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(re: re: re: re: Kinko’s scanning) I should be back in Seattle on Oct 22nd, and will look then to see what I have.
On the budget side: I’ll kick in up to $2,000 on the project – which doesn’t need repaid. Do we have someone who is interested in “marketing” the CDs at a reasonable cost – so that the rest of us can count on being able to obtain them?. I don’t think we’ll sell a lot of them – but it wouldn’t surprise me if we move a few hundred over the next year or two.
-Ken W
Ken,
Perfect. Let me call Kinko’s and try to renegotiate with them and/or Robert, and work on posting a budget that would outline how that $2,000 would be spent, and get back with you.
As far as marketing them – I have always been interested in doing that – not for profit, but in the fact that I have a keen interest in the products (not to mention a history) and that I know that I can deliver a quality product to the public. I am working on a Sierra archive/distribution site as we speak, both the distribute the end product, gather people to help, and finding people to donate/lend materials to be archived, should be done in the next week or so. So I will have the perfect place to showcase them.
Also, Ken, while you are looking through those boxes, do you think you might be able to start rounding up all those videos you remember having? I am still itching to get a DVD Video collection up and going, moving forward on these projects has really got my gears turning. Just let me know. Thanks
-Brad(re: re: re: Kinko’s scanning) Basically there is nothing stopping me from starting to scan them right now, I guess I am just waiting for Ken to say yea or nea on the budget for an external company. Ken when did you think you would be back home again?
I should be back in Seattle on Oct 22nd, and will look then to see what I have.
On the budget side: I’ll kick in up to $2,000 on the project – which doesn’t need repaid. Do we have someone who is interested in “marketing” the CDs at a reasonable cost – so that the rest of us can count on being able to obtain them?. I don’t think we’ll sell a lot of them – but it wouldn’t surprise me if we move a few hundred over the next year or two.
-Ken W(re: Old games under DOS)
sounds very familiar – in my friend’s laptop, whenever you load ANY dos application (raging from Borland C++ 3.0 to dos games like Red Alert 1) it shrinks to about 3/4 of the screen, without any apparant reason. He tried to solve it but gave up in the end, probobly a hardware thing… (in any case, try to search your BIOS menu)
(re: Old games under DOS) did you get any answers to your question? i just got back from vacation and am still getting the hang of this new interface…
i read recently that you could edit a line in one of the DOS files to get your game to run fullscreen. i can’t remember now where i saw that. i was poking around the sierra bulletin boards to get info about Lost in Time, so there’s a good chance i saw this info on one of their “classic games” boards.
-emily(re: re: Kinko’s scanning) Petter :
Thanks for all the info on the mad magazine archive. That sounds like quite and impressive project. I have been researching Adobe Capture. Basically it is OCR (optical character recognition) software that works with a PDF file, to basically “hide” the recognized text being the image scan, so that although it looks like a perfectly scanned image, and the formatting has been preserved, it is fully searchable by word. I am really leaning toward this route I think.
Back on to the main subject. It seems from what I hear yourself, Ken, and others talk about is the concern for how much room this collection is going to take up for the final product to the average end user. While this is a very valid subject, and will need to be determined at some point, I think the real issue at hand is how these magazines are :
1) Going to be rounded up (we are still missing a some)
2) Scanned (by who(m) and if by how a company how much, and whos paying)
3) If someone is going to pay, what is our budget?
As it stands right now I think Ken is our best source for the missing ones, but sounds like things are kinda packed up from a move, and needs some sorting through. As far as who is going to scan them – I think we have 2 or 3 people willing to help – we just need to set a standard, do some test, and have at it. If we are going to send it out to be done 3rd party, we need to find out who our investors are (at this point just Ken) and find out what we are willing to spend. From Ken’s earlier Email it looks like he was willing to pay around $1-2 a scan for 1200 pages.. so that give me an idea of around $1500-2000 to work with.
Basically there is nothing stopping me from starting to scan them right now, I guess I am just waiting for Ken to say yea or nea on the budget for an external company. Ken when did you think you would be back home again?
-Brad(re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: Kinko’s scanning) For reference of this size/quality issue, I got a copy of the Totally MAD collection, which contains high-res scans of every single issue of the original MAD Magazine between 1952 and 1998 along with a lot of side-material like sound and video clips and various wacky things (if you’ve ever read MAD I think you get the idea). Everything is packaged within a nice and funny user interface. It is produced by Broderbund. Hey, that’s your old buddies Ken! 😉
Anyway, this collection is 7 CD’s big. The total number of scanned magazines on them are 509, plus a dozen or two special editions. If we omit for a moment the fact that there is lots of extra material on the CD’s, this makes an average of approximately 73 issues per CD. A very rough estimate would be that the average MAD issue contains about 40 pages. That’s almost 3000 pages per CD! So, the quality must be pretty bad you say. On the contrary! There is a feature to send a page to the clipboard, and you get a crisp 24-bit picture with the resolution 1110 x 1626 pixels. Many of the pages are in black and white though, as they were printed in the magazine. But even though this makes it possible to reduce their byte size by at least half (I don’t know if that’s how they’re stored since you still get a color image if you copy such a page to the clipboard) there is no doubt that it’s possible to get lots of scans on a CD at high quality. I didn’t manage to figure out exactly what format the scans are in (PDF?), although I know from analysis of them that the images are definately stored in the regular sequential format defined by CCITT for JPEG images, with 8 x 8 DCT-coded blocks. So there’s no secret super-effective image compression at work here or anything. Apart from the scans themselves, the viewing software allows you to search throughout the entire archive with great precision. If you know a word related to a specific article in some MAD Magazine you remember from somewhere, your chances of finding it immediately are great. This is my own experience anyway. The software has lots of nice features to use with the material, such as the option to interact with those famous fold-in back covers. 🙂
For copyright reasons, I cannot post you one of the scans for demonstration, but I did a little experiment (that you can easily repeat yourself), taking that 2.5 mb scan you posted Brad and reduced its size to the Totally MAD dimensions (actually, those scans have a black border where the paper ends around them so I got a slightly bigger page with your picture) and saved it in standard JPEG format, with 15% compression. The result was quite pleasing, with all images and text practically as good as on paper (and almost twice the size on my 19inch screen) with a file size of 326k. With 800 megabytes you would be able to fit 2512 such JPEG pictures. If every magazine had 40 pages (I’m just guessing here) you would fit at least 62 magazines on 800mb at that quality. For the convenience of having everything on one CD I think this quality is perfectly acceptable. I am all for extra care right from the beginning when doing a project like this so you guys could very well keep scans of much higher quality on your own, but these calculations made me confident that 1 CD is enough to get something that people will be happy with.
For whatever this is worth, the Totally MAD archival project was far more ambitious than this consiering the immense amount of material they had to go through, so it’s reasonable to assume that they did some proper research on what quality/size ratio was acceptable, and it translates very well into this project. Seriously, there is nothing to complain about regarding the quality of these MAD magazine scans and if my calculations holds, it would probably be possible to squeeze in even a bit more quality than they did and still make it all fit on one CD.(re: re: re: re: re: re: re: Kinko’s scanning) Brad:
Here’s the picture you uploaded, as a 387k image. At this quality, all the magazines should fit a single CD.
-Ken W
PS I’m not sure what magazines I have. I’m in Florida now, and won’t be back home in Seattle for another couple of weeks. When I get home I’ll look to see. I remember that my brother once gave me a full set. They were in my bookcase when we moved — which could mean anything. I have LOTS of boxes to sort through looking for them.(re: re: re: re: re: re: Kinko’s scanning) I am attaching an Image that is 8.5×11 inches with a pixel count of 2550×3300 if you decided to print it at 300dpi, the resulting image will be 8.5x11in. This file is JPEG at roughly 25% compression… if 0 is the worst and 100% is the best quality scale.
As far as magazine count.. I personally own 35 different magazines. Between a few other people there 5 others that I know exist, bringing it to 40, and if you follow the Qtr/Volume numbers, I am pretty sure there are 8-10 others. (Depending on what happend during some transition periods of magazine name change). So by my count I am positive there at 40, with most likely 48-50.
I am sure we can negotiate with anyone that we get to do the job. We just have to be willing to move forward with it – as far as making the project too complex, I am with you to a certain point. This project no matter how you structure it is going to be complex – fact of the matter is, you are going to have to hand-place each page on a scanner – that is the time killer right there, the dpi you use, the medium that you put it on, percentage wise will be very small compared to the acutal “laying the magazine on the glass”.
60% of the time will be spent laying the picture down and scanning.
20% of the time will be spent correcting the pages
10% of the time will be spent saving and converting (PDF)
10% of the time will be spent archiving to some medium
That being said, if we save them as 300dpi TIFF files, or 100×400 low-res JPG’s the bulk of the time is the same regardless (scanning). So as I have learned in projects in the past – do it right the first time, put forth the extra effort to get what you want. No sense in completing the project, and then a year later wishing you had done it differently. Plan for the lowest common denominator, and go from there. Just my .02 cents worth. It’s gonna be hard but well worth it I believe.
Ken, Question : If I give you a list of the missing magazines (about 10 of them) can you search through your collection, you are our best source right now, or possibly have a contact (like Al Lowe) that might have the others? Thanks.
-Brad50k JPG of Winter 1988 Sierra Mag
Same pic, but at 2.7 MEGABYTES!(re: re: re: re: re: re: Kinko’s scanning) Never had any Interaction magazines myself… wasn’t aware of them in the UK?!
The guy who runs the Vintage Sierra site had posted some mag covers a while back (last years). His scans are of the covers and they are generally <300K each and ‘around’ the size you requested.Link: http://www.vintage-sierra.com/magazine.html(http://www.vintage-sierra.com/magazine.html)
IMO, the quality presented is still very useable 🙂
(re: re: re: re: re: Kinko’s scanning) Can someone scan ONE image, as a 500k image – at a resolution of approximately 800×1200
I’m curious to see how it looks.
My feeling is that if the final result requires more than 1 or 2 CDs, it becomes impractical to sell the CDs, and the market for the CDs evaporates.
On the price issue: I don’t think there are as many issues as some think. My guess is that we can only come up with 20-30 issues. I also think we can negotiate a deal with Kinkos, or some other similar company.
If we make this a huge complex project, it will not get done.
-Ken W(re: re: re: re: Kinko’s scanning) Some BIG numbers there 🙂 I’d agree that the ‘master’ scan resolution should be as stated – an uncompressed 300dpi image. This should be used as the source for ‘corrections’, after which the image may be compressed (preferably losslessly) and archived to the media (CD/DVD).
We’ve a couple of choices when it comes to storage…. My initial thoughts concerning image size were to store the images compressed (ZIP like) per issue on the media. These would be unpacked by the menu system into a simple ‘book reader viewer’. The book reader would have facilities to export the uncompressed version, printing, etc.
Obviously the above would need some code writing and there would need to be some debate about what platforms it should support! I’d want to limit my involvement (should anyone want me to do anything!) to a Windows platform.(re: re: re: re: Kinko’s scanning) Brad (and anyone else thinking of this scanning deal),
That’s a lot of work…perhaps if some of all of us worked together on it? I’m willing to offer my help, though I don’t know how much help I can be; I’m not sure I have enough of the right equipment or experience available. What I do have is this: the scanner in my Lexmark X75 color printer/scanner/copier (I know it’s capable of scanning at least 300dpi–I’ve been doing some of my game manuals to get some physical storage space back) and Adobe Acrobat 5.0. I know all of you have been kicking around Photoshop and some others, and I’m not sure how Acrobat matches up to that, so, like I said, I don’t know if I’d be of help. I’m just now self-teaching scanning and related topics (though I taught myself most everything else I know about computers). I also realize that some of my idea is predicated upon others sending their Interactions to me (I was, well, not financially capable of getting most of Sierra’s products from the “good old days” and so never really qualified for Interaction except for rare occasions so I don’t have any copies), and they are collectors items. I’d understand if no one is interested in this idea (having just named the single biggest reason why no one should be interested ;P).
Anyway, the offer is there, at least. Let me know if I could be of help (and if I can’t, that’s ok, too–I don’t offend easily). Cause, let’s face it–even ten grand is a whole lotta money.
Morgan(re: re: re: re: Why was there never a third game?) I did hear that one of the Murrays passed away. Sad…
Here’s something really strange: I double checked that it was the Murrays that produced Manhunter (which it was) but what is a little bizarre is that all the articles I found through Google refer to the Murrays as a trio – Barry, Dave and Dee Dee. Obviously, I knew Dee Dee – but, the honest truth is that I can’t remember her. Darned if I know why. I remember the guys, but can’t remember her at all. Weird.
-Ken W(re: re: re: Release Dates) OK – the thread caught my eye – but, I’m not sure what I can add to the discussion. I can barely remember which decade the games were released in. I wish I could be more help….
Sorry – Ken W(re: re: re: Kinko’s scanning) Ok, for all parties interested, sit down and get ready for some numbers.
I contacted Kinko’s earlier this week – spoke to a really nice fellow – names Robert. I told Robert the following:
Archiving project – magazines
About 50 magazines, 50 pages each (2500 pages)
Historical stuff – need to be real careful
He explained to me that kinko’s normally works with loose leaf paper (like legal documents) for scanning. This particular job would require hand placement (they ain’t cutting up my mags!), since they could not feed it through a document feeder. This particular Kinko’s was the only on that would even consider the job – the other one I called said no way. Anyway here is the breakdown he gave me that the managers said they would do only cause it was high volume, (although I fail to see the discount) I guess it all boils down to the fact that they dont want to do it :
$9.95 per page (normally $15 for hand placement) 300dpi color scans
$90/hr for any descreening, color correction, blemish removal
$15 for “Setup” on each CD burned PLUS
$15 for each CD to acutally burn and label it.
I’ll do some REALLY rough math, and throw out around $30,000 for Kinko’s to do it. Any buyers? That’s what I thought. I asked how much those legal documents (loose paper) cost, and he said around $5 per.
Robert did inform me though, that he does do other printing work/document work on the side, and could quote me a much better price. He called me back in a few days and gave me his low-down as follows :
$4.00 per page
That includes descreening, color correction (for yellowing pages), blemish removal, and 300 dpi images burned on a CD-ROM, firewire drive, or whatever we wanted. He also said he would do some tests up front to show us his work. I asked about insurance on the magazines.. he is covered.
Ken, we are still looking at $10,000 even at the reduced rate. I am pretty positive that there are around 50 magazines – I own around 35 of them, and if you fill in the blanks (with a few unknowns) you get around 50. The earlier mags have around 30 pages, the later ones around 65. So I think 2,500 pages is a good estimate.
For this project, I personally want 300dpi, 8.5×11, 24bit, UNCOMPRESSED images. I want these archived perfectly. If you do the math with those numbers you get the following :
25,245,000 bytes per image (24,653K)
2500 pages = 58.7GB
27 pages per CD-R ///// would take 93 CD’s
178 pages per DVD-R ///// would take 15 DVD’s300dpi scans saved at low JPG resolution look great. Around 500k page = 25MB per issue. I printed some tests out on a HP Color Laser printer – looked great. 50 issues would be 2 CD’s worth.. and essentially anyone could print out a “magazine” on a nice printer. Further testing is needed to find the optimum trade off’s but that is what I have found so far.
Photoshop files use a lossless compression, and store a theortical 25,245,000 byte file depending on the complexity around 15MB. So you you could save potentially around 40% in storage space.
If I was to scan 20 pages a night it would take me around 125 days to scan them. Ok, I am through with the numbers for now – I can keep breaking it down a billion ways. Basically I just wanted to get the numbers from Kinko’s in front of you Ken. Robert said he could have them done in 3 weeks.
This is going to be a worthwhile project folks, and not JUST the magazine archiving. I am organizing some online stuff, to officially kick off the project – and get those who REALLY want to be involved : involved. So stay tuned.
Talk to you all later.
-Brad(re: re: Ack my forum is dieing! :() You really want to help get it going? The real way to do this is to get more people to come…..I need some regulars to visit and visit often. I also need some advertising….I tried putting my redirect on google….but nothing seemed to work. I kind of gave up after a while…..I just don’t want to bother anymore….
(re: re: re: Sierra 25-year anniversary – next year?) Anyway, you are probobly right asking – is there a “there” … they (Vivendi) probobly use the name “Sierra” for their games.. and that’s that. But there must be something… you moved the headquarters to Bellevue sometime around ~1993 right? since the heart at Oakhurst (Yosemite Entertainment) was shut down in 1999, what’s left of the hq. in Bellevue ?
I happened to be looking over the Sierra website the other night (trying to find a fix for a patch for Empire Earth that isn’t installing correctly…) and I noticed that they list the headquarters of Sierra Entertainment as Bellevue still. I don’t know how much of it survives, but Vivendi claims that’s still the “heart” of Sierra, so I assume that it must still be substantial.
Of course, we know differently…but that’s what they say. ;P
Morgan.(re: re: Release Dates) No, I haven’t really taken re-releases into account because copyright/trademark records only record the day of first usage. I haven’t added anything to the list since my original post (was hoping the thread would catch Ken’s eye, but apparently it hasn’t).
I will post my complete list here soon and maybe people can help me add/correct dates.
– Evan(re: re: re: Why was there never a third game?) Ken,
I posted this link a while ago .. I believe it was either Dave or Barry that passed away. The link can be found under Cool Sierra Links. The link leads to a Christian website, which is run by the remainder of the Murray’s. They don’t mention anything about Manhunter though.(re: re: Sierra 25-year anniversary – next year?) I didn’t know when in 2004, since 2004 is getting closer I asked… only to know its December 2004…
Anyway, you are probobly right asking – is there a “there” … they (Vivendi) probobly use the name “Sierra” for their games.. and that’s that. But there must be something… you moved the headquarters to Bellevue sometime around ~1993 right? since the heart at Oakhurst (Yosemite Entertainment) was shut down in 1999, what’s left of the hq. in Bellevue ?
Another thought – all the tech people and the phone-lines that current Sierra have… and they must store all the data of past products somewhere… well there must be something, I guess?
[and who (which company) develop the new LSL … interesting though]
-Eyal(re: re: Why was there never a third game?) I hope I am remembering this right…
The Murrays (it was the Murrays who wrote Manhunter, wasn’t it?) did the first two Manhunters, and then starting working on a game called “Ancient Art of Way”. I had them planned for Manhunter 3, but when they spoke about their idea for Ancient Art of War, it sounded great – so I encouraged them to work on it.
Unfortunately, during development, Broderbund somehow got into the loop, and convinced Dave and Barry to publish War through them. One of my “rules” was to never be the “high bidder” on anything (it’s a long story). They never returned to Sierra.
Here’s an interesting side story:
Broderbund’s initial box for Ancient Art of War had a picture of an ancient vase on the front. The vase had a lot of oriental writing on it – that no one knew what said. Oops – the writing was in chinese (or, Japanese) and to those who could read it, it was x-rated. Broderbund had to recall all the copies of the game that had been shipped to retail.
-Ken W(re: Sierra 25-year anniversary – next year?) Hi Ken,
It might be a bit early to bring up this issue – but isn’t Sierra gonna have its 25 years anniversary sometime in 2004? On which month exactly?
Wow, I sure hope to see some old titles in honor of the anniversary. There will be probobly another Larry game (although sadly without Al Lowe). Maybe we can hope for a re-release of at least the collections… looking on eBay, the (used!) collections of the various quests series are sold for prices around 80$+, and people are “jumping” on every collection auction, eventhough mostly include only the CD, and sometimes the manual only. Currently, Sierra is wrong by underestimating the financial potential of this. I hope that in honor of the anniversary (a quarter of a century!!) they will understand the situation. [Maybe we will make a petition, but it is still early..]Posted by: qfgs on 10/9/2003
qfgs:
I started coding on Mystery House, our first game, in December of 1979. We started selling it in May of 1980. Hence … the 25 year anniversary is 2004, or 2005 – depending on how you look at it.
My personal opinion: “is there anyone left at Sierra? Is there a ‘there’ there?”
-Ken W(re: re: Kinko’s scanning) My recollection is that the magazines were 64 pages.
With 20 issues, there are approximately 1,280 pages to be scanned
At 500k per image, this is approximiately, 620 megabytes – or, 1 full cd
Is my math correct?
I’m guessing Kinkos would charge $1 to $2 per page to do the scanning. At 500k per page, the quality can be pretty good.
-Ken W
