The FAQ is moving to the Wiki, for easier management....


www.retromags.com/wiki/FAQ

So you have some magazines and you wish to join our awesome project. The best way to start is to pick a magazine that you wish to scan....and scan maybe 5 to 10 pages and send them off to myself to take a look at. That way I can offer any advice before you get too far into your first magazine. Just take the 5 or 10 images and zip them up and upload them to Rapidshare and send me the download link through the forum's Personal Message system. This is generally only needed for the first magazine you plan to scan, and remember that Retromags only scans magazines that are BEFORE January 2000. Generally the older the magazine you wish to scan, the better!




Moved to Wiki for easier reading: http://www.retromags.com/wiki/index.php?title=Debinding




Moved to Wiki for easier reading: http://www.retromags.com/wiki/index.php?title=Scanning




Let me start off by saying that Retromags appreciates EVERYONE who steps forward and lends a hand. Running a project such as this, where you depend on people to lend their time and effort free of charge...well it puts you in a tough situation. What happens when someone offers help, but there help is not of the highest standard? How do you approach such a predicament? Not everyone has a scanner that can scan 300DPI, nor do many people have a high end photo editing suite such as Photoshop. So do you dismiss such people wishing to help? How can you nicely say "Thanks for helping but can you improve on this aspect"? Well these common things that come up all the time.....So here is my official thought on the topic.....

When you count on people to step forward and help out, you cant really demand what their work quality should be. So if you see a contrast in work quality between certain members on this site, realize that each of them is putting forth time and effort for nothing more then a Thank You. But with that said, if you see a release and believe that YOU can do a better job....by all means go right ahead! I don't care if its a magazine that I personally did myself, if you believe that YOU can redo it better.....Go right ahead! I will not take offense to my work being redone....nor should anyone else.

The only thing that will not be tolerated is complaining about the quality of a members work! Our members do this out of the satisfaction it gives us to protect and preserve this aspect of gaming history.

Helpful Tips on Editing


Reserved for links to Meppi's topics on editing!

How To Compile Magazines into a Release Goes Here!

How To FTP the Releases and Import them into the Download Section Goes Here!

Members are welcome to distribute the Retromags releases in any of the following ways....

• Peer to Peer (Kazaa, Morpheus, etc)
• DC++
• Binary NewsGroups
• Private Torrent Sites ([censor bypass], Demonoid, Black Cats)
• Public Torrent Sites (Mininova, Piratebay)
• File Storage Sites (RapidShare, MegaUpload)

The only thing that we ask is that you distribute the files as they were received and that you do not remove the "Thank You" page at the end of each of our releases. It would also be appreciated if when you distribute the Retromags releases on a torrent site (private or public) that you insert a clickable link back to the Retromags home page.


Not Recommended = This magazine came from Retromags.com
Recommended = This magazine came from www.retromags.com



We realize that many members out there run fan websites and may want to remove an Article or Advertisement from one of our magazines releases for use on their website. We allow this but ask that if you remove a piece of the magazine release for use on your website that you create a clickable link back to Retromags each time you do so. For example, if you run a website that talks about Final Fantasy....and you want to pull a 3 page article out of one of the Retromags releases for use on your website or forum, we would ask that you create a link back to this website stating that the scans originated from here.

Recommended - This Article came from EGM Issue 45 on www.retromags.com!
Not Recommended - I got these scans from Retromags!




If you have downloaded any of our releases and wish to compress them down or rework them and such. We would ask that you not do so! If you feel as though you can improve on any aspect of the releases we have provided, you are encouraged to come and join our team. But we really would rather not have random people redoing our work and releasing it back out on to the internet. It causes confusion for people to see unauthorized reworks on the internet and its is generally seen as a slap in the face to the original people who worked on providing those scans. We do not provide any scans of work we did not do ourselves from start to finish, and we also do not recompile other peoples scans that we have found on the internet.....we hope you can show us the same respect.

Converting Magazines From .CBR/CBZ to PDF Goes Here!

For members that do not have scanners, we can always use a helping hand on our Wiki section. We hope to grow our Retromags Wiki to be the largest searchable database of video game magazines. We are always looking for people to add cover shots of magazines or to help list out the contents of a magazine. Also remember that the Wiki does not have a limit on the age of the magazine you are working on. If you want to list the contents for this months GamePro or a PSM magazine from 1995....you are welcome and encouraged to do so.

Our Wiki can be found at http://www.retromags.com/wiki






Wiki code is fairly simple to understand, and the best part about it is there is plenty of tutorials. Most people will only need to know a handful of the code such as bold, underlined, bullets and font colors. Below I will list a tutorial for new users to get acquainted with MediaWiki,

Creating New Pages
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Editing_pages

Formatting
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Formatting




One of the biggest reasons we started a wiki was to allow members to search for what magazines covered what games. If a member goes onto our Wiki and does a search for "Contra", then all the magazines that have articles or reviews for Contra should show up in the results. The amount of detail you wish to index is up to you, I would recommend listing down the sections of the magazine and then what is covered in each of those sections. Most magazines will have a Preview section for games yet to be released and a Review section for games that just came out....and most will have a password and cheat section also. Even if you don't own any gaming magazines, you can always index magazines that you have downloaded from Retromags. Most of the Nintendo Powers have been indexed already which can be viewed here...

http://www.retromags.com/wiki/index.php?ti...ndo_Power_(USA)




Uploading magazine covers is very simple, if you have already scanned a magazine cover and wish to upload it.....just go to the following page.....

http://www.retromags.com/wiki/index.php?title=Special:Upload

You will need to be logged in to upload files to the Wiki, and then once you have uploaded the file you can show that uploaded cover on any page by using the following code.....

Since most people simply install and use CDisplay to view the cbr or cbz files from here without going into the settings, it might be good to know some things you can do with the program, as well as some settings which can improve the way magazines are viewed.

CDisplay can be downloaded from the original site right here, or from a backup copy here.

People using OSX can download FFview from here.
But since I'm still on windows (for now ;P), I can't check out the positives and negatives about this program.


To start off, here are the settings I like to use with the program:

Open up a CBR and click C to open up the configuration screen.

-Image Sizing Opions

-Fit Width (C+W)
-Rotate Scroll Functions

are both checked, all other boxes are left unchecked.

-Colour Balance as well as Yellow Reduction

In here I have all the boxes unchecked. Otherwise the program itself tries to correct for marks, spots and discouloration which can occur when a scan is not properly edited.
So when viewing a complete release (one that has been fully edited and scanned with good equipment), these options will "correct" a pretty much perfect scan so that it looks washed out or dull.
But even raw releases might benefit from having these options turned off.

-Program Settings

-Forward+Backward Two pages in Two Pages Mode is checked.
This makes it easy to navigate guide books with lots maps that are spread over both pages

-Generate thumbs in background (speeds up the process of creating the overview thumbnail page)

-Small Cursor (I like to use this one since it hides the mouse arrow and reduces it to a dot)

-Page Buffer Size: A pretty important one. Set this to 8. This way pages will be loading much quicker when going from one page to the next as they have been loaded into memory already.

Other options can ofcourse be use as desired.

-Mouse Control

-I like to put the Single click action for the Left Button on Next or Previous.
That way you can go forward by clicking once on the right half of a page and backwards by clicking once on the left side of a page.


These settings will make using the program for reading our magazines a bit (or a lot) better.
But there are a couple more options one can use to improve the enjoyment of the software.


By pressing "W" you go from the regular "windowed mode" into the full screen mode.
Which is a much nicer way to read through a magazine, as you don't have anything else cluttering up the screen.

Pressing "F1" will bring up a manual which explains just about everything you can do with CDisplay.

Pressing "P" will bring up the thumbnail page from where you can simply click desired page and it will instantly load. (The loading of the thumbnail page may take a while)

Chances are if you like Retromags you are into Emulation also, So we have a section set up for users to keep each other informed of emulation news. The Front Page News section is unique in that any thing that is posted in that section will show up on the Retromags Portal page as a news item. Members looking to increase their post count will find that using the Front Page News section can help with this. Any posts made to this section will require the approval of an Admin or Moderator, but we are constantly monitoring this section. Retromags may prune older posts from this section every year, so be forewarned. Below I will list some of the more common places to find out about emulation news to post on Retromags.


Emulation Websites:

http://www.1emulation.com
http://www.emuhq.com/
http://www.emulation64.com/
http://www.ngemu.com/
http://www.zophar.net/

Please keep in mind that if you copy a news item from another website, that you provide a link to the site the emulator is from and not the site you got the news from. Below is an example for your reference.....

====================Example==========================

Commodore Amiga emulator




Download it from Here!