Archive hunt: help us find new games!
 

Whenever we have some difficulty locating a game that we want to add to Abandonia, we ask the user community for help on this thread. If you have an archive that we're looking for, please let us know and we'll tell you how to upload it to Abandonia. When the game is published the upload will remain credited to you (even if you only point us to where it can be downloaded, for example).
:thanks:

About each archive, please tell us all that you know about its condition; we want the closest to the original that's practically possible. We may accept modified versions if the original one's too hard to run (but this isn't usually the case, see our Troubleshooting board). We want portable archives, so they can be easily played by Abandonians without need of technical knowledge, but most times it's ideal if you give us something like the original disk image, and we can come up with a way to make a portable archive, preserving as much as possible. We also value and need the opinion and collaboration of technically knowledgeable contributors.

Please let us know if your archives are cracked (we prefer that they aren't, if we can get the copy protection codes), or ripped (missing material to reduce size), if they have saved games (non original), etc.

List of archives currently wanted
 

- Magic the Gathering AKA Shandalar + ManaLink

Magic the Gathering AKA Shandalar + ManaLink
 

http://www.mobygames.com/game/magic-the-gathering
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic:_...g_(MicroProse)
Expansions:
http://www.mobygames.com/game/magic-...f-the-ancients
http://www.mobygames.com/game/magic-...-planeswalkers

The original (for Windows 95) is very hard to run on modern computers--and for that reason it's in low demand and hard to find--and quite buggy. Modded and patched versions are more popular, as well as easier to run and more stable. The following forum is dedicated to this game:
http://www.slightlymagic.net/forum/viewforum.php?f=74

We haven't yet taken the necessary time to look at the different versions and mods discussed there, and convert the installers to portable archives, which we need. We want both parts of the game: Shandalar and ManaLink, together if possible.

Mission Critical
 

http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/mission-critical

We already have the CDs actually:
http://www.abandonia.com/vbullet/showthread.php?t=16709

But it would be good to have a rip that we could host directly in Abandonia (in addition). It's OK either to find a way to rip those CDs into 300 MB or less, or to find an existing rip for download anywhere, and you get some credit either way.

HOTU had it before...

No more. :/ Also, they (HOTUd) lose forum recently, as I see. :(

I will check my archives, I believe, I still can have it (HOTU-rip) somewhere...

What about
 

Would a .rar file work? Quick question, too. Is the 300 MB size restriction the reason some games don't have their intro's?

Any compression format is OK (on site we use 7z or zip is also OK for very small archives--but we can convert any format to those).

When a game is too big, we often host a "rip", that's the game with something removed (movies, speech, etc.) but still working correctly otherwise. That's what we need here.

Checked. I have HOTU rip of Mission Critical, and it's 70Mb. It need also "movies fix" that will add another 35Mb to it.

If I can upload it on FTP, I must say that my old 2012 password for incoming files doesn't work anymore.

PM sent :)

If it can include the movies that's better, as it's still way below 300 MB

Umm... It's still rip, and still home-made fix. :)

As I understood, initial release was missed movies altogether - but in result it was totally impossible to finish game, as some key info was in movie. So they include several key movies. Not all of them, no way (it's 3 or 4 CDs for game with full movies :).

Ok, I will try to upload both archives today at evening. Thank you for new password.

---update---
Both files are on site in original structure. It means that you must re-pack sound files after installing (manually), and then put needed movies in it's right place (manually). Thinking about it, I can do both tasks and re-pack it back into new, single archive, ready to use. But it will mean increase for another 20-30Mb.