By Kieron Gillen on March 4th, 2008 at 12:32 pm.
EDIT: Site is 403ed. Comments thread is now a list of who got what and what to do with ‘em.
Wow. This appears to be the motherlode. If you read our Warren Spector interview last month, you’ll have probably been excited by the section where he describes interviewing twelve gaming luminaries as part of his University of Texas Master Class in Video Games and Digital Media. Talking to everyone from Richard Garriott to Blizzard’s Mike Morhaime to Id’s Tim Willits, in sessions you’d want to be a fly on the wall for. And now you can, as in a bandwidth-destroying move, the University of Texas has posted all thirteen lectures.
Get them now before the internet collapses.
(I’m not even joking. I was tempted to not blog it until I’d downloaded them all, as a quick technorati search reveals only Primotech and Spector’s blog has actually publicised them so far. But I do this thing for you, yes, you. JUST YOU.)
This is what he said about these lectures in our interview…
“I’m teaching a course at the university of Texas, where I’ve been inviting – well – gaming luminaries to talk to me for three hours, from the perspective of, “Hey – I’ve known you for 20 years, don’t try to con me and let’s talk about the stuff that typically doesn’t get talked about.” It’s part of an oral history project – because we are all still alive. Well, not all of us – Dani Bunten’s gone and a couple of others. But we’re getting to the point where the pioneers are not going to be here forever. We need to get it recorded for future generations before it’s lost, in the same way that lots of early film history is lost. Gone. Never known. I don’t want that to happen to us, as I really believe that videogames are the medium of the 21st century, in the same way that movies and TV were the medium of the 20th century. We have to preserve our history before it’s gone.”
I couldn’t agree more, really. Spector also provides a watching order, if you’re interested in doing it chronologically…
- 1. September 10, 2007: Warren Spector (Intro Lecture)
- 2. September 17, 2007: Patricia York (HR Director, Disney Interactive Studios)
- 3. September 24, 2007: Harvey Smith (then Creative Director, Midway Austin)
- 4. October 1, 2007: Hal Barwood (Game Designer, Screenwriter par excellence)
- 5. October 8, 2007: Matthew Bellows (GM, Floodgate Entertainment)
- 6. October 15, 2007: Marc LeBlanc (Designer/Programmer, Mind Control Software)
- 7. October 22, 2007: Mike Morhaime (President, Blizzard)
- 8. October 29, 2007: Tim Willits (Lead Designer, id Software)
- 9. November 5, 2007: Seamus Blackley (Talent Agent, Creative Artists Agency – also, “Father of the Xbox”)
- 10. November 12, 2007: Paul Weaver (Director of Development, Junction Point Studios)
- 11. November 19, 2007: Gordon Walton (Co-Studio Director, Bioware Austin)
- 12. November 26, 2007: Richard Garriott (Creative Guy whose title I don’t actually know, NC Soft)
- 13. December 3, 2007: Richard Hilleman (Guy With No Title – and proud of it – at Electronic Arts)
Only downloaded Spector’s intro so far and watched a fragment. I sense I’ll return. This actually feels kinda important.
Sweet manatee of Galilee! Thanks for these Kieron, my mornings trawling RPS have not been in vain.
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Don’t you mean Dan Button?
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Yes, Alex.
KG
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This is going to take forever to download. Thanks for the heads up KG. Planning to post a summary or discussion or something of them?
nabeel
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I think I’ll just wait until they’re up on Youtube, as Quicktime appears to be crashing Firefox. Damn you!
Looking forward to see Garriott’s and Morhaine’s ones.
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Dear lord. I’ve got to run off to a lecture now (and not, sadly, with Warren Spector. To be fair, I’m not sure that his knowledge of Attic Greek is all that hot), so I’m hoping I can trust my download manager with the grave task of downloading each video.
Man!
P.S – is that the actual American box-art for Deus Ex on the right hand side of the website? Because boy is it ugly.
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Awesome, thanks a lot for it (now I need free time, has anyone some to spare?).
And it’s really a sad thing to think, we don´t have many deaths in this industry, is hard to accept that people that has done some of the masterpieces won´t be along forever. Sometime ago, Warren Spector said something about that he could foresee three projects more before he would retire. Of course, other people will come, life cycle and all that. But is a thought that disturbs me in some way.
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Acosta: Yeah, he said that in the EG part of my interview. It’s an interesting one, innit.
KG
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The internet has collapsed.
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@Acosta:
You’re gonna die soon, you’re gonna die soon.
It’s not cold in here, you’re just dying.
You’re gonna die, you’re gonna die, you’re dying.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=UPiFhjCxXpk
HTH.
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And the site is now 404 Not Found. Sigh, I only managed to download one video before it disappeared
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Odds on “Lord British”, anyone?
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Failed
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Okay: I have…
Spector
Harvey Smith
Seamus Blackley
Who else got what?
KG
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Looks like the videos are down from the official site. Some enterprising people on Spector’s blog have posted the directory listing (http://podcast.communication.utexas.edu/RTF/vidgames/)
Warren S. commented on his blog the following:
“Well… Just got word from UT that they’ve taken the class videos down! Apparently, there were some i’s not dotted and t’s not crossed. I expect they’ll go back up sometime soon… Sorry! I’ll keep everyone posted when they’re available again.”
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Okay, grabbing “Oct1,” Gordan Wallace, and Hal Barwood from the open dir.
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Grabbing Marc LeBlanc.
EDIT: And Alec got Morheim.
KG
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Got Gordon Wallace and Hal Barwood. Moving on to Patricia York and Paul Weaver.
EDIT: It’s looking increasingly likely that I can get all of these. I’ll see about making a torrent if I do.
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Hah, I read that as Matt LeBlanc. Like, totally TMI Kieron!
Oh well, I guess I wasn’t doing anything else with my d/l limit this month. *downloads*
*well, downloads ‘Garriott’ and ‘Spector’, anyway, I’ll Youtube-wait the rest…*
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Alec is getting Tim Willits.
KG
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Missus.
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I have the same as Kieron, plus Mike Morhaime, Gordon Walton, Garriot and Tim Willits still downloading. Cheers for the heads-up RPS.
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Okay, I managed to get everything bar LeBlanc, York, Willits and Weaver. Unfortunately my webspace is nowhere near good enough to fit any of the videos on, so I’m not sure what to do with the files I do have. Perhaps a torrent would be sensible, though I’m not sure if it’d be a waste of time uploading an incomplete set (not to mention that with my connection – 20kb/s upstream at the very most – it’d take an awfully long time for the set to seed at first).
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This is turning into an hockey card collecting game for gamers.
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Downloaded and uploaded using the magic speeds of the work connection, out of curiousity as to whether anyone will grab it – the Warren Spector video:
http://www.essell.org/stuff/temp/warren_spector.mov
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I can never get enough of Warren Spector. The man has the best attitude of any dev, and has the best personality. He’s my hero *sniff sniff* (ahem)
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Hmm, my download died part way in, looking like its gone down…
Some very interesting stuff here though by the looks of it, will have to make it onto the student server where I’m studying (Swansea Metropolitan University, formerly the much cooler sounding Swansea Institute of Higher Education).
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@essell: Thanks, I’m grabbing it! I tried to get the lot, but it went down after I’d got 6 of them. I’ll have to scavenge around for the others.
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Damn! I found these last week, but had only downloaded two at the time. :(
I’ve only watched the Warren Spector one, but it’s fantastic.
::Ed – Oh and Warren now seems to be posting regularly, woo!
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The Harvey Smith one too:
http://www.essell.org/stuff/temp/harvey_smith.mov
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Thanks Essell for sharing, put more up if you got any.
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Seconded, cheers Essell.
Am watching the Marc LeBlanc one now, amusing to hear how much nepotism was involved in the birth of Looking Glass. :)
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I’m also here to thanks Essell. So thanks Essell.
I’m watching the first one and I’m finding it incredibly interesting.
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Essell, you are my new (temporary) best friend, using the magic of my work connection, currently pulling them down at just over 2Megs/sec….moarplzkthx.
Okay, I just used lolcats speak…must kill myself now.
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Wiper – that doesn’t look like any boxart I’ve ever seen…my copy is a cool blue theme w/ just JC and a city skyline, IIRC…
P.S. Said copy is the mac version – anyone know where to get just the PC executable/.dll’s? (.UTX and such files are cross platform.) Yea, it’s super cheap on steam, but I’m super cheap, and I already paid full retail price back in the day and would rather use the money for Audiosurf or WorldOfGoo or food or something. >:P
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Torrent anyone?
Btw, thanks massive to essell.
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Thanks indeed, was hoping someone grabbed some before they were removed.
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man, now I’m seriously bummed out…
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Wiper, if your isp supplies Usenet access you could upload them to a game related group. That way everyone would be able to download them without waiting for a bunch of seeders.
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http://www.ninjadodo.net/temp/spector/
I managed to grab a couple. Patricia York is up. Still uploading Hal Barwood and Gordon Walton. I’ve also got Smith and Spector, so I guess I’ll do a mirror for those as well…
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Sadly I lack Usenet access, and much as I love you all, I’m not about to shell out for access just so that I can spend the next few days clogging up my (shared) bandwidth with uploading. I’ll try and think of something.
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Thank you Essel and Ninja Dodo. Thanks to you, and before the files disappeared, I managed to get:
Gordon Wallace
Hal Barwood
Harvey Smith
Marc LeBlanc
Matthew Bellows
Mike Morhaime
Patricia York
Warren Spector
Unfortunately I don’t have the web hosting to put them up for everyone, but if someone is compiling a collection to share… :)
The one’s I’m missing are:
Paul Weaver
Richard Hilleman
Seamus Blackley
Tim Willits
Richard Garriot
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How about Bittorrent though? That should be feasible.
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I can up the Paul Weaver one … on rapidshare or something? o__O; I got a couple others but it seems you guys got that covered already.
Torrent’s a great idea for the whole lot, if anyone can sort that out.
nabeel
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these are the few i could download early enough.
does anybody have some of the rest?
http://torrents.thepiratebay.org/4064718/warren_spector_lecture.4064718.TPB.torrent
http://torrents.thepiratebay.org/4064732/warren_spector_interviews_gordon_walton.4064732.TPB.torrent
http://torrents.thepiratebay.org/4064735/warren_spector_interviews_hal_barwood.4064735.TPB.torrent
http://torrents.thepiratebay.org/4064737/warren_spector_interviews_patricia_york.4064737.TPB.torrent
http://torrents.thepiratebay.org/4064729/warren_spector_interviews_harvey_smith.4064729.TPB.torrent
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The Gordon Walton one is fantastic, at least from a game history point of view.
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Here’s the Paul Weaver one.
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The Paul Weaver torrent is only 25 mins… Is that the whole thing? All the others are like 2 hours.
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:X I dunno actually, it was only 40 MB when I was getting it, so I dunno if the file was incomplete on their end or what.
Now that I’ve started watching these, I’m getting that tingling feeling about seeing something important. I find stuff like this absolutely and utterly fascinating, and I love how candid it is. I’d give anything to attend things like this.
nabeel
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If you’re ever in the North of the UK around February the Animex festival has a similar vibe (or at least has done the couple times I attended it).
I agree this is great stuff. Just finished uploading all the ones I have to my temp space so hopefully someone else can fill in the gaps.
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I made a torrent of the Tim Willits one
http://torrents.thepiratebay.org/4066283/Tim_Willits(id_Software)_at_Warren_Spector________s_UT_class.4066283.TPB.torrent
Really interesting talk, especially the interview but also Willits’ Presentation. Have Fun watching.
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ouch, bad link. download here:
http://thepiratebay.org/tor/4066283
sorry.
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Thanks, sbs, I was hoping someone would put that one up.
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Unfortunately, these were made available prematurely. They’ll be up again later on after we at the University of Texas do some tweaking.
If all of you like this so much maybe you’d consider helping us fund the next series! We had a shoestring budget, with promises of help from various folks but not much actually materialized.
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I hope you don’t cut anything. My only criticism is that the mic doesn’t appear to be on for a minute at the start of some of these and the audio goes a bit off-sync at some point in the Harvey Smith video. Aside from that not sure what you would want to tweak.
As far as the next series I think if you a set up some kind of donations thing you might get a good bit of support.
Would be interesting btw if this (and the archive for that matter) expanded its focus to be more international, because while you have to start somewhere I wouldn’t mind hearing from European or Japanese devs as well.
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Sharon – Unfortunately, I’ve learned when it comes to money, don’t count on anything until it’s in your hand. How much are we talking here to cover costs? $200 total? $10,000? $12.99 tax? (Ooh, this really is the place to ask, as the folks across the pond could donate a fiver, and it magically turns into a, what, $12 now or something?) In the meantime, do you mind terribly much if we share what we have amongst our small little group here?
SBS – Thanks! I’m pulling/seeding using my magic work connection, I limited it to 1Mbit upload, but I’m only seeing c. 10k down and 20k up…we do some traffic shaping (right now it’s set, not dynamic) so that might be it. I might turning on encryption, see if that helps or hurts. Once yours completes I could try and toss a torrent together…can you have a torrent incorporate existing torrents? (i.e. Could I have one that uses my seed files for, say, the harvey one but could start pulling from the willits torrent that’s already out there?)
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[b]Sharon:[/b] I think that with a series of clips as popular as yours, the most viable thing at first would be merely hosting a torrent for the particular videos.
Though I of course don’t have access to your traffic charts.
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Does YouTube accept videos this long? It’s not as if the image quality is particularly important (in the ones I’ve watched anyway).
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I think 10 minutes is the limit for Youtube videos. But it could be chopped to several parts.
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YouTube videos can be longer, there’s a limit to file size uploadable. Thanks for the torrents, guys, anyone got the rest?
nabeel
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Otherwise it’d probably be possible to make an arrangement with Google Video.
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http://dl.127001.org/movies/spector/
This is all the ones we could find so far. If anyone has any others, feel free to email me at my nick @ my website (without the www, natch) and we’ll mirror them
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Here is Seamus Blackley.
http://rapidshare.com/files/97209667/seamus_blackley.part1.rar.html
http://rapidshare.com/files/97249064/seamus_blackley.part2.rar.html
http://rapidshare.com/files/97283569/seamus_blackley.part3.rar.html
Enjoy.
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cheers bludr, that video has now been added to the mirror frymaster posted ( http://dl.127001.org/movies/spector/ )
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Awesome community spirit, Frymaster, bludr and lifeless!
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Thanks a lot guys.
Still 7 left.
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Frymaster, check your email ;)
Shortly, only Richard Garriott (12) and Richard Hilleman (13) will be missing. Anyone got them?
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system shock forever and ever
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I did get #12 & #13 (one of the best) – so who should I contact?
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maze: if you email me [my username] at 127001.org we can sort out mirroring them
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I’m uploading what I got so far (which is roughly what you can also download from the other links at this thread) to Wuala (see http://wua.la for info). It’s a distributed online storage which is in closed alpha at the moment, but speed is usually very good because the files are spread over a lot of hosts.
If anyone is interested in an invite to that system (especially people who have videos not yet widespread) you can contact me at my uni-koblenz (de) mail account, which starts with “sma” and ends with “xein”. Not writing it out here, spam protection, ya know :). We can start a group for these videos then and try to puzzle them all together.
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Thanks to Maze we now have Richard Garriot
We just need 6,7 and 13 now
http://dl.127001.org/movies/spector
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6 & 7 are on their way. Frymaster, I’ll email you links again when they’re up.
Sorry I can’t just host them for everyone, but I don’t have a great deal of space or bandwidth, and my cable upstream is pretty pathetic for starting torrents with.
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Muchly appreciated, guys; looking forward to the last two.
nabeel
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These are some of the most interesting, entertaining and informative pieces I’ve ever seen about the game industry. Thanks everyone for the hosting and contributions!
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Is there more to the Garriot video? It looks like it was cut off with about 40 minutes to go…
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No, he meant Dani Bunten, who used to be Dan Bunten.
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(I know. It’s a reference to a previous boo-boo).
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I’ve got the following files & sizes (according to windows) but no sufficient webspace of my own to upload them to nor any knowledge of how I should make a torrent of them, so contact me if you’ve got a place I can upload/FTP them chtulie(at)hotmail(dot)com.
01 – 219.267kB
02 – 278.815 kB
03 – 276.971 kB
04 – 271.743 kB
05 – 242.174 kB
06 – NA (couldn’t get it, haven’t seen it since)
07 – 264.549 kB
08 – 248.866 kB
09 – 290.016 kB
10 – 45.723 kB (I haven’t seen a complete version of this yet, so it seems likely that there was some technical trouble when recording this guest)
11 – 287.113 kB
12 – 239.933 kB
13 – 287.651 kB
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Getting the remaining two, thanks a bunch!
nabeel
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My FTP at home uploads really slowly for some reason so I’m going to be able to mirror all of these eventually, but the selection is limited for now.
http://www.ninjadodo.net/temp/spector/
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thanks to everyone for the videos, they offer amazing insight into the industry. I only watched Garriot’s and Willit’s (I know, big names appeal) but I’ll check out the others asap.
it’s a shame that despite being in a game design school (france) we rarely get guests as interesting as those featured on these videos :-(
A little remark: Like Soren pointed out, the R.Garriot video is in fact broken. Does anyone have a working copy?
thanks again.
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andreadst: You mean Spector isn’t a big name? :p
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My paul weaver is incomplete, does somebody has it?
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The person who was uploading Garriot was doing it while afk and neither me or lifeless noticed it was incomplete at the time we moved it to the live download; he’s since reuploaded it (if you look at http://dl.127001.org/movies/spector you’ll notice it’s jumped up in size by 90 meg) and he’s uploading #13 as we speak
As long as it’s just people in this comment thread our mirror should be OK but I’m going to talk to wireplay / jolt / virginmedia and see if any of them fancy putting up a proper mirror – we can only afford about another 250 gigs worth of bandwidth ourselves
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…aaaaaaaaaand that’s the full set
…unless someone has a copy of Paul Weaver that _isn’t_ only 45 meg, that is
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I’ve created a torrent to help distribute the load a bit
http://www.gameupdates.org/details.php?id=2265
if you can please use this instead of the web, and seed if you can
we’ve got arround 70Mbits allocated to the torrent so it should fast
cheers
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Frymaster, and everyone else who has sent/hosted/torrented, thank you :)
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>we can only afford about another 250 gigs worth of bandwidth ourselves
I’m uploading the remaining ones right now (7, 9, 10, 12 and 13 still to go) and my host is pretty generous with the bandwidth so between our two servers and the various torrents it should be fine, I think.
http://www.ninjadodo.net/temp/spector/
(this Paul Weaver is also the 45 meg one, sadly)
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lifeless, do you have a direct link to the torrent? My Opera insists on using its own torrent downloader unless I save the torrent to my computer.
I’ve already got all the files, but will happily upload to those who haven’t got it yet.
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Zuffox: http://dl.127001.org/torrents/Warren Spector Master Class Videos.torrent
also looks like gameupdates.org have bots which auto download new content to seed, so there are a few fast servers seeding it now
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I just (finally) finished watching two of them. (Spector and Harvey…hm, that should be a TV show…) So, is there someplace we can discuss these?
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i just want to say. you guys are awesome, thanks a lot for the re-host.
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er, nevermind… move along!
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