TIMGUL forum archives open at CodeWalrus

[xlibman]

Some of you might be unaware of this, but I did not create two forums in the past, but rather three. Aside from Omnimaga group in 2001, its website in 2004 and CodeWalrus in 2014, I also founded TIMGUL in 2007, which stands for "The International Music Generator Users Lounge". Similar to Omnimaga's history of catering to TI-BASIC and xLIB programmers in its early days, TIMGUL did the same with the music making scene: From 1998 to 2004, Codemasters and Jester Interactive released the MTV Music Generator and Music 2000 software series for the Playstation 1 and 2, PC and even portable iterations known as Pocket Music for the GBC and GBA. Those softwares, especially the Playstation version of MTVMG and Music 2000, were basically the TI-BASIC of the music making scene, and TIMGUL was a community of users creating songs using those softwares.

Despite this console "game" series being discontinued three years prior the site's creation, the userbase grew to the point where the site hosted over 1000 songs and 12000 posts by the start of 2009. Unfortunately, drama then ensued, as well as multiple data losses, including corrupted song files and months of posts. Things stabilized in Early 2010 and TIMGUL enjoyed a revival under new administration, but after I stepped down from Omnimaga in 2011, the remaining administrators of the latter site chose to stop maintaining TIMGUL hosting and their backups became corrupted. Without warning, the site vanished for weeks, until me and Juju offered to host it. With all late 2011 and early 2012 songs data gone and its userbase being completely depleted, we chose to close the site and put it in read-only mode, until its new host also shut down in 2013. Afterwards the posts made between July 5th and April 24th 2012 were also lost.


Tonight, however, we are happy to announce that  CodeWalrus has put what's left of The International Music Generator Users Lounge archives back online. While it uses a different, read-only SMF database, you can now access TIMGUL like any other CW sub-forum or from the Downloads navigation at the top of each page. TIMGUL featured not only hundreds of songs made with the aforementioned vintage music making softwares, but also tutorials, help and support, contests and more. It is currently unclear if the TIMGUL database will merge with CodeWalrus, due to the challenges this would pose, so as a result, it is currently not possible to link old accounts and topics with new ones, but old TIMGUL users are free to register a CodeWalrus account and showcase their old or current work in our current music section, which we will expand based on future demand.

TIMGUL Archives
CodeWalrus music discussion and showcase

[::CMG (UTOPIA)::]

Just a side note to anyone browsing the site, if you see my stuff on there, just ignore it and head over to this post on CodeWalrus instead for the most up-to-date albums and songs

otherwise, great to see the site's back up 

[xlibman]

It might be a good idea as I said to check in case there are files you lost there that might still be there. I think I had every song I made backed up, though.

I also have copies of the TIMGUL Rave Mixes in MP3 format (maybe only in 128K quality, tho, not the 320K files), but since they're now on Youtube I didn't bother putting them back online. I think there's a CodeWalrus or Omnimaga topic with the Youtube links.

That makes me wish you had joined TIMGUL earlier because some of your songs would have fit perfectly in the mixes

Also, look what I found in my inbox: This was the e-mail that was sent to all TIMGUL members on April 27th 2012 and the only 2012 post that still appears to have a backup of:

2007 - 2012

Starting tonight, The International Music Generator Users Lounge will be put in read-only mode, so everything will remain online, including the songs, but it will no longer be possible to post new topics, replies, music files. Also it will no longer be possible to sign up new user accounts. All files attached to forum messages will be made visible to guests to accomodate the lack of ability to create new accounts.

This decision was taken due to the decision to end TIMGUL's hosting a few weeks ago, along with the general inactivity on the forums. Back in the days, TIMGUL thrived and gave the Music 2000 series a small resurgence, then it even recovered from one year of drama and a massive data loss, reaching high activity levels again from a renewed userbase. But i t seems that with the arrival of freeware alternatives such as LMMS and the lack of any new music software project finally had its toll. This isn't to mention that getting the Music softwares to work on new computers or emulators is difficult, so the arrival of freeware music creation tools probably didn't help. This is not to mention it was always difficult for TIMGUL to compete against Youtube for music showcase, as many MTVMG users have chosen to stay on Youtube. Besides that, over the last two years, all the TIMGUL administrators have either moved on in their music carreers or no longer have enough time to keep TIMGUL afloat (such as posting at least a few times per week consistently), and most members are not very active anymore.

So tonight is the end of TIMGUL as an active site. The entire website content will remain online for as long as his upcoming new host (Juju) will run his hosting service, but it will remain in read-only mode.

Any new music discussion will be moved to Omnimaga music section. To accomodate the few that still use the MUSIC software series, extra forum sections may be opened in the future on Omnimaga for help and support. Also, since TIMGUL will remain online, you are free to cross-post music that you have made on Omnimaga forums as well (although in the future, there are possibilities that both websites merge together). Since the upload limit is 4 MB, you may have to use a third-party hosting site (such as Youtube, Mediafire or Soundcloud) to host new music you want to showcase on the forums. Keep in mind that the forum rules there disallows uploading music attachments that contains copyrighted material, however, so if you have a Rihanna remix, for example, then you will have to use an alternate upload site and link to the file instead.

We would like to thank every TIMGUL membe r who have allowed this site to thrive for many years, their contributions and of course CoLD SToRAGE, Codemasters and Jester Interactive for creating the MUSIC series, which allowed this unique site to exist.

[Decon Theed]

Oh, man, word's cannot begin to describe how pleased I am this archive exists; I'm only sad I didn't stumble on it sooner, haha~!

I used to post on TIMGUL under the name "J-MACHine", and it was probably the first major hub I shared my music through (before that, I recall sticking things up on ZippyShare and hoping for the best). I don't think I was around much during the drama, so most of the memories I have of the site are fairly positive; if nothing else, it was just nice hearing music from other folks that used software in the Music line. And, in a round about way, it helped legitimise my decision to use Music 2000 during a time when I felt very self conscious about not using "real" software- something I've stuck with to this day, as it happens.

One of my biggest regrets was losing access to a number of songs I'd DL'd from the site over the time I was there, so needless to say I'm stoked to be able to grab stuff from there again! I think there might even be a few pieces of mine I'd lost access to that are still there, too, so that'll be handy.

Major thanks for putting the work in to get this archive set up, Omnimaga; this is gonna be a serious trip down memory lane~

[xlibman]

Thanks. I wish that all the 1200+ songs were still available. I might have some that are just no longer linked to posts, so if I ever am bored and have lots of free time, I could try to re-link them with their old posts or put them in a folder

[Decon Theed]

Aye; I did some digging through the archives over a couple of days this week, and there's a lot of stuff that seems like it's not linked to posts. There is, however, a decent amount of stuff still readily available- at least 500 or so songs by my estimate, probably more- so that's something.

Unfortunately, there's a lot of stuff that's just straight up gone because users linked to it via alternative means. I went scouring for older work of mine I'd lost access too, but I tended to link to an old YouTube account I no longer have or long-dead Zippyshare links. A shame, but hey, if nothing else it teaches a potent "keep backups of and take better care of your work" (a lesson past me could've done with learning sooner ).

Still, I can't complain too much; there were a few songs I'd wanted to find that were still around, and I wound up discovering a few neat things I missed the first time around. It's also always really cool to hear how other musicians made use of Music 2000's features (or other programs in the series) in contrast to how I do, or the little stylistic differences between artists and how they manifest in the various software's features. Seeing what users used in addition to Music software was also pretty cool too; Weapons Division did some neat stuff using hardware synths/effect racks, on one song they did at least.

[xlibman]

Yeah I remember when Savefiles was the main upload site, then one day it started lagging like mad, to finally shut down entirely. X.x