| |
Bamu®
Account closed
Registered: May 2005
Posts: 1332 |
HVSC update?
@steppe
Shrug, no HVSC update this year? :_( |
|
| |
Jammer
Registered: Nov 2002
Posts: 1336 |
yeah, i thought that new update would be a nice xmas gift ;(;(;( |
| |
Raf
Registered: Nov 2003
Posts: 343 |
Steppe was cut off from regular net access for nearly month , hence the delay
www.vulture.c64.org |
| |
Steppe
Registered: Jan 2002
Posts: 1510 |
Yup, but I'm back since a few days. Which doesn't mean I have a lot of spare time now, the new appartment still is quite a mess. Have patience folks, it will come in January, that's for sure. |
| |
Bamu®
Account closed
Registered: May 2005
Posts: 1332 |
now we have January. ;-) |
| |
Steppe
Registered: Jan 2002
Posts: 1510 |
Yes, you're so absolutely correct. And it doesn't really clash with my statement above.
Recently the police stopped me because of speeding. They asked if I'm aware that I just went 75 km/h in the city (50 is allowed) and I said "Yes, but I got that HVSC update to finish, officer. The sooner that happens the sooner I get these people off my back that remind me about it on a weekly basis!"
The face of the policeman cheered up, he smiled and said: "Now if we only knew, we'd never have stopped you in the first place. Go on and finish your undoubtedly important mission."
Ah, such a nice and privileged life I'm living. ;-) |
| |
Bamu®
Account closed
Registered: May 2005
Posts: 1332 |
I understand. :DDDDDDD
So, it comes a week later?! ;-)
Seriously, maybe more + smaller updates would be more suitable... maybe. :) |
| |
CreaMD
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 3057 |
Nata I think I finally understand your problem with the scene. You don't realise that it already died (;-) and noone takes their scene-duties too seriously because they don't weight them high in the rank of their so called real life duties. Now I understand why you are bugging Cadaver with updates and stuff and claim a full-time customer support etc. Yeah, I partially agree. It's a bad thing when someone starts doing something and doesn't do it 100%, but in my honest opinion, everyone should first clean before their own door-step. That also concerns you. Make more tunes, be more active and maybe you get what you call for. And maybe not.. after all scene is after it's clinic death.. the thing we live now is called "life-after-life" or maybe even scene-heaven ;-). |
| |
Bamu®
Account closed
Registered: May 2005
Posts: 1332 |
As far me is concerned: Well, I'm one of the composers (even if I left the scene) that regularly releases something. :) |
| |
cadaver
Registered: Feb 2002
Posts: 1160 |
I'd put it another way: in a time when scene is mostly dead but dreaming (I like to use that instead of just "dead") forum-sceners should realize that it's easy for their voice to grow disproportionally loud, and thus further discourage people who are still to some degree active. You know, log in to the forum and all you see is whine, whine, whine, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, request, request, request. That really encourages one to be active and contribute, right?
In this state it's possible for a single person to significantly (if not completely) degrade for example a certain subforum. Lemon64 scene forum was quite unreadable before, but since Tomz arrived it's at least 3 times as bad.
(of course being active doesn't really need www-forums, but it seems quite like the main format of public, more or less permanent & organized scene discussion today, so stopping to read them entirely doesn't seem like a good solution either..)
As for you nata, it will take a long time before the equation
total_contribution = released_tunes - forum_bullshit
reaches positive side again :) |
| |
Yodelking
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 189 |
Quote: I understand. :DDDDDDD
So, it comes a week later?! ;-)
Seriously, maybe more + smaller updates would be more suitable... maybe. :)
Smaller updates would perhaps be more suitable for the users, who would get them more often. But it takes us less time to release updates more seldom.
The testing phase of each update, to try to make it work on all platforms, including a real c-64 makes it time consuming.
In the early days we had a backlog of 3000 tunes, which made it easy to select a bunch of tunes, and release 500 tunes. Now we have to rip enough tunes to have a complete update. And people who contributes with rippacks has decreased a lot over the years. Also many members of the HVSC-crew got older, got fulltime work, family, house, and other hobbies... |
| |
Luca
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 178 |
On the other hand, I heard that HVSC team has to perform a drastic HVSC directory change. Steppe, could you please mention a bit of this one, before update.exe would run on our peecees? |
| |
Steppe
Registered: Jan 2002
Posts: 1510 |
This year was a bit odd:
The routine of releasing updates regularly was crossed by our 10 Years HVSC collection, which took a significant amount of time to coordinate. We delayed the update, because we wanted to have the tunes of 10 Years inside. 10 Years HVSC got delayed itself, so the update got delayed again.
In addition, we're heading for a major directory structure change this update which needed quite some discussion time and finetuning adjustments until we found a clean and futureproof solution.
Then we decided to wait another few days for the Sidcompo 6 tunes and the end of the voting phase, but that didn't finish in time either...
So the weeks went by, what once was planned for early October is now finally due to be released in about a week. Shame on us for slaughtering the holy cow called "christmas update"! ;-)
And also: What Peter said, it's less timeconsuming to release one big update than to release three small ones. |
| |
j0x
Registered: Mar 2004
Posts: 215 |
We're working on it. Personally, I have an ascii file of 14 kb of comments for the latest beta (update #46, beta 6) after going through about half of it. And I'm certainly not the hardest-working member of the HVSC-crew.
A lot of work from a lot of people goes into fixing, ripping, compiling, checking, checking, checking and re-checking these updates, so please have patience.
Besides, there's still about four weeks left of January. :)
|
| |
Steppe
Registered: Jan 2002
Posts: 1510 |
Quote: On the other hand, I heard that HVSC team has to perform a drastic HVSC directory change. Steppe, could you please mention a bit of this one, before update.exe would run on our peecees?
There are several disturbing factors in the current HVSC directory structure:
1. Inconsistencies to our own rule as to what is root and what is VARIOUS. There are composers in VARIOUS that, according to our rules should be in the root and vice versa.
2. With more and more composers surfacing and others getting their own directories by gathering their 3 tunes the directory trees grew to huge sizes (several screens high), which made navigating and maintaining a bit cumbersome.
3. The term VARIOUS and the fact that the tunes inside that directory were 3 directory levels further down than the glorious root composers was considered unfair by a lot of people. Discussions went in circles thinking about a better name (SCENE? POST_1993?) or to organize the root dir similiarly (CLASSICS? PRE_1993?), so we finally decided to go for the following structure:
/DEMOS
/0-9
/A-F
/G-L
/M-R
/S-Z
/UNKNOWN
/DOCUMENTS
/GAMES
/0-9
/A-F
/G-L
/M-R
/S-Z
/MUSICIANS
/0-9
/A
/B
/C
...
We don't say it's flawless now, but it's easier to maintain, easier to navigate, it's more fair (no more discussions about "why is composer x in the root, shouldn't he be in VARIOUS?" or "composer y made 3 gametunes before 93, shouldn't he be in the root?".
In addition, an almost flat structure like that hopefully encourages one or the other guy to program a proper frontend for HVSC one day. Be it in form of a tool or a website interface, so people can conveniently switch between several HVSC "views", assign "favourites" flags to tunes and composers etc. HVSC has grown almost too big to jump around in Windows Explorer without getting lost.
There was the argument that people new to HVSC usually quickly find what they're looking for (that is: Hubbard, Galway and Jeroen Tel). We think that people will still find what they're looking for, only it takes them an hour longer than before.
Give us some input what you think, even though it's a little late now. |
| |
Luca
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 178 |
Uhmmm, this means, e.g.: Composer-X did several tunes, for demos, games and standalone. Shall his tunes be spreaded in the respective folders? Did you mean "commercial games" for /GAMES folder, or "all" the games?
Anyway, congrats for keeping up the hard work, I appreciate it a lot, bet on it. |
| |
Yodelking
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 189 |
If a composer have 3+ tunes ALL his tune will be in his dir. Game composers who has 2 tunes or less will end up in the games dir.
So it will be a lot like today, just a merge of root and various, and then split the composers dirs into /A/, /B/, /C/, etc...
Hopefully all old farts who just listens to old music will find some new favourite composers moved from Various...
And all new farts might find something from the root... :)
Even though I'm one of the old farts (sigh!) I usually end up listening in Various anyway... Damn there's so much great music. |
| |
Steppe
Registered: Jan 2002
Posts: 1510 |
No, GAMES and DEMOS are (like in the current HVSC) still a place for tunes from unknown composers or, if composer is known, he only did one or two tunes. The "3 tunes minimum per directory" stays unchanged. |
| |
CreaMD
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 3057 |
I like the new structure, but how do you recognise the "music groups?" like e.g. Vibrants.. not that I'm asking of cluttering the structure with exceptions.. I'm just curious. |
| |
Luca
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 178 |
Quote: I like the new structure, but how do you recognise the "music groups?" like e.g. Vibrants.. not that I'm asking of cluttering the structure with exceptions.. I'm just curious.
Heh, take Dane for example: splitting his sidography into "on his own" and "with Mitch" would be terrible, but exact and fair. Probably we'll have both folders, /M/Mitch_And_Dane and /D/Dane...
No music groups allowed, only cooperation works... |
| |
CreaMD
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 3057 |
Yeah, and how about our coop with Agemixer .. I want to have it in my directory too.. ;-))))) |
| |
Luca
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 178 |
Quote:Yeah, and how about our coop with Agemixer .. I want to have it in my directory too.. ;-))))) Min. 3 tunes per folder, 3 tunes per folder, 3 tunes per folder. |
| |
Steppe
Registered: Jan 2002
Posts: 1510 |
Music groups is a prime example why every sorting structure with a collection of that size is prone to failure.
Luca, we already have a kindof ok solution for Dane/Mitch&Dane, I think.
In the new structure the coop tunes will reside in /MUSICIANS/M/Mitch_and_Dane, and Dane's solo tunes will be in a subdirectory under /MUSICIANS/M/Mitch_and_Dane/Dane
But how would you treat 20CC for example? Sonic_Graffity? Audial Arts? FAME? They're all nice examples where the groupname was by far the dominant part why they were famous. Michael Hen-what? Isn't that by FAME? You get the drift...
That's why I said, a flat structure in a collection of that size will always have its flaws. We need a well maintained underlying database, preferrably with a frontend to get the maximum out of HVSC. Any volunteer that wants to take HVSC to the next level with us? :-) |
| |
Laxity
Registered: Aug 2005
Posts: 459 |
What's wrong with the current structure?.. |
| |
Steppe
Registered: Jan 2002
Posts: 1510 |
Hm, read above, post from 16:10. |
| |
Laxity
Registered: Aug 2005
Posts: 459 |
Oh, sorry!. I see your point. |
| |
Oswald
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 5094 |
the nicest would be if hvsc would be an online sid csdb, with the sorting capabilities of remix.kwed.org |
| |
chatGPZ
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11386 |
Quote:Music groups is a prime example why every sorting structure with a collection of that size is prone to failure.
symlinks? |
| |
j0x
Registered: Mar 2004
Posts: 215 |
Quote: Quote:Music groups is a prime example why every sorting structure with a collection of that size is prone to failure.
symlinks?
That work reliably across all target platforms? |
| |
Devia
Registered: Oct 2004
Posts: 401 |
works on Windows with NTFS, on AmigaOS with Kickstart 2.04+ and FFS, on most, if not all flavors of *nix'ish OS'es, depending on the filesystem used of course..
It will however NOT work with FAT and thus not with Win9x/Me.
Oh, and reliably?? - uhm.. links would be broken when HVSC were to be copied on some systems, so an installer would be needed. |
| |
chatGPZ
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11386 |
make the symlinks relative? |
| |
Devia
Registered: Oct 2004
Posts: 401 |
hmm.. on second thought: NTFS only supports Hard Links.
It's so called Junctions can only link to directories.
I don't know if you can make relative symlinks on FFS so it'd probably only work with *nix.
But all that linking stuff isn't the best solution anyway. We need a REAL database ;-)
|
| |
chatGPZ
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11386 |
and elephants! |
| |
T.M.R
Account closed
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 749 |
Any chance of the directories renamed so they feature the musician's handle as well as their name perhaps? i can never Hayes/Euratom's real name (for example) so having Mueller_Markus_(Hayes) or something similar to that would be nice...? (Not exactly a random example, went through the root three times! =-) |
| |
CreaMD
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 3057 |
TMR, you mean something like Antti Mäkynen (Monk) ? ;-)))) that would for sure make him "happy" ;-). |
| |
T.M.R
Account closed
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 749 |
What a terrible example... =-) |
| |
Wisdom
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 90 |
The new structure is what it should have been like since the beginning. I completely support it with some exceptions:
My personal opinion about music labels is that you can skip them and just list all the musicians flatly. I always browse through musician names and not through music labels and probably most of the crowd do it in the same way.
There is also this "depth" problem when it comes to music labels: Where will you locate Jeroen Tel? Under MUSICIANS/T/Tel_Jeroen or under something like MUSICIANS/M/MoN/Tel_Jeroen? Same goes for Deenen, DRAX, Laxity, Bjerregaard. Needless to say; these are all top composers that cannot be sacrificed because of directory depth.
Another problem with music labels is that one composer might have been a member of more than one music label (DRAX comes to mind as a prime example.)
Cooperative tunes can be placed in the most participating composer's directory. I admit that most of the time it will not be possible to determine whoever is "the most participating" one. In those cases, there may be a silly rule such as "put it in alpabetical order", "put it into the one who has got more tunes" or simply "put it into the better known one".
|
| |
Yodelking
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 189 |
Quote: Any chance of the directories renamed so they feature the musician's handle as well as their name perhaps? i can never Hayes/Euratom's real name (for example) so having Mueller_Markus_(Hayes) or something similar to that would be nice...? (Not exactly a random example, went through the root three times! =-)
When it comes to Hayes, just write me and ask, I will know for sure... :) He's one of my favourites. ;)
We've tried to name the dirs what the composers was known from, either real name or handle.
Then when composers had several handles, like: Hayes, Superbrain, Sidbusters, it makes it hard...
Someone might want to find Superbrain, while you want to find Hayes...
As a side note, you'll get 8 new Markus Müller tunes on the next HVSC update. :) |
| |
Yodelking
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 189 |
Quote: The new structure is what it should have been like since the beginning. I completely support it with some exceptions:
My personal opinion about music labels is that you can skip them and just list all the musicians flatly. I always browse through musician names and not through music labels and probably most of the crowd do it in the same way.
There is also this "depth" problem when it comes to music labels: Where will you locate Jeroen Tel? Under MUSICIANS/T/Tel_Jeroen or under something like MUSICIANS/M/MoN/Tel_Jeroen? Same goes for Deenen, DRAX, Laxity, Bjerregaard. Needless to say; these are all top composers that cannot be sacrificed because of directory depth.
Another problem with music labels is that one composer might have been a member of more than one music label (DRAX comes to mind as a prime example.)
Cooperative tunes can be placed in the most participating composer's directory. I admit that most of the time it will not be possible to determine whoever is "the most participating" one. In those cases, there may be a silly rule such as "put it in alpabetical order", "put it into the one who has got more tunes" or simply "put it into the better known one".
Sorting up the
/MUSICIANS/B/Blues_Muz/
and
/MUSICIANS/B/Blues_Muz/Worktunes/
Would be be a nightmare, so many co-ops... sigh. :)
A database layout where you would see all tunes from a composers, including all co-ops he did would be really nice.
|
| |
Steppe
Registered: Jan 2002
Posts: 1510 |
@Wisdom: When it comes to groups/single musicians directories, everything stays like in the current HVSC. So there will be no MoN directory, but we didn't dare to dissolve FAME or Blues_Muz either. So there will be nothing new on that level.
@TMR: You have heard about that glorious tool called Sidbace32? It's exactly what I'm asking for, only with a bit stripped down functionality. But it does what it should, provide a database driven offline search.
http://gnetools.sourceforge.net/sidbace/
Also, when in desperate need for a tune, but only remember the handle (which you can't find as directory name), just go to the numerous sid search engines.
www.c64.org/sidfind is a good one. |
| |
Bamu®
Account closed
Registered: May 2005
Posts: 1332 |
Then, the next update comes anno 2008??? ;-) |
| |
Yodelking
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 189 |
Quote: Then, the next update comes anno 2008??? ;-)
2009, if we have to rip your protected SIDs, instead of you sending them in. ;) |
| |
Dane
Registered: May 2002
Posts: 423 |
Rip my Chronicle of Craft music instead while you're waiting :D |
| |
Steppe
Registered: Jan 2002
Posts: 1510 |
Impossible. It's unrippable. Did you hear me Inge: IMPOSSIBLE! This tune CAN'T BE RIPPED!
Ok Dane, that should do the trick. ;-) |
| |
Dane
Registered: May 2002
Posts: 423 |
Quote: Impossible. It's unrippable. Did you hear me Inge: IMPOSSIBLE! This tune CAN'T BE RIPPED!
Ok Dane, that should do the trick. ;-)
It's the 2007 Inge vs Crossbow race! |
| |
Inge
Registered: Nov 2003
Posts: 144 |
Ah... So you're throwing a bait at me?
The tune doesn't seem unrippable to me, but I could be wrong of course. |
| |
Steppe
Registered: Jan 2002
Posts: 1510 |
Hehe, I hope the bait isn't just a plain $1000/$1003 tune. I admit, I didn't check. |
| |
j0x
Registered: Mar 2004
Posts: 215 |
Steppe: It almost is :) The only non-standard thing is handling the interactive bit. Unless I missed something... Dane? |
| |
Dane
Registered: May 2002
Posts: 423 |
It's a two-in-one tune. :) |
| |
Bamu®
Account closed
Registered: May 2005
Posts: 1332 |
Seriously, when we can expect the next HVSC update?
It's just because I'm missing a lot of tunes I've heard last year. :_( |
| |
Yodelking
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 189 |
Quote: Seriously, when we can expect the next HVSC update?
It's just because I'm missing a lot of tunes I've heard last year. :_(
Seriously, we have no idea. A true answer that won't make anyone happy is "when it's ready".
Also there's no guarantee that the tunes you miss out no actually are ripped and will be added in the next update.
But currently there's a site beeing made for SID requests, I'll let you know when it's done, so you can request what you miss out on. |
