Studio Pixel on Floppy Disks

I put this in "Other Game's by Pixel" because it's about all he has made, not just Doukutsu or Kero, and not just random conversation either.
First off, no I ain't fully dead and no this ain't me playing songs on Floppy Drives, that's way over my head.

Instead I stored the entire portfolio of Daisuke Amaya, pretty much almost everything he's done, into the most fitting physical storage device: The 1.44MB Floppy Disk.

And before you go thinking this be some small 30min project. I should emphasize the fact that every single one of these had to be crafted into as few 1.36 MB packages as possible. I just barely forced them into the five. No, This took several days.
WHAT EACH DISK CONTAINS (HyperLinked):

Spoiler: Contents

*All of the following are the Fan English translations (if one was provided)*

StuPixDisk Ame_ [White/Yellow Label]
- Ame Manga
- Random Selection of Ame Pictures
- The Pictures from Cave Story's Ending Credits

StuPixDisk Douk [Red/Red Label]
- Cave Story (Freshly Patched)
- Ikachan
- Piranhan (An Offline/Local HTML version I created, more details in the Case File)

StuPixDisk Kero [Black/Green Label]
- Kero Blaster
- Pink Hour
- Random Selection of Cave Story Beta Pictures (The artistic ones, not the in-game pics)

StuPixDisk Misc [Blue/LightBlue Label]
- Akantares (Offline version, of course)
- Azarashi (Just the new one, I didn't archive the 1998 version)
- Megane (Glasses)
- Guxt
- JilJil
- kadoAI
- Random Selection of the Cave Story Pics found here
- Neko100
- Rain
- Soaprun (I combined some offline versions together... sucks we don't have the server files)
- All Org Songs. Both the current ones and all of these beta ones. (I did not archive any Internal Percussion tracks, unless they were in the zipped dumps).
- ShineShineGalaxy
((Yes, all of that was hyper-compressed to 1.36MB))

StuPixDisk Song [Yellow/Orange Label]
- OrgMaker (Latest English)
- OrgView
- Piyo Piyo
- PxTone Collage
- Seatone (Yeah, it ain't Amaya's Pixtone but I think it obsoletes it).
- A bonus/secret picture I ain't giving you. Pixel drew it, and it's amazing.

THE FULL CASE FILE:

Spoiler: THE FULL CASE FILE

~ Why did I do this?
I don't know. I had the urge to copy some floppys, and I had everything needed... so... yep.

First off, if you didn't know already, Amaya is insanely conservative on filesize. I literally only have one other game that is smaller than 2 MB when hyper-compressed. It is quite the feat when an expansive portfolio can be put into a single 6.82MB file.

The compressed files within each disk is a singular 7-Zip file, with maxed settings for compression using LZMA2 compression (which from my basic research and experimentation compresses the most). It takes an uncompressed folder of English Cave Story (about 4MB) and shrinks it down to less than 1.30MB
Than again, Studio Pixel's stuff even compresses more than other games. I can normally only shave off 0.25MB from any other 2MB game, not freaking 2.5MB off of a 4MB game.

The Ame Manga has the largest FileSize. Cave Story and Kero Blaster can share a disk with other games, but Ame only gets a selection of random pics to go with it. I was forced to give it its own Floppy instead of splitting it up among the others (I originally aimed for three disks, before adding the music programs), and that's after I shaved off a third of its filesize in down-scaling to 70% size in WORST quality. The same was done to the biggest non-manga pictures. It is of note that Panel 9 and 10 aren't optimized (the ones that use grey colors), you can open each image in Paint.net and resave it at almost half the size with no modification to the image itself. Everything else is the opposite, resaving it ADDS KB's to the file.

It ain't a perfect archive, I could probably combine PinkHour and KeroBlaster into using the same shared resources... but I'd have to also find a way to split the slightly different ones... hmm. Also, technically OrgView (And Cave Story) contains most of the orgs in the "current" folder of the tracks in "misc", which one could easily extract out with ResourceHacker... that would only give me some minor KB leeway.

The Piranhan I included was one I assembled myself, because the only offline versions were huge due to having included the entire Unity base within them. I simply downloaded the html of the webpage linked, grabbed the unity file linked within the player and attached them to run as a Local HTML. You have to have Unity plugins installed in a browser, but I ain't giving that 8MB to you. If a single person at all is interested all zip it up separately and provide this minor hack. I might even add an English translated version of the webpage with it.

The secret bonus picture can be obtained if you steal it from me. Just don't actually have that criminal-level of curiosity. That's really bad if you are seriously considering it now.

I uploaded the complete archive to my personal Dropbox, Mediafire, MEGA, and I'll probably add it to my Youtube's Google Drive I haven't really used yet. I can't give out the 7MB file because it does include Kero Blaster and I'm unsure about distributing Pink Hour because Playism stuff. If someone wants I'll make a public version of the archive without these two, saved possibly forever, and share it here... Though I'll probably use the original upscaled images... and remove the bonus/secret one.

Feel free to inquire on details (hahah, like you care.) or if you just want stuff... I guess... I mean, 98% of this stuff is on the tribute site so...

Oh... I also make this cardstock box:

If you have a Physical Archive in retro technology, you may as well go all the way. (More of this thing in the Picture Gallery Below)

Another thing: I've briefly considered giving some CaveStory/Ikachan/Guxt Bundles away on red floppies, maybe as a prize for my Steam Giveaways (Even if I do that again). Only thing is I'm not sure about physically distributing shareware, such as making shipping costs not be profit and stuff. The other thing is... uh... you guys unsecurely giving away Street Addresses... and International shipping..... it's really complicated and honestly it's flipping easy to fit only those three games on your own Floppy. So yeah not really gonna happen but I've considered it for some odd reason.

A Condensed Fact Sheet of the Above:

Spoiler: A Condensed Fact Sheet

- Studio Pixel's filesizes are already insanely small, but they even compress more than other games I've tested.
- All archived together, Amaya's portfolio is less than 7MB
- A 4MB Doukutsu folder condenses to less than 1.30MB
- The Ame Manga has the largest FileSize. I was forced to give it its own Floppy instead of splitting it up among the others, and that's after I shaved off a third of its filesize in down-scaling.
- I worked with the Piranhan pages to make my own lightweight offline version that requires a unity-enabled browser. Ask me and I'll provide.
- I've personally archived the entire bundle online to four different sites... If you want I'll make a public version without the Playism Infringing Games.
- I made a sweet cardstock box to house the drives, it's in the picture gallery.
- I briefly considered giving away some CaveStory/Ikachan/Guxt physical bundles, but the many problems that arise from that pretty much means it ain't happening. It's easy to make one's own anyway (those three games go easily under the max limit).

The Imgur Picture Gallery.

 

Cave Story compresses so well because all the graphics are bitmaps, a terribly inefficient format but it leaves a lot of redundancy that can be crushed down.

As for Ame Manga, I know you could compress it more if you didn't mind losing some of the colour information. 16-color bitmap will preserve most of the detail, but if you want to be anal then 2-color bitmap can get the first page down to 18.7kb after lzma compression.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/42853625/Temp/data.7z eg

Also, I've got a handful of Rare Ame's that you probably ain't never seen before that could fit in the extra space
just sayin'

I ALSO have a collection of these old things he made back in... 2004, probably, as some kind of pixel-art journal / proto-twitter. I never got em translated.

 

I ALSO have a collection of these old things he made back in... 2004, probably, as some kind of pixel-art journal / proto-twitter. I never got em translated.

Do you have a copy of 040109.png from said collection? I have all of them except that one.

http://www.cavestory.org/page-archive/profile/
(the image with an X is a placeholder for 040109.png)

 

Sadly not, as I'm sure we both got them the same way and that image was overlooked for reasons unknown.
We could try emailing him to ask if he still has it... he seems like the kind of guy to archive everything.

 

if you want to be anal then 2-color bitmap can get the first page down to 18.7kb after lzma compression.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/42853625/Temp/data.7z eg

Oh wow, I was thinking about reducing color data, but didn't realize how much of a difference that makes (it halves what I've got so far).
I'll look into your example file in the morning and I'll consider if I want the rewrite that disk.

I ALSO have a collection of these old things he made back in... 2004, probably, as some kind of pixel-art journal / proto-twitter. I never got em translated.

I did notice those when I scourged the Tribute Site, but decided at the time to ignore them (in the same way I ignored BBS Logs, In-Game Beta Pics, and his Twitter pics). I'll see what works and reconsider.

 

Also, I've got a handful of Rare Ame's that you probably ain't never seen before that could fit in the extra space
just sayin'

THIS IS A STICKUP, GIVE ME ALL YOUR RARE AMES REEEEEEEEEE

 

We may as well just make the Ame Tribute Site, where we post fanart 24/7 and do daily rituals.

I'm actually all for that. Better than that Balrog Site some guy had six months ago.

 

This is pretty sweet. Been wanting to play Kero Blaster but I don't know what Playism is. Is it an app like steam or a site I just pay money for a download link?

 

The latter.
http://playism-games.com/game/141/kero-blaster

 

Thanks!

 

As a huge fan of obsolete media, I really, really, really like this thread.

 

Interesting. You could bury these floppy discs in your garden. That way, when archaeologists in a thousand years start to dig there, they may find these. That way, Cave Story will never die out.
<3

 

Floppy disks usually degrade after like 5-25 years

 

Just etch out the entire binary code onto a platinum plate and bury it in a desert; it'll last ya forever

 

Well, Noxid's tips opened up the "Ame_" floppy, and there's that new Pink Heaven game, plus the box I made has room for an additional Diskette anyway.
So, more opprotunites for degradation is always available. (Except that the soundtrack isn't available on vinyl [or any physical format], I would add that to my collection in a heartbeat).

Just etch out the entire binary code onto a platinum plate and bury it in a desert; it'll last ya forever

If having it pretty much stored everywhere on the Internet isn't enough to ensure its longevity (despite OS software eventually obsoleting it), I don't think binary will help. That kind of technlogical fallout usually would render computers useless, or we would have more pressing matters than "resurfacing a video game", such as not having us killed by whatever took away out Internet (yes, I am fun at parties).

EDIT:
Damnit. Pink Heaven is apparently 14MB. Someone messed up and I blame Playism.

(I haven't actually played it yet, and most of the size comes from those weird .exe's I don't recognize from the previous games out of the "Kero" engine. I'll see if I can get by without them after my playthrough).