What is TOSEC?

[BippyM]

T.O.S.E.C stands for The Old School Emulation Centre

Website's :-->

http://www.tosecdev.org
http://www.tosecdev.org/forum
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOSEC

All the information in this thread can also be found in more detail on the official TOSEC website!

What is TOSEC?

TOSEC is a project which started out as a renaming project for emulated games.

When I started TOSEC, most emulation enthusiasts had hard drives filled with rom, tape and disk images with unrecognizable names and lots of duplicate files. I tried to bring some order to emuland by examining all these files and changing the names to recognisable names ("space invaders.bin" instead of "spinv3.bin"). These names were added to datafiles which could then be used in combination with renaming tools to "automatically" rename any recognized files. I mainly started with this because my -for those days- huge collection of 40,000 files was a complete mess and I actually didn't have a clue what I exactly had. Soon, a few others who came across the same problem joined me with checking and renaming files and together we wrote a basic version of what we now call the TNC, the TOSEC Naming Convention - a set of "rules" which describe how the name of an emulated image should be formed. We looked at other formats available at that time (like the informal standard Cowering was using back then for his GoodTools) and developed a more sophisticated format using similar ideas.

After working a few months on this renaming thing I started to wonder if there wasn't some big database around on the web which had information on all the games we had been renaming. To my surprise I only found a handful of specialized sites, most of them only covering 1 -or sometimes 2- systems. At that point I decided I wanted to set up a games encyclopaedia, covering every emulated game we could find on the internet. The TNC v1 was updated to make sure people using it would also add basic information about year of production, publisher/company name, etc and I started writing my "battleplan" which described how I was going to get this thing going.

While all of this was happening more and more people started to check and rename files they had by using our naming system and I decided to launch a site to host the datafiles we were making. Because the site needed a logo, and the project needed a name, I came up with TOSEC as a name which was to be used until we came up with a better name.

What isn't TOSEC?

TOSEC is NOT about the collection and distribution of files, it never has been and never will be.

Don't ask the TOSEC guys for roms/files/adf's etc as you'll be most likely told where to get off.

Who is involved?

There are currently many, many members working on various projects from the web site to TIM to renaming.

The most active members on EAB and the only guys most of you will need to talk to are:

idoru - Maintains most of the Amiga dats. idoru also maintains the TNC (TOSEC Naming Convention) which governs how the files are renamed. If you have any issues with naming etc bug idoru

Belgarath - Maintains the SPS dats

WindowsKiller - Maintains the Kickstart/Operating Systems/ROMs dats

BippyM - Renamer and provides FTP access for the renamers

Adderly - Renamer and scene verifier. Adderly checks his collection of scene releases and then updates the current tosec info as required

DPainter - Renamer and provides a lot of unreleased/rare stuff. DPainter is currently MIA if anyone see's him give him a good kicking!!

andreas - andreas provides plenty of naming corrections and also scours his adf collection for rarities which will eventually be added to the dats

retrogamer - Provides corrections to already renamed files

Demoniac - Provides corrections to already renamed files

jjs - Maintains the Demos dats, jjs isn't a member of EAB - please contact through Idoru if necessary

If you have any questions, about TOSEC Amiga only , please feel free to post in this thread and one of us will do our best to answer your questions!

If you have any files that you think need to be added to TOSEC please contact either idoru or a renamer and instructions will be given then.

[mai]

Maybe its a good idea to post the
new TOSEC website:
http://www.tosecdev.org/

[PandMonium]

good idea

[DH]

^ Excellent, but I also think it should be placed in the news Thread, it might get more views in there

[desiv]

Probably way too late to mention this, but personally, I think it would be great if the TOSEC names included something to let people know whether a disk is an NTSC or PAL version.

I'm just saying.. :-)

It's a great project tho. Thanx.

desiv

[PandMonium]

hi desiv,
thanks for your kind words
About your suggestion, there is already a flag in our naming convention (tnc - video flag: http://www.tosecdev.org/index.php/to...ention?start=8 ) that covers that and a bit more cases, it is up to renamers to use it when needed.
Unfortunately there is no public way or tool to let you see which sets in which dats use them, do you need something in specific or was just a suggestion?

I can't give you much info currently since i just came home and my desktop is off (i was told my main board 'died' but still have to ask my sister and dad what happened :P)

[desiv]

Originally Posted by PandMonium

hi desiv,
thanks for your kind words
About your suggestion, there is already a flag in our naming convention (tnc - video flag: http://www.tosecdev.org/index.php/to...ention?start=8 ) that covers that and a bit more cases, it is up to renamers to use it when needed.
Unfortunately there is no public way or tool to let you see which sets in which dats use them, do you need something in specific or was just a suggestion?

I can't give you much info currently since i just came home and my desktop is off (i was told my main board 'died' but still have to ask my sister and dad what happened :P)

Wow... I missed that.
I "thought" I read the naming convention.

OK, then it's just the sets I've seen don't seem to use it that often (I haven't noticed it..).

I'll do some more checking...

I'm sure I have lots more great ideas you have already implemented too.

Thanx,

desiv

[PandMonium]

Feel free to suggest any then but i can't promise any change since it takes a lot of time and we have things going on currently.
Yes, the flag is not used much, i guess it could be in a lot of the sets but maybe renamers were lazy and in other cases that info wasn't easy/possible to know, i don't know for sure but maybe mai or TKaos can give you their view about it

[TKaos]

I was talking to Aral once about all that (PAL) / (NTSC) stuff, he said that he rather put a country code in the game name than filling it up even more with the video flag.
Well he's right, if I use the country code for germany (DE) then I don't need to add (PAL) to the name too, makes it just a useless info now, same goes for (US) being (NTSC).
I would only add video flag to (US) if the game runs in PAL or PAL+NTSC.

[Aral]

[telbee]

Originally Posted by TKaos

I was talking to Aral once about all that (PAL) / (NTSC) stuff, he said that he rather put a country code in the game name than filling it up even more with the video flag.
Well he's right, if I use the country code for germany (DE) then I don't need to add (PAL) to the name too, makes it just a useless info now, same goes for (US) being (NTSC).
I would only add video flag to (US) if the game runs in PAL or PAL+NTSC.

Will future generations make a connection between country code and NTSC/PAL given that neither really apply in these HDMI days?

That said, it's a top-notch project. I hope it's as successful as it deserves to be!


T

[TCD]

It's better just to mention it once somewhere, than bloating each disk name with the info Assuming that 'future generations' will still remember to RTFM that is

[PandMonium]

Originally Posted by telbee

Will future generations make a connection between country code and NTSC/PAL given that neither really apply in these HDMI days?

That said, it's a top-notch project. I hope it's as successful as it deserves to be!


T

Actually now that you talk about that, i need to store that information in my data, might be useful for something someday (even to check some sets :P)

[mai]

Originally Posted by desiv

Probably way too late to mention this, but personally, I think it would be great if the TOSEC names included something to let people know whether a disk is an NTSC or PAL version.

Video flag seems to be not much used in the past, althought this info should really be included in filename if it is needed.

Examples:

Cabal

and

Cadaver

sets needs video flag in my opinion, because both games runs on PAL systems only.
So it should be for example:
Cadaver v0.01 (1990-09-12)(Image Works)(PAL)(M3)(Disk 1 of 2)[cr CLS]
scene NTSC fixes are available for both games.

[Cassiel]

FYI... just in case anyone new is using the background info in the original post (I doubt it, but you never know!) please be advised that this is quite out of date in places.

I would recommend checking out our official wiki page that contains much more extensive background info (and of course is constantly updated release on release, and for any big changes).

The other obvious source of info (and the DATs) is our official website and forum. Note the OP still has the old, defunct URL.

The TOSEC Team
http://www.tosecdev.org
http://www.tosecdev.org/forum
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOSEC

[BippyM]

I have updated the links in the first post. Thanks Cassiel

[Cassiel]

Nice one..... you might want mai or someone to update the list of who responsible for what too. Can't imagine that's even close to accurate nowadays!

[BanisterDK]

Is the TOSEC anywhere to download as ISO files ?

If yes, will they be updated ?

Don't think I know how to use romvault and dat files for update and is pretty much easier for me to just download iso files. Takes me 30 mins. for 26GB

[mai]

Originally Posted by BanisterDK

Is the TOSEC anywhere to download as ISO files ?

If yes, will they be updated ?

Don't think I know how to use romvault and dat files for update and is pretty much easier for me to just download iso files. Takes me 30 mins. for 26GB

as ISO? I do not think so.

[BanisterDK]

So what can I do to keep updated ?

Romvault is unusable since i can't update with dat files.

Gives an more then 260 char error even though it all is in the root of the harddrive.

Manually download and checking what I have and what I don't (tbh) a complete waste of time