Most popular lists updated again

The log problem has been resolved. I did contact support in the end, and it turned out I can no longer access my logs with standard FTP, I need to use SFTP. Oh well. But I learned it just in time so that I didn’t miss a single day, and have updated the most popular lists again. That’s all for the moment.

A bit slower

I uploaded eight Windows 3.1 games today, but this was the first update in five days. At the moment, things are going a bit slower on Download Central. There isn’t anything burning under my nails, nothing I feel I have to upload now—as soon as possible. The number of downloads is 1,458, I had hoped to reach 1,500 within July, but I probably won’t make it.

I’ve got a few drafts here on the blog, one of them dating back to early April, which I intend to finish and publish in the next days, and there’s the forum. There will probably soon be a few new categories on Download Central. Just not that many new downloads.

There’s something wrong with my logs

Since 25th 11:29 a.m. the server hasn’t been writing to the logs any more, or has written at a place where I can’t access them. I looked up the DreamHost Status Blog, but found nothing about it. There seems to have been some trouble lately, and I won’t pester them about it. This is really not very relevant for anybody but me, it’s just an explanation why I don’t update the most popular lists at the moment.

Four more games running in small windows

Some time ago I listed five games running in small windows, something that has always fascinated me. Then I had found some more, and made a new list, again with a maximum size of 40,000 pixels. That was exactly one month ago. I noticed that I had only four this time, so I left it as a draft hoping a fifth would turn up. It didn’t, so here’s the list anyway.

Usually I look only at how the game starts by default. I’ll make an exception for Ecstasy, since it’s such a cute game, and has only three size settings. By default it starts with 5×5 smileys, with 4×4 the window is small enough to fit here: Pixel count 31,920.

This is how Lights! starts by default under Windows 9x or XP. Under Win32s, you have to resize it to make it display nicely , and the window would be larger. Pixel count: 25,920.

Gem Mania is the third and last Lights Out in this list. It was written by Steven Marshall and has a custom window in the same style as Slider. A special feat the author has achieved here is that the icon is a complete representation of the game, just smaller in size, but the number of “gems” is the same! The window is already smaller than anything in the previous list, but it is not the smallest yet. Pixel count: 20,736.

This one is. Global Mines is a Minesweeper with Internet support, and in its default setting it has the smallest window I have ever seen on a Windows game. Pixel count: 20,064.

More about Google+

I’m still not very familiar with it. The first thing I posted was an album with a few Windows 2.0 256-color screenshots. Now I’ve posted a photo I took of Taipei running on Windows 1, but that doesn’t have a specific URL. You just see it in the list of my posts.

I could access both links when logged out, so they should work whether you have a Google+ account or not.

I’m working on a forum

Now that I’ve already a blog and a twitter account, I’ve decided to create a forum too. I’ve registered with a free forum provider. I’m still pondering the details, so I’m not posting the URL yet.

The forum will serve all my websites, primarily Download Central and Svatopluk’s Arcade at the moment. Ideally, there would be a thread for every game, linked from the game page, but since these two sites contain about 2000 games, this would be a Herculean task.

If you have any ideas or suggestions, please comment below.

Palette on Windows 2.0 with 256 colors

Palette is a small program that runs on everything from Windows 2.0 to XP and does nothing but show 125 colors, dithered or solid, depending on the environment. I’ve taken screenshots on various Windows versions under different settings and posted them in The Colors of Windows. Here’s a new one, on Windows 2.0 with Paradise 256 colors drivers:

Note again that Windows 2.0 can take advantage of the full 256-color palette. Under 3.x, you need a desktop setting of at least 32k colors for undithered display.

I’m on Google+

I have a Google+ account. I haven’t done very much with it yet, but after the last post I uploaded a few more screenshots. It was easier and went quicker than it would anywhere else, including here on WordPress. So, I’ll probably use it more for this kind of thing.

I’m not sure what the status of Google+ is at the moment, but I think it’s open to anyone with a Google account. So, if the topics of this blog are interesting for you, follow me on Google+.

Windows 2.0 with 256 colors

For Paradise SVGA cards, which are emulated in DOSBox, there are drivers that allow running Windows 2.0 either at 640×400×256 or at 800×600×16. You can find them here, download PVGA16-2.ZIP. Here are two screenshots of Windows 2.0 running with 256 colors:

Japanese-Games.info

I’ve started working on a new site, with the domain japanese-games.info. So far, the only page on it is about Sokoban. The idea is to transfer all the pages about Japanese games from the old site to it.