-= GB64 Forum =-

Wow! 3755 Games listed! Wow!

You sure have been hard at work! This is awesome! Thank you so much for this.

Do you have any plans on adding extras, like docs, box scans, etc.?

I noticed in the games list that Arabela 2 - Part I shows up as Arabela 2 - Part II. A minor tweak to the db fixed it, of course.

Thanks again for all your hard work! It is greatly appreciated!!


Patch

V3, very nice, keep up this great work! very appreciated and enjoyed!

Just a quick post to let everyone know that a lot of work has been done on gamebase since version 3. I have included many tapes, Original Disks and cartridges in to the extras, as well as some tape covers. The Database at the moment has 4101 entries and hope to include many more. Hope to release version 4 in the next few weeks.

This turning into a really top notch Gamebase, keep up the good work!

PS. How you manage to work on 4 Gamebases at once is bewildering

hardmanm wrote:Just a quick post to let everyone know that a lot of work has been done on gamebase since version 3. I have included many tapes, Original Disks and cartridges in to the extras, as well as some tape covers. The Database at the moment has 4101 entries and hope to include many more. Hope to release version 4 in the next few weeks.

Thank you!!

I actually started to do a gamebase many moons ago but had to stop because of illness. I decided to have a look at what gamebase projects were 'on the go' today and was stunned / happy to see yours.

Many many thanbks for doing what I could not do, keep up the excellent work and I look forward to V4 and above

Here is the first part of Gamebase800V4, the extras will follow soon

http://www.sendspace.com/file/6mlblp

This version has 4400 entries and loads of extras

The extras are here:

http://www.sendspace.com/file/zbsfy4

Did you get any permission to use our work?

--
Atari Frog
http://www.atarimania.com

Hope this isn't going to kick off into something nasty, we have witnessed this before with GambaseST & D-Bug.

The big question is would you grant permission ? I do understand that you would have appreciated being asked first, but please bear in my mind this is a one man hobby he is sharing and not turning any profit.

I used alot of images from Atari Age for my Atari 5200 & 7800 Gamebases and fortunately it was never an issue although I do accept that I should have asked permission before sharing with the public. Again I stress we are not talking projects that are created for personal profit but hobbies and offline databases of machines we want to keep alive.

The beauty of Gamebase is anyone can create one, and if we start getting confrontation for using scans or game images from websites then we may as well all stop doing them now.

Agree !

It´s just a hobby

Regards
Sjakie43

I third that, perhaps it would have been nice to be asked but I'd say the guy was just trying to make the best gamebase he could and thought that the extra were excellent material.

What he has posted is a superb gamebase, please don't discourage him from improving it because of the material involved, there's no money being made and people are really appreciating your work more publicly thanks to his excellent work.

Please bear in mind that all that is collectable on your and other sites comes from a multitude of sources including yourselves, many will never get a thank you (myself included) for the work put in BUT we are just happy it's out there and that people can come to your and other sites and see it.

We all appreciate every bit of work by everyone and what better thing than to enjoy it being put to great use in a non profit gamebase.

Dont worry, im still working on gamebase version 5 and it already have 4630 games in it so far. I really want to add a lot more and might not release it for 2 or 3 months. I have tried to contact the Atarimania team to ask for permission, but have yet heard nothing. If anyone has found any problems with version 4, please let me know and i will do my best to fix it. I know there is a problem autobooting tape images which require basic, so will try to sort that out for the next release.

Hi there,

The only minor niggles I've had (and they are nigh on nothing) are that Saper will on a rare occasion play nothing but I think I've seen that once or twice in all the times I've used the DB.

The other one is simply that the emulator returns to the hardware state it was left running under, ie if booted as an XL that's what it runs as next time. Not a big thing just that there's stuff out there that runs only under OSB or rarely OSA, also things like the Space Harrier demo need 128K of mem to run.

I can't remember if Atari800win Plus allows for command line variables for things like -XL -OSB etc (annoying as I beta tested it for long enough).

I don't know if script wise individual games could pass on those command lines or not?

Personally I think it might be a lot of work and it's 2 secs of manual work to reboot under another configuration.

Let me know what you think?

Cheers from a miserable West London...

Btw Hardnman,

Apart from not thanking you for the continued work which I do now, I thought I'd pass on this forum if you are not on there already.

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.ph ... owforum=12

Atarimania hang around there a lot and there's a huge selection of us old school people who were there from the off of the Atari (it was my business to sell and support them).

Mark,

We did get your PM and the message you sent to the team, apologies for the late reply.

Sorry but we cannot grant you permission to use our work.

We would have appreciated an e-mail with your request in the first place. If I hadn't jumped in on this forum, it doesn't even seem like you would've asked! That's not the main gripe though...

One of the problems is that it isn't like you just took some bits and pieces: MANY things in the "extras" folder are from our site. We do not want you or anybody to spread our VAPI images, instructions or box scans anywhere without our permission. As opposed to what the folks at World of Spectrum have been doing, we have not gained the rights to publish all this material on Atarimania. We therefore request that you remove all of it at once. You also took a number of screenshots from Atarimania and will ask you to delete them from GB800.

We understand that this is a hobby - it is for us as well! - but, if you are to use all this stuff from our site, I think we have the right to have a say on the way it is used. We also spent THOUSANDS of hours dumping, scanning, even paying this material and we don't like the idea of having all this stuff diluted in this project where the only thing that has been done is some (really basic) compilation work. Our project is something precise and accurate with many changes being made on a daily basis, something that is not reflected in the current version of GB800.

To us, working on a database means much more than just copying files over the way you did, taking things here and replacing files there. If you want to construct a front-end in the GameBase vein for the Atari 8-bit computers using our work, you have to respect our attention to detail. Sorry for being pedantic but we feel that our project is a true preservation effort. GB800, honestly, looks like a real mess in its present form and the only "selling point" seems to be the number of games added and nothing else.

This being said, if somebody WITH AN ATARI BACKGROUND wants to build a HIGH QUALITY GameBase-compatible database using our files, screenshots, pictures... according to our criteria and standards (which, we feel, are or would be a benefit to both casual users and collectors, not just the former) and following our own decisions, we are open to discussion. But none of this "there will be 8659 games in the next release" crap, this will have to be a QUALITY RELEASE approved by us.

Thanks,
Atari Frog
http://www.atarimania.com

To Atari Frog,

Hmmmm...... where do I start?

First of all, to claim that you own images and scans of items COPYRIGHTED BY OTHER PARTIES, is at best fallacious and at worst, piracy. While I greatly appreciate all the work Atarimania has done in the name of preservation, it just strikes me as odd that you claim rights over something that does not belong to you in the first place. Just because you scanned something that is copyrighted by somebody else does not mean you suddenly own the image or the rights to it.

Secondly, to turn around and tell somebody else that they can't use the images that you don't own is just senseless. I do agree it would have been nice if he asked permission to make use of the scans from your site. That would have been a thoughtful acknowledgement of the efforts your team has made. However, you do make those images freely available to the public. Also, I do not agree that his use of them is any less valid than yours just because his use is more for entertainment (in whatever sense) and yours is for preservation. Everybody values things differently.

Perhaps instead of putting down his efforts, you could suggest ways to improve the perceived (in your eyes) quality of what he is trying to do. Especially given that you say you would support a 'quality' effort in that direction. Maybe what he has done can be steadily improved until it is of sufficient quality for your tastes.

I'm definitely not an expert on copyright law or anything... and I may be way off base here... but it kind of sounds like somebody saying, "I took somebody else's property, but I have a noble cause, so it is OK. Somebody else took that same property from me and their cause doesn't seem to me to be as noble as mine, so they are naughty."

Feel free to flog me.