AntigOne's Projects: Elsewhere.

[vester]

Cédric, you just keeps pushing the game to another level.


Beautiful pictures.

[Girafe]

you again 


Fabulous pics

[romualdillo]

Incredible pictures!!! Is difficult to think about new versions of the game looking at pictures like these, showing all your talent creating realistic rural (and urban) scenes. There is no way to surpass them!!! Fantastic!!1 

[Orange_o_]

It's a really pleasure to see your SC4's play. I would like to have time to spend hours to "bat", but this time is end.

[juliok102013]

This is amazing, how do you do these things? My God, this is wonderful ... especially the waterfall xD

[benedict]

Your recreation of real life places is sublime.

[Badsim]

Hi ,

Dear AntigOne's viewers ( still something like 1000 views per week , which isn't nothing , I think , considering the general SC4 activity decline ... ) , I received yesterday this notification from ImageShack staff :

ImageShack Content delivery policy changes

Dear ImageShack users, since 2004 ImageShack's team has been working
hard to create easiest to use, best performing Image Hosting and
delivery solution for all users. To continue to improve our services
for our premium users, ImageShack will implement policy changes that
are listed in detail below.

Starting November 1st, 2015 ImageShack will be implementing a new
policy that will affect image delivery for some of our users, here are
those changes:

Premium ImageShack accounts will not be affected in any way. You will
continue to be able to use your ImageShack account, and all images
will be served to your pages.

Any free accounts (non-premium) will no longer deliver images to any
sites, blogs or forums. This change will be implemented by November
1st,2015. If you have a free account, have images that are linked to
any sites, blogs or forums and want to continue to have images
delivered to those pages, please convert to premium account
here:https://imageshack.us/upgrade, for only $3.99/mo, you will
continue to have unlimited storage and unlimited delivery of your
images.

You can read about those changes in more details here:
https://medium.com/@ImageShack/imageshack-content-delivery-policy-changes-3984af30964e

ImageShack Team.

Then found at the FaQ :

Q. I have a free account, I do not plan to upgrade at all, what are my options?
A. You have until November 1st, 2015 re-host your images any other service provider, and until January 31st, before your access to ImageShack.com site is discontinued.

Is it a bad joke or a good nightmare ?

Even not considering the cost and the fact that we are more and more forced to live with multiple subscriptions , which in a way can be considered like modern form of slavery even if  , on another hand and  after all , nothing's is free and any work and/or service deserve a cost , that's the rule , but in that precise case , I find the retroactive process unacceptable and  similar to blackmail and so , I do not intend to subscribe in anyway to such practices ... which means that from now until two weeks , this 10 years runing MD is going to lose all its pictures ... and , as I do not intend either to sort out 4135 pictures and then re-upload something like 3500 of them elsewhere and then re-link them to these pages , if you wanna save something , the countdown has begun .

Then , I have confidence in SC4D staff to take the right decision , but I think that AntigOne once castrated should be shut down in the Classical Archives .


« End of the world like you knew it » , that's life . And yes I'm particularly angry thinking about the probably millions of pictures disappearing on thousands of forums all over the world . Incredible , so finally not surprising ...

Cédric.

[Girafe]

"tout fout le camp" 

I share your disappointment and frustration  , however no way to see Antigone without pictures. I am ready to pay your upgrate to premium account 

[art128]

This is really ridiculous. Of course, saving the picture on another website is always a solution, but as you said, 3500 pictures is a lot of work.  It's very sad that it has come to this kind of racket, because it clearly is.

While I do think having MDs with no picture in the HoF is a bit pointless (nothing to see uh), it was awarded to you because of your work, technical achievements and dedication to the game, and no matter how much plague imageshack or whatever hosting service is going to do will change these facts. Keeping your MD in the HoF is essential, imo.

I agree with Antoine, even though it's wrong to play in their game, at this point to save 3500 pictures a premium account might be the solution...

[noahclem]

Heh, I guess it's slightly better than what Majhost did, just shutting down without warning, which has devastated both Siilijoki and NORO, but still is clearly extortion. If you don't take up Antoine on his subscription offer I would volunteer to rehost a small number of pages if we could get a group together to share the work. I'd offer to do more but I know how long your updates tend to be Leaving HoF is nonsensical   Sorry you're having to deal with this

[EDGE4194]

I completely understand your frustration Cedric and agree with Arthur that keeping your spot in the HoF is essential. The images of your incredible work deserve to be saved, but only you can make that decision.  Whatever happens, hopefully you know how much your work is valued by us.

[FrankU]

Well.... mmm. This emphasizes my opinion on using the cloud for everything, which is imposed on us as a solution for all our data storage problems. But once you are hooked they can ask anything. Now it concerns only a hobby, but what would you do if it concerned information and files that you need for making a living? You would end up paying what they demand....

It is really a pity for this beautiful MD, but it's up to you what you do with it.

I have an account at Photobucket. Let's see when they come with a similar "offer".

[Badsim]

Two days later , new message from ImageShack :

Dear ImageShack users, on September 29th '15, ImageShack has
suffered a very large service outage.  We wanted to take time
to explain what happened, and how it affected your accounts
as well as Image delivery.

During a routine maintenance, a small mistake crept up into
one of our management tools that caused all our of servers
to wipe out their operating systems as well as most of the image
storage systems.  You may want to ask, how can something
small cause such a large issue?  Don't we have backups.
And Yes, indeed, we do have at least 3 copies as backups
of all your images.

ImageShack has been around since 2004, during that time
we have grown to store billions of images, and used hundreds of
servers to deliver those images to the internet.  We always
relied on automated systems that allowed us to keep our
team relatively small, so that we could pass to cost savings
to you, our users.  Unfortunately, with system automation
comes a risk of a mistake such as described above.

The good news, we were able to restore most of the images,
and continue to deliver them to you pages.  The bad news
is that we lost about 4% of all images, across all accounts
(paid and free).  This means that if you have a page with
100 images embedded, there perhaps would be between
3 to 5 images missing.  We sincerely apologize for this
loss.

We have decided to take some serious steps regarding
ImageShack as a service.  We want to absolutely
guarantee that your images will be delivered to your pages.
We do not resize images, we do not impose bandwidth
limits like other image hosting sites do. We do not put
claim to your images, and we do limit ads next to your
images, so that anyone who sees your images have the
best experience possible.  For us to be able to promise
that - our business requires a transition to pay model only.

So, what are the steps we are taking?  We will be
focusing on users that ImageShack matters to the
most - Those users are the users who have paid
accounts.  If you are a user with free account, and do
not plan to upgrade, you have until January 31st, 2016
to download your images.  After that date, only
paid accounts are going to continue to exist at ImageShack.

We are doing this so that we can put time an effort
towards our "premium" users who depend on ImageShack
for their businesses and other important functions.  We want
to give 300% more quality and performance to those users,
they have certainly paid and earned the right to have it.

If you have had a paid account before, or have a free account
today, please consider upgrading to paid.  Our plans start
at $3.99/mo.  However, until January 31st 2016, we will be offering
a huge discount of $18.99/year only, as our thanks
to all users who are patient enough to stay with us through
this transition!

Sincerely,

ImageShack Team.

Both the style and conditions have changed a lot ...  « We sincerely apologize... » , « Please consider ... » and so on  , exit the 1st of  November ultimatum , and a 50 % discount offer for an upgrade until the 31th of January 2016 ... now that's what I call understandable and acceptable commercial practices : I'll upgrade my account to Premium . The bad news is that  I have now to list and restore the missing pictures on various of my threads since the September 29th service outage ( I didn't notice it ).

Arthur , Antoine , Noah , EDGE4194 ( sorry to don't know your first name ) and Frank , thanks for your offers and support . Greatly appreciated . I spent my sunday to search for a good image host - free or paid , if they are legion , once you read closely their terms of use , which is extremely boring , you can find annoying things like storage and bandwidth limitations , obligation to connect regularly to your account and others unclear clauses ... 

With digital affairs , nothing can be set in stone , like Noah experienced with Majhost and like I did by the past with late-lamented Fileden.com ... so the future of this MD is assured , well , a little longer would I say ... 

On a side note , speaking about future , I wasn't only worried about AntigOne's posterity : if I haven't been active this year , it doesn't mean the story is over ... 

Cédric.

[art128]

it doesn't mean the story is over ... 

Now that's something I like to hear.

[TheTeaCat]

it doesn't mean the story is over ... 

Now that's something I like to hear.

You are not the only one!!

[Girafe]

I think all love this reply from Cedric. Letting us guess about future updates 

Hope to see you soon and glad that finally Antigone will not be too much crippled

Did you check dropbox?

[Dantes]

I think this company ImageShack is one of Mr. Burns from the Simpsons. It's really not fair to blackmail someone. I use ld-host.de

[Framly]

Hi Cédric,

i've the same "problem" i also converted my account! 38€ per Anno - but Rondnoir deserved it

Glad to see that you're still here

[SuperMessi]

I mean, this is just stupid. The distance between you and other players is just, lol. We all try our best to do great stuff, and we do great stuff, but then you post, and our stuff just becomes old. I just wish you would publish more files and stuff. We, the mere mortals, would like. Such an ownage of a game, puff.

Language please

-Noah, admin

[Badsim]

Hi Devotion !

After a 2 years long pause , I'm back ( for some undefined time ... ) with a new massive project : Port-Royal .

What's done :

... what's done and what is still under planning :

New textures created :

Again , that's a total war  to force all and each piece of custom content to suit my vision , pulling out all my weapons ; resizing , re-modding , Lot editing , texturing , extracting props from automatas ...  fortunately I was less rusty than expected , for sure once you practiced as intensively than I did by the past , it just becomes like to drive a bicycle : once you know ... And about this comeback ,  I've to confess once more that I don't know a better software than SC4 to satisfy my needs of creativity !

On a side note , our friend Delecto as VIP Team member created more 2 years ago 35 new HD models of Sims , I've resized them and Modded them to a MMP , if our other friend Antoine is OK to make the packaging , readme and installer , it should be available on the LEX as soon as possible ... Happy birthday and long life to you , SC4 & Devotion . 

Cédric .