The SAC – Superior Art Creations All-Time Member List Project Update

I am trying for a while now to create an all time Superior Art Creations member list. This is unfortunately no easy task, because the information in the SAC.NFO files of the SAC Pack releases were not always as well maintained as they should have been. I don’t want to point and blame anybody, but its is pretty tough to get a clear picture of who is who and who was in when as what, with the amount of information that can be extracted from the releases of the group itself.

Here is what I came up with so for. The stuff that is high lighted with an orange background is where I would be happy, if anybody has an answer to my question or the missing information, whatever the case might be.

Also, the whole last section with “Non-Contributing Temp Members” is open for input. Listed there are names that were mentioned that they are members of SAC, but I could not find any contribution of those guys in any of the SAC art packs. Maybe they did something under the name of SAC, but nothing that found its way into an art pack. If that is the case, then I want of course give the credits where credits are due and remove that person from the “non-contributing” section.

If you know any of the folks where questions are still in the room or if you have any tip how or where I could find out more about them etc. Please let me know. The comments section of this blog post would do just fine.

I’d appreciate it. Thanks.

#	Handles / Aliases	File Prefix(es)	Country	PPE	PRG	VGA	MFX	ANS	ASC	ADM	Notes/Comments
Contributing Members (Included in Art Packs)
1	2Fast	2F	Germany						X
2	Acen	AC	Germany				X
3	Allanon	ALN	Sweden						X
4	Antibody	ANTI / AB	Denmark			X		X	X
5	Argon Factor	AR	Germany				X
6	Arlequin	ARL / AR	Argentina					X	X
7	Asphyx	ASX	France			X		X	X
8	Axess	AXS	Germany			X	X
9	Barium	B5	n/a			X		X	X
10	Bazilla	BAZ	Germany			X
11	Brane	BNE	Sweden						X
12	Cokine	COK	Sweden			X
13	Comrade	COM	Canada		X
14	Creator	CRE	Australia			X
15	Creature of Hell	COH / CH	USA			X	X	X
16	Crome	CROME / CRM	Germany				X
17	cRu / Maverick	CRU	Germany					X	X
18	Crusader	CDR	Sweden						X
19	D0n	DN	n/a						X
20	DAC	DAC	Germany				X
21	Dalezy / The Unconsciousness / Animal	DLZ / TU / AN	Germany				X
22	Dark Star / Puschel	DS / PL	Germany			X		X	X
23	Davek	DKNY	USA					X	X
24	Desolation Angel	DA	USA			X
25	Dipswitch	DIP	Germany						X
26	Don Rapello	DON	Finland						X
27	Dream Design	DD	Germany		X	X		X
28	DW0	DW0	n/a					X			What's the full name?
29	Eboy	EB	Finland			X		X	X
30	Edge	ED	USA			X
31	Ex0	EX0	Australia					X	X
32	F0st	FST / FS	France			X			X
33	Ferrex	FRX / FX	Germany		X	X		X	X
34	Flames	FLAMES	Germany			X			X
35	Fourth	4TH	n/a						X
36	Geareo	MYD	n/a						X
37	Giovanni	GIO	Germany				X
38	Grap	GP	Germany		X
39	GrymmJack	GJ	USA						X
40	GTI	GTI	Canada			X		X	X
41	Helix	HLX	USA						X
42	Hetero	HT	Germany		X	X		X	X
43	HKultra	HKU	n/a			X
44	IxLover Buddha	IX	n/a			X			X
45	[K]	K	Germany		X	X
46	Kaethe	KT	Germany					X	X
47	Kenet	K	France			X
48	KMX	KMX	Poland		X						What does KMX stand for?
49	Maktone	MT / M1	Sweden				X
50	Markgoh	MG	Canada						X
51	Marky	MY / M	Germany			X			X
52	Matador	MTD	Russia		X				X
53	Mattey	MATTEY	n/a			X
54	McBarn	MB	Sweden				X
55	Midfit	MF	Germany		X
56	Moolok	MOO	Germany			X		X
57	Mr.Death	MRDEATH / MRD	Sweden				X
58	Mr.Jezus	MRJEZUS	Finland			X
59	Mydknight	MID	Canada						X
60	Myth	MYTH	Germany		X
61	Neophyte	NP	Germany		X
62	Nerv	NERV / NR	France			X		X	X
63	Nova	N	Australia			X
64	Pasha	P	Germany			X			X
65	PDZ	PDZ	n/a						X		PDZ = Podzi?
66	Poldi	PD	Germany			X		X	X
67	Quasar	QS	Sweden						X
68	Rainer	RN	Germany				X
69	Raiser	RS	Germany					X	X
70	Rave	RV	Germany			X		X	X
71	Rez	REZ	Netherlands		X		X				Is Rez an abbreviation?
72	Roodolph	ROO	Poland						X
73	Roy	ROY	Germany/USA	X	X	X		X	X
74	RZ	RZ	n/a						X		RZ = Rahzel? Uses }8]a or }8] as sig in pics
75	S!	S!	n/a						X		S! = Stylez or S! = Serges or somebody else?
76	Scour	SCR	USA						X
77	Senser	SNS	France			X		X	X
78	Sergeon Cuts	SERGEON	USA			X
79	Stonehedge	SH	Germany				X
80	Shaq	SQ	Russia						X
81	Shot	ST	Germany					X
82	Silent	SiL	n/a			X
83	sOul	SOUL	Germany				X
84	Spectrum	SPC	Germany		X
85	Spoon	SPN	Germany				X
86	Sprocket	SPROCKET	Norway			X
87	Squizzy	SQZ	Netherlands						X
88	Strike Light	SL	Canada					X	X
89	Svenzzon	SVENZZON / SVEN / SV	n/a				X		X
90	Synec	SY	Germany		X
91	Techbit	TB	Canada			X
92	Teepak	TPK	Germany			X		X	X
93	Toxic Trancer	TOX	Germany				X
94	v0uck	VK	n/a						X
95	W.O.T.W.	WOTW	Germany				X
96	Webpige0	W0	n/a			X		X	X
SAC PPE Coders (Had no file prefix)
97	Cyz		Germany	X
98	Monster		Germany	X
99	Fox		Germany	X
100	Cyber Brain		Germany	X
Administrative Members
Internet Coordinators, except for Idiana who did Group Management and Organization
101	Hoziris		Israel							X
102	Cercyon		Germany							X
103	Corex		Germany							X
104	Idiana		Germany							X
Guest Contributors
Included in one or more SAC Pack releases, but never had status of SAC member
n/a	Z80	Z80	Germany		1
Non Contributing Temp Members
This list may includes members where I could not match them up confidentially with a file prefix from the pack.
It could also be that one person is listed with multiple nick names or real name.
If you know of any contributions to the group and it to the comments please.
	Ripper		Germany
	Prosthesis		Finland
	Paledeth		Sweden
	White Zombie	TWZ	Denmark
	Darkheart		Sweden
	Felix		Germany
	Timelord		Italy
	Necrotoad		Canada
	Nitrifik		Sweden
	Spinsane	SP	n/a
	Xeek	XK	n/a
	PODZI		n/a								Podzi = PDZ
	Stylez		Germany								Styles = S!?
	Serges		n/a								Serges = S!?
	Sick Doctor		n/a								Serges = Sick Doctor?
	Rahzel		n/a								Rahzel = RZ?
	Shady		Germany								Shady = S!?

Explanation of Columns
PPE = PCBoard BBS Tools Programmer (using PPL-PCBoard Programming Language, which are compiled to PPE’s)
PRG = Programmer/Coder of Intros, tools etc. such as the SACtros for SAC artpack releases.
VGA = Pixel Art Graphician and later also hi-res art via Photoshop etc.
MFX = Musician, mainly old-school tracker MOD modules (or FastTracker, ScreamTracker etc.)
ANS = ANSI text artist (like the image below)
ASC = ASCII text artist, 7-Bit and/or “high ASCII” (Block ASCII)
ADM = Administrative work, Internet Coordinator, Bot-Master (IRC) and those sorts of things)

I am feeling that we come slowly but surely closer to the goal of having a complete and correct all-time Superior Art Creations member list that I can post on the SAC section of the site as I promised to do so already two or some more years ago.

Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Jason Scott from Textfiles.com Text-urized

I wrote a while back already a post about the online Image to Text (ASCII) converter tool at Photo2Text.com.

Back then I used Matt Cutts from Google as my Guinea-Pig to illustrate it’s capabilities. This is not the purpose of this blog post though. Shortly after I did my post, I played around with it a bit more. I experimented with a photograph of Jason Scott Sadofsky from Textfiles.com (who also did the DVD documentary “BBS – The Documentary”, which I highly recommend, if you are interested in the subject of Bulletin Board Systems)

I tweaked the source photo of him to get better results and saved them on my hard drive and then forgot about them until now. I stumbled across them by accident and thought that I should not hide them, or at least make them accessible for Jason himself.

I took the results from the converter and tweaked them a bit more in Photoshop, adding some color and stuff like that. You can see below the stages of my changes. Click on the thumbnail images for the larger original sized version of it.

Original 7-Bit ASCII as Image.  Download the original text ASCII file	Colors added	Final picture with background added and name tag

This is the final piece and I hope that Jason (and you too) will like it.

I also created an ANSI version of the photograph with the tool. It is only using the number characters 0-9, but a very small font. The result is good, but it looks to little like an ASCII to me, because of the font size.

This ANSI was actually created as a HTML document. You can see the original HTML/Text version here.

If you are interested in the subject of image to ASCII art conversion, I also suggest to check out my post where I reviewed a number of online and desktop image to text converter tools.

I also wrote a post about video to text conversion via the vlan video player with special conversion plug-in.

If the subject of ASCII and ANSI text art is new to you and you would like to learn more about this old school art form that actually pre-dates the computer, check out my ASCII Art Academy for more resources and information.

Semi-related: Did you see my post about ASCII/RTTY art nudes versus their original Centerfold Photographs?
I still need help with matching up more of the ASCIIs with their source photographs. You can help.

Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Convert Video to ASCII Text Art

Uh, third post in 2 days... that surprises even me. Hehe

It was by coincidence actually, but somebody at Mahalo Answers made me aware of the feature of the free VLC (VideoLan) video player to convert video images to color ASCII art (some would call this ANSI hehe) in real-time.

I thought that this is a cool feature, just by hearing about it. I downloaded the player and was unable to find the option for the ASCII art output, so I asked the guy at Mahalo Answers about it and luckily for me, he answered this question as well (a bit delayed, which made me drop the ball on it as well).

The feature is buried deeply within the configuration options of the player and not that easy to find.

To help you with this problem, see my step by step guide to enable the feature in the VideoLan player. Every step is illustrated with a screen shot, so that there should not be any excuses for why you could not set it up yourself properly. Start with getting the latest version of the VideoLan video player at VideoLan.org (note: the latest version does not have this feature anymore. See note at the end of the post for details). The player is available across platform, over a dozen different Linux and Unix distributions and versions. Binaries for Windows, Macintosh Mac OS X, BeOS and Syllable are also available by the way. It's released under the GNU License.

Step by Step Guide to Enable the Color ASCII Art Output Module Configuration in the VLC Video Player

1. Start the VLC/VideoLan media player and open any supported video file.

2. Click on "Settings" in the top menu navigation and select "Preferences"

3. Audio is selected by default at the left. Check out the bottom-right where you can find a check box labeled "Advanced Options", which should be unchecked (default). Check that box to enable the Advanced Options.

4. Back to the navigation to the left. Click on the plus sign next to "Video" in the preferences box to open the configuration tree node for the "Video" options.

5. Click on the "Output Modules" node

6. Change the "default" in the drop down options for video output module to "Color ASCII Art Video output"

7. Click "Save" in the lower left of the window

8. Stop the video that you opened, if it isn't stopped already or if you stopped it after step 1.

9. Press "Play" to re-start the video again with the new video output module

Here are some results of me playing with that option for some videos of mine to give you an idea of how the real-time converted video images look in text mode with colors. I am not sure yet, if the module sticks to the 16 pre-set colors defined for PC MS DOS ANSI, which would be really cool. It may uses other colors instead. I have to do some more tests to find that out.

 
Playing Around with the VLC Color ANSI Art Video Output Module from Carsten Cumbrowski on Vimeo.

You can download this video in AVI format at Mediafile.com.

The player itself is worth checking out in general, beyond the ASCII output feature, which is kind of a "hidden treasure" within the features set of this open source video player. It supports virtually all major video formats, including Mpeg, AVI, QuickTime MOV/MP4, Windows Media WMV/ASF, Macromedia/Adobe Flash (FLV), the open source Matroska, Real Media (RealPlayer), OGG, FLAC and even Midi and raw DV video, WAV, MP3 audio etc.

It can play back streaming video UDP, TCP and DCCP/RTP Unicast or Multicast, HTTP/FTP and MMS in addition to traditional DVD video and audio, Audio CD, Video CD and SVCD, DVB from Satellite, Digital TV and cable television. A lot of stuff for NO BUCK at all. You cannot beat free, or can you?!

Also check out my previous posts about ASCII and ANSI Text Animation:

• ASCII plus Animation is ASCIImation
• What is ANSI Animation or ANSImation?
• Beck ASCIImation and a Walking Man 7-Bit ASCII
• my ASCIImations and ANSI Animations Video Play List at YouTube
• Review of Image to Text (ASCII) Converters

Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Update: I just learned that the current version of VLC (Version 0.9.8a, 16 MB) does not have the ASCII output feature anymore. I have VLC Player Version 0.8.6f Janus (wxWidget interface) from last year, where the feature is still there. You can download this older version here from my web site: vlc-0.8.6f-win32.zip (9.19 MB). I don't know why they would remove such a nice feature from their player. Mhhh.

First ASCII Art Piece of Mine in Ages

I cannot believe that I actually managed to create my first piece of block ASCII Art in ages... eons might be the better word to describe the time frame between the creation of this ASCII  and the last ASCII of mine that I created before this one.

The ASCII that I created was a long over-due request by Mad Max, the co-founder of the old scene group CPI, Canadian Pirates Inc., which I actually joined myself in September of last year.

I had this open request on my conscience for way too long and I am glad that I got this off my head now. I also hope that Mad Max will like the NFO file logo. I have to admit, that I got a little bit rusty (old maybe? :( ).

I sent the ASCII to him via email, but did not hear back from him since then. I will find out sooner or later :)

I also Finished Something Else ;) !!!

I wrote about the amount (count) of different SAC releases across all pages earlier this year.  I also made stuff available for download in re-sorted and grouped bundles by content type rather than by SAC artpack.

• Interesting SAC Art Packs Statistics, Figures and Downloads
• Interesting SAC Art Packs Statistics, Figures and Downloads - Part II

More SAC Art Put Up for Access On-Line via Web Browser

That was all nice and good, but does not make the old-school art of ASCII, ANSI or Pixel Art accessible (viewable) online and across platforms.  Okay, so I took it upon myself to convert the thousands of ASCII and ANSI art pieces that several dozen artists produced over a period longer than 10 years and converted all of them into PNG image format, which is compatible with everything today. I also converted the Pixel art that was for a large degree saved in the old IFF (or LBM of Deluxe Paint II) format and other similar depreciated formats, which are today not in use anymore.

1. ASCII ART Collection

All 3,000+ Superior Art Creations ASCII Art Pieces from 30+ artists and all 35 SAC art packs in one Flickr collection with 30 separate picture sets, sorted by artists most of the time.

2. ANSI ART Collection

All 450+ Superior Art Creations ANSI Art Pieces from 25+ artists and all 35 SAC art packs in one Flickr collection with 10 separate picture sets, 9 sets for the nine most productive ANSI artists in SAC and a tens set with various ANSI art by 15+ SAC artists who did not produce very much ANSI art for the packs overall.

I created by far the most ANSI art of all (over 130 ANSI art pieces), followed by Rave with 105 pieces. Hetero did 72, Dark Star aka Puschel did 25, Raiser 24, Shot and Kenet 18 ANSI's each, SL aka Strike Light 16, Webpige0 12 and 56 ANSI art pieces created by over 15 different artists.

3. Pixel Art Collection

All 500+ of Superior Art Creations oldskool pixel VGA art pieces, logos for the most part, created by 30+ artists and all 35 SAC art packs in one Flickr collection with 16 picture sets. The largest number of pixel art contribution was done by the following SAC artists (alphabetically): Asphyx (ASX), Cokine (COK), Creator (CRE), Creator of Hell (CH/CoH), Desolation Angel (DA), Dream Design (DD), Eboy (EB), Fefst (FST), Ferrex (FX), HKultra (HKU), [K], Kenet, Moolok (MOO), Nerv (N,NR), Pasha (P), Puschel (PL), Roy, Sergeon, Senser (SNS) and Webpige0 (W0)

SAC artists who contributed to pixel art, but only very little were: Antibody (AB), B5, Bazilla (BAZ), ED, Flames, FX, GTI, Hetero (HT), IX, Marky (M), Mattey, Mr.Jezus, n]-[wa, Poldi (PD), Rave (RV), Silent (SiL), Sprocket , Techbit (TB), TPK

Putting over 400 MP3 Songs Up for Play-Back in Browser

All MP3 files are stored in a single "Directory" at Amazon S3 - Help Wanted and Appreciated

I already uploaded most of the 400+ tracker music files converted to MP3 to my Amazon S3 Account. I need to check and then upload if I missed any song and then think up a way to put them up somewhere for easy accessibility and play-back capabilities via web browser, without too long load-times or requirement for setting up another browser plug-in, which would have to be downloaded first. All this should of course take as little as time as possible, without sacrificing the accessibility of the music by platform restrictions.

Ideas and suggestions are welcome and appreciated. Whatever the suggestion might be, it has to run on MS IIS6 on Microsoft Windows 2003 Server, Classic ASP and/or ASP.NET and/or PHP 4. If it requires MySQL 5 and/or MS SQL Server 2005 portable or developer edition, fine. Also MS Access 2007 as database storage for some settings and catalog content would be alright.

Thanks and Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Roy/SAC Homepage

Interesting SAC Art Packs Statistics, Figures and Downloads - Part II

I posted yesterday Part I of my findings about the Superior Art Creations (SAC) Art Pack Releases.

I was sorting today through the ANSI and ASCII releases and also uploaded all the music files converted to MP3 to Mediafire.com for download by anybody who is interested and not able to play back the music in its original format (MOD, XM, S3M, DMF, IT and SID). You can find them all at this web address. More download links can be found at the end of this post.

I shouldn't have made jokes about the file duplications by some of the SAC pixel artists by saying "funny, he obviously had no directory with all his art work in it, like the rest of us hehe", because it appears that I made the same error myself a few times when it comes to my ASCII art releases. I file name duped pretty often actually so I should have kept my mouth shut, because it seems that I am the worst offender of them all hehe.

But more to that a but later. Lets start with some additional music dupes that I found. I believe the following facts might not be as interesting as the stuff in my previous post, but it is interesting for me and maybe a few folks out there and that is enough for me to publish it on my blog hehe. Sorry :)

File Name          Pk   MP3 File Name      MP3 MD5 Check Sum
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
mt_addi.sid        27 mt_addi.mp3        1aca2c2191c2173e2d5dc858ec9d6a21
mt_holba.sid       27 mt_holba_beer.mp3  dc14a3fc3a5ac670e4b3e2313a546055
mt_addiction.sid   28 mt_addiction.mp3   1aca2c2191c2173e2d5dc858ec9d6a21
mt_holba_beer.sid  28 mt_holba_beer.mp3  dc14a3fc3a5ac670e4b3e2313a546055

I did not catch it myself. It was Mediafire.com who does automatically a de-duping based on the MD5 hash (obviously). The fact that the files have the same size in MP3 and SID format (MP3: 4,799,520 bytes, SID: 6,142 bytes) made me wonder, because I noticed this during the conversion.

There are in fact 25 unique SID songs by Maktone, MRD and Crome that have the same size. I tried a few to see if there are dupes, but the ones I checked were fine. Below is the list of the 25 songs that I mentioned.

Obviously not, because there were two real dupes actually.

MD5 Check Sum                    *File Name
-----------------------------------------------------------------
1aca2c2191c2173e2d5dc858ec9d6a21 *mt_addi.mp3
dc14a3fc3a5ac670e4b3e2313a546055 *mt_holba_beer.mp3

5e3319cd92b5229dcfd36455d5a7a598 *mrd_lazyrainydays.mp3
441187bae1564e4cf97f998adc92ee36 *mrd_graduationseasonfinal.mp3
ae4f190f150a6acb48d2fcb61aec08d8 *mrd_wondersoftheworldfinal.mp3
d407917b591cd2f4fdebdaadd6ca3c0a *MRD_RCM.mp3
654449199e164bbecc0c4e2ff11f6955 *mt_white_s.mp3
dc14a3fc3a5ac670e4b3e2313a546055 *mt_holba.mp3
a5aefa7e2c7a6cba1ce93a36cb059c67 *MRD-Airikka_High_Kick.mp3
3e3c9255d4bd5873474e1ca7346a84dd *MRD-Knark_I_Karusellen.mp3
ebf7397b9fb8a004a5d0eff788c71ed4 *mt_nag_cham.mp3
f428fbeb5742cae559a3ea53ef53ff61 *mt_kingsize.mp3
ea4c9a758e5c2972d1478be35516b8fa *mt_mortal.mp3
52a4565a7a6418d15743ae915a5b4abe *mt_hansa.mp3
1aca2c2191c2173e2d5dc858ec9d6a21 *mt_addiction.mp3
673c85d6306a3e9db345b9bbd6f7cf9b *MRD-Disco_Night.mp3
ba58e84da350b367c533901fcf49c11e *MRD_SG.mp3
c021cfeafa008da75308a026060ccf6c *crome-For_the_Years.mp3
e0aa086df18ff8892f10cfacc0c28a3c *crome-Bleib_wie_du_bist.mp3
dc91edc0775ef95f87c14cf50984b06e *!bla.bat
854553bcdf4fe85b59fdc515c1ad03b0 *mt_druid2rmx.mp3
33bb3b7b044bb8d0e8adb826e96b534b *MRD-Good_Bad_Necrotoad.mp3
25c6b194fd33085baa6fe851a42e2346 *mt_gob_king.mp3
7eaed33fd861fe5b8767ca36fc512774 *mt_fltdemo1.mp3
908997a8b0ed342b5b4f8eeab747f422 *mt_3ankare.mp3
b9c509d805eedaca308631770a8e4676 *MRD-Polymatrix.mp3
3661d853298174e0d301dfc104021924 *mrd_questoflightfinal.mp3

Btw. Just for clarification, in the case that you didn't get it already, File Name Dupe means that the two files have the same name, but differ in size and/or modified date. Full Dupe means that not only the file name is the same, but the size and last modified date as well.

ANSI File Name Dupes: 5
ASCII Full Dupes: 22
ASCII File Name Dupes: 45

ANSI File Name Dupes
------------------------------------
Pack 7               Pack 14
HT-PC2.ans           GTI-AR.ANS 
    
Pack 8               Pack 30
RV-RAY.ANS           w0-sacns.ANS 
RV-ULBY.ANS    
    

ASCII Full Dupes
------------------------------------
Pack 13              Pack 20                 Pack 33
SL-CO.ASC            CH-ACE.ASC              asx-bmf.txt 
                     CH-CLASS.ASC            dip-dsco.asc 
Pack 16              CH-DE3.ASC              asx-dsm.nfo 
SL-SUB2.ASC          CH-ESTRA.ASC            asx-dsm2.diz 
                     ch-mw2.asc              asx-sven.txt 
Pack 17              CH-MW.ASC               asx-svn2.txt 
ARL-SS.ASC           CH-PNC.ASC              S!-trd.diz 
ARL-FLOO.ASC         CH-REUNI.ASC    
                     CH-RISE2.ASC    
                     CH-RNDIZ.ASC    
                     CH-RNS3.ASC   

   
ASCII File Name Dupes
--------------------------------------
Pack 6               Pack 18                 Pack 25
ROY-DTCD.ASC         RV-CNC2.ASC             CH-RISE.ASC 
                     RV-CNC3.ASC             CH-RNS2.ASC 
Pack 8               ROY-CNCD.ASC    
ROY-PNSD.ASC         ROY-LSWA.ASC            Pack 27
ROY-IMPD.ASC                                 aln-solskogen.txt 
                     Pack 19                 scr-vite.nfo 
Pack 10              ARL-HIJA.ASC   
ROY-PNS3.ASC         sns-sacd.asc            Pack 28
                                             ROY-DEVN.ASC 
Pack 13              Pack 20   
ROY-SDMD.ASC         CH-DE.ASC               Pack 30
                     CH-RNS.ASC              cDr-soh.asc 
Pack 14              CH-MOTV8.ASC    
ROY-IMP.ASC          roy-phs.asc             Pack 32
HLX-SAC2.ASC         sns-eur.asc             dip-dark.asc 
HLX-SAC3.ASC         sns-pdx.asc    
                     SQZ-DST.ASC             Pack 33
Pack 16                                      nr-sac.asc 
ARL-PVM.ASC          Pack 21   
HLX-SAC.ASC          sns-stc.asc             Pack 34
ROY-PCY.ASC          frx-stc1.asc            cDr-sweatshop.asc 
ROY-NBD.ASC          frx-mth3.asc    
                     sl-ref.nfo    
Pack 17      
ARL-DREA.ASC         Pack 24   
ARL-NGT.ASC          scr-sac.nfo    
RV-CNC.ASC           sns-stat.asc    
ROY-PHC.ASC       
scr-cms.nfo       

Special ASCII Packs (which were already included in my original count)

Pack 32
cDr-glftpd: 75 files

Pack 34
nerv-purpleous: 33 files
S!-phus9: 7 files

Total ASCII: 3,001 (instead of 3,023)

Found another music dupe, Crm_Turr.xm Pack 21 and crm_turrica1.xm from pack 23 are the same. I discovered this one by accident.

Adjusted Music Files: 425 (instead of 428)

I had the music disks not in my original count. I used the dedupe feature by Mediafire.com for the MP3 to find out, which songs in the MDs where new or new versions of older songs that were already released in SAC art packs.

Crome's I Miss You Amiga: 25 files, 5 dupes = 20 original
SvenZZon's Chip Disk: 22 files, 5 dupes = 17 Original
Total = 37 Originals

Music Total: 463 Files

SvenZZon included a little intro with his music disk. I did not realize that until yesterday. Here is a capture of this mini intro. It's from 2004 as his music disk. Code by Red and Graphics by Webpige0/SAC. Music by SV of course hehe.

Backup Link to Video on YouTube.com
Download the video in AVI format from Mediafire.com

I then also found an intro with the same file name (except SACtros where it is expected).

File Name Dupe Executable: FRX-CRO1.EXE

in Pack 18
Date Created: Saturday, May 29, 1999, 00:03:38
Size: 26,063 bytes

in Pack 19
Date Created: Monday, September 06, 1999, 14:09:58
Size: 26,331 bytes

The date and size of the executables are different so I count the re-release as a file duplicate only although its not an entirely new intro (borderline cheat hehe).

More Downloads

• SAC Original NFO Files and File_IDs-!nfo.rar (286 KB)
• SAC Original PPEs - !PPE.rar (132 KB)
• SAC Original ANSI Art - !ANSI.ORG.rar (616 KB)
• SAC Original ASCII Art - !ASCII.Org.rar (2 MB)
• SAC Original Exe and Tools - !Exe.ORG.rar (7,4 MB)
• SAC Music in MP3 Format (over 400 individual files)

Okay, that's it for now.

Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Interesting SAC Art Packs Statistics, Figures and Downloads

I am still working on sorting through the Superior Art Creations (SAC) art packs and to make them easy accessible via the web (e.g. my web site and elsewhere). The sorting brings up some interesting facts about the art pack releases that I want to share with you. All SAC Art Packs are available for download here and also here at my site.  

Facts, Stats and Figures

• 2 of the 35 art packs included  no music release at all, packs 18 and 19. All art packs included ANSI, ASCII and VGA pixel art work, but it was once  close to the release of an art pack without pixel art. Pack 08 from September 1996 was 2 files in size, but it only included one piece of pixel art, a small SAC logo by Hetero that he created for the packs SACtro (SAC0996A.ZIP and SAC0996B.ZIP). I guess we were lucky hehe.
• 2 pixel art images in pack 33 by Asphyx/SAC were a dupe (asx-madhat-final.jpg and asx-warlords-logo.png). The two images had been released already in SAC Pack 32 five months earlier that same year. It almost looked like as if Pasha duped a picture for art pack 27, but the images are different (p-abs.png). He just named the file for another logo the same as he did a logo for the same group that he created in the past (funny, he obviously had no directory with all his art work in it, like the rest of us hehe).
• 2 Tracker Modules were dupes. But also the musicians duped once. Two of them, one song each in the same art pack. Crome (CRM) and Maktone (MT) included a song in pack 28, which they already released in a previous pack (crm_dustinmyeyes.XM and mt_FLT01.MOD).
• 2 art packs did not include a File_ID.diz file to describe the content of the ZIP archive, pack 21 and 22 (shame on you Ferrex ;)).  Since art pack 29 was no member list or FTP/BBS list included in the NFO files, which makes it hard to impossible to complete my "All-Time SAC Member List".
• 2 members, both pixel artists, used the same file prefix for some time, creating confusion, not just back then, but also today (I know, because I got confused too). Kenet and [K] used both the file prefix "k-" in various art packs. "[K]" also used "K_", with the underscore instead of the dash and Kenet used his full name as prefix in his file names. I have not checked who used which prefix when, but it surely created a big mess, when I aggregated the artwork, because you files from both with the prefix "K-" in the file name.

• 484 ANSI art pieces were released in 35 art packs between December 1994 and March 2007. The packs also included the following ....
• 3,023 ASCII art logos, file_id.diz, NFO layouts, FTP site designs etc. Not including the SAC releases File_IDs and NFO files itself.
• 115 Executables (.EXE and .COM files), excluding tools, installers and viewers, but including Cracktros, BBS intros and Still Images that were converted to an executable (e.g. a BBS ad ANSI in a wrapper to show the ANSI without having the need of the ANSI.SYS driver loaded). Also included in this figure are the SACtros that came with some of the art pack releases, especially during the early days. You can watch the video recorded 13 SACtros that were released with the SAC Packs on my web site. I also captured most of the other intros from the packs already. I have not put them up on my web site yet, but on YouTube. You can download all of my recordings and more via this share at Mediafile.com and its subsequent sub directories.
• 534 Pixel Art Images. I converted all images that were not already  in Jpeg or PNG format to PNG (e.g. Deluxe Paint .LBM files, but also old GIF files, BMP, PCX and TGA). I want to put them up on the site one day, but for now Flickr.com must suffice. I created a special collection with a bunch of sets for all the pixel art images there.
• 428 MODs (ProTracker, TakeTracker and NoiseTracker modules), SIDs (Commodore 64 music files), XMs (Fasttracker 2 modules), S3Ms (Scream Tracker 3), ITs (Impulse Tracker), DMFs (X-Tracker) and MP3s (not including the separate music disc releases, which include music from the packs, but maybe also some stuff that wasn't released in a pack yet. I don't know yet. I need to check this.)

Tracker Music Play-back and Conversion to MP3

I just converted all the tracker modules and SIDs to MP3 format for the later use on my web site, to make the music accessible to a broader audience, because you cannot play tracker music without special software or player plug-ins. The conversion was a pain in the neck. I used DeliPlayer2 (no link, because their web site DeliPlayer.com seems to be down, but see this site for more info.) for most of the music, which worked fine, but unfortunately only one module at the time. I ran into some problems with about 15 or so of the over 400 mods. DeliPlayer said that it believes that the files are corrupted and refused to play/convert them. I checked with ModPlug Player for Windows and they played back fine.

I also tried WinAmp with the LifeAMP plug-in and the internal MOD input source plug-in, but the results were mixed. I have not checked the BASS module player plug-in and thus do not know, if it is any good. Also useful is the SidPlay plug-in for WinAmp for playing back the SID music files.

But then I discovered XMPlay, which beats all of the players and tools above. It has tons of plug-ins as well and even supports WinAmp plug-ins as well. With XMPlay was it a breeze to convert tracker music to MP3, WAV or other formats, including in batch mode and the option to save the results in the same folder as the source file. Damn, if I only had known earlier. It would have saved me hours of time that I wasted on manually converting one song at a time.

More Download Options

If you don't want to download all the art packs, but are interested in some of the stuff, then I have something for you that you might like. I sorted the original content of the packs by content type and put them into individual RAR archives. I did that already for the music files and the pixel art. I have not done yet a archive for the ANSI and ASCII art yet. I already had packages for the Intros and Cracktros available for download directly from my web site here.

• All pixel art releases (534 images) in original format (LBM, PCX, GIF, JPG, TGA and BMP were used by the artists). Total size of the RAR archive = 50 MB. Download via Mediafire.com here.
• 194 XM Fast Tracker 2 Modules (22 MB .RAR File) + it also includes the 47 modules from the two music disk releases by Svenzzon and Crome. Download via Mediafire.com here.
• 156 MOD Pro Tracker, Take Tracker and Noise Tracker Modules (2.4 MB .RAR File). Download here.
• 26 SID Commodore 64 Music Files (50 KB, yeah, kilobytes :), .RAR File). Download here.
• 22 S3M Scream Tracker 3 Modules (2.8 MB .RAR File). Download here.
• 14 DMF X-Tracker Modules (3.1 MB .RAR File). Download here.
• 12 MP3 Mpeg-1 Layer 3 music files (35 MB .RAR File). Download here.
• 4 IT Impulse Tracker Modules (1.5 MB .RAR File). Download here.
• more Downloads ...
• and even more Downloads ...

Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC