Should more effort be made to preserve useful threads & resources from the PinSimDB?

[Isaac Sauvage]

CONTEXT: A recent ShoutBox exchange reminded me of the fact that AO (The Internet Archive) still has plenty of the late PinSimDB's content archived, which is a good thing, yeah?

For example, a user recently asked for table recommendations, and GeorgeH helpfully still had his master list recorded of FP table recs at the defunct PSDB.

I went ahead and plugged that link in to AO, but gloomily assumed that the "?" php operator would have confounded AO's archiving services, which it used to. (for example, I'm still pretty gutted that I lost the community project of "The History of VP" which used to be here.

Thankfully, George's thread did get preserved!
http://web.archive.org/web/20211025071146/http://www.gopinball.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=6176

AND NOW? Which brings me back to an issue I'd brought up some time back. Partially because I'm an FP dumbass who worries that important discussion & code techniques might be lost (as with the original VPforums), and partially because I admire how much good, useful discussion went on over at the PSDB's forums, before it got overridden by spam.

Hmm. So what am I really asking here?

I guess-- if you FP vets still have some nice PSDB threads in your bookmarks, what do you think about preserving them here in one form or another?

Or on the other hand, would you say there's simply no need for that kind of thing, anymore...?

 

[GeorgeH]

The only other useful thread I know about is this one:

GoPinball.com • View topic - How to use Score / High Score with 15 digits and BAM.

Pushing the Pinball limits...One pixel at a time

web.archive.org

It is about the use of the Bam fix score code that is used to extend high score overflow from 2 billion to 922 trillion. I don't know how he did it but AnonTet found both of them for me.

After I looked through the Internet Archive, it seemed to me that there was not much left of GoPinball in there but then maybe I don't know how to look for it.

Alex said he still had data on the GoPinball site and would post it somewhere but has not done so yet.

 

[Pop Bumper Pete]

AND NOW? Which brings me back to an issue I'd brought up some time back. Partially because I'm an FP dumbass who worries that important discussion & code techniques might be lost (as with the original VPforums), and partially because I admire how much good, useful discussion went on over at the PSDB's forums, before it got overridden by spam.

But how much of that stuff form VPF is even relevant today?
Really, VP back then was stuck in a rut, no updates to the program, new tables were not emulated, and really there was only a dozen or so active authors. many of the innovators had come in on the ground-floor, stretched the software, had ego trips and left the scene

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

After I looked through the Internet Archive, it seemed to me that there was not much left of GoPinball in there but then maybe I don't know how to look for it.

I haven't played around with AO's archive of GoPinball for awhile.

It may be that some of the '?'-style thread links work, and some don't. More testing is needed, I guess. The main issue with me is that even when the links are working, I'm not much use at figuring out what FP content might be worth saving vs not.

Oh well. When I get 'round to testing again, I'll try to take a look for things that might seem useful to be preserved, and link them here. Hopefully you and/or others can comment on them at that time.

But how much of that stuff form VPF is even relevant today?
Really, VP back then was stuck in a rut, no updates to the program, new tables were not emulated, and really there was only a dozen or so active authors. many of the innovators had come in on the ground-floor, stretched the software, had ego trips and left the scene

However pessimistically you look at the VP scene at that time, there was still some neat stuff people were doing, code-wise and innovation-wise. For example, @highrise for one was just crushing it with DMD animations and other novel ideas not seen before. Another person figured out a way for a master table to load a completely separate table and pass values to it, something with lots of interesting possibilities.

Just as in life, I think some of the very limitations you're complaining about were in fact helpful for spurring people to look deeper in to VB scripting, which can be used to do loads more than tables traditionally did. Personally I think that's awesome, and loved seeing things progress like that, even if it wasn't a 'point A-to-point B' kind of route, i.e. regular updates from Randy.

Now yeah, I don't know how much of the old innovations would be of use today. Maybe very little.

But aside from all that, there's always the history of the project that fascinates me. I don't imagine there are many software projects that are going on 25 years like VP & pinMAME have.

I get that some people are happy having the past erased or forgotten so to speak, but as you probably know, I've never really been that type.

 

[GeorgeH]

It may be that some of the '?'-style thread links work, and some don't. More testing is needed, I guess. The main issue with me is that even when the links are working, I'm not much use at figuring out what FP content might be worth saving vs not.

The main thing I would like is Ravarcade's directions for each version of Bam. I seem to remember all of it was posted on one huge thread.

 

[AnonTet]

Does this link here helps? Look for " "Better Arcade Mode" where Ravarcade announced BAM :)

Not all pages under that topic are archived it seems, you'll have to go 1 by one and no guarantees you'll be able to compile the "history of bam", unfortunately.

 

[GeorgeH]

Does this link here helps? Look for " "Better Arcade Mode" where Ravarcade announced BAM :)

Not all pages under that topic are archived it seems, you'll have to go 1 by one and no guarantees you'll be able to compile the "history of bam", unfortunately.

Yes, the topic "Better Arcade Mode - MOD for Future Pinball" is where he always posted new versions of Bam. It doesn't work when you click on the link though.

 

[AnonTet]

Works for me.
Maybe it works if you c&p
http://web.archive.org/web/20210413...php?f=86&sid=50a1cd13806feecc9eb10e8d2e12d143

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

Doing a little testing right now:

- AO's "BAM Corner" subforum link Tiago posted above works for me in Chrome.

- NOTE: when clicking on individual threads, some of the URL's won't work unless you remove the "session ID," which appears as "&sid=" + {string of numbers & letters}

- Rafal's massive thread of updates George is looking for... is it this?
http://web.archive.org/web/20210415111156/http://gopinball.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=86&t=3249

 

[AnonTet]

That's the one I was talking about, yes. It seems that's where it all started to change :)

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

That's the one I was talking about, yes. It seems that's where it all started to change :)

Unfortunately, it looks like most of the individual pages weren't actually archived by AO. To be clear, I tested the first five, removing the "sid" info but preserving the "&start=#" info.

So, yeah... drat.

Oh! But fortunately, VPF has the counterpart thread, and altho not nearly as big as GoPinball's (46pp vs 243pp!), I would guess Rafal published the same matching BAM guidelines with each update.
https://www.vpforums.org/index.php?showtopic=23791

Does that work for you, George?

 

[GeorgeH]

Works for me.
Maybe it works if you c&p
http://web.archive.org/web/20210413...php?f=86&sid=50a1cd13806feecc9eb10e8d2e12d143

I use a sandbox. It worked when I clicked on the link using a web browser that is not sandboxed.

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

I use a sandbox. It worked when I clicked on the link using a web browser that is not sandboxed.

This stuff is kinda confusing to me, but like I was saying--
maybe just refer to Rafal's VPF thread for the significant updates of BAM?

If that's not good enough, I'm not sure how I can possibly help further, assuming I ever did.