importantly it supports downloads, and like sourceforge you can have a history of version downloads so if the new one is no good fans can get to the older ones.
3. Create a facebook group for your mod. Fans can easily converse and shares pictures and stories of their games. Plus facebook group pages allow file hosting for files up to 100megs (I believe yours is around the 70meg mark). A lot of modern fan projects these days have their own facebook communities due to the decline of forums (last decade most large fan projects had their own forums, I miss those days!).
4. Host the file yourself, these days its dead easy to host files for others without all the evil megaupload style issues. If you have a hotmail/live account then you have a free one drive. If you have a gmail or google youtube account then you have a free google drive and finally most people have drop box accounts too. They all offer a few gigs of free storage so just chose one or more of them to upload the file to and set it's privacy to public and then grab its share link for here and your good to go. Personally I use my one drive to host all the downloads (often long lost demos of dead fan projects) for my website, very easy to use.
5. Get rid of the megaupload link or at least put it at the very bottom of possible link mirrors lol.
If author PsiCorps doesn't return..
Does anyone else here have a relatively recent copy of this mod? Eg a dedicated fan or another member of his team? If so I'd be more than happy to host a copy of the file on my website. Even though I haven't got any 'sexy pictures' of this mod yet I'm going to try and create a preliminary tribute page with what I've got and I can then host a copy of the file there for fans if I can just get a working copy of it.
Blake's Sanctum:
- Total Conversion mods: Star Trek Doom 2, & Star Wars Civilization 2
- Game Shrines: Age of Wonders,
Babylon 5 Fan Games, Command & Conquer, Elder Scrolls, Dune Games, Final Fantasy, Freelancer, Heroes of Might & Magic, Master of Magic, Quest for Glory Series, Starflight, & Star Trek Games
- Movie & TV Shrines: Lord Of The Rings & Hobbit, & Star Trek
- Emulation
Although I'd already found a lot of those you've given me a few more nice shots. Problem is they're great at showing off the detail of the ship models and some close up battles but they give zero idea of the actual game to B5 fans who are not familiar with Civ 4 or Civ4 Final Frontier mods.
