Archiving Tamatown

[hwd45]

Ah, it's ok. i found the wayback machine version anyway. Apparently, Bandai shut down Dream Town.

Well, yes, that's why a recreation was produced. The WayBack variant of Dream Town won't work due to the servers being taken down, but the revival will.

 

[Tacoburritotchi]

Yeah, but when I tried it, it just said:  Context3D not available! Possible reasons: wrong wmode or missing device support.

 

[hwd45]

Yeah, but when I tried it, it just said:  Context3D not available! Possible reasons: wrong wmode or missing device support.

That's likely not an issue of the revival, though, considering others have had it work with no complaints. The most likely issue, I would speculate, is that your device just doesn't support it. Regardless, that's something that should be taken up with the creator of the recreation rather than here.

 

[Tacoburritotchi]

Hm. I'm using a desktop, connected with a Raspberry Pi.

 

[Tacoburritotchi]

And it said the same thing with the wayback version, so i guess there's no surprise there.

 

[Tacoburritotchi]

Anyone know what this means? go to tamago-land.com

 

[hwd45]

In case anyone was wondering where I am with this, some life things came up which have taken a lot of my focus away from Tamagotchi research for the time being (it's nothing serious or negative, just some exciting research in a different field!)

That said, I did buy a whole bunch of equipment for checking out my old cache files for lost Tamatown files, so when I get around to using those I'll document my process.

And yes, the post about the V6/7 Tamatown will come at some point, I've not forgotten

Speak soon, Tama fans.

 

[SilicaAndPina]

Yeah, but when I tried it, it just said:  Context3D not available! Possible reasons: wrong wmode or missing device support.
Anyone know what this means? go to tamago-land.com

Basically, for some reason DreamTown uses Context3D (i think its a thing with the sterling engine thing. idk) ,

despite the name, "Context3D" has little to do with 3D graphics, its a wrapper around OpenGL ES. in ActionScript >-<

it was a feature added in Flash Player 11, make sure your using flash player 11 or higher lol

anyway, im not sure whats up with the Flash Player on Raspberry Pi but Some users have reported similar issues on Firefox for Ubuntu.

In completely different games, so probably not an issue with DreamTown ...

you could try the Adobe Flash Projector which is a standalone app provided by Adobe for running SWF files, just go "File > Open > "https://famita.ml/friends/prelauncher.swf?1.0.1.1776" 

the plus to using that is that it'll probably work after December 2020

 

[SilicaAndPina]

One obvious way to approach the matter is just to find people that actually saved some of the Tamatown files. Problem is, not only are these people already few and far between,

Mm what about Binary? he did a bunch of reversing tamatown stuff back in the day on TamaTalk (mainly how to request codes?)~

it seems likely he could have some files from TamaTown .. potentially?

 

[hwd45]

Mm what about Binary? he did a bunch of reversing tamatown stuff back in the day on TamaTalk (mainly how to request codes?)~

it seems likely he could have some files from TamaTown .. potentially?

I think I'd already sent Binary a message by the time I wrote that paragraph. He's not particularly easy to contact.

As I recall, he was around in a few old threads where people discussed how to download the character SWFs and I think some of the music too. To me, this would certainly suggest that there are some people out there who have some of the missing files saved to their old PCs, but I've not had any luck in actually locating or contacting any of these people.

 

[hwd45]

Hello everyone!

Today I've got a treat for you all, courtesy of Wolf Nanaki (a.k.a. OsuMesu21). Whilst digging through some of their files, they found a number of previously lost character swf files and location mp3s. This is a small step, but it's significant one, nonetheless!

I guess the next step is finding other dedicated fans who are still around and would have downloaded a bunch of the files at the time they were still accessible? Though I can't see it as particularly likely that too many more people would still have these files, even if they did download them at the time.

You can download the files here.

In the zip you'll find two directories - a V3 directory and a V5 directory, corresponding to the V3 Tamatown and the V5 Tama & Earth EXPO respectively. The V3 directory is additionally split up into two subdirectories, one for mp3 files and another for swf files.

V3/4

• Quite a lot of character files!
  
  
  bill.swf
  
• billotchi.swf
  
• bunbuntchi.swf
  
• chomametchi.swf
  
• decotchi.swf
  
• hashizoutchi.swf
  
• kuchitamatchi.swf
  
• kurokotchi.swf
  
• megatchi.swf
  
• mimiyoritchi.swf
  
• nyatchi.swf
  
• pipotchi.swf
  
• sekitoritchi.swf
  
• tamatchi.swf
  
• teketchi.swf
  
• tsunotchi.swf
  
• warusotchi.swf
  
• wooltchi.swf
  
• nazotchi.swf
  

[*]A couple of location mp3s! These would have been used in the Tamagotchi School and the Town Hall respectively. It's a shame that the travel centre mp3 is still lost, though, that one was my favourite.

• 
  
  school.mp3
  
• townhall.mp3
  

V5

• Four character swfs are included:
  
  
  r29.swf (Magictchi)
  
• r32.swf (Prince Tamahiko)
  
• r51.swf (Jeweltchi)
  
• r53.swf (Nazotchi, would have been used by guests on the website)
  

If you're aware of the status of Macromedia Flash, you may know that it won't be long before many browsers will be dropping support for it. Future incarnations of Tamatown - or recreations thereof - will need to use something other than Flash. Regardless, for the sake of data preservation, ensuring these files are publicly available would be a good idea, even if there's not much use one can get out of them alone. Though, that said, in the scenario where the rest of Tamatown is also recovered, these files would be vital. On top of that, if you've got a Flash decompiler like JPEXS, you can use it to obtain high quality images of the characters corresponding to each of the files, which is something Wolf Nanaki has done to enhance some of the character art on the wiki.

Thanks again to Wolf Nanaki for digging up these files!

Until next time, everyone!

 

[hwd45]

Also, a brief update because this has been on my mind for a bit. This topic alone is useful in providing insight into what's still lost, but I do intend on making more comprehensive documentation soon so that it's very clear how the site was structured when it was up and running. I'll be packaging the recovered files into ZIP files with a README detailing instructions on the directory structure the site used so that Flash Player emulators such as Ruffle will be compatible with Tamatown.

Slightly longer-term, emulating the bits of the site that we have using the web archive's Ruffle implementation - or alternative solutions - will allow the game to be preserved beyond 2020 and in the future new versions can replace this one, should any of the other flash files be recovered.

This is not a piece of history I want to become lost or obscured

 

[hwd45]

Another brief update - I've begun work on a site specifically dedicated to documenting all of what is currently archived of Tamatown. I've got an early version ready to view for those that want to see it, but I'll hold off from posting it publicly until it's a bit more fleshed out. I'm hoping that, by raising awareness on what's currently lost, we have a greater chance of recovering it!

 

[KareliaTheTama]

Hi, just wanted to say excellent job and you're doing God's work out here. Best of luck.

 

[hwd45]

Hi all,

This is just going to be a brief update because naturally I don't really have any newly recovered files or anything like that to show just yet (working on it!)

What I am attempting to do, however, is spread some awareness about how some of these files may be recovered. I think, potentially, there's a lot of people out there that could put their old PCs to use and recover some of the lost files, but I think every time I mention this it slips by most people with few attempting it themselves. Casting a wider net and informing more people of what is lost (and also that the site is lost at all, as many old users may not know this!) seemed like the best approach.

I should probably state in advance that this is yet to have led to any new findings, and I don't think many people have really taken any of my spread awareness as an opportunity to try out any of the methods I proposed themselves, but maybe it's just a matter of time and continual raising awareness that will get us there. I've considered making a YouTube video on the topic too, which would hopefully spread awareness further, but that'll take longer to prepare.

Anyway - I've taken two steps to help better document the history of Tamatown and give it some more attention, and I'll start with the latter:

The Twitter thread
When I first joined Twitter about 10 years ago, a tweet getting about 50 favourites was usually a fairly big deal. Nowadays you can tweet just about anything and within moments it'll be at 10 likes and 2 retweets - and if you tweet about something people actually care about - or better yet, a whole thread about something people care about - then you're bound to cause quite a wide range of people to see your content.

A few days back, I wrote a long long loooong thread on Twitter about the current state of Tamatown with the hope that it would end up with the right people or motivate more people to check their old PC caches. As of yet, no luck, but the thread did get roughly 150 retweets before slowing down. As for how many people saw it, if the analytics are to be believed...

Apparently, quite a few. I can never remember what the link policy is here, but if you want to read the thread and learn a bit of Tamatown history (and perhaps help spread awareness), I've embedded the thread below:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1422525217486872592

At the end of the thread I announced something I've been working on for a month or so:

MameMame Library
The documentation surrounding what Tamatown files are lost has always been a little bit rubbish - I even made mistakes in my initial post in this thread. The spreadsheet I was maintaining is perhaps not the friendliest or easiest to access source of documentation, so I decided to make a website to keep up-to-date info about the preserved (and lost) Tamatown files, as well as what each file did:

https://mamemamelibrary.crd.co/

There's still a lot to fill in (eventually I'll get around to those Music City files!), but as it is this really helps illustrate just how much is left to find. I've tried to spend time getting feedback from people to make sure it's as accessible as possible, and there's FAQ and help pages for anyone that wants to learn more about Tamatown or how we can attempt to recover some of the lost files.

Looking forward to seeing what people think of the site, but the most important thing is that this will help keep a much more public-facing form of documentation for Tamatown's lost files!

Until next time!

---

Off topic: apparently I've been on this site 14 years now, that definitely doesn't make me feel old at all

 

[Penguin-keeper]

I think, potentially, there's a lot of people out there that could put their old PCs to use and recover some of the lost files, but I think every time I mention this it slips by most people with few attempting it themselves.

I always feel kind of helpless every time that I see these call-outs - I never used the site myself due to not getting along with the Connexion line so I have no machines potentially housing any of the lost data, and having been both an x86-64 and ARM Linux user over the course of many, many, many years, the Flash-free web has been a reality for me for around a decade, so I couldn't have used it even if I'd wanted to!