Understanding problem of a newbie

Discussion about Amiga / C64 / Demoscene music and the ExoticA music archive. Favourite music, new rips, musicians, demo sounds, audio software. It's all welcome here.

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Lomaxx
Posts: 2
Joined: Tue Nov 22, 2005 12:06 am

Understanding problem of a newbie

Post by Lomaxx »

Hello, although i am a great fan of amiga-game-music and Unexotica for a rather long time, i do consider myself still a bloody newbie to the archive-structure of Unexotica. Now, while browsing the various directories i noticed two diffrent versions of Amberstar and wonder which is the 'right','newer','full' or 'correct' one.

The two versions can be found at the following links:
http://exotica.fix.no/tunes/archive/Aut ... el_Jochen/
http://exotica.fix.no/tunes/archive/HIP-Hippel/

I noticed that both versions differ in size greatly. One is 1M large, while the smaller one only is 232k. I downloaded both and listed their content:

1MB-version:

Code: Select all

 PERMSSN    UID  GID      SIZE  RATIO     STAMP           NAME
---------- ----------- ------- ------ ------------ --------------------
[generic]                66064  77.5% Sep 20  1999 Amberstar/Amberstar-Endtheme.s7c
[generic]               149778  75.1% Sep 20  1999 Amberstar/Amberstar-Title.s7c
[generic]                59392  79.1% Nov 16  1998 Amberstar/HIPC.Amberstar-01
[generic]                59672  79.2% Nov 16  1998 Amberstar/HIPC.Amberstar-02
[generic]                59136  79.2% Nov 16  1998 Amberstar/HIPC.Amberstar-03
[generic]                59314  78.9% Nov 16  1998 Amberstar/HIPC.Amberstar-04
[generic]                59192  79.2% Nov 16  1998 Amberstar/HIPC.Amberstar-05
[generic]                59538  79.0% Nov 16  1998 Amberstar/HIPC.Amberstar-06
[generic]                59814  79.0% Nov 16  1998 Amberstar/HIPC.Amberstar-07
[generic]                59958  78.7% Nov 16  1998 Amberstar/HIPC.Amberstar-08
[generic]                60102  78.8% Nov 16  1998 Amberstar/HIPC.Amberstar-09
[generic]                59784  79.0% Nov 16  1998 Amberstar/HIPC.Amberstar-10
[generic]                59678  78.9% Nov 16  1998 Amberstar/HIPC.Amberstar-11
[generic]                58864  79.3% Nov 16  1998 Amberstar/HIPC.Amberstar-12
[generic]                59026  79.5% Nov 16  1998 Amberstar/HIPC.Amberstar-13
[generic]                59146  79.5% Nov 16  1998 Amberstar/HIPC.Amberstar-14
[generic]                59004  79.3% Nov 16  1998 Amberstar/HIPC.Amberstar-15
[generic]                60656  78.6% Nov 16  1998 Amberstar/HIPC.Amberstar-16
[generic]                59284  79.3% Nov 16  1998 Amberstar/HIPC.Amberstar-17
[generic]                59514  79.0% Nov 16  1998 Amberstar/HIPC.Amberstar-18
[generic]                59534  79.0% Nov 16  1998 Amberstar/HIPC.Amberstar-19
---------- ----------- ------- ------ ------------ --------------------
 Total        21 files 1346450  78.5% Nov 22 00:59
237kb version:

Code: Select all

 PERMSSN    UID  GID      SIZE  RATIO     STAMP           NAME
---------- ----------- ------- ------ ------------ --------------------
[generic]                 1816  47.1% Oct  5  2002 Amberstar/hipc.City_Walk
[generic]                 1288  43.2% Oct  5  2002 Amberstar/hipc.Dreamcave
[generic]                 2382  43.3% Oct  5  2002 Amberstar/hipc.Eriks_Revenge
[generic]                 2526  47.6% Oct  5  2002 Amberstar/hipc.Fanfares
[generic]                 1938  47.4% Oct  5  2002 Amberstar/hipc.Funkey_Dungeon
[generic]                 1958  45.3% Oct  5  2002 Amberstar/hipc.Hasta_La_Vista
[generic]                 2096  52.6% Oct  5  2002 Amberstar/hipc.High_Seas
[generic]                 1560  47.3% Oct  5  2002 Amberstar/hipc.Horse_Song
[generic]                 1428  48.6% Oct  5  2002 Amberstar/hipc.ingame
[generic]                 1708  52.2% Oct  5  2002 Amberstar/hipc.Lullaby
[generic]                 1570  56.1% Oct  5  2002 Amberstar/hipc.Lurking_Horror
[generic]                 3080  47.6% Oct  5  2002 Amberstar/hipc.Minor_Quarrels
[generic]                 2102  45.0% Oct  5  2002 Amberstar/hipc.Misty_Orc_Hop
[generic]                 1450  55.8% Oct  5  2002 Amberstar/hipc.Mystic_Moments
[generic]                 2208  47.6% Oct  5  2002 Amberstar/hipc.Ode_To_Schnism
[generic]                57576  80.0% Oct  5  2002 Amberstar/hipc.samp
[generic]               106572  50.8% Oct  5  2002 Amberstar/hip.game_end
[generic]               191862  61.2% Oct  5  2002 Amberstar/hip.title
[generic]                 1738  40.6% Oct  5  2002 Amberstar/hipc.Flying_High
[generic]                 2238  49.7% Oct  5  2002 Amberstar/hipc.Gwens_Lament
[generic]                 1962  44.4% Oct  5  2002 Amberstar/hipc.Irish_Spring
[generic]                 1616  47.3% Oct  5  2002 Amberstar/hipc.Travellers_Tune
---------- ----------- ------- ------ ------------ --------------------
 Total        22 files  392674  59.9% Aug 29 00:17
So the smaller version seems to be newer and offers the new songnames. Due to the date mentionend in the output and the following, rather new thread http://exotica.fix.no/forum/viewtopic.php?t=553 the smaller version should be the newest one. But why is the old version so much bigger then? I know that bigger is not always better ;) but the large sizediffrence makes me doubtful. Or is this only due to a better internal compression of these files? I have no clue.

Also i have a general question: It seems to me that more or less all gamemusicarchives are existing twice: Once in the gamesection and one in the soundformat-section. Did i get that right? And why aren't these archives only existing once and then being linked? I am asking because i plan to make my own little gamemusic-database and am not sure which structure i should use.

Thanks for any answer.

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XtC
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Joined: Wed Jun 12, 2002 6:26 pm
Location: Rossendale, England
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Post by XtC »

Ey up!

Welcome to the forum!

The main reason for a lot of duplication on ExoticA is because BuZz is a lazy arse! :wink:

UnExoticA (2001) is a recent addition to ExoticA (1997). Originally UnExoticA wasn't going to tread on the toes of ExoticA, but that's another story...

If I had admin priviliges for ExoticA, those sections would have been modified many moons ago!

Until the entire website is sorted a good rule of thumb is to favour the game soundtracks on UnExoticA as they were done more recently.

I notice you quote the directory structure rather than the web pages, i.e. : -
Nothing wrong with that. But if duplicates exist elsewhere on ExoticA just favour the archives found under: -

...tunes/archive/Authors/Demo/
...tunes/archive/Authors/Game/


Finally, the reason for the difference in file size with the two Amberstar rips is that the newer rip has a separate file for the sample data which all the songs share - this is a feature of the new replayer.

Hope that helps?
Cheers!

Lomaxx
Posts: 2
Joined: Tue Nov 22, 2005 12:06 am

Post by Lomaxx »

Thanks for the warm welcome and the helpful information. :)

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BuZz
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Posts: 569
Joined: Mon Jun 10, 2002 12:52 pm
Location: Didcot, Oxfordshire
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Post by BuZz »

Yes. I'm a lazy b*stard..

I'll work on the new exotica next year I'm sure...

btw, totem just had an upgrade from freebsd 4.1 to 6. Also, it had a ram increase back to 1gb (there were stability problems with some previous ram). Not all services are back yet, but if you were wondering why it was down on sunday, that is why.

I'm finding the server much more responsive now anyway.

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