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Making the games 'friendly' to download

Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2012 11:02 am
by tjewell
Hi all,

As fun as the emulator is, there's something just wonderful about playing the games as nature intended on a real machine. Currently, I've starting keeping the sound files on my phone - so I plug the audio cable into the headphone, play the file and off I go (although the day these files leaked onto my music playlist was quite headache inducing!).

If I have any problem with this approach, it's that it can be a bit long winded. I have to download a zip file and unpack it, then go off to the wiki in the hope that there's cover art and instructions. I have this dream of a little app on my phone that allows me to scroll through the games by cover art, then click on it to find the instructions and a simple button to push to play the audio. Now, I could probably build this, purely as a labour of love (I suspect the audience is small!) using resources already out there. I could grab cover art from the wiki, use Sixxie's wonderfully transcribed instructions I've just discovered on his site, and the audio files from the archive. The archive is where I'm stalling a bit - is there a way to get FTP access to simplify downloading the files? I could just grab them in an automated fashion, but I'd like to be well behaved if I can!

Also, am I reinventing the wheel here? has anyone else tried to simplify the process already?

Cheers, Tony.

Re: Making the games 'friendly' to download

Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2012 1:15 pm
by admin
Hi,

Currently no FTP access to the archive - purely because I can't provide it with my current hosting to "end users" and secondly because I simply don't have the time any more.... I pop in here now and then.

Most of the site updates are now done by the members - but the one area I cannot open up at the moment is the main archive - ideas on a post card?

Rgds
Simon

Re: Making the games 'friendly' to download

Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2012 12:22 pm
by Rink
I have a phone app (I've not released it yet though) which allows you to browse a coverflow/list of wav and cas files (experimental support) imported from Dropbox or through iTunes sharing. You can play them obviously, but you can also save new ones to record any programs you've written (special cable needed).

I did consider at one point presenting the WoD archive pages in the app and intercepting any zip file downloads to automatically import the file. But currently that would be without the artwork packaged along with the audio.

An alternative which works quite well is the approach taken by the Apple II Disk Server - http://asciiexpress.net/diskserver/ - where you can stream the data into the cassette port. In this case, a built-in loader writes the data to a disk, but wouldn't be essential for the Dragon's tapes.