Question about Mongoose products on Drive Thru

[Theophilus]

I've been thinking about getting some of the Mongoose products from Drive Thru. Namely Deneb, Ziaf, Gvurd, and Alpha Sectors. If I understand correctly these are just "scans" of the book products.

How is the quality of the scan? Are they OCR'ed or just "picture" scan's?

Is it worth it, or should I buy the paper version?

I'd like to get the Paper versions of Zhodani and Solomani, but the pdf's are so much cheaper.

 

[CosmicGamer]

Don't know about the ones you mentioned, but from looking at the Reft Sector pdf it doesn't look like it was scanned. Even the gray numbering on the sub-sector hex maps is clear.

Not sure why they would need to scan it when they have the original electronic documents the books were created from.

 

[Theophilus]

There described as scan's so that's what I wondered. If there closer to the free previews that come with some products I might be buying.

 

[nDervish]

I can't speak to those particular products (I don't buy sectors, I roll my own), but I have purchased several MgT products from DTRPG and none of them are scans, so I wouldn't expect any other MgT products to be scans either.

I've also picked up some MegaTraveller products from DTRPG and those are scans, but they've at least been OCRed.

 

[Dragoner]

I don't think they are scans, but according to Matt they are from the mong alien modules:

Note, you do not need this book if you already have Alien Module 2: Vargr.

 

[GypsyComet]

Mongoose owns the original files. There is no reason beyond some odd desire for file bloat to "scan" the printed product.

They may be "flat" PDFs, but that's different.

Reft sector was published as its own book in the first place, so it would be in the same category as Deneb, Spinward Marches, and the Solomani Rim. This new set are extracted from the Aliens books.

 

[aramis]

I've been thinking about getting some of the Mongoose products from Drive Thru. Namely Deneb, Ziaf, Gvurd, and Alpha Sectors. If I understand correctly these are just "scans" of the book products.

How is the quality of the scan? Are they OCR'ed or just "picture" scan's?

Is it worth it, or should I buy the paper version?

I'd like to get the Paper versions of Zhodani and Solomani, but the pdf's are so much cheaper.

Mongoose's PDFs are direct PDF's, not scans. No OCR needed. Some had some issues with low resolution deckplans inserted as rasters (rather than as vectors), and since I've not gotten update notices on those, probably still do.

There are pirate scans online taken from the print versions... but those are not the actual commercial PDF's. (And, if you stumble across them, please forward the URL's to DonM for C&D actions.)

 

[DonM]

Yes, I'm in the middle of my quarterly C&D hunt... so forward away...

 

[Theophilus]

Bought Deneb and Ziapfrilians, so far I'm impressed. One question, can I make a print version with these? My computer locks up when I try to print one page.

 

[aramis]

Bought Deneb and Ziapfrilians, so far I'm impressed. One question, can I make a print version with these? My computer locks up when I try to print one page.

You might need to run them through an unlocker program (I had to to read my MT PDFs, for example), but with the current exception regulation for format shifting in place, that's legal in the US. For about another 1.5 years (but is likely to be renewed).

However... things to try first...

1) upgrade acrobat reader to most current
2) upgrade your printer drivers to most current
3) minimize your ram footprint for everything else before trying to print. (In other words, use the "system tray" or "force quit" or "kill -9" to terminate everything you safely can.)

 

[Dragoner]

One question, can I make a print version with these? My computer locks up when I try to print one page.

When does it lock up? If the print button isn't greyed out it should be printable.

 

[Greylond]

Sorry to necro this thread but no one answered Dragoner's question.

Adobe Reader has problems. Personally, I think it is the worst PDF reader available. If you aren't creating PDFs and you just need a reader, I highly recommend Foxit PDF Reader. I do computer support and I've had to fix various problems with Adobe Reader so many times I've come to hate it. Adobe Pro is a lot better though.

One quick tip with Adobe Reader is that sometime you have to set it to "Print as Image."