KaOsKrew

was just reminiscing after i came across a old hdd what contained one of our old installers from 2001, yeah i miss them days, was easy & quick work doing a game and they were all always compressable , games were small to start with compared to todays standards. people were not insane on lossless, lossless was actually always frowned upon and classed as been lazy and not putting the effort in, was little to no competition, repacks were actually correctly tagged as rips and the repack tag was only used if you made a correction like its supposed to be, far to many people doing this now since almost everything is automated and the list just keeps growing , 95% of them are just children, very little skill is needed nowadays. tbh this work is no longer worth doing, its alot of time & effort due to the size of the games and it constantly leaves you out of pocket, you dont get the traffic anymore to help with that as theres 20+ other groups/people to choose from. to many torrent and repack sites serving everybodys work so its easier to choose from and everybodys work is only a click away. back then groups were really hated and ended up been driven to closure if they were caught stealing or copying was like a list of unspoken rules lol, people do not seem to care now as long as the game works. alot has changed since we started and not all of it is for the better any body have any thoughts?

Just a thought, if you don't already perhaps look to announcing releases in other places, perhaps like the reddit.com/r/CrackWatch/ could help get more traffic.


Things have changed a lot, though I think it's all understandable. Perhaps the main reason being bandwidth speeds. Back then downloading a 50-100MB game took a while (as in all day), one file at a time, single thread, without resume in many places. Then a Rip was basically a necessity compared to games starting to fill a CD. These days if one heard a dial-up modem, if they knew the sound or not, they'd go to see what the hell was going on.

That "necessity" for small releases is no longer there, download managers are ancient nevermind the sound of Pshhhkkkkkkrrrr​kakingkakingkakingtsh​chchchchchchchcch lol

Perhaps the biggest concern is storage and with the size of drives these days it's worlds apart. Some people may go on about one Rip/"repack" being a gig smaller but when we're talking about 10-15GB+ to begin with, well if you can download 15GB you can download 17GB, it's not an issue either way anymore. The ease thanks to software and availability play some part I'd say.

In some ways you could even say the bandwidth and storage often available far exceeds what games use these days even excluding the "small" games of 4GB, could point at mods as an example, be they "HD Texture Super Redux.....etc" or improved sounds and so on for both old and new games. That goes hand in hand with people not needing/wanting versions with lower quality textures/video etc to save a bit of space that isn't critically low, however imperceptible the difference is.

When talking about 5 to 20+ gig games I don't think anyone will feel the necessity of a Rip like in the "old" days (stop making me feel old lol). It's not like every good or new game coming out is 60 to 200 gigs, that's what it felt like back then if not worse.

Also if someone has the hardware to play a 60GB AAA game chances are downloading/storing it isn't going to break their budget or means. Considering the changes and demand, I think it's also understandable how "repack" has usurped Rips.


I feel like actual Rips died off ages ago, sure there are surprisingly still a few popping up though I so seldom get them and even when I do I basically end up getting +music +video and then repack it myself for my own use because they don't have nice installers anymore (even do it to some of the old GOG games I own so once it's extracted that ancient game is tweaked and ready to go with widescreen mods/settings, community patches etc already applied, speaking of which I actually did "Tyrian 2000" today lol).

I don't think actual Rips will ever be as common or sought after as they once were, it's gone from something of a necessity to an art, if you know what I mean. Though unfortunately there's very little art in releases anymore to speak of, even before comparing it to back then. I still have so many Rips backed up on DVD because I didn't have the heart to delete them even after replacing them with isos on an external HDD.

Even though I can't get to those old Rips on DVD because I no longer have a DVD Rom installed, I still have some leftover/junk files laying around
https://i.imgbox.com/boREbYs4.jpg
Unfortunately though many of them no longer work on newer systems anymore, graphics no longer working or not comprehending how much RAM there is etc. (Such things being one of the reasons I'm against passwording the installer archives because one day their installers may have problems , and I consider piracy partly as the act of preserving things)

Personally I don't so much lament Rips dying off as the love and detail that went into them. Like a classic car next to a modern hybrid or electric. Sure the "repacks" may be smaller, sometimes impressively, but without that touch or art in the installer it's like a classic car with plastic instead of wood on the dash. Without it, it feels soulless and automated, just another release.

Perhaps of all the reasons to do these things, today's "repacks", is a labour of love or hobby regardless of competition. Like someone crafting a coffee table even though they don't have to. Every time I see a nice installer pop up with one of those tunes I always end up taking a moment to appreciate it, and certain tunes can make me all nostalgic about those old rips (and keygens) and the excitement like opening a present when launching it.

Wherever things go from here, I'm sure years from now someone will open one of the recent KaOs installers and end up staring at it thinking about their "old days", perhaps a little sad, maybe a little happy, or both.








edit.. please excuse my incoherent rambling, I'm extremely sleep deprived at the moment lol.

very good read, thanks for your thoughts. i totally agree with the installer comment, i used to feel the same about the old installers, even if i did not want the game i used to grab it anyway just to see what installer was used and if the tune they picked was any good, some of the music i liked alot and used to just open the installer without actually installing the game just to hear it and see the spinning effects or screenshots, it really was like opening a present lol

we did try to duplicate the same kind of thing in our installer wile attempting to bring back the oldskool, i hope we came close to making at least some people feel a similar way, although as i mentioned earlier i think kids nowadays do not seem to really care as long as the game works unfortunately.

there are a few examples of installers i would have mentioned but do not want to cause offence to who made them, but nowadays there is very little effort put into them, they are very bland and even retail looking no real artwork to make you look twice, and either no music or music in mp3 what you could probably find on itunes or youtube, no change of skins or music so its the same thing every time.
apart from possibly getting a working game you don't really feel as if your getting a present or something special and it just gets dumped on a backup drive with the others and forgotten about.
and as i read you mention on another post i would also go for a larger release just for a good installer (depending on how much larger it was of course)

were probably only going to hear from old folks in this conversation tbh lol

KiNG wrote:were probably only going to hear from old folks in this conversation tbh lol

Yep, old folk here & I'm totally with you on all the above lol! Sounds like you were having a bad day or some kind of old guy reflective moment there KiNG hehe! Been there myself and when you look at the state of society in general all around us atm one could almost feel like giving up. However, many of the young are still eager to learn despite how bad it seems & I still see many signs that give me hope. I'm talking in general rather than the gaming scene specifically of course but I don't think all is completely lost there either. There's definitely many "grasshoppers" out there who are very ignorant of the history & what constitutes real quality work & effort. Their number seems great simply because there are generally more kids doing it today. Also nowadays it's all handed to them on a plate & they haven't learned the necessary skills to differentiate between the good & the bad. But don't worry too much - there's still good, bright kids out there willing to learn what's REAL! I've seen similar things happen with skateboarding & surfing since I started doing both back in the late 70s/early 80s. Back then you had to invent everything from scratch but now a kid just gets a pro-model board, watches all the videos & goes down to the local perfectly built skatepark, beach or man-made wave. It's all relative man but you know what - OG is OG, oldschool is oldschool, we know where we came from & we got the memories AND all the hard work encoded in our DNA, some of which got passed on to our kids without them even knowing it & that sows seeds for the future Hail!