More Traveller Than You Can Fit in a Low Berth

[saundby]

Well, I took advantage of the 443 deal when I ordered my updated version of the CT CD last week:

I've got my updated CT CD, the two disks of CT material from other publishers, a new T5 CD, and the not-appearing-in-this-picture T4 CD when it comes out at the end of August pre-ordered.

When I shoved my original Traveller box in my backpack and rode home on my bike in 1977, I could hardly have imagined being able to own so much great Traveller gaming stuff!

More on my blog, like a shot of Duke Norris's stamp. I'm also going to have to go update my website. But first, I'm going to open these things up and have a read!

And I want to say how amazingly great that Marc makes this stuff available like this. The work to be able to manage the rights to bring all this great material together, bringing it together and putting it on the market in a simple, easy to use form--it's just great.

Thanks so very much, Marc! You've done an incredible job.

-Mark G., happy customer of Marc's since purchasing Triplanetary in a cardboard shipping box in 1976.

 

[ShapeShifter]

Great blog post!
I ordered the CT replacement disk and eagerly await it.

 

[saundby]

Thanks!

I've glanced at mine. The scans of the 1977 rules are pristine.

I've been spending more time, so far, reading the T5 rules. I had one problem with them--my ebook reader didn't like the PDFs built from other PDFs. It showed them as a bunch of individual Word documents rather than as a PDF. The information was still all there and readable, but the document structure was gone.

I worked around the problem by opening the documents in Preview on a Mac, then printing as PDF. The new PDF prints display fine on the ebook reader.

All the PDFs were fine on my computers under all three OSes (Linux, Mac OS X, Windows), it was just the Sony Reader that didn't recognise the format.

 

[soloprobe]

Got MY updated CT CD on monday! WooHoo!

 

[ShapeShifter]

On my disk that I got about three years ago the worst scans (AFAIK) were Scouts, Robots, a few of the adventures and the Atlas. I was sad, as Scouts is one of my favorites. I hope the new disk has better scans of Scouts.

 

[Dragoner]

I ordered last week, received nothing yet, should have ordered the CT replacement CD as well, oh well. Last time I ordered it was here in 3 days.

 

[saundby]

On my disk that I got about three years ago the worst scans (AFAIK) were Scouts, Robots, a few of the adventures and the Atlas. I was sad, as Scouts is one of my favorites. I hope the new disk has better scans of Scouts.

The scans are much, much better throughout. Scouts and Robots are sharp and easily readable as are all the files I've looked at so far. The scans are a step, no, a giant leap above the ones on the old disk. The only flaws I see are minor scuffs on the original material faithfully reproduced in the scan, usually a bit of wear on the covers. These aren't really flaws, they're character.

There is a bit of color bleeding and some compression artifacting where there are strong saturated colors, like the red top and bottom color stripes on Supplement 5's cover. Again, these aren't problems, really, it's just what happens with scans where you have to keep the data down to a reasonable size. Most of the covers look like photographic reproductions, they're that sharp.

The OCR is much improved, but short of perfect. The flaws I found mostly related to dual column layout--two columns treated as one, or most of one column grouped together with one line in the middle grouped to the other column. A bit disappointing, as I like to have my speaking reader software read books to me as I work on other mindless tasks. But the OCRs are plenty good for casual cut and paste of segments of text. Which wasn't the case for many of the texts before.

All in all, this new disk is an immense improvement. Much better scans & OCR, much more comprehensive collection of CT material. It's well worth the upgrade (and then some), and if you don't have the CT CD yet, you're missing out on the best deal in gaming material anywhere!

The Apocrypha CDs are also very high quality. Every flaw in the Judges Guild zip-a-tones jumps out at you. A few of the materials were a bit knackered before scan, but not in a way that affects the information, just a bit around the edges on a couple. Most are in very good condition at least, and the scans are excellent.

The quantity of material is pretty well staggering.

Given the high quality of the new scans, I'm really looking forward to the update of the JTAS CD as well. I was reading an article just last week when I stumbled into one of the partial pages there. The new scans on the other disks are head-and-shoulders above that.

-Mark G.

 

[ShapeShifter]

Thanks for the detailed descriptions.
Can't wait!
*camps out eagerly at mailbox, braving the swelter.*

 

[ShapeShifter]

Still waiting on the revised disk.
I wonder if others have had delivery delays.

EDIT (7.30.11): Well I finally got the revised disk in the post, and everything checks out. One exception however: the scan of Shadows (D01) is the same as the old one. In other words, very, very low resolution--with the odd exception of page 6 which is relatively crystal clear. In all it's a marked improvement. I want to take the time to heartily thank Mr. Miller and his crew of dedicated staff for revising the disk and improving its overall quality. My degrading eyesight thanks you too.

 

[saundby]

Yes, Annic Nova and Shadows are both still pretty fuzzy, now that you mention it. I haven't found any others that are still fuzzy. but I haven't checked everything yet. All the other double adventures look really good.