Deck Exchange Guidelines

[Programmer]

Hi Everyone,

I just made a couple of slight changes to the Guidelines document for the deck exchange. After the flurry of uploading to the exchange that we had a couple of weeks ago, things have now gone a bit quiet. This might just be co-incidence, but the slowdown happened after I uploaded the guidelines last weekend, so I thought I had better clarify things in case I have put anyone off uploading decks.

I suggested in the document that there should be a limit to the deck size of about two megs. I am worried that people might think this is because I am running out of disk space on the server or whatever. This really is not the case. In the future my Internet Service Provider will probably approach me about memory or bandwidth issues, but so far they haven't and I will worry about that when it happens.

If your deck is three or four megs, please don't let that stop you from uploading it. It is nice to have larger graphics and to be able to zoom in on an image. I just felt it was worth making people aware of the issue because the graphics on the Russian Playing Card Museum site are really quite big (six megs plus for the whole deck) and the program runs a bit slowly when you have a lot of cards out of the pack. With tools like Irfanview it is quite simple to optimise the file size for the program so we should take advantage.

I am very keen to promote the deck exchange and have it become a key incentive for people to register the program. I never actually referred to this directly (Dominatrix did obliquely in another post), and some people might not be aware of it, but thanks to some hackers there is a keygen available on the internet that lets people unlock version 5 of the program. This appeared a couple of months ago, just before I released version six. Unfortunately the affect on registrations has been dramatic - I have gone from about four a week down to about one every ten days, which is actually fewer than when I released version 1 of the program in 2002! Of course, when version 1 of the Orphalese Tarot came out there was not really any similar competition, but now I have to compete against my own version 5, which was really quite a good tarot program. My reason for promoting the deck exchange then is to get people interested in the Tarot Zone, the only part of the program that I can guarantee the security of. To get access to the Deck Exchange you have to be registered, and you have to pass through validation against my customer database each time you log in (this happens in the background, you wouldn't be aware of it). I know I probably shouldn't mention the keygen here but I think the cat is pretty much out of the bag by now. I feel it is more important to express my thoughts about this, to encourage people with the idea that by uploading decks they are supporting the program, as well as sharing the pleasure of a new deck with the rest of the group.

On the subject of the Deck Exchange Guidelines I made another slight change because I noticed something about zip files. If you are using Windows XP it actually is possible to preview the internal structure of a zip file by selecting it Explorer in the left hand pane. The contents of the zip file, including sub-folder, appears in the right-hand file pane.

Cheers!

Richard

[Aurora]

Dear Richard:

I`m sorry for all this story. Your program is so good that I cannot imagine someone using it and not buying it, as a gesture of appreciation to your creativity and the constant improvements you make to the program.

Love,
Aurora

[pteb]

Hi
I am very sorry to hear about the pirating of your programm because you sell it at a very resonable price. I will try to become more active on the site in the hope that more people will follow my example and the increased activity will make people consider buying the orphalese tarot in order to gain access to it.
Pteb

[Dominatrix]

I must say Programmer and I have discussed the subject in the past, and I agree with the guidelines shown. That's why Richard emptied the Deck section at the Orphalese Web, and also for most of my decks appearing only at the TZ.

I'm starting to think that, once Russian frenzy is over (I always said that WWPCM decks were too big), we must try to design new decks, and also scan the highlight of our collections in order to share it on Deck Exchange. Of course, I will be glad to add icons, wallpapers and special files related with Orphalese too. So, as Marvin did, if someone has an idea or suggestion for new items, please share it. Best.

[Programmer]

Hi Everyone,

First of all, thanks everyone for being willing to help and by contributing to the OTZ community. It is very encouraging, and I am no longer feeling quite as despondent as I did the other day.

I have been giving quite a bit of thought to what is going wrong with marketing the program, and the other issues I raised the other day. I think my main problem (apart from not having a clue about marketing) is that I put too much energy into adding new features to the program, and not enough time consolidating what is there. Aurora pointed out to me that the main Orphalese website gives bad errors when viewed with her Mozilla browser. I had tested it with IE, Netscape and the latest version of Firefox, but not with any other browsers. This is the kind of thing I need to look at and tighten up. Also, I am pondering whether some people cannot get the program to run at all on their machines, or they get lots of offputting errors. I have received some error messages from people but then I haven't been able to get them to provide any more feedback, so it leaves me a bit stuck. The trouble is that I only have access to two machines for testing and developing: an XP Pro machine that I develop on which has .NET Framework version 1 and the latest IE6, and a Windows 2000 machine at work with a similar profile. So here is a way anyone can help if you happen to have a spare half an hour and access to another machine: just download and install the program and see if it runs OK, and if the instructions are easy to follow etc, and let me know about any bugs or error messages.

By the way Pteb, I was very interested to read what you said about the Windows emulator. I had heard of them but I didn't know they could run .NET programs! Could you send me a link to where I can find out more about it? Both my parents are Mac enthusiasts and won't go anywhere near a PC, so it would be great to get them up and running with this so they could see the tarot program for themselves. I think that a Mac version of the program is still a long way off.

Another thing I need to sort out is the help file(s) which are really out of date.

So I have been thinking that perhaps the pirated keygen is not the only factor at work here. When I discovered it, I cancelled my subscription to a couple of download sites because they carried the old version. According to my web stats I didn't get much traffic from them, but that could also be partly to blame for the drop in sales.

So anyway, I promise everyone that I am going to concentrate on getting everything up to speed, sort out all the bugs, make sure the program installs properly, the help file is up to date etc etc. If anyone sees me getting distracted and spending time on new features please shout at me, RICHARD, NO, DON'T DO IT!!!

Cheers!

PS The only exception to this is adding extra languages, which is really just an extension of an exisiting feature. I have a Hebrew language version in its testing phase at the moment, so don't shout at me when I bring that out . )

[pteb]

Hi
The development of virtual pc has now been taken over by microsoft itself. You can find out about it at the following link:

http//www.microsoft.com/mac/products/virtualp ... =virtualpc

I am running version 7 on a dual processor g5 and have had no problems running orphalese tarot on it. If you have any mac based people enquiring about orphalese then they should be able to run it on virtual pc.

Pteb

[Dominatrix]

I was to point out what Pteb said already... I've been using Virtual PC on a Mac System for years (I think is an old version), and also its Windows counterpart. No, it's not a crazy thing to run a Windows emulator under Windows: it gives you the chance of testing a lot of OSes with minimum effort. I even installed Solaris 7 inside Windows with it... Only a high end Mac gives a decent speed, because if I'm not wrong, the synthetic system emulated is a low one, but I've even executed DirectX games on the Mac with Virtual PC...

As for the program, Richard, no need to tell that everyone here will lend a hand! Best.

[Alisa]

Hi Richard:

I haven't signed in for a few weeks, maybe more. I notice I no longer can see the Deck Exchange. What happened to it?
I tried to look at the posts, but I do not see much.

I've been a registered member now for about 6 months. Can you assist?

[Dominatrix]

Maybe you missed some vital posts from the last days, Alisa, because the Exchange vanishing has been a common topic lately! For making it short, a big Tarot publisher has threatened Richard with a lawsuit due to copyright infringement due to the Exchange contents. While trying to negotiate and look for a solution, comrade Programmer has decided to take out temporally the Deck Exchange in order to avoid trouble. That's the reason. Best.

[Kate]

I can't seem to find the Deck Exchange panel. Has something happened to it? Never had this problem before and feel a little crazy.

In Decks and Spreads I can see Decks by F.J. Campos, Other decks, Carddat files and Backgrounds but nothing about the Deck Exchange.

Have version 7.2.

Help ... someone :).

Kate