Preserve darnkitty.com data?

[crem]

Today while doing some research on JSW, I've got the link to darnkitty.com in search engine.

This site apparently just went permanently down, but still can be accessed through google cache (example, won't work for long).

It seems that it has per-room trivia for JSW/MM which is quite unique and there's no other place where information like this can be found.

 

The question is, should we somehow preserve that information? If someone knows who the owner of the site is, maybe contact them and ask to share the information?

Alternatively, it may be possible to recover at least something from archive.org and (for a few days) Google cache?

[Spider]

IA / WBM both hold (afaik) it, last grab was Jan 27th this year.

There are some tools to permit downloading however a bash script and something perhaps again 'nix wget may be enough, assuming its all there. It would be a shame to lose it however I (not wanting to tempt fate here) don't see it going awol from IA/WBM unless the site owner specifically requests its removal.

Its not a site I've visited for quite a while. I did enjoy a few years ago the variations on the games though! 🙂

[crem]

If we think we want to save the site, I think it makes sense to contact the site owner first and ask for the dump of database, rather than trying to scrape it.
That's both easier, and it would be nice to get agreement/approval from them.

What to do with that data is another question.
I could surely help with generating a static website from that data (for example publishing it to GitHub as Jekyll site so be available at through github.io).

Also if we have any community-maintained Willy-themed wiki, I can automatically fill content there.

As for having a separate full-featured dynamic site where people are able to add new content, I don't think I'd have enough enthusiasm to work on it.

[Spider]

Yes it would be best to contact the author if possible to determine what they want to do, if anything. Although its a short message on their static page, they are to be given credit for that, rather than just disabling it completely without anything as some other sites have done.

Static is one idea, although iirc there's a lot of scripts on that site for those games I think. Mind you it would preserve the raw 'meat on the bones' of the data around each game / room / cavern etc.

Wiki: Well there's the article system here, it offers the ability to create pages and databases, including a wiki style option for editing. Its not used much as you can see. That's just a single database I whipped up a few years ago to store articles etc, as per usual you just create your fields for the records etc. The 4x version is a bit less feature equipped in some ways than the 3x version however a huge gain was made in its usability. Its not really something I've dealt with in great detail, it may have an API in the 4x version. I can probably point you towards some relevant documentation if required.

However its probably best to not get too far ahead here with  that until the site owner/author has possibly been contacted.

EDIT... A 'REST' API

[darnkitty]

Hi there,

I'm Matt, and I ran the darnkitty.com site. I was sad that it had to close down, but once the last browser stopped supporting Java a couple of years ago, nobody was able to play JSW on my site anymore, and now Flash is going the same way, so there's not really any more point keeping the site going.

For now I have at least re-enabled the JSW section of the site: http://www.darnkitty.com/jsw/. But there isn't a browser out there anymore that runs JAVA (in particular Java applets), so I would be very surprised if you could get the game itself to load.

I can upload a zip file if people would like, containing the room images and comments, etc. But it would take a couple of days.

Matt

Edited May 3, 2021 by darnkitty

[jetsetdanny]

Welcome to the forum, Matt! I hope you're a box of birds even though your website's down 🙂 .

Thank you for re-enabling the JSW section.

I have happy memories related to darnkitty.com. I spent a lot of time there back in 2008 and 2009, playing "Manic Miner" (including competing for the best level-completion time against Andrew Broad) and a game called "Cheese Louise".

Those were my glory days, too 🤪 - at one point I established a Manic Miner high-score of 135,199 points over there, and then I improved it to achieve 201,773 points, which means (if I am calculating correctly right now, without referring to a video recording of that effort which I still keep) that I completed MM five times in a row and was several rooms into the sixth sequence of caverns when I lost my last life (I probably could have done better still but, to be honest, I had no incentive to concentrate any more, after playing the game, with pauses, for several hours, having crossed the 200,000 points threshold).

Matt's website has also left a lasting legacy in the field of MM and JSW games for the ZX Spectrum. Andrew Broad's "JSW64: Flash Manic Miner" is a conversion of the extra caverns from Matt's Flash version to the Spectrum: Caverns 21 to 43 of Flash Manic Miner map to Rooms 0 to 22 of the JSW64 conversion, with Room 22's portal looping back to Room 3 (because for n >= 44, Cavern n is identical to Cavern n-20).

So it's good to see you here, Matt 🙂 . Do upload the ZIP file when you get a chance.

[darnkitty]

Here's a zip file containing the room images from the JSW Map (http://www.darnkitty.com/jsw/jet-set-willy-map.php). There's also a TXT file containing the comments people have left, and some PHP code which links the room name with the room number I used internally. As those of you who got to play the remake probably knew, there were a few extra rooms that I added in there - spoiler alert, their images are included in the ZIP file 🙂

There's not that much in the ZIP file really, and I don't know what other information people want to preserve. But happy to help where I can.

I previously ruled out rewriting the JSW remake in another technology... but I was thinking last night, Java is still around, it just doesn't run in browsers any more. I'm quite keen, if I can find and compile the original source code, to compile a version of the JSW remake which could be downloaded and run locally on somebody's machine as an EXE. I think that would still be possible.

darnkitty-jsw-rooms.zip

Edited May 4, 2021 by darnkitty

[IRF]

Was there a similar amount of content on the darnkitty site for Manic Miner, that could also be worth preserving for posterity?

[darnkitty]

I never did a map for Manic Miner, or a "room comments" system or anything like that. I don't have any screenshots or anything of it.

[jetsetdanny]

Thanks for the ZIP, Matt! 👍