Mega Updates

[Tom Henrik]

Hi there :bye:


After yesterday's tragic happening, which can be read about in this topic (http://www.abandonia.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=5252), we also have good news. Believe it or not.


First of all the server speed should increase drastically for all the downloads, making all the downloaders very happy.

Secondly we suddenly got a lot of free space on the server, which we want to fill up. This means Mega Updates, Giga Updates and even Bigger Updates :D



Now...
Obviously we need the help of you forum dwellers for this, and also we need to make sure that the new games are not ESA Protected.

How do we do this, I hear you ask... well, it's really simple really. The first thing you should do is to look up information on the game you want to supply using MobyGames (http://www.mobygames.com/home) or any other info-site. Then look really closely at the companies involved in the game. If any of the following names pop up, the game is ESA Protected, and you don't have to start reviewing it. Activision, Inc
Atari
# GT Interactive
# Hasbro Interactive
# Spectrum Holobyte
# MicroProse
# Infogrames Entertainment

Bueana Vista Games
Capcom
Crave Entertainment
Eidos Interactive
Electronic Arts
# Bullfrog
# EA Sports
# EA Sports BIG
# EA Store
# Maxis
# Origin
# Westwood Studios

Her Interactive
id Software
Konami Digital Entertainment
LucasArts
# LucasFilm

Microsoft Corporation
Midway Games, Inc
Namco Hometek, Inc
Nintendo
NovaLogic, Inc
SEGA
Sony Computer Entertainment
Square Enix, Inc
Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc
THQ, Inc
Ubisoft Entertainment

Vivendi Universal Games
# Blizzard Entertainment
# Coktel
# Fox Interactive
# inXile Entertainment
# Knowledge Adventure
# Majesco
# Massive Entertainment
# Mythic Entertainment
# Sierra Entertainment

Warner Bros. Interactive Entertaiment, Inc
Wild Tangent
If the game is clear of these producers, we will accept it. Remember to give a very good description of who made the game, and who published it. Again... use either MobyGames (http://www.mobygames.com/home) or any other info-site to help you out.

Thanks in advance, people.
Now let's get the site back on track :ok:

[Luchsen]

Originally posted by Tom Henrik@May 12 2005, 05:09 PM
First of all the server speed should increase drastically for all the downloads, making all the downloaders very happy.
Yes!!! :D Quintuple speed!

[lethe]

Originally posted by Tom Henrik@May 12 2005, 03:09 PM
### MicroProse
# Infogrames Entertainment
Electronic Arts (and the following subsidiaries)
# Bullfrog
# Maxis
# Origin
# Westwood Studios
[ ## Mindscape
## Strategic Simulations Inc
# Blizzard Entertainment

:cry: There goes 99% of the strategy industry.

[The Fifth Horseman]

Side note, there are some oddities concerning UBISoft's SSI heritage... some folk recently asked the company for using some sounds and music from Warhammer 40k: Chaos Gate and ended up with reply the sort of "What the hell is that game???".

[Tom Henrik]

Just a notion.

As we have a lot of free space on the server, we will accept games that was thought too big in the past. 100+ MB games, here we go :D

[Dino]

YAY! That's one of the good sides of this unfortunate event!

[Unknown Hero]

Ying and Yang! :Brain:

[rabadi]

Originally posted by Tom Henrik@May 12 2005, 09:49 PM
Just a notion.

As we have a lot of free space on the server, we will accept games that was thought too big in the past. 100+ MB games, here we go :D
Then would it be possible to get Anvil of Dawn ending movie/cutscene for download?

[TheChosen]

First of all the server speed should increase drastically for all the downloads, making all the downloaders very happy

Great! :ok:

The ESA caused a quite panic in this site. But Abandonia will rise again!!
Like Phoenix bird from the ashes!! :Brain:

[wormpaul]

Really bad that we so lost so many good games :not_ok:

But did HOTU lost them also??

But now again, give us good new games :bleh:

[Sebatianos]

New reviews - uderstood.
New games - undoubtably.
Mega updates - unlikely.

For a mega update we'd need many games, that would not be ESA protected and would still be abandonia quality (I don't think there's such a huge number of these games waiting in line for us start mega-updating).
If we get 20 of such games I'd rather see a whole month of (almost) daily updates, then one mega update.

[The Fifth Horseman]

But did HOTU lost them also??
No, they didn't. Sure this feels wrong.

With the current trend of game companies molding together, we might expect only a few mega-companies to remain on the market soon. Go figure what will happen then...

[Tulac]

Originally posted by Sebatianos@May 13 2005, 10:57 AM
Mega updates - unlikely.


I thought they meant mega update as a HUGE game being uploaded and not a huge number of games, but mayne that's just me being stupid :tomato:

[Tom Henrik]

Originally posted by Tulac+May 13 2005, 11:27 AM****</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Tulac @ May 13 2005, 11:27 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> ******QuoteBegin-Sebatianos@May 13 2005, 10:57 AM
Mega updates - unlikely.


I thought they meant mega update as a HUGE game being uploaded and not a huge number of games, but mayne that's just me being stupid :tomato: [/b][/quote]
Both ;)

[Kosta]

Originally posted by Sebatianos@May 13 2005, 09:57 AM
New reviews - uderstood.
New games - undoubtably.
Mega updates - unlikely.

For a mega update we'd need many games, that would not be ESA protected and would still be abandonia quality (I don't think there's such a huge number of these games waiting in line for us start mega-updating).
If we get 20 of such games I'd rather see a whole month of (almost) daily updates, then one mega update.
Oh there are lots of good games out there that weren't produced by ESA protected companies. Just browse around the underdogs and list "Top Dogs" only and you'll see. ;)

[Sebatianos]

There are many of them out there yes - but some are still being sold (even if some sites do offer them for free).
What I basically wanted to say was that it's better not to update too many games at the same time (so we won't run out of updates too soon - it's better to have a game or two waiting then not to have games updated because to many have been added at a certain point in time) and someone *let the owner of the site stay annonymous* said it's quality over quantity...

[Jeremiah]

what is HOTU?

[Sebatianos]

It's something that we can look up to in a way, but on the other hand it's something that could learn something from us as well - it's another abandonware site.

[Havell]

Home of the Underdogs (http://www.the-underdogs.org/)

[xcom freak]

I don't know if there are a lot of non-esa games out there not still being sold. BUt we should all really contribute to put all of them (the good ones of course) on the site. It would be like giving the finger to esa.

[rabadi]

Originally posted by Tom Henrik+May 13 2005, 03:07 PM****</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Tom Henrik @ May 13 2005, 03:07 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> Originally posted by Tulac@May 13 2005, 11:27 AM
******QuoteBegin-Sebatianos@May 13 2005, 10:57 AM
Mega updates - unlikely.


I thought they meant mega update as a HUGE game being uploaded and not a huge number of games, but mayne that's just me being stupid :tomato:
Both ;) [/b][/quote]
So, it's more about huge new games and huge number of new games being uploaded? Any chance of huge *extras* for existing games, like ending movie/cutscene for Anvil of Dawn, please, please, please? :help:

[Tom Henrik]

Sure, if anyone has them, that is.

[TaloN]

Originally posted by Tom Henrik@May 12 2005, 09:49 PM
Just a notion.

As we have a lot of free space on the server, we will accept games that was thought too big in the past. 100+ MB games, here we go :D
so you want CC2 now???

[Tom Henrik]

That game is still sold.

[hanging]

I can only suggest - but get someone to do realms of the haunting.. hardly anywhere has that :sneaky:

[Sebatianos]

Well we were preparing this very same game for Friday (the 13th) - would be a cool update, but making screenshots was a real pain in the donkey...

The game is still considered for an update quite soon, so stay tooned to the site!

[janm.l]

ok, for everybody who already has the Game Stunts!

Please try out these tracks! And report if you break some of my best highscores...


:-)

[janm.l]

ok, I have got some small games that were not produced by an ESA member. How and where can I actually upload them?

what about this one? It is a mod of "Digger", a very known XT game

cu, JM

[A. J. Raffles]

Erm, sorry if this sounds pedantic to you, Jan, but could you please try to avoid triple posting in the future? It's a bit annoying... And you should contact Kosta first before you upload a game.

[kOS]

Sooo, if Abandonia has more space on server and higher speed, it means that there will be bigger games on our site.

And that is a question. How big? I mean, my point is that maybe it's a good time to discuss about compression.

Today i have downloaded a cd version of DreamWeb game. Size was something about 100MB. After unpacking it - 230MB. It was compressed by UHA.

I remeber that Zaffo started this thread http://www.abandonia.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=5114&st=0

This fact made me feel very interested. Now, I am testing various formats on this game (zip, rar, uha, 7zip), so that, i can present you the final result of my little experiment soon :))

Could it be possible to compress bigger games with other (better) compression formats in future?

[BeefontheBone]

We've had this discussion a couple of times - generally we're sticking to .zip (and occasionally .rar) files because they don't require separate software to unpack, but if we do upload larger files it might make sense to use 7z for the better compression.

[The Fifth Horseman]

It changes from game to game. Sometimes 7z does great compression, sometimes it has virtually no difference to rar.
I agree with Beefonthebone that bigger games should be compressed with more efficient methods. Basically qualifying to that cathegory every game over 60 MB. Then the actual method used would depend on which one works best for the given game.

[kOS]

So that's my point :)

[Tom Henrik]

First Mega Update delivered.

Took me three days to get all 12 games ready.

[Flop]

Great job Tom Henrik. I gotta say I was baffled to see so many updates at once. Impressive.

[BeefontheBone]

Nice, although I have to admit I don't fancy playing any of those. Still, good work!

[Tom Henrik]

Originally posted by Flop@May 19 2005, 03:04 PM
Great job Tom Henrik. I gotta say I was baffled to see so many updates at once. Impressive.
Well....

I've done two 20 games updates in the past, so 12 is nothing ;)
Guess you weren't around then.

Thanks anyways for the comments :ok:

[Doubler]

Nice additions anyway. :ok:

[A. J. Raffles]

Great job! :ok:

Too bad I suck at strategy games... :D

[Sebatianos]

Heh - there goes twoweek of steady updates (one a day). When the :Tom: starts updating there's no stopping him! :ok:

[Tom Henrik]

Well... I had them ready yesterday, but then you updated Micro Machines 2.

So I skipped the update to today, and managed to get two more games running (Nobunaga's Ambition and Romance of the Three Kingdoms), both of these demanded special tweaking from DOSBox.

All the actual work was done in two days time.




What can I say... I work fast :max:

[Sebatianos]

I know what you mean... But now I have a bit more work catching up with the review translations :wall: And the Germans are only a few games behind *calls on Rainwife to help out with a game or two*

[Luchsen]

Originally posted by Sebatianos@May 19 2005, 05:46 PM
I know what you mean... But now I have a bit more work catching up with the review translations :wall: And the Germans are only a few games behind *calls on Rainwife to help out with a game or two*
NOOO!!! He has noticed it! Where is my dictionary?! Have to translate at least 200 games today! NOOO!!! There are only 23 remaining!

[Dino]

Grrrrrrrrreat job, :Tom: ! Oh, and BTW, do you know how much translators will suffer because of your MEGA UPDATE?! :ranting:
Now I'll have to do another one too! :D

[samtam90]

Great job! I wait for the next mega update (and i hope it's a mega update of RPGs! :D )

[Spoonman]

Originally posted by OvErLoRd@May 19 2005, 10:15 PM
Grrrrrrrrreat job, :Tom: ! Oh, and BTW, do you know how much translators will suffer because of your MEGA UPDATE?! :ranting:
Now I'll have to do another one too! :D
I know I will :P I suddenly noticed all the sequels :D

[Zxby]

Please, I have a questions. I read the forum rules about how you cant post any abandware web sites. I was wondering the reason why? Im not wanting to question the sites decision, im just curiuos of the reason. Is it legal?

Also, if you cant post the sites on here, and you cant refer people to a site that has the file/game that they are looking for, then how would one go about finding the game/file you need?

Finally, I read in a few other forums to look for "burners" - any ideas what that is? :wall:

Anthony

[Zxby]

One more question I forgot. Even though a game may be on the aforementioned ESA banned list, can you still add the name with complete description? This way should the game officially go abandonware, all you need to do is just add the files. What do you all think? Thanks,

Anthony

[Tom Henrik]

We have done that with a couple of games. Simon the Sorceror springs to mind. Problem is that making an update (with the game or not) is a LOT of work, and we would rather go through all that work with a game that can be downloaded.

Secondly, it would be irritating to those who looks at the news and goes "WOW! DOOM 3, this game is awesome! Whoo-hoo.... why can't I download it?"

We already get tons of e-mails from people who can't figure out the difference between "GET IT", "BUY IT" and "ESA - NO GO", we even have requests from idiots wanting us to burn all the ESA games onto CD's and sending them via the post. There are a lot of people who just don't understand the difference between a downloadable game and a non-downloadable one. :wall:

The idea is great, it's not that. It's just that it would create a lot of extra work for us, as we would have to tell a lot of people that "when a game is not for download, it means that (surprise) the game is NOT for download." <_<

[mahwahdenizen]

Do we have any idea on whether this ESA issue is permanent?

Is there anything us "forum dwellers" can do? I don't know if e-mailing ESA with concerns about this or asking for leniency would help. Maybe if enough e-mails were sent we could elicit some sort of response?

Just wondering/pondering.

[kOS]

look at the other ESA topics. do nothing. be patient. play in downloadable games :)

[Tom Henrik]

ESA protects any company for the entire time an ESA member continues its membership.

Meaning:
ESA will protect Ubisoft, as long Ubisoft keeps paying them to do so.

[Zxby]

ok i got it, a "burner" = someone who burns the games to cd for distribution. sounds illegal...

Your description of the adding a game without the file makes sense. no need to go through all that hastle. thanks,

PS, thank you for a great site. projects such as this helps keep old games alive.

[Grand Dad]

Look I may be dense or ignorent but what and who the devil is ESA? And how are they protecting those companies which 'extinct' e.g. Microprose, Sierra etc?

[Doubler]

ESA (http://www.theesa.com/)
The ESA protects all it's members against piracy.
They do permit some sites (by agreement) to host some of their games which are clearly abandoned.
Abandonia used to be one of them, but due to an unfortunate misunderstanding in which Abandonia unknowingly hosted some games they did NOT have permission for, their agreement was terminated.

[BeefontheBone]

Those companies you mention were bought by other companies, or sold the rights to their game titles/series when in liquidation, and those companies are now members of the ESA (this is in fact more and more common with the current industry trend toward a few large publishing companies such as EA - the only potential hope is for independents like Darwinia or new distribution methods like Steam, which have their own pros and cons - for instance, indies tend to be breeding grounds for innovation, but never make any money due to lack of advertising budget, and Steam is in some ways helping VALVe monopolise the distribution of their software, and hence control the price, though it is incredibly useful for preordering titles, multiplayer and news/patch announcements).

[Chris]

Originally posted by Grand Dad+Jun 1 2005, 08:43 PM****</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Grand Dad @ Jun 1 2005, 08:43 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> Look I may be dense or ignorent but what and who the devil is ESA?[/b]

Well, to my knowledge the ESA is nothing more than a private company (or association) of lawyers, whose business it is to protect the copyrights of software companies who pay them. They might hold good connections to government (especially in the U.S.) but they remain private. Their main purpose is that of a watchdog, which cares for it's customers rights. They have all the right to do that... and they also have the means.
The whole abandonware-sector is just side-business to them, however. New games have much more pericular potential and are therefore more important to them.

Originally posted by Grand Dad@Jun 1 2005, 08:43 PM
And how are they protecting those companies which 'extinct' e.g. Microprose, Sierra etc?

******QuoteBegin-ESA
*
United States copyright law provides important protection to ensure that video and computer games continue to be enjoyed by the millions of people who play them.* Without the protections of copyright law, the long hours of work by programmers, software engineers, writers and animators and the millions of dollars invested by publishers to bring a top game to market would be lost to piracy.* The ESA's Intellectual Property Policy Department serves the public policy needs of video and computer game companies on a variety of domestic and international intellectual property issues.[/quote]

That's the official ESA statement, regarding the protection of copyrights of intellectual property. Actually, at least the U.S. law provides 70 years of protection for these issues. That's the basis the ESA relies on. Copyrights are just commodities, that may be sold or bought. Therefore many copyrights are held by companies, which bought up smaller developers and want to have their rights asserted, no matter if they might benefit from them, or not.

That's my sight of the ESA, as I've experienced them so far. If someone has another view, I'll stand corrected. :whistle: At last, the people at ESA are just doing their jobs, as everyone else. Some of their actions may be questionable from our p.o.v., but are absolutely correct by the laws of the U.S. and many other countries.

I hope I was of some help, G.D. :cheers:

:ot: :ot: :ot:
But this topic should not lead to another discussion of laws and ESA's rights to assert them. Everyone interested in this matter should use the search-function. :max:

[BeefontheBone]

My understanding is that they have quite strong connections with the US government, in the sense that they're a not insignificant lobby group representing a large number of big companies in a fast-growing industry.

[Flop]

Originally posted by Bobbin@Jun 2 2005, 03:14 AM
Actually, at least the U.S. law provides 70 years of protection for these issues.
I don't want to start a debate here, I just want to clear something up. It's true that US laws provides 70 years of copyright protection (after the creators death), but in the case of corporations it's actually 95 years (after the product was first released. According to international law it's 50 years after the death of the creator, but any country is entitled to extend that period as they see fit (and many, including USA and the EU have done so).

This is pretty minor, admittedly, but I thought I'd mention it anyway.

[Grand Dad]

Be that as it may...they are only protecting the so called rights of the bigger companies, BUT what about all those "long hours of work of programmers, writers, software engineers, animators etc"? What benefit are they getting? Are they being paid for their past efforts? This all nonsense...they were simply kicked out and get jobs elsewhere...why couldn't Vivandi and the other Corps. keep them on and let them continue their excellent efforts? And why aren't these Corps. putting the old products on the market :bleh: :crazy:

I know, I know that all our arguements are a futile exercise.

Happy Gaming with what you have!!!

[Rogue]

Originally posted by Grand Dad@Jun 2 2005, 05:50 AM
Be that as it may...they are only protecting the so called rights of the bigger companies, BUT what about all those "long hours of work of programmers, writers, software engineers, animators etc"? What benefit are they getting? Are they being paid for their past efforts? This all nonsense...they were simply kicked out and get jobs elsewhere...why couldn't Vivandi and the other Corps. keep them on and let them continue their excellent efforts? And why aren't these Corps. putting the old products on the market :bleh: :crazy:

I know, I know that all our arguements are a futile exercise.

Happy Gaming with what you have!!!
I completely second this!

[r8a]

This is why I went linux for the first time some time ago... don't want to know what will be sold to us by mmorpg games!... piracy is not the way to go, but when you do not have clear access to those old games as many found here, is heartbroken to discover the actual software being ESA protected (try buying something other than monkey island or star wars by the web from an authorized dealer by lucas and you will get what I mean)...

That's why I have to cheer your efforts at AB and reloaded... go on, keep them rolling :)

[Fubb]

Um, this is a topic from the year 2005/06...

[_r.u.s.s.]

i guess that's kind of in-your-face welcome message

[Fubb]

He's new here?

Oops :oh: