Install takes over 15 hours? (solved for me, thanks)

[Farya]

Hi there!

I live in germany and was a great fan of the thief series. Today I heard about "The Dark Mod" the first time in my life and wanted to give it a try.

Unfortunately, the download/install of The Dark Mod takes very, very long.

I've got four different mirrors I can choose from (Germany, East US, France), which all need over 15 hours.

Is this a problem of mine or is there any other source I can get the game from? I don't want to leave my PC on for that long time, just to download.

Thanks in advance for any helpful answer

Edit: Nevermind, I loaded the standalone from another mod page, after a litte more research.

Edited December 2, 2021 by Farya

[Zerg Rush]

Here in Spain I had to reinstall TDM again because of a computer disaster, it didn't take more than a few minutes.
The installation time naturally depended on several factors, such as the speed of your connection, the operating system, the use of an AV or security soft that can hinder the download ...
But still, 13 h is inexplicable, except you use some old 56k modem
The Dark Mod has just over 3 Gigabytes. which even in a slow connection should not take, at most, half an hour 

[freyk]

We got slow downloadmirrors. In the installer, choose another mirror.
Or use the sollution you found:
Downloading the standalone from moddb.
(but dont forget to run the installer/updater after unpacking)

[stgatilov]

It would be interesting to see log files of tdm_installer to see if something wrong is going on.

Also, you can try to disable "multipart byteranges" on the very first page (it should be the last under advanced settings), maybe you have some problems with it.

I'm living approximately in the middle of Russia, and all mirrors work pretty well for me. 15 hours is not normal: it means something very bad happens. Moreover, one mirror is located in Germany, and it should be perfect choice for you.

Even if you downloaded TDM from another source, it is still recommended to run tdm_installer and let it update to the current release. It should take some time to "analyze" your data, but after that it will download only the necessary diff.

Also, we have a torrent (seeding from the very same http mirrors) for 2.09a, but it has been recently superseded by 2.09b.

[datiswous]

On 12/3/2021 at 7:59 AM, freyk said:

Downloading the standalone from moddb.
(but dont forget to run the installer/updater after unpacking)

If I remember correctly, the standalone doesn't include the installer and therefore it has to be downloaded separate. I assume this will change with 2.10 standalone.

[stgatilov]

8 hours ago, datiswous said:

If I remember correctly, the standalone doesn't include the installer and therefore it has to be downloaded separate. I assume this will change with 2.10 standalone.

Actually not.

tdm_update was always bundled with TDM, because it was versioned and released synchronously. You could not use new tdm_update to get an old version... installing old version was not supported at all.

Now tdm_installer versioning is totally separate from TDM releases. That's because every TDM release is treated as a bunch of zips with a few hardcoded archives auto-unpacked (and some whistles like desktop icon). As the result of such simplification, old versions of TDM are supported, and you should always used the most recent version of tdm_installer. For this reason, tdm_installer is no longer bundled with TDM release, so you need to download it from the website.

Another reason to download tdm_installer from TDM website is security. If you have downloaded it from a different server, you cannot be sure that it will install a correct build of TDM and won't silently turn your machine into monero miner (or destroy your data as cryptolocker). Luckily, this danger is still only theoretical for TDM, but better be safe.
On the other hand, it does not matter where you initially got 3-4 GB of TDM zips: after you run the correct tdm_installer on your TDM installation and let it successfully finish, you can be sure that it does not contain anything malicious (well, I won't be surprised if there are holes for a malicious TDM to survive tdm_installer run, but that would be way too targeted attack).

[Xolvix]

The main issue I've had with downloading TDM is that it uses a selection of mirrors that can vary wildly in download speeds for various reasons. That said, when you first run the installer it will download a tdm_installer.ini config file that contains information about (among other things) the list of mirrors to use. When the installer actually gets going it seems to randomly flick between mirrors for each new file to be downloaded. If you find that a particular mirror is being dog slow, close the installer, edit this .ini file and near the top there will be the mirror list. Remove or comment out the ones you see as being slow, then run the installer again, click the "Advanced settings" checkbox and click the "Skip config file download" checkbox. This will force the installer to use your existing, modified config rather than a new downloaded copy, hence it will use your modified selection of mirrors which will hopefully only have the fast ones.

[datiswous]

2 hours ago, stgatilov said:

For this reason, tdm_installer is no longer bundled with TDM release, so you need to download it from the website.

Ok but the description for the standalone version (The Dark Mod 2.09 FULL on moddb) states:

The entire Darkmod 2.09 download in one archive. No need to run tdm_installer.

Some people are downloading this version (because of mirror issues) which does not include the installer and the description says you don't need it.

[stgatilov]

29 minutes ago, datiswous said:

Ok but the description for the standalone version (The Dark Mod 2.09 FULL on moddb) states:

The entire Darkmod 2.09 download in one archive. No need to run tdm_installer.

Some people are downloading this version (because of mirror issues) which does not include the installer and the description says you don't need it.

Yes, this is a strong reason for @nbohr1more to make sure at least 2.09a is uploaded there.

[datiswous]

2 hours ago, Xolvix said:

The main issue I've had with downloading TDM is that it uses a selection of mirrors that can vary wildly in download speeds for various reasons.

Well in the installer if you select you want a custum version, you can specify the mirror, but I found that this doesn't always work. Often you have to select the mirror from the pull-down menu and after that you see that it still downloads from the old mirror. When you cancel, restart and then select the mirror again, it does download from that mirror. But it should do that immediately (bug?). Also I think you should be able to select a different mirror when you don't opt for a custom version at the start.

Edited December 6, 2021 by datiswous