[Guest]

I'm going to have to delete everything (start over) once I figure out the right regex to keep the i18n pages (foreign language duplicates) out the index. This technology is fairly state-of-the-art, or at least it's an application with no other alternatives other than Grub (now owned by Wikia -- and not to be confused with GRUB!) ...so I'm having to work fairly closely with the development/early adopter community, which unfortunately is almost entirely German.

Alright! I think I finally have a possible alternative to Google on the search front:

[I decided to remove this link to avoid attracting spammers to the url which will be included server side in the future]

Go ahead and try that link. This is basically a home Google I was able to setup thanks to YaCy. If all pans out, in not too long I can make the website search bar fetch these results and format them too look like they belong on the website like the wiki pages.


PS: Hopefully it will be faster after I slow down the crawler a little (right now it's building an initial index)

Well, this is it for now...


PS: I will add some links to some of the keywords and urls when I have some time.

On an up note the website is back, and its future is more secure than ever. However, what little creative interest we've been able to sustain since the first downtime late last year is now (after our second, and what should be final, downtime) at an all time low. In fact there appears to be no party interested in contributing new content to the website.

That said we still have administrative and editorial staff eager and available to assist any fans who would be interested in helping to expand the website. A long term commitment is not even necessary. As always, just drop us a line in the website <acronym title="Bulletin Board System">BBS</acronym> and we will see that your contribution however great or small is made available to our readership.

The website will not be going anywhere in the meantime, and we still field a lot of traffic everyday. Generally about 300 people visit the site about 1000 times a day like clockwork. We are still the premier source for in-depth Megaten info in English. We know the site could be a much better resource, but its up to Megami Tensei fans everywhere to see to that.


This host's response time can be a little slower than the last. And has a knack for not returning from long jobs such as complex searches. On the other hand we can now host large files including video. Our stay here will be only temporary however. A very feature rich server with the works is slated to host the website. Unlike previous transitions this move will be seamless, and open up a world of possibilities. We will retain the use of this present server for hosting unlimited downloads which will then no longer compete with or impede the performance of the website.

I am personally repairing the site to all its former glory and hopefully more. However my enthusiasm for these labors is only so much as the creative outlook here. We did loose a number of files, but have backups on hand which will find their way to our new host in course. A few features are probably broken. But will be back in time. Worst of all Google has forsaken digitaldevildb.com. Taking with it our ability to search the website. We are seeking alternatives for indexing its content. If you can run a YaCy service for us (you can do this from your home broadband connection) please get in touch. Google dumped us like all websites it owes their first 100$ and considers insignificant. The official reason given by Google is "invalid clicks" which supposedly occurred during the downtime (that is when the website was inaccessible!!) ---no further comment. Unfortunately this is Google's <abbr title="Modus Operandi">M.O.</abbr> ...and we learned it the hard way, after investing a lot of time and expectations into Google. From now on the website will officially boycott Google and Hostpapa.com who acted unethically like all too many webhosting companies and is completely responsible for all of the havoc wreaked upon this website not caused by Google. With Google's 100$ goes any definite means of financing the website. If you would like to donate/advertise your Megaten website on our site please don't hesitate to seek our audience. We have it in our todo list to setup a proper system for doing so.

Last but not least, we've become a reluctant branch of the "Megami Tensei Wiki" at megamitensei.wikia.com. Time will tell if our branch will or won't become the dominant of the two. The decision to do so was completely necessary by the most basic of ethical standards. Two out of three sysops (including myself) made the decision to do so with the encouragement of the third and Wikia staff. We will hopefully find the time and initiative to document these circumstances along with the rest of the wiki. You can edit the wiki at wiki.digitaldevildb.com/wiki/. This branch of the wiki is now the source of content retrieved by our wiki pages at www.digitaldevildb.com/wiki/.

I have always wondered where the Megaten worldview must come from. That is precisely, my bet is originally MT2 must've had a primary source. That is some inspiration the game makers were working from in concocting the scenario of the game. It's obviously Gnostic/Luciferian/Zoroastrian in bent but not in any classic/dogmatic way. That said I don't give the game makes enough credit to expect them to have synthesized all of this stuff on their own, so I've always wondered what their main text/pov might've been. I mean we're talking about people who lifted all of their demon designs from the "Dictionnaire Infernal".

Well, the other day I came across this group from the 60s which seems to be almost at the heart of the way people think about Luciferians and Satanists / occult groups to this day.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Process_Church_of_The_Final_Judgment

This cult has all the unique hallmarks of Megaten's central thesis, and even had classes of people like SMT that were considered to be predominantly (by birth) either Jehovans (Law) Luciferians (Chaos) Satanists (Dark) and Christians (Light) all welcome within the cult. Like conservatives are Jehovans, socialists are Luciferians, bikers/nazis are Satanists, and the peace-nik hippies are Christians (identified with Christ)

^Of course the original MT2 need not have all these complications and still does a much better job of embodying these themes. The cult also believed in an apocalyptic/road warrior future from which they would be the only survivors, and was really influential all around the world.

It's surmised Charles Manson was somehow tangentially "inspired" by the philosophies of this group and another cult which bare significant resemblance to Manson's own life/thought.

The male leader of the cult believed/insisted he was Christ. But if anything he was upstaged by Manson himself. If I was a Christian personally I'd probably believe Manson is Christ. He is the perfect Christ archetype and hell, who says Christ is supposed to be lovable. If god/the gods is/are really sophisticated Christ would be the ultimate societal outcast / persecuted just like Manson. I guess we'll just have to wait until Manson dies and see if he rises from the dead or not


PS: Even if you don't dig Manson (you dig) he's technically not guilty (or even charged) with anything, and has really been wrongfully imprisoned / denied parole just for the hell of it (should sound familiar to Christians)

I've saved this Kerberos for safe keeping (nice to finally see this one btw) but I'm not sure how I'm going to get him cut out of there with all those effect behind him....

Let us know if you ever come across a different version. If I get bored one day I might yet give it a shot. Would look a lot better if I can pull it off somehow. I'm pretty clever in the image processing dept.

More Google bashing (http://www.digitaldevildb.com/search/#comment-5216) at your service.

I did a pretty good job replicating the look/feel of the Google sidebar (http://www.digitaldevildb.com/)

I like it/think it's creative. And I'm just getting warmed up

PS: Just to be clear. It's not that I have no interest in the website, though technically I never really have had much. It's just that I feel I'm just here to keep the site working, and really that's all I can spare time to do. So if people don't chip into the site, there is not even reason for me to keep it alive. I do this out of a sense of obligation to Megaten to keep at least one committed fansite there for anyone who wants to be an active member of a Megaten community.

I also do it because it often presents interesting development challenges/experience for me. But like I'm not the go to guy for new content. Others have to be there.


Speaking of which. I did get an email from Wolfzau when I sent out the last newsletter who apologized for being away, and offered to come back. I think (as I recall) he had to leave China for the UK so he lost contact for a while. Also there is this guy named "Benedict X" who offered to chip in a long time back and I never saw a letter he sent to www. digitaldevildb .com at gmail.com until I went to write that newsletter. I sent him a reply and he sent a reply back. But I don't know what to make of him. He keeps saying he has all these degrees but seems incapable of using forums to interact with the website... keeps insisting on email contacts, which I don't understand personally. Anyway, I think you're the official site Editor Jessicat like it / can do anything about it / or not... so you might want to email this guy and see if you can get him to do anything.


I can write Wolfzau a letter and get this X guys email address when I can get around to it....

Well...

I happened to find a screenshot of what the old Google sidebar looked like. So I'm thinking it might be more creative to instead of just making a page about the badness of Google... why not just fill the sidebar with lots of interesting information about Google?

Basically the damage Google has done to this website (from what we had) warrants a thorough ripping I think. On one hand it feels a little not right to use a Megaten fansite to fight back at Google, but on the other hand this is personal, and it seems totally cool. Besides their is a huge whole on the front page that needs to be filled with something



This can also be an opportunity to let readers know why the website is in the state it's in (on top of an update blog post which is really overdue)

Whatever future there is for this website, it's going to have to get by without Google. Afaik Google might have blacklisted the domain name for ever.



I've been trying like mad to install YaCy somewhere where it can crawl the site and others. But I've been having zero luck with it, even though it seems like a good little project that others seem to be using... but obviously the code is just not up to snuff. Otherwise I got nothing that can compete with Google. I learned today that Wikia bought/is the current owner of Grub (which is the only other p2p crawler effort in town) and apparently uses it to index their website. Wikia is also a mortal enemy of the digitaldevildb.com since we had to relinquish the Megami Tensei Wiki from it's grip. Anyway, from first hand experience, Wikia is not a good place. I've since come across many communities still sore from getting caught up in Wikia's web. In fact in all my years, almost all big name internet sites with "customer" relations are bad apples. It's going to take a while to clean up the internet.


PS: Oh yeah, for the record I have uploaded a placeholder image where the Google sidebar used to be on the front page. I guess I need to start pulling out all the ad fetching code around the website...

^Last I checked, just a few days ago, his profile said he had been logged in that day (Emilio)

Chirp chirp,

I'm sorry but I don't know what to do next with this place...

I could invest a lot of my time into fixing it up back to normal, but there is no interest, so I'm sorry, but I just don't know what I should do (I feel like others should be doing more basically)


I setup the wiki, but the other sysop who was (and is technically still) on board, has been under the weather apparently, and now says he's backed up for a couple weeks. That was all I had going for the place. So right now, I got nothing.

And like I say, if others don't start pitching in, I'm not super ready to spend hours fixing stuff.

I'm not sure but I've never had a scanner that sort of blurring going on. It could be light reflecting off the page somehow if it is really glossy. If it's just depth of field blurring, if you ever go to get a replacement scanner (they seem to cost a lot these days but like 10yrs ago you could buy good ones for 20$ or less, they were even giving them away??) ...I know the last cheapo scanner I had was sold as "3D scanner" meaning you could scan anything clearly... not just flat stuff. It works fine to put anything on top of it and scan away. Will even scan the ceiling just fine if you take the top completely off.

Another great alternative is just use a nice digital camera. My latest camera was quite cheap and the quality is just amazing. Perfect really. Just taking pictures of stuff yields better scans than any scanner I've ever used. Photographs might also come out more natural like an eye sees, because maybe scanners pick up too much of the grain and artifacts of the printing process (magnified by the scanner)

And before I forget, also uploaded a profile image list of all the obtainable Devil Survivor demons in English: HERE. Had to upload it there because there's no way photobucket would let me upload a 2mb picture XD

You can upload anything like that to comp.digitaldevildb.com now!! Won't have to go thru any crap either (and most importantly neither will the people you share with)

I am glad that you got :)

Me too

^Thanks. Seriously! But does your game have sound after it says Sega? Maybe I need a newer version of Gens like yours

   
Damn, I've got no sound. I just checked with the sound down on my comp. And after your message I decided to check. Sound is not found.
But I found the solution. 
Just run it in another emu. It's Kega Fusion http://www.eidolons-inn.net/tiki-index.php?page=Kega
But the need to run through the .cue file.

Hmmm, thanks for the leg work!! It was a little bumpy getting started. Running from the cue crashed, but fortunately it worked as a mounted drive thru the CD boot option

This is the coolest version of SMT I've ever played. I like all the redone sprites. Can't wait to find out what the devils are like (hopefully it won't be a let down)