Complete Xbox NTSC-U (Plus ARE) Project
From Underground Gamer
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THIS PROJECT WIKI IS CURRENTLY BEING REWRITTEN TO REFLECT THE POLICIES OF THE NEW XBOX PROJECT, SO PLEASE TAKE ALL OF THE BELOW INFORMATION LIGHTLY AS THE ENTIRE PROJECT IS BEING RESTRUCTURED.
Introduction
Welcome to the Complete Xbox NTSC-U project page! The goal of this project is to collect every single game that was released for the Microsoft Xbox video game system in North America, then upload the complete collection to Underground Gamer when the Xbox system is declared safe by the staff. Any and all help from the community is welcome and appreciated, so if you're interested and feel you have something which you can contribute to the project, please feel free to get involved.
- Why "complete" and not "scene?"
- There are several reasons actually:
- With a scene collection, the collector is limited to the games ripped and released by scene groups.
- Scene archiving standards are not the most efficient, and our goal is to have the smallest torrent sizes possible.
- Scene groups do not have the manpower to buy and rip every single game. One example is Syberia II, which was released in the US 10/05/04, but never ripped by a scene group.
- Often times scene groups will include an "intro" or trainer or some other modification to the original release in an effort to spread their name around, and sometimes rip "unnecessary" files, re-link videos, etc. to save space. This project will include only 100% complete and unmolested releases (except of course for the utterly useless dashboard update and live files).
- What is a layout file and why do you only include images built with a layout file?
- An Xbox layout file (.lyt) is a file which is dumped from the original retail copy of a game disc using DVD2Xbox that contains the original file structure as designed by the game developer. When Xbox ISO images are built with software such as Qwix which does not make use of layout files, the files are not organized on the disc in any logical order whatsoever, which results in a game performing poorly because the laser has to jump around to locate and load files. When an Xbox ISO image is built using the original layout file, it usually produces an ISO image which is fully optimized to reduce load times and reduce head travel of the optical drive because the laser doesn't have to hunt for files, because they are laid out on the disc in a format that makes logical sense. I say "usually" because it is possible to make manual optimizations to original layout files to further optimize images for reduced load times, but that is a process we will not concern ourselves with for this project. Our goal for this project is to provide complete copies of games in their original unaltered form.
- OK I want to help! How do I upload games for the project?
- First of all, please read the Project Details section below to make sure you understand the correct process of building ISO images and creating an archive. Once you understand the process, PM EmuKing for the project FTP server login details and start uploading!
Project Members
- EmuKing - Founder & wiki designer
Project Details
The following standards have been set for this project:
- All games collected must be NTSC-U or mixed region format (which must include NTSC-U).
- All games must have the following three files removed from the root directory if they are present:
- dashupdate.xbe
- downloader.xbe
- update.xbe
(The reason for the removal of these files is because for one, downloader.xbe and update.xbe are used solely for Xbox Live purposes, and burned games cannot be played on Xbox Live because Microsoft will ban the Xbox console from Xbox Live permanently, so they are useless, and two, dashupdate.xbe is used for updating the default Xbox dashboard, which is also useless on a modded Xbox because most likely a different dashboard is being used. The space saved by removing these files from each game that contains them is substantial, and will ultimately yield the smallest torrent sizes possible. The removal of these files has no impact on gameplay whatsoever, and does not result in any game content being removed or altered in any way.)
- All games must be complete! Except for the aforementioned files, nothing must be removed or altered in any way, even to make a DVD9 game fit onto a single layer DVD. This includes cross-linking video files, downsampling, etc. It should be left up to each person who downloads these games to determine whether to burn a game onto a dual layer DVD or "shrink" the game to fit onto a single layer DVD.
- All games must be in Xbox ISO format built with the original layout file, following this tutorial to the letter. If you do not have the means or the time to dedicate to building ISO images that way, or just don't want to, you can still contribute games for the project by uploading what you have and somebody from the project team will analyze and rebuild the images as necessary.
- All games must be archived via 7-zip at the maximum possible compression, and split into 100 MB volumes. There are very few instances in which RAR will produce a smaller archive than 7-zip, so we will be using 7-zip as the sole compression program for this project to cut the time to archive games in half (no testing and comparing RAR and 7-zip).
- Please do not upload untested games! All games must be tested on an Xbox console (chipped or softmodded) to ensure they work properly.
- To keep the project uniform and well organized, each game must be named exactly as it appears in the Complete Xbox Game List.
Tutorials
Torrent Details
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