7 replies to this topic

[mossy_11]

I just noticed that the IMG Historical Archives link/URL is gone, which is not only a bummer for me as a historian (because now it's way harder to look up old IMG articles) but also sad news for all of us who read IMG over the years.

Looking at the Wayback Machine, it seems to have been switched off mid-January. Anyone know why? Or have a backup copy of the old site (most pages are on the Wayback Machine, but not all, and searching through their archives is painful)? Or do I need to go bug Tuncer about it?

EDIT: Never mind the why question. I know that now. Would still be great if there's a local backup I could download or we could pop up as a static site elsewhere.

[Matt Diamond]

I believe the admin mentioned he tried to generate static pages from the database before pulling the plug, but wasn't successful.

Ironically, the oldest editions of IMG are available (downloadable as disk images, as you know.) This world-wide-web thing made a lot of things obsolete, but replaced them with something that isn't very persistent or resilient.

I sincerely hope this doesn't delay your second book about Mac games too much. :-)

[Frigidman™]

The old site was still 'running from code'. It was never properly made into a static set of htmls+images. I did not know how to generate them, or was willing to buy some random software to try and do a hashed up job at it.

So instead of leaving security-hole riddled code still running, I shut off that section from the public to safeguard the server from intrusion points.

All the data in the database still exists, and all the code still exists. Its just the public cannot reach any of it. I also cannot simply wrap it all up for public (or even private) download, as the IMG Pro User data is part of that system, and it would be a violation of Privacy Rights in that regard.

[mossy_11]

Gotcha.

Matt Diamond, on 17 February 2021 - 09:20 PM, said:

Ironically, the oldest editions of IMG are available (downloadable as disk images, as you know.) This world-wide-web thing made a lot of things obsolete, but replaced them with something that isn't very persistent or resilient.

Indeed. There's a huge amount of mid-to-late 90s web stuff that's just completely gone, sadly  — not even archived on the Wayback Machine. Much of IMG's early web content — from the original version of the site, which ran in conjunction with the mag for a few years — is gone too.

Quote

I sincerely hope this doesn't delay your second book about Mac games too much. :-)

It'll slow things down a bit if we can't get searchable static pages up, but we're talking more on the scale of days or weeks rather than months. Right now the larger cause of delay is that I need to finish Shareware Heroes before I can return to actively working on the second Mac book (aside from the odd bit of crossover research, with shareware Mac games). And that's taking me longer than I'd expected.

[Cougar]

mossy_11, on 19 February 2021 - 01:01 AM, said:

Right now the larger cause of delay is that I need to finish Shareware Heroes before I can return to actively working on the second Mac book (aside from the odd bit of crossover research, with shareware Mac games). And that's taking me longer than I'd expected.

Wait, there's going to be a second Mac book?? Cool! I somehow missed that. What will it cover?

[mossy_11]

I've sort of only soft-announced it (as an aside, a couple of times, on Twitter, and in a talk I gave about Ambrosia's history).

The book will cover lots of things I missed or couldn't fit into the first one, or where I wasn't previously able to interview the key people (eg. notable games that got only a passing mention, if at all — MacGolf, Cap'n Magneto, the lesser-known Ambrosia titles, Gopher Golf, Snood, etc; notable companies that barely got covered — Aspyr, MacSoft, etc), plus fill in more details on some of the stories that did get told (like Ambrosia's history) and expand the scope to the PPC OS X era.

I'll talk more about it later in the year, and as part of that I'll be consulting with the classic Mac community here and elsewhere to hopefully leave us with a definitive, complete history across the two volumes, but I'm open to suggestions and requests for things to cover anytime.

[Matt Diamond]

Suggested title: The Double Secret History of Mac Gaming

[mossy_11]

One of my title ideas is "The (Even More) Secret History of Mac Gaming". Definitely looking to have some fun with it.