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GameBaseAmy Project On Hold

Discuss the Commodore Amiga database that uses the GameBase Frontend.

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Runey
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GameBaseAmy Project On Hold

Fri Jul 15, 2005 3:21 am

Due to a recent break-in and the loss of all my hardware and software backups, the GameBaseAmy Project is temporarily on hold.

The project is on hold until at least the end of September. It will start up again after that and a new release is expected prior to Xmas.

Sorry for any inconvenience and thankyou for your understanding
Runey
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Fri Jul 15, 2005 1:04 pm

Umm how would a UPS stop a thief breaking into my house and stealing all my stuff?

As for backups. I had a copy of my latest work on my dektop, laptop, portable hard drive and burnt onto a DVD. I believe I also had it on a memory stick.

But my desktop, laptop, portable hard rive and memory stick were stolen. Along with lots of other stuff. All my DVDs were smashed.

Oh yeah and they stole my UPS too
pang
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Fri Jul 15, 2005 1:17 pm

Damn thiefs

i have a whole collection of films emulators roms games if they break in and destroy or steal my collection whcih took me years to collect i would fall into desperation.

I think i gonna do a booby trap so at least i will have a clean consciens knowing that the thiefs blew to hell

apart from the jokes man i feel sorry for you, as i sad its the worst fear, for me they can steal everything i dont care i am insures but should not dare touch my dvd's :).

i was waiting for a realease now i have to wait another year.

Pang
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Fri Jul 15, 2005 2:16 pm

Really sorry to hear this...
Runey
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Fri Jul 15, 2005 4:28 pm

Thanks dudes!!! Yeah a bomb would be good. I still would have lost my DVDs but at least I would have taken bastards out with them :D

Not another year Pang... not if I can help it. Once I have my holiday in September I will be doing everything within my power to have a release by Xmas. So in less than 6 months I promise a near finished release. All game info in. All screenshots in (at a minimum there will be title screen shots). Rips of most of the music. Game manuals., walkthroughs and cheatcodes for most games.

This was where I was up to. I was only a couple of weeks away from releasing it. Well I've done it once, should go quicker the second time.

Backups will be going on the net this time, so it never happens again.
Gu
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backups

Fri Jul 15, 2005 6:27 pm

Always remember to keep a backup somewhere else... like at your parents or something, just incase you get robbed again! :)
Runey
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Tue Jul 19, 2005 4:41 am

You try doing releases every week when you have a full time job doing 70 hours a week. This is not a team effort. I'm doing this by myself. I have enough trouble keeping up as it is, and it's not the only project I'm working on.

Plus what you see in a release is only a fraction of what is going on behind the scenes. There are hundreds of pages of code to filter the TOSEC lists and to track tested games, among other things. It's not a simple matter of just filling in the blanks in GameBase. The final product released contains none of that and is useless as a backup.

And I've already said backups will be going on the net. But it isn't a few meg. It's 10's of GIGS of data. All games ROMs, All screenshots, All music, All walkthroughs, manuals and cheats, All code, etc etc. Not a 5 minute job to back up.

I'm sure you mean well Bobek and I appreciate you taking an interest, but it's not as simple as you may think.

Oh and James I'm gonna do that too :D
J2003C
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Wed Jul 20, 2005 6:30 am

You work 70 hours/week? That still leaves 98 hours/week free time. What's wrong with you? It's not like you need sleep, right? :wink:

Do what you can, and we all hope you can get it back to where it was and beyond. Just know that there are people out here that really appreciate and patiently anticipate what you are doing/producing.
-J2010C-
Runey
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Wed Jul 20, 2005 12:34 pm

I know sleep is overrated but I have gotten attached to it over the years :D

Thanks for your support :)
Am
AmiFan

Backups

Thu Jul 21, 2005 2:40 pm

That means only one: If whole GBAMY in developer version contains above 10 GB of data, that means you lost whole work by those thieves. Is true that you musr remage GBAMY from anew since you lost your hardware and software?

I make my GB128 in much simpler way - collating C128 TOSEC files into it and no more. Thus in my case release=backup.
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Thu Jul 21, 2005 3:57 pm

Hi AmiFan,

I did find and old backup that hadn't been smashed by the thieves. So I didn't lose the lot, but I did lose the vast proportion.
Yes I use the TOSEC collection as the basis as well, but they're gone too :( though I'm close to a complete set again (about 90%)

Even without the TOSEC disk images, there is several Gig worth of screenshots etc gone :(

I'm not sure how you filter out duplicate and non-working TOSEC images. I had a rather complex code written that would analyse the naming convention and filter out disk images that were unsuitable. That way I had only 6000 disk images to deal with instead of over 20,000.

The code would also extract information such as Publisher, Year Published, Cracker, Disk Number and Number of Disks.

Further information such Developer, Players, System type (don't forget this was for OCS, ECS and AGA Amigas') plus others was added. This was done, partially, through a program that trawled specified websites and gathered the information (only info not images)

It would also track which disk images had been tested and whether it was suitable or not. Suitable disk images would have all the emulator settings that were for tested stored as well.

Then it would track which games had title / screenshots, disk scans, box scans, ripped music, manuals, walkthroughs and cheatcodes and store that info as well.

All the while keeping it referenced to the TOSEC collection and updating it as TOSEC was updated.

Finally it would generate the dat file and gamebase database (the easy bit :D )

So a release contains some of the information, but with nothing to reference it to, it's not particularly useful :(

The Amiga collection is just too massive to do manually and would take years and a team of people. My goal was to do it in around 12ish months, which I was about to achieve before losing everything.

So now I have to re-write all the code (hopefully faster this time because I wont make the same mistakes), play all the games, take all the screen shots etc etc... The biggest loss is the software I had written to manage the project. The next biggest loss is the game testing information. Everything else is 'relatively' easy to re-do

Well life wasn't meant to be easy :)
Am
AmiFan

GB128

Fri Jul 22, 2005 5:09 pm

I am filtering out duplicate and non-working TOSEC images manually. And I have it done. This was very easy, because TOSEC for C128 doesn't exceed 50 titles. And it is growing very slowly - one to three files per year.
Am
AmiFan

Wickedness of thieves

Fri Jul 22, 2005 5:14 pm

I think that these thieves are very wicked and foul - they didn't need to smash your CD and DVD disks. Normal thieves would only steal PC, and not destroy anything. If these thieves would be at least near to normal, you would have all backups left intact and in one piece. I think that those foul thieves MUST be severely punished!
Runey
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Sat Jul 23, 2005 6:25 am

This type of break in seems to be getting more common though these days. Gone are the good old days when they would just steal your stuff, and the insurance company would replace it. Now they seem to feel the need to destroy everything they can't carry. The house was a right off, had to live elsewhere while it was being fixed up.

And yes if they just left my DVDs alone there would be a new GameBaseAMY out already :(

Unfortunately they are not likely to ever be punished. Something like 10% or less of house break ins are ever solved.

Oh well I go on holiday (vacation) in a month. After that work will start again (in ernest) and there will be a major release before Xmas even if it kills me :)
Runey
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Sun Jul 24, 2005 10:36 am

Here's the process I have to go through for 30,000 images

1) Convert TOSEC datfile into Microsoft database
2) Remove all obviously unsuitable images by filtering certain TOSEC flags
3) Extract any available information from the TOSEC name
4) Remove all duplicate images
5) Move those duplicate images into another table
6) Rename images to something suitable for Gamebase
7) Create a link bewteen renamed images and TOSEC images
8 ) TEST EVERY SINGLE GAME OVER AND OVER AGAIN
9) Delete any unsuitable images and replace with images from dupe table
10) TEST THEM ALL AGAIN UNTIL YOU FIND THE BEST ONE

and that's just the stuff you want me to do in a month. GET REAL

OH AND THREAD CLOSED I'M SICK OF THIS

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