Unbelievable

[Ian]

Completely missed this earlier when you posted it

I loved Coverdisks too, and then MrDig's site came (i'll be contributing to it soon...)

If you really like Mr Digs site that much, you'll quite possibly shoot your load when you see THIS

If you already knew about this site, please ignore this message

[Malc]

Oi IcyCool - I'm not arguing about something so stupid, that ADF was created when ALE first started out, back then the site was under attack on a big scale and things like that needed to be done.

I do aggree with TOSEC about this kind of thing and understand were you are coming from, I'm not a difficult person as most people know but when you come under fire like we did at the start of last year you do drastic stuff.

The disk still works doesn't it?



Plus like you said there is a fine line between tagging and protecting your work, okay the coverdisk wasn't created by us on the disk itself but the ADF image was!

[icycool]

Thankyou Ian, I am aware of MrDigs site, and i am quite sure that he does not 'tag' disks.

Malc, if you want your disks protected so much, do not put them on the web for download, there are no excuses for fucking with images.. as i said, i have dumped a few thousand adfs..I didn't make them, I dumped someone elses hard work..now those disks are spread all over the web, and I'm not worried about no credit simply because i wanted to dump my collection, and saw no reason why other people can't benefit from my work.

If you are not a difficult person, I hope you won't be tagging disks anymore, excepting those that you did make from scratch like your disksalv disk.

I hope Bobbic from BTTR is reading all of this, as they like to also modify the disk name of their demo disks.

All of these fun little changes to disks are completely irreversible and decrease the quantity of original 'clean' disk images on the web.

Before modifying disks, ask yourself 2 questions
1) did i make this disk from a blank floppy?
2) is it a workdisk?

If neither of these questions are true and other people get your modified disk, you are simply adding to the entropy of the already messy amiga scene; and with the odd 40000 images out there, do we need more?

[Amiga1992]

Ack! Ian! I always heard about this site, but never gave it a visit... Methinks I have missed out big time eh?

About clean images, I have to agree... That's why I tried to do a site dedicated to that, a year ago or so (it got canned, of course). However now that I know one exists, I'll be contributing to it...

As one of the guys working on the TOSEC project & being a little bit involved in ARP too, i can only 100% agree with |cy's stance on dealing with disk images. With our work on the TOSEC project (Amiga section), we're trying to give people the possibility to rename their ADF Files, resulting in long, descriptive filenames containing info like release year (and soon publisher & cracking group too, we're still working on that). In order to achieve this, we create datfiles that can be used with a variety of Rom Managers (yeah, i know, ADFs aren't roms... but that's how these tools are called) like RomCenter or ClrMame Pro. Now, these tools simply check ADF Files for their CRCs and compare them with the ones in the datfile... the problem with this approach is of course, if a disk image has been tampered with (altered bootblock, intro message advertising a web site), the CRC changes and these ADFs aren't recognized by the renaming tools. There's already so many different cracks/hacks from back in the old days, why on earth do people have to add to that? And it makes the work of us TOSEC dudes SO much more difficult.

[[idoru]]

Preservation is the name of the game. Ideally all the major sites would be working together to try and create some semblance of order in a messy "scene ". Obviously this will never happen as ego's get in the way, but wouldn't it be cool ?

My support will always be behind those that strive to preserve clean disk images - verified as good by multiple sources redumping.

I'm not trying to take away the history and remove all traces of cracked & trained disks etc. In fact, I'm quite happy to have them - I just want clean unadulterated images too

What I don't like to see however is edited labels & pointless tagging - if you trained it then fine, tell us who you are. But if all you did was dump the disk then don't be so lame & go on a l33t eg0 trip. Seems to me there's something rather anal about spending longer tagging a disk than it did to dump it in the first place. There's enough years of crap already out there, no need to make more.

All points of view mentioned previously I know, but it's my first post so I've gotta say something in it

Also, being the newbie and not knowing who's the loose cannon around here - none of the above is directed at any one individual, but to everyone in general. K, now I've covered my ass I'm done.

[Ian]

The link I posted wasn't for Mr Dig's site. Someone else runs this site: http://nthdimension.emuunlim.com/

This was not posted as part of this debate, just so Akira could have a look at the HUGE archive of coverdisk's

[Amiga1992]

Ian, you offtpic-y person you... Again, cheers for the link. It seems Nth and MrDig share a few of the disks there (i mean, they have the same coverdisks available for download), so I'll try to provide Mr Dig with unique stuff.

Hey idoru, nice to see you here. The forum is getting attention from a lot of cool peeps. I agree with you about his strange ' fight' among amiga websites... Looks like they all strive for licenses, and get a bit nasty in the process, sometimes. I said it before and I say it again, I'd like them all to join. But I suppose that's utopic :/

[Malc]

Okay, to put an end on this - as from June 27th 2001 the ADF/HDF images at ALE are now untagged.

Just remember were you got your files from and don't forget to stop by from time to time, check the latest update for the first batch of 100% untagged ADFs.

The decision was made to keep TOSEC happy

[P-J]

I gotta agree with Icy here, it's all about preservation.

[icycool]

Thank you Malc, its an honourable decision :thumbs_up

Now, just to get Bobbit to take heed...
:P

[CodyJarrett]

Talking of TOSEC, I have two major problems with it:

1. As was acknowledged by Morph in this thread, minor changes to an ADF means that it is regarded as a new version. Unlike console ROMs, ADFs can be changed, so it seems silly to use ROM tools like ROMCenter with Amiga disks.

2. TOSEC is for emulation only. Like other people, I actually use real Amigas as well as emulators and the long filenames of the TOSEC naming system will not work on a real Amiga. The Amiga supports about 30 character filenames and something like the following is 33 characters too many:

1869 - History Experience I (1992) (AGA) [cr] (Disk 2 of 4).zip

This is a prime example of trying to cram all the game info into the filename. The filename will be truncated on a real Amiga.

First, let's get rid of the spaces, as they serve little purpose, except to make it slightly more readable:

1869-HistoryExperienceI(1992)(AGA)[cr](Disk2of4).zip

Next, let's get rid of 'History Experience I'. There's no reason to include this subtitle here, as there is no other 1869 on the Amiga. Why not put it in an Amiga games database? Do the same for (1992).

1869(AGA)[cr](Disk2of4).zip

My, what a lot of brackets!

1869AGA_cr_Disk2of4.zip

Look, there are more useless characters for the disk numbering. Get rid of 'Disk' and get rid of 'of'. The number of disks can also be stored in the database.

1869AGA_cr_2.zip

In fact, why not go all the way and store all disk information in a database? Let's give each version of a game a certain ID. So, the first version of 1869 AGA would be called v1, the second v2 etc.

1869AGA_v1_1.zip, 1869AGA_v1_2.zip, 1869AGA_v1_3.zip, 1869AGA_v1_4.zip

1869AGA_v2_1.zip, 1869AGA_v2_2.zip, 1869AGA_v2_3.zip, 1869AGA_v2_4.zip

In the database:

v1
Name=1869: History Experience I AGA
Graphic chipset=AGA
Year=1992
Disks=4
Crack?=Yes
...

v2
etc.


The main point about this system is that it doesn't ignore the computer that the games are for - the Amiga.

[RCK]

THIS, is the goal of our upcoming database cody.
(no I have not forgotten )

The tosec first goal was to produce a software wich could auto rename your ADF file in order to sort them.

[derSammler]

I agree. Using ROMCenter to rename disk-images is very silly. If someone save the highscore, the guys from TOSEC have to add this as a "new" version of the game.

BTW I hate such long filenames...

[andreas]

hmmm ... due to the fact that I just *flew* over this thread, I don't know if this has already been said:

I think that the TOSEC Amiga set contains many images *not* marked as bad, but being bad, having track errors and all that stuff. It feels a little paradox that a not-100% version which is widely spread across the net is recognized, whilst another that IS 100% and can only be found on ONE site, isn't.
Example: I'd suggest to at least update the *.DATs for games that Cody or Twistin' uploaded here and/or add it to the set. They were quite a bunch ... it's just a grain of salt, but at least these crappy versions have been replaced by good ones.
I'm also aware of the fact that there are guys around there that think it's a must to even have the bad versions in their sets - but that's another story.

Originally posted by |cy[ool
Thankyou Ian, I am aware of MrDigs site, and i am quite sure that he does not 'tag' disks.

Nope, I don't tag disks, I think you must not mess up originally disks.. I do created some disks by meself, just because it is easier for some coverdisks otherwise people have to change a lot of disks before they can run a gamedemo..

Oh, and I once tagged a disk containing Sensible Massacre for Bobic.. I actually don't know if that tag is still on it though... I've send him this tagged adf a very long time ago...

Originally posted by Akira
Ian, you offtpic-y person you... Again, cheers for the link. It seems Nth and MrDig share a few of the disks there (i mean, they have the same coverdisks available for download), so I'll try to provide Mr Dig with unique stuff.
:/

Yep, I know the webmaster of the Ninth Dimension! He has even a link to my page! He likes my more detailed information about each coverdisk and I even may use his coverdisks and scans.. But unfortunately I still haven't searched his site quite well for my missing disks.. So I'll have to that first then... I know he doesn't mind adding some of his disks to my site, because as already said, he likes my site! As long as I give him the credits for his disks then it's fine by him...

The best solution would be if we could set up one Amiga Coverdisk site together hosted at Ale or at Emuunlim, but I'm afraid we both don't have enough free time to do such an enormous job...

And I don't mind if we both are adding the same disks.. I like it to add more information (Coverscans etc...) of each Amiga magazine...

[Amiga1992]

About the TOSEC, I also think rom utils shouldnt be used, and that the slightest change would make it as an unrecognized image. Lets say I have a collection of 1000 or so images, and tehy are all valid, however ive been using them, so some have savestates and stuff.. if i pass them thru romcenter, they would fail, while they are actually good images.

But which other way is there to recognize and rename disk images?

MrDig, i can give you coverscans and disk scans as well. lemme gather my stuff during this sunday.

[[idoru]]

Yes, the disk images probably would still be good & valid (ie. working) after using them, but they're still modified images. Modified only by a savestate maybe, but they still wont be a true image of the original disk. Personally, I'd like to see every disk redumped and verified images of the original disks catalogued.

Long shot I know, but if everyone that cares supports redump projects...

[Amiga1992]

That's not my point, I'm talking from the point of the end-user. of course, dloading images wit hsavestates should be crap, I mean that after I used MY images, when they might have savegames and such, I decide to run MY images thro RomCenter, and it would give me errors and stuff. I might think the image is bad, and delete it.