Play It By Year - a new Amiga game collection

[dreadnought]

V0.9 is up now on archive. org (search for "amiga"+"akeley" or "play it by year").

It adds years 1992-1995 and it concludes the first part of this project, spanning Amiga's birth and arguably the end of the Golden Era (years 1985-1995).

Upcoming version 1.0 will add the "no-year" games from HoL (which require a bit more research). In a more distant future I might attempt making a collection concentrating on years 1996-present.

As always, I welcome any bug reports, comments, and also help in finding the games which should be available out there but I failed to locate, as per this thread.

[dreadnought]

V1.0 is up now on archive. org (search for "amiga"+"akeley" or "play it by year").

V1.0 adds the "unknown" year 19xx from HoL, and the collection now should - in theory - represent a complete Hall Of Light database mirror for years 1985-1995 (sans compilations, duplicates, language versions, etc), plus some extra games not included there.

The upcoming version 1.1 will add games which are in TOSEC but not in HoL yet.

[TCD]

Would be great if you could keep track of those games that are in TOSEC but not in HOL (yet).

[dreadnought]

[ Show youtube player ]

I'm only on A at the moment, and there's already quite a few. Will post the whole list once finished.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

I'm only on A at the moment, and there's already quite a few. Will post the whole list once finished.

Perfect

[Bren McGuire]

i still wish this would have just ADFs

[dreadnought]

Me too, so it's definitely on the cards in the not-so-far future. It's a bit of work though, so first I want to make sure I have the base collection completed (need to compare the current crop against TOSEC atm).

[Bren McGuire]

very much appreciated is there anything any of us can do to help?

Originally Posted by dreadnought

Me too, so it's definitely on the cards in the not-so-far future. It's a bit of work though, so first I want to make sure I have the base collection completed (need to compare the current crop against TOSEC atm).

[dreadnought]

Well, if you, or anybody alse, fancy doing some heavy lifting then you'd simply have to look at each year's WHDL files from the collection, source the corresponding adfs, and then upload the result somehwere so I can merge it into the main.

It's not really difficult, if you have latest TOSEC or some other source handy, just a little bit tedious (btw, I forgot to mention that I've done it for years 1985/6 already - the collection's adfs for these years can be used as independently from WHDL)

[TCD]

Do you plan to extend your year range or is it 'capped' at 1995?

[dreadnought]

I'd like to, at some point, but I work on other stuff as well, rotating the projects so as to avoid burnout. Now is time for the long overdue Apple II / CRT updates. I also still have to do the TOSEC-comparison and adf-standalone thingy, and they might take some time.

Technically, the years >1996 could be much faster to do, seeing as there are comparably much less releases than at the peak time (89-94). But, I also worry a bit about the esoteric "new" Amiga configs I know zero about, and possible copyright issues for new games (I'm sure it can be untangled but it does take a little more digging).

[TCD]

I understand It's a good approach and going past 1995 does approach the RTG era (but most of them can still work on AGA).

[Seiya]

a part very few games, all the other ones run with PAL configuration

[Bren McGuire]

wow an msdos play it by year collection i really needed that, thanks!!

Originally Posted by dreadnought

I'd like to, at some point, but I work on other stuff as wel

[dreadnought]

The MS DOS one covers only years 81-89, because it's mainly meant to cover the PC/XT era (it was inspired by MiSTer's excellent PC/XT core).

If you want the later stuff, there are other by-year packs on the archive.org, look for "ao486 dos"

[doom99]

Great idea, might get these onto my mister, haven't got around to putting any amiga games on there yet.

[Bren McGuire]

thank you will do mostly want stuff from 1992-1996

Originally Posted by dreadnought

If you want the later stuff, there are other by-year packs on the archive.org, look for "ao486 dos"

[dreadnought]

V1.05 is up now on archive. org (search for "amiga"+"play it by year") and also here on eab's ftp: uploads/dreadnought

V1.05 changes:
-added some WHDLoad games from Beta/Unreleased directory, and the ones which were updated recently
-added several corrected version of existing games (eg Barney Mouse, Tank Buster)
-added games which are in TOSEC but not in HoL yet - for now covering only letter A. The rest will be included in the upcoming version 1.1. It will take some time though, hence the partial inclusion. Please note that these games are not included in the by-year directories yet.

This is a small update, so I've included a separate "update v1.0 to v1.1" zip so there's no need to redownload everything.

Big thanks to grafpatrick for pointing out the faulty games (Barney Mouse, Tank Buster, Wizards Castle, Xorron 2001)

[philgood1351fr]

Thanks for the update