DOSBASE Here!

[pondo198]

DOSBASE IS HERE!!!!



...okay... well


maybe not exactly. But it is being worked on and should be the most comprehensive DOS database around once completed.


I am creating this thread to chronicle the progress of the gamebase. It will undoubtably take some great length of time to complete, so this thread will contain updates of the lengthy process.


The gamebase is currently supporting most games from the numerics (0-9) through the letter C. I say most, because some games have not yet been found.

Here are some stats on what we have so far:

Current number of games in database: 2811
Current playable games in database: 2266

The gamebase will be absolutely huge when finished; In fact, the CD image files between 0-C total almost 60 Gig alone. Fortuneatly, the games are to be divided into four groups for distribution: The Basic Pack, The International Language Pack, The Shareware/Freeware Pack, and The CD Pack. Aside from the CD images, the rest of the gamebase should be closer to 25 Gig complete with games, extras, screenshots, etc. Even though that is still huge, it is much better then trying to package everything into one database. The CD Pack will more-than-likely be closer to 450Gig

I plan on releasing the CD pack as a torrent zipped file, meaning that anyone can download just the CD images they want, or the entire thing if you have the time and hard drive space. As far as the other packs, I would approxiamte the main database with extras and screen shots to be around 10-12 Gig, and the basic, international, and freeware/shareware packs around 5gig each. These figures could be entirely wrong at such an early stage, but we will see as progress continues.


Heres a breakdown of the game count per pack so far:

Basic Pack: 918
International Pack: 259
CD PACK: 450
Shareware/Freeware Pack: 1186

If anyone has taken the time to add up all those numbers, you will have probably noticed that they add up to more then the total number of games listed at the top of this post. There are a couple of games that somehow fall into two categories for some reason. Luckily, it only seems to be the case for a couple of the smaller game files and is no major deal. Hopefully I will have worked out the kinks by the final release.

I will periodically update this thread as I complete additional letters in the gamebase, but please be patient. This is a tremendous task and will certainly take some time to complete.

Any requests to upload the gamebase in its incomplete state will be ignored. But should something happen that I will not be able to continue work on it, I will make sure the gamebase is uploaded somewhere for anyone who wishes to continue the project.

So thats about it, but here's a couple screenshots of the gamebase in action so you can see it is definately for real!

[OX]

Great stuff Pondo, looking forward to this monster GB.

[dax]

finally something DOS related

[.mad.]

it's looking good.

[neil324]

Looks good

[Vicman]

Really great Project !
Hope you will have the power to finish it.

btw.
What's the source for the games do you use ?
DOSCollection v0.8 from Pleasuredome, The Doscollection from UG, any other collection or just a mix of all you've found in the web ?

[Hidron]

What's the source for the games do you use ?
DOSCollection v0.8 from Pleasuredome, The Doscollection from UG, any other collection or just a mix of all you've found in the web ?

Is the v0.8 from Pleasuredome any different from the v0.8 on UG?

[pondo198]

Vicman,

The DOScollection v0.8 from Pleasuredome and UG appear to be the same.

I am using the U.G. DOS masterlist to compile my database. However, I have found that there are still a lot of corrections and missing files on even that massive list. As I track down each game and correct the titles as necessary, I find additional games that are not listed, I weed out same titles with multiple versions (unless there are significant differences in game-play), and then add those as well.

Of course, there are literally thousands of additional Shareware/Freeware titles that probably never will make the final cut, most of which can be found in the cd.textfiles, GIFers Public Access Page, or the multiple BASIC program sites.


It is quite a daunting task since I not only have to cross-reference all of the games from multiple sites, but I also then need to write a batch routine, apply necessary patches, and in some cases - add additional files for video, sound, peripherals, fonts, etc..

After all that is done, I painstakingly test each game for playability, research and add all extra content that I can find, and then organize them into their separate game packs.

Each letter of the alphabet has taken me about 1-2 months, but hopefully some of the more uncommon letters (like games that begin with the letter 'Q') will take less time.

[Vicman]

Vicman,
The DOScollection v0.8 from Pleasuredome and UG appear to be the same.

Well, I did not mean the DOScollection V.08 from UG.

I mean the The DOS Collection- Complete: 1981-1992 by hargle
more info : UG-Wiki

however, the DOS-GB is a GREAT GameBase project.
waiting for the first release

[pondo198]

Yes,

and sorry I misunderstood the question. DOSBase is a combination of all games listed on the U.G. MS-DOS Collection list, as well as lists from several other sources. The U.G. project is definetly one of the best resources, but it is obviously an on-going and seemlingly endless project. But it is still the closest thing you will find to a complete collection.

[pondo198]

I have been crunching data into this thing for the past year. So much so that my eyes are BUGGED out! It is a painstaking process of not only collecting all these games, but then installing them, applying patches, configuring them, etc, so they work. And evry time I finish a series, I go back through each and every game to make sure they work before I archive the database.

Currently DOSBASE is about at the 30% mark, which puts me on schedule for what I figured would be a three year endeavor. The database itself is growing increasing huge, and even the Extra's are becoming a real size issue.

Does anybody know of any way to convert PDF files to a smaller size? Some of the larger manuals are over 20MB in size. I have tried a utility program called BullZipPrinter to make the files smaller, and although it works on some mid sized manuals, it crashes on me every time I try to compress a manual of more than 20 pages it seems. SI get some kind of 'ghost script' error.

If anyone has any ideas, it sure would be greatly appreciated.

P.S. I will be posting an update on DOSABE progress within the next week or two.

[.mad.]

Does anybody know of any way to convert PDF files to a smaller size?

if i understand the way some PDF work, it's a collection of picture files. (could be very wrong)
So i think the only way to reduce the size is change the bit rate quality of the screens /pages inside it.

so it would mean extracting the JPG's from the PDF reducing the quality to say 256 colours or 4 colours /greyscale for text only.
and then converting it back to PDF.

this would take ages, and might not save you that much memory to be worth the trouble.

If the manual is all text (no diagrams), other tools claim to convert PDF to text if the quality is good enough. That would save loads.

[pondo198]

Yeah, that's what I thought. I was hoping that there may have been some other program that would automate the task. The manual sizes don't bother me really, I was just merely concerned about the size of the uploads.

[OX]

Hi Pondo, when do you plan to release the first increment of Dos gamebase?

You can post the missing stuff on here and we'll have a hunt around to find them.

[Conj]

This looks like a great project. I can't wait!