I suggest reading the previous post “OSDM .VOBJ and .OBJ Tool V3.0Beta Released”, if you are interested in the general subject of “Oldskool Demomaker” by Testaware, 3D Vector graphics and Geometry math etc.

You can download Version 3.2B of my tool at
http://roysacweb.s3.amazonaws.com/files/Roy-VOBJTOOL32B.zip

Also check out the included release intro RoySAC.com.exe hehe. You can find additional tools, resources and my own OSDM productions at the OSDM section of web site. There you will also be able to find always the latest version of my VOBJ/OBJ Vector Object Tool for Oldskool Demomaker.

So what’s new since my release of Version 3.0B? Here is the list of changes and additions, including comments and notes to the individual item.

Version 3.1B

General

• NEW- Version History records started :)
• UPD – Documentation extended (see especially "Last Notes" section)

Main Tool

• UPD – Intersecting Polygon Detection Redone
• NEW – Color Optimization also includes removal of not used Colors

Tools Section

• NEW – VOBJ to Wavefront OBJ Converter
• NEW – VOBJ to Renderware RWX Converter
• UPD – New Version of Triangles to Quad Merger
• UPD – Polygon Reduction Tool (own class now) 
• NEW – Switch to derive Output File Name+Path from Input File
• UPD – Renderware (RWX) to VOBJ Converter Tool Offset Input no longer necessary
• UPD – Render 386 (PLG) to VOBJ Converter Tweaked Offset Input no longer necessary
• NEW/UPD – Old Triangles to Quads and Polygon Reduction Routines re-included. They are at the end of the tools selection and marked  with the suffix "old" in the name. The new routines don’t work as  well as I had hoped and the old routines sometimes produce better results.

Vector Object Generator

• NEW – Parallelohedron (4 Different Objects)

Version 3.2

Tools Section

• NEW – Inertia 3D Engine GFXFX3 (.GVO) to .VOBJ
• NEW – Super 3D (.RAW) to VOBJ Converter
• NEW – Bezier Surface _Nodes + _Rectangles (.TXT) to VOBJ Converter

None of those three converters handle colors or transparency, since those features are already absent in the original file format.

The GVO to VOBJ converter is the first Binary file to VOBJ converter that I have written. VBScript isn’t particularly made for handling of binary data, but it worked.

The GVO files are a simple binary mesh format, but unfortunately without settings for color or transparency. However, they had many nice meshes with their free 3D Engine release package that I decided that it is worth to write a converter for it. What also helped was the fact that he GVO file format was well documented by Inertia also.

I don’t know, if there are more meshes out there or even how they were/are created, but decided to include the converter in my tool anyway. I used many of the objects that I converted from there in my OSDM demo production “Oh Xee A Moron”, which was well received. Here is a video snapshot of it.

Backup Link to Video on YouTube.com

• NEW – 3DStudio ASCII (.ASC) to VOBJ Converter

This is not the binary .3DS or .MAX format! There is the option in Autodesk 3D Studio to export 3DS mesh data to Text/ASCII with the file extension .ASC.

I have not found a documentation for this file format and could not figure out yet, how (if they are exported) color and transparency information are stored in this format.

I use right now as a workaround the "Ambient light color" setting for the default color of an object, if this information is available. It’s not perfect, but better than nothing.

If you know how "diffuse" colors of surfaces or materials and transparency values are stored in the .ASC file format or have an example file where those information are included, please contact me and send me the file and I will implement it into my tool.

The Converter Module was practically rewritten and restructured. I moved in general a bunch of stuff around.
The original code was all classic sub routines and functions in a big VBS file. I am migrating it piece by piece to be "class" based. This causes some loss in performance, but it helps to keep the code better organized.

You might be surprised, by the entire tool with all its components is over 20,000 lines of code and the programming environment support for VBScript is very poor, although I already use a special editor specifically designed for VBScript programming.

Well, I am working in parallel on a port to VB.NET. The programming in MS Visual Studio makes things easier.

I am just still making the transition from classic VB6, VBScript, ASP 3.0 to the .NET platform.

• UPD – None of the converters requires the specification of the data point offset anymore. The tool determines that automatically now for all formats.
• UPD – The WRL to VOBJ converter also makes use now of the "Vertex Colors" feature of VRML in order to extract more colors for the resulting OSDM vector object. The Vertex colors were actually meant for light shading or “Gouraud Shading”,  features that OSDM does not support.  The tool calculates for each polygon the average color from all vertex colors for that polygon. 

  For objects that are made of many faces, this could still result into  many different colors. OSDM only supports up to 99 colors per object so  the tool will use the closest matching existing color for the polygon, if all 99 colors were already exhausted.

  The transformation settings "translation" and "rotation" are now considered  and applied to the object during conversion.

• UPD – All main Object to VOBJ converters now use a complicated triangulation routine to cut up polygons with more than 4 data points into triangle polygons, which should result into less number of polygons and overall better visual results.

Main Tool

• UPD – Found some bugs in my  File Dialogs selector. It’s a pain in the neck, because there is no standard open and save dialog  in Windows which works across all the latest Windows platforms, including Win XP, Win 2003, Vista and Windows 7  (I don’t care about Win 2000 or Win 98/CE anymore, sorry). 

  Now I am having a chain of 6 different file dialog options,  which will be checked for availability on the users machine. I just added the 6th one, which is the MSComDlg.CommonDialog, which is available on machines that have the comdlg32.ocx on their system, which is used by a lot of VB applications.

• NEW – in the settings is now the option to select a specific file dialog.  The default is still the auto mode. 
  Be aware that not all of them on any given computer, but i wanted  to give users the option to find out for themselves, which one of the ones  that work will work best for them. If the manually selected file dialog does not work, then it automatically falls back on the one option that should work on all machines, the IE Web Browser one  (the last resort in the "Auto" mode). 

  It’s okay for the "open" dialog, but sucks for the "Output" file selection, because it requires that the output file already exists, which is typically not the case. Well, I hope that my previous additions of the "automatic" output determination will  makes things easier. Drag and Drop does not work anymore unfortunately (a while already). Microsoft changed security stuff with Win XP SP3 already, which became the final blow to kill drag and drop for all "IE based" windows applications, including HTA. 

  I first wanted to make the tool a HTA application, but there was no reason  no more to do so. HTA was meant to create local windows apps using a browser interface for easy integration into a intranet and stuff like MS SharePoint,  but I guess that is history now too.  Drag and drop work on my VB.NET port again though :)

• UPD – Speaking of the interface. It is IE based (HTML with a lot of JavaScript, interacting with the underlying VBScript). I don’t know, if it only did this on my machine, but I got the feeling that the tool sucked more and more power and got slow, which was especially noticeable during manual inputs into text boxes. 

  I  cannot link VBScript events with the HTML interface,  so I have to rely on JavaScript for the input validation  and check a lot, with a VBScript running in a loop like crazy  in the background checking for specific modifications to the html that  trigger actions, like the processing of files etc. 

  I hooked up events on every form field with JavaScript on the "onChange", "onBlur" and "onKeyUp" events and think that this was  creating some overkill and killing the browser along the way. I reduced it to only "onChange" and "onBlur", which saves some resources, but has the side effect, that certain changes made  by the user don’t trigger an immediate response in all cases,  like the activation of the "go" button, when all required inputs were made. 

  I need to see and find better ways and do some manual optimizing here and there or My VB.NET version will be finished by then already and let us forget about all this browser related nonsense, since it will be a  real Windows 32bit application and not a browser app. 

  I tweaked also some JavaScript related this, minor stuff in the interface, what probably nobody noticed so far anyway :)

Vector Object Generator

• NEW – Graphical Icon in B/W that depicts the selected object type to enhance the user experience and usability.

Command Line CLI

• NEW – Command Line support for VOBJ to XX converters
• UPD – Offset Parameter Removed and support for new converters added

Enjoy!

Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Vector Graphics in Oldskool Demomaker

The demoscene tool “Oldskool Demomaker” by Peace of Testaware to create oldskool style intro and demo  productions like in the good old days supports vector graphics. Very basic with little more than some fake light shading of flat-shaded quad polygon-vector objects with only a limited number of faces and data points (the number 1.000 is what you could call the border-line area for the size of the mesh. Less than 1.000 okay, above that, may be, may be not. try!)

Unfortunately is the format for the mesh definitions not a standard one or something used by any 3D modeling software that I know of (still looking for the one,  that was used to borrow the mesh layout from, if there is any). This makes it very hard to create or change any vector objects. The definition is in readable text format and not binary, but that’s not unusual for this kind of data. It does not help much with making changes to it, because what’s missing is the visual element (in 3 dimensions) , which is of the utmost importance. Looking at the columns of numbers for data points and polygon meshes makes your head spin in the best of cases.

So tweaks via a text editor like notepad is cumbersome to say the least. A spreadsheets application like Excel is helpful for some of the possible tweaks you might have in mind, but its also very limited. So I decided one day to write some scripts, originally meant for batch jobs etc. with no interface to help me with some of the fundamental tasks that are tedious, prone to errors and following some mathematical pattern.  Things like rotating, resizing and shifting of a vector object.

VOBJ Tool Humble Beginnings

Those things were in particular of high importance before OSDM implemented features to control the angles, rotations and such for vector objects in general and also during run-time. This things lost some significance with the April 2010 release of OSDM, which introduced many features to deal with those things. However, my scripts already outgrew their original purposes, thanks to other OSDM fans, such as “Wildcop”, who are no programmers and needed an interface for the tool and started making suggestions for new features when they actually got one. So I added more features like the cloning of an object with options to manipulate the clone at the same time.

Creating Primitives

At one point I started to add the separate feature to create new basic objects from scratch based on some variables to manipulate the results. I think it started with the option to generate a “Sphere”, based on a Excel spreadsheet created by Wildcop, which he used in the past, but was unfortunately very static in nature without much options for changing some of the basic parameters. Well, after the “Spheres” problem was solved, new objects followed.  Now a wide variety of basic objects and shapes can be created with the Object Generator Tool add-on.

Creating new objects from scratch without a modeler is so hard and time consuming that not many sat down and actually did it. That’s why the amount of vector objects for OSDM remained very limited in number for a long time. The object generator helped and in combination with the tools part for adjusting, replicating and merging of objects, new stuff could be created, but still only very limited in nature.

Conversion of Meshes in Other Formats

There are so many vector designs for everything imaginable out there, produced by millions of people on dozens of computer hardware and hundreds of computer software (modelers) platforms throughout multiple decades that it was a shame that we could not tap into this vast pool to make use of it in OSDM. So I started to look at conversions from popular or easy to convert mesh formats to the proprietary OSDM mesh format.

Progress was slow, but I got better at it. My tool currently supports more or less okay to acceptable conversions from four other mesh formats to OSDM. Best results are probably achieved with the RenderWare (.RWX files) to OSDM (.VOBJ) converter. It was the first format where I was successfully able to convert color and transparency settings in addition to the simple data points and polygon structures.  However, the new version of my tool is now also able to extract color and transparency information from the  .MTL material files for WaveFront (.OBJ files) meshes, if available and also from the VRML 1.0 (.WRL files), if they were provided.

None of the converters support OSDM vector animations nor the “shadow” parameter. The biggest problem there is probably the lack of knowledge and understanding from my part about what the actual meanings in mathematical terms are… in OSDM and not in terms of the features provided by the standard modelers. OSDM is using some home-made tricks and fake effects to accomplish some pseudo lighting and shadow visual effects. In regards to animations I need to admit, that I hadn’t had the time yet to get my head around the general subject yet to even start looking into possible conversions from other modeler mesh formats.

The Final Goal – Modeler for OSDM Meshes

The final goal at the end of the tunnel is of course something like a modeler / designer tool for OSDM poly meshes. This involves graphical visualization and actual rendering of the 3d vectors, which cannot be done via script like the other stuff that I did so far already. So I started looking into some alternative options. I looked at multiple options in parallel, including solutions in Pure Basic, the language OSDM itself was written in and also MS VB.NET and oldskool Visual Basic 6 frameworks, 3D Libraries and 3D rendering/modeling sample source codes.

My vector viewer tool (build intro my VOBJ tool and also available as stand-alone application), which was written in Pure Basic is one of the fruits from my research. I hit many dead ends though in regards to the design of an actual modeler. All the stuff I found so far is based on triangular polygon meshes only, which does not work so great for our purposes, because OSDM meshes do not support real triangular polygons and only quad points polygons instead. I won’t go into much details, but if you are working with quads instead of triangles, several additional layers of complexity and several new problems are part of the mix that you don’t have, if you only work with triangles. I will only mention one of the issues: accidental “self-intersecting polygons” (cannot happen with triangles).

What I do in my converters for example, for meshes that include triangular polygons, is to use the first polygon point again also as the last one in my quad point definition, EG. “A”, “B”, “C” and “A”.

Currently Ventured Avenues – Research

I found a promising 3D Engine for Visual Basic 6, called Dex3D V0.0.8, which was written and released (including its fullsource code) by Jerry Chen. In my work-in-progress modeler there, I can already do some nice things like changing colors of polygon faces, remove entire polygons and also merge two neighboring triangular “pseudo-quads”  to a single and “real” quad polygon. I started working on things like the removal of “edges” (lines) to basically merge two “real’” quad polygons. Polygon reduction is one of the most important things that you do in order to repurpose existing meshes for OSDM, because most meshes have simply too much points or polygons to work with OSDM (remember the magic 1.000 border?). I am still trying to figure out how I can determine over which edge my mouse pointer is currently hovering over, taking into account that the object was rotated and zoomed and shifted and the info that my mouse is over "A” line of a polygon isn’t cutting it, if that line happens to be on the “opposite” side of the object instead of being one of the lines of a polygon that I am facing at right now.

Problems That I am Facing Now

Apropos “facing”, another problem that I still haven’t solved entirely is the dealing with so called “back sides” of polygons. Actually I do deal with it, but more than OSDM does. OSDM does not seem to care much about things like direction and point definition order of polygons (clockwise and counter-clockwise orientation) to separate “front facing polygons”  and “back faces” for back faces culling and Z-Buffering (what’s supposed to be visible and what’s not).

Polygon transparency is also a problem with the Dex3d engine, because it does not really use Direct 3D, Open GL and stuff like that, which support RGBA color specifications for the alpha blending of surfaces. It uses standard GDI32 functions for the most part to do the rendering and I have not found a way to make the 0-255 levels of the alpha transparency of OSDM polygons work using GDI32. I just recently stumbled across some other 3D Engine, also for Visual Basic 6, but which is based on OpenGL, which supports all this stuff. However the documentation for that engine is rather poorly, the subject complicated, but at least a lot of sample source code is available to answer questions indirectly, taking more time unfortunately. Well, I keep looking and work step by step forward to get something like a modeler for OSDM done eventually.

I never did graphic programming in the scene nor elsewhere before, so it’s all “NEW” stuff for me. I used to be good in math in school, but the subject is complication and I don’t recall using much of it in school nor the extended classes that I got outside of the regular school schedule while I was part of the Natural Science Society in East Germany at the Humboldt University in Berlin.  I certainly didn’t do anything with it using English terminology, which only adds to the stuff that is new to me.

Back to the VOBJ Tool

The JUMP from Version 2.1B to 3.0 happened for a reason. Much of the underlying code of the tool was rewritten and cleaned up.

I mentioned earlier that the tool was written in script, specifically VBScript for the most part and its limitations. I started working on a port of the tool to VB.NET, but then, VB.NET is also new to me, so it will take a while and some learning to complete the transition. However, I learned a lot about the general subject of computer graphics, in particular 3D Vector graphics and also some nice tricks in VBScript that come in handy for problems like the ones I try to solve with my little tool.

Well, it’s a nice and long way of saying that it was time to clean up the mess that I started when I jumped into this project without knowing where I was heading or even realizing that there was supposed to be a direction to begin with. The structure, format and documentation of the code put together by myself were testament to this. Instead of trying to keep the baby alive, I decided for the more radical step of making a new one and to discard (for the most part) the old one.

Knowing when to “Let Go” is always hard and some folks don’t even manage to do something like that at all and rather stop working on the problem altogether instead of taking some steps backward and start off a second (or third) time clean to reduce problems that are already visible and glooming on the horizon.

No Refunds for Something that is Free!

I hope that I also eliminated most of the stupid interface bugs of the previous versions with this re-write. While I was making things “nice” under the hood, I also thought a bit more about the user. A good thing to do, if you plan to create a professional application with the intention to sell to people. Folks who are paying money for it typically have some expectations that they want to see realized by the application in return for their investment. Don’t panic, there are no intensions to monetize on this tool, EG. switching to a shareware model or something like that. Well, if something is free, it’s hard to under-deliver in terms of value.

Any expectation met or even exceeded represents a value indefinitely larger than the user has a right to expect (and demand respectively). That’s the crux with the free stuff. It was done by somebody for HIS own purpose who is just kind enough to make it accessible to others who might have to happen the same or similar problem they’d like to solve somehow. If it works, great, if not, sorry, but $0.00 refunds are not an option. Not via PayPal, Google Checkout, nor an old-school written paper check. 

Anyhow. I wanted to say that I did make a lot of noticeable changes to the user interface in the hope to make it easier to use and more intuitive. One new feature to accomplish this is the active options highlighting and the quick help via tool-tip if you hover with the mouse over a label for a parameter and more.

VOBJ Tool V3.0Beta Overview

The Main/Original Tool

The Main Tool. Move, Scale, Rotate, Clone, Adjust, Merge, Cleanup, Rearrange and Fix 3D Vector and 3D Ball Vector Object Files.

Object Generator

Primitives Creator for Spheres, Torus, Cubes, Pyramids, Cones, Cylinders, Grids, Gems, Stars, Cogs and more vector objects.

The are only two new object types for the Object Creator tool compared to the previous version of it; the "Cog" and the "Grid" creators.

Tools and Converters

Nothing new, but a lot improved and expanded :)

Renderware (.RWX), Wavefront(.OBJ), VRML 1 (.WRL) and Render386 (.PLG) Mesh converter to VOBJ format for OSDM. Polygon-Reduction and Triangle Polygons to  Quad Polygons merger tool.

Furthermore. The converter features are now also available via command-line options for batch processing.

VOBJ Tool Settings

Primarily for the VOBJ Tool for the cleanup of objects. New here is the public “debug” option that can be enabled for trouble-shouting.

File Info Tool

Introduced with the previous version and not expanded in this new version. Actually, I removed a few features that it used to have before, which I might re-add later again, if I see the need for it.

Help and Documentation

I am pretty proud of it, because it is IMO detailed and extensive, what is rarely done for scene related tools hehe.

Well, I don’t want to start praising myself, because (for the German readers of this blog) “Eigenlob Stinkt!” ;)

I put a lot of stuff in the updated documentation of the tool, so I check it out yourself for further details. :)

VOBJ Viewer Tool (also available stand-alone)

Also included a stand-alone version of the VOBJ viewer tool. It’s also used for the preview feature of the object generator.

The latest and past versions of the VOBJ Tool as well as my own OSDM productions and numerous resources for intro designers can be found at my web site at http://www.roysac.com/osdm/

              Visit the Download Page for the VOBJ Tool! —>

Finally Some Legal Blah Blah

PS. Those tools are freeware. Do with it whatever you like, except selling it. You can use it free, copy it, share it whatever.  You are using it at your own risk. You cannot make me  liable for any damage or loss of data that might results directly or indirectly because of the use of my tools.

You can find all my own production at the special OSDM section here on my site. There you can also find additional resources, tools and more related to the Oldskool Demomaker, like my OSDM Script Cheat Sheet, Tutorials and my VOBJ Vector Object manipulation tool and more.

Table of Contents

• Dynamic Layer Ordering
• Vector Object Control
• Addition to (Sprite) Cloning Feature
• Macros

Dynamic Layer Ordering

I remember when I first checked out OSDM. The interface was not very intuitive, but what’s new when it comes to scene stuff (Elite has to suffer or something like that hehe) and I struggled with a couple specific issues. One of which was the rendering order of effects on the screen (= what is in front and what is in the back ground etc.)

Only when Peace himself explained to me in detail how the “Storyboard” page in the “Regie” tab worked, did I finally realized how this is being accomplished. It didn’t even occur to me when I looked at the interface myself that you can do more on that page than just controlling start and end times for the effects via the sliders.

I wouldn’t be surprised, if you didn’t get it either, so I will explain it quickly.

Each effect in that page has a letter encapsulated in apparentness in front. That letter is a hotkey. Press it on the keyboard (no ALT, CTRL or Shift key needed) and then use the Cursor UP/Down keys to move the selected Effect up or down in that list of effects. The further an effect is listed towards the top, the further “back” the effect is rendered. The active effect closest to the bottom of that list is rendered in front.

In the case of the “Reflection (R)” effect for example, only effects that are “Behind” it are actually being reflected. The effects below of it are not.

Since OSDM Version v2.20.160 you can change this layer order via OSDM Script in your production on the fly. This is cool for my multi-part demos that combine different effects in a different way for each part, but also makes sense to be used within a single demo part. I used it in several of my demos in combination with the reflection effect. I wanted an object reflected while it was further in the back, but not when I zoomed in on it. So within my Zoom script, I included the changing of the layer order to position another effect in front or behind the reflection effect as I needed.

The command is IDL = EFFECT. Important is that EFFECT is the effect you want to SWAP position in the layer hierarchy with. You have to have another effect selected via LEA = EFFECT first. You need to know the original layer order of course. That is your starting point.  For example, if the Storyboard lists “Amigatext (W)”  and “Reflection (R)” below, meaning that the Amigatext is being reflected and you want to move it in front of the Reflection effect, you use the following code:

CAL = AMIGATEXT
CAL = REFLECTION

LEA = AMIGATEXT
IDL = REFLECTION

; Amigatext is now in front of Reflection
NOP = 3 ; Wait a bit, like “Sleep” in VB
IDL = REFLECTION
;Amigatext and Reflection swapped position again.
;Amigatext is reflected again also.
END

Vector Object Control

The commands that probably exited me the most in OSDM v2.20.160  were the ARX, ARY, ARZ, AAX, AAY, AAZ and corresponding MRX, MRY, MRZ, MAX, MAY and MAZ commands to dynamically control the rotation and angle of an vector object within your demo, beyond the initial settings that you could specify via the interface.

Direction is still a bit tricky and takes some trial and error before you get to the desired results, but it is something and indefinitely more than what was available before (nothing hehe).

All Commands that start with an “M” are to “SET”  an exact value for a property, while commands that begin with an “A” always adjust properties with the result depending on the value of the property before the command was invoked. Positive and negative values are okay in both instances.

The last character does in this case specify the Axis in three-dimensional space; X, Y and Z.  That leaves only the middle characters of the commands left, which are “R” and “A”.  Take a guess :)! Okay, “R” is for “Rotation” and “A” for Angle (Tilt).

When I created my first OSDM Vector object, I noticed something strange. I thought that I did something wrong at first, but I was assured that nothing was wrong with my object, but OSDM. For reasons unknown to anybody I know, VOBJ 3D Vector Objects are Flipped on the Y-Axis (Upside-Down); –Y is at the top and +Y at the bottom for whatever reason.

Well , instead of flipping the object in the definition file, which tricky at best, if done by hand (and not by using my OSDM VOBJ tool hehe), you also can now simply flip it around via OSDM Script.

To flip the upside/down objects  around use the command:  MAX = 180.

First Note: The use of MAX, MAY, MAZ or initial use of AAX, AAY and AAZ also have the (IMO positive) side effect in the current version of OSDM, that they reset the vector objects rotation back to the original starting point. That helps with timing and positioning, especially if you are using multiple vector objects in one demo via the Multi Vector Object feature (see Tools section, Utilities dropdown).

Second Note: Those new commands are only for rotation and tilting. Use the commands ADX, ADY / MVX, MVY for translation and ADZ / MVZ for scaling as in previous OSDM versions.

Sample Code:

CAL = 3DVECTOR   ;Start 3DVector Effect
LEA = 3DVECTOR   ;Select 3D Vector Effect
IDN = 0          ;Select 1st Vector Object in Multi .mVOBJ Object File

;Enable Fast Vector Shading for Lighting Effects
BFX = 4

;Initialize X and Y Positions to center object
;in Windowed Mode in 640×480 (Use 0 for Full Screen Mode)
MVX = -600    
MVY = -300

;Default Z position
MVZ = 500

;Adjust X-Axis Angle
MAX = -92

;Set Rotation Speed for Y-Axis
MRY = 20

;Loop and  adjust X, Y and Z coordinates
REP = 150
  ADX = -2   ;Move left
  ADY = -2   ;move up
  ADZ = 5    ;Zoom out
LOP

;Set Rotation to -15 (reversed)
MRY = -15

;move object back to where we started
REP = 150
  ADX = 2  ;Move right
  ADY = 2   ;Move down
  ADZ = -5  ;Zoom in
LOP

;Stop Rotation
ADY = 15   ;MRY = 0 would have done the same

;change X-Angle (after loop, the object was effectively
;turned around itself full circle once)
REP = 360
  AAX = 1
LOP

STP = 3DVECTOR

ESC

Addition to Cloning Feature

The latest version of OSDM V2.21.274 also introduced a new feature for the cloning of sprites. Cloning is a feature that is only available via OSDM script for the use with the 3D Vector, Bouncer (Bouncing Bobs) and Sprites.

This new addition is actually only available for Sprites. I hope that it will become available for 3D Vectors too one day though. 

In the past you could only clone an object once or multiple times on its X and/or Y axis. You specified the distance of the clones from the original and to each other in the case of multiple clones via CPW (for X) or CPH (for Y) and then CPX or CPY = NUMBER OF CLONES to clone the currently selected object.

All clones did the same movements etc. as the original object and all adjustments that you apply to the original will also be applied to the clones. Nice and good, but you always ended up with the same thing aligned in a “string” or arranged in a grid like shape doing exactly the same thing.

The new IDC command now lets you create a clone of a Sprite, assign its own ID to it and then control the clone independent from the original, just as you would the original.

It seems that IDC only supports ID’s up to 15, which gives you 8 additional Sprite objects, if you used up all your 8 Sprite slots in the OSDM interface or 15 clones, if you only use one sprite slot and just clone that single sprite.

Sample Code:

CAL = SPRITE   ;Start Sprites
LEA = SPRITE   ;Select Sprite effect
IDN = 0        ;Select First Sprite
IDC = 8        ;Clone Sprite and Assign ID 8 to it

;Move original Sprite around
REP = 200   
     ADX = 1
     AAZ = 1
LOP

;Move cloned Sprite around
REP = 100
      ADX = –1
      ADY = 2
      ADH  = 1
LOP

Macros

Also new with Version v2.20.160 is a feature called “Macros”. The difference between a Macro and traditional OSDM script sub routine (or label) is the option to pass to the macro one or more parameter values. OSDM script does not support user variables at this time so this new Macro feature is a good addition and direction towards something like custom user controls that can be reused within a demo and help to reduce the overall amount of script code to write.

Sample Codes

;Initialize 3D Vector Object
@INITV   ;2 Parameters: IDN of 3D Vector and Blending Mode Enum
    LEA = 3DVECTOR
    IDN = /0
    BFX = /1

   ; For use with Windowed Version
   ; MVX = –600       
   ; MVY = –300

   ; For use with Full Screen Version
     MVX = 0
     MVY = 0
     MVZ = 500
@END

;Initialize 3D Ball Object
@INIT3DB
    LEA = 3DBALL
    IDN = /0

  ; For use with Full Screen Version
    MVX = 0
    MVY = 0
    MVZ = 500 
@END

FPS = 60         ;Set Frame Rate
PSH              ;Update All Effect Values
CAL = DISPLAY    ;Start Display
CAL = MUSIC      ;Run Music
JSR = 1         ;Gosub Routine 1
ESC              ;Quit Demo
END             ;End OSDM Script Processing

LAB = 1

   CAL = 3DVECTOR  ;Start 3D Vector Effect
   @INITV = 0, 4   ;Initialize First Object in mVOBJ Multi Vector Object 
                    ;File and set Blending Mode to Fast Vector Shading

   CAL = 3DBALL    ;Start 3DBall Effect
   @INIT3DB = 1    ;Initialize Second Object in mOBJ Multi 3D Ball Object File

   NOP = 4

RTS  ;Return

That’s it for now. I hope that you liked it. As you can see from the “1” at the end of the title for this post, I might write up some additional tips and tricks for OSDM script :).

Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Release Notes

A little toolset that converts MS DOS ASCII files, such as NFO’s or FILE_ID.DIZ text files (Code Page 437, USA and other) to HTML encoded Unicode (Output is still an ASCII file) that can be used to display the ASCII art, specifically the “High ASCII” or  block ASCII art on a web site. You can also convert the ASCII files to real Unicode Text files for the use in Windows Apps.

There are 3 different programs.

1. “batchconvert2.exe” is the ASCII to Unicode converter with a simple step by step user interface (see the image, file name: “Batch-ASCII2WebOrUniCode-Steps20.jpg” in the sub-folder “screenshots” for illustration.
2. “batchconvert2cli.exe” provides the same features as “batchconvert2.exe” but as an command-line tool for easy batch processing from a .BAT script etc.
3. “ASCIIConverterExtendedGUI1.exe” is a new version of my tool with a more user friendly single screen user interface. This version also provides some new features not available in the other two programs. You can convert Unicode text files or HTML encoded Unicode ASCII to MS-DOS ASCII text files. See some screen shots of the interface in the “screenshots” sub folder.

I decided to only include the .VBS and .HTA scripts converted to Win32 executables, but not the script sources itself in this version of the release. The code amount grew a significant amount and might be confusing. It’s not that I don’t want to share it. If you want to have the source files, contact me and I will give them to you. Null Problemo!

Examples

The example files can be found in the sub-folder “examples”.

File: roy.asc

     ───────── ▄ ▄▄▄▄ ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄   ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄  ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄▄▄ ▄ ─────────
     ·R·E·L·.·  ▄ ▄▄▄▄ ▀▀▀▀▀▀███ ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀███ █ ███ ▀ ███ ▄▄▄▄ ▄  ·2·0·0·9·
     ─────────── ▄ ▄▄▄ ███ ▄▄██▀ █ ███ █ ███ █▄ ▀▀▀▀▀███ ▄▄▄ ▄ ───────────
                    ▄▄ ███ ▄ ███ █ ███▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄  ▄▄▄▄▄███ ▄▄
                       ▀▀▀   ███ ▀  ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀  ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀

For example the small logo above (which is in DOS ASCII Format) would be converted to the following;

File: roy.web

       ─────────
       ▄ ▄▄▄▄ ▄▄▄▄▄
       ▄▄▄▄   ▄▄▄▄▄▄
       ▄▄▄  ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄
       ▄ ▄▄▄▄▄ ▄ ───
       ──────     ·R·E·L
       ·.·  ▄ ▄▄▄▄ ▀▀▀
       ▀▀▀███ ▀▀▀▀
       ▀▀▀▀███ █ ██
       █ ▀ ███ ▄▄▄▄ ▄�
       ·2·0·1·0· …

Note: I manually added line breaks and spaces to the example for  NFO layout reasons and it is also not the entire logo.  See the example files for the real results.

Unicode Text file Output.

File: roy.txt

This example file illustrates the results of a conversion of the roy.asc MS-DOS ASCII file to a Unicode Text file.

Notes to the HTML Encoding:

The Web Encoded ASCII does not include <BR> Tags for the line-breaks. You have to add those manually or do what I do on my web site and enclose the code in <PRE> </PRE> tags, which preserves the line-breaks within the enclosed text.

Since the result is Unicode and not DOS ASCII anymore, you can use any mono-space font to display the ASCII somewhat correctly. You won’t get a 100% accurate result anyway, because the old MS DOS font set is not part of Windows anymore. What you can get is only a close approximation. I use on my web site the font “Lucida Console”, which seems to be installed on many machines. If the Windows of the user who visits your page with the ASCII for example does not have that font installed, Windows will automatically  pick another font that comes close. I use the following CSS formatting for the PRE tags where I show ASCIIs. 

              pre {
                 background-color:#000;
                 color:#FFF;
                 display:block;
                 font-family:”Lucida Console”, monospace;
                 font-size:9pt;
                 line-height:12px;
                 padding:10px;
                 text-align:left;
               }

If the PRE Tag is also used for something else on your web site then you can also define it for a specific class selector like

              pre.asciiart {
              …
              }

You would then also have to extend the PRE HTML tag like this:

              <PRE class=asciiart>
              …
              </PRE>

Batchconvert2.exe

The script is designed to convert all files with a specified extension (.ASC by default) to web ready files with a new extension (.WEB by default, but you could also make it .HTML or whatever).

There are two additional options, where I recommend to use the defaults (which is “yes”).

The first option is “HTML Encode?”, which means that all non-US-ASCII characters (the 7 bit ASCII codes) will be converted to HTML codes  like &#XXX;. Also standard ASCII characters that could be misinterpreted by HTML or DHTML and XML are also encoded, like the ” becomes &quot;,  & becomes &amp;, < becomes &lt; and > becomes &gt; etc. If you select “No”, the ASCII will be converted to Windows Unicode (UTF-16) instead.

The second one is “Sanitize?” It will only come up, if you decide to convert files to Unicode text files and not, if you select HTML encoding. This option is automatically applied for HTML encoding.

What that does, if you select “Yes”. It is removing ASCII characters with an ASCII code smaller than 32, which are special control characters that cannot be printed anyway, with 3 exceptions, chr(10) = line-feed, chr(13) = carriage-return and chr(9) = tab. LF and CR remain unchanged. Tab characters will be converted to 8 spaces, which is the default MS DOS tab-stop.

Batchconvert2Cli.exe

The command-line version of my converter tool. The only required parameter is the path to the directory to  process. If nothing else is specified, all files with the extension .ASC will be converted to HTML encoded Unicode. Output files will be written into the same directory and same file-name, but with the file extension .WEB. If the tool is called without any parameters, the HELP text will be shown.

Usage:

              BATCHCONVERT2CLI.EXE PATH [/fext:|/text:|/cp:|/san:|/html:]

Optional Parameters (Named Arguments):

/fext:  select files with specified extension to be converted. (default is “asc”)
/text:  extension of converted files (default is “web”)
/cp:    Codepage (CP437/CP850…) (default is “CP437″)
/san:   Sanitize (y/n), replace tabs with spaces + remove control chrs* (default is “y”)
        * ASCII Code < 32, except for line breaks
/html:  HTML Encode (y/n) – Encode Unicode Characters for HTML (&#CHR;)* (default is “y”)
        * Note: Output will still be a text file; If “n” then Output encoding is UTF-16

Example:

   BATCHCONVERT2CLI.EXE “C:\NFOS\” /fext:NFO /text:HTML /cp:CP850 /san:y /html:y

• Processes all file in folder “C:\NFOS\” with extension .NFO.
• Generate output files in the same folder and file base-name.
• Use file extension .html for output files.
• For all processed files Code Page 850 (Western Europe) is assumed.
• Convert ASCII text to HTML encoded Unicode entities and sanitize the data prior conversion and output.

MS-DOS Code Pages

              CP437 – Latin US/United States/Canada
              CP737 – Greek
              CP775 – Baltic Rim
              CP850 – Latin 1 (Western Europe: DE, FR, ES)
              CP852 – Latin 2 (Slavic: PL, RU, BA, HR, HU, CZ, SK)
              CP855 – Cyrillic (RU, BG, UA)
              CP857 – Turkish, TR
              CP858 – Latin 1 Alt (= 850, 0xD5 = U+20AC EURO SYM)
              CP860 – Portuguese, PT
              CP861 – Islandic, IS
              CP862 – Hebrew, IL
              CP863 – Canada, CA (French)
              CP864 – Arabic
              CP865 – Nordic (except IS) (DK, SE, NO, FI)
              CP866 – Cyrillic Russian (based on GOST 19768-87)
              CP869 – Greek 2 (IBM Modern GR)
              CP874 – MS-DOS Thai

Windows Code Pages

              CP1250 – Windows Latin-2
              CP1251 – Windows Cyrillic
              CP1252 – Windows Latin-1
              CP1253 – Windows Greek
              CP1254 – Windows Turkish
              CP1255 – Windows Hebrew
              CP1256 – Windows Arabic
              CP1257 – Windows Baltic (1)
              CP1258 – Windows Vietnamese
              CP874 – Windows Thai
              CP932 – Windows Japanese
              CP936 – Windows Chinese (VRCN)
              CP949 – Windows Korean
              CP950 – Windows Chinese (HK)

Disclaimer and Waiver

Those tools are freeware. Do with it whatever you like, except selling it. You can use it free, copy it, share it whatever. You are using it at your own risk. You cannot make me liable for any damage or loss of data that might results directly or indirectly because of the use of my tools.

Downloads

Download the Release ZIP file from MediaFire.com

  RoySAC-ASC2UNI20B.ZIP (1.1 MB)

Backup Link to Amazon S3: RoySAC-ASC2UNI20B.ZIP (1.1 MB)

Enjoy the Tool! Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

This site and also the Blog were hosted on an old dedicated web server of mine which came into its years. It just suddenly decided that it is time for it to go. Admitted, it was not all that suddenly. The server had accumulated various minor “diseases” and flukes over the past seven years while it was running 24/7. It even crashed before, but until recently never “fatally”. A few days down and stuff like a new HD brought it always back up and running again.

Not so this time. May it rest in peace.

Web Server Fatal and Permanent Crash – Site and Blog Move

I also have to admit that I was kind of dragging along the well overdue move to a different server for way to long. Always came something else up and I simply did not do it. Well, now I had no more liberty to choose the when and how. That decision was done for me.

Coincidently also Google discontinued their FTP feature for Google/Blogger blogs for webmasters who wanted to host the actual blog media and content files on their own web server rather than having it hosted at blogspot.com or running on a sub-domain like blog.website.com with the actual blog itself still being hosted at Google and not their own web servers.

It actually meant that I not only had to move this site (and two other sites as well), but also had to do something about this blog. I played in the past already with the thought to migrate the blog to a different platform, such as Word Press, but also here, time for long time considerations and migration timelines vanished completely.

Google announced the discontinuation of the FTP feature already several months ago, but I was of course waiting until they actually disabled the feature and I wanted to make a change to an existing post. Well, that was the moment when I was thinking to just take care of the blog migration. On that day I went to my site getting an error screen telling me that there is no site anymore at all and I realized that I got a hell of a lot more to deal with than just the migration of my “little” personal blog. And that is how I ended up with a stressful week and way to little sleep.

…

Short answer, the blog is now running on WordPress, which I host on my own dedicated server running under Microsoft IIS and not PHP, which was less of a problem in many respects than I expected it to be.

The move of the main web site(s) was all in all not that much of a problem. I also had up-to-date content backups, which prevented the loss of data fortunately. Where I did not have an 100% backup of were the damn Blogger blog images. There were multiple reasons why that happened. The major reason was probably the history of the blog itself, which I started in February 2006 as a blogspot.com hosted blog, then moved to Cumbrowski.com with FTP option and then in 2007 to RoySAC.com. I also started using Windows Live Writer as main editor, using prior to that the Blogger.com interface and then another editor (I think it was called Blogworks). That also brought some changes to how, where and when images were published to the blog.

Image locations changed several times, having at the end about 4 of them. One of the 4 locations was unfortunately outside  the main web sites directory and missed by my frequent file backups. I also converted all blog posts that I ever wrote to MS Word and PDF, which means that lost image files did not get lost forever, only, how do I put it best… were less convenient accessible and in a format that would have allowed a swift transition to a different blogging platform. But my problems did not end there. Let me start from the beginning.

As I mentioned already, getting WordPress up and running on a Windows Server wasn’t much of a problem. That used to be very different only a few years ago. Okay, I had PHP already installed and configured. MySQL was also setup, but not configured also, but having those things installed with IIS web server does not mean that you can call it a day, job done in order to get WP up and running using those things properly.

1. Word Press/PHP/MySQL Server Install on Windows Server with IIS

With the exception of Windows Live Writer (which they later had to bundle with Windows Live Essentials to get people mad at them again), Microsoft appears to have created something that is actually fantastically useful, working, plug and play versus plug-n-pray, pain-free and fee-free on top of that. It is called “Microsoft Web Platform” and Wordpress is one application already supported by it. Download, run setup and the thing not only downloaded and installed the latest version of Wordpress right on my Server, but also downloaded, installed and/or configured all depending apps like PHP and MySQL Server within the same process as needed. It took less than 5 minutes (or maybe 1-2 more, well, it was light-speed fast compared to a Windows Service Pack install).

I could not believe that this was all I had to do and prepared myself for the worse, but to my amasement it was really working and ready to use. I only had to change one thing myself and that was the increase of allowed upload file size in order to get my blog backup from Blogger imported into Word Press. My 4+ years of blogging added up to more than just 2 MB, which was the default limit by the PHP installation, but Word Press figured that and told me exactly what the problem is, what I had to do, where and why in order to fix it.. nothing the typical Windows error message that says nothing, offers no help or anything near of an explanation of what happed in the first place.

2. Conversion of Blogger Backup XML to Word Press WXR Format

I mentioned already the Blogger backup, which is a nice feature in blogger that was around for some while already. It simply allows the export of all blog posts, comments, tags and categories into a single XML text file to download and local safekeeping or in my case, migration to another blogging platform.

Unfortunately, the Blogger import feature in Word Press does not make use of this full backup file and only offers solutions that involve a live hosted blog, which I did not have anymore at that time.

Fortunately, some folks developed a free tool using Google’s App Engine to convert those Blogger backup files to various different blogging platforms, including the Word Press Backup, WXR file format. You can download the tool and run it yourself or use the online version of it, which is also provided by that developer team at: http://blogger2wordpress.appspot.com/

Posts, Comments and Categories were imported into Word Press. One catch though, Blogger “Categories” are converted to Word Press “Tags” and not “Categories”. All posts ended up under the WP default category “uncategorized”.

3. Word Press URL Formatting and IIS

Word Press allows the configuration of various different permalink URLs, giving users a great deal of freedom. There are also tons of additional Word Press plug-ins available that let you tweak your post URLs even further. There is only one problem, most of those only work properly or at all with Apache Web Servers and/or .HTA-access for proper internal redirection to the Word Press internal URL format, which looks basically like this:

http://www.domain.com/blog/?p=POSTID or http://www.domain.com/blog/index.php?p=POSTID

Nice URLs with a folder like structure like this one: www.domain.com/blog/year/month/post-name/
do not work with IIS web servers off the bat. IIS will return a 404 Error (not found), because there is no real directory for each year, month and post, but IIS keeps looking for one. The solution that works out of the box looks something like this.

http://www.domain.com/blog/index.php/year/month/post-name/

“blog” is an actual folder on my site where the blog really resides. Notice the “index.php” that follows right after that? This is the actual script file located in the sub folder “blog”, which generated the blog home-page and many of its sub pages as well. If you browse to www.domain.com/blog/, index.php is called automatically without the need to enter it, because that is how I configured it in IIS. This works fine for default scripts in a directory, root or sub-directory, but it requires that the directory itself exists before it starts looking for a default script to process. With the exception of messing around with the default IIS error pages (like the 404 not found error page that you get from a web server that is unable to locate the requested document), I believe the only practical workable solution is the installation of an ISAPI filter in IIS itself. No PHP script, regardless how sophisticated will help you get around it as far as I know. Possibly with IIS 7, which I am not really familiar with, but not IIS 6 or lower.

But also there is a free, pretty easy to setup and configure solution available:

WordPressURLRewrite by Binary Fortress Software is free and easy to configure ISAPI filter plug-in for Word Press installations running on IIS web servers. There is a 32bit and 64bit version available depending on what type of web server you are using. Copy the Dynamic Link Library for your platform “WordPressURLRewrite32.dll” or “WordPressURLRewrite64.dll”, plus the configuration file “WordPressURLRewrite.ini” somewhere on the web server, where it is possible for you to set the user permissions for the account IIS is running under to “WRITE” for the DLL and INI. A new sub-directory of the Word Press “plugins” sub-folder will do just file, e.g.:

../blog/wp-content/plugins/wordpressurlrewrite/

The INI file is simple and straight forward and in most cases already ready to be used without modification. It requires the logical path location of the blog on your web site and the list of exceptions, that you don’t want the plug-in to mess with. Those are the usual suspects, like the Word Press contents and admin sub folders. I only had to add a few more exceptions to mine to include image sub folders etc.

#Paths to Rewrite (not case sensitive)
/blog/

#Path Exceptions (not case sensitive)
/blog/wp-admin
/blog/wp%2dadmin
/blog/wp-content
/blog/wp%2dcontent

The Installation in IIS is straight forward. Open the IIS (Internet Information Services) Manager under “Administrative Tools”, expand Web Sites and right-click on the site where you installed Word Press. Click “Properties”, select the "tab “ISAPI Filters” in the window that pops up. Click the “Add” button, “Browse” for the 32 or 64 bit DLL of WordPressURLRewrite, depending on your server, OK, OK and you are done there.

I don’t know why, but any ISAPI filter in IIS I have encountered so far requires WRITE permission to itself in Windows (NOT Web Site permissions in IIS). In order to do that, you need to know the Windows User account, which the IIS User is running under (You can find that out when you are in IIS Manager and the properties for your web site, where you setup the ISAPI filter. Instead of “ISAPI Filter” select the tab “Directory Security” and then clicking on the “Edit” button for the segment “Authentication and Access Control”. The second pop-up window that opens up shows in the text field for “User name” the Windows account that is used for anonymous/public visitors to your web site. This user needs the write permissions IN WINDOWS. You probably configure this  best via Windows Explorer (right click the plug-in folder, “Properties”, select the “Security’” tab and add the account used by ISS there, checking “Write” in the “Allow” column, which is “off” by default for any new user account that you add permissions for.)

So, that takes care of the nasty “Index.php” problem in the URL.

4. Old Blogger Permalinks to New Word Press Permalinks Redirection

It would have ended right there, if that would have been a new blog or one with the same permalink URLs as I have now. Unfortunately that is not the case. Blogger URLs look similar, but are not.

They look like this: http://www.domain.com/blog/year/month/post-name.html

The actual post looks like a file name and not a folder. If that would have been the only difference, no problem, because a “Custom” permalink structure configuration in Word Press looking like this:
/%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%.html instead of /%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%/ would accomplish the same goal. It would have been too easy though. While this solution might work for a large number of posts, it probably won’t work for all of them, and if it fails just for one, its already bad, especially, if you have no idea which one and several hundred to check.

Blogger does not use the entire post title for the generated URL. It cuts it off at some point, if it exceeds a certain size. I read somewhere that blogger cuts off after 40 characters, but I won’t vouch for that information. It also makes some different  choices for the conversion of special characters used within a post title. Some are simply ignored, while others are replaced by a “dash” or “hyphen” character, the generic and universal “minus” sign: “-“. It does that with SPACES, which is the same rule as Word Press uses for it’s permalink URLs, but when it comes to other characters, both platforms do it differently. What the rules are exactly I don’t know. Unless your post titles are always short and never uses any other characters than Letters, Numbers and Space, odds are that one or more of your new Word Press URLS will not match your old Blogger ones.

I have not found anything that worked properly for this problem. If the number of your posts isn’t too much and a manual tweak of the one or the other permalink by hand is okay and acceptable for you, I’d suggest to stop here. Use the custom link structure “/%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%.html” in Word Press and change the few wrong generated permalinks that differ from the original Blogger ones in the “Edit” screen of the post in Word Press. Word Press allows a manual change and overwrite for the permalink for every post whenever you feel like it.

5. Darker Territory

If you are a perfectionist or have too many posts that would fit the “possibly wrong generated by Word Press” category to check them one by one, then continue to follow me. :)

I decided to setup a one-to-one redirection for each post from the old Blogger URL to the new Word Press URL.

That required me to do 4 things. 1) get all permalinks for all posts generated by Word Press for my imported posts, 2) get all permalinks for all posts written using Blogger, 3) match them all up with as little as possible manual labor to do so and last but not least 4) establish a 301 redirection for each of those URL pairs.

Step 4) One-On-One Redirection

Let me start with 4), the redirection. The ISAPI filter WordPressURLRedirection does not offer any help, but a different ISAPI filter does. Since you installed already one, installing a second one should be a piece of cake. It’s the same thing over again. Only another DLL and a different configuration file to worry about, the rest is the same. I decided to go with the ISAPI filter I am most familiar with, which is called “ISAPI_Rewrite by Helicon”, the free version of it will do, while the paid pro version does a heck of a lot more, which has nothing to do with our little problem though. But you could use any other ISAPI filter that has a one by one URL redirection option. See this page on my other web site for tools and stuff for this kind of purposes, where you can also find a link to download the ISAPI_Rewrite filter by Helicon.

Add the DLL “ISAPI_Rewrite.dll” of the ISAPI_REWRITE filter by Helicon to IIS, change permission to the Windows folder for the IIS user and configure the filter via the httpd.ini configuration file.  Example:

[ISAPI_REWIRTE]

RewriteCond  Host:  (?:www\.)?roysac\.com
RewriteRule ^/blog/2010/05/demo-post\.html /blog/2010/05/demo-post/ [I,R]
RewriteRule …

Step 1) Getting New Word Press Permalinks

Actually getting the “Post Title” AND the Permalink is much more helpful in order to reduce the amount of manual labor in step 3) hehe. There are many different ways to do this. I used MySQL to get to the “meat”. If you have the user name and password for the MySQL installation that is used for the blog, good.

Start the MySQL Administrator and connect to the DB server with that user name and password, preferably the “root” (master) user account. If you cannot remember from the original installation of Word Press, use the manager to find out the “Database” or “Catalog” name used for Word Press. The right catalog or database will have tables with names that start with the same prefix (which you specified during the WP installation, “WP_” by default). The table we are interested in is called “PREFIX_posts” (E.g. wp_posts).

Start the MySQL Command Line Client from the “Tools” Menu in MySQL Administrator, there type:

use CATALOGNAME

where CATALOGNAME is the name of the database or catalog used by your WP installation. then type:

SELECT w.post_title, w.post_name INTO OUTFILE "C:/WPLINKS.TXT" FROM wp_posts w where w.post_type=”post”;

where you only have to replace the “wp_posts” towards the end, if you are using a different table prefix. This writes a text file to the root of the “C:” drives called “WPLINKS.TXT”

Step 2) and 3) Getting Old Blogger Permalinks, Matching Them

… and post titles, which should actually be the same as in Word Press, if you did not change them there for any reasons. You can get them from an old RSS feed or from the XML backup file.

1. Download this ZIP file and extract the small executable included in the archive.

2. Copy and Rename into the same folder where you extracted the EXE file to

     2 a) Your Blogger backup XML file, rename it to “bglxml.txt”

     2 b) the text file created from MySQL called “wplinks.txt”

Run the EXE and it should start reading the Blogger backup file, parsing URLs and post titles from it, then reading the Word Press extract and match them. It generates two files in the same folder called OUT1.TXT and OUT2.TXT.

OUT1.TXT contains ready to use line items for the ISAPI_REWRITE tool for all posts where it was able to match them up and OUT2.TXT, which contains Blogger as well as Word Press post titles and URLs, where it was not able to match them up.Those you have to deal with yourself and my hand.

Final Words and Comments

Well, I had to recover many images manually for a bunch of my blog posts and while I was going through my posts, I noticed that in some cases something was not right. Embed videos were missing and some HTML was messed up. This was not consistent that I was able to nail it down to anything specific, like the video sharing site or editing platform that I used. Below are “before” and “after” screen shots of a severe case of mal-formatting.

I am not sure if the cause for this can be found in any of the tools and steps that I mentioned above or if it was caused by my other messing around working towards a solution by trial and error.

Before Fixing

After Fixing

Good Luck for your own migration project and I hope that my tips, resources and experiences are able to make your migration go through much smoother that my own.

Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Overview

• New World Order“ – Multipart Demo by Roy/SAC Created in January 2010 with the Oldskool Demomaker (OSDM) V2.01.140 by Peace/Testaware
• Watch the Video Capture of the Demo and download the Win32 executable here.
• OSDM Settings File Location: Data\Prefs\Roy – NewWorldOrder-fs.ini
  (zip download NWOPrefsIni.zip (6.84 KiB)
• Download All Resources, Images, Objects, Ini, Screen Shots, Tutorial in TXT format and Win32 Exe of the Demo in one ZIP archive here NWO TUt.zip NWO (4.9 MB)

The Demo Parts

First a break-down of the individual demo parts and which OSDM effects were used for each of those parts.

1. Roy/SAC is Back - Bounce Bobs Effect	2. Roy/SAC Proudly Presents - Sprites Effect - 3D Ball Effect	3. NWO Logo Animation - Sprites Effect
4. Vector Stars - 3D Vector Effect	5. Text and Copper Bars - Mask Effect - Star field Effect - Copper Bars Effect - Amiga Text Effect	6. 3D Balls Carpet - Plasma Effect - Star field Effect - 3D Ball Effect
7. Big Scroller - Plasma Effect - Star field Effect - Scroll Text Effect	8. Vector Space Ship - Plasma Effect - Star field Effect - 3D Vector Effect	9. Dollar Pyramid Flashing - Mask Effect
10. Pyramid Parallax Scroll & Text - Mask Effect - Back Effect - Page Text Effect	11. Final Part - Star field Effect - Reflection Effect - Logo Effect - Sinus 16 and 32 Effects	Not really a part: 12) Quit Demo via Scroll Text Control Code and Transitions between many of the demo parts are using the C64 Back effect. See details further down. - C64 Back Effect - Scroll Text Effect

The Settings

I am now going over all Settings Tabs and their configuration in detail. I also added notes to the effects settings where I felt it to be important to explain the “WHY” and “WHAT FOR”.

Main

Enabled Effects Star field Copper Bars Plasma Logo Background Mask Picture C64 Back Music 3D Ball Object 3D Vector Object Bounce Bobs Reflection Sinus Text 16 Sinus Text 32 Scroll Text Page Text Amiga Text Sprites

Display

Display: Full Screen Mode 640×480 pixels Resolution Frame Rate (FPS): 60 Display Size: 100 RGB Hide: (0,0,0) (Black) Allow to fade display in and out: enabled Render View / Adjust to size of Display: enabled

Stars

3D Simulation enabled X, Y and Z Rotation: enabled Number: 200 Planes Depth: 4 Angle: 9 Speed: 9 Use Star Picture: Data\Bobs\Miscellaneous\03.PNG

Stars Effect Notes

• The stars effect is used for the background and mostly just as visual support for the main effect in a whopping 5 parts of the demo

1. Part 5) Amiga Text
2. Part 6) 3D Ball Carpet
3. Part 7) Big Scroll
4. Part 8) Vector Space Ship
5. Part 11) Final Part

• The settings for the rotation and speed were configured primarily for the Vector Space Ship part, because there the effect plays an integrated part in the scene beyond merely providing visual support.

Copper (FX) and Plasma

Copper bars Effect RGB Copper bars Color: 64, 128, 128 Number: 16 Size: 14 Speed: 3 Tail: On Plasma Color: 0, 0, 40 Random: Off Colorize: Off X-Sin: 120  X-Speed: 2 Y-Sin: 95 Y-Speed: 1 Step: 2 Copper Media Copper Amiga Text “Data\Copper\green-copper.PNG” See Amiga Text Settings for Image

Copper Bars Effect Notes

• The Copper bars are only used as background for the Amiga Text Effect of part 5) of the demo

Plasma Effect Notes

• I like to use the plasma effect to add some visual depth to various scenes. It just looks cooler if you have something going on in the background instead of having just a black screen there. I like blue as a color in general, but it is also a nice fit for the space scenes in this demo. However, the effect is used for visual support in 3 parts of the demo altogether.

1. Part 6) 3D Ball Carpet
2. Part 7) Big Scroll
3. Part 8) Vector Space Ship

Media – Logo

File: “Data\Anim\Vertical\women01b-_V9.jpg” (click on image for full size version) Anim: On # Frames: 9 Frame Delay: 15 Logo Effect: Wave Stretch RGB Hide: Black (0,0,0) Position: X = 80 Y = 100 Alpha: 100 Fade: Enabled Speed: 2 FX Speed: 1 X/Y Swing: Off

Logo Effect Notes

• The logo effect is only used for the final part (11) of the demo. I almost did not use it at all, but felt bad about that fact and decided to add a small and short bonus part at the end of the demo as a result of it. I use a Vertical Frame animation as logo, a girl covered in silk throwing back her hair in slow motion. It almost looks like she is underwater, which is the reason why I applied the „Wave Stretch“ effect to the logo to enhance this notion even further.

Media – Background

File “Data\Layer\Novus Okdo Seclorum2.png” (click on image for full size version) Horizontal Scroll: Swing Left Amount: 5 Vertical Scroll: Swing Down Amount: 5 Zoom: Screen size Mirror: Off

Background Effect Notes

• This effect is only used for part 9) of the demo. The black regions of the image are transparent and make the MASK effect visible. The order in which the effects are rendered is controlled via the „Storyboard“ feature under the „Regie“ (Direction) tab of the OSDM interface.

Media – Mask

File: “Data\Layer\Novus Okdo Seclorum2.png” (Same Image as for Background) Mask Effect: Flashing Skid Boxes Alpha: 30

Mask Effect Notes

• This nice effect is used in 3 parts of the demo 5) Text and Copper (to enhance the copper background effect), 9) just on its own and 10) as background for the same image used with the BACK image and only visible through the black and thus transparent regions of the BACK image effect.

Fonts

Font 16 File “Data\Fonts\16\megafont16-x16.png” Font 32 File: “Data\Fonts\32\OSDM_Fnt32×32_EarwigFactory – ccu.png” Amiga Text File: “Data\Fonts\32\OSDM_Fnt32×32_OnesizeReverse-GoldCCU4.png”

Font 16 Notes

• Used for Big Scroll and Sinus Scroll 16 (Final Part). As you can see, most characters of the font were replaced by graphical elements, which are vital for its use for the two effects in the demo.

Font 32 Notes

• Used for the End Scroller in part 10 of the demo (Page Text) and for the short Sinus 32 Scroller in the Final Part (11) of the demo

Amiga Text Font Notes

• Only used for the Text Part (5) of the demo with a green copper effect applied to it. See details at the information about the „Amiga Text“ effect

Music

File: “Data\Modules\Nervous Disorder by Keith 303 of Radical Rhythms.XM” (NWOmodule.zip (305.41 KB))

Music Notes

• I only used a single Fast Tracker 2 (.XM) tune, so there was nothing really to configure for me on this screen (except for selecting the tune itself). I am not using the Equalizer effect nor the multiple tunes packed into an OMA archive features.

Text – Scroll Text

Scroll Text Effect Notes

• ID 1-7 are used for the “Big Scroll” Part

• The Big Scroll uses a special tweaked font where the letters are replaced by graphical elements that make up the scroller, in this case square boxes in blue colors with different shades.

• Each scroller starts with a ^B control code to initiate the „bounce“ effect. The amount is set to a different value for each scroller to achieve the stretch and swing effect that you can see in the final demo. The ^S0 code at the end of each scroller sets the speed to 0 to avoid that the scroller restarts.

• In Order to prevent the Scroller No 8 with the Script command to be executed while my Big Scroller runs, I set its speed via OSDM Script to 0 prior running the big scroller. I then changed the speed back to “-5“ at the end of the demo to execute the command. To avoid any accidental execution caused by potential delays between the effect activation and the modification of its speed to stop it, I added a few spaces at the beginning of scroller #8 and also the pause (^P3) prior the quit command.

Note: I removed 52 blanks/space Characters of scroller texts 1 to 7 before the
S0 control command for display/space reasons. I also added line-breaks for the same reasons.

ID: 1 , Speed: 6, Y-Pos: 110, Font Mode: Font 16
^B1 HHHHHHHHH HHH HHH HHH HHHHHHHH HHH HHHHHHHH HHHHHHH
HHH HHH HHHHHHH HHH HHH HHHHHHH HHHHHHH HHH HHHHHHH
HHH HHH HHH ^S0

ID: 2 , Speed: 6, Y-Pos: 126, Font Mode: Font 16
^B2 III III III III III III III III III III III III
III III III III III III III III III III III III III
III III ^S0

ID: 3 , Speed: 6, Y-Pos: 142, Font Mode: Font 16
^B3 JJJ JJJ JJJ JJJ JJJ JJJ JJJ JJJ JJJ JJJ
JJJ JJJ JJJ JJJ JJJ JJJ JJJ JJJ JJJ JJJ JJJ JJJ JJJ
JJJ JJJ ^S0

ID: 4 , Speed: 6, Y-Pos: 158, Font Mode: Font 16
^B4 KKK KKKKKKKKK KKK LLLLLLL KKK LLLLLLL KKK KKK KKK
KKK KKKKKKKK KKK KKK KKK KKK KKKKKKKK KKK KKK KKK KKK
KKK KKK ^S0

ID: 5 , Speed: 6, Y-Pos: 182, Font Mode: Font 16
^B5 JJJ JJJ JJJ JJJ JJJ JJJ JJJ JJJ JJJ JJJ
JJJ JJJ JJJ JJJ J JJJ JJJ JJJ JJJ JJJ JJJ JJJ JJJ JJJ JJJ
JJJ JJJ ^S0

ID: 6 , Speed: 6, Y-Pos: 200, Font Mode: Font 16
^B6 III III III III III III III III III III III
III III III III III III III III III III III III III III
III ^S0

ID: 7 , Speed: 6, Y-Pos: 222, Font Mode: Font 16
^B8 HHH HHH HHH HHH HHHHHHHH HHH HHHHHHHH HHHHHHH
HHHHH HHH HHH HHHH HHHH HHHHHHH HHH HHH HHHHHHHH HHHHHHH
HHH HHH HHH ^S0

ID: 8 , Speed: 1, Y-Pos: 240, Font Mode: Font 16
^P3^Q1

Text – Sinus Text

Sinus 16 Settings High: 44 Frequency: 4 Speed: 3 Y-Pos: 100 Copper: Off Sinus 32 Settings High: 100 Frequency: 10 Speed: 5 Y-Pos: 90 Copper: Off

 Sinus Text Effect Notes

• Both Sinus Text Scrollers were only used for the final part (11) of the demo

Sinus 16 Text

Note: I added  line-breaks to the scroll text for display reasons
ABCDEFGFEDCBABCDEFGFEDCBABCDEFGFEDCBABCDEFGFEDCBABCDEFGFEDCB
ABCDEFGFEDCBABCDEFGFEDCBABCDEFGFEDCBABCDEFGFEDCBABCDEFGFEDCB
ABCDEFGFEDCBABCDEFGFEDCBABCDEFGFEDCBABCDEFGFEDCBABCDEFGFEDCB
ABCDEFGFEDCBABCDEFGFEDCBABCDEFGFEDCBABCDEFGFEDCBABCDEFGFEDCB

Sinus Text 16 Effect Notes

• It uses the modified font like the Big scroll but it uses different letters, which were replaced with gray boxes in different shades.

Sinus 32 Text

THANK YOU FOR WATCHING THIS DEMO!

Text – Amiga Text

Letter FX Zoom: Enabled Shadow: Enabled Copper: Enabled (set at Copper/Copper Media Screen, “Data\Copper\green-copper.PNG”) Page Effect: Vertical Page Lines: 7 Wait: 45 X-Pos: 25 Y-Pos: 60 Size: 32

Text – Page Text

Settings Page Lines: 16 Wait: 10 X-Pos: 25 Y-Pos: 5 Page Mode: FX scroll up Font Size: Font 32 FX Speed: 2 FX Fade: 3 FX Effects Jump: Enabled Stretch: Enabled FX High: 480 Text

Page Text Effect Notes

• This effect was only used in the End Scroller Part (10) of the demo

3D – 3D Ball

The 3D Ball Images  Uses the “Solarsystem” Bobs Set from OSDM – Files: Data\Bobs\Solarsystem\00.PNG Data\Bobs\Solarsystem\01.PNG Data\Bobs\Solarsystem\02.PNG Data\Bobs\Solarsystem\03.PNG Data\Bobs\Solarsystem\04.PNG Data\Bobs\Solarsystem\05.PNG Data\Bobs\Solarsystem\06.PNG Data\Bobs\Solarsystem\07.PNG

The MOBJ file was created using the “Create Multiple 3D Ball Object” feature under Tools\Utils (Select Tool via the Dropdown in the top right) File: “Data\Objects\NWO.mOBJ” (NWOmOBJ.zip (9.38 KB)) – which contains: The Roy/SAC object from the beginning and the 3D Ball Carpet. Position X,Y,Z Position: Off (will be set via Script) X,Y,Z Move: Off (Not used, can’t be controlled via script) Rotation (fix for all objects, cannot be changed via script) X: Off Y: Off Z: 16 Angle X: 5 Y: 5 Z: 5

3D – 3D Vector

Uses also a multi object file, created using the “Create Multiple 3D Vector Object” feature under Tools\UtilsFile: “Data\Vectors\NWO.mVOBJ” (NWOmVOBJ.zip (10.88 KB)) – It contains: the Bouncing Stars Circle Object and the Space Ship Object Position X,Y,Z Position: Off (will be set via Script) Rotation (fix for all objects, cannot be changed via script) X: 1 Y: 1 Z: 16  X,Y,Z Move: Off Fast Vector Shading: Off Wireframe: Off

3D Vector Effects Notes

• Due to the lack of control of 3D objects via OSDM Script in the current version of OSDM (Peace is fixing this in the upcoming version of OSDM) is it quite a challenge to use multiple different objects in a single demo, because the rotation settings etc. are all fix and the same for all objects. You can only control the movement of the object on the X and Y axis as well as zoom it on the Z-axis. While the settings worked nicely for the Stars Circle vector object, it was a different story with the spaceship. It just did not look right and changing the current settings would have screwed up the other effect. As a solution for this dilemma I added animation commands to the space ship object. All points are animated on the X, Y and Z coordinates to add some extra movement.

• Also to consider was the fact that once you enable the vector effect, ALL objects within the mVOBJ object definition file start to rotate according to the settings in OSDM. This happens regardless if you selected a particular object via IDN = X. This means that the appearance of an object changes depending on how long you had the effect enabled prior to show other objects. Depending on the object and the rotation settings, this can have dramatic impact on how each of the vector parts are going to look like.

• The same limitations and challenges also apply to the 3D Ball vector objects.

Misc. – Sprites

I uses 6 of the available 8 Sprite slots

1. File: “Data\Anim\Horizontal\Smokeburst-gray_h18.jpg” (click on image for full size version)

• X-Pos: 1, Y-Pos: 1, Alpha: 1, Zoom: 205
• Anim: On, Frames: 18, Delay: 20, Start: 1
• Angle: 285, Rotate: Left, Speed: 2

Sprite 1 Notes

• Used as background effect of the intro part (2) with the 3D Balls Roy/SAC logo

2. File: “Data\Anim\Horizontal\earth05b_H30.png” (click on image for full size version)

• X-Pos: 100, Y-Pos: 390, Alpha: 1, Zoom: 240
• Anim: On, Frames: 30, Delay: 22, Start: 1
• Angle: Off, Rotate: Off

Sprite 2 Notes

• Used for the Title animation part (3) of the demo

3. File: “Data\Layer\anewproductioncalled.png”

• X-Pos: 320, Y-Pos: 350, Alpha: 1, Zoom: 100
• Anim: Off
• Angle: Off, Rotate: Off

Sprite 3 Notes

• A simple text layer used for the intro sequence (part 2) of the demo. Faded in and out using OSDM Script.

4. File: “Data\Layer\proudlypresents.png”

• X-Pos: 320, Y-Pos: 155, Alpha: 1, Zoom: 100
• Anim: Off
• Angle: Off, Rotate: Off

Sprite 4 Notes

• Another simple text layer faded in and out during the intro sequence (part 2) of the demo

5. File: “Data\Layer\NewWorldOrder.png” (click on image for full size version)

X-Pos: 320 Y-Pos: 240 Alpha: 1 Zoom: 100 Anim: Off Angle: Off Rotate: Off

Sprite 5 Notes

• Used for the title animation part (3) of the demo. Zoomed and faded via OSDM script.

6. File: “Data\Anim\Horizontal\mou2blackbg_H20.png” (click on image for full size version)

• X-Pos: 121 , Y-Pos: 240 , Alpha: 1 , Zoom: 200
• Anim: On , Frames: 33 , Delay: 22 , Start: Off
• Angle: Off , Rotate: Off

Sprite 6 Notes

• The funny animation of the mouse that is scared of what it sees to escape with a squish in classic comic style. Used for the title animation part 3 of the demo.

Misc. Bounce Bob

File “Data\Layer\RoySACisBacknoyear.png” (click on image for full size version) Size: 100 Ground: Off Number: 1 Alpha: 50 Rotate: Off X-Mirror: Off Frames: Off X/Y Bounce Off Mask *: X: On Y: On Color: RGB(0,0,128)

Bounce Bobs Effect Notes

• * The Bounce Off settings are irrelevant and can be switched off, because the bounce bob appears on a screen that is entirely black.
• I only used the bounce bob effect for this, because I could not use another sprite slot anymore, because adding a 7th sprite would reduce the maximum allowed file size for all other sprites as well and some of the vital frame animations would exceed this lower maximum.

Misc. – Reflection

Start Mirror Y: 11 Height: 312 View Mirror Below Y: 325 Size: 54% RGB Mask: (2,2,2) Alpha: 29

Reflection Effect Notes

• The Reflection Effect is used for two parts of the demo, 5) Text and Copper and 11) Final Part

Misc. – C64 Back

File: “Data\Copper\Copper_33.PNG“ Vertical Position: Center High: 480 Effect Mode: Raster Mirror Outside Speed: 2

C64 Back Effect Notes:

• I use the C64 Back Effect for most of the transitions between the individual demo parts. See screenshot of a transition further up in this tutorial.

• I call the effect via CAL = C64 (OSDM Script) right before I stop the display at the end of a demo part via STP = DISPLAY and stop it within the next demo part via STP = C64, right before I enable the display again via the CAL = DISPLAY command.

Regie (Direction) – Storyboard

Fade: On Speed: 25 Restart: 2:00 (irrelevant) Order (Top to Bottom = Back to Front) (A) Plasma (E) Border Lines (Not Used) (F) 3D DOT Object (Not Used) (B) Back Picture (C) Copper bars (D) Star field (O) Mask (G) 3D Vector Object (H) Bounce Bob (X) Sprites (K) Scroll Text (L) Sinus Text 16 (I) 3D Ball Object (J) Logo (M) Sinus Text 32 (N) Page Text (P) Equalizer (Not Used) (Q) 3D Direct Object (Not Used) (S) Zini Text (Not Used) (T) Magnifying (Not Used) (V) DYXCP Text (Not Used) (W) Amiga Text (R) Reflection (U) C64 Back List with NOT used Effects removed (A) Plasma (B) Back Picture (C) Copper bars (D) Star field (O) Mask (G) 3D Vector Object (H) Bounce Bob (X) Sprites (K) Scroll Text (L) Sinus Text 16 (I) 3D Ball Object (J) Logo (M) Sinus Text 32 (N) Page Text (W) Amiga Text (R) Reflection (U) C64 Back

Storyboard Notes

Start and End of each effect is irrelevant because it is controlled via script. It is also irrelevant if an effect is „checked“ or not, meaning if the checkbox in front of each effect is enabled or not,

Regie (Direction) – Script

Include Script and Sort effects by Storyboard Only: Enabled (IMPORTANT!!!!) Paste by Selection: Enabled (I have no idea what that is for) See Script Code below

Script Notes

• The heart and core of the demo where everything comes together. The whole direction of the demo and the separation into its individual parts is controlled via script, also the direction of the individual effects within each part as well as the transition between them is all done via this script.

FPS = 60
PSH
;New World Order
;11 Part OSDM
;Demo by Roy/SAC
;in 2010
;RoySAC.com/osdm/
CAL = MUSIC
STP = DISPLAY

LAB = 99

;is back
JSR = 6

;3DBalls
JSR = 5

;Mouse
JSR = 2

;Vector Stars
JSR = 1

;Amiga
JSR = 9

;Balls 2
JSR = 7

;Scroll
JSR = 8

;3DVect Ship
JSR = 11

;Mask and Credits
JSR = 4

JSR = 12

;Quit Demo
;Called from LAB=12
End

;-----------------
LAB = 1
;3D Vector Star
;outx5.vobj
;z-rotate 16
CAL = 3DVECTOR
LEA = 3DVECTOR
IDN = 0
MVX = -640
MVY = -320
MVZ = 1000
OSX = -100
OSY = 0
OSZ = 0
MVS = 30
OSX = 0
STP = C64
CAL = DISPLAY
NOP = 1
NOP = 8
CAL = C64
STP = DISPLAY
NOP = 1
STP = 3DVector
STP = C64
OSY = 0
OSX = 0
OSZ = 0
NOP = 0
RTS
;------------------
;3DBall
;roy23b - Copy.obj
LAB = 5
CAL = SPRITE
LEA = SPRITE
IDN = 1
MVA = 0
MVX = 320
MVY = 240
IDN = 2
MVA = 0
IDN = 3
MVA = 0
IDN = 4
MVA = 0
IDN = 0
MVX = 320
MVY = 240
CAL = 3DBALL
LEA = 3DBALL
IDN = 0
MVX = -500
MVY = -240
MVZ = 700
NOP = 0
CAL = DISPLAY
LEA = SPRITE
IDN = 0
REP = 40
  ADA = 2
  ADZ = 5
LOP

NOP = 1
LEA = 3DBALL
IDN = 0
REP = 200
  ADZ = 4
  ADX = -1
  ADY = 1
LOP
REP = 400
  ADZ = -4
  ADX = 1
  ADY = -1
LOP
REP = 200
  ADZ = 4
  ADX = -1
  ADY = 1
LOP
LEA = SPRITE
IDN = 3
REP = 52
  ADA = 4
LOP
MVA = 255
NOP = 1
REP = 52
  ADA = -4
LOP
MVA = 0
NOP = 1
LEA = 3DBALL
IDN = 0
REP = 200
  ADZ = 4
  ADX = 1
  ADY = 1
LOP
REP = 400
  ADZ = -4
  ADX = -1
  ADY = -1
LOP
REP = 200
  ADZ = 4
  ADX = 1
  ADY = 1
LOP
LEA = SPRITE
IDN = 2
REP = 52
  ADA =4
LOP
MVA = 255
NOP = 1
REP = 52
  ADA = -4
LOP
MVA = 0
NOP = 2
CAL = C64
STP = DISPLAY
STP = 3DBall
NOP = 1
RTS
;--------------
;Mouse
LAB = 2
;Initialize
LEA = SPRITE
IDN = 0
MVA = 0
IDN = 4
MVA = 0
MVZ = 0
MVX = 320
MVY = 240
IDN = 5
MVA = 0
IDN = 1
MVA = 0
MVZ = 200
MVX = 320
MVY = 240
NOP = 0
STP = C64
CAL = DISPLAY
;Fade+Zoom-In Logo
IDN = 4
REP = 100
  ADA = 1
  ADZ = 1
LOP
REP = 50
  IDN = 4
  ADA = 3
LOP
IDN = 4
MVA = 254
IDN = 5
MVA = 254
;Play Anim
;and Switch Off
IDN = 1
REP = 20
  ADA = 5
  ADZ = 5
LOP
MVA = 254

NOP = 2
IDN = 5
MVA = 0
;Fade and Zoom Out Logo
REP = 253
  IDN = 4
  ADA = -1
  ADZ = 1
  IDN = 1
  ADA = -1
  ADZ = 2
LOP
CAL = C64
STP = DISPLAY
NOP = 1
IDN = 4
MVA = 0
IDN = 1
MVA = 0
RTS
;-----------------
;Mask and Credits
LAB = 4
TRS
CAL = MASK
CAL = DISPLAY
NOP = 1
NOP = 2
STP = DISPLAY
NOP = 1
CAL = BACK
CAL = DISPLAY
CAL = PAGE
TIM = 52
CAL = C64
STP = DISPLAY
NOP = 1
STP = C64+PAGE
STP = BACK+MASK
RTS
;-----------------
LAB = 100
;Quit Demo
CAL = SCROLL
LEA = SCROLL
IDN = 7
MVS = 0
;CAL = DISPLAY
NOP = 1
MVS = -1
RTS
;-----------------
;Is Back
LAB = 6
CAL = BOUNCE
CAL = DISPLAY
NOP = 1
CAL = C64
STP = DISPLAY
NOP = 1
STP = C64+BOUNCE
RTS
;----------------
;3DBall 2
LAB = 7
CAL = STARS
CAL = PLASMA
CAL = 3DBALL
LEA = 3DBALL
IDN = 1
OSZ = -100
OSX = 100
OSY = 100
MVZ = 1900
MVY = -400
MVX = -600
CPW = 100
CPZ = 20
NOP = 0
CAL = DISPLAY
LEA = 3DBALL
IDN = 1
REP = 300
  ADZ = -6
LOP
REP = 250
  ADZ = 4
LOP
REP = 250
  ADZ = -3
LOP
REP = 250
  ADX = -1
  ADZ = 2
LOP
REP = 350
  ADX = 2
  ADZ = 2
LOP
CAL = C64
STP = DISPLAY
NOP = 1
STP = C64
OSZ = 0
OSX = 0
OSY = 0
STP = 3DBALL
STP = STARS
STP = PLASMA
RTS

;-----------
;Scroll
LAB = 8
TRS
CAL = STARS
CAL = PLASMA
CAL = SCROLL
LEA = SCROLL
IDN = 7
MVS = 0
CAL = DISPLAY
NOP = 1
TIM = 17
CAL = C64
STP = DISPLAY
NOP = 1
STP = C64
STP = SCROLL
STP = PLASMA
STP = STARS
NOP = 0
RTS
;-----------------
;Amiga
LAB = 9
CAL = MASK
LEA = MASK
MVA = 100
CAL = REFLECTION
CAL = STARS
CAL = COPPERBAR
TRS
CAL = DISPLAY
NOP = 1
CAL = AMIGATEXT
LEA = AMIGATEXT
MVC = -2
REP = 100
  JSR = 10
LOP
TIM = 22
CAL = C64
STP = DISPLAY
NOP = 1
STP = C64
STP = AMIGATEXT
STP = STARS
STP = COPPERBAR
STP = REFLECTION
LEA = MASK
MVA = 30
STP = MASK
NOP = 0
RTS
;-----------------
LAB = 10
LEA = AMIGATEXT
REP = 6
  ADC = 1
LOP
REP = 6
  ADC = -1
LOP
NOP = 0
RTS
;---------------
;Vect Spaceship
LAB = 11
CAL = 3DVECTOR
LEA = 3DVECTOR
IDN = 1
MVX = -700
MVY = -300
MVZ = 1200
NOP = 0
CAL = STARS+PLASMA
CAL = DISPLAY
NOP = 1
NOP = 8
CAL = C64
STP = DISPLAY
NOP = 1
STP = C64
STP = 3DVECTOR
STP = STARS
STP = PLASMA
NOP = 0
RTS
;----------------
;End
LAB = 12
  CAL = SINUS16
  LEA = SINUS16
  MVS = 10
  NOP = 1
  MVS = 4
  CAL = DISPLAY
  CAL = LOGO+STARS
  CAL = SINUS32
  CAL = REFLECTION
  NOP = 3
  JSR = 100
RTS

Tools – Export

Export Icon: Enabled File: “Data\Misc\RoySAC.ico” (NWOMiscIco.zip (625 Bytes)) Start Screen Picture: Enabled   File: “Data\Logos\Roysacny2010-loading.png”

EXTRAS

• NWO Tutorial Resources NWO TUt.zip NWO (4.9 MB)
• This Tutorial in PDF Format OSDM_Demo_Tutorial-New_World_Order-by_Roy-SAC.pdf (1.7 MB)

Oldskool Demomaker does not support animated GIFs or any other animation/video format, but it is capable of rendering something like an animation via the work-around, which is called „Frame Animation Images“. This is basically a generic flat image in PNG, JPG or other format supported by OSDM, which contains all frames for the animation.

The only thing you have to do is tell OSDM how many frames the image contains and it will automatically slice up the image into equal size pieces, which are then shown one after another, with the speed of changing from one frame to another, depending on the value for “delay” that also needs to be specified for a frame animation image.

The Logo feature supports “Vertical Frame Animations” and the Sprites and Bounce Bobs features support “Horizontal Frame Animations”. The difference between the two is how the frames are arranged within the image; Vertical means on top of each other and horizontal means that they are arranged next to each other.

Example:
Frame animation image dimensions: 200×200 pixels, Number of frames: 2
- Vertical Frame Animation Frame Size: 200×100 pixels or
- Horizontal Frame Animation Frame Size: 100×200 pixels

Creating Frame Animations

Now, those frame animation images are hard to create by hand, because you have to be very precise. It is also virtually impossible to proper align the content within each frame to get a smooth and seamless animation sequence.

The best way to create frame animation images is by preparing all frames of the animation sequence and save them as individual images in PNG format into a separate folder on your hard disk. The file names for the images should be created by using a sequential numbering schema that they can be ordered properly; something Like “FRAME-001.PNG”, “FRAME-002.PNG” … “FRAME-XXX.PNG” etc.

Once you have that, you can use the freeware tool „FAC – Frame Animation Creator“ for OSDM by Peace/Testaware (77 KB) to convert the set of individual images to a single image frame animation file.

• Frame Animation Creator – FAC Tool (freeware) by Peace/Testaware

The tool will create a single image in PNG format out of all your individual images . It also adds a suffix to the name of the output image, such as “_H99” or “_V10” etc. The “H” stands for Horizontal and the “V” for Vertical, followed by the number of frames this image contains. You will notice when you are using the finished image with such prefix in the file name, that OSDM recognizes this and automatically pre-sets the corresponding frame count parameter in the OSDM interface to the right value.

Note: I recommend for a number of different reasons that you keep your frame animation images as small in size and also in dimensions as possible. There are already restrictions build into OSDM itself when it comes to the image size of the frame animation. However, it does not restrict the dimension of an image. If an OSDM production uses an Image that exceeds the width or height of 4000 pixels, nothing of that image/animation might be shown on some machines, including my primary PC currently, which runs the 64bit version of Windows 7 Ultimate. I know from others that they don’t have this problem and animations that exceed the mentioned dimensions are still rendered on their computers, however, there is a problem for some folks out there. If you want to make your production to run properly on the most possible number of computers, don’t go over this limit.

Image Editors

Sometimes it is necessary to tweak the source images or even the final frame animation image before it can be used properly in OSDM. One example would be change the background color to back (RGB: 0, 0, 0) for transparency in OSDM for the Horizontal Sprite animations.

Using the open source image editing tool Gimp is one option and free.

•  Gimp Open Source Image Editor

I personally like to use the Snag-It Editor for minor image tweaks, which comes with Snag-It the Screen Capture Tool (Commercial, $50 for single user license), which I happen to own. Snag-it is also capable of making video captures of content that runs in windowed mode, which could be used to capture intros within an emulator window, if the emulator itself does not support video capture directly. DOS Box for example, which is useful to run old MS DOS intros, has a build in video capture feature and the captured video can be loaded into Virtual Dub and the frames exported from there to individual images (requires zmbv.dll codec). …more to that will follow in the subsequent paragraphs that are about the conversion from other animation formats to OSDM frame animations.

• Snag-it by TechSmith (commercial, $50 per user license)

Creating and Converting of Existing Animations

Not everybody is artist enough to create new animations from scratch himself for the use in your own OSDM intro production, so you probably prefer to use animations that were created by others instead.

There are a number of different sources that you could use. Some require more extra work and manual fine tuning than others. Let me provide a few typical examples that you might want to use as source.

Source: Animated GIFs

There are tons of small size animations out there cr
eated by people around the world for decades for all kinds of purposes, mostly for the use on a web site on the internet. I am referring to animated GIFs.

The animated GIF format is already very restricted in terms of the amount of colors and data the animation can have. They have to be small in size (and typically short) and only use up to 256 colors. This makes them perfect as source material for an animation in OSDM, since we also need to keep it short for the usage in our intro or demo production.

Finding Animated GIF images on the Internet; some Resources:

• http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Graphics/Web/Free/Animated_GIFs/
• http://coolclips.com/
• http://www.gifanimations.com/
• http://www.animatedgif.net/

In order to be able to create a frame animation image with FAC, the animated GIFs need to be converted to individual frame images.

Here are some tools that do exactly that.

• Animated Gif Frame Extractor (17 KB)
• IrFanView 4.25 (1.3 MB)
• IrFanView Portable Version (10 MB!)

The Animated Gif Frame Extractor is a very small and straight forward tool to convert GIF animations, but it is also slow and has problems sometimes with certain types of animated GIFs, because it does not seem to support all of the animation features that the GIF file format supports.

I actually recommend using none of the three tools that I just mentioned, but another one, which does also a lot more than just convert GIF images.

See the next paragraph for details.

Source: Videos

You might want to use a very short video sequence as animation in your demo production. This should only be a limited number of video frames, to stay within the limits of OSDM.

A good and FREE (which is also nice) tool that allows you to extract images from video frames is the open source tool Virtual Dub. It also supports animated GIFs as input files and is able to convert them to individual frame images as well. Since full motion video has many frames per second (25, 30 or even 60), a conversion just a few seconds of video would result into hundreds of individual frames.

• VirtualDub 1.9.9 (1.6-1.8 MB)

Virtual Dub Preferences for Image Exports: Set the Frame Rate for image sequences much lower, if you want to convert some full motion video to a frame animation. You might even set it as low as 1 FPS, if it makes sense.

Virtual Dub Image Export Settings

Source: FLASH Animations

There are folks who remade hundreds of old school intro productions from the Commodore 64, Commodore Amiga and old MS DOS PC to the Adobe/Macromedia Shockwave Flash format. Although the effects in the original production was probably accomplished via code, most of those remakes are not doing this and use pre-created animations for those effects instead. Many of them perfect for the use with OSDM.

Here are some sites where you can find those flash productions. They don’t provide links to download the flash animation in SWF format to your local machine, but as most content loaded with a web page, those flash animations are being downloaded to your web browser cache first and then executed there, so you can have a look there and copy the file to a different location on your hard disk.

There are also tools and browser plug-ins available that let you download/extract flash animation files from web pages. There are tons of options out there, but the cheapest and simplest is to look into the local temp folder as I already mentioned.

Retro-Remake web sites – Extraction from Flash Remakes of Intros/Cracktros

• Flashtro.com
• Doc Snyder’s Flash Remakes

Flash Resources Extractors

Use a SWF Resource Extractor/De-compiler tool to extract images from Flash files.
Probably the best tool for this kind of task is the commercial de-compiler by SourceTec, however, that one is not free, nor is it cheap.

• SWF Decompiler by SourceTec/Sothink (commercial, $80), same as Eltima Flash De-compiler

But I did a quick test with the free tool SWF Picture Extractor and it also seems to do the trick. It only extracts the images from a SWF file, but that is all we really care about in the first place.

• SWF Picture Extractor (Freeware)

Here are two other supposedly free SWF extraction tools that I have found on the internet, but which I have not tested myself, so I don’t know if they are any good or not:

• SWF Extractor Free
• Fortop SWF Resources Extractor Version 1.0 (supposed to be freeware)
  current SW version is only $10 though

Source: Other Frame Animations

Another not so obvious source for an animation could be frame animation images that were created by others for example. They might be ready to use, if you plan to use them in the same way the original creator intended it or used in his own production, but this might also not be the case.

For example. If you have a cool Vertical frame animation that you would like to use, but via the Sprites or Bounce Bobs features instead of the Logo, then you have a problem, because Sprites and Bounce Bobs support only Horizontal frame animations.

Since you do not have the original individual frame images, the Frame Animation Creator tool won’t help you with this. At least not without an additional intermediate step, the conversion back from the frame animation image to single frame images. Since this option is not provided by FAC nor OSDM itself, I decided to write a little tool in PureBasic that is doing just that. It slices up Vertical and also Horizontal frame animations in PNG image format.

• Vertical/Horizontal Frame Animation PNG to Frame Images
  Converter (78 KB)

Conclusion

Okay, that rounds up my little tutorial about the creation of animations for the Oldskool Demomaker by Peace/Testaware.

Make sure to check out the OSDM related section on my own web site for demo and intro productions that I created with the tool as well as useful resources that you might also learn to appreciate for your very own intro/demo project.

I also suggest stopping by the OSDM support portal, which has a community form, wiki and other goodies. There you can find answers to your questions, either from what is already there or by simply asking others by posting to the forum. I am hanging out there too.

And last but not least the best “bonus” of them all. I created a set at my image sharing account at Flickr.com, just for OSDM ready frame animation images, horizontal and vertical as well. There are already several hundred animations that you are free to use for your own production. I also add new ones every now and then, so coming back to revisit it once in a while does not hurt.

Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC
http://www.roysac.com/

The general issue is Copyright Laws that they cannot change, but the way how they deal with the situations that are a consequence of IMO insufficient laws in an environment they were not designed for and weren’t even envisioned when those laws were put in place to begin with.

The Letter:

This letter was written in response to the YouTube Account Inquiry #572435220 regarding the termination of the YouTube account “CirqueDuSoleilGuru” on December 18, 2009.

For whatever reason did your email response from January 6, 2010 to my web inquiry about the suspension of my YouTube account “CirqueDuSoleilGuru” on December 18, 2010 show up in my Gmail inbox now, several months later. I was looking for it back in January and did not find any of it. This is weird, but a separate issue.

I am pretty sure that YouTube accounts and their content that were suspended 4+ months ago cannot be reactivated and recovered anyway, so there is no urgency to the situation anymore and my comments can be classified as detailed user feedback, suggestions and complaints from a long time and very active YouTube user who operates multiple personal and professional YouTube accounts for different reasons and purposes. My initial response and not so “nice” blog post about the termination of my account can be found at this URL. It uses stronger words, but might be worth thinking about nevertheless. Several of my former 2000 channel subscribers contacted me via other means to inquire about the unexpected termination of my account that I felt the need to publish a statement myself publicly.

Background Story

The YouTube account “CirqueDuSoleilGuru” was my personal non-commercial outlet to promote and appreciate the Canadian entertainment company “Cirque du Soleil”, inform other people about activities and events that involve the Circus, review related merchandise and comment on various issues that concern the company and are of my personal interest and may also interest other fans of the Circus like me.

In addition to the YouTube channel, I maintained content in written format related to the same subject on my personal web site. The main entry page to this content would be my “Cirque du Soleil Primer Article” at http://www.roysac.com/cirque and its several dozen subsequent pages.

I have no commercial relationship with Cirque du Soleil, although my activities online were noticed and appreciated by various employees of the company, including artists, but also some of their marketing professionals. They notified me about events and other things that might of my interest without any obligations for me to follow up on that and without offering any financial reward for my efforts. However, I met their Las Vegas marketing executive in Las Vegas in person once and was given a free ticket to one of their shows that I have already seen. This was more a sign of being grateful for my support and not an attempt to pay me off or bribe me.

My YouTube channel featured over 200 videos, which could be categorized as follows.

1. Teaser and Promotional Material to Cirque du Soleil resident and touring shows as well as related merchandise, such as show recordings on DVD and similar products.
2. Behind the scene, Making of, Meet the artist kind of mini documentaries that could also be considered “promotional” in nature, although the main target audience would probably be Cirque fans like me, who are also interested in the things that go beyond their elaborate shows.
3. News footage about special activities that involve Cirque du Soleil in general. This can be a multitude of things, from Guinness Book of World Records attempts to Involvements in their Charity work in organizations such as the One Drop Foundation.
4. Original content that I created myself entirely that include product reviews and also “news type” of content or personal opinions about non-product related things.
5. Indirectly related content about Circus arts at large and also content that fall under the categories 1-3 that involve the famous and now former director of Cirque du Soleil, “Franco Dragonè”, who owns today his own company and works independent from Cirque du Soleil, but in the same field.
6. This is probably the category that is the most problematic one and with only a few exceptions all videos that were removed my YouTube in the past belonged to this one. Appearances and special performances by Cirque du Soleil outside their own productions. This includes promotional appearances on national television or special mini performances to openings of special events (such as Oscars, Grammy’s, and Olympic Games etc.). I have a special page that concerns just such performances, which is part of my Primer article series, titled “Cirque du Soleil Special Events and Performances”

I also like to add, that many but not all of the material published on my YouTube channel was edited by me prior its publication to the YouTube web site and not just a simple reproduction of existing material from other sources. Several hundreds of hours of actual work went into the 200+ videos that I published to this Channel.

Although content in the categories 1-2 is also “copyright protected” by law, so is it much less likely that the copyright owner would make a complaint about its publication and distribution free of charge, since it was produced for this purpose in the first place. Exception might be the use in an environment where the copyright owner does not want to be associated with and feels it to be inappropriate, but this is obviously not the case in my example. The owner had knowledge of it and actually appreciated my distribution and publication.

Regarding the content that falls into category 6 I have to say that I was and are aware that the content that I used was not free, but I also did not and do not feel that I was really violating any laws or caused damage or loss the owner of the intellectual property that I used for it. Now I am not a copyright lawyer myself, but after doing some self-study online, during conferences in educational sessions and personal talks to copyright lawyers I learned that the fair-use clause that I think applies to this content is not that clear and not objective applicable as I would wish it would. I only take snippets, typically 1-5 minutes out of 1-3 or more hours of copyrighted material that is only about the Cirque and virtually never about the setting and surrounding where this appearance takes place, which is however mentioned in detail as much as I know as future reference and for historic archiving purposes. It is of educational and almost news like character, where the “news” aspect might be the one that could be debated the most.

Penalty 1 and 3 are perfect examples of this. I am not a regular viewer of TV talk shows like Jay Leno’s “Tonight Show” on NBC or “Chelsea Lately”, which I never even had heard of before I learned about Cirques special appearance on it.

Penalty 1:
“Cirque du Soleil – Zumanity @ Jay Leno” formerly at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YVO0FD0RpQ
Removed due to a copyright claim by NBC Universal on 07/09/2008

Penalty 2:
“Cirque du Soleil – KA 1/9″ formerly at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzisBtyhCt4
Removed due to a copyright claim by Cirque du Solei
l on 06/25/2009

Note: I left this video out of this discussion, because there is a much bigger story to it, which would be too much to bring into this general debate.

Penalty 3:
“Alan Silva from Cirque du Soleil’s Zumanity at Chelsea Lately” formerly at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3BMgsPwjdg
Removed due to a copyright claim by Comcast Entertainment Group on 12/18/2009

Since the laws is vague in this respect and my interest in this non-commercial, I did not and won’t file any counter suit if the copyright owner files a complaint with YouTube and is impossible to communicate with as an individual without commercial interests. I tend to make some attempts to contact the company who filed the complaint to sort out things using common sense and reasoning and come to a solution that serves our mutual interests, but that is unfortunately only accomplished successfully in very few of the cases where it happens.

I don’t mind to serve additional advertisement that benefits the owner or even change and extend the content description to include additional related information of commercial nature, including links to a target web site operated by the owner or an e-commerce site where related products can be purchased by viewers of the video.

This communication issue is something where YouTube/Google could provide some help.

YouTube would and should only act as a neutral relay of information without getting directly involved or extend on its legal responsibilities and risks. I think it would even lower the risks of YouTube, because it would show that the company is actively involved in solving conflicts that are located in a legal gray area and benefit both conflicting parties, save everybody involved time, money, bad blood and headaches and maybe even aids the formation of new partnerships along the way as a bonus.

YouTube does some of it already, but it is only a one-way street at the moment.

It offers to owners of the intellectual property already today the option to include additional ads and/or revenue share for existing ads served on Google property along with the content instead of taking it down completely, if the owner decides to do so. Examples are text ads in the format of video annotations with a link to buy the CD of the audio that is currently being heard by the viewer or extra ad units on the video detail page that promote other and maybe even related content of the copyright owner.

The Issue Today

Publishers are currently not offered anything to serve their interests and support their rights. They are treated, sorry my strong words, like dirt and 2^nd class people, whose time and energy is discarded as worthless and negligible, at the mercy of Google and large media companies to be erased without any warning at any time.

In the case of a complaint a publisher gets only very little choices and options, basically reduced to only one, which is to take legal actions themselves and better get a lawyer involved right away before anything might be done to do anything for them. Since the majority of publishers on YouTube are individuals who publish without commercial interests, this is actually very unlikely to be done. What everybody gets are rightfully first confused and then upset or even angry individuals that potentially harm not just Google’s business in the future but potentially also the business of copyright owner. All of this only because of something that probably does not harm anybody involved and most likely benefit everybody involved and may only requires some fine-tuning to make every party completely happy.

Suggested Solution

What YouTube could provide for example is the ability for a publisher to respond to a complaint via a web form, where he is able to state that he believes that the use of the copyrighted content does qualify to be exempted by a fair-use clause, which one and why. This would be non-formal and non-legally binding, entirely separated from any formal legal action the publisher could take. The publisher should also be enabled to make offers to the property owner, like the ones that I mentioned already earlier. Some of which could even be automated entirely by YouTube, such as the activation of additional Ad units on the video page or a supplemental video description block that can be maintained by the copyright owner.

Since the publisher needs to explain why he thinks fair-use might apply in his case, bogus claims could be filtered out fairly easily in most of the cases. The owner will also be forced to have a second look at the case and maybe learns about a previously missed opportunity at the same time that could be of even more benefit for him in the future. The number of actual law suits should in my opinion decrease as a consequence as well and the owner of the copyright also gets to know of the chance that a legal suit might back-fire and creates unnecessary cost for him and might even harms his business.

Google on the other hand adds another level of refinement to its system to better be able to distinguish between publishers who are in essence legitimate, but acting unfortunately in somewhat legal gray area und blatant violators of existing copyright laws that probably deserve the harsh and strict punishment exercised by YouTube in both cases today.

Along the way, you could also implement something where somebody who submits a complaint via your web complaint form gets the ability to retract this complaint, if things got resolved without any legal actions taken by any party, including the publisher. I still have a “Strike” in a different YouTube account that I manage where things got resolved directly between me and the entity who filed the complaint, even though that entity assured me that they tried to get a hold of somebody at YouTube to retract the previously filed complained that it will be removed from my account as a consequence.

See my case as an example.

A channel where over 200 videos were published over a period of 1 ½ years, with over 3.2 million views of those videos with over 5000 ratings and over 3000 user comments. The channel itself also had over 2000 subscribers. All wiped out from the face of this world, because of 3 cases where YouTube has no idea if there was potentially a law violated at all or if the publisher simply did not made the choice to engage in costly and time-consuming legal action, because of the lack of common sense to pursue this route and only option available to him at the moment.

Conclusion

Asking for 5 minutes of the alleged copyright owner’s time, who claims to own the rights and felt those rights to be violated to have a second look and option to resolve the situation in a civilized manner should not be too much in return for the preservation of hundreds of hours of time, unknown amounts of money, energy and love by the publishers and also the time spent by active members of the YouTube community who rate content, make comments, answer questions and help YouTube to rid itself of spam and illegal content.

Google cannot change current laws, which are in the case of copyright laws unfortunately ill-suited for this new environment and situation, which was not envisioned when the laws where put in place as they are to this date (which is my own personal opinion and subjective). There is work needed elsewhere. However, Google could make some more efforts to easy the tensions and reduce conflicts that result from these short comings and are also a result of their commercial services in form of a social video sharing web site called YouTube that pioneered the ways how audio-visual content of commercial as well as non-commercial nature is being consumed by millions of people around the world today and in the future.

I hope that my comments and recommendations ma
ke sense and be considered useful and realistic as I believe them to be and will make the life of everybody involved much less painful than it is today, if they should be followed through with and become implemented in the near future.

Regards,

Carsten Cumbrowski

Fresno, CA on April 8, 2010

Note: This letter will also be published publicly on my personal blog at RoySAC.com/blog.

That’s it. I hope I made sense. Comments and Feedback (also anonymously) are not only allowed but also encouraged, via the comment-form further down below.

Mhh.. I have actually a bunch of things to write about, but did not get around actually doing it. Well, I will provide some brief updates.

Megatro III Release

I released another Megatro Intro pack with my latest OSDM productions. The menu system was coded by myself again and I hope that I was also able to improve on it since Megatro II. For details and download links check out the dedicated page for this release.

Since the release of Megatro III I did create already several other productions as well. You might want to check out my OSDM homepage to check it out.

OSDM Vector Object Resources

Vector Objects for OSDM are hard to create and have more than one person already driven close to insanity. But there are some lights at the end of the tunnel, which could help until a vector object editor will be implemented into OSDM itself.

• Creation of Vector Objects Tutorial written by Wildcop (in German only, unfortunately)
• Notes to 3D Vectors (from the OSDM feature notes at the OSDM Wiki)
• VOBJ Tool V1.5beta written by me, which provides some nice features that make the work with the VOBJ data files much easier. Features like Merge of 2 VOBJ files, cloning of objects, shifting, flipping, centering, rotating etc. Also new is a Vector Object Creator for the creation of some basic vector objects, such as Spheres, Torus’, Cubes and Pyramids. The tool is a beta and has some known and still not known bugs, just as a reminder. I only made it public, because everybody agreed so far that ANY help is better than nothing at all. I wrote it in VBScript and it uses IE for the interface. I then made an Executable out of it to make it easier to use and the original .VBS script file.
• Excel 2007 Macro Worksheet – This one is also highly experimental and you can use it at your own risk. It has some nice features that make editing of vector objects easier, but also several more or less working features that can be described as “tests” on my part. I only decided to make it public, because I think that it is helpful, even in its current version, despite all its flaws and bugs and unfinished features.You must enable Macros in Excel 2007 in order to make the document work. It’s also saved with a XLSM extension for the same reason. To change the Macro security settings, click on the MS Office button in the upper left corner of Excel 2007, then click on the “Excel Options” button, which is not located on the left where you can find the “Open”, “Save” dialogs etc., but the lower right, next to the “Exit Excel” button. Select “Trust Center” from the options on the left, then “Trust Center Settings” at the lower right of the Trust Center home page. Then select “Macro Settings” on the right side again and adjust the settings in the page that opens accordingly. Yeah, Microsoft could not have buried it much deeper in Excel to make it hard to find.

Forced Blog Move/Change

Google Blogger announced that they are going to discontinue the support for FTP. That is how I operate my blog with Blogger. The files (the blog content) is hosted at my own web server and pushed by Google to via FTP to my server, if changes to the blog are made (e.g. new posts are posted or comments).

I always wanted to switch to Wordpress. Maybe its now the time to actually do it, but I am not sure yet. I might go with an alternative route that became available, such as the custom domain for blogger. The blog would be moved from RoySAC.com/blog to Blog.RoySAC.com or something like that and would reside on Google’s servers instead of mine. It should not make any difference to the look and feel of my blog, but I am still skeptical when it comes to this.

There is still some time to think about it.

Well, that’s it for now. I hope that I will be able to post something else that is new and interesting soon.

Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

http://www.roysac.com/

I was co-leader of the Dytec PC section at the time and took an active part in this mega-merger.

Dynasty has no homepage today so I decided to put up a page on my web site, where you can read about the creation of the group and also find historic artifacts like Dynasty Crack Intros, CD-Rip Installers, ASCII, ANSI and Pixel Art etc. I thought that this might be a good idea and is part of my continues efforts to preserve scene history for the future.

The page can be accessed via this link. Below is a screenshot of the top part of that new page.

Dynasty Media Pack Release

I also created a media pack release, which contains all the art work and intros created for Dynasty. The pack is much larger than the one that I created earlier for the release group Dytec³, because I also included Video captures of the Intros and MP3 recordings of the tracker modules this time. It is still “only” about 98 MB in size and what are 98MB nowadays? :)

The NEW – DNS – Dynasty Group Media Collection. Included in this collection are:

• 7 Dynasty MS DOS PC Intros
• 2 Dynasty MS DOS CD-RIP Installers
• 9 Video Captures of Intros and Installers in AVI Format
• 9 Tracker Music files from DNS PC Prods.
• 9 MP3 Recordings of the Tracker Music Files
• 7 Images, Pixel Artwork, like Logos
• 18 FILE_ID.DIZ Designs
• 7 NFO File Logo Designs
• 5 ANSI Logos
• PNG Snapshots of all Text Art Files

Roy-DNSMediaColV1.ZIP release package is available for download at my Mediafire.com file share account.

Roy_DNSMediaColV1.ZIP- Download the Dynasty Media Collection V1.0 (97.82 MB ZIP)

Here is the NFO File, which I included in my Media Pack Release, another opportunity for me to use my new RoySAC.com ASCII design hehe:

      ▄▄▄▄▄▄                                        ▄▄▄▄▄     ▄▄▄▄▄                 █▄
  ▀███████████▄▄               ▄        ▄▄     ▄▄██████████▀████▀▀███▄       ▄▄████████▄
    ▀█▓█    ▀████           ▄███    ▄▄▓▓▓█  ▄██████▀▀ █▒▓█ ███▀    █▓▓█    █████▀▀  ██▀█▀▄
    ██▓█     █▓▓██         ██▓▓█   █▓▓▒▒▓█ ███▓██▀   ██▓██▐██       █▓▓▌  ██▓█▀    ▐▀  ▐  ▌
    ████    ▐█▒▓▓█  ▄▄████▄ ██▓█   █▓▒░▒▓▌ █████     ████ ██▌      ▐▓▓█▌ █▓▓▓▌     ▌   ▐  ▌
    ████  ▄▄█▓█▀▀ ▄██▀▀  ███▐███   █▓▒░▓█   ▀███▄    ▀   ▄███▀▄▄▄  ██▓██ █▓▒█      ▀▀▀▄▄▄ █
   ▐▌ ▀██▀███▄▄  ███▌   ▐▓▒▓▌███▄  ██▓▓█  ▄▄▄ ▀▀████▄▄  ▀███▌  ▀▀▀██████ █▓▒█            ▀▀
   █    █  ▀█ ▀█▄ ▀█    █▓▒▓█▀███▄ ███▓█ ▐█  ▀▌    ▀█▓▓█ ███       ▀████ █▓▓█      █
  ▐▌    ▐▌  █   █▌ █▄  ▄█▒░▒█▌ ▀███████▌ ▀▌   █      █▒▓█▐██        █ ▀█ ██▓▓▌     ██▄
  █      █ ▐▌   ▐█ █████▓░▒▓█     ▀▀████  █▄▄█▌      █▓██ ██       ▐▌  █  ██▓█     ████
 █▄▄▄▄▄▄▄█▄█     █ ▀█████▓█▀ ▄▀▄     ████  ▀███▄   ▄████  ██       █   █   ████▄▄  ████
         ▄▀      █    ▀▀▀▀ ▄▀   ▀▄▄   ███▌   ▀▀██████▀▀   █▌     ▄▀    █     ▀█████████
       ▄▀        ▐▌      ▄▀        ▀█▄████                ▌    ▄▀      █        ▀▀▀▀███
      █           █     ▀▄           ████                      ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀              ▀
     █            █       ▀▀▄▄     ▄███▀                                          Roy<SAC>
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                         Roy/SAC presents

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    ▓                     DNS Dynasty PC Media Collection Vol.1                 ▓
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       ▀▄          Packaged and Released on February 23, 2010                ▄▀
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              The DNS – Dynasty PC Group Media Collection
              Included in this collection are

                    – 7 Dynasty MS DOS PC Intros
                    – 2 Dynasty MS DOS CD–RIP Installers
		    – 9 Video Captures of Intros and Installers in AVI Format

                    – 9 Tracker Music files from DNS PC Prods.
                    – 9 MP3 Recordings of the Tracker Music Files

                    – 7 Images, Pixel Artwork, like Logos
                    – 18 FILE_ID.DIZ Designs
                    – 7 NFO File Logo Designs
                    – 5 ANSI Logos
                    – PNG Snapshots of all Text Art Files

             Produced and used by the warez release group (German language games)
             called DNS – Dynasty from Germany since 1996.
             The group was founded in April 1996 as a result of the merger of the
             three German release groups EOD – Empire of Darkness, VTX – Vortex
             and DTC – Dytec – Dynamic Technologies.

             Visit http://www.roysac.com/dynasty
             The temporary and unofficial web site of Dynasty PC
             for more information, history, videos and downloads.

             Also check out the Win32 Intro INTRO.EXE, which includes a
             Windows 32bit XP/VISTA/Win7 remake of an old Dynasty PC MS DOS
             Cracktro :).

             Cheers!
             Carsten aka Roy/SAC

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             Unrar the included RAR archive DNSCOLLECTION1.RAR and enjoy.
             Don't forget to check out the INTRO.EXE Intro for Win32.

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       ▀▄ ■▄     Greeting ...              ░ ░▒▒▒▓▒ ░░░░░░▒▓▒░ ░ ▀■·     ▄■ ▄▀
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                                                ░
            All folks at the OSDM support forums at forum.deltaforceteam.de
            especially to: Rebell, Wildcop, Peace, Jizzy, Dragon, Bobo,
                           Marie, Skid, Sanity, Genom, Synth and Inc

            Additional Personal Greetings to:
            Mad Max/CPI, Rad Man/ACiD, Ben Garret/Defacto2.net,
            Lord Scarlet/SixteenColors.net, Jason Scott/Textfiles.com

            All folks (including former members) from Blocktronix, SAC,
            Razor 1911, Dynasty, Dytec, TRSI/Faith, TOaO, LSD, Cardinals,
            Backlash, Peanuts

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      ▀▄ ■▄     Other Stuff ...           ░ ░▒▒▒▓▒ ░░░░░░▒▓▒░ ░ ▀■·     ▄■ ▄▀
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           Check out the page about Dytec – Dynamic Technologies
           for History, All–Time Member List, Artwork and Intros at

http://www.roysac.com/dytec

           Also check out my site at http://www.roysac.com/ in general and
           also my personal blog at http://www.roysac.com/blog/

           Signing off!

           Roy of Superior Art Creations, CPI, Dytec,
                  Razor 1911, TRSI, TDU–Jam, PNS

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Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Former Founding Member of Dynasty PC in 1996

I already posted about my thoughts about the issue of using a tool such as OSDM in general, the few at what coding is today and what is today different than it was 10-15 years ago. So I won’t go into that subject again right now, because I think that I understood today what the other issue is what some folks seem to have, which does not seem to be about the use of such tool as I believed it to be, but about who creates it and how it is presented.

(What Appears to Be) The (Real) Issue

It did not occur to me that people would mix my personal OSDM stuff with official SAC productions and releases, something that I also not knowingly encouraged to do.

I avoided to reference to my OSDM stuff within the official SAC content on my Website, which resides in its own section at RoySAC.com/sac and can also be accessed from SuperiorArtCreations.com.

The user always remains in the SAC section while he browses the SAC Packs and official SAC Galleries on the Site. You can tell this by looking at the top navigation on the site. Not only is the tab “Superior Art Creations” highlighted, but also the top header image is different and shows “Superior Art Creations”  instead of the typical “Roy of Superior Art Creations” that is used for all other areas of my web site. Only one page referred to the ‘”Art Galleries” Section instead of SAC and that was the SAC VGA Logos collection, which I changed today.

URL to full sized version of this screen shot:
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4062/4364417256_48277e4272_o.png

Am I considering my OSDM stuff to be official SAC releases? No, I don’t, certainly not after my chat with Scour this January. In my blog post that followed that conversation, I stated explicitly that my OSDM stuff is NOT appropriate for an official SAC release. I was referring particularly to the SACtro that I prepared for the SAC Pack #36 release.

Can’t Blame

Despite all this are some people still doing the association of my OSDM stuff with official Superior Art Creations business and I cannot really blame them for doing so. They would probably realize their error, if they would take the time to look closely enough and really cared, but I cannot expect doing that from everybody out there who is involved in the scene and sees my OSDM stuff.

The problem is that I use Roy/SAC in the credits of my productions and not simply ROY without the /SAC. Using Roy/SAC is obviously enough for some people to automatically see it as an official SAC production. I am not aware that I ever used in any of my OSDM production the words “official SAC production” or “Superior Art Creations Release” all on their own without the restrictor and refinement “Roy of …” before that.

Also, an intro or demo production is typically defined by its coder(s), or at least that used to be the case. I never claimed that I programmed any of the OSDM intros/demos myself and always gave the appropriate credits to the person who deserved it, in the case of OSDM to Peace/Testaware and Epyx, who wrote the FXLib library for Pure Basic where OSDM is based on. So by this standard, my productions are more like a “Testaware Production” or an “Epyx Release” or something like that, because my parts were “only” the overall design, direction, concepts, choice of music and in many cases the pixel graphics and vector object definitions as well, plus the scripting of the demo maker to control, adjust and blend the individual effects as well as the transitions between them.

Okay, some start with a big “Roy/SAC presents” or “Roy of Superior Art Creations presents” and none with “Testaware presents” or something like that; Granted. Why not drop the /SAC from Roy and why did I use it in the first place? Good question and if you are long enough around then you will probably also already know the answer to this question.

Why, Why, Why, What, What, What?

“Roy” and “SAC” became throughout the past 15+ years inseparable from another. The vast majority of my artwork bears the signature “SAC>”<strong> or “Roy[SAC]”  or “Roy” and since 1995 onwards my IRC handle (Internet Relay Chat, specifically the EFNet) always has been “Roy[SAC]” (which does not seem to be allowed to be used anymore, at least by the IRC servers that I used recently) and my fall-back nick-name was “Roy_SAC”. It was never ROY without the SAC. Also the domain for the web site is RoySAC.com and not Roy.com, which is more due to the fact that Roy.com is kind of unavailable and unobtainable these days. I had my shot at SAC.com in 1995 and missed it, which haunts me to this day, but that is a different story.

When got in touch with other oldskool sceners for the first time, it happened that just “Roy” only triggered thinking and digging in old memories, with some being able to make the leap and fill the missing gap themselves and others keeping thinking and thinking unable to make the jump until the needed hint is provided to them… “SAC” …. “ah yes, Roy/SAC, the ASCII artist. The NFO logos for XXX and YYY.”. Now they remember and know. Well most folks have not seen my name very often or not at all just by itself without the descriptor “/SAC”  next to it.

This was a process that took many years and I cannot change that now anymore, even if I wanted to. I did not realize that this would happen and thus were unable to do something to prevent that from h
appening while there was still a chance. Okay, I cannot change it anymore and won’t even start trying to so today; so what else can I do? This blog post is a start and a good place to refer to in a discussion with anybody who does create the wrong connection and assumption about whether or not something I do is an official SAC release or not.

 URL to full sized version of this screen shot:
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4070/4364430236_f13268752b_o.png

Defusing Attempts

But I cannot stop there. I added also a disclaimer to the OSDM section homepage on my web site stating that none of the productions are official SAC releases. I will also add a similar disclaimer to the individual production pages. Then I will also start slowly updating descriptions of video captures of my OSDM stuff on sites like Vimeo, YouTube and Facebook. Also made a design change to the loader image that I used in virtually all of my OSDM productions since the end of last year. It looks like this and will be used for my future productions.

I also started the re-assignment of all OSDM related pages from “Art Galleries”, which is used for my personal art galleries, but also for generic art galleries with artwork by SAC as well as non-SAC members or even not by somebody from the underground art scene at all. I began assigning those to the “Roy/SAC” section (see, even there it says “Roy/SAC” instead of just “Roy”), to make it even more clear, that this is something that has to be associated with me personally and not with ”SAC” or anything else.

Conclusion

For the folks who hoped that I will abandon having fun with OSDM altogether to avoid all trouble that it causes without having much to do with it to begin with, sorry. I do not intend to do you this favor. Just ignore it, if you cannot stand seeing it. Just use the keyword “OSDM” for any filter that you are using to remove content associated with it. I am pretty sure that I use the word at least once with everything that is associated with it hehe; or you just get over it and see the stuff at what it is and not what you used to make out of it in your own head. Warning: You might even start enjoying them too! :)

I hope this post clarifies things for some and that my other done and still to do actions will also have the desired impact as well. If anybody claims a connection between my personal OSDM releases and official SAC business, point him to this post to correct his false statements.

For the folks who actually like my oldskool OSDM stuff, check out my latest and to this date best releases in my own opinion, but also in the eyes of some who have seen most of my other OSDM releases as well.

• NWO – New World Order Multi-Part OSDM Demo
• Only 16-Colors Short Oldskool ANSI Demo for Windows

or my Cracktros:

• TOaO – The One and Only #3
• TOaO – The One and Only #2
• Giana Sisters Intro

The short-cut to most of my past OSDM releases is downloading my 2 Mega-tros intro Packs releases to-date:

• Megatro 1 from last year and
• Megatro 2 from this year

Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

You can find a whopping 7 of such multi-part demos in my new Megatro II release. Then there are also a bunch of new intros/crack intros that I created and even a nostalgic release for the Commodore 64 classic “Giana Sisters”.

The interface was like the one for the first release programmed by myself in Pure Basic. I made a lot of changes to it and enhancements that you will hopefully notice and appreciate. Another difference to my first Megatro release is also the fact that this pack is running in “windowed mode” instead of “full screen”. The main reason for that is that some of my new productions utilize the “Skin Window” feature of OSDM, which creates a custom frame for the intro or demo to run within. I did not want to switch between full screen and windowed mode all the time in an unpredictable manner and instead decided to run all productions in windowed mode this time.

The NFO viewer within the interface was also improved. What I did not do this time, was to create a special intro just for this release. I thought that my enhancements to the interface will compensate for this shortcoming.

Here is the list of all  that I included in this release. It is total in size and can be downloaded via a link from this page.

                > Download Roy/SAC Megatro II Intro Pack 2010
                  Release for 32bit & 64bit Windows XP/Vista/Win7

Production Index

Tweaked Intros (Original Version is available in previous Megatro)
01. RoySAC.com Intro #8 Lemmings
02. TOaO – The One and Only Cracktro #1
03. TRSI – Tristar and Red Sector Inc. Cracktro

New Intros
04. RoySAC.com Intro #16 1st 2010 (Turrican Intro)
05. RoySAC.com Intro #17 Cross
06. RoySAC.com Intro #18 Balls
07. RoySAC.com Intro #19 Starfall
08. Giana Sisters Intro
09. New Year 2010 Megademo – My Part

New Intros (continued…)
10. SACtro Intro Design
11. TOaO – The One and Only Cracktro #2

Multi-Part Demos
12. Oldskool
13. Skull and Bones
14. Smoke and Mirrors
15. Scheissfreundlich
16. Megademo
17. I Want Your Money
18. Dragon Fire

Here is a screen shot of the new interface.

Note: I also did not make the same mistake as last time, where I released at first the pack only with an executable for 64Bit operating systems. Users that are still running on 32 Bit Windows OS could not run it until I released another 32 bit version of the pack. This pack was compiled for 32 Bit from the start and also runs on 64 Bit versions of Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7.

“Novus Okdo Seclorum” Release

The latest production of mine, which I just finished did not make it into the pack. It’s the biggest production of mine so far, using features that I never used before until now, such as multiple Vector Objects and 3D Balls.

It is call NEW WORLD ORDER and runs for about 4 minutes.

The video capture is not the best quality. It’s not very smooth, which is a consequence of my issues with video capturing since I upgraded to Windows 7 64 bit a few weeks ago. Some of my tools work only partially and some not at all, so I apologize for the sub-par video quality in advance already. I suggest downloading the ca. 1 MB Windows executable and run the production on your own PC.

More details and download links are available at the main page for my New World Order Demo production.

I hope you will like it. It was a lot of work, but also a lot of fun to make.

Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

I used the same script to prepare the ASCIIs in my text art galleries on my web site, such as:

• My ASCII Art Gallery
• My Early ASCII Art Gallery
• Various ASCII Art by Others
• or my FILE_ID.DIZ Collection

just to name a few.

You can download the script here:   ROY-BATCHCONVERT-ASCII2WEB2.ZIP (700KB)

The Release NFO File :)

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     █            █       ▀▀▄▄     ▄███▀                                          Roy<SAC>
      ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▄▄▄  █           ▀▀▀▀▀                            ▄▄██████▀  ▄▄▄▄   █▄
                ▀▀█                                           ███▀ ███  ▄██▀████ ██▄ ▄█ ▄██▄
                                                             ███   ▀   ██▀   ████ ███▀██ ███
                                                          ▄█▄ ██   ▄  ██▌    ▐███ ██  █  ███
                                                          ████▐█   ██▄ █     ████ ██     ███
                                                           ▀▀ ▐██▄ ███ ██▄▄▄████  ██     ███
                                                              ▀▀██████  ▀█████▀  ██▀     ███▀
                                                                   ▀       ▀▀    ▀       ▀
                         Roy/SAC presents

    ▒ ▀ ▀▀ ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀  ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ ▀▀ ▀ ▒
    ▓                 Batch ASCII to Web File Converter 2                       ▓
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     ▀█▀                                                                     ▀█▀
       ▀▄          Packaged and Released on January 25, 2010                 ▄▀
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              A little script that converts MS DOS ASCII files, such as NFO's
              or FILE_ID.DIZ text files (Code Page 437, USA) to ASCII
              but HTML encoded files that can be used to display the ASCII
              art, specifically the "High ASCII" or block ASCII art on a
              web site or to Unicode Text files for the use in Windows Apps.

     ───────── ▄ ▄▄▄▄ ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄   ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄  ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄▄▄ ▄ ─────────
     ·R·E·L·.·  ▄ ▄▄▄▄ ▀▀▀▀▀▀███ ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀███ █ ███ ▀ ███ ▄▄▄▄ ▄  ·2·0·1·0·
     ─────────── ▄ ▄▄▄ ███ ▄▄██▀ █ ███ █ ███ █▄ ▀▀▀▀▀███ ▄▄▄ ▄ ───────────
                    ▄▄ ███ ▄ ███ █ ███▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄  ▄▄▄▄▄███ ▄▄
                       ▀▀▀   ███ ▀  ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀  ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀

              For example the small logo above (which is in DOS ASCII Format)
              would be converted to the following;

       &#9472;&#9472;&#9472;&#9472;&#9472;&#9472;&#9472;&#9472;&#9472;
       &#9604; &#9604;&#9604;&#9604;&#9604; &#9604;&#9604;&#9604;&#9604;&#9604;
       &#9604;&#9604;&#9604;&#9604;   &#9604;&#9604;&#9604;&#9604;&#9604;&#9604;
       &#9604;&#9604;&#9604;  &#9604; &#9604;&#9604;&#9604; &#9604; &#9604;&#9604;
       &#9604; &#9604;&#9604;&#9604;&#9604;&#9604; &#9604; &#9472;&#9472;&#9472;
       &#9472;&#9472;&#9472;&#9472;&#9472;&#9472;     &middot;R&middot;E&middot;L
       &middot;.&middot;  &#9604; &#9604;&#9604;&#9604;&#9604; &#9600;&#9600;&#9600;
       &#9600;&#9600;&#9600;&#9608;&#9608;&#9608; &#9600;&#9600;&#9600;&#9600;
       &#9600;&#9600;&#9600;&#9600;&#9608;&#9608;&#9608; &#9608; &#9608;&#9608;
       &#9608; &#9600; &#9608;&#9608;&#9608; &#9604;&#9604;&#9604;&#9604; &#9604;
       &middot;2&middot;0&middot;1&middot;0&middot; ...

              Note: I manually added line breaks and spaces to the example for
              NFO layout reasons and it is also not the entire logo.
              I included the files roy.asc and roy.web as examples also.
              The file Roy.TXT contains the same example for the conversion to
              Unicode text result.

              The Web Encoded ASCII does not include <BR> Tags for the line–breaks
              You have to add those manually or do what I do on my web site and
              enclose the code in <PRE> </PRE> tags, which preserves the line–breaks
              within the enclosed text.

              Since the result is Unicode and not DOS ASCII anymore, you can
              use any monospace font to display the ASCII somewhat correctly.
              You won't get a 100% acurate result anyway, because the old
              MS DOS font set is not part of Windows anymore. What you can get
              is only a close aproximation. I use on my web site the font
              "Lucida Console", which seems to be installed on many machines.
              If the Windows of the user who visits your page with the ASCII for
              example does not have that font installed, Windows will automatically
              pick another font that comes close. I use the following CSS formatting
              for the PRE tags where I show ASCIIs.

              pre {
                 background–color:#000;
                 color:#FFF;
                 display:block;
                 font–family:"Lucida Console", monospace;
                 font–size:9pt;
                 line–height:12px;
                 padding:10px;
                 text–align:left;
               }

               If the PRE Tag is also used for something else on your web site
               then you can also define it for a specific class selector like

              pre.asciiart {
              ...
              }

              You would then also have to extend the PRE HTML tag like this:

              <PRE class=asciiart>
              ...
              </PRE>

              The script is designed to convert all files with a specified
              extension (.ASC by default) to web ready files with a new
              extension (.WEB by default, but you could also make it .HTML or
              whatever).

              There are two additional options, where I recommend
              to use the defaults (which is "yes").

              The first option is "HTML Encode?", which means that all non–US–ASCII
              characters (the 7 bit ASCII codes) will be converted to HTML codes
              like &#XXX;. Also standard ASCII characters that could be misinterpreted
              by HTML or DHTML and XML are also encoded, like the " becomes &quot;,
              & becomes &amp;, < becomes &lt; and > becomes &gt; etc.
              If you select "No", the ASCII will be converted to Windows Unicode (UTF–8)
              instead.

              The second one is "Sanitize?"
              What that does, is removing ASCII characters with an ASCII code
              smaller than 32, which are special control characters that cannot
              be printed anyway, with 3 exceptions, chr(10) = line–feed,
              chr(13) = cariage–return and chr(9) = tab. LF and CR remain unchanged.
              Tab characters will be converted to 8 spaces, which is the default
              MS DOS tab–stop. You might not want to select "Yes", if you convert
              ASCII files to Windows Unicode, but you could, if you like.

              Part of this package is the image "Batch–ASCII2WebOrUniCode–Steps.jpg",
              which shows screenshots of all the steps where the script goes through.

              Enjoy!
              Carsten aka Roy/SAC

              p.s. This script is freeware. Do with it whatever you like, except
              selling it. You can use it free, copy it, share it, even modify it
              if you like to. You are using it at your own risk. You cannot make me
              liable for any damage or loss of data that might results directly
              or indirectly because of the use of my script.

              p.s.2 I also included a very early beta of a HTA version of the tool
              with an interface. The conversion from Unicode to ASCII is not supported
              by the HTA application yet and the file selector uses MS Word and might
              not work, if you don't have Office installed. Since the latest security
              updates for Windows XP as well as Vista and Windows 7, the drag and drop
              feature also stopped working unfortunately.

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       ▀▄ ■▄     Installation    ...       ░ ░▒▒▒▓▒ ░░░░░░▒▓▒░ ░ ▀■·     ▄■ ▄▀
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          You can either execute the VBS script file (which is the source code
          and should be executed by WSCRIPT.EXE, which comes with Windows) or
          run the EXE file. The EXE is just the VBScript converted to an
          executable via VBSEdit by Adersoft.

              Also check out my little intro "RoySAC.exe" :)

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       ▀▄ ■▄     Greeting ...              ░ ░▒▒▒▓▒ ░░░░░░▒▓▒░ ░ ▀■·     ▄■ ▄▀
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                                                ░
           Defacto2.net, Scene.org, Textfiles.com, Pouet.net
           Demoscene.tv, GfxZone, Intro Inferno, C64.org, OSDM,
           AMP, Edge, Sizteen Colors, Flashtro, Old–Skool.net,
           Untergrund.net, Bitfellas, Exotica and everybody else who
           works on preserving the rich history of the scene and makes
           it accessible for future generations to enjoy.

           Group Greetings:
           Blocktronix (thanks for keeping the ANSI scene alive and kickin)
           CPI (Oldskool forver!)
           Andomeda Software Development (Your demos rock! Period!)

           Personal Greetings to:
           Madmax/CPI, Peace/Testaware, Smash/Fairlight, Shamen/Dytec,
           DaLezy, Dipswitch, Mandibular Joint Dysfunction, RaD Man/ACiD,
           Jason Scott/Textfiles.com, Ben Garrett/Defacto2, my blog readers,
           Lord Scarlet/SixteenColors, Zerovision/Blocktronics and everybody
           else I know and forgot to mention :)

            For a full list of greetings, check out my Intro, which is
            included with this release.

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      ▀▄ ■▄     Other Stuff ...           ░ ░▒▒▒▓▒ ░░░░░░▒▓▒░ ░ ▀■·     ▄■ ▄▀
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           Check out the intro in this release "RoySACIntro.exe" :)

           and don't forget visiting http://www.RoySAC.com
           and to check out my blog at http://www.roysac.com/blog

           Additional URLs you might want to check out

           Over 300 demos, cracktros and other scene related videos

http://www.youtube.com/sacreleases

           Scene Images of all sorts

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cumbrowski/collections/72157611288618058/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cumbrowski/collections/72157612320706642/

           My Mediafire.com file share with tons of files to download!

http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=b570d9e07985879c7069484bded33bcd06b0971baa3373fa

           My ASCII Art Academy to learn more about classic Text Art

http://www.roysac.com/learn/

           Links to other useful resources online to learn more about the scene

http://www.roysac.com/roy_links.asp

           Signing off!

           Roy of Superior Art Creations, CPI, Dytec,
                  Razor 1911, TRSI, TDU–Jam, PNS

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< br />

You can download the script here:   ROY-BATCHCONVERT-ASCII2WEB2.ZIP (700 KB)

You can download the script here:   ROY-BATCHCONVERT-ASCII2WEB2.ZIP (700 KB)

Enjoy!
Carsten aka Roy/SAC

PS. This script is freeware. Do with it whatever you like, except selling it. You can use it free, copy it, share it, even modify it if you like to. You are using it at your own risk. You cannot make me liable for any damage or loss of data that might results directly or indirectly because of the use of my script.

I thought that is time to actually release another one. There are several reasons for it. First, the last update included many logos that were not sorted away properly and simply dumped into the sub folder by first letter instead of the logo with the title of the group or production. I also de-duped several hundred logos using a modified version of my own De-Dupe script. The biggest change of all is the addition of some archive support scripts. More about those in a moment.

I also stopped the assignment of version numbers or volumes to this collection. The last update was called volume 2, which would make this one volume 3. But this sucks and does not tell you anything about the release really, so I started using the Month+Year to indicate its age and last release update date.

Your Contributions / Help is Wanted

Also new is the addition of 20+ folders for groups where you can only find a text file, but no logos. Those are groups where I know about the group and are pretty sure that there exist logos for them out there somewhere, but wasn’t able to manage to get my hands on those. The text file includes a short note and a link to my contact page with the request to send me logos for those groups, if you happen to have any of them. The same invitation can be extended to all other groups too, including groups where I already have many logos or groups where I did not create a folder already and do not have any logos at all yet. You can send images to my email or drop them off at my file-drop box at Mediafire.com. Detailed information to all those options are available at my contact page.

The new release of my collection contains over 10,000 Images for over 2,00 Groups, BBS, Demos and more from the Commodore 64, Amiga, Atari and PC Demo- and Warez Scenes.

About the Collection

The collection contains thousands of logos for groups, demos, bulletin board systems, web sites and individuals from all the major scene platforms, including Windows PC (Super VGA, Hi-Res), old MS DOS standard VGA PCs         (320×200 256 Colors), Commodore Amiga’s (32 Colors), Commodore 64s (8Bit), Apple IIs (8Bit), CPCs (8Bit), Atari 8Bit Home Computers, Atari STs and Atari Falcons.

Why is De-Duping So Hard?

Despite my de-duping via my own tools, there are still a lot of duplicates, which I am working on constantly eliminating (or at least reducing). Here is an explanation for why it is so difficult.

It is not that easy, because it is not always clear, which is the best or authentic original to keep and which version to delete (once you detected a duplicate visually, which by itself takes already a lot of time).

If I have a PNG or GIF version and another JPG version of an image,then it is clear which one I should keep, but if I have a PNG and a GIF or 2x GIF or 2x PNG or only 2x JPG etc. then it is not that easy anymore. The last thing I want to do is deleting an authentic logo and keep the one that was altered by image compression or by hand (resized etc.). My credo is: “Better 5 Dupes than not at all!”. I hope you agree with me on that one.

The Archive System

The logos are sorted alphabetically. There are the following root folders: Folders for the letters A-Z (such as “Logos A“), “Logos 0-9“, “Cannot_Read” (for logos that I cannot de-cipher and thus not sort away yet), “ArchiveTools” (see notes below). For each name/title exists a sub directory below the appropriate root folder, such as “2000 AD” below “Logos 0-9“.

Archive Scripts

The folder “ArchiveTools” contains a bunch of BAT, MS DOS batch scripts and VBS – VBScript scripts. Typically you only need to run the script(s) once, after you extracted the collection to the final location on your hard disk or network share.  

One script removes the system files “thumbs.db” and “desktop.ini” that might have been created in  folders by your Windows OS automatically. It also removes short cuts (*.lnk files), which should not be there yet, if you just unpacked the collection. It then goes ahead to remove any empty sub folders below the logos collection main root.

Short Cuts Creation Script

Another script creates short cuts. There are two kinds of short cuts being created. Manually defined ones and auto-generated ones.

Manual Short Cuts

The manually defined ones are specified in the file “CrossLinkList.txt”. There are only a few ones, because the reasons for those scenarios were typically rare exceptions. In those cases the script also creates a new sub folder to place the short cut in, what it is not doing for the auto-generated ones. Let me explain this via a specific example.

The Amiga group with it’s official name “The Silents“, which is abbreviated “TSL“, is also known simply as “Silents“. People might look for logos under “Logos S” instead of “Logos T“, where they actually reside. In this case the script creates a folder “Silents” under “Logos S” and adds a short cut there the actual folder location, where the images can be found, which is “Logos T\The Silents (TSL)\“.

Auto-Generated Short Cuts

Automatic shortcuts are generated for the abbreviations of titles and group names. No extra folder is created, the short cuts are simply created directly beneath the “Logos *” folders where the actual folder with the full name of the group also exists.

For example the folder “Tristar & Red Sector Inc. (TRSI)“, located under “Logos T“. The script creates a short cut “TRSI – Tristar & Red Sector Inc.” in the folder “Logos T“, which points to the actual file folder. This makes it easy to find the right group/title folder, if you only know the abbreviation, but not the full title of something.

I hope this makes sense and that you find this addition of mine useful.

The Release Files

The collection is close to 300 MB in size and was split up into 4 archives for download and distribution via other web sites, torrents, ftp servers, Usenet or direct copies made by one friend for another. The files can be found at my Collections Folder at Mediafire.com.

1. ROY-ScnLogoCol2010JAN1.ZIP (96 MB)
2. ROY-ScnLogoCol2010JAN2.ZIP (96 MB)
3. ROY-ScnLogoCol2010JAN3.ZIP (96 MB)
4. ROY-ScnLogoCol2010JAN4.ZIP  (3 MB)

I did not add direct download links to the files, because I want you to browse my Collections Folder share at Mediafire.com to make sure that download the latest version of my collection. There might be another update available by the time you read this b
log post of mine one day in the distant future.

Other Downloads Added

Next to the various collections that I put out and made available for public download, other sceners and preservationists of the scene legacy are doing the same. I added to the download page on my site a list of links to downloads of collections by some of those folks. The collections vary in type and size. I included tracker mod collections, C64 SID music archives, Cracktros, BBS ads, NFO files collections and much more great stuff.

Check out this new Collection Downloads Section at RoySAC.com.

Enjoy and Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Flashback

The year 2009 finished good and bad. It saw the release of the first Superior Art Creations art package in over 2.5 years, show-casing high quality art by talented artists. Unfortunately this great event was overshadowed by things that happened in the background and dragged intro the open by writing things into the release NFO file of the pack that probably should never be written. Written words can all to easy be misinterpreted entirely. I know this very well from personal experience through my blogging. The things stated in the NFO were bad, but most of it was written under false or incomplete assumptions. I wasn’t innocent either, because I also assumed things that did not happen or were not true. This chain of misunderstandings and false assumptions leads to disaster and Scour und myself did seek each other out to talk with each other before things get really bad und won’t be of any help to anybody of us.

On January 12, 2010 I installed a trial version of MIRC and connected for the first time in several years to the IRC. I think that I mentioned in other occasions already why I am avoiding IRC on purpose. It has nothing to do with the people, but the amount of time that I used to spend and for a large part wasted many years ago on EFNet. I should have pay a visit once in a while though, because this could have prevented things like the ones that just happened.

Voice Chat

Anyhow; Scour was online and I told him that a chat will not do it and probably lead to more misunderstandings. Text does not transmit emotions very well and smileys are also a poor substitute for the real deal. So we hooked up via Skype and had a very long conversation about the past, present, SAC, our life’s, the scene in general etc.

What became clear quickly was the fact that we shared the same fundamental goals and also cared deeply about the group Superior Art Creations. Once this was realized, it became clear that any petty differences that might stand between us must and can be overcome in order to accomplish our higher common goal.

False assumptions and incorrect facts also became apparent quickly and events were viewed differently by both of us, once we got all the relevant facts straight. All the false assumptions combined with a bad day and the last minute stress to rush out the release on time as promised resulted in the choice of words that were regret afterwards, but cannot be retracted unfortunately. But apologies were made, by both of us actually.

Where Communication Went Wrong Badly

When it came to the present and future of SAC, things also became clear. The assumed conflict was not there. I, Roy have neither interest nor the time to run an active art group, but are strongly interested in the preservation of it’s past and legacy. I believed that the Pack #36 was supposed to be “retro” or “remembrance” pack to celebrate the old times and allow former and retired SAC members to release the little bit of artwork that most produced over the years even though they were retired, like I did myself. The text in my intro design for the pack, using the hated OSDM attests to that. Shocking as it may sound to some, for the SAC Pack #36 that I believed it to be, using an OSDM intro to go along with it would have been perfectly fine. But SAC Pack #36 was not supposed to be a “remembrance” pack to whine after the long gone glory days of the past.

Scour worked behind the scenes (from my point of view) to revive the group entirely and actively. No reunion of old men, but the coming together of a young and motivated crowd to take SAC once more a notch higher in the scene and fight for the top position in today’s art scene. BIG DIFFERENCE! Would an OSDM intro okay under such circumstances? Heck no! Also some of my work that only reached Scour on the last day before the pack release through several detours and not directly from my email as I had assumed, would not have been appropriate of the pack that Scour had in mind. We talked about how to incorporate retro stuff in new SAC Pack releases to pay tribute to the past and also to allow retired SAC members who get requests for specific art today, namely old fashioned art that they did when they were active, to release under the SAC label und not anywhere else. Many long time members and also I were always SAC and only SAC. I don’t want or need a new group to publish once in a while the little bit of stuff that I do, when it itches me. Details how this will be accomplished are still debated, but a solution will be found, because we want to.

SAC Web Site

Since I did and are also still willing to do more work on a Superior Art Creations official web site, I will continue with those efforts and now also get some help from active SAC members. Next to the history also some new stuff could be added to such a web site where it makes sense. The location at RoySAC.com was never meant to be the “Home” for the group. I stated that already multiple times on the site itself and elsewhere. Where the home will finally be, is not decided yet, but SuperiorArtCreations.com seems to be a good and logical choice, since we have already everything in place to rebuild the SAC Homepage under this URL, domain ownership etc.

To make it more clear, although I said it already. I, Roy am not interested in running the affairs and the group today. Scour is eager to do this job and I don’t envy him, because I know how hard and time consuming this task is (not to mention “nerve wrecking” hehe).

The Outlook

We are now looking forward to work together on our joined goals. We also know how to reach each other now and I hope that we will be able to meet each other in person when Scour is able to make it to California for some other reason in February, which is next month. That would be really nice and definitely worth for me to make this trip down to th
e greater L.A. area to see each other face to face.

I am posting this in collaboration with Scour to make sure that nothing was missed or maybe written in a way that could be misinterpreted and cause new problems again.

Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC (Former Leader, Retired) and Scour/SAC (Active Leader)  – 1994-2010+

Quick Update Note by Roy:

I added SAC Art Pack #36 to the Superior Art Creations Art Packs Releases page, where you can also find a link to download the release ZIP file from a server that I control  (to make sure that the link does not go bad any day soon). Its content can like the previous pack releases be browsed online. Browse SAC Pack #36 now! I also added the new artists to make sure that they appear properly on the artists browse page. Enjoy!

See my McAfee Support Forum Posts:

•  White Listing False Positives
•  Sending Files to McAfee

I could not believe this and started to get really frustrated. I am looking for a long time for proper Anti virus and anti spyware solutions for my personal and professional use in my home network, but got disappointed with everything I tried so far. That the anti-virus software industry is in such a bad shape, which got only worse over the last years, I refused to believe at first. But then people contacted me privately and we exchanged some tips and experiences and it seemed that there was no other way around than facing reality.

Last years final issue of the German computer magazine CT (Magazin Computer Technik Issue 26/2009) by publisher Heise included a review of the 2010 versions of the Anti-Virus software solutions AVG Anti-Virus Professional 9.0, Bitdefender Antivirus 2010, Bullguard Internet Security 8.7, F-Secure Anti-Virus 2010, Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2010, McAfee AntiVirus plus 2010, Microsoft Security Essentials, Norton AntiVirus 2010 and PC Tools Spyware Doctor with Antivirus and ThreadFire.

I am still a subscriber to the magazine (the print version), even here in California, because nothing I have seen here in English comes even close to the quality and depth of CT. It would be like comparing Notepad with MS Word or MS Paint with Adobe Photoshop. There is unfortunately no English version of the magazine, which I feel very sorry about and for you, if you don’t speak German.

The tests revealed already what I had feared, but more so did the editorial of that issue, which was about the state of Anti-Virus software, written in a narrative and funny way to cope with the actual sadness of things in this industry. It is titled “Protection for Others” and was written by Gerald Himmelein. I am posting a translation of this editorial here. The original German version can be accessed online and in PDF format from this page at the Heise.de web site. This editorial sums up my own experiences and frustrations perfectly.

Protection for Others

by Gerald Himmelein – Editorial for CT Magazin 26/2009 from December 2009

On an IT conference somebody invited me to check out the beta version of a program, accompanied by a nice female opinion researcher. Basically, i found the application okay although for me personally it lacked some features. Immediately several people came into my mind, who would get along with it pretty well.

When I said that the smile in the opinion researcher’s face briefly froze. After we were done, she explained somewhat frustrated that she was hearing this phrase over and over. At the end, the program never hit the market: nobody wanted to use it, all wanted it simply press it on to somebody.

This incident came intro my mind during the Anti-Virus Scanner tests (from page 98). For each test object I instantly knew somebody who would be a perfect fit for the solution. For some of the programs people came to mind that I did not like very much. Certain providers seem to want to punish their users for the legitimate purchase of their product.

Seen several times: The scanner locks away a harmless program without asking into the quarantine.
Just when you fought back its freedom (Do you really don’t want to abort?”), the background guard hits and kicks the just restored file back into its prison cell. Even the best performance can not make up for this.

Also nice: a few scanners make a big fuss if they find the tracking cookies that were swallowed by the web browser as if they had just detected extreme dangerous malware. If one day a real threat comes along, the user probably only responds shrugging one’s shoulders: Can’t be so bad. Desensitization through Hysteria.

Every single or last one of the virus-protectors cares a great deal that the user will notice how super-active he is being protected because of them. Details are held back, such as the age of the virus definition. If the scanner gives an alert, he disguises the true nature of the threat with cryptic abbreviations, which remain unexplained for the most part. “Trojan” is used as generic classification, for malicious key-loggers as also for completely harmless PC-Demos.

After finishing the tests of the current generation of scanners, I remain hesitant towards the decision, on which of those “horses” I should bet on privately. Without a “condom” into the Internet isn’t a solution either.

If we should bump into each other one day, you rather don’t ask me which virus scanner you should use. If I am in a good mood, I will only look at you unhappy. If I am in a bad mood, I might get myself to actually make a (poor) recommendation. I might suggest to get a Mac instead.

The Editorial depicts exactly the behavior of McAfee’s AntiVirus solution, but I also used other software solutions in the past myself and encountered similar issues, just not as bad yet ad with McAfee. With McAfee several tools that I frequently use ended up in the quarantine without a white-list option.  

Still no news from McAfee. I am still completely irritated at this lack of fundamental features and could not believe that I am dealing here with the same company whose products were the first anti-virus software I knew about and used for year (1991-2000). I then used various corporate versions of other anti-virus software, including Kaspersky, through my former Employers. I got self employed in 2007 and looking for a good anti-virus/spyware solution for my personal/business home network ever since.

I wasted money any several solutions and stopped shopping around for the moment. I won’t touch Norton Anti-Virus by Symantec unless they turned around to become as good as McAfee appears to have gone bad.

I used to be happy with Spybot S&D; in combination with the old Microsoft Defender (while it was still in beta and not a “full product package”), but both of those products turned sour a couple years ago.

I had Avira, which sucked. The default settings of their full protection suite basically removed the machine from the network, including the home network, not to mention the internet and impossible to configure properly, even for somebody who actually know
s more about computers than the average user. It also sucked the life out of the machine while it was running in the background.

PC Tools Anti Spyware + Anti Virus was okay and did not eat up too much resources. You could also exclude stuff, like video files (based on extensions) or even specific files by path and file name.

However, I don’t trust it to be as up to date as it could and should be. It can also be rendered disabled by an attacker too easily. I experienced this first hand, when I literally saw how a Trojan infected the machine and finished it off in no-time. It saw the attack, wasn’t able to block it. Claimed that it caught and removed it and then kept silence ever after, even when I knew that the machine was not cleaned properly. Super Antispyware together with Spybot S&D; and some help finished it off eventually.

I still use Super Antispyware (free Version) as a once in a while full system scanner/double checker, but don’t use the real-time protection of it.

LavaSoft Pro used to be the king of the Anti-Spyware/AdWare removers and blockers, but their once slim and efficient shareware tool also turned big-business and that was the end of it.

Who is left to check? Sophos? Trend Micro and Kaspersky I guess. Kaspersky has a good reputation, but I have not checked out their offers yet. I have seen too much good turn bad that I am reluctant to waste time and money once more on things that have little to do with what I do to make a living (using a computer).

Poorly designed user interfaces that are hard to use, too little transparency and information given to the user to be able to make a conscious and educated decision, combined with varying results regarding detecting threats that miss as much real threats entirely as they have false positives. Things went from bad to worse with little improvements by some providers in a few areas, but too little. In the article with the tests itself, CT also could not make a honest recommendation for any product that they tested (so the joking in the Editorial was not a joke after all). Finding the right combination is currently the only way to go at the moment; nothing easy to do.   

Things got harder for the protection and scanner tools, certainly. They know that they are currently losing a war, so they should be a bit more helpful with providing users with as much and specific information, options and suggestions and also tools that the user himself can make the final calls at the end of the day. They go into the complete opposite direction instead and play the “risk management” game by numbers and odds calculated against the cost of development versus possible loss in revenue. I don’t gamble and don’t want to gamble.

I am always open to hear new ideas, recommendations and options, if you have any, let me know in the comments below. I’d appreciate it.

Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Note on the Side: I uninstalled McAfee from my computer a few days ago, because I had it with them. I had it more OFF than on to prevent that it quarantines programs that are not infected that I happen to use every now and then. It didn’t learn to do better and I also could not white list. Add to that all the other short-comings and it became clear that one had to go.

Well,  McAfee does not help me to do my work and earn a living, but some of the tools it removed from my HD do. I reinstalled PC Tools Spyware Doctor with Antivirus for the time being. My subscription there is still good for another 2 1/2 months. But I am not really happy with them either, but it is better than using nothing at all :(.

I already wrote about how I got started with creating art. You can read all about it here.

How it Started

I co-founded SAC in December 1994 together with Hetero, whom I had just met in person for the first time a couple weeks earlier. I discussed with him the lack of a German art group and also the lack of an art group that has closer ties to the Warez scene. At that time the requests that I received just for NFO file logos and designs increased significantly. Instead of sitting around and just whining about those facts, we decided to start something. He and I knew some other local artists who were “independent” at the time. We asked them if they would join a local art group and that’s how it all started. The name for the group was my idea. I wanted a name that can be abbreviated to 3 letters that also sound cool. 3 Letters, because of the possible use as a file extension (EG. ICE used to do it for their ANSIS)

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  ▄  ▄ ▄▄▀ ▄▄▄████████████▄▄▄▄  ▄     ▀██     ▄▄▄████████▀▀▀▀▄▄▄▄██████▀▀▀▄ ▄
        ▄▀██████▀▀▀▀▀▀▀██████▓█████▄▄▄▄▄▄▄████▓████▀▀▀▄▄▄▓▓███████▀▀
       ██▄███▀             ▀▀▀▀▀█▓████████▓▓██▀▀▀▄▄████▓▓██████▀▀    ░░░
       ▀█▄████▄▄▄██████▓█████▀▀▀  ▀▀▓▓█▓▓█▀▀▀▀▀███████▓████▀▀   ▀▀ ▀
         ▀▀█████████▓██▀▀▀         ▄ ▀▒▀ ▄ ▄    ▄ ▀▀▀█████  ░░░
             ▀████▓█▀   ░░░       ██▀    █▀ ▄░         ▀▓██  ░
              ██▓▓▀   ░░         █▓█       ▄  ▄          ▀▓█▄  ░
▄ ▀  ▀▀ ▀▀▀ ▄██▓▒ ▀▀▀ ▀▀  ▀     ▀▓█       ▄ ▀ ░      ▀ ▀▀  ▒▓█▄▄ ▀     ▀▀ ▀▄▀
 ▀█▄▄  ▄▄▄████▓▒  ░        ▄  ▀██▄▄     ▄█▀ ▄  ░░           ▒▓████▄▄▄  ▄▄█▀
   ▀█████████▓▒  ░      ▄      ▄ ▀██▄ ▄██  ▓██  ░░           ▒▓█████████▀  ░░
 ░░  ▀██████▓▒  ░      ■      ▄▓█▄ ▀█▄ █  ░ ▓██  ░            ▒▓████ █▀  ░░
   ░░  ▀████▓▒ ░░▄            ▓██    █     ░ ▓██  ░       ▄■  ▒▀█▀▀█▀▄▄ ▄  ▄
     ░░  ▀███▓▒ ░  ▄         ▓██           ░ ▓██  ░     ▄    ▒▓███▀ █
       ░░  ▀██▓▒ ░  ▓  ▄     ▓██▀▄    █   ░ ▓████▄     █    ▒▓██▀   ▄
         ░░  ▀███▄▄██   ▄  ▄████▄██       ░ ▓███▀      ▓█▄▄▓██▀  ░░      HETERO
           ░░  ▀▀██▀     ▀▀  ▀███▀       ░ ▓██▀         ▀██▀▀  ░░      • ••SAC!
              ░      ░                 ░  ▓█▀
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                                       ■

─   ──  ──── ────────────────────────────────────────────────────── ────  ──  ─
  •  ••  S• U  P •E  R  I• O••R     A  R  T •  C  R  E  A •T  I• O• N  S ••  •
─   ──  ──── ────────────────────────────────────────────────────── ────  ──  ─

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   ██   ██ ██   ██  ██ ▀▀▀ ██      ██   ██ ▀█▄▄▄ ██  ██ ██   ██ ▀█▄▄▄██ ▀█▄▄▄
   ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄                                    ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄
   ██████████████████ ██  ██ ▄█▀▀█▄ ██    ▄ ▄   ▀▀██▀▀ ██████████████████████
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   ██████████████████▌▐█  █▌ ██  ██ ██   ▀█▀█▀    ██ ████████████████████████
   ███████████████████ ▀██▀  ▀█▄▄█▀ ▀█▄▄  ▄▄▄▄  ▄▄██▄▄ ██████████████████████
   ▀███████████████████▄▄▄▄██▄▄▄▄▄▄█▄▄▄▄▄██████▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄█████████████████████▀

Members of the First Hour, First Pack

The first members were Toxic Trancer, a musician, Dream Design, a gifted pixel artist active primarily on the Commodore Amiga for a group called Remedy at the time, Kaethe, a local female ANSI artist and Wife of the sysop of a local pirate board called “Mystery”, Hetero as Coder and ASCII/ANSI/Pixel Artist and me, as ANSI/ASCII/VGA Artist and Sysop of the World HQ for the group. I had started my own BBS in Spring that year.

Almost the entire crew planned to go together to The Party 1994 demo party in Herning, Denmark, so we thought that this is a good place and time to  release our very first art pack and introduce us to the world.

It was clear pretty early on that I was taking on the main responsibilities for managing the group. This made not just sense, because I also happened to run the WHQ of the group, but also because I seemed to have the required skills for this kind of job, which I performed for other groups beyond SAC
also throughout my active scene years.

What SAC Was Not

We did not want to be German or European answer to the major US art groups like ACiD, iCE and the countless others which emulated the leading groups pretty much. We were focused on the pirate scene, which means that our recruitment efforts happened naturally among folks who were also active in Warez release groups. We also did not want to pressure ourselves to crank out an art pack release every month. We did not intend to compete with all those other groups. However, without some plan or goals, you won’t get anything done. So we decided to release quarterly packs with a fix release date, to have always the next goal in sight, but at the same time don’t pressure any of us too much to produce stuff for the packs. It should be possible for anybody who is even only somewhat active to get something done within 3 months, right? That was the thought.

Artists were working pretty much independent and took requests by themselves and also decided if they want to take a job or not. Only some projects required closer collaboration between multiple members, such as crack intro productions for the various release groups where somebody of us was a member of or had some buddies who called in a favor. There were attempts to establish some sort of centralized “requests” taking and distribution system that passes down art requests to available artists with the required skills, but they never went anywhere.

Global Expansion

SAC remained a relative democratic structured group that provided an outlet for pirate sceners with artistic talents to publish and promote their art work produced. This was especially beneficial for young and still unknown artists as an efficient method to get their name out. With the increasing popularity and fame of SAC as an art group in its own right, applications increased. Even more so once we did the jump into the internet and opened the #SAC IRC channel on the EFNet. The move into the Internet also transformed the group from a mainly local group with its largest member base in Berlin, Germany with some artists here and there in Germany to become a truly international group. The artwork produced before that was already international, but the members in the group itself were not.

Dealing with Applications to Join the Group

In the past most SAC members became part of the group, because somebody in the group noticed them and their work and asked them, if they would like to join. Nobody was doing this all on his own of course. Typically mails were sent on my BBS to the other members and sample artwork was uploaded to show the rest of the clique what they think. That was not a problem while we were only a few guys. It became one, when the group suddenly expanded quickly and at the same time applications of artists seeking us out exploded.

Not every new member was really that much interested in things like thinking about another artist and if he would be a good fit for the group. So decisions about some applications were not made for a long time, because we were waiting for the opinion of several l SAC members about a particular artist, which they never expressed. So a voting system was establish, where every member in SAC was able to cast his vote, his YAH or NAY to any artist application, if the member chooses to make use of this right. If nobody voted for a new applicant for some weeks anymore, the polls were closed and counted. Every vote counted equal, including mine and Hetero’s.

This system also became increasingly difficult, because it required members to call my BBS in Berlin frequently or some member had to try to catch a member of the group on IRC and send him the latest applications to cast votes. Blue Boxing and Calling Cards were pretty much dead and long distance calls by members to the WHQ an unacceptable burden. And with all things that grow bigger beyond a certain point, keeping everybody together becomes also impossible. It also becomes the time when parasites take advantage of the group, trying to join making promises and coming up with grandiose ideas, but never actually doing something, including not producing any art work. For the first time members had to be kicked out of the group, rather than leave it, almost always because the member left the scene or got into other projects that SAC wasn’t able to support at the time (e.g. Some of the musicians left to produce “real music” when MP3s just appeared but not wide spread and okay to include in an art package. Any pack over 2 MB was considered “large” back then.

Membership Levels in a Democracy?!

It became somewhat the rule that somebody who wants to explore other things for any reason, knowing that he cannot contribute to the group with it at the same time, would come forward and “retire’” from the active membership in SAC. Nobody saw any benefit of having a bloated up membership list, if only a fraction of those members would actually be represented by at least one piece of art in SAC pack release every quarter. Several of the members who retired, decided one day that they want to become active again and joined the group with full member status restored. I do not remember any case where somebody was rejected who retired himself from the group previously. To deal with those flaky kind of members who joined and then stopped doing anything without retiring on their own, something had to be done. The answer was to introduce some sort of hierarchy to the group, which was not a chain of command like hierarchy, but a way to express seniority and amount of contribution to the group. New members joined as “trial members”. After a pack or two, the trial was over, if the artist contributed to the art packs during this time. After even longer active membership, the status changed to “senior member”. Trial members saw a much larger fluctuation and were in many cases also just the type of members that were kicked out versus left by themselves.

The Scene Changed

At the end of 1997 things changed. The Internet changed the scene a lot, for the better and unfortunately also for the worse. A lot of idiots and jerks seemed to got access to what used to be a relatively small and easy to keep track of bunch of folks who were bound by common motivations, interests and goals and for the most part also similar ethics and universally accepted rules of conduct.

I was not so happy anymore and did not like the direction where things seemed to be heading at that time. Towards the end of 1997 and beginning of 1998, I started to quit member and even leader ship and senior positions in various release groups, some of which I helped founding and growing myself. I left Dynasty, Backlash and Razor 1911. I still continued with SAC and also Peanuts (the former SAC PPE section), focusing more on the demo scene and the development of free tools for other sysops. A slow retreat from the pirate scene was underway and plans were made to move my pirate BBS from the underground to the light of day. I had already purchased licenses for the BBS software months earlier when suddenly in 1997, the Berlin State Police raided my place and I got busted. I was trying to find the paperwork from this, but it must be buried somewhere and I don’t remember when exactly the bust happened. Sorry. I will update this post when I figure it out. I wrote about the experience of the bust itself on my web site, if you would like to learn more about it.

I got eventually fined in 1998, but already got my personal PC back since it had virtually no pirated software on it and was also not used for the BBS, which was the reason for my bust. Since I already bought a new PC shortly after my other ones were seized, I had two computers again, also ISDN cards and a modem, licensed BBS software and OS/2 Warp operating system to re-launch my BBS now as public demo scene board right from the get go. But it was already l
ate 1998. I was drafted into the German army in January 1998, out of  a full paid job, on only of a fraction of my jobs income and not covering any of my expenses to run the BBS. Every day I was in the army to serve my mandatory military service, I lost money. At the same time callers dried up for any BBS anywhere in the world. The Internet had already won, even if some sysops did not want it to be true and tried hard to keep their BBS alive. I shut it down one day and cannot even remember on what day that actually happened.

Meanwhile I was fighting a “cold war” with the German Army. I also got my court appointment because of my BBS while I was in the army. I got a fine and the BBS hardware that the police seized was kept as punishment for what I did. It wasn’t illegal when I started with this stuff, became somewhat not okay, but ignored later, to become illegal eventually with the BSA and other entities trying to fight back and make examples of as many of the pirates as they could. German laws shielded me from this at that time, fortunately. The court noticed the complete lack of selfish and financial motives for what I was doing and decided that it would not be of the states interest to make me to a criminal with all its far reaching consequences. I ended up with the equivalent of a very expensive speeding ticket and community work in form of a monetary donation to a charity of my own choosing.

This also meant that the software companies could not come after me because of it. Something that some of my American buddies were not so lucky with, unfortunately.

I was working after I finished military service for a couple months as a business consultant in a different city and living in hotels 5 out of 7 days of the week. I knew already when I started with this project that I would leave the company and Germany altogether when my current assignment will be over. I made that a condition for taking the offer of the foreign company, that I will not abandon a limited term project where it would be very hard to replace me, if I just leave them behind. In March 1999 the project was done and I flew in April 1999, one day after my 25th birthday to Switzerland.

On the Road

There I lived only for a year. I knew that from the start, because the position they hired me originally for was in the United States. The time in Switzerland was primarily for the company to test me and to check if I am the right guy for the job and also gave them time to get the required work visa for me to move to the United States. The main office in Switzerland was in St. Gallen. I only rented a studio there, nothing big and put most of my stuff that I did not want and could take to Switzerland into storage in Germany. I also ended up living 5 days out of 7 in a hotel at the other end of Switzerland in Basel to work on a lucrative assignment for the Pharmaceutical giant Hoffmann La Roche. It became increasingly hard for me to do any serious management of Superior Art Creations. That things did not work too well is clearly visible at the release dates of SAC packs at the time. The quarterly release date was missed ever more frequent.

Organizing and “Leading” a group is a lot of work. More work than most folks can imagine. Anybody who tried it will agree with me on this one. It is funny, I always got the feeling as if nothing would get done if it would not be for a few stupid idiots who try to get their buddies on track with a goal and focused, holding their hands, yell or grow gray hair until the next goal was finally reached, just to be replaced by the next one (e.g. next release). Taking on responsibilities on their own, planning and focusing on something specific, short term, but part of a larger picture, seems to be a trait that the majority of people apparently lack.  

Handing Over Responsibility for the Group

I decided to do the only right thing that I could think of, which was handling over responsibility to somebody else. I did that while I was in Switzerland. The person I chose was Ferrex. I remained in the NFO file for a bit longer and also contributed to a pack with a few things once in a while. But in 2001 I asked to be removed from the active member list and officially retire. I had moved to the United States a year earlier. My company was in the Internet Business and we know what happened in 2001, starting already at the end of 2000. The DOT.COM crash of course. I was mentally prepared to pack up again to return to Germany because of another round of lay-offs that shock many businesses in the industry, including the company I worked for via a work-visa bound to my employment contract with this company.

The company had to think fast and act even faster to change focus and strategy in order to survive.

A Lot of Changes With Lasting Impact

The few people left to do the work had to put in over time, a lot. I learned a lot during this time, which also lead to me becoming self employed in 2007, leaving my former visa and green card sponsor in good terms, still maintaining personal contacts with its owners and management. The company is doing good today, which is good. I also got the time to do something else for myself again and was for the first time thinking about the old days of bulletin boards and text art again. windows 95 was replaced by Windows 98, which were both pretty much compatible still with the old fashioned MS DOS operating system. By the time I looked back again, Windows 2000 came and went and Windows XP and Windows 2003 Servers were the OS that dominated the PC market. Many of the old stuff did not even run on the machines anymore. MS DOS was virtually gone with some fragments of it left here and there. At was at this time when I started to worry about the legacy of SAC and my own work as ASCII/ANSI artist. Displaying an ANSI required already special software that did not come with the OS anymore.

Here are some posts and comments from the Time before I became involved with SAC again, starting with nice story that describes how the old stuff (scene, BBS, ANSI art) was ultimately responsible for other things that became relevant for my life, but had nothing to do with my scene past per se.

Feb, 11 2006 – How things happen such as this Blog

Launch of RoySAC.com

The old version of Cumbrowski.com had multiple subjects and content for each of those subjects grew, the family part, the professional part and the oldskool scene part. So I decided in 2006 to create three web sites out of the one to keep things separated. The result was the move from Cumbrowski.com to its own domain, just for the old scene stuff.  May 21, 2006 – Site Cleanup and Re-Structure and a New Site launch
Aug 19, 2006 Move to RoySAC.com – Official Re-Launch of RoySAC.com

Meanwhile

I had contact with “Idiana” (the girlfriend of Ferrex, not an active artist, but keeping things together and do Ferrex job) and was able to gather some more information. I even had a Wiki up for a short period of time to gather more information, but I remained the only contributor despite the promises that were made by others
to do something as well.

May 2007 – I got contacted by “Xeek” regarding the domain “SuperiorArtCreations.com”, which was just about to expire. Transferred the domain. He also sent me a ZIP with some Site Layout Ideas in a early stage

Expansion of SAC Section at RoySAC.com Began

To see how things progressed, check out the Web Archive (Unfortu
nately it only has data  since 11-2007, but you can see the difference between the site in November compared to the expanded version a month later.

Aug 01, 2007 – Major Site Expansion and New SAC Section with Art Packs Page
Aug 31, 2007 – Welcome to the ASCII Art Videos

I started Capturing SAC Cracktros and Intros and made them available on YouTube mainly and some also at other video sharing web sites. I created a special account on YouTube called “sacreleases”. The account started out with SAC related content only, but was then expanded, since I only made little progress on the few remaining SAC productions that I was unable to capture on video.

I created special play lists for the SAC stuff though, to keep it separate from the other videos

• PC Intros (by SAC) for Others
• Sactros

Oct 15, 2007 – It Was Time Again For A Clean-Up

•      Nov . 2007 – Snapshot at Web Archive before 1st major expansion
•      Dec 2007 – Snapshot at Web Archive after 1st stage

Dec 3, 2007 – Web Archive After Phase 1 – SAC Updates and Site Content Additions

Getting the SAC Pack Content Online

Major Work began in December 2008. Multiple Posts 12-2008 and 01-2009

Dec 29, 2008 – Interesting SAC Art Packs Statistics, Figures and Downloads
Dec 39, 2008 – Interesting SAC Art Packs Statistics, Figures and Downloads – Part II
Jan 18, 2009 – First ASCII Art Piece of Mine in Ages

Before I had the stuff up on my website I already put up many of it on sites like Flickr, YouTube and others.
I did that with stuff that I processed throughout the year. I created Flickr Sets with converted ANSI/ASCII and VGA art from the packs as early as January 2009. I also uploaded converted content to my file share account at Mediafire.com where people could download the content in packages and collection format.

My Flickr.com Collection for SAC artwork

Side Project – The SAC All Time Member List. Decision Made to post what I had so far publicly in the hope that SAC members would respond and provide info on outstanding and open questions. I maintained the list via Google Docs and Spreadsheets  and even gave several SAC members with whom I was able to get in touch with access to the document for collaborative editing. Nobody ever did a single edit.

Apr 27, 2009 – The SAC – Superior Art Creations All-Time Member List Project Update

Almost One Year of Work Bears Finally Fruits

1. Begin Oct 2009, Cracktro Browse
    Oct 2, 2009 – SAC Crack Intros and BBS’tros Collection Finally Live on RoySAC.com

2. End Oct 2009 SAC Pack Browse (Some Long Weekends for the last stretch and get the packs finally up)
    Oct 15, 2009 – SAC Art Packs Now Accessible Via Web Browser Online

Final Words

I knew that a SAC channel was kept up on IRC and also spend a little bit time there now and then. Never for extended periods of time, because I wasted too much time on IRC already in the many years before. There was not much going on there, but somebody was always there, not a SAC member but somebody who was not a bot. That’s also the reason why I referred people time and again to the channel and also others like #ACID to try to find an active artist who is willing to take requests for artwork.

At the same time, i made myself accessible and reachable. A simple search in any of the major search engines for “Superior Art Creations”, “Roy/SAC” or even “ANSI Art” would have lead anybody who was looking for me or information about SAC right here and to all the stuff that I did over the years. I expanded my outreach beyond the steadily growing web site here at RoySAC.com even further with creating a MySpace page for Roy and a MySpace group dedicated to ANSI Art. I started a text art group on Google Groups, started a Facebook group for Superior Art Creations, a YouTube channel, Flickr collection and sets, Picasa Albums. I updated content at Pouet and made content available for backup at my file share account at Mediafire.com and on my web site.

The only place where I did not publish was on Warez FTP Servers and on IRC. While the FTP option was a problem due to the lack of access, it had just like IRC one major flaw, it only lasts for a very short period of time and is  then gone for ever into oblivion and camping out there like a bum was out of the question, but I did not feel it necessary. Even the most reactionary scener from the old days could not forever ignore the developments and changes around him and stuck to only use the Internet Services FTP, IRC and EMAIL, ignoring the WEB entirely. One search in Google and everything would be right in their face. What they decide to do with it is a quite different story, but ignoring it was virtually impossible.

Whenever I encountered another former SAC member at any of those places or got contacted via my email address at GMX.DE, which was my scener email address since 1995 already and was continuously working with only a couple months interruption in 2009, I pointed to what I did and what I wanted to do, asking for their help and opinions. I also noted contact information in the non-public version of the SAC member list. Emails, Web Sites, Facebook Profiles, Phone Numbers, Real Names etc. Nothing happened sud
denly and certainly not secretly either. At stake was the legacy of a group that I helped founding and growing for 7 years and a scene I was part of for 9 years of my life. I could not allow this to slip away into the darkness and become lost forever. I was not just talking about doing something, but went ahead and did it. How good of a job I did might be debatable, but out of the question should be the fact that doing something is indefinitely better than doing nothing at all.

During all this time I stated over and over again, that I consider the stuff I did for SAC on the Web to be only “preliminary” until a better solution is found, involving other SAC members to build a final and official legacy for the group together. It’s not about me, it’s about us. SAC is a result of a joint effort by over 100 individuals over a period of more than a decade of work and dedication and only another joined effort can secure the legacy of it eventually. I hope my efforts contribute to this effort, but they should not be the end of it.

I appreciate the work of others who are driven by very similar motives like Lord Scarlet of Sixteen Colors, Ben Garret of Defacto2.net, Jason Scott of Textfiles.com (and director of the BBS Documentary DVD), RaD Man of ACiD (Dark Domain DVD and public speaker about the subject), the folks at Blocktronics and the many others like them or supporting those efforts. See my links section for more scene preservation efforts and more.

I will continue with my efforts regardless of what happened and hope that others will also start helping to preserve a legacy that became part of the history for all of us and should be worth remembering, even after our deaths long time in the future.

Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC in 2010

I did not receive a response and became worried that he did not get my message on time.

The December 31, 2009 passed and I still did not hear back from Scour, so I told DA and asked, if he heard from him and knows if a SAC pack was released or not. He gave me an alternative email address and sent another message to that one. He also had not heard from Scour, nor got a download link to the pack. Meanwhile Maktone contacted me via FB also, asking me, if I got a link to download the new art pack.

Finally Scour responded to my last email on January 6, 2010 without saying anything, but 2 links to download the SAC pack release. That was it. I downloaded the archive and found to my disappointment that my stuff was not included. I believed that my emails to the first address did not get to Scour on time for the release at first, but then I read the text in the SAC.NFO file of the release and was shocked and very disappointed.

I was thinking how to respond to this and decided to write a clear and friendly email back to Scour and Barium, who wrote the content of the NFO and then also release my response publicly. Below is my response from January 9, 2010. The words in red color are citations of Scour and Barium from the NFO file, which I also included in its entirely below and should be read first to better understand my own responses to it.

Again, I am very disappointed and unnecessary, but unfortunately also unavoidable. What happened could not be ignored by me and left out in the open without a statement on my part.   

Update February 2010: Please also read my follow up posts about the issue: A Tale about an Art Group Called Superior Art Creations and more important SAC – Misunderstandings Cleared and Differences Settled.

Here is the entire NFO file and it’s wording from SAC Pack #36 from December 31, 2009

the entire NFO file and it’s wording from SAC Pack #36 from December 31, 2009
                    ▀ ▄   ▄▄             ▄
                     ▀▓▀ ▓▓██             ▀█▄  ▐
               ▐          ▀▀ ▓▓▄██████▀▀▀██████▐▄▄▄
               ▐       ▀▄▄▄████████▐▀▄■   ▀▐█████████▄▀
               ▐         ▀█████████ ▓░    ░░████████▀      S A C
               █          ▐█████████▄▀ ▄ .▄████████▌                 ▄
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▄▄████░▓█▐▀ ▄ ▀ ▄█▓▀▄ █▄█████▄ ▀██▄▀█▄▄ ▄██▀ ██ ▀▄███▄▀▄ ██▄▀▓█▄ ▀ ▄ ▐██ ████ ▌
 ▀████░░▓█ ▀▓▀   ▀▓▀ ▄▓ ▀█▓▒▀ ▄██████▀██▓▀ ▒▓███▄ ▀▒▓▄▀ ▄▓█▄▀▓▀   ▀▓▀█▓  ████▀
  ▐████ ▒█   ▄▓▄  ░ ████▄ ▀ ▄█▓█████▄  ▀ ▄████████▄ ▀ ▄███    ▀      █▒ ████▌
   ████ ░█▐ ████    ██████▄██████▄▀▀▄███████████████▄█████  ▄▓      ▐█░ ███
    ███  ▓█▓▓███▀ ░       █████████░   ▀▀▀▓▓█▀ ▀███████████ ▀ ▀▄▄▄▄▓█▓  ███▐
▀██████▓ ▀▀▀▀▀  ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▓▓▓▓▓▓█████████████████▄███▓▓▓█████▄▄▄▄▄  ▀▀▀▀▀ ▓█████
 ▐███▄▄▄▄▓██████▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▐░░                   ▐▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▒▀▀▀██████▓▄▄▄▄███
▄▀▀▀▀▓████▓▄▄                                              ░      ▄▄▓▓██████▓█▀
      ▀▀▓▓██████████▄▄▄   ▄▄▄▄▒░                 ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▓██████████████▓▓
       ▀ ▄██████▀▀▓██▀ ▄██████████████████████████████████████████████▀▀▀ ▄
     ▄▄▓█▀▀▀▀▀▀██▄▄▄  ▀██▓█████████████████████▓███▀ ▀██████████▀▀▀▀▓ ▄▄█▀
   ▄▀▀░    ▀▄▄▄  ▀▓█▓█ ██ ░█████▓▐▓████▓▀▄█████▒█▀▄█▄██▀  ▐▓████ █████▀▀  ▄
         ▄▓▄ █▓▀ ▄█▓▀  ▀ ▄▓███▓▀ ▐ ▀███▓▄      ░▐▓███▓▌▄▓▄ █████ ▓█ ▄▄▄██▀
        ▄ ▀ ▄▀ ▄▓▀▀ ▄▄███▓▓▀▀░   ▐  ░▀▀████▄▄░  ▓████░  ▀ ▐████▌  ▓▄ ▀▓▄
 mydknight & ▄▀░▄▄███▓▀▀▌      ▄▄▐▓█     ▀▓███▓▄█████   ░▄██▓▓▀▄▓▄  ▀   ▀
    ferrex  ▓ ▐▓██▓▀    ▄   ▄▓██████      ▒██████████     ▄░    ▀
        ▄    ▄ ▀▓██▄▄  ▀▓▀ ▀   ███████▓ ▓ ░█████▐████   ▄  ▀█▓▄▄▄     ▄▄
       ▀▓▀        ▀▀▓▓██▄▄▄    █████▓ ▄    █████▐████    ▀███████▓▓  ██▓▓
     ▄▄      ░▄▄▄▀    ░▀▀▓██▓▄ █████▒  █▄  █████▐████    ▐█▓▀█████    ▀▀
    ▓▓██   ▓███▓  ░ ▄▓   ▒████▓█████░  ▐█▌ █████▐████░  ▄▓▀  █████      ▄
     ▀▀  ▄ █████  ░▓██▒  ░██████████  ▐█▓  █████ ▓███▒ ▓█ ▄▓▄█████ ▀▄  ▀▓▀
       ▄█  █████░  ███▓▒  ████▌█████  ██▌ ░█████ ▒███▓  ▀▄ ▀ ████▓ ░█▄
     ▄▓██▓  ████▒  ███▓  ▐███▓ █████  ▓▓█▄▀█████ ░████▌     ▐████▌░▓██▓▄
  ░▄██████░ ████▓░  ▒▀  ▄██▓▀  █████   ▓█▄ ▄▓▓▓▓  ▒███▓ ▀▄▄▄▓██▓▀ ▓██████▄
 ▐▓███ ███▓▄ ▀▀▀▀ ▄▄▄▄██▓▀▀     ▄▓▓▄    ░▀▀▒▒▒▒▀   ░███▓▄▄ ▀▀▀░ ▄███▀ ████▀
  ▀▓██▄ ▀████▄▄██▓▓▀▀▀  ░    ▄▓▄ ▀▀           ░     ░▐▀▀▓█████████▀ ▄███▀▌
    ▀███▄▌ ▀▀▀▀▌           ▀  ▀                            ▀▀▀▀ ▐▄▄███▀ ▄▄██▄
 ░▄▄ ▐▀███▄░   ▌                                               ▓███▓▀ ▄██▓▀███
▄████▓▄ ███▓▌ ▄▌  S U P E R I O R   A R T   C R E A T I O N S   ▀▀▓████▀  ▄█▀
▓██ ▀██████▀                  1 9 9 4 – 2 0 1 0                ▄▓▄ ░▀▀  ▄▀▀
 ▀▓▄  ▀▓▓▀ ▄▓▄                                                  ▀     ▄░
  ▐▀▀▄ ░    ▀                         ░░                              ░
     ▄ ▓        ▄▄▄▄▄▄  ▄▄▄▄▄   ▄▄▄▄  ▓▓ ▄▄▄  ▄▄   ▄▄██  ▄▄▄▄         ▓ ▄
   ▀▄▄ █▓▒░░░ ░  ██▄▄█▀ ██▄▄█▀ ██▄▄▄█ ██  ██  ██ ██  ██ ██▄▄▄█ ░ ░░░▒▓█ ▄▄▀
     ▀█▓▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄ ██ ▄▄▄ ██  ██ ▀█▄▄▄▄▄ ▀▄ ▀█▄▄█▀ ▀█▄▄██ ▀█▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄██▀
      ▐█                                                              █▌
     ▄██ And once again Lazarus has dug himself out of his hole to    ██▄
   ▀  █▓ show you guys how it's done. We've seen some random act–     ▓█  ▀
      ██ ivity on the artscene, but whatever. Nothing to be proud     ██
      ██ about. Stop being such fucking rippers, you know who you are ██
      ██ ...                                                          ██
    ▄ ██ *Cough cough* CR...OMG, look! Another fx sprouts onto the    ██ ▄
   ▐▌ ██ asciiscene shamelessly! Perhaps we should have included the  ██ ▐▌
    ▀▄██ tutorial he wrote... You seem to need it.                    ██▄▀
     ▐██                                                              ██▌
    ▀▄██ On a completely different note, Roy for some reason thinks   ██▄▀
     ▐▓▓ this is still his group... Well, fuck that, go back to your  ▓▓▌
      ██ retarded blog and write about canadian circus. Thanks for    ██
     ▐██ your subs, but no thanks. We've gotta keep up some standards ██▌
     ▓██ you know. There's another german founded three letter acron– ██▓
    ▐▌██ ym group that'd fit you like a glove.                        ██▐▌
    █ ██                                                              ██ █
   ▐▌ ██ Anyways, why the fuck haven't we released an artpack in 2.5  ██ ▐▌
   █  ██ years? Barium, got an answer?                                ██  █
  ▐▌  ██                                                              ██  ▐▌
   ▀▄ ██ Yeah, not really. I guess we're only humans with lusts and   ██ ▄▀
      ██ several TBs of porn.                                         ██
      ██                                                              ██
      ██ Well there you have it folks, the Almighty SAC has returned  ██
      ██ from its slumber to conquer and rule with an iron fist.      ██
      ██                                                              ██
      ██ I say, from this day forward you will obey. The age of indi– ██
      ██ vidualism in the artscene is over. Conform or perish.        ██
      ██                                                              ██
      ██ That's it! Like that black guy who turned white, then his    ██
      ██ face fell in, Superior Art Creations Scene Art Pack Vol. 36  ██
      ██ is finally here for your viewing pleasure, so enjoy! Or else ██
      ██ we'll have Roy draw your next req.                           ██
      ██                                                              ██
      ██ –Barium/Scour (we joint everything else, why not Sac.nfo?)   ██
      ██                                                              ██
      ██ For this production S.P.E.C.T.R.E. have decided to activate  ██
      ██ the following sleeper agents:                                ██
      ██                                                              ██
      ██ Asphyx, Barium, Creature of Hell, Crome, Desolation Angel,   ██
      ██ Dipswitch, Don Rapello, Hkultra, Maktone, Nerv, & Scour.     ██
      ██                                                              ██
      ██ Alas we have recruited some unusually enthusiastic talent    ██
      ██ to fill our ranks in the past few months due to the invent–  ██
      ██ ion of remote brainwashing technology. Introducing the fut–  ██
      ██ ure of our beloved artscene:                                 ██
      ██                                                              ██
      ██ Elle, oPi, pOLe, & Sephiroth. Watch out, you might be next!  ██
      █▀     ▄                                                        ██
      █ ▀     ▀█▓▄▄  You know the deal.. #sac @ EFNET                 ██
      ▓▓ ▄▓▄  ▐███▓                                                   ██
      ▀▀  ▀ ▄▄▓████  No official homepage, no matter what one claims. ██
    ▄▓█████▓▀▀████▌                                    ▄▀             ██
    ▓███▄    ▄██▓█    ▄         ▄        ▄        ▄  ▄▓█              ██   ▄
 ▀▄▄ ▀▀▓███▄▄▄    ▄  ▀▓▀      ▄█       ▄█       ▄█   ███▄       ▄  ▄ ▄▀  ▄█
   ▀██ ▐  ░▀▓██▓▄▀▓▀     ▀   ▓██      ███      ██▓   ▀█▓▓ ▄▓▄ ▄█  ▀▓▀   ▓██
▄▓▄ ▓▓██▀    ███▓ ▓████   ▓██▀██▓▄ ███▀██▓▄ ███▀██▓▄  ▀▀   ▀ ███  ▄  ▓▓█▀▓██▄
 ▀  ████ ▄▓▄ ▐▀▀ ▄  ███   ███  ▀██▓███  ▀██▓███  ▀███ ▓▓█ ▓▓█▀▓██▄ ▀████  ▀███
  ▀ ████  ▀   ▄▓▀▌  ███   ███  ▄██▀███  ▄██▀███  ▄██▀ ███ ▓██▄ ▀███▄ ███  ▄█▓▀
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    ▀█        AGAINST THE COMMERCIALIZATION OF THE COMPUTERSCENE        ▄▀
      ▀▄                JUST DO IT. ..FOR FUN THAT IS.                ▄▀
        ▀
                             – <3 12/31/09 E> –

Hi Scour, and Barium (please forward to Jesper, I don’t have his email)

Thanks for the download links.

I started a nice email back to you, but then read the NFO file of the SAC pack release. I am not sure, if I am glad that I did not send my response first already or not.

Anyhow, since I did not send it yet and read the NFO, I could not send it anymore, so I have to say sorry, but the Thanks at the beginning of this email will be the only nice words that you are going to hear from me.

I have no intention to start a flame-bullshit-war with you or Barium. I am too old for that shit and so should you too actually.

I will try to express myself as clear as possible.

“On a completely different note, Roy for some reason thinks  this is still his group… “

I am not just thinking this, it is actually true, now more than ever, especially after it retired itself about 2.5 years ago. At that moment you lost all right to it and even the remote chance to legitimize what you just did now.

Even more so, you take into account what happened between then and the release of your art pack a few days ago.

You had no right to revive the group and explicitly exclude the senior founders, long time leader, major contributor and only one who gave a damn to bring it up at the beginning and to preserve its legacy when it fell apart in 2007.

I als
o gave this group the name and abbreviation, so go and found yourself another group on your own where you can do with whatever you like. You guys did not make SAC to what it was, you were merely benefiting from it when you joined it while Ferrex had the leadership role, which I handed to him in 2000 2001 (with some regrets I might add).

“Well, fuck that, go back to your retarded blog and write about canadian circus.”

Mhh.. an artist who does not appreciate Cirque du Soleil, interesting. I would never had though that to be possible.

My blog is not just about CDS btw. Some of it should even be of value and interest to you (not sure who to direct this to, you Scour or Barium)

I will leave it at that. I cannot please everyone, I know, so if you don’t like it, don’t read it. There are millions of other blogs and web sites to spend time on.

“Thanks for your subs, but no thanks. “

So you got my stuff on time!

“We’ve gotta keep up some standards you know. “

Oho… You are obviously very full of yourself. That’s arrogance and something that I don’t want to seen associated with SAC. I heard that Ferrex was going on that trip after I was gone and I can tell you that it did not make me very happy.

People made their own judgment already years ago when non of you two were even around and also today. … and btw. if you would know a little bit more about SAC, then you would also know who sets the standards and what those are.

“There’s another german founded three letter acronym group that’d fit you like a glove.”

I don’t know who you are referring, but I believe that this is the attempt to insult me or something like that.

The only other art groups in Germany that were around when or after SAC was founded and active were cRO and BM.

I am sure that you did not refer to cRO, right?

I hope that I expressed myself clear enough.

I will put the new pack on the web site, but not as an official pack. A blog post will also follow and some other stuff that you might find out yourself sooner or later.

“No official homepage, no matter what one claims.”

Well, SUPERIORARTCREATIONS.COM seems to be the final home for the group now after all. Well, it became that already when you abandoned it in 2007 and the domain got almost dropped, if XEEK would not have contacted me and take it over as soon as I could.

“You know the deal.. #sac @ EFNET”

I won’t force you to close the channel on EfNet. I was kind of glad that It was still there, although I am not hanging out on IRC anymore.

However, you know what you have to do. I also don’t mind, if you want the channel up for folks to hang out there and chat about art, just start another channel for your own new group for your official group stuff. You might even use #SAC to recruit artists to your own group, as long as SAC is not really active. I sent folks there myself, because I knew that somebody could find artists there for requests, even if it wasn’t a current or former SAC member. Basically don’t use the channel to discredit SAC, its origins, roots and what it stand and still stands for.

Happy New Year anyway. It could have been a happy start for all of us instead, but this was obviously not meant to happen unfortunately.

Oops, I lied! I said that the thanks at the beginning of the email would be the only kind words in this email. Well, I can forgive myself for this lie. I never had anything against you and don’t know where your hatred against me comes from.

I am not happy about it and doubt that you will tell me the reasons for it, thus I cannot do much about it either, am I?

Regards,

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Another quote from the NFO file, which I did not include in my email, but would like to comment on as well.

..to conquer and rule with an iron fist.

I say from this day forward you will obey. The age of individualism is over. Conform or Perish.

What do we have here? Some little Fascists or what? Sorry, but Nazis are not permitted in my art group.  Go and crawl back under the rock where you came from. Perish!

Can you believe this? Gosh, are we not too old for this chicken-sh*t ? Some people should know better than this.

Regards,

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Co-Founder and Leader of SAC – Superior Art Creations
1994 – 2001, 2007-…

PS. Regardless if I disapprove of the NFO file and how this release was conducted, here is the download link to the entire pack anyway, because it includes a lot of nice old-skool art by various respected artists and musicians of the scene and I also do not consider this whole thing to be something between me and the whole rest of SAC or what is left of it. I actually would be even more disappointed, if none of the members, especially the ones who have seniority, speak up themselves to express their thoughts and opinions regarding this matter.

Update February 2010: The art pack can also browsed on my web site: Browse SAC Pack #36 Online!

Yes, Vista sucked and I knew why I was doing myself a favor avoiding it at all cost. Many of the severe issues Vista had when it started were fixed. I used a version with SP1 and most patches before SP2 was released, so I don’t even want to know what users of the pre-SP1 versions had to endure.

I never installed a beta version of Windows 7, but from what I heard was this OS version looking very promising and make up for all the bad things of its predecessor. I got my copy of Windows 7 in December and installed it during the holidays over my existing Vista Ultimate 64-Bit installation. I still have a machine running Windows XP Professional, but Windows 7 does not support an upgrade from Win XP unfortunately.

The Upgrade Process from Vista Ultimate to Windows 7

The upgrade process itself ran for the most part automatically. The upgrade wizard complained about a few browser toolbars that seemed to be incompatible and had me uninstall it. Among those was the Google Toolbar, which I did not uninstall (because the provided wizard could not do it and I did not want to remove it via the control panel and lose all my custom stuff). Anyhow, the upgrade went okay. I had to download a new version of the ATI Control Center, because the previous version had also be uninstalled due to incompatibility issues. After that all seemed to be fine, emphasis on SEEMED.

One exception was Internet Explorer, which hang forever when I tried to start it after the upgrade. The problem was with the StumbleUpon browser toolbar, which was not seen as an issue by the upgrade wizard. I had to disable it manually and IE started fine after that. The freeware tool “Free Download Manager”, which I use for larger file-downloads and other things also did not work properly after the upgrade. A file download that would have triggered the launch of FDM resulted in an error message claiming that the program was not configured properly. A re-install over the previously installed version did not fix it. I need to try to uninstall it entirely and then re-install it, to see if that will do the trick. My suspicion is that it will not, because of the other security settings issues that I experienced after the upgrade as well, but more to that in the next segment of my blog post.

Windows 7 Security Management Issues

Windows 7 made changes to the system security management and behavior. It was already with Vista annoying as hell that even an account with administrator privileges and permissions still encountered situations left and right where required read/write/delete/execute permission were missing. I got most of those issues fixed in Vista already by disabling the security advisor and transferring ownerships of the Windows system folder inclusive files and sub folders to my main user account. The administrator account in Vista was disabled by default and it was suggested not to keep it enabled or use it. The same is the case in Windows 7. However, some of my old permission issues came back and also new ones appeared.

Problems with Portable Apps

I switched for many of the tools and programs that I use frequently to a portable version wherever I possibly could. This makes backups easier and also taking the tools with you to use on another computer via a USB thumb-drive. No registry mess that is created AND required for the program to run, no files are copied and sometimes replaced in the Windows system directories or “Common Files” folder beneath “Program Files” or “Program Files (x86)’”. Many of the tools store stuff, like custom user settings or last accessed files in the registry and uses them, if they exist and create new ones, if they do not. No problem, at least under XP and Vista; different story with Windows 7. Several of my portable versions don’t work at all or crash, if I run them via my own user account with administrator permissions (and a member of the administrator user-group).

I got most of them to work, if I right-clicked on the executable and selected “Run as Administrator”. That is annoying, especially, if you forget doing that first and the program loads and loads and then crashes to remind you of how it has to be started. After that other problems also appeared. For example if I started a tool as administrator, all my network mappings to the various network storages in my home network become inaccessible. This has two reasons, first of all are those shares not mapped for the “Administrator” user, but even if they were, is there also the problem, that I did not setup users with the name “administrator” with the same password as the password for the local administrator account at those network storage devices.

Some programs became unable to store any files on the computer outside of the user folder (EG. My Documents). I don’t have multiple users using my machine and always kept my documents in different folders in the root of the hard drive outside the “Users” (Vista/Win7) and “Documents and Settings” (XP) folder, because of permission issues in some cases where one computer in my home network group was unable to access any user folder or system folder on another remote machine within the same network.

Codec and Video/Audio Filters Management

Things that seem to be impossible to change with an administrator account that is not the user login “administrator” are settings stored in the registry, such as video and audio codec and filter configurations. This whole stuff was already a nightmare to cope with in XP, got a bit worse in Vista and even more so in Windows 7. Dudes at Microsoft, you are taking steps in the wrong direction here!

Windows Explorer has the tendency to hang and crash more frequent than with XP, something that I noticed with Vista already, but became more severe with Windows 7. Cause: unknown.

The User Interface

I can live with the fact that they moved the “Show Desktop” button to the far right of the taskbar. What I absolutely hate are two other changes to the task bar.

1) The quick-launch bar/menu is gone entirely and was only replaced by the option to pin programs to the task bar, which is not the same. I had folders in my quick-launch menu and basically used it as an alternative and faster programs start menu with all the shortcuts to scripts and programs that I am using all the time.

2) The grouping of running instances of the same program used to be an optional feature and is now the default option without the ability to turn it off. The individual instances of a program can be accessed easier with Window
s 7, kudos there, but this wasn’t and isn’t enough reason for me to abandon the option of not grouping instances altogether.

Many changes to the start menu design and functionality are improvements, yes, but I hate how they did the tree navigation in the “All Programs” section. You cannot make sub-nodes expand in fly-out menus anymore, but what annoys me the most is that sub folders beyond “All Programs” are not being expanded automatically if the mouse pauses of them, as I specified it in the properties for the Start Menu.

Logitech and Bluetooth Problems

Other issues that I continue to have and which already started with Vista are related to my Bluetooth wireless keyboard and mouse from Logitech. The mouse simply stops working in the middle of things and won’t come back in most cases until a reboot of the computer or by simply disabling and then re-enabling Bluetooth via the provided button for that on my laptop. The devices appear fine in the Bluetooth device manager, even after they stopped functioning. I believe that this is a driver issue, but are surprised that Logitech did not solve it yet after such a long time. Keep in mind that I had the same issue already in Vista and the latest “Set Point’” software by Logitech installed.

IE Browser History Not Recorded Anymore

Internet Explorer does not track my browser history since the upgrade. The only items left there were my visits to web sites prior the upgrade. Not even the sites that I just visited in the same user session appear, including not in the section “View by Order Visited Today”. I always had my browser setting set to keeping the history for 999 days, except for SSL secured pages, which I did not track.

I searched at Google and Microsoft’s web site directly to find an answer to this issue, but was not able to find anything yet. My guess it that it is also a problem related to the changed security management in Windows 7, but this is just a hunch and not based on factual things that could proof that.

Files Dialog

Something that I just noticed while I was writing this blog post via Microsoft’s free tool called Windows Live Writer (which I can highly recommend to anybody who blogs, regardless if you are using Blogger, Word Press, Movable Type or Live Spaces etc. It works with pretty much all of them). They seemed to have standardized it, because I think it always looks the same now. However, Live Writer had some extended tabs in that interface, for example to specify a URL to a file on the web instead of a local file, with preview option and all that. This is now gone and probably a side effect of the change to the open-files dialog that is build into Windows. Not so nice, but I noticed via my own programming of VBScript tools that MS changed their system open/save file dialogs with virtually every new Windows version.

Conclusion

I have not figured out all the things related to the security issues with the new Windows 7 Operating System. If you know more about those things, please leave a comment for me and others who have the same problem(s). This would really be appreciated. Thanks in advance already!

All in all I don’t think that Windows 7 deserves the hype and credits. Vista Service Pack 2 became already so close to what Windows 7 has to offer that it become harder to distinguish between Vista and Windows 7 in those areas. Some things of the user interface did improve though, which is good, unfortunately also accompanied by making other things worse again, by removing a feature or option that should have been left alone to begin with. The least they should have done is to keep it in and make it optional for the users who prefer it. Microsoft tends to forget that the majority of their customers are not first time computer users who are unbiased to changes of their user interface and changes to how things work. Unless there is no way to keep the option to make the system to behave and navigate like previous version,

General Note for the Microsoft Product Team(s)

MS should never remove any of them entirely and always keep them there as optional feature. You might get away with replacing something with something entirely new and different, if the selling points and advantages and improvements of the new is so overwhelming that requiring the user to spend time to get acquainted with it is more than justifiable.

Closing Up My First Impressions

I am sure that new things will come up along the way. What I posted here are just my experiences with the new Microsoft operating system after using it for just 2 weeks as a user, doing the same with the PC as I did before, without doing any in-depth tests or explorations of the system components (except where I had to in order to solve some of the problems that I encountered virtually from the start).

I read some stuff about meta-tag(s) features introduced into the operating system with Windows 7, something I am really interested in myself, due to the vast amount of data that I piled up throughout the years to various subjects, including documents, source codes, images, videos, Zip/RAR archives etc. I could not find much in the system myself. Maybe I looked in the wrong places. I noticed that lack of some column types in Windows Explorer, which I really miss, such as “Codec” for video and audio files. Something I am still looking forward to. There must be something Microsoft really improved a lot with the new OS.

PS. My Media Library issues are not solved yet to this day, although I learned a lot of what not to do and which tools and applications are more worthless than others. :)

I am no Microsoft hater, although I am very critical about them. I still believe that they really try to make things better and that there is no evil master plan to make the life of millions of their users miserable.

Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Obituary Note for YouTube’s “CirqueDuSoleilGuru” Born: July 2008, Died: December 18, 2009 200+ Videos, Total video views: 3,244,071, Total ratings 5,240, Total comments posted to videos by users: 3,152, Almost 2,000 subscribers and hundreds of friends. CirqueDuSoleilGuru (aka YouTube.com/CirqueDuSoleilGuru) was a well respected and loved member of the YouTube community, not only because of the valuable content that he provided, but also because of his support and engagement beyond YouTube and the videos in the cause to support and promote the works of Cirque du Soleil. But the content was one important factor also. The average rating of all the videos uploaded to the account was a whopping “4.46” out of “5”. The sudden death was not only tragic, but also unexpected.  What’s now lost also with the death of CirqueDuSoleilGuru, represents hundreds upon hundreds of hours of work by me and other YouTube community members. All of which was destroyed and killed in cold blooded murder because of corporate greed, ignorance and disrespect of the average people, like me and you.

The YouTube Publisher Account (Type: Guru) “CirqueDuSoleilGuru” was suspended on December 18, 2009 by Google without notice or stating any reasons for taking such dramatic actions.

Two users and former subscribers to my channel already contacted me via other communication channels, like another YouTube account of mine or via private email and asked me what happened and how unhappy they are about this happening.

I honestly don’t know what happened and why they suspended my YouTube account. I can only make wild speculations, but that is beyond the point.

What makes me mad is the fact that the account was in good standing, no warnings, had almost 2000 subscribers, 3.2 Mio video views, over 3,000 video comments and close to 300 videos and gets suspended without giving any reason or anything. No email, nothing. Support generally does ignore things like that. I know that from past experience, which made me a lot more careful, without success obviously.

It could be something that happened recently or something that happened months or longer ago. You simply don’t know. Considering the status and activity (content) of the account, you would expect that they would at least tell you what the problem is that you get at least a chance to do something about it. Nope, hundreds of hours of my time and time of YouTube’s users who commented on my videos gone. Not even worth a single email to them to let me know. The last email that I got was about a new subscriber to the channel.

The last Email that I sent to YouTube just a few days before my account was suspended was an alert to make them aware of a scam that was abusing their system to trick users into installing some malware on their computers. This was happening on December 14, 2009. I also blogged about that at my personal blog. Well, you can  see how grateful they are and how much they appreciate their users and how much they value the time that their users spend on producing and publishing videos on their web site.

Moving Forward

I have 3 other YouTube accounts, one has even more videos that my Cirque du Soleil channel had (but much less viewers and subscribers). I don’t know if I will start a new Cirque related channel on YouTube. The videos are still up on my File-share for download. Many are also available on other Video sharing sites. I have not yet decided what to do. I am also thinking about not to do much with video sharing sites directly anymore, but host the videos myself on Amazon S3 and put them on a new web site that I would have to create for this stuff. Video sharing sites would then only be used to promote that new site (teasers etc.) and not depend on them for the actual content distribution that much anymore.

It would take a lot of time and eventually money as well. Things I don’t have plenty of at the moment. To take the time, I would need to monetize it early on to cover my expenses and pay at least for some of my time. I know quite a bit about this kind of stuff and thus know that it is not so easy in this particular niche.

Regardless of this blog post, I have little hope that it will be resolved in a positive way, because YouTube/Google simply gives a crap about you. The traditional media outlet dinosaurs care even less about anything but how they can milk the consumer cow for hard cash as much as possible. With them is any discussion about the value of content and alternative options to come to terms with them a waste of time for everybody involved. For them is content, media and art nothing more (or less) than a bag of wheat, a commodity with a price label attached to it.

Appealing to their responsibilities in society falls on dumb ears, because they are not in business to do anything good for society, but to maximize profits for their share holders and for themselves.

I just watched yesterday a video about the history of YouTube (on YouTube) and had to laugh when they talked about the value and importance of “community” and the users who are active in it. Well, the video was not created by YouTube themselves, but some students. They obviously did not know better.

The thing that pisses me off the most is the fact that I finished 10 or so videos, branded with “YouTube’s CirqueDuSoleilGuru” that I wanted to upload when I learned that my account was suspended. A “nice” Christmas present.

You could try to help and contact YouTube to ask them about my account as a caring and appreciative user, who liked the content of my channel. I have no idea, if that might trigger that they take a second look at it, but it is not hard to do, does not take too much of your time and who knows, might works. You are now the second user who contacted me because of that. Maybe others will start wondering too and could join in too. You don’t have to do it of course, but I’d appreciate it really.

Doing What I Dared to Do

PS. I just used YouTube’s web form to request more information about the account suspension, which I also just found out about today, but have little hope to get anything back from there that would help in this situation, if I hear back anything from YouTube at all. So far YouTube/Google tends to follow the strategy of complete silence and ignorance when it is about unpleasant things they don’t want to cope with.

I did not want to speculate about why the account was suspended, but I found this post in Google Groups, which is interesting and says it all. There somebody stated it cold and clear that YouTube has the right to suspend any account at any time for any reason without any notice and that you are at their mercy from the moment when you created your YouTube account and agreed to their terms of services while doing so.

It also states that a typical reason for an account suspension is their “3-Strikes” rule, where a strike is ONE video where somebody complained about and it was removed without you fighting against it on the legal battlefront.

I had more than 3 movies that were removed from the account over the months and I stopped arguing with them in those cases, if there could be the possibility that the fair-use clause does apply. I did not involve a lawyer, heck no. I did all this stuff in my spare time as a hobby and to support Cirque du Soleil and the artists and not for profit. In some cases YouTube simply slammed additional ads over the video and shared the revenue from those ads with the alleged owner (or partial owner) of the content.

I also got contacted by companies and individuals about the content of some videos. A few even were unhappy at first, but then realized that what I was doing was not to do them any bad, but the exact opposite. Anger tended to turn into appreciation and acknowledgement of the work that I had done for them without them asking or compensating me.

Also Cirque officials contacted me through YouTube to send me information etc. in the hope that I would help them with the voluntary promotion of their stuff, if I liked it. This said, I doubt that Cirque du Soleil had any hand in this issue. You might would think otherwise, considering that the vast majority of the content at my CIrqueDuSoleilGuru channel was about or from Cirque du Soleil itself.

It’s all such a pain and waste.

Regards,

Carsten aka Roy/SAC aka Ex-CirqueDuSoleilGuru