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Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2005 11:38 am
by Lloyd Mangram
CraigGrannell wrote:I suppose in retrospect it might have been a good idea to rope in Paul and Robin for some of the Zzap!backs, seeing as they were up for it last time round, thereby having a more obvious mix of old and new.
Yeah, my idea too. But unfortunately Paul turned down the offer, being too busy. Robin said he was in, but after that, he never replied to my requests and e-mails. He was in the Yahoo group, but I disconnected his account, because I didn't want to have 'lurkers' around.
From over 30 ex-zzap! staffers *only* Gary Penn sent me personal comments over old ratings, and Gordon H.

I did all I could to get those people in, but when they do not respond or don't have time, what can I do?
And, as a matter of fact, this DEF Tribute was not only a tribute to the ones who created and worked for the mag during the 80s, it was also meant as a tribute to the ones who are keeping the flame alive right now.
That's why I wanted Iain & Mort to contribute comments as well as the #107 team and other Rrap regulars.

It was the only way to create a full size team, doing about 3 comments for each game -which was just do-able regarding the tight deadlines at the time. I didn't know by then we'd end up in July with the whole thing!
8)

I could write a book about the whole project, really. :wink:

Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2005 11:43 am
by gravy
BAH!

Just been down to Smiths and they didn't have it (but did have a worryingly large amount of last month's copies).

<innocently>Anyone fancy posting some scans</innocently>

:D

Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2005 11:45 am
by Lloyd Mangram
Gary, your personal DEF Tribute is in the mail.
I've sent it last monday to your Xen address you gave me.
Should reach you this week. :D

Best,
Rob

Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2005 11:48 am
by gravy
Yeah I know and it's much appreciated :) The post is being a bit poxy and I don't mind buying it in the meantime. If RG see a sales spike for having the Zzap!64 tribute in hopefully it mean the chance for more cool stuff like this happening in the future.

:D

Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2005 12:11 pm
by Lloyd Mangram
AFAIK it'll only be in WHSmith from July 7th on.

Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2005 12:18 pm
by CraigGrannell
Rob—I actually suspected that would be the case with Paul and Rob, despite what I wrote. Paul turned down the opportunity to get involved with another (much stalled) gaming magazine project that I'm involved with. Still, it was good to get so much input from the ever-busy Gary and Gordon, who was obviously not entirely traumatised from his involvement with z107!

Your point about keeping the flame alive is a good one, too. Like you, I'm certain interest in Zzap! wouldn't be what it is without the efforts of the likes of Iain and Mort, and without z107 ending up like it did, I imagine it may have been significantly harder to convince Retro Gamer to print it (after all, z107 was sort of "proof of concept", which you were able to build on and in many ways improve).

Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2005 12:43 pm
by Iain
CraigGrannell wrote:z107 and that had (at a conservative estimate) three to five thousand downloads,
It had a hell of a lot more than that! :) It still gets downloaded around 100 times a month.

For the Tribute, I'll be using a bit of a tracking system so we can all have a much better idea of how much it is downloaded, no matter where it's stored. :)

Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2005 1:12 pm
by CraigGrannell
Iain wrote:
CraigGrannell wrote:z107 and that had (at a conservative estimate) three to five thousand downloads,
It had a hell of a lot more than that! :) It still gets downloaded around 100 times a month.
Fair enough! I know that one of the servers we managed to fry got a couple of thousand downloads prior to the files being pulled. One Gaz helped set up had a thousand or so downloads before the files were wrenched offline. I suppose I should have said "within the first couple of weeks of it being released".

It's actually rather nice to hear that 107's still being downloaded though!

Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2005 1:39 pm
by Lloyd Mangram
I've sent Roger a DVD with the hi-res pdf's of #107 as well, btw.

Live Publishing updated their site, look.

And don't forget to inform everybody about this one.

Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2005 2:29 pm
by Mayhem
Iain wrote:For the Tribute, I'll be using a bit of a tracking system so we can all have a much better idea of how much it is downloaded, no matter where it's stored. :)
I don't mind hosting a copy of one of the PDFs on my site either. I've got hi-res #107 on there and it gets downloaded every so often (I see it from the sudden spike in bandwidth use!). If you want to track the total, then perhaps figure out how to include my location with it too...

Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2005 6:12 pm
by Fiery Phoenix
Sorry if I went off on one. Just one one of my pet hates when people slag off other people's efforts, without trying themselves.

Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2005 11:17 pm
by Iain
Mayhem wrote:I don't mind hosting a copy of one of the PDFs on my site either. I've got hi-res #107 on there and it gets downloaded every so often (I see it from the sudden spike in bandwidth use!). If you want to track the total, then perhaps figure out how to include my location with it too...
You do? That's not linked to from my site is it though? I don't think there's been a live hi res link on here for years.. although I could do it now no probs..

Regarding the tracking, basically it'll just be a little script and when somebody clicks on 'download' it'll increase the counter by one and get the file from a weighed random location (of which you can be one). It probably won't account for non completed downloads (ie don't add them to the toal), but I think we can live with a few percentage points margin of error! :)

I have lots of bandwidth and space available to me these days, so I should be able to handle most of the traffic but a couple of other servers would not hurt at all!

Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2005 11:18 pm
by Mort
Sorry been out at the Cinema (War of the Worlds is actually good LOL)

If its ok with the crew we could also add the pdf`s to the ZZapdvd (well shoehorn is more the case with it being so full )later in the Autumn. Hopefully by then most of the scans will be up again via the Bit torrent stuff Iain is doing.

Anyhow must get some sleep before the War Machines get me ZZAAAPPPP AARRGGGHHH :lol:

Posted: Thu Jul 07, 2005 12:26 am
by Mayhem
Iain wrote:You do? That's not linked to from my site is it though? I don't think there's been a live hi res link on here for years.. although I could do it now no probs..
No it isn't actually. I did annouce it here long time ago I think :P

I believe it's the hi-res singles but would have to check. It's sitting in the magazines section of my site I think.

Posted: Thu Jul 07, 2005 12:45 am
by Iain
Mort wrote: Hopefully by then most of the scans will be up again via the Bit torrent stuff Iain is doing.
Actually, most of the issue scans are now available on this site and they all would have been by now if my motherboard didn't start trying to set fire to itself :(

maybe you can delete some of the non zzap related stuff on the DVD, eg the first issue of LM or some other mag scans you have on there?