Lately, we’ve been getting a shitload of E-mails asking what happened to SCC, the highly respected scene torrent tracker. The site was down for nearly a day and even their IRC server was not responding. Long story short, SCC suffered from a Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack. This seems to have ceased right now and both the site and tracker, as it stands right now are back online. SCC hit several important milestones last week, including their 4th birthday celebration as well as the opening of long awaited SCC v2 to all user classes. The site also handed out at least one invite to each and every existing member – this was a timed invite and had to be used within 48 hours. Unfortunately, SCC went down before the 48 hour time frame was over and we are pretty sure many people could not use their invite due to the downtime. Either way don’t worry – the limited time on invites has been extended by yet another 48 hours.

A mass PM explaining the reason for downtime is quoted below (this was sent to all SCC members):

The DDoS attack on our site and IRC has ceased. The temporary channel on p2p-net is now closed, please join us on irc.sceneaccess.org. Due to the attacks on our servers, we have now extended the limited time on the invites to another 48 hours. We hope this time everyone can take advantage of the birthday gift. We apologize for the downtime, hopefully this was the last batch of trouble.
PS. If you have edited your hosts file, please remove the old IP addresses and let the DNS propagate.
We hope you'll still have a wonderful weekend. Love, Staff.

Some of you might wonder, what really prompted the DDOS attack. Well, it could be related to the recently pre’d SCENENOTICE regarding SCC – the notice, titled SCENEACCESS.ORG.P2PTORRENT-SCENENOTICE exposed IP addresses of SCC servers (which really wasn’t anything secret, after all) and pleaded the scene to help ‘take it down’. Quoted below is the notice, with personal information and IP addresses removed:

BE SMART YOUR BEST SITE CAN BE A TORRENT SITE!!! PASS THIS IPS FORWARD.
Just another tracker making dumps from scene using falow ips for this shits
[SCC URL] IP (XX.XX.XX.XX) - they use like master for dumps (can be a site or just a dump)
[SCC IRC SERVER URL] IP (XX.XX.XX.XX)
pls all siteops check this ips... if u have this ips linked on master/slaves or a user!
and help scene put this shit down
your site will be down soon! fuck you [OWNER NAME] (owner)
[List of SCC SysOp nicks]
by torrent hunters!

After all, this looks like another chapter in the seemingly never ending P2P vs Scene war. Has the DDOS been successful? Not really, coz if it had, SCC would not be up right now.

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Two new editions of your favorite pirate magazine, The Game Scene Charts (TGSC), is out. Issues No. 45 and 46 covers PC game ISO/DOX scene releases for the months of July and August 2010. For those of you who are reading about TGSC for the first time, it’s a coded magazine that rates and ranks release groups in the warez scene based on the number of cracked games they leak each month. Groups are given points for each pre they make and at the end of each month groups with the highest number of points are selected. Each edition usually includes an editorial, a monthly overview, monthly charts, yearly charts, all time stats and in some cases even interviews with scene groups. TGSC is built with an old school scene cracktro look and feel, comes with its own rendering engine and does not require any additional software to run – just click on the executable and start reading.

As for the monthly group rankings, SKIDROW has unsurprisingly managed to retain the top position in both July and August. This group has been spewing releases regularly and consistently, and appears to have the ability to break all major DRM on the market (Steam, Securom, UBISoft DRM, etc) today. They have also been releasing cracked game updates, which we don’t always see from scene groups. Anyways go ahead and download the magazines to see complete group rankings.

Download

You can download TGSC issues from Defacto, a scene resources site we featured in a previous article.

[Click Here] to download Game Scene Charts Issue 45 (July 2010) from Defacto.

[Click Here] to download Game Scene Charts Issue 46 (August 2010) from Defacto.

Note: Your screen may flash and flickering text will appear during the magazine’s intro screens. This is intentional since it’s modeled after old school scene cracktros.

If you are looking for older editions, Defacto has the complete collection of TGSC magazines since Issue #1 (September 2006) on this page. And it’s regularly updated with new editions as well.

Related Articles

• 10 Great Resources For Scene Releases, Pre Times, NFOs and BitTorrent

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After a long wait, Fallout New Vegas has finally hit the streets. New Vegas is the latest installment to this long running RPG franchise and is without a doubt one of the most anticipated titles to be released this year. Fallout 3 in my opinion was a great game – however it had its share of technical issues, bugs and glitches which sometimes proved to be annoying. New Vegas is built on the same game engine as FO3 and seems to be an equally enjoyable gaming experience. Unfortunately, New Vegas has also inherited some of the bugs it’s predecessor had. This is not to say the game is bugged to hell, but there seem to be a lot of folks who have run into various issues including performance woes, crashes and audio issues. If you have run into problems with New Vegas, check out the list of fixes below – they will help you improve game performance, avoid crashes and in some cases, get the damn game to run :)

Fallout 3 New Vegas freezing & random freezes mid game, BSOD errors

Random freezes including BSOD errors can occur on certain multi core hardware environments due to incompatibilities with the game engine. You can try to avert these issues by limiting the game to use only two cores.

1. Open fallout.ini file in My Documents\My Games\FalloutNV with a text editor such as Notepad.
2. Look for the string bUseThreadedAI=0
3. Change it to bUseThreadedAI=1
4. Add another line beneath the above, iNumHWThreads=2
5. Save and close this file.
6. Repeat steps 2-5 for fallout_default.ini file in installation dir (default C:\Program Files (x86)\Bethesda Softworks\Fallout New Vegas)
   

Improve FPS, fix NPC slowdown, stuttering issues and increase framerate

I’ve got to say, this is an awesome fix and a godsend for those who are plagued with performance problems. Download and place the dx9.dll file as directed in instructions below and you may notice a significant performance increase with your Fallout New Vegas installation:

1. Download dx9.dll file from http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=34778
2. Place file in ../steamapps/common/fallout new vegas (or wherever your falloutNV.exe is located)
3. Restart steam and the game. Game will now use Directx 9 Render Path instead of the backward computability DX9 API with DX10

This fix was originally found here.

This is also known to resolve some crash at launch issues with Fallout New Vegas.

Fix Jerky framerate issues, low FPS in Fallout New Vegas

Sometimes, particularly if you are using low end video hardware, you might find the game to be lagging in performance with stuttering and jerky frame rates. If you encounter this issue, try setting the water multisampling setting to low. I’ve found this to be killing lower end GPU and disabling this gave a noticeable performance boost.

Fix New Vegas mouse acceleration issues

I don’t know about you but I find the sudden mouse accelration annoying as hell. I’m not sure if this is a feature or a bug but if you want to disable it, follow the steps below:

1. Open FalloutPrefs.ini located inside My Documents\My Games\FalloutNV with a text editor.
2. Find the [Controls] section in this file.
3. Add the following lines to this section: fForegroundMouseAccelBase=0
   fForegroundMouseAccelTop=0
   fForegroundMouseBase=0
   fForegroundMouseMult=0

Save and close the file (it’s assumed that this file is not read only – if it is, remove the read only attribute from file properties). Restart the game and mouse acceleration issues should hopefully be resolved. Repeat steps 1-3 for Fallout_default.ini located inside Steam\steamapps\common\fallout new vegas\ folder.

Fallout New Vegas crash after intro video

1. Download dx9.dll file from http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=34778
2. Place the file inside your game' installation directory.
3. Restart the game.

If the above still does not fix your crash and launch, try running the game in windowed mode.

Fallout 3 New Vegas crash to desktop at intro or launch, black screen issues, audio issues

Above can happen if you have FFDShow codecs installed on your machine. Fallout 3 engine seems to have incompatibilities with these and is known to cause crashes as well as audio issues. You have to either uninstall the codecs from your system or add fallout3.exe to FFDShow audio and video decoders exceptions list.

1. Launch the ffdshow video decoder configuration window. You may access this through the start menu. If you have installed any codec packs, check the start menu entries of those. If you can’t find it on the start menu, right click the ffdshow video decoder (red) icon that appears on the taskbar when a supported video file is playing, and select ‘ffdshow video decoder’ option from the menu.
   
2. Tick the ‘Dont use ffdshow in’ checkbox if not already checked
3. Press the edit button that is next to the text field. A new dialog box will pop up. Press the Add button. The ‘Add incompatible executable file’ dialog box will be displayed. Browse to the Fallout New Vegas installation directory and locate the main game exe file. Select it and press open. Close all dialog boxes currently open by pressing ok.
   (OR you can simply type falloutnv.exe at the end of the text field next to ‘Dont use ffdshow in’ checkbox)
4. Repeat steps 2-3 in ffdshow audio decoder configuration (the blue icon in taskbar) window as well. It is important that you add fallout3.exe to both ffdshow audio and video decoder’s exceptions list.

This is a bug that’s been there since Fallout 3. We posted a separate article on how to fix this issue back in 2008, which you may find here.

New Vegas audio issues, lagging, stuttering or noisy audio

First of all, try the FFDShow fix (above) if you are having issues with New Vegas audio. If the problem persists, you can try the following:

• Disable surround sound output in your computers sound properties. Try to use  Sterero speaker setup.
• Lower your sound card’s audio sampling rate to at least 48000hz (a screenshot and detailed steps on how to do this may be found in this article)
• Try running the game in Windowed Mode. Strange as it may sound, this seems to fix lagging audio for some.
• Update your sound card’s drivers.

Update your graphics drivers and DirectX

Again, this is pretty basic stuff buy many people seem to ignore this – always update your video card drivers to the latest build before running the game. Update your video card’s drivers – if latest drivers do not work, try downloading and installing latest beta drivers (do this at your own risk).

• ATI Drivers: Download the latest ATI Catalyst drivers from this link: http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_catalyst.aspx
• NVIDIA Drivers: Download latest official NVIDIA drivers from this link: http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us
• Beta Drivers: Check here http://downloads.guru3d.com/

As for DirectX, you may download the latest monthly runtime from this location.

This article is a work in progress – it will be updated as more solutions are found.

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• Read our Private Trackers section for latest BitTorrent news

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It’s not everyday you see the launch of a specialized private tracker for Horror Movies and TV Shows. In fact, there are only a handful such trackers around, with live examples being The Horror Charnel (THC) and Henteles.Hu (Signups open). Horror-World is the latest torrent site to join this club – and yeah, as you might have guessed its dedicated to tracking all things Horror, including movies, film stills, soundtracks to electronic books relating to this genre. Built on TS Special Edition 7.1 codebase, HW is a private tracker that’s just starting up. Some of you would be glad to know that this isn’t one of those super secret sites closed to the public – signups are currently open and everyone is able to create a free account. If you like Horror movies, check this out.

Horror World is only a few weeks old so don’t expect to join a tracker that has 50k members and 100k torrents. Additionally, this is a niche site meaning it would have much less number of torrents than your average General/0Day tracker. Nevertheless, HW is off to a pretty good start and currently tracks around 500 active torrents and has managed to amass a registered user base of 475+ members (statistics as of 10/20/2010). 

As for the content available on H-W, it’s not just horror movies and TV shows. Movie soundtracks and electronic books (including audio books) relating to the genre are also indexed. Right now there aren’t a lot of these non-movie torrents available but presence of separate tracker categories would mean there are plans to add more of these in future. As for the movies, they come in a number of different video qualities ranging from BRRips, DVDRips, R5 to VHSRips. Both new movies as well as older releases are indexed. The screenshot below should give you a better understanding of what to expect on Horror-World.

Signups for H-W are currently open. In fact, they’ve been always open ever since the site’s launch about one and a half months ago. If you like Horror themed video and audio content, check this tracker out.

Site Name: Horror-World (http://horror-world.info)

Signup URL: http://horror-world.info/signup.php

Related Articles

• Henteles.Hu – Private Tracker For Horror Movies

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Welcome to our latest collective private tracker open signup update. This is a recap of notable private and public torrent sites we discussed here in the past one and a half months. This post includes summarized information about 16 different torrent sites that are currently open to the public, either via direct open registrations or by alternate means such as online invite applications or IRC recruitment. As usual, lots of niche trackers including sites that specialize in High Definition content, E-Learning material, Movies, Music, Games, Software as well as General/0Day trackers that index a broader range of content is featured in the article. All entries come complete with up to date site statistics, signup URLs and links to a detailed review which usually contains screenshots and other noteworthy information. Please take the time to read full review before you sign up for any tracker – this will save you from signing up for sites that you’ll never use and will prevent private trackers getting filled with lots of inactive members.

AceHD

Site Name: AceHD (http://acehd.net)
Signup URL: http://acehd.net/signup.php
Stats: 13600+ members and 4200+ torrents
Description: AceHD is a specialized HD tracker which tracks movies, TV shows and documentaries in high definition video formats. Although it has had only three public open signups in one year, the site has managed to build a strong user base. Signups are currently open, but most likely will not last long.
Full Review: [Click Here]

AsiaTorrents

Site Name: Asia Torrents (http://www.asiatorrents.com)
Signup URL: http://www.asiatorrents.com/index.php?page=signup
Stats: 184000+ users and ~14000 torrents
Description: AsiaTorrents (formerly known as AvistaZ), is a private tracker that focuses on movies from the Asian region. Movies, music and TV Shows from countries such as Korea, Hong Kong, China, Japan, India and Thailand may be found here. A massive tracker with some really rare content.
Full Review: [Click Here]

PwnNetwork

Site Name: PwnNetwork (http://pwnnetwork.net)
Signup URL: http://pwnnetwork.net/register.php
Stats: 5600+ members and 600+ torrents
Description: PwnNetwork is a new Gazelle based games tracker. This site is the successor to nTorrets – instead of limiting itself to one particular console, PWN tracks games across multiple platforms including PC, PS3, Will. X360 and more.
Full Review: [Click Here]

TheGeeks

Site Name: The Geeks (http://thegeeks.bz)
Signup URL: http://thegeeks.bz/signup.php
Stats: 3800+ torrents
Description: Latest addition to the TBZ studios family of trackers, TheGeeks is a new E-Learning tracker. With nearly ~4000 unique torrents uploaded within weeks since launch, this has to be one of the most successful trackers to be launched in 2010 so far.
Full Review: [Click Here]

Torrent My Books

Site Name: Torrent My Books (http://torrentmybooks.com/)
Signup URL: http://torrentmybooks.com/register.php (Optional)
Stats: 250+ torrents
Description: TMB is not a private tracker – it’s a new public BitTorrent search engine that focuses solely on educational material. Torrent files are hosted on TMB but it uses external trackers (such as OpenBitTorrent) to facilitate the downloads.
Full Review: [Click Here]

CreativeBits

Site Name: CreativeBits
Invites Channel URL: irc://irc.omgwtfhax.net/cb-invites
Stats: 275 users and 1000+ torrents
Description: CreativeBits is a  ratio free BitTorrent tracker dedicated to tracking templates, graphics, fonts, E-books, video tutorials, content management systems (CMS), Flash & Photoshop content, software, etc. It’d come in handy for software engineers, web developers, web designers, graphics designers and even to students of pretty much any field related to information technology.
Full Review: [Click Here]

nCore

Site Name: nCore (http://ncore.cc)
Invite Application URL: Visit http://ncore.cc/login.php and click on Meghívó igénylés
Stats: 138000+ users and ~90000 torrents
Description: A huge General/0Day torrent tracker, nCore has opened invite applications probably for the very first time since its launch. With a massive torrent index and thousands of users, activity is very high on this site. Please refer to the full review for detailed signup instructions including translation help.
Full Review: [Click Here]

iTS

Site Name: iTS
Signup URL: Please refer to this post for detailed instructions.
Stats: 4500+ torrents
Description: A private tracker that does not prefer much publicity, iTS has just started recruiting new members via their online invite applications. iTS’ a ratioless tracker that shares a lot of unique content such as AFR movie rips, lossless FLAC rips, a variety of classic collections and of course, other general content including a ton of exclusive uploads made available by the site’s internal encoders. Before you apply, please do read the full review carefully.
Full Review: [Click Here]

Wunza

Site Name: Wunza (http://wunza.ws)
Invites Channel Direct Link: http://wunza.ws:9090/?nick=&channels=interview
Stats: 3000+ users and 975+ torrents
Description: A Gazelle based specialized movie tracker, Wunza launched v3 recently with a new visual layout and a more polished look. This tracker is known for it’s IMDB style browse pages and attractive user interface.
Full Review: [Click Here]

SceneVids

Site Name: SceneVids (http://scenevids.info)
Signup URL: http://scenevids.info/signup.php
Stats: ~1000 torrents
Description: SceneVids is a specialized music video torrent tracker. As the name suggests, most of the indexed torrents are scene releases. Although only a few weeks old, SceneVids is off to a promising start, with lots of new torrents uploaded daily.
Full Review: [Click Here]

TinBoxTorrent

Site Name: TinBoxTorrent (http://www.tinboxtorrent.com)
Signup URL: http://www.tinboxtorrent.com/signup.php (EDIT: Site is temporarily offline)
Stats: 300+ torrents (at last check)
Description: TinBoxTorrent is a movie and TV tracker with a lot of focus on BRRips and BDRip releases. The site has received a lot of positive comments from our users but unfortunately, it went down a couple of days ago. According to TBT administrator, it will be back soon (read last comment in full review link for the detailed response).
Full Review: [Click Here]

Libble

Site Name: Libble (http://libble.me)
Signup URL: http://libble.me/register.php
Stats: ~8000 users and 16700+ torrents
Description: Libble is a ratio free music torrent tracker powered by Gazelle RC2 codebase. They recently increased their maximum user limit to 10000 and there are plenty of free slots left for potential new members. 
Full Review: [Click Here]

DeamonBytes

Site Name: DeamonBytes (http://www.deamonbytes.net)
Signup URL: http://www.deamonbytes.net/create_account.php
Stats: 10000+ users and 1800+ torrents
Description: DeamonBytes is the successor to long standing private tracker PeerPortal (now defunct). DB is a ratio free site and has managed to retain bulk of the old PP user base, making it one of the more active new trackers to launch recently.
Full Review: [Click Here]

Romanian ShareReactor

Site Name: Romanian ShareReactor (http://tracker.sharereactor.ro/)
Signup URL: http://tracker.sharereactor.ro/registration.php
Stats: 7500+ torrents
Description: Another veteran 4+ year old private tracker, RSR tracks both scene and non scene releases at pretty good speeds. The site is not always open for registration but the there’s space for ~1500 new signups in current recruitment phase.
Full Review: [Click Here]

Speed.CD

Site Name: Speed.cd (http://speed.cd)
Signup URL: http://speed.cd/signup.php
Stats: 25000+ torrents
Description: A private tracker that’s several years old, Speed.CD ran into hot waters after they claimed it was the official home of popular P2P ripper aXXo (which it wasn’t). Nevertheless the site has survived the controversy and is currently open for signup. Speed is a family friendly tracker focusing only on Movies and TV shows.
Full Review: [Click Here]

The Empire

Site Name: The Empire (http://www.theempire.bz)
Signup URL: http://www.theempire.bz/signup.php
Stats: 4300+ torrents
Description: Another member of TBZ tracker family, The Empire is a private torrent tracker for TV and radio shows. TE specializes in shows from commonwealth countries – television shows from Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and other regions may be found here. Just like its sister sites, TE.BZ indexes some unique torrents not usually found elsewhere.
Full Review: [Click Here]

Not enough private trackers? Check out our previous collective tracker update (September 2010) – this included 15 more sites, most of which are still open for signup.

Special thanks to everyone who’s been sending us tips, inside information and updates – you guys have been awesome.

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Earlier this month we featured a new Gazelle based PC and Games torrent tracker called PwnNetwork (aka The Network). PWN was not just any games tracker - it was the successor to the much famed nTorrents. However, back when the article was posted, this site was closed to the public – only existing nTorrent members who were sent invites were able to get in. Anyway here’s some good news for those who could not join earlier – PWN has opened registrations for the first time since its launch and now everyone is able to create a free account. In addition to open registrations, sitewide free leech has also been activated to help users build a healthy ratio. As mentioned earlier, PWN is a Gazelle powered dedicated games tracker which indexes video games for PC, Mac, PS3, XBOX360, Wii and other platforms including currently discontinued, older consoles.

Although a site built from scratch, PWN seems to be expanding at a rather rapid pace. Since the launch of its public beta around 2 weeks ago, PWN has managed to recruit 3800+ users and index nearly 600 torrents. Of course, the user base and torrent index built around nTorrents has no doubt played a major role in these statistics – but still, it’s a good start for a new tracker by any means.

If you are looking for background information, site features and the type of content PWN tracks, we suggest you read our previous article located here. We pretty much covered everything there’s to be said about this tracker in last post and there’s no need to repeat the same information here. For those looking for a quick peek, here’s a screenshot of their torrent index:

Although the site is currently open for signup, don’t expect open registrations to last forever:

Thanks to everyone who has been supporting us these last few weeks. We have decided to welcome some more members into the tracker. Signups and freeleech for the weekend! They will be closed sometime after the weekend. So please tell your friends.

If you are a video games fan, go ahead and check the site out. It’s still new but given the experienced crew behind the tracker and thanks to a successful launch, the PWN’s future looks very promising.

Site Name: PwnNetwork (http://pwnnetwork.net)

Signup URL: http://pwnnetwork.net/register.php

Special thanks to Andrew M for the heads up.

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Back in its day, OiNK was probably the most popular private tracker – it had over 180000 active members and had a celebrity status among BitTorrent sites. Sadly, all of this changed when Operation Ark Royal, a coordinated raid by IFPI, BPI and Interpol, shut down the ‘Pink Palace’ tracker and arrested its owner Allan Ellis. However during the legal proceedings it was determined that founder Alan Ellis was not guilty and he walked free. Despite this legal victory, OiNK remained down since 2007 and it was said that the site was never coming back. Now. three years later, a rather peculiar message has appeared on http://oink.me – according to the message the site is set to return on 31st of October. This is currently a hot topic on most BitTorrent forums and everyone is asking the same question – is this for real?

Before you celebrate, there are several things that seem to be wrong with this announcement. First of all, the message has appeared on http://oink.me – although similar to OiNK’s domain, this actually was not the location where the site was last hosted. OiNK’s was earlier accessible via http://oink.me.uk and then the site moved to http://oink.cd citing legal reasons. Both these domains still point to an official statement by Allan Ellis which contradicts what’s being said on http://oink.me:

On 15 January 2010, Alan Ellis was unanimously declared not guilty.
If you would like to get in touch with me, you can do so here: contact@alanellis.co.uk.
The solicitors representing me in the case were Morgan Rose with Alex Stein as the barrister.
I'd like to express my thanks to all those who have been in touch offering their support over the years, and the huge amount of congratulations I've received over the past few days.
There were three main questions arising from the emails:

1. Will the site be returning? Absolutely not.
2. Will I be available for interview? No, sorry, I would like to get on with my life in peace now.
3. Where did I buy my coat? Wait, what!? Well, I'm almost ashamed to say, but it's from New Look, and judging by the fact that when I checked yesterday my local shop had more than 10 of them in stock for £30, it's not very popular!

Finally, a huge thank you to my excellent legal team, without which I wouldn't be here writing this right now.

From what we can gather from the above, the so called return of OiNK does not seem to be official. It doesn’t look like any of the site’s former owners are behind http://oink.me project. Sure, a new BitTorrent tracker could go live on this domain in a couple of weeks, but it’s highly unlikely it’d be the same old community. I could be wrong but for me this looks like another attempt to ride on the popularity of a once great private tracker. It could be a legit site but considering the number of frauds and scams that are around, I’d suggest you proceed with caution on this one.

P.S. – If you want to read more about OiNK, the raid and events following the raid, have a look here - http://oinkmemorial.blogspot.com .

Related Articles

• OiNK Music Tracker – An Update From Allan Ellis

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After a series of private tracker open signup and invite application updates, here’s some DDL forum news for a change. Over the years, we’ve featured a number of DDL forums on this blog, most of which cater to specific niches such as music, movies, games, documentaries, etc. While these are some very special sites indexing unique content, several of our readers had asked us to feature more sites with scene 0-Day releases. PreScene is one such DDL forum that indexes latest scene releases along with download links to listed releases - all sorts of uploads ranging from zero day software to TV shows can be found here. In fact, this site acts both as a release log (pre database) as well as a download link repository – most scene pres are listed on PreScene and most of these releases even come with direct download links (based on one click hosting sites), making this much more than a web based pre channel.

PreScene is not a site that started yesterday. It’s in fact been around for more than one and a half years and indexes a whopping 686493 releases as at 13/10/2010. For those of you still wondering what this site is all about, quoted below is the announcement made when it officially launched:

Our aim is to create a large database of Pre'd releases from within the Warez Scene and offer you download links to them. We will list both our local links and external links (other warez sites).
Please do note though, all sites we link to are clean and will not affect you in any way.
Anyway, have a browse around and see what you think. We'll be developing this site throughout the long future ahead and hope to bring you the latest releases, fast.

When it comes to actual operation, PreScene pretty much does what’s stated above. The home page lists latest releases pre’d online by scene groups. If you click on one of these, you will be taken to a detailed description page which has release information, download links offered by PreScene as well as download links extracted from external sites (in the Link Search Results section):

PreScene does not provide internal download links for all indexed releases. However, some releases do come with them and this appears to be the work of an automatic uploader bot. A list of most recent releases that came with download links is always accessible from http://prescene.com/new_downloads.html page. If you can’t find any internally provided download links for a particular release, you may still be able to download it through ‘Link Search Results’ which are one click hosting links extracted from external sites. While these links are not as reliable as internally provided downloads, they do seem to be pretty accurate most of the time.

Image: Part of PreScene’s main index. The ‘New Downloads’ section lists last few releases that came with internal download links. 

You can browse the pre database using the main index – the categories in top toolbar offer some level of filtering to results. To look for older releases however you’ll have to use the Pre Search feature.

PreScene is currently open for registration. Membership is not required to browse the Pre DB or to view download links – registration however is required to access the discussion forums. If you are looking for a PreDB with download links, check this out.

Site Name: PreScene (http://prescene.com)

Signup URL: http://prescene.com/forum/index.php?action=register

Related Articles

• Download The Net (DDLThe.Net) – An Alternative To SceneDDL & NewSceneFiles
• AfterPre – Direct Download Links For Movies, TV Shows, Apps & Other Scene Releases
• SceneFlux – Scene Release Blog With Auto Uploader & Auto Poster
• JDownloader – Best Download Manager For One Click Hosting Services & DDL Forums

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More good games for the PC – this time the 4th installment of highly popular gaming franchise Gothic. Arcania Gothic 4 continues the storyline after Gothic 3 – the game looks better and plays a lot similar to its predecessor. While the it has not received stellar ratings from various online reviews, Gothic 4 does not appear to be a flop either. For me it looks like a loot filled game you can waste a lot of time on. Anyway here’s our mini troubleshooting article for Gothic 4 – this post tries to address some of the most common problems people seem to be experiencing with the game, such as crash to desktop (CTD) at startup, black screens and other launch errors along with audio issues.

Game crashes to desktop (CTD) at launch, black screen or won’t start

Solution 1

There can be a number of different reasons why this can happen but here’s a common fix you can try. We have mentioned this previously in troubleshooting posts for other games. This applies to Gothic 4 as well and we can confirm that some people have managed to resolve their launch errors with this method. Gothic 4 might crash if your sound card’s audio sampling rate is set to any value above 24 bit/48000 Hz range. To fix this issue, follow the steps below (applicable on Windows Vista and Windows 7 systems):

1. Open Control Panel –> Sound.
2. In the ‘Playback’ tab, select ‘Speakers’. Choose ‘Properties’.
3. In the Speaker Properties window, switch to the ‘Advanced’ tab.
4. Under the ‘Default Format’ drop down, choose 24 bit, 48000 Hz (Studio Quality) option.
5. Close all Windows by pressing Ok. Run the game.

Note that you should try this fix if you have run into audio issues including noisy sound, stuttering or lagging audio, no audio, etc. as well.

Solution 2

1. Uninstall the game
2. Manually delete the Arcania registry key located under HKCU\Software\Microsoft\DirectInput (using Registry Editor)
3. Delete the game settings folder inside your My Documents (Documents in Win 7) folder
4. Reinstall the game – it’s preffered that you try installing the game to your root directory ( Ex – X:\Gothic 4\, where X is your root drive)

Note that we cannot guarantee the above fixes will work in all CTD scenarios – however, they are worth a try. This article is a work in progress – it will be updated as more solutions are found.

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Finally, the PC version of Lost Planet 2 is here. This highly anticipated third person shooter video game from Capcom has been released on the 12th October in North America, several months after the console release. I’ve had the opportunity to play the game (single player component) for several hours and I must say the graphics look absolutely beautiful when maxed out. Gameplay however can sometimes get a bit boring and the game appears to be rather short as well. Anyways Lost Planet 2 is one of the better PC titles to be released this year and you won’t be too disappointed with it. For those who are having trouble getting the game to run, here’s our routine troubleshooting article for LP2. There are some common fixes you can try to avert save issues and crashes – this article is a work in progress and more fixes will be added later, as they are discovered.

How do I save progress in Lost Planet 2?

This is one of the most frequently asked questions in our troubleshooting articles. LP2 is a Games For Windows Live (GFWL) based title and you need access to a GFWL account in order to save game progress. But don’t worry,  in case you don’t have an online profile, you can still save the game using an offline account. Step by step instructions on how to do this is given below:

1. Launch the game. Open the Windows Live menu (or it will open automatically, prompting you to log in or create a new account).
2. If you are not logged into any GFWL profile continue to step 3. If you are already logged onto a profile (local or online), try launching the single player component and try to save progress. If saving and loading works fine, you obviously have no problem. If it does not work, you’ll need to sign out of the current profile before continuing to step 3 (Create profile button will only become visible when you aren’t logged in).
3. Click on ‘Create new profile’ button.
4. In the dialog box that pops up DO NOT hit continue. Hitting continue will take you to a registration page for an ONLINE profile – this is not the requirement.
5. Once in the ‘Create Gamer Profile’ window, scroll down so that you can see the bottom paragraph.
6. Look for the hyperlinked ‘created a local profile’ link in last paragraph. Clicking this will allow you to create a new offline profile.

Note that an offline GFWL account will not let you play online. But you should be able to play single player mode without any issues whatsoever. A YouTube video showing how to make an offline xlive account can also be found here.

Crashes and Error messages

Just like with any game, you might run into crashes and error messages caused by a number of different reasons. Here are some common fixes you can try to avert such annoyances. If you get any of those Lost Planet 2 has stopped working errors, first thing you should do is to update DirectX. I myself had the misfortune to run into one of these errors and upgrading to the latest DX version resolved the issue for me. You can download the latest DirectX monthly runtime from here. This should fix most crashes at startup and launch.

Another common error you might run into is the missing xlive.dll issue. This is mostly caused by a missing or incomplete installation of Games for Windows Live (GFWL) component. You can download the GFWL client from this location (choose Download option even if you don’t have a gamertag)

Update your graphics drivers

Always update your video card drivers to the latest build before running the game – if latest drivers do not work, try downloading and installing latest beta drivers (do this at your own risk).

• ATI Drivers: Download the latest ATI Catalyst drivers from this link: http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_catalyst.aspx
• NVIDIA Drivers: Download latest official NVIDIA drivers from this link: http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us
• Beta Drivers: Check here http://downloads.guru3d.com/

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