Goodbye
Greetings PC Demo Scene,
Since 1992, you have enjoyed the vast collection of scene-related files located at The Hornet Archive. For years, we have struggled to provide the best user interface and highest level of organization possible. With over 300 gigs of files downloaded per month, all of us have been kept very busy. Our archive is undeniably the single most active demo scene location in existence.
On 04 Feb 1998, the final issue of DemoNews was released. From that point forward, the energy of those who maintained the archive decreased steadily. Finally it seemed obvious that we were no longer willing to give _enough_ energy. Many aspects of the archive have been completely automated (/incoming/music being one example). If it hadn't been for this, the archive would not have lasted this long.
Hornet is disbanding. Although not all of our group members directly assisted with the maintenance of the archive, they were all driving forces keeping our organization together. Our group, in its final state, consisted of 5 members: Andy Voss (Phoenix), Brett Neely (GD), Pim van Mun (Stony), Jim Leonard (Trixter), and myself (Snowman).
Andy (maintainer of everything that was "demo" on the archive) plans to retire from the scene by the end of this year, but not without one final scene project, a CDROM filled with memorabilia from NAID '95 and '96. You can contact him at vossa@rpi.edu or xproject@erols.com.
Brett (columnist for DemoNews and co-organizer for Music Contest) has retired from Hornet but plans to remain in the music scene; you can reach him now at gd@scene.org.
Jim (coder for our single large-scale demo Explicit and several other smaller intros) has already left our group and retired from the scene to work on his new project oldskool.org, a tribute/nostalgia site dedicated to games of the early 1980's. Jim's new email address is trixter@oldskool.org.
Pim (graphics artist for the Escape and Freedom CDs, as well as a contributor to several intros and web images) will go inactive at the same time as the archive. His plans are to release his never before released work on a scene CDROM project. He will finish up his Computer Science degree at the University of Nijmegen in The Netherlands next year, and will continue with his small company. You can reach Pim at mun@wxs.nl.
Personally, I plan to complete my new faster-than-light warp drive and sail to the third moon of Zenthrax on the outer fringes of the Pangalaxian Empire, where I will be reunited with my r3 brethren. On approximately 01 Nov 1998 according to your primitive Julian Earth calander, I will reachable through terrestrial email at r3cgm@rworld.org.
As a result, the archive will be dismantled as soon as possible. All html pages will be deleted. The search engine will cease to function. The /incoming directory will be cataloged, emptied, and removed. All sites being web-hosted under /info will find new homes. Our mirror sites will no longer be resolvable by (country-code).hornet.org. In the near future, there will be a "final" version of the archive. At this point, there will be no web interface.
We can not shut down the archive quickly. We are the primary host for several large online documentation projects and must give the maintainers of them a chance to move somewhere else. We also can not, in good conscience, end the archive with a full upload directory. For the first time in perhaps 5 years we will have every file moved out of /incoming.
Those of you who know me personally realize that I do not like loose ends. I like closure. I feel an obligation to shut down the archive properly. No, the end of The Hornet Archive will be a grueling, painful, extended process (just kidding!).
Ironically, we have not been able to sell off all of our Hornet Underground and Hornet MODs CDROMs. They will outlive the archive itself. There are still at least a couple hundred of each left. See http://www.cdrom.com under "Games and Entertainment" for more details.
When the archive has reached its final state, I will put a copy of our MASTER.SDD database file online. To all those would-be flat ascii file hackerz, do with it as you please. After backups of the archive have been made, the files will officially be transfered over to the folks at scene.org. What they will call the new archive I couldn't guess. Provided this new host keeps the data, they are allowed to do with it as they wish. After this transfer is complete, I will rm -rf * /pub/demos.
Hopefully, the scene.org maintainers will set up a new archive quickly. After that, I will mirror this archive back to our server on ftp.cdrom.com (we might as well take advantage of our bandwidth as long as no work is required). Hornet Archive mirror sites will then become scene.org mirror sites.
I notified several people at least a month ago about the end of the archive. Fortunately, the "PC Demos Explained", "PC Demo Fan Club", "Zen of Tracking", "GFX Zone", and Future Crew pages have all found new homes. The URLs to the new locations will be posted on the main page of our archive as they become available. Update your bookmarks as soon as possible since there won't be a "main page" of the archive much longer.
The "Music Contest" and "Hornet Archive Memories" pages will be moving to a new domain called rworld.org. I am setting up this new domain with a friend of mine from University (r3mdh). After the new machine is up, I will remap the DNS entry for www.hornet.org to point to rworld.org, and set up a virtual host so that you get to the correct location. This will happen in about 2 months.
Music Contest may or may not be over. It is the single scene activity I have not necessarily given up. Right now, I would estimate about a 60% chance of MC7 happening. Just wait 8 months and find out.
And now as an added bonus for having read this far, you will uncover the answer to the longest-held secret about The Hornet Archive.