I know. I was being a bit too broad in that statement. I meant to say that particular piece of the tree, more specifically, that port. Poor choice of words :\
Before it printed "error code 1", I could see what was wrong, it couldn't find the tarball it was looking for in any of the web addresses it was set to look for (isn't that what error code 1 is?) The ports tree, up to this point, has been flawless for my needs, and I didn't really know how to proceed. I guess every now and again this type of thing can occur.
My solution was simple; locate the exact version of the tarball, drop it into distfiles, then the system handled the rest (dependencies and etc).
--Q