Broken image links

AGA · Sat 04/05/2013 17:07:49

So I worked out a way of identifying which image links in the games database are broken. This page gives a full list. As you can see, around a third of all games has a broken link, which is unfortunate, and messy looking.

Could everyone who reads this please make sure at very least their own games have valid image links. If you're playing another game that doesn't have a valid image, please take a screenshot and send it to me, and I'll fix it for you. Images should be hosted places that support hotlinking, and are ideally quite reliable (such as agser.me or agsarchives.com. Keeping the hosting within the community should make it a lot more likely to last. A local mirror of the image will also be made on the AGS site every time an image link is updated.

If anyone has any difficulty with this process, please let me know!

Stupot · Sat 04/05/2013 18:35:42

Good idea AGA. It's a sad fact that I tend to scroll past games that don't have a screenshot, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. So doing this might at least make more people play some of these games.

How about some of us choose a letter of the alphabet and go through them collecting screenshots of the games on that list? I'll be in charge of 'A' if you like.

AGA · Sat 04/05/2013 19:06:05

That's a cunning way of doing it. That way it will only take 26 volunteers to do this properly! Please be sure to mark any broken download links using the link on a game's page too. And post here, to see if anyone like Peder has it in their archives.

Stupot · Sat 04/05/2013 19:38:45

So far I'm finding that nearly all of these games' links are broken. But I've still managed to find Screenshots of quite a lot of them via Leon's walkthrough website! The best thing to do is copy and paste this link into the browser and insert the games name with no spaces:
http://gamesolutions.efzeven.nl/images/gamesnamenospaces-walkthrough.png

selmiak · Sat 04/05/2013 19:40:53

since you can indentify game without screenshot now, what do you think about not displaying these games on the startpage within the randomly selected games there? Or would this narrow the number of games shown down too much?

AGA · Sat 04/05/2013 19:56:19

This is a list of all the download links that have been marked as broken, by the way.

Quote from: selmiak on Sat 04/05/2013 19:40:53
since you can indentify game without screenshot now, what do you think about not displaying these games on the startpage within the randomly selected games there? Or would this narrow the number of games shown down too much?

It now shows a placeholder image where the link's broken. I don't want to completely ignore these games, as this would reduce the publication of so many games.

Stupot · Sat 04/05/2013 23:28:29

What is aafiles.bicycle-for-slugs.org?
A lot of the games seem to be (or have been) hosted on there (about 8 just in the A's) but it keeps giving me a scary malware warning.

AGA · Sun 05/05/2013 02:06:07

That is where the original AGS Archives was hosted, before Peder started his version. Pretty sure the files should mostly still be there though?

Peder 🚀 · Sun 05/05/2013 04:38:11

I got this: http://bicycle.agsarchives.com/ which I think is most of the stuff that was located on that url when it was live. I've not been able to add all the stuff to the main site yet.

dactylopus · Sun 05/05/2013 06:34:41

Quote from: Peder Johnsen+ on Sun 05/05/2013 04:38:11
I got this: http://bicycle.agsarchives.com/ which I think is most of the stuff that was located on that url when it was live. I've not been able to add all the stuff to the main site yet.

Wow, thanks for this!

There were a couple of games I was looking to try out, but the links were broken. Now I'm ready to play!

m0ds · Sun 05/05/2013 12:12:32

Berian/Peder, is there internal upload space available of any kind? Screenshots have always been hotlinked, so there is always going to be this problem and always someone chasing it - surely there's some capacity for users to upload 320x200 jpeg files that can be stored locally? Would be kind of nice for AGS to have some sort of internal screenshots rather than rely on the wider web for its image content

for your consideration..

Radiant · Sun 05/05/2013 12:44:48

Please use PNG rather than JPEG. Lossy storage isn't a great fit for a low-resolution image.

m0ds · Sun 05/05/2013 13:02:57

Very true! I was just concerned for space, not sure if Berian can allot more than 1mb

selmiak · Sun 05/05/2013 13:09:29

this can easily add up on filesize over time, but having them hosted on some AGS servers would really be comfortable and nothing will get lost.
btw is it possible to upload your own thumbnail image for a game rather than have one distorted image generated by the display code?

cat · Sun 05/05/2013 13:39:43

Quote from: AGA on Sat 04/05/2013 17:07:49
A local mirror of the image will also be made on the AGS site every time an image link is updated.

As far as I understood: With the new page, as soon as you change the screenshot, it is also stored on the server.

selmiak · Sun 05/05/2013 14:25:18

oh, now that is nice!

note to self: reading stuff before posting stuff often helps understanding stuff...

Peder 🚀 · Sun 05/05/2013 15:20:23

Yeah, what cat said.
M0ds, space is not going to be an issue any time soon

.

AGA · Sun 05/05/2013 18:42:27

I could just as easily have it so users are able to upload directly from their HD OR link to an external source. It'll set that up soon.

m0ds · Mon 06/05/2013 10:44:53

^ Cool.

Quoteit is also stored on the server.

But to what end? A URL does not become available to the uploader, nor does the site or database ever call on a mirrored version. Am I missing something?

Anyhoo issue sorted it seems

AGA · Mon 06/05/2013 11:37:00

It's meant to be a fallback in case the original link times out. I should probably change that though, since having all images stored locally would be a lot more reliable.

Broken image links

m0ds

m0ds

m0ds