Long-overdue update

Greetings everybody!

First and for all, I would like to apologize for not having provided an update in quite a while. Lots of things have been and are going on, but most of it concerned updating coding for Sierra Chest 2, and I wanted to make sure I had something of substance to show you, so you can actually visualize the progress.

Let's start out with the annoying news I got from the host of the site. On April 11 I received an email from them, stating that, and I quote: 

"During routine maintenance our system has discovered material that appears to violate our terms of service. This includes what appears to be material of which the transmission and distribution of is illegal under US copyright, and which, per our terms of service, is not allowed to be stored on your account. [...] Please remove all material that violates our terms of service by tomorrow at 5PM EST, OR provide evidence of your rights to broadcast or redistribute this material. Please respond to this email within the stated time-frame advising us of your compliance. We will, unfortunately, be required to suspend your account if the material in question is not removed within the time frame provided." 

First, there is no copyrighted material on the Sierra Chest, so their assumption was flatout wrong. I'm a collector and curator, not a pirate. Secondly they did not specify which the files in question were. Instead they told me on the 'support' line to just remove the entire games folder, which would be the entire site basically. Luckily, about two hours before they were going to wipe out the entire site, somebody did provide a list - it turned out to be all exe files - namely fan-made patches and demos that are no copyright violation at all (as expected).

Anyway, it wasn't the first time this host caused me a serious headache (the entire site has been wiped out twice due to hard drive failures in the past, among other things), so I decided to move out of there, because there's no way I'm going to let them host Sierra Chest 2.

So, for over a month I've been transferring the entire site content of nearly 100GB to a new Google Drive account. While that was a big loss of time, it also has some advantages:

- it is a safer way to keep things backed-up

- it makes it easier to switch hosts since the assets stay in place and the entire site doesn't need to be re-uploaded.

- I can share it with you guys. Yep, here you go, direct access to the source files of the Sierra Chest. Don't share with others please :) : https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2wNYJVS5fv0bFZDUFlvOHpuUUk

The drive contains everything except the site's programming code, screen shots and box art. So you'll find the music, demos, trailers, videos, publications (still uploading those), manuals, hint books and more there at your fingertips. The box art and screen shots remain at the host because those are things site members will be able to upload on the site - and obviously I can't give everybody editing permissions to the source files of the site itself, that must stay separated. 

I also added another 1,200 boxes to the database since the latest update by the way. I'm adding each version for each available platform for each game to it - anything I can find. Why so detailed? Because it's essential for members to be able to mark which exact games they have in their collection (to compile their virtual collection), which exact games they would like to acquire, and which exact games store owners are listing in the Sierra Chest store in order to get perfect matches. That and it's pretty cool to know how many different releases actually exist - I don't think any site out there goes into such detail.

Anyway, let's move on to the visual stuff: Sierra Chest 2! Yes, I've also been working on that for the past several months and I've got some screen caps for you :). Mind you it is still work in progress, but it is nicely shaping up!

Main page: http://www.sierrachest.com/gfx/blog/20160525PatreonUpdate/pic1.jpg

Sierra magazines page:

http://www.sierrachest.com/gfx/blog/20160525PatreonUpdate/pic2.jpg

Sierra catalogues page:

http://www.sierrachest.com/gfx/blog/20160525PatreonUpdate/pic3.jpg

TSN Times page:

http://www.sierrachest.com/gfx/blog/20160525PatreonUpdate/pic4.jpg

Playable demos page (demos are also accessible on the game pages themselves):

http://www.sierrachest.com/gfx/blog/20160525PatreonUpdate/pic5.jpg

Trailers page (trailers are also accessible on the game pages themselves):

http://www.sierrachest.com/gfx/blog/20160525PatreonUpdate/pic6.jpg

Hint books and strategy guides page

http://www.sierrachest.com/gfx/blog/20160525PatreonUpdate/pic7.jpg

Memorabilia page

http://www.sierrachest.com/gfx/blog/20160525PatreonUpdate/pic8.jpg

External links page

http://www.sierrachest.com/gfx/blog/20160525PatreonUpdate/pic9.jpg

Game page (As you can see the game pages have an additional menu to access the various sub-sections, such as walkthrough, game play, screen caps, tech support, box art and so on.

http://www.sierrachest.com/gfx/blog/20160525PatreonUpdate/pic10.jpg

More updates coming soon. Again my apologies it's been so long since the latest one.

Rudy