12:23 AM 04/03/2003 GMT Don't wanna be too grumpy, but to save us all time: No, I won't add GBA ROMs. The GBA is still on the market; Nintendo pay the rent with the thing. Also, from a practical standpoint if you don't buy that, GBA ROM sites go down like flies. Unless you like the idea of the Cult going down, then stop asking for GBA ROMs.

I know the mailing list is full. Anyone know a good place to get a mailing list without a cap on membership numbers? Bravenet's topped out at 500.

Stop emailing me about not being able to get Star Ocean/Far East of Eden Zero/Street Fighter Alpha 2 working - I'll add clearer, hopefully idiot-proof instructions soon.

I'll update when I feel like it.

N64 ROMs will go up when I've worked out a way of providing tens of thousands of users per day enough bandwidth to download 10-60MB files. I've realised that really, leeching is actually not the major problem, but rather one aspect of a larger issue: bandwidth. The site is currently hosted off a free ISP's webspace, believe it or not, a situation I'm not too happy about. Sure, so it's quite fast, and rather reliable these days, but even now, it'd be easy enough to take down. What I'd like is a setup whereby multitudes of users host mirrors of the Cult off DSL/cable/T1/Tx/OCx connections - that way, only mirrors would ever go down - poke around for a while on trusty ol' Google and you'd find plenty of other people hosting the site. The problem is this: 6,000 unique visitors a day

Typical SNES ROM size (zipped):

1MB Okay, so let's say the average user downloads three ROMs on a day that they visit. Sure, there are a few people who go through the whole list downloading everything, but I'm guessing most of you are probably downloading 1-5 or so on one visit. 6,000 x 1MB x 3 = 18,000MB = 18GB That's DAILY bandwidth consumption. For reference, a modem capable of uploading at 256 kilobits a second can output 2.7GB a day. As such, to use broadband connections as mirrors, I'd need quite a serious number of mirrors. Contact me if you're willing and have a suitable connection... Think about this, though. Given enough mirrors, this site could literally live as long as the internet. I'm considering zipping the whole Cult and distributing it freely, to maximise the number of people downloading it and hopefully hosting it. Oh, and that estimate of 18GB/day is without N64 ROMs. Given the rarity of N64 ROMs, that 6,000 unique visitors a day could hit... hell, I don't even know. Maybe 30,000 a day. 50,000. Over time, 100,000 even. It'd go through the roof - not to forget that the average N64 ROM size is closer to 18MB than 1MB, and... erm, how does 1.06 terrabytes a day sound (assuming two N64 ROMs at 18MB each, with 30,000 unique visitors a day)? Um, anyone? :P I'll add a proper update (as in the kind with content added) soon. Got a fair bit in the works. 04:29 24/11/2002 GMT Yay! Finished building my new computer, and miraculously, it actually works. It's quite powerful, too. Much to my surprise, I actually managed a three-way Redhat 8/Windows 2000/Windows Me boot, too... so overall, I'm rather chuffed computer-wise... :) Anyway, this new computer means I can finally put an update together. As promised, Bahamut Lagoon is available in English. Due to some whiny guy emailing me, I've made an attempt at replacing the German version of FFVI with a better translation. Since I don't speak German, I went by the logic of going for the translation which had a version of 1.01 (shows a little dedication to the project, no?), a funky custom font, and a pretty homepage... anyway, Deutschland rejoice, with any luck the FFVI front is looking a bit better now. Also as promised/warned, I've added a political section. This represents my desire to broaden the scope of the Cult. I feel like I've pretty much done everything that can be done in terms of SNES ROMs and reviews, so I'm interested in taking the Cult in new directions. Please drop me a line and tell me what you make of it all. Something strange has been happening in my Lycos Mail account. I keep getting emails with strange subject titles (some common titles are "OnClick", "OnMouseOver" etc etc, but not all are Javascript-related), with no attachments and yet with a size of around 120-128kB, which upon opening, redirect me to the invalid URL 'cid:xxxx', where xxxx is a seemingly random alphanumeric combination of roughly 10 characters. Any LM users here with suggestions, or in fact, anybody with any ideas as to what the hell is going on there...? I've been through my contact section and taken out all the things that I don't really want any more. I've also been through the links section, which was pretty disheartening, given how many ROM sites have gone down. I've put up a few new links though. Oh, and a bit of an appeal to you all to make... I'll cut to the chase. I have a GB of N64 ROMs ready to upload, and there's only one thing stopping me from doing so immediately. Leeching. Various websites are leeching off me already, and I dread to think of the scale of the problem were I to put up N64 ROMs right now, with no measures to stop leeching. The obvious way to stop it is various scripts such as disabled right-clicking and so forth, but the more effective such means become, the more irritating they become for the user. What I'd like to do is to have a .htaccess file in a subdirectory along with the ROMs, stopping download links working from any server other than the Cult's. Unfortunately (this might be hard to believe, but...), the Cult is actually on a free server, and they don't allow the use of .htaccess and the like. So my appeal is two-fold: first, can anyone think of alternate means to stop hotlinking that are not an irritation to people using the site normally, and secondly, is anyone out there willing to host the Cult? Free, that is... :) If any of you have a server that's on 24/7 with a seriously fast connection (the Cult currently gets 5,000-10,000 front page hits a day - factor in N64 ROMs and within months my conservative estimate is five times that figure, possibly ten), then I'd like to hear from you. I've had a few offers before, but it's always come to nothing so far. HELP! :P And yeah, you read that right. A gigabyte of N64 ROMs. 82 of 'em to be precise. That damn 'under construction' sign has been killed off. It only took me a little over three years to decide that the site had come to a satisfactory level of completion to warrant the removal of the sign. The Vortex review is now done, albeit badly, in my opinion.

Cult poll How many SNES ROMs do you typically download per day that you visit the Cult?



None - I'm here for the reviews/other content

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10+



The music on the front page...



I'm not fussed one way or the other

Love it - don't you dare get rid

Get out a pair of pliers and a blowtorch - for it must die

but I'd survive the loss

I dislike it but don't mind if it stays really







View Results