The new HBGames Archive Board

[Ace_V]

... so what's next? 

[Missing Picture Here]

A very naïve response indeed, Ace_V.

I tried! 

[DerVVulfman]

Well, I have now archived the Resources forum of HBGames under its final arpgmaker.com url. Of this, only two songs were not able to be saved, one of which the composer pulled their own soundcloud account. That could not be helped.

There were a TON of resources by Wyatt which were posted. Oddly, HBGames had a Battler subfolder, but all battler art appeared within the Character Art subfolder leaving the Battler subfolder empty.

I will revisit the site under its previous incarnations to see if any data was lost between URL transitions. But I am aware that it is often the case that topics/threads may be present but not able to be saved.

In the meantime, I'm taking a break from HBGames archiving.

[CarlosDavilla]

Good job! You're the greatest we have, DerVV.

[Remi-chan]

... so what's next? 

[Missing Picture Here]

A very naïve response indeed, Ace_V.

Though not invalid!

Also update on this since DerVVulfman hasn't broken the news about it yet.

While trying to get some downloads for games DerVVulfman encountered this absolute bastard.


If you somehow aren't aware of what this is, it's ransomware. And somehow, it got through noscript!

LIKE FUCK, IT ISN'T EVEN HALLOWEEN YET! THIS IS STILL TWO MONTHS PRE-COOKED! FUNK YOU INTERNET ARCHIVE!!!

Dervvulfman is the hero we need, but not the one we deserve.

Lest you worry, DerVV had a techo resolve the problem in ten minutes, but the fact this shit can happen while trying to archive stuff truly highlights how risky a business something like this can be!

Y'all don't realize the horrors this man has seen and the injustices he has endured to archive all our stuff.

Also sorry for stealing your thunder VVulfy! :(

[Ace_V]

Yikes!  That's the type of screen that could give me a heart attack. Thankfully I've never been hit with ransomware (last nasty virus that struck me was more than 16 years ago on XP, and it got so bad that it bricked my system and forced me to do a full wipe and move to Win7) Since then I've been extra careful and always use several layers of protection, including a licensed AV.

Still, downloading exe files is always risky, and I am very grateful for all the work and sacrifice our fearless wolf-person puts into archiving stuff for us! 

Glad your situation was remedied quickly, DerVVulfman, and thanks for the update, Remi-chan!

[DerVVulfman]

Work does continue. I won't say that I am a third of the way through the tutorials, but I am nearly a third through the index pages of tutorials. I make that distinction as I work backwards, working to attain the oldest content to save first, and there are a vast number of tutorials that relied upon now-extinct services that cannot be accessed.

To be sure, I do test all the links. And for demos, I run those through virus-scans. But do realize that older demos of any board would be set up to use older versions of the software (ie RPGMaker XP with the 1.02dll rather than the 1.04dll). All one needs to do is swap out the .exe, the .dll the .proj file and edit the .ini to point to the correct .dll itself. So many people have said "I can't get this to run!" ... um, duh?

And then there are the Youtube video tutorials that have been pulled. Most have gone by way of the poster no longer wanting to share or acknowledge his/her work. But I found a couple instances of 'violation of terms' Yeets!. That was entertaining.

So yes, work continues on the archiving.

[DerVVulfman]

I am nearly halfway through the Tutorials Board from HBGames, and I must say UGH!!!!!

Its sad to see that someone would post the same tutorial 2 to 3 times. But finding multiple individuals would post their work repeatedly is annoying, and not even a corrective or updated version at that. And its also sad to see threads that used links to image-sharing services that no longer exist. There are quite a many.

I am not sure to be saddened or relieved about ONE post, a video tuorial on tileset art that spanned fifty chapters, all chapters going to youtube links that are completely dead. I mean, its on tileset artwork and tileset artists are few and far between! But fifty? FIFTY?

Out of four hours of work, I have been able to salvage twenty-eight more tutorials, many needing major cleanup due to past forum transfer corruptions. But that's twenty eight more now saved.