kitsunebi

Although I'd like to think that Bond is too cool to use an adjustable-strap hook-on bowtie.  Surely he uses a real bowtie tied from scratch every time.

I guess the unauthorized guide couldn't get Bond's actual bowtie and had to settle for a picture of junior agent Poindexter's bowtie and bottom-shelf gin martini.

GREAT SCOTT!!!

It's an unauthorized guide with cover art that actually evokes the game it covers!!

Blame Future.  The USA version of PC Gamer as published by Imagine and its predecessors (Game Player's PC Strategy Guide, Game Player's PC Entertainment) were all excellent.  Then, in 2002, Future bought out Imagine (Future being the company that published PC Gamer in the UK.)  The UK mag was never as good, so this didn't promise good things to come, but for a while at least, the USA version retained it's own separate identity.  Eventually, though, the UK side of Future took more and more control until the mag became what it is today -  a 1:1 copy of the UK mag.

So if you want good issues of PC Gamer, just make sure they were published by Imagine.  And don't forget about its precursor mags, either.

3 hours ago, GamesAreGood said:

Is it me, or is there something wrong with the file? I tried opening it in Comical, and the file doesn't seem to register.

Looks like it's just you.  Or maybe your reader.  I have CDisplay and Mcomix and it opens fine in both.

So there are two "official" strategy guides for this game?  I thought that was...impossible?

1 hour ago, MigJmz said:

Also its very pixly-blocky around the text on yours but if thats what we want to do then fine.

LOL what are you talking about?  Do you mean if you zoom in 1000% to look at the individual pixels?   It's not "my version," and it wasn't sabotaged in any way, it's simply the file you uploaded dropped down to around 300ppi, which is as large as any magazine file needs to be (and, I might add, still larger than 95% of the files currently available at Retromags).

Anything at any size will look pixelly if you zoom in far enough...because the image is literally composed entirely of square pixels.  But we don't have any reason to care about that.  What we're concerned with is the quality of the file as pertains to reading.  At any zoom level where pixels can be seen, the mag is unreadable, so it doesn't matter what it looks like.

Here's part of a page from this file at 5000px:

Here's that same part of the page at 3200px:

Both are of identical quality at any kind of reading-level zoom. Feel free to open them in new windows to see them slightly larger than our forums will display. (And to be honest, both are probably easier to read than the actual printed page, since Japanese mags use very small fonts.)

No matter how high the resolution of someone's display is, there will never be a need to zoom in further than a normal reading distance.  So we do not edit our files under the assumption that anyone will EVER read the magazine with just a few words on screen at a time like this:

It matters because the rule is in place to prevent unnecessarily large files from being uploaded, regardless of their individual size.  Just like our gallery.

One gallery image at 600ppi might only be 10 MB.  Not so big.  But still unnecessarily huge, and those things add up. 

Our official rules still state "2200 px high" but as you know, I've been pushing to allow for 300 ppi uploads.  But a 300ppi A4 magazine will only be around 3000-3200 px high.

It has been discussed and Phillyman has explicitly stated that 600ppi scans are not allowed to be uploaded here.  And he's the one who has to pay for the storage and servers.  If he posts something indicating that 5000px uploads are allowed, then of course that would be fine, but I wouldn't get your hopes up.

As I said, 5000 px is not allowed here.  You can upload it to the Internet Archive if you like.

Don't or I'll have to replace it again.

Sorry, not corrected, per se, but resized.  It's been discussed with Phillyman.  A height of 5000 px isn't allowed here.  I resized it to 3200 which is about 300 ppi.

Also, it was saved at quality level 12, which actually increases filesize without adding to quality.  Never save above 9.

These are Phillyman's directives.  Just making sure they're followed.

The corrected file is currently uploaded.

If you have the 210 MB file, you may want to download the new copy, which is only 37.4 MB and looks the same.

From 250 MB to 25 MB.   And it looks the same.  Thanks for taking care of this one.

1 hour ago, E-Day said:

Is that small screenshot on the cover not good enough? 

No, you're right.  One small screenshot is all you really need to make a totally relevant cover.

Here's another Sonic guide I might scan some day.

Apparently they felt there was no need to have the cover artwork even tangentially related to the game.  I get that it's an unauthorized guide, but...

Removed the hyphen from the title so that this sorts correctly

Also, removed the "donated by" status.  You can't be the donator of your own scans.  Although, really, that sort of IS what we're doing when we trash our own mags for the sake of scanning them for everyone else's benefit...

14 minutes ago, MigJmz said:

His other egm scans have these tears visible too, I wish he ran them by me first. He obviously doesn't know how to fix these simple mistakes so he might need a editor before releasing them (me). 

What exactly is his title? Content contributor? Why does he have upload powers.

The entire mag can be fixed in under 10 minutes.  He doesn't need an editor - he's already done the hard part of (mostly) cropping and straightening, so someone swooping in and taking the editor credit for doing a little bit of touch up work isn't really fair or necessary.  The edits simply aren't complete, that's all, so what he really needs is some advice.

@hardcorehubz - if you're using Photoshop, please familarize yourself with two tools - the "content aware fill" tool and the clone stamp.  These two tools are all you need to get your current scans in Retromags-worthy condition.  The content aware fill tool is the most valuable tool in Photoshop.  You can select an area using a rectangular box, or else by drawing a freeform loop around the damaged area.  Then use the content aware fill tool and presto - the tear is gone, replaced by what looks indistinguishable from the background.  And if the tear is over a particularly busy part of the picture (such as text), you can always use the clone stamp to try to have a more direct hand in reconstructing the missing or obscured part of the page.

If you're using a free software like GIMP, no worries - there are content aware fill add-ons that can be downloaded and installed for free.

Since pretty much all of your problems are on the gutter side of the page (due to debinding), I'd be surprised if the content aware fill tool couldn't quickly fix ALL of your problems in a very short time.

Here's another tip: after editing a mag, always view the entire thing in two-page mode, making sure that facing pages are displayed together - this makes seeing editing flaws along the gutter side of the page readily obvious.

3 hours ago, MigJmz said:

You should let me edit these before you release them. I can get rid of the rip marks on the sides rather quickly or  at least take a day or 2 to finish.

Actually, that's something the editor themselves is supposed to do before releasing them here.  Our releases should not have any visible damage from creases, tears, or any other flaws caused by debinding.  It's one of the things that sets our Photoshopped releases apart from the Internet Archive's plethora of raw unedited scans.

EDIT: I just took a look at this file, and it has not been properly edited to meet Retromags standards in its current state.  It would not have been approved if submitted by a first-time uploader until further revisions were made.  Too many pages show evidence of debinding and need to be cleaned up in Photoshop or another photo-editing software. As Migjmz points out, those adjustments are relatively easy (content aware fill tool!!) but they should have been made before this was uploaded here.

This file was blocked to non-registered members before, but is now available to be downloaded by everyone.

Anyone lucky enough to grab the black void variant should definitely hold on it it - it's a SUPER RARE collector's item now!

Like I said, I took one look at the scan and said "nope, waste of time."  Just not a good scan at all for "making pretty."  I'm willing to put in lots of time fixing a mag in editing when the problems are due to the mag itself being damaged.  But when the problems are just because it wasn't scanned well, I'm inclined to just leave it alone and wait for a better scan.  But you worked some magic with this one.  It would be almost impossible to make it perfect, but it looks pretty damn good, especially considering what it looked like before being edited.

Checked it out, and although there is still warping here and there, a lot of it got straightened out.  What a pain in the ass that must have been!  Good work, MigJmz!

I haven't downloaded this yet, but is this from the same scan that's on the Internet Archive?  How in the world did you compensate for the wavy lines on all the pages?  I don't know if the entire mag had water damage or just wasn't laid flat when it was scanned, but the pages on the archive.org version looked almost unfixable to me, they were warped in so many places.

Also...how can the scanner also be the donator?

At least it wasn't the first word you typed.

5 hours ago, Areala said:

Well, you know that Jim. He's gotta get his name in there everywhere...

Jim isn't the problem.  It's Jimi that's causing trouble.

This right here is what I'm talking about.  Not only is @Cryomancer not able to receive a single thanks for donating these EGMs, but the poor guy doesn't even get his ghost status lifted.

Want more people participating in the site?  How about making them feel their participation is appreciated?  You'll catch more flies with honey than with a stone cold refusal to acknowledge their existence. 

Maybe no one else cares, but THANK YOU CRYOMANCER!  (and E-Day, of course).