CASA ::

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.

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

Garry wrote: Thu Aug 06, 2026 12:55 pm 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.

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.

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

gschmidl wrote: Sun Aug 09, 2026 9:10 pm I don't think a single uploaded game I've looked at had that information, for what it's worth.

It's possible that of the people who have supplied fixed games only Dave, Samwise, and myself ever read that thread when it was originally posted. As I said, I had completely forgotten about it so I would not be surprised to find that most fixed game uploads don't contain the additional information.