Alpha Centauri 2

Other Games => CivII => Topic started by: Blake00 on May 29, 2021, 03:06:18 PM

Title: Civilization 2 websites archive search and rescue side project
Post by: Blake00 on May 29, 2021, 03:06:18 PM
Hey guys,

Good timing on making this forum as today I just finished a huge side project I've been working on for weeks now over at CFC and wanna put copies in other Civ2 forums to make sure this important archive resource is accessible to all communities and not lost.

While doing my scenario search & rescue project (https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/scenario-hunt-mars-alphac-c-c-ra-dune-mom-col-moo-doom-b5-strek-swars-sgate-homm-more.657278/) and Civ video series prep work I've located quite a few old Civ2 scenario repositories! Using similar research and hunting techniques I've used over the years when tributing long lost libraries of fan games/mods for my retro gaming website Blake's Sanctum (http://blakessanctum.x10.mx/) and also in real world work I do, I've used link lists on surviving sites to collect old addresses to paste into webarchive, each time I found a backup of a long lost site I'd then visit it's own links section to find even more long lost site links to paste into the archive search. This branching out takes days or even weeks but leads to huge results! The larger sites (in particular any Apolyton hosted ones) seem to have good backups with working downloads still, presumably due to someone manually backing them up to webarchive. Whereas the smaller sites often don't have working downloads due to the bot crawler only backing up small stuff. However the smaller sites are still useful as they often contain useful info, strategy guides and custom Civ2 graphic files that were more likely to get backed up than the scenarios due to their smaller file size. This was actually quite fun to make as visiting these sites is like stepping into a time machine to the late 90s! :)

Below are all the repositories/sources I've managed to find in my rescue efforts, please let me know if there's any other good dead or alive Civ2 scenario site/sources missing! Obviously there's quite a bit of crossover and duplication between them but many tend to have something the others don't.

Compilations & collections:
Large website repositories:
Title: Re: Civilization 2 websites archive search and rescue side project
Post by: Blake00 on May 29, 2021, 03:06:56 PM
Small website repositories (often a modders homepage):
Title: Re: Civilization 2 websites archive search and rescue side project
Post by: Blake00 on May 29, 2021, 03:07:23 PM
Forums containing scenario files & links:
Other Civilization 2 websites (no scenarios):
RIP Lost Civilization 2 websites (no working backup found):
Like I said above, if you know of a great Civ2 related page missing from here let me know! :)

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Title: Re: Civilization 2 websites archive search and rescue side project
Post by: Blake00 on July 22, 2021, 11:58:48 AM
Have made some updates to the list including separating out the compilation CDs and download section zip backups from the regular websites into their own new section at the top of the list. In this new section I put all the CD scenario & map collections I've found (including a new one uploaded to ModDB (https://www.moddb.com/mods/civilization-ii-mod-pack/downloads/civilization-ii-mod-pack/) by a guy called foo_jam2002 that has some interesting scenarios I haven't seen before in it), along with recently acquired huge classic Apolyton & CFC backup collection zips, and finally the new browsable backup collections I'm in the process of building on ModDB and Web Archive Library (https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/scenario-mod-preservation-project-log-uploading-linking.671035/).

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Title: Re: Civilization 2 websites archive search and rescue side project
Post by: MysticWind on May 02, 2022, 07:27:09 AM
Not Civ II specifically, but I found a January 2006 archive of Apolyton - The Book (https://web.archive.org/web/20060101085308/http://home.att.net/~sjcfg/main.html), which was a historical account by poster DarkCloud about that forum's history up to 2002. Helpfully, the entire site is preserved as a Word document (https://web.archive.org/web/20060101085308/http://home.att.net/~sjcfg/book.doc).
Title: Re: Civilization 2 websites archive search and rescue side project
Post by: Buster's Uncle on June 13, 2025, 06:37:32 PM
Say Blake - it would take me about zero time to add a Civ2 section to Downloads here.  Would that be any use to you?
Title: Re: Civilization 2 websites archive search and rescue side project
Post by: Buster's Uncle on June 14, 2025, 04:19:27 PM
-In fact, I went ahead and made the category yesterday.

You'll find it at the bottom, and it's a good spot to upload mods and spread around the love in another place.

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You probably ought to have a look at the Alpha Centauri desktop images too; ISTR some material generated that you'd have included in the recent CFC posting if you'd had it.
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