Prior to 2007 old news was often deleted. Although there's a few gaps, this news archive has been restored for posterity from backups at archive.org.
November 18, 2007
It's time to bring this site up to code. HTML code, that is. A lot has changed in the ten years this site has been around and believe it or not, Vimm's Lair was originally designed with Netscape 2 compatibility in mind! HTML has evolved quite a bit since then and the site has never followed a set standard, so it seems like a good learning exercise to make everything HTML 4.01 compliant. This means that any browser that follows the HTML 4.01 standard will display the site correctly. If done right you should notice... nothing at all! Exciting, huh?
On a related note, this update is taking place on a new server. While it's not any faster than the old one, it can hold more memory and has much fewer miles on it. The Vimm's Lair server has been chugging away 24/7 for about 8 years now and it's only a matter of time until its hard drive gives out. So, to prevent this a copy of Vimm's Lair has been made on another server and the HTML compliance is being worked on there. Along the way a few minor tweaks are being made, but for the most part everything will look the same. Once it's finished the servers will be swapped and it should be good to go for many years to come.
In other news, work on improving the Genesis Vault is proceeding nicely and every game is getting an updated screen shot and stats. Any duplicate or mislabeled games are being corrected, though there does appear to be a few holes. Any missing games will be filled in once the entire Vault has been updated. |
July 26, 2007
| There's a couple items worth reporting today. First up, the Emulation Lair has been updated with all of the latest emulator releases. Looks like May was a busy month! A new Genesis emulator has been added too, and with it the Genesis Vault has reopened! Enjoy! |
February 3, 2007
| Well, it turns out Vimm's Lair won't have to close after all. A new way was found to keep Vimm's Lair online for another year and it's twice as fast to boot. While the server was down it got a small hardware upgrade and a fresh coat of software, but unfortunately it broke pdf generation so pdf manuals won't be available for a while. On the bright side the site now has bandwidth to spare and it'll surely be put to good use soon. |
January 1, 2007
| Happy New Year! This year marks the 10th anniversary of Vimm's Lair, though the exact date the site was started is unknown. To start off the year the Emulation Lair has been updated with new releases of Nestopia and ZSNES. In other news the site has been having a bit of trouble staying up lately due to some server errors. It may not be worth fixing the problem though since Vimm just got a new Lair and can't take bring the virtual one along this time. So, unless Vimm's Lair can find a new home it's likely it will close for good near the end of the month. This may not be the best way to celebrate the 10th anniversary but it's been a great 10 years! A big thank you to all the millions of people who have visited over the years to make this site a success! |
May 15, 2006
| A couple emulators have been updated and a new one has been added called uberNES. Also, a new version of the Manual Viewer is available that fixes a couple minor bugs. One caused the print icon to always be disabled and another one caused images to not center properly when zooming in. And finally, the Genesis section of The Vault has been closed for now. The section was only opened due to the resource donations of an individual and they are no longer able to provide those resources, so the section has been closed. |
April 2, 2006
| Whoops! Another bug which was reported on the Message Board has been fixed. Internet Explorer users with Windows XP SP2 were getting the "click here to download" message like everyone else, but for them it wouldn't download. The error has been corrected and should now work for all IE browsers again. |
March 28, 2006
| Manual downloads are back up again since they had been left down since last week. A bug which caused files to download without an extension has been fixed, and the FFA Links are finally accepting new posts after it has been broken for quite a while now. |
March 21, 2006
| There was a little mix-up where a server payment expired and failed to automatically renew, however the portions of the site that were affected are back up again. Thanks everybody who posted or wrote in about it. The whole site will be moving in about two months and there will undoubtedly be some downtime, so it seems silly to go to all the trouble of setting up another one for just two months. So, until then the download queue will have to return to keep the server from getting swamped. The queue has been revamped internally and was activated during a short downtime this afternoon. The old system had grown to become quite a beast that was scary to touch so hopefully it'll be easier to make changes now without breaking things. At this moment the server's full and there's already 20 people in line, so everything appears to be running smoothly. |
December 11, 2005
A new zoom option was added to all online manuals last weekend and seems to be working well. On the lower right corner of each manual the resolution of the image is shown in dpi (dots per inch) and it can be resized by changing that value from as low as 50 to as high as the page was scanned at (provided the contributor set the correct scanning resolution). So now people with smaller monitors or slower connections can view smaller images while people with larger monitors and/or faster connections can view larger images. This also works with downloadable manuals though the layout of The Manual Project will probably have to be changed a bit to accommodate it. There's only so much data you can cram into one line and a resolution selector would need another chunk, so all manual details will likely be split off on to a separate page much like how The Vault currently works. Also, there was a bug preventing many manuals from being viewed past page one which has been fixed.
The new changes to The Manual Project are complete. The old column for downloading vlm's / pdf's now shows the max resolution instead, and clicking on the manuals' title now leads to a details page instead of loading the online viewer. From there the online viewer can be opened and the manual can also be downloaded at the chosen resolution. If anyone has any problems with the new system, please report them on the Message Board. |
December 1, 2005
Another update to Nestopia (1.23) has been posted to the Emulation Lair. Also, a new release of Jnes (0.6) from June that was never posted has been added as well. And finally, since two of the NES emulators were several years old and likely will never be updated again they've been removed to reduce clutter and make choices easier for newcomers.
After a long time of waiting some new viewing options should be appearing this weekend in The Manual Project. Currently all manuals are scaled down to a specific size to fit more easily on a standard monitor, however while that's fine for many people others may want to see the images as large and as detailed as possible. Besides, the standard monitor has gotten a bit bigger since The Manual Project started and 800 x 600 is no longer the norm. On the other hand, making the images larger makes them take longer to download too. Of course, some people might prefer small downloads while others don't care and prefer large ones. So since everyone is sure to have different tastes (and monitors), why not let you decide? Starting soon, visitors will be able to select their viewing resolution for both online and downloadable manuals. Some image cleanup has been added as well to make all manuals more readable at different sizes and it's already being applied to existing manuals. When compared side-by-side there is a noticeable improvement! So for everyone who has asked why there's a resolution field when they contribute a manual (a very common question), you're about to find out. |
November 18, 2005
| After two years of silence a new version of Nestopia has been released and added to the Emulation Lair. Version 1.21 sports numerous improvements and is really looking great. Also, the server was upgraded to the new SQL Server 2005 over the weekend. The downtime was very short and everything seems to be running smoothly. |
July 29, 2005
| A new set of Message Boards have been opened up to replace the old ones that have been used for around five years now. The new boards currently mimic the old ones in nearly every way, and while it's not completely finished yet they should be fully functional. Sure, a pre-packaged board could be used like pretty much every other site out there, but where's the fun in that? It's so un-original! All registrations from the old board have been moved over, and the new board will be merged with The Manual Project so that people won't have to register twice to use both. |
July 19, 2005
Many new additions are flowing in lately for The Manual Project. As requested, pdf support has been added to the upload scripts so that pdf files may now be uploaded as well. Currently the entire archive is being reviewed for accuracy and most sections have been completed. Part of that review process is cataloging the origin of each manual where possible. Since the contributor of the scans and the creator of those scans are not necessarily the same person they have now been split into two categories. Vimm's Lair has always acknowledged the contributions of each and every person who has invested their time and effort in the project, however there are some who would rather erase such knowledge. Vimm's Lair will never do such a thing and will always make the highest effort to record the proper sources who have made this project possible. After all, without the dedication of all these people where would we be? The entire archive is being meticulously scanned for accuracy and it is nearly complete, so if there are any mistakes please feel free to report them. For example, all of the Lynx manuals snuck into the PS2 section and have been removed.
There was another change made to the download system in further preparation for a new feature that's almost ready. Apologies to all the people who were trying to download while the bugs were being worked out, but they all have hopefully been found now. The status page before a download starts should be a little more informative now and the manuals themselves should generate a little bit faster. |
July 1, 2005
A lone router managed to get zapped in a recent storm despite being connected to a surge protector with other devices, and as a result the site was down for two days until a replacement arrived.
While the site was down all downloads in The Manual Project were changed to be dynamically generated. Since the manual is created when someone clicks the download button it will take a bit longer for the download to start, however this also adds much more flexibility now and in the future. This also corrects an issue with most NES and SNES vlm manuals printing at incorrect sizes, as well as many other manuals.
Also, being the first of the month Vimm's Rant has been introduced on the main page. This could be a one-time thing or a regular (monthly?) event, and it'll most likely be decided based on feedback. |
June 20, 2005
| Slowly but surely the new Manual Project seems to be coming together. No new bugs have been reported recently and several new manuals have been added from multiple contributors, so hopefully things are running smoothly now. One bug that was reported regarding the broken Message Board registration has been fixed. |
May 19, 2005
| The manual contribution section has gotten off to a rocky start, mostly due to errors. Several people have expressed interest in contributing but some silly server side errors have prevented their manuals from being processed correctly. A couple people have been providing feedback to help correct the lingering problems and more data is being recorded with each submission to try to identify the remaining bugs. Suggestions for how to improve the process or new features to add are more than welcome. |
April 18, 2005
| The manual contribution system is now live! This new system allows anyone to contribute to The Manual Project via a fully automated process. There will never be any waiting for an administrator to post a submission or wade through a backlog of submissions. Once a manual is uploaded it is posted instantly! So, if you have some manuals laying around and you've ever thought about contributing to The Manual Project, head on over and give it a try! |
April 14, 2005
There was an error in the new shopping cart where the cart would be emptied if you use Internet Explorer and try to calculate shipping for the first time, though it seems to work fine each time after that. It works perfectly fine with Netscape / FireFox, but most people use IE and nobody wants to fill their cart twice so the old cart has been brought back until a fix can be found.
In other news, a radical new change is in store for The Manual Project. A new script was developed yesterday and tested today which allows for anyone to upload a manual and have it appear on the site instantly. Uploading a manual is a very simple process and a tutorial will be written so that anybody with a scanner and an internet connection can do it. The new manual submission pages are complete and ready for testing, and should be going live sometime this weekend.
Also, for those who have asked the game review submissions are working properly again. A few reviews that had been sitting in the queue since December have been cleaned out and everything seems to be working once again. Apologies to those who submitted a review only to get a blank page, it should not happen anymore. |
March 31, 2005
| The Genesis Vault had to be closed due to technical troubles but is back open now. GamerX has also responded that he is interested in maintaining it, so hopefully some new content will be coming soon. |
March 22, 2005
| This will probably come as a surprise to most but the Genesis Vault has returned. A few days ago Kanadian Hosting offered to donate some web hosting for the purpose of reviving the Genisis Vault. Coincidentally the creator of the Genesis section, gamerX, recently expressed an interest in working on it again. The original database and all the files were dusted off and everything's ready to go. Unfortunately the screen shots were not backed up so hopefully gamerX has a copy somewhere, but otherwise everything's ready to go so there's no reason not to open it now. So, after several years of slumber, the Genesis Vault is back! |
March 4, 2005
| A few problems with the new shopping cart have been found and fixed. Order numbers were not being generated properly which affected one order, and a bug stopping product images from loading was corrected. Also, PayPal orders will be redirected to the PayPal site in a new window so that the URL is visible during payment. With phishing scams getting so much of the spotlight lately it's clear this is necessary. Also, PS1 games have been added to the Vault Store. The opening selection is rather small and consists mostly of RPG's, and if it's popular it will probably expand in the future. |
March 2, 2005
A few things have happened over the past month worth mentioning.
- First up, operating costs for the site have been drastically reduced so more bandwidth has been purchased. There is now no speed cap for the NES section of the Vault and the number of download slots for the SNES section has been raised by 25%.
- Next, many new systems have been added to The Manual Project and the layout has been shifted around a tiny bit to make room for them. If it keeps gaining in popularity more download slots may be taken from the SNES Vault to keep download waits short.
- And finally, the new shopping cart for The Vault Store has gone live. It has been designed to mimic the old one with only a few modifications and there are a few things that still need tweaking, but it's fully functional and ready to work. It will likely evolve over time much like the site always has. All new orders will start with a "4" instead of a "3", and all previous orders have been assigned a new "4" order number. Order status can be checked using either number.
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February 4, 2005
A couple recent emulator releases have been posted to the Emulation Lair, including the latest RockNES and ZSNES. Also, Playstation manuals have been added to The Manual Project.
The download queue in The Vault seems to be working well. The problem people were reporting where trying to navigate in The Vault kicked them to the homepage seems to have been fixed, and a final download link has been added for people using Internet Explorer with Windows XP Service Pack 2, or anyone else who's download does not start automatically. A tweak has also been made to move the queue along faster by filling in empty download slots sooner. For the remainder of this week there is no limit on how many files can be downloaded which should make for a good stress test. |
January 13, 2005
The download queue redesign has been completed and should be running smoothly now. A new descriptive error message has also been added for the most common error regarding floating IP addresses. It looks like the only error left is from Windows XP SP2 users and a "click here to download" link should do the trick. The plan is to add the link to the final page so that an XP user (or anyone else) can click the link if their download does not start. The link will only be active for a short time, so it will probably take some testing and tweaking to find the right time.
Thank you everyone who has posted their problems on the Message Board. They've been a big help in finding things that were overlooked in the transition. |
January 7, 2005
| A redesign of the download queue for The Vault is in progress which will make it more firewall friendly and hopefully a way can be found to finally make it work with Windows XP SP2 (thanks, Microsoft). Currently all downloads have been moved to port 80 which makes the default firewall happy, however the download is still blocked and must be manually allowed, and after doing so the user gets dumped to the homepage. This issue is being addressed, however people using IE 6 in Windows XP SP2 with the default firewall should be warned that they'll have trouble downloading. As with any complex system some errors are bound to pop up, so please post any problems on the Message Board and give as much detail as possible. |
December 17, 2004
Whoops! During the maintenance overhaul last weekend a module that is needed for shipping calculations wasn't moved over which made it impossible to place an order all week. The error has been fixed and everything is running smoothly again.
For the future, a new shopping cart is in the works which better integrates the site inventory and PayPal as well. There's no hard estimate on when it will be ready though it currently has all the functionality of the current cart. It'll be run through lots of testing after the new features are added and will probably go live in January or February. If people like the new cart it may also be made available for free with limited functionality, or by subscription with full functionality. |
December 13, 2004
| Sorry for the sporadic downtime lately. The power supply of the main server lost its cooling fan and it went unnoticed. It gave out in one great pop of glory over the weekend. Luckily a spare was available and while the system was down it was given a complete maintenance overhaul which it desperately needed. Barring any more problems things should run much smoother from here on. |
October 24, 2004
| The Vimm's Lair Manual Viewer 2.13 has been released. New in this version is a zoom feature which can zoom in and out on an image as well as print at the zoomed size. A small addition has been made to the vlm format so that the manual will print at the appropriate zoom. The layout has also been touched up and tweaked a bit to look and function like the online version, include page jumping. |
October 16, 2004
Okay, maybe just a small update. The FFA Links page has been revamped to function like it did long ago. It was converted from PERL to PHP but was never quite finished and was kind of forgotten, and as a result it hasn't been nearly as popular. Full functionality has been restored along with a couple improvements, such as verifying that a link works before it's posted.
On a different note, the Vimm's Lair stance on donations changed a while ago but has never been noted anywhere. Previously there was a donation link on the contact info page, however now Vimm's Lair no longer accepts donations. The reasons why are addressed there, but the gist of it is that there are far more worthy causes than this site that could really use your money. While the sentiment is appreciated, there are far more deserving causes than videogames in the world, so if anyone's considering donating to this site please consider a local charity of some sort instead. They could surely put your money to far better use than this site ever could. |
October 9, 2004
Not much going on around here lately. The server has been taken out a couple times due to the hurricanes that have been rumbling by lately, but other than that things have been running smoothly. There's not really any plans to make any changes in the future, either. This site is pretty much complete and has far exceeded the goals it started with. Despite the fact that there have been no major additions to the site's content in years now, people still keep coming. So, the plan is to pretty much just keep things as they are. Any significant updates to the site will most likely just be code or content maintenance, so this news section is likely to continue to stay quiet for a while. There is a server move tentatively planned for sometime in November / December which will drastically cut costs, and the money that's saved may go into adding more bandwidth. It's still up in the air right now. When the server does move there will of course be a downtime, hopefully little more than an hour.
The Game Swap hasn't been progressing all that much. Much of it is partially or fully functional, but it still needs a lot of work. At this rate it won't be opening anytime soon, but there's not really any rush to finish it. There's also a new Manual Viewer build which includes a new zoom feature, however the prototype code doesn't seem to be merging with the release code resulting in one big bug that just won't seem to go away. The prototype works fine though, so it's just a matter of time to find out why it's code won't move over. |
July 12, 2004
| It looks like The Vault may remain open for a while longer after all. Many people sent in e-mails expressing their disappointment and while the timing was right some plans fell through, so since there's no particular reason to close The Vault now it may as well stay open. Work on the Game Swap is progressing, though it hasn't been much fun to code so it's progressing slowly. It's mostly a matter of tweaking existing code for a new purpose which isn't all that exciting work. Also, the monthly Top 10 lists in The Vault have returned. They were removed in February but have been tracking since March and are back up again. |
June 21, 2004
| Over the weekend it was decided that all downloads will be removed from The Vault permanently, so consider this advance notice. The exact timing hasn't been decided but it will likely be sometime during the next week or two. The Emulation Lair will be closed since it's no longer needed, and The Vault Store will most likely merge with The Vault. It would be a horrible waste to leave so much free space on the menu, so a new service is currently in development which will allow people to trade any videogame for any system anonymously and securely. Through this service you will be able trade any game for any system for about the same price as renting a game. The tentatively titled Game Swap should be going live over the next week or two. |
June 16, 2004
The Vimm's Lair Manual Viewer 2.12 was uploaded a few days ago. It's just a small update which allows the viewer to support images of any size, even within the same manual.
The online viewer has also received a similar update which makes it detect the size of the image being viewed and resize itself appropriately at all monitor resolutions. This update will work properly with all version of Netscape and Internet Explorer versions 4 and up.
A couple NES emulators have been updated recently, including FCE Ultra and the long silent Jnes. The latest versions have been added to the Emulation Lair.
And finally, The Manual Project has been expanded to include works from other sites. Manuals for the Atari 2600, 5200, 7800, Jaguar, Game Boy Advance, & Turbo Grafx 16 have been added. |
May 14, 2004
| The Vimm's Lair Manual Viewer 2.11 has been released today. The main change in this version is that images can finally be printed without those annoying lines. Hopefully it will print correctly on all printers as it has on the three test printers that were used. Another change is that menu and navigation items are now disabled (grayed out) whenever selecting them shouldn't do anything. This also removes the error which was generated if you tried to print before opening a manual. And finally, a small memory leak introduced in version 2.0 has been found and fixed. |
April 20, 2004
The download script seems to be functioning well and has been stable for weeks, so for the rest of the week all download limits will be lifted so everyone can download as many files as they want. Hopefully this won't over-stress the script like it did last time, and if it succeeds this test will last through Sunday.
The Manual Project has reached 400 manuals! Today marks the 400th manual to be scanned and uploaded to The Manual Project. To date The Manual Project contains 5657 individual pages of scanned images of both NES and SNES game manuals. Many thanks to all the people who have sent in their manuals over the years to help make this possible. |
April 17, 2004
| All manuals are now available in pdf format! This allows for manuals to be downloaded and opened anytime in Adobe Acrobat Reader, available at adobe.com. It also allows for manuals to (finally!) be printed as well as being viewable on non-Windows systems, such as Mac and Linux. All future manuals will be available in both vlm and pdf format. Someone has also been kind enough to make all manuals available in a single, downloadable file using a download program called BitTorrent. Head on over to The Manual Project to pick it up. |
April 2, 2004
| A new Manual Viewer has been released, though there's not really anything new in it yet. This version is designed for an updated manual format and is backwards compatible with version 2.0 manuals. All manuals on the site have been updated to the 2.1 format, so viewing any new manuals will require the Manual Viewer 2.1. An updated version with more features should be released soon once it's ready. New features include more user-friendly error messages, a fix for a tiny memory leak (oops), and an additional printing option that prints without lines but may not work with all printers. |
March 17, 2004
| It's alive! It's aliiiiiiiiiiive!! The download script is finally alive and kicking. It's taken a long time but the server and script have been relatively stable the past couple days and have been running full speed all day without any signs of jamming up during the day's heaviest traffic. For now it finally seems to be working correctly so it'll be left alone for a while to see how it fares. |
March 12, 2004
| Well, looks like the script is working fine. The problem seems to be the system it's on. Whatever the problem is it's causing the download script to randomly time out, and until the cause of the problem can be found there's not much that can be done. |
March 7, 2004
| Sorry about the crappy download script over the past few days. The download script just wasn't running as it was designed to and there's no clear reason why it wasn't working. It seems to be working at the moment with the latest tweaks so with luck it will continue to behave itself. |
March 2, 2004
| The database isn't able to handle the extra activity required to maintain the increasingly larger download queues so the test has been cancelled. Several methods for improving performance have been discovered, so perhaps the test will run again in the future. |
March 1, 2004
| This week only, there will be no limit on the number of files everyone may download. This is a test to see which way people like better, this way or the current way. Feel free to post any comments on the Message Board. |
February 9, 2004
| The culprit for the site's instability has been found. Turns out all the problems were being caused by the Access database used to implement the download queue. Access just isn't designed to handle this kind of traffic and this is a fine example of why. The data was transferred to a MySQL database and the server hasn't reported any errors in over 24 hours. Another error caused by some newly installed software has also been fixed, so everything seems to be running smoothly at the moment. |
February 8, 2004
| Some new software was installed on the server a couple days ago and things aren't running very well. It'll probably be a while before the server's completely stable again. |
February 3, 2004
| The random ASP error has been verified as being caused by this site and isolated from affecting the rest of the sites on the server. The downloading scripts are not in ASP and should not be affected by this. A newer version of those scripts was waiting to go live and was put on today. This version's a little more efficient and is accurate down to the second as to who is first in line. It's not uncommon for two people to enter the queue during the same second so they could potentially switch back in forth in line while they're waiting so that'll be fixed later if it ends up being an issue. |
February 2, 2004
| There seems to be an ASP error popping up on the server with little explanation as to what's causing it. Whatever the problem is, it causes the ASP service to restart and anyone who loads a page during that process gets an error message reading "The RPC server is unavailable". If this happens, simply refresh the page. During heavy traffic periods this is often occurring every few minutes. ASP is a pain to debug since literally any script on the server could be responsible for the problem. |
January 26, 2004
| Just a little status update today. Everything on the server's running fine and the download scripts are functioning perfectly. Over the past few days traffic has been above average and there have been zero complaints, which is unheard of around here. On the contrary, there was actually a compliment for a change! Unfortunately site traffic is on the rise and when the site gets heavy traffic people start complaining, so hopefully it'll dip back down this week. |
January 21, 2004
| The source of the intermittent ASP errors which shut down several parts of the site may have been found. A database which is very heavily used was being accessed on an old drive when it should have been moved to the new drive many months ago. All this time it has been slowly growing and chewing up massive amounts of resources whenever it's accessed. A simple compacting of the database brought it from over 5MB down to 450K and server performance has dramatically improved. Hopefully this was the cause of the problem so it shouldn't happen anymore. |
January 16, 2004
| A choice of shipping options is now being offered in the Vault Store. Orders weighing less than 16 ounces can now be shipped via First Class or Priority Mail. The extra cost associated with packaging and delivery confirmation for First Class mail is factored into the rate calculation. For orders consisting of one or two games First Class is cheaper than Priority Mail and takes roughly the same amount of time to be delivered. The store policy will be updated soon to reflect these changes. |
January 10, 2004
The download script has been made a little smarter. If one download queue is full and another is not full the script will borrow a download slot from the emptiest queue. For example, if people are waiting in line to download a manual but nobody is currently downloading a NES ROM, the script will borrow a slot from the NES ROM download queue to allow an additional person to download a manual. This should help balance the spurts of download traffic that is often seen and result in shorter lines when the server is not operating at capacity.
If that still doesn't make any sense, smarter script = shorter wait. |
January 9, 2004
| A bug in the download script which caused all downloads to be counted towards your daily count regardless of which section of the site you downloaded from has been fixed. For example if you downloaded a manual it was counted towards your SNES ROM quota as well so you would get an erroneous quota message. Also, the download speed for off-peak hours (1am - 11am) had been increased to 10K/sec since the server is rarely full during these hours. |
December 20, 2003
A new enhancement for downloading files has been activated today. Now if the server is full you should be placed into a queue to download your file and your status in line is updated every 30 seconds. Also, hitting the refresh button will do nothing but display an error and remove you from the line, so don't bother trying. There may still be some bugs to work out but for the moment this enhanced system seems to be working.
There was a bug where your place in line would appear to jump around when it really wasn't. This has been fixed and everything appears to be working. |
December 15, 2003
| As promised, everything is now up and running and all downloads are available once more. Everything went smoothly and was finished right on schedule. |
December 11, 2003
| Everything should be back to normal on Monday. The site will be down from approximately 8-12am EST and all files will be available again once it comes back up. Registration for the boards and FFA Link posts will be enabled the following Monday. |
November 26, 2003
| The server's internet connection is currently locked at its current speed so nothing can be done at the moment. Everyone's gone for the Thanksgiving holiday now so it's likely nothing can be done until Monday, and even then it could take several weeks to get the appropriate speed back. This is way too little bandwidth to support any downloads so they will be staying off-line until further notice. Since it's inevitable that people will post nasty messages, registration for the Message Boards been disabled and new FFA Links may not be posted. |
November 24, 2003
| Sorry for the slow speeds at the moment. The main server was moved on Sunday and the internet connection at the new location was setup at only 1/4 of the speed it's supposed to be. The ISP never bothered to mention this and currently has no explanation as to how or why it happened. In order to keep the site in a usable state all downloadable files have been taken offline until this is fixed. |
November 14, 2003
| New versions of FCE Ultra and Jnes have been released and added to the Emulation Lair. A NES new emulator, Nestopia, has also been added and it is quite good despite it's young age. |
October 6, 2003
| The SNES test seemed to go fairly well and after a few tweaks and balances to the script it will be left running with a cap of 5 simultaneous downloads for all of Vimm's Lair combined and 1 SNES ROM download per person per day. The 30 second retry seems to work pretty good, and a small error where ratings were being displayed out of order was corrected as well. Judging by the swift jump in traffic this seems to be what people want, so it'll stay that way for now. |
August 3, 2003
The Vimm's Lair Manual Viewer 2.0 has been released! If you have any feedback about the new version, please post it on the boards. Here's a list of what's new.
- Installation file is much smaller (1/3 as large as before)
- New version 2.0 manual format.
- Manuals are a little bit smaller.
- Sorry, the Manual Viewer 2.0 is not compatible with pre-2.0 manuals.
- Manuals load in the main window rather than opening a new window.
- All manuals are now printable.
- Printouts still have a grid of lines displayed over them due to using freeware image printing code. The full version prints without lines and would cost $100.
- Backwards compatibility may be added in the future if people want it, however 1.x manuals would still load in a new window and may or may not be printable.
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July 12, 2003
| The review system for The Vault has been tweaked a bit to be more user friendly. Now, whenever a review is approved or rejected an e-mail is automatically sent to the writer. If the review was rejected, comments for why it was rejected are included along with the original review for if the author wants to clean it up and re-submit it. |
June 22, 2003
| A few noticeable changes have been made to the site. First off, the FFA Links page is still down. The code was lost and it'll take a little while to make it from scratch again. A few people have pointed out some minor bugs on the boards and some of them have been cleaned up as well, and the rest should slowly be rounded up too. In the Vault Store, now only items currently in-stock are listed by default. The Vault is the place to find info about games so it seemed redundant to list every game in the Vault Store, though the option is still available. The store is still going strong and is really keeping the site going. On the server side, the inventory is now directly tied in with the order process so it's updated appropriately whenever an order is placed, shipped, or cancelled. An e-mail is also sent for every step of the order process. The invoice process for Vimm's Lair Hosting has been automated as well, with accounts being updated and invoices sent automatically. Usually behind the scenes stuff isn't posted in news updates, but this stuff really took a while to get working correctly and makes maintenance a whole lot easier. The inventory listing should be far more accurate from now on since human error has been eliminated. |
June 9, 2003
| All downloadable files have been restored except for manuals. Downloadable manuals may not be available for a while, but the on-line versions are always up. |
June 7, 2003
| The boards are back up, however all downloads will be off-line for a few days. |
June 4, 2003
| The FFA Links and Message Boards are down and will be down for several days, at least. Thanks everyone who wrote in about it. |
January 26, 2003
| All downloads in the Super Nintendo section have been removed. They will not return anytime in the foreseeable future. |
December 29, 2002
| Vimm's Lair Magic (magic.vimm.net) is now open for business. It can also be reached by clicking the "Magic" link in the menu. The site currently has cards for Onslaught, the latest set, for sale. If there seems to be enough interest in the site more sets will be added in the future. While Magic: The Gathering may not be emulation related, it does undoubtedly share some of the same audience. Any feedback about the new site is welcome and should be posted on the boards. |
November 26, 2002
| The shipping policy for the Vault Store has been modified. In an effort to supply more accurate shipping rates, shipping is now determined based on the estimated weight of the package and the zip code it is being sent to. This should result in more accurate (and hopefully lower) shipping rates for everyone. This now applies to both US and international rates. |
November 19, 2002
The purchasing interface for the Vault Store has been slightly re-designed. Now instead of using a drop box to select options, a series of checkboxes is displayed for each available option. Simply check off which options you'd like and click the "Add to cart" button. This new design is hopefully easier to read and understand. Also, manuals for a few games have been made available and may be purchased with or without their associated game by checking the manual option (if available). Manuals or boxes may be purchased individually by un-checking the "Game Cartridge" option and checking the "Manual" or "Box" option.
Games with manuals available now have the icon by them. Currently a dozen or so NES manuals are available, and more will be coming soon. |
November 12, 2002
The Manual Project is back in motion again. It turns out the scanner wasn't broken after all, so expect to see more manuals soon.
Also, a new version of snes9x has been released after over a year. The changes are too much to list here, and as always the latest version can be found in the Emulation Lair. |
November 1, 2002
| The Manual Project is temporarily on hold. The scanner used to scan the manuals is acting up and is very difficult to use at the moment. Until it can be fixed or replaced there will be very few, if any, new manual scans. |
October 23, 2002
| A few changes have been made to the Emulation Lair. It seems like all emulators are the same these days and which one to use is a matter of personal preference, so the ratings categories for each emulator have been removed. Also, it seems that Jnes is being sporadically updated so it has been added again. NNNesterJ has also been added in place of Nester as it is also being occasionally updated and is considerably better. The latest version of FCE Ultra (.81) has also been added. |
October 21, 2002
| Sorry about the random errors lately. There was a problem during the installation of some new security protocols on the server and it has taken a while to get everything back to normal again. Other than that, there really hasn't been anything newsworthy worth posting lately. There haven't been any major emulator releases in the past several months, and most of the time spent on this site has been working the store. People have asked to see some more manuals so more will be more coming sometime in the near future. There is still quite a backlog but all the addresses have been saved so everyone's manuals will be returned in the end. |
June 5, 2001
RockNESX v2.0 beta2 has been released. Here's what's new in this version.
- The battery save is FINALLY working;
- The GUI menu item File->Play Selected Rom has been fixed;
- Now RockNES X stores the roms list in a file (rocklist.dat), so it do not need to search for your 5000 roms every time the emu is started :)
- The way screenshots are named has changed. Now, the screenshots are automatically saved as romname 0.bmp, romname 1.bmp... romname N.bmp. It is not needed to change the slot to save different shots during the gameplay. Using the old system (slots), you could save up to 10 shots per game. Now this number has been increased to 2 billion :)
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