On 2006-01-11 12:46, ADJB wrote:
at this time I belive it isn't reliable enough to be included in what should be a definative file (the tzx).
It's true, but if you think it applies also to the company name.
Only thing I think we can do is to be very careful when assigning a title to a company; I see many titles on WOS that changes its Publisher time to time, mainly into labels from the same company or with titles published from companies that did not develop their own software.
Also I forgot other fields, like "saga", so it would be easy to an app to see where sabreman appears, for example :)
I'd like to see the Archive Info block deprecated and removed entirely in favour of a centralised database here at WOS.
As ADJB pointed out, we're getting corrections in on an almost daily basis, and although we can update the tapes that are held here, we cannot update those that have already been downloaded by other people.
Given that many download the tapes purely for nostalgic reasons and not for any "collectible" purposes, I can see the following scenario becoming very common:
1. User downloads AgentX II, or some other game
2. WOS finds that some archive info is incorrect, makes the correction and uploads the new tape
3a. User looks, sees that there's no actual change to the game and so doesn't bother to download
-or-
3b. User doesn't bother to look at all, as the game already works anyway.
4. User passes the tape he has out to his mates, via his webpage or whatever.
5. We end up with many, many badly built archive info blocks floating around out there, and those complete fools at TOSEC gather them up as "ROMz WAREz" and calls them the standard, which competely defeats the purpose of the WOS archive.
We need to get *rid* of the Archive info block entirely.
In these days of routine internet access, emulators could either grab that info form WOS as required, or the user could download the database of information from here to browse at their leisure. It doesn't have to be *very* large, as we're only storing text.
OTOH archive info blocks are pretty much equivalent to mp3 tags, and despite there being loads of dodgy mp3 files with crap tags around I still manage to have well organised set of mp3 tag info, and it seems so does anyone who cares to.
I also think that removing this feature is working against the trend towards integrating meta data searching directly in newer operating systems (Mac OS X, Windows Vista, Beagle on Linux). For example in Mac OS X, I can search for Raffaele Cecco in the file open dialog of any program, and my notebook is often disconnected from the internet.
It is often much faster doing this kind of search than navigating my TZX Vault dump directory hierarchy for example.
In addition, not all Spectrum software comes from WoS, and some is still being written. I doubt WoS will ever have useful metadata about my own sad Spectrum efforts, and I should be allowed to index that along with all my other Speccy files IMHO.
Dunny, I think Archive info is a very necessary block.
You are supposing everybody have internet connection, everybody gets the programs via world of spectrum and everybody updates info not having data about them.
If the man who catches the game into tzx creates archive info with the info from the inlay from his tape he can not make any mistake because it is the best resource he can get, and if you download that tape or he sents it to WOS you will know its origin. Other way it will be very very hard to find.
Other suggestion I had is a CRC-like check into archive info (my app will do it, at least) that can tell you if two similar tapes are the same or not without browsing the content, despite other info blocks the file has.
As Fred says, it would be a nice feature to search for a title with those meta data. How many duplicate titles from different authors are out there? you can find 11 backgammon files from different poblishers on WOS. Without archive info you will have backgammon1.tzx, backgammon2.tzx.... or worse backgammon(CDS microsystem).tzx and so on. Is really info block unuseful?
On the other hand, of course WOS is the reference for the speccy, but will it remain in the future? 10, 20 years? Hope it will, but you suppose this is the ONLY true speccy archive, and I think it is not correct.
3a. User looks, sees that there's no actual change to the game and so doesn't bother to download
-or-
3b. User doesn't bother to look at all, as the game already works anyway.
Yes, mos of times it is true.
In these days of routine internet access, emulators could either grab that info form WOS as required, or the user could download the database of information from here to browse at their leisure. It doesn't have to be *very* large, as we're only storing text.
Yes, but that way I have to download all 11 backgammon games to know if my tape is up-to-date, because I downloaded from a web page and no info is supplied etc...
Anyway, I see no future for an update on tzx format, in fact I still even don't know who mantains the format today. Many many years talking about technical reasons for updating a block and zero real updates :(
On 2006-02-20 11:22, Piernas wrote:
Anyway, I see no future for an update on tzx format, in fact I still even don't know who mantains the format today. Many many years talking about technical reasons for updating a block and zero real updates :(
Ramsoft are currently the maintainers - their current Real-Life situations don't give them a lot of time to get updates out, but once they get back on their feet they assure us that will change :p
Concerning the Archive Info block, I'm with Piernas. I don't like relying on a website, which is not a "permanent" resource - although I wish WOS a very very long life, and prosper! ;)
I think the implementation of the Generalised Data Block is really nice... it is what we need to do any possible block really (atleast whatever I have seen so far on ZX). It is very well described too. Great stuff.
The deprecation of C64 bits, emul.info and snapshot block is good too in my opinion.
Are we 100% sure there are no TZX files with Call Sequence/Return from Sequence blocks ? If so then deprecate them by all means.
Also the Set Signal level is very usefull (atleast in a few ZX tapes).
The CSW block might come in usefull, it might prove a bit tough to implement though.
We would need to add info for the Archive block that was suggested for the purposes of re-releases and some more stuff there too.
There were some more suggestions for aditions here on the forum, but I think you could do an official release very soon with this ?
Unfortunetly my time is very limited lately, otherwise I would go implementing the new Generalised block into Samp2TZX immediately and try to support atleast one or two loaders that weren't implementable before. But sources are out there and anyone can add to it.
I think 90% of the currently not-convertable loading schemes could be converted with the old TZX blocks. The new block is usable only for those that don't have symetric pulses for bits (or have only one pulse per bit or even different number of pulses for different bit combos) - and there are only one or two ones.
I saw Phantomas loader - REALLY nice ! :) Well the whole package is very professional indeed.
Nono... I didn't mean NEW loaders that are done by people nowadays to hack the old games and make them load blazingly fast... I was talking about original games that had loaders which would require the new block. There are some, but I think you could count them on one hand.
Ofcourse the new block is needed to encode all the new super-fast loaders that use same length of a wave for bits 0 and 1 but the oposite polarity or only one pulse per bit, etc. I am not sure if anyone would make a Sample->TZX converter for these, since they can be created by the authors (once the format is settled).
I was about to test some preliminary coding for ID 19 support in my TZX2WAV program, and I was wondering if any emulator was updated with TZX v1.20 specifications, or someone had released TZX samples with the new chunks.
We will need to soon fix the 1.20 specs since it is needed BADLY. The block 19 needs updating (as BlackHole mentioned) with the Mikies enhancements - and shitloads of HW info needs to be added.
Ramsoft guys PLEASE respond to this (and the emails) so we can finish the specs.
sorry again for the delay! I am currently in France for work, but I will be back home for the weekend and this time I'm going to stay for a while, phew! So I will be able to resume work for my favourite hobby, starting from the TZX specs. I'm coming!!! :)
Comments
It's true, but if you think it applies also to the company name.
Only thing I think we can do is to be very careful when assigning a title to a company; I see many titles on WOS that changes its Publisher time to time, mainly into labels from the same company or with titles published from companies that did not develop their own software.
Also I forgot other fields, like "saga", so it would be easy to an app to see where sabreman appears, for example :)
MikeW
I'd like to see the Archive Info block deprecated and removed entirely in favour of a centralised database here at WOS.
As ADJB pointed out, we're getting corrections in on an almost daily basis, and although we can update the tapes that are held here, we cannot update those that have already been downloaded by other people.
Given that many download the tapes purely for nostalgic reasons and not for any "collectible" purposes, I can see the following scenario becoming very common:
1. User downloads AgentX II, or some other game
2. WOS finds that some archive info is incorrect, makes the correction and uploads the new tape
3a. User looks, sees that there's no actual change to the game and so doesn't bother to download
-or-
3b. User doesn't bother to look at all, as the game already works anyway.
4. User passes the tape he has out to his mates, via his webpage or whatever.
5. We end up with many, many badly built archive info blocks floating around out there, and those complete fools at TOSEC gather them up as "ROMz WAREz" and calls them the standard, which competely defeats the purpose of the WOS archive.
We need to get *rid* of the Archive info block entirely.
In these days of routine internet access, emulators could either grab that info form WOS as required, or the user could download the database of information from here to browse at their leisure. It doesn't have to be *very* large, as we're only storing text.
D.
I also think that removing this feature is working against the trend towards integrating meta data searching directly in newer operating systems (Mac OS X, Windows Vista, Beagle on Linux). For example in Mac OS X, I can search for Raffaele Cecco in the file open dialog of any program, and my notebook is often disconnected from the internet.
It is often much faster doing this kind of search than navigating my TZX Vault dump directory hierarchy for example.
In addition, not all Spectrum software comes from WoS, and some is still being written. I doubt WoS will ever have useful metadata about my own sad Spectrum efforts, and I should be allowed to index that along with all my other Speccy files IMHO.
You are supposing everybody have internet connection, everybody gets the programs via world of spectrum and everybody updates info not having data about them.
If the man who catches the game into tzx creates archive info with the info from the inlay from his tape he can not make any mistake because it is the best resource he can get, and if you download that tape or he sents it to WOS you will know its origin. Other way it will be very very hard to find.
Other suggestion I had is a CRC-like check into archive info (my app will do it, at least) that can tell you if two similar tapes are the same or not without browsing the content, despite other info blocks the file has.
As Fred says, it would be a nice feature to search for a title with those meta data. How many duplicate titles from different authors are out there? you can find 11 backgammon files from different poblishers on WOS. Without archive info you will have backgammon1.tzx, backgammon2.tzx.... or worse backgammon(CDS microsystem).tzx and so on. Is really info block unuseful?
On the other hand, of course WOS is the reference for the speccy, but will it remain in the future? 10, 20 years? Hope it will, but you suppose this is the ONLY true speccy archive, and I think it is not correct.
Yes, mos of times it is true.
Yes, but that way I have to download all 11 backgammon games to know if my tape is up-to-date, because I downloaded from a web page and no info is supplied etc...
Ramsoft are currently the maintainers - their current Real-Life situations don't give them a lot of time to get updates out, but once they get back on their feet they assure us that will change :p
D.
don't forget that block 0x19 has been already implemented, so it's a little more than pure speculation.
http://www.ramsoft.bbk.org/tzxform120.html
Concerning the Archive Info block, I'm with Piernas. I don't like relying on a website, which is not a "permanent" resource - although I wish WOS a very very long life, and prosper! ;)
Greets from France,
Luca
The deprecation of C64 bits, emul.info and snapshot block is good too in my opinion.
Are we 100% sure there are no TZX files with Call Sequence/Return from Sequence blocks ? If so then deprecate them by all means.
Also the Set Signal level is very usefull (atleast in a few ZX tapes).
The CSW block might come in usefull, it might prove a bit tough to implement though.
We would need to add info for the Archive block that was suggested for the purposes of re-releases and some more stuff there too.
There were some more suggestions for aditions here on the forum, but I think you could do an official release very soon with this ?
Unfortunetly my time is very limited lately, otherwise I would go implementing the new Generalised block into Samp2TZX immediately and try to support atleast one or two loaders that weren't implementable before. But sources are out there and anyone can add to it.
Best regards,
Tomaz
Which games do you think could be covered with new generalized data block?
Surely BC's Quest For Tires. Anything else from Andy's pages? Or other webs to look for?
I wish to test some of these, and test if 0x19 needs to be expanded to other schemes or not. Did you see my custom Phantomas 2 loader some weeks ago?
BH'06
I saw Phantomas loader - REALLY nice ! :) Well the whole package is very professional indeed.
http://www.worldofspectrum.org/forums/viewtopic.php?topic=10482&forum=11
Were you able to check them out? I doubt they can be parsed with generalized blocks.
By the way, some othe spanish guy in the newsgroup es.comp.sistemas.sinclair made a new 19600 bits per second loader. And damn it works!
http://groups.google.com/group/es.comp.sistemas.sinclair/browse_frm/thread/849286b735bfd0be/
[ This Message was edited by: Black Hole on 2006-03-12 13:03 ]
Ofcourse the new block is needed to encode all the new super-fast loaders that use same length of a wave for bits 0 and 1 but the oposite polarity or only one pulse per bit, etc. I am not sure if anyone would make a Sample->TZX converter for these, since they can be created by the authors (once the format is settled).
Best regards,
Tomaz
I agree.
I think Fraser Ross may have done one or two TZXs with them. No offence to Fraser or anyone else who uses them. I'm not keen on doing it that way.
Cheers
Andy
I didn't read this thread below. Too bad it's still on the works.
http://www.worldofspectrum.org/forums/showthread.php?t=12062
Luca: I didn't know about your meeting in Madrid. Poke me next time. B-)
Thanks in advance.
Ramsoft guys PLEASE respond to this (and the emails) so we can finish the specs.
sorry again for the delay! I am currently in France for work, but I will be back home for the weekend and this time I'm going to stay for a while, phew! So I will be able to resume work for my favourite hobby, starting from the TZX specs. I'm coming!!! :)
Luca (from Lannion, France)
Look forward to this.
Cheers
Andy