"Your Amiga games are likely dying"

[Flojomojo]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-12-03-your-amiga-games-are-likely-dying

 

Decomposition vs preservation

 

Dumb outsider question: haven't most Amiga games been dumped and preserved already?

[carlsson]

Yes, at least in cracked versions. I would suppose originals have been preserved too, though I don't know if those fit within the ADF or DMS formats.

[+save2600]

Yes, most anything worth preserving has already been dumped. Just skimmed the article and found some errors and misconceptions as per usual. Floppies are a lot more durable than some give them credit for. Don't keep them near CRT's, transformers, non-shielded speakers, magnets or in a humid basement, garage, shed, attic or anywhere else you shouldn't be keeping these things and they'll literally last a lifetime, decades or damn near "forever". I and anyone else who's been using them (magnetic tape too for that matter) since the 70's/80's know this to be true but whatever... not a bad thing to be continually archiving or preserving this stuff. Transfer to the next and latest disposable format, etc. It's all good!

[AMenard]

I have Floppies that have outlived the CD and DVD backups that I've made of them...

[+save2600]

I have Floppies that have outlived the CD and DVD backups that I've made of them...

Same here! Not sure if it's a weak brand of optical media thing or what, but some sure don't last. I've had particularly bad luck with those expensive and proprietary CD Audio discs Pioneer, Philips and others force(d) you to use in their home audio gear. Pisses me off as I used lots of those discs throughout the years and now 3/4 or more are bad.

 

Good thing I have Maxell XLII-S or MX-S cassette tapes of irreplaceable and important stuff we originally recorded to throughout the 80's, 90's and 2000's that sound as good as the day they were recorded.

[AMenard]

Most of the bad reputation that magnetic media has is mostly coming from people who used crappy brand on equally crappy equipment. Like people judging the audio quality of tape by listening to dollars store cassette brand on cheap boombox...

[thetick1]

Almost all my Commodore 64 floppies from the late 80's and early 90's still work fine as does my old C64 and my old 1541 drive. Even my early 80's Vic-20 and datasette work fine. But my x86 laptops from the mid to late 90's are ALL dead. Those cheap Commodores were built pretty good.

Edited December 10, 2017 by thetick1

[eightbit]

For me, floppy disks are a thing of the past. With modern day solutions like WHDLoad and HxC Floppy replacements combined with the fact that every single thing I play and enjoy has been dumped to ADF or WHDLoad format (and then some...a LOT of some) I am fine with that.

[tschak909]

The problem with the Amiga software preservation scene, is that while the Software Preservation Society (SPS) has done a fantastic job preserving Amiga game disks in a format that captures the disks well enough, the IPF format that they've created is closed source, and only available as a binary shared library for emulators that implement its API (CAPS).

 

This may not sound like a show-stopper for most, but it does put the breaks on IPF as an archival format due to it's complete lack of being documented, and no implementations available as source code.

 

Quite bullshit, really. Just l33tists trying to show how "awesome" they are.

 

-Thom

[eightbit]

Funny thing is that the cracked copied of games along with their unique intros are what I remember as a kid...so those have the most nostalgia anyway for me than the uncracked retail games. I guess you can get by that statement that I was a little snot-nose Amiga software pirate in those days.... not something I am particularly proud of but it is what it is.

[tschak909]

The cracking groups have ironically become the curators of abandoned software.

 

-Thom

[Keatah]

Who else going to do it?

[Keatah]

For me, floppy disks are a thing of the past. With modern day solutions like WHDLoad and HxC Floppy replacements combined with the fact that every single thing I play and enjoy has been dumped to ADF or WHDLoad format (and then some...a LOT of some) I am fine with that.

 

Modern flash storage devices are simply continuations in the evolution of the disk drive. I think I said this elsewhere. We had punch-card, magazine type-ins, cassettes, 5.25 disks, hard disks, and now flash drives; as working storage media.

 

Flash just speeds everything up all over again and eliminates many mechanical parts, so it's a next logical progression. And the same flash drive can go to and from a PC for file management - this is a huge plus that wasn't practical back then.

 

The reason I let modern flash storage systems "slide" or "get away with it" as being valid upgrades that don't ruin the experience of classic computing is because most flash-based solutions simply sit on the bus and are still bossed around by the original classic CPU. At classic CPU speeds. And even back in the day we had a taste of this through something called a RamDisk.

 

For the un-initiated noobs, RamDisks were little software programs that could take a chunk of memory and turn it into a lightspeed disk drive, small, fast, fun to play with. Some systems were even practical, loading 5 floppy disks in all at once, and eliminating disk swapping. That's just what modern-flash add-ons do today.

 

With the Apple II we could plug in a 4MB (or more) and put multiple disk images or folders on it. Sure it wasn't permanent, and initial startup and load may have been clumsy & tedious. But.. BUT! We got the wow factor! Check out that SssspppeeeeeeEEEEEEDDDD!

 

 

 

Most of the bad reputation that magnetic media has is mostly coming from people who used crappy brand on equally crappy equipment. Like people judging the audio quality of tape by listening to dollars store cassette brand on cheap boombox...

 

I think the bad rap comes from magazine articles and "industry evangelists" peddling the next storage format. They wanted people to move beyond floppy disks so they could sell you the next big thing. Which was a hard drive, and BIG it was!

 

Then they pushed optical discs on you too. Citing such things and contact-less read/write operations. And the futuristic laser. No wear, no contact, nothing to go bad. BULLSHIT! The dyes in writable discs is lousy, really lousy. Some fade after a couple of years!

 

And then there is the 3.5" disk. These were terrible because the standards were too loose. Different brands and capacities of 3.5"ers had different magnetic cohesion properties and this, believe it or not, had to be matched to the drive head. Too much or too little meant you ended up with tracks that spilled over to the adjacent tracks, or tracks that were weakly written.

 

I'm just glad 3.5 died. And as for reliability? Shit.. man.. I've got 5.25" disks from like 1977 that are just fine. So the industry can shove this finger right up its ass!

Edited December 11, 2017 by Keatah

[Keatah]

This may not sound like a show-stopper for most, but it does put the breaks on IPF as an archival format due to it's complete lack of being documented, and no implementations available as source code.

 

Quite bullshit, really. Just l33tists trying to show how "awesome" they are.

 

-Thom

 

They've elite'd themselves way up there, that's for sure. True preservationists make something available on multiple formats, and something that works on real hardware or virtual hardware.

 

A cracked copy of something can be put on a website, hosted on ftp archive, played on real hardware with real floppy disk or flash disk, or even period-correct hard drive. It can even be played in a software emulator or on an fpga simulation. And the code and contents can be examined with many native platform tools or pc-based utilities. Even printed on a dot-matrix printer if that's your gig!

 

With all those options available who'd want to stick with a proprietary format that's:

1- expensive

2- narrow in scope

3- controlled by a 3rd party

4- closed source

5- requires specialized hardware in order to access the disk images

 

Say no to KryoFlux!

[pacman000]

Interesting quote near the end of the article:

 

Still, Newman is more concerned about losing the digital-only titles being released now than the Amiga games of old. "Floppy disks might be unreliable, but the challenges of dealing with games where there is no physical medium are in a different league altogether. We're going to need to think creatively about how we interpret and document these so-called 'born digital' materials."

We've already lost some online games, like this online Crash Bandicoot Adventure Promo: https://web.archive.org/web/19961222223310/http://www.sepc.sony.com:80/SCEA/arena/crash/pursuit/

[Keatah]

Pundits of preserving media with specialized tools and stratospherically unobtainable disk images DO NOT know what preservation is about anyways.

 

In the Apple II ecosphere. A game was written and tested, and after being deemed good, the author applied copy protection. This could either be purchased or home-brewed. More often than not it was purchased. And 1 form of protection is spread among many disks..

 

But this whole notion of protection is unnatural to the game and should never be in there in the first place. Copy protection is hindrince deemed necessary by marketing and other forces. Again, while I used Apple II as an example, I'm sure it all applies to Amiga stuff.

 

I was also "satisfied" (not completely surprised, but happy to see) that most recently de-protected Apple II disks have their file systems exposed thus allowing one to see the game or application in full glory.

 

I will also argue that back in the day the crackers and pirates would often add their own intro screen. This is great up to a specific point. When booting the disk, a fast loader would display BBS numbers and graphics and sometimes little animations. This was like a brand in and of itself. It was almost like the title pages were ads, and yet they served a necessary function by displaying those BBS'es to call. Very necessary!!

 

Furthermore, these special title-pages and intro screens are of nostalgic value themselves. They're often how we first saw the games back then.

 

But that is as far as one should go. Anything after that should behave like the original disk. I really hated it when pirates and crackers would continue to piss on the game artwork and the game's official intro screens. We don't need that. And I doubly hate it when modern preservationists use that old practice as reason to start using their own methods and specialized hardware. Bullshit!

 

Another thing is the hi-score tables. Still, today and in the past, hi-score tables are not reset to zero. Or they are purposely populated with names or unobtainable scores themselves. Frown on that too.

[Keatah]

Yes I'm rather disgusted with the present "clashing" of online gaming and preservation. Unfortunately I don't see it improving. And I'm at a loss for a solution. It should be understood that today's smartphone games and online-only games with online-only DLC feel more like insidious ways into your wallet rather games engineered to transcend the ages.

 

I will assume it's the desire to get money out of you more than it is to creatively express oneself (the developer) through an electronic art form like they did in the 70's and 80's.

 

I might even begin thinking about questioning whether today's games are worth preserving. Or are they just ways and means for a company to take your money?

 

Interesting quote near the end of the article:

We've already lost some online games, like this online Crash Bandicoot Adventure Promo: https://web.archive.org/web/19961222223310/http://www.sepc.sony.com:80/SCEA/arena/crash/pursuit/

 

I'm still of mixed opinions on these online games. To me it seems that all online games have their experience affected and degraded by having to be online in the first place.

 

The last "online games" I thought were done right happened around the Quake Arena or Unreal "era". These games focused on or were still styled around the single-player. But they had the option to go online. The option to do multi-player. It was optional to contact the server. And if you did, it was to connect for multi-player capability and data, in real-time. A leaderboard. A central communications hub to create a network for playing against others. And that was it!

 

(I would dare mention the even earlier days like Doom, but that's online modem play for 2 players. And going back further to the 70's and 80's we have online play like Modem Commbat and TeleChess.)

 

But, getting back to Quake Arena. The game was fully functional all the way around without the server. And would remain so forever. And the protocol details for server operations were made available IIRC. This enables the game to be played online again, long after the official servers were shut down. Multi-player, as intended by the developer, fully-functional, with your hardware. You make your own server, and it was no big secret. It took a bit of technical know-how, naturally, but not more than setting up a network card back then.

 

And downloadable content happened on your terms. When you bought a game back then it worked right away. And at any time you could add characters or levels or partake in other's creations. A downside was you had to do it yourself, you had to seek out and install the "mods" and "levels" yourself. On your end. By yourself! OMFG! The gamer had to think! Had to do something!

 

But the gamer had better choices back then. Get your DLC by modem. Get your DLC by store-bought discs. And you could keep it forever.

 

Today it's all done for you. Today people have been dumbed down so much they can't install their own DLC. And they do not understand how to handle files. Has to be done by the company/publisher.. Or is it the other way around? Game publishers and devs have found ways to bring games to even the stupid people? And looking at the situation from that perspective we have a bunch of idiots that shouldn't be touching stuff like this. I don't see this state of affairs improving.Yet a third angle comes into play, a well-known issue. Game pubs and devs want this level of control so they can obsolete old material and force-feed you new stuff. Prod you along. Drain your wallet. What a racket. A $42 billion racket.

 

Anyways, the end result of the old-school ways was that you had your original disks. And those of us forward thinking enough likely still have a stash of Doom wads sitting on Zip disk someplace.

[thetick1]

@Quadrunner

 

I think you are missing the point that the industry is an entertainment business for the masses first. It is a nerd heaven second because as you just stated the business is $42 BILLION.

 

I do understand what you're saying as I'm a nerd at heart also. I still enjoy powering up my Unix workstation from '96 and running Doom or Quake. I actually used Doom and Quake at work in our test lab for next generation workstation development/testing. Doom stressed out the workstation/server hardware better than the CAD/CAM programs normally used on this high end Unix workstations/servers. I miss the days I was highly paid to setup/config/tweek/play Doom and Quake at work.

 

I personally think pirates are a good thing for preservation. I still have my C64 and hundreds of legit games and enjoy playing via emulation software many of the games I never had. I also enjoy playing many of the Amiga games as I never owned an Amiga.

Edited December 30, 2017 by thetick1

[JimDrew]

IPF format is documented by several sources. Keir Fraser has his Disk Utils that supports it. You can use the SuperCard Pro hardware with Keir's utility to dump disks to various formats, including IPF.

 

https://github.com/keirf/Disk-Utilities