Heh... we're on the same path it seems. We've probably seen a lot of the same forums already.

I just signed up for OpenDNS (on a suggestion on one forum) to change my DNS server, but now I'm wishing I hadn't since that did nothing to fix my problem.

I've rebooted the PC countless times, I've reset the modem and the router. I'm constantly deleting the megaupload cookie, and I've even tried with all antivirus/firewall stuff turned off.

Now when I am uploading to megaupload, after the 15 seconds it takes to upload a 317MB file, it not only locks up firefox on me, but whenever I try to load the Task Manager it errors out on me. A reboot of the computer allows me to use Firefox and the Task Manager again.



This is bullshit.

Sorry everyone, but I don't think I'll be releasing any teasers. I've already wasted over a day on this crap.

send it to me via irc or msn (LTGRIMSR@HOTMAIL.COM) and i'll host it on my webserver.

Thanks, but Hotmail maxes out at 10MB and IRC gives me the hives.

if you use MSN messenger it doesn't max out. Well nevermind just thought of alternative ways to help out

Thanks, but with all I have to upload I'm looking for a way that I'll be able to do it myself on the fly.

I'm seriously about to throw my computer out the phucking window. I gotta walk away from this or I'm going to have an aneurysm.

Oh yeah.... I'm uploading the first part of a 317MB file to rapidshare now at 1kb per second. Slow.....? Yes. But at least it's not telling me that it's uploading at 13MB per second which is about 500 times faster than my connection would even allow.

Ok, sounds like a tough day for ressurectionx and the xtras. Hope this will cheer us up a bit

I just downloaded all the NES snapshots xtras, and have a few space-saving tips!

1. The rar file I downloaded contained hidden "thumbs.db" files. These are not used by the xbox, so they can all be deleted. I don't know if these would be transferred across with most ftp programs.

2. Use PNGGauntlet. This is a great program which losslessly recompresses png files to make them as small as possible. I believe the program uses a brute force method of compression, where it tries many different compression parameters to find the most efficient for each file. This takes some time, but only needs to be done once - remember the image quality remains exactly the same!

3. Run deflopt on the images. I believe this restructures the file to save a few bytes. This saves very little space, but takes a fraction of a second for each file, so we might as well run it.

4. Run zipmax to brute-force compress your roms. Using kzip and 7zip with zipmax saves 3-5% even on most highly-compressed zip files.

The results of the above on the NES snapshots xtras:

1. Saved 9mb.

2. Saved 54mb (took a few hours)

3. Saved 64kb (took 2 mins)

4. On 1250 NES roms, I saved 7mb. (took an hour or 2)

That's 70mb in total. From what I've read, the decreasing in load time from the disc should outweigh any extra decompression time.
Disclaimer: I haven't tested the snaps on the xbox yet, as I don't have access now. The zipmax'ed roms do work perfectly though.


The methodology was taken from here:
http://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p=361912&postcount=1

By the way, thanks for all the hard work of ressurectionx and the other contributors. This is a magnificent effort, and will cement the xbox's position as the ultimate emulation machine/museum for years to come.

mobygames.com amstrad cpc

I downloaded the Megaupload Uploader/Downloader and that seems to be working, assuming it doesn't die midstream. We're at 10% now.




Hey edwardar,

1) I've already removed the thumbs, but I had no idea they were that large.

2) This sounds promising. Test this out and send me the links for it in a PM if it's good.

3) 64kb I'm going to pass on. Just because I have a ton of stuff to do on a ton of sets and that's just one more thing I don't have to remember.

4) I don't think I'll be using zipmax. I don't even heavily compress the roms using winrar/zip. The normal zip works fine in the emulators, but a handful of roms seem to break if you compress at the max. I'm sure if somebody were to test which roms run fine compressed we'd save a ton of space, but even I'm not crazy enough to try to figure that out.

Thanks for the suggestions,
~Rx

It doesn't matter how many leeches there are. So long as one seed remains, the system works, even if he only does his actual seeding for a few hours a week.

The average leecher doesn't bother to specifically disable his upload stream anyways - 10,000 of them would actually ensure a fairly decent distribution speed, especially on a small file (and 300mb is small, for a torrent).

As for linking, you shouldn't even need to hint at where the pack would be. Anyone with half an idea as to what the pack's called and how to use Google should have no difficulty finding it on a public tracker, so long as they know it's "released". Not so true of a private tracker.

how's the upload looking Rx ? :-)

The upload is done buddy.

Might I STRONGLY suggest to anyone who will be getting any of the stuff that I put up in this forum that they get the megaupload manager. I thought you needed an account for it, but you don't. Just download it and install and you shouldn't have any more download/upload problems.

Of course, I've only tested it with one upload, but after having it fail 1,000 times on me with 4 different hosting sites today, I'm taking that as rock solid proof that it works.



Here ya go everyone. Enjoy.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=YTXIOZYC

Be sure to thank Gilles for the Generic Boxarts and BombBloke for the scripts.






P.S. BombBloke. My t0rrented uploads would be much larger than this upload. For SNES, it would likely be around 6GB. Would that still work well with a public tracker?

I'm going to start putting together commercial packs for the major systems. Any suggestions or help would be appreciated.

That pack looked awezome

I know dude, right?

Check out the teaser thread for the link to convert the packs for use with ZSNESXBox. I forgot to add that script and instructions for doing that.

Will check that out
I do have some questions about the pack tho.

Can you explain what will be in these folders (and how far along it is to be complete)

MEDIA\SNES\ARTWORK (will this be covers etc in better resolution than in screenshots folder?)
MEDIA\SNES\COMMERCIALS (videos?)
MEDIA\SNES\GAME FAQS
MEDIA\SNES\MANUALS
MEDIA\SNES\MOVIES (will have both wmv or xmv?)
MEDIA\SNES\ROMS (will have all the roms that has cut files?)
MEDIA\SNES\SAVES (savegames i guess?)
MEDIA\SNES\STRATEGY GUIDES

And I guess

Would be swell to know the status of all these xtras even tho they are not included in the teaser preview

BTW: I'm done with some more scraping and I'm uploading now. Will post when finished.
Playstation, amiga and atari-st (not even sure if they're needed or wanted, but since they complete i'll make them public). I know all mobygames boxart have watermarks, but it can be a nice collection to edit out watermarks and fill whatever we don't find elsewhere.

Artwork will be the same resolution. They're converted to a ZSNESXBox style folder setup. Makes for much faster FTP transfer, and takes advantage of some of the new features madmab will be releasing that won't work with the old screenshots pack (I do my work in the screenshots packs and convert to Artwork since it's easier to edit in the old screenshots IMHO)

EDIT: I only included screenshots this time around because the Enhanced Artwork is not usable in the latest SNES at the usual spot. Only beta testers can use them now.

Commercials will be videos of commercials for games and systems, relative to what system they're located in.

Movies are our game previews. When this is distributed somewhere else, it will just have the XMV files in there. I will make the WMV files available separately for anybody who wanted to port this to another system. These media folders will only have files that are to be transfered via FTP to the box, making the WMV files useless for that purpose. (Same thing with commercials, Angry Video Game Nerd reviews, etc.)

It would be nice to know the status of these things. Unfortunately, I don't have a team to go over exactly what's on my setup, so you'll know when I do.


Scrape the PSX screenshots (action,title) but don't sweat the boxes or CDs. I have about 700 cd images and I'm pretty sure I have all the covers in high resolution with no watermarks.

Yeah, hope to se a seperate release of all the WMV's.. Glad to see you will supply that

Even though you can't know the exact diskspace and completeness of everything I put my faith in you having complete control over the situation! :>

About the PSX scrape. It's already finished and it includes covers anyways I'm not rescraping or reuploading without covers as that would be a pain in the ass.. just ignore them

Sounds good. I'm working on getting the right names on your VGMaps and getting some commercials done.

I'm going to need help with the commercials. I'm sure people can find stuff that I don't already have. When I get a grip on what I've got, I'll provide a spreadsheet and people can add games that they find.

Also, many of these commercials are in a few other formats like mpg and flv. I'm going to have to figure out how to convert them to the right format for our programs to work on them.




EDIT: Any way you can change the VGMaps scrapper to name the folders with spaces in between the words? That would eliminate about half of the folders that I have to rename by hand.

Do they still make a lot of maps there? These are really cool and look great in the emu.

When it comes to foldernames i knew it might be a bad idea removing spaces(but made the coding a bit quicker hehe). I thought you'd already have folders for the games and just could copy/paste from my folders into your own. If it's much hassle I'll redo the scraper and fix the one I've already uploaded.

They are still adding maps. My scraper is updated now so it will rescan the site whenever I tell it to, to download new additions.

MOBYGAMES SCRAPING SO FAR:
* amiga-cd32, atari-5200, intellivision (pasted before)
* atari-8-bit, apple2, msx (pasted before)
* amstrad cpc (pasted before)
* atari-st
* amiga
* playstation1 part1
* playstation1 part2

I'm off to work now. Later!

Sure... I have changed the maps folders you sent me by hand by copying my screenshot folder names and pasting over the maps names. That's not very fun when you have to do it for about 5 or 6 hundred folders though. It probably doesn't matter now though since I don't imagine they're going to be coming too quick with new additions. Those look like they're a ton of work to make.


Do me a favor and keep a document on your PC with all your links for stuff that you scraped. I haven't been keeping up on them and I'll need to get them integrated eventually.

yep i'm keeping backups of everything.

when it comes to the vgmaps i'll redo the scraper and fix so you don't have to do all the manual work. atleast alot less of it. it seems they have small additions every week or so. just rescraped now and got ~15 new maps since last scrape (~1week ago) so we might wanna think about releasing addons when new stuff arrives perhaps each month or so.

NOW i'm off to work :> i'll still be able to read here so if there is anything let me know.

Sounds good.

By having the spaces in there in the future, it should make about 50% of the games or more match up immediately.

These old commercials are great. I wish it was 1983 again.

Hey, here is the NES 3D boxart set...

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=LBCPYY2F

these actually look quite nice! do they have transparent bg? i cant see that it here at work.. but the images look very nice. planning on doing more systems?

I didn't make these, I'm just uploading them. As far as uploading more. I have Sega Master System, and Game Gear left to upload... I already uploaded a bunch a few days ago if you go back a few pages on here...

Rx did you see the PM I sent you?

Anyway, I'll mention it here too. (hope it's ok)

I am a member of HDDX tracker and mentioned all about the xtras over at their forums. They seem very keen to have this as a torrent there. It is a private tracker, but registrations are open at the moment and they are keen to have new people sign up.

It's up to you really, just thought it would be a good option. (if you can't find some other way to share everything)

If you want more information, let me know. Is it allowed to post a link to their site?

Oh and it would probably be freeleech too! (just need to get confirmation)

I wouldn't post any links here. I'm sure it's not allowed.

I'll answer your PM when I get a chance.

why dont use just link us to hyperspin or are you renaming them for us

Impressive and very useful. Good to have a look on other systems, too.

WimpyRBX, Bigby, Carnage by Bob, and of course Madmab, I don't forget what we have to do together and I thank you warmly for your work.

I just finished modding my new xbox this weekend. Now I have to configure it and upload my files to feel more comfortable.

I'll be back in business soon.

Cheers.

I posted a new thread in the main EMU forums with links to all the 3D box art... thats all I have for systems emulated on Xbox.

thanks mate, feel free to join IRC ti chat again:) we're having a blast (when everyone isn't idling that is )

RX: not sure how far (or you might even have finished) renaming the folders for VGMAPS.. but i'm going to rescrape the lot now. It will however be some folders that needs fixing up anyways. It's hard to make a ruleset to make them 100% all the time since nowhere on the site in the code they refer to the title like it should be formatted.

Will let you know when it's finished.

You're re-doing stuff? I thought you said that you were done with those except the new ones. I wouldn't have worked on them yet if I knew you were going to change things.

EDIT: If you were doing that for my benefit, don't bother. I finished that last night. I only need the new ones.

Ok Well the problem is that redoing the scraper makes it download all the files all over since it changes the directory structure. I'll need to update the directory structure to how the scraper is working now to ensure it only fetching new additions.

Will be done tomorrow with it so doesn't really bother me Sorry I didn't think of it before the manual work.. :S

EDIT: VGMAPS ADDITIONS 1
These are the additions before my rescrape. (that's the reason for folders being like before.. next will be much better).

No big deal. If nothing changed on the old set of images you sent me it's cool. They probably have a list of newest maps on their site, right? I could just look at that and find out which ones I still need, rather than going through hundreds of folders and deleting them one at a time.

Hey Rx,
Did you ever get an Xmv converter with the (-c) edit you wanted...? you could just change it yourself (if you know how), but I can just send you one.

Also,
You got my GB videos now, right?
I will do some more, If i can get my PC working right... (the ram is acting funny )

SNES Video Updates: this was kinda a funky task.

1. Some, I am simply re-editing to make them more efficient. (smaller/ fix the sound/ get to the action)
2. Others, I must redo completely, for they are just bad or I think they can be better.

There are around 80 vids, that I am in the works of re-doing.
My biggest dilemma is that my emu/video capture "snes9x-1.43-rerecording-svn84" is super buggy and slow when I try to capture videos. This leads to glitches when i get to the editing and converting processes, too.

Help, anyone!?. What is the best SNES PC emu(and version), for capturing avi videos?
Thanks

Just a little update. Been a bit busy digging in the code trying to fix "puzzling issues", as well as adding all the configuration data for the BlissX INTV overlays! I'm up to "Space Armada"

Plus I've been trying to go thru each emu as I work on it to remove the old "networking" code and replacing it with the newer code which is more flexible.

To do for Blissx
+ Overlay can be accessed by both controllers. So that player two can use it as well (useful for games like "Body Slam - Super Pro Wrestling".

+ Fixed issue with screen blurring when overlay (keypad) is activated. This is apparently an issue with the onscreen keyboard as well. I'm surprised I did not notice this earlier.

+ Added the following homebrew games to the Bliss internal database. The following games are now playable. Astrosmash competition, King Of The Mountain (fixed), League Of Light (proto), Lock 'n' Chase (fixed), Robot Rubble (how do you start this?), Same game & Robot, Space Patrol (Teaser), Stonix, Super Masters, Tag-Along Todd

+ Transparency control for keypad and keyboard should now function properly

Oh and "CBB" I fixed the issue with "right on controller two's disc" not working. Seems there was a slight collision with it's internal "value" and the value x-port's code uses for keyboard values.

Glad to hear that you fixed the blurry screen, and the ability to use the second controller. I am curious to see how the onscreen overlay all comes together. I look forward to the next update!

There is also one more homebrew to add:

Minehunter

this megaupload only contains the new adds since the last one you got.

Cool....

BTW... I have tried logging in to that chat you guys setup using "http://mibbit.com/chat/", but nobody is ever in there. I don't know if I'm doing it right.

I just integrated this and I see that they've added new maps for games they've already done.

Very cool, but it could complicate things if we don't think this through. Given that, it's pretty important that we only add new maps as they are created, otherwise, I'll be better off just starting the maps all from scratch.

I'm suggesting you go back to your old scraper if that's still possible if you have no way of making the new scraper only pull newly created maps. It would likely be a lot less work for me to rename the occasional new folder as they add maps instead of starting all the maps from scratch.

Thanks bud,
~Rx

On a side note. One thing that I wanted to do with each emu, like I did with atarixlbox, is add in a video game music player. For example Atari tunes are in SAP format so I added a SAP player. So I'd like to do that for each emu that has a custom music format. But, unfortunately, that is something that got stuck waaaaay on the backburner, when I got involved with the Xtra's.

What I did was go to that site. Put "#RessurectionXtras" in the channel name field. Pick the first "EFNET [webirc]" entry. When I've gone in there it shows "5" idle users to the right. Click on that and you will see everyones name.

from now on the new scraper will (like the old only download new maps). only difference is that game folders have spaces lile you asked.



SNES: has a SPC music format aswell i think?
i'll keep looking around for more music.

just did a quick midi test earlier today: FF IV - love theme ;P

Waal, don't know if you saw my post about emumovies making amiga videos.

Not sure if I should help them (there is a bit of an argument about the best way to make them) or just start from scratch.

Have you made any, or were you planning to make some?

If I could get some information on what resolution to record at, whether to keep the aspect ratio (keeping black borders) or to have the game fill the screen (no black borders). Also maybe a list of the games that will be included in WinUAEx.

I would be happy to start making some videos once I know how best to do them.

Sweet.....

Using that "-c" option in the WMV to XMV converter on all of my movies now. It's not as slow as I expected, but it will take a few days for all the videos.

I've only finished Atari 2600 so far, but it's looking real good. The original XMV videos I did were 2.65GB. After using the "-c" option, they're only 980MB!!!!! I didn't notice any change in quality, and we've established a few months ago that people are in agreement that there is no visible our audible difference in the quality of videos using this method.

So far, SNES is looking good too. The original conversion was 12.1GB. I'm practically through the letter "S" now and it's not even 5GB yet!

Just in time too..... I was running out of room and running out of PSX & XBOX games to delete.

excellent!

thats a space saver deluxe!

Thank bigby for the -c edit...
He brought it to my attention awhile ago, and I have been promoting it ever since.

Thanks bigby!

Anyways.... SNES wasn't as good a space saver ratio-wise but size-wise, look out!

Original Size: 12.1GB
New Size: 6.2GB

Sweet.......




I'm keeping track of how much space is saved here. I'll give you the list when I know. Kinda cool that I waited till the end to do this in a way because we get to see what the true space savings actually is from system to system.

this is good news:) and you're testing some vids to see they are ok??