Downloads of fixed game images are broken

[Garry]

Downloads of fixed game images are broken if they're not in a zip file. Someone just told me that my upload of an atr disk image for The Halls of Death was broken, so I tried it myself and they were right. I've uploaded a new disk image to replace the old one, but DON'T UNZIP IT!

My correspondent then revealed that there are lots of broken images and he theorised that: "If the files were corrupted by the same UTF-8 bug that hit the frontend's encoding, they're probably gone." I sure do hope you've got backups.

[gschmidl]

I was the unfortunate person to stumble upon this problem.

My primary theory is that the MIME type is incorrect for random downloads (not .txt/.zip/.pdf/...) and the server tries to show them as plain text, which mangles them. Since all the .zip downloads seem to be working, I assume the files are stores as-is somewhere, not as BLOBs in the database, and hopefully aren't actually corrupted.

Some examples:

https://solutionarchive.com/game/id%2C2 ... aster.html
https://solutionarchive.com/game/id%2C2 ... ntain.html
https://solutionarchive.com/game/id%2C2 ... +Time.html
https://solutionarchive.com/game/id%2C2 ... nture.html
https://solutionarchive.com/game/id%2C7 ... asure.html

[Alastair]

Downloads of fixed game images are broken if they're not in a zip file. Someone just told me that my upload of an atr disk image for The Halls of Death was broken, so I tried it myself and they were right. I've uploaded a new disk image to replace the old one, but DON'T UNZIP IT!

Thanks Garry, I've done the swap.

The problem with non-zipped program images has been known about for some years (the earliest mention I can find is from 2010). I thought that there was some information available instructing uploaders to submit fixed programs within zipped files, but if it ever existed I can't find it now. Anyway, everyone who has authority to edit the main site should know that non-zipped program images become corrupted and so should not add them to the site (instead they should get in touch with the uploader and request a zipped re-submission) so I don't know how these non-zipped program images ended up approved.

Related to fixed games, during my search of the site and forum for relevant information I came across something I'd completely forgotten about - https://solutionarchive.com/phpBB3/view ... 4474#p4474 - I take it that the Halls of Death fix is the one mentioned in the Notes? If so an explanatory file within the zip file is probably not needed.

[Garry]

Thanks Alastair. I was unaware of the requirement to add a text file with the bug fixes. That makes sense, so I'll do that in future. For 'Halls of Death', I presume the fixes were those mentioned in the notes, but I don't know for sure, as that was a long time ago.

[gschmidl]

I don't think a single uploaded game I've looked at had that information, for what it's worth.