Update Archive

	February 8, 2014 - The Dragon Films Historical Archive After waiting for far too long, I finally managed to dust off the old Dragon Films code, fire up an ASP server, and convert all of the old Dragon Films content into a series of static pages that can be put back online. We'll call it the "Dragon Films Historical Archive," as it's basically a snapshot of how the site existed since the last time it was updated with new content nearly 10 years ago, complete with all of the old movies, reviews, comments, movie posters, classified ads, and Ask the Dragon questions. While I do not plan on making any further updates to the site (you can get all the latest 3DMM-related shenanigans at 3dmm.com), I do want to make sure that those who were around back in the good ol' days can once again come take a walk down memory lane and maybe even watch some old gems. Some technical notes: since everything here is static content, all of the "interactive" features have been removed (namely, anything that involved typing into a text field, such as submitting feedback or performing movie searches). Since movie browsing involved dynamic code, I've dumped all movies into a single Theater page so you can simply use your browser's text search functionality to find a movie you're looking for (warning: the file is on the large size, especially with all the old and extremely heavy HTML markup I used back then, so it may take a moment or six to load). You can also get a text-only index of everything on the Movie Listing page). However, as a throwback to the good ol' days, I also made individual pages for the different "theaters" (Fantasy, Action, etc.), just because. Finally, all e-mail addresses have also been removed to prevent spambots from eating everything. So, if you've been around he block a few times and are coming back to relive the past, welcome back. And if this is your first visit to Dragon Films... welcome! It was a fun ride, and I'm glad you've come to see it.

	February 5, 2006 - Where we go from here As many of you probably know by now, I have not been able to update Dragon Films for over a whole year. This is partly due to my being in Japan for nine months, partly because I am migrating to a new, PHP-only server, and partly because other aspects of my life have taken precedence over working on this site. I'm going to say this right up front: I don't want to let Dragon Films die. I'm going to be hosting it on any ASP-enabled server I can manage to find until I can redesign it in PHP, whenever that may be. In the worst possible scenario, I will disable all of the "interactive" features of Dragon Films and let it persist as a kind of "antique movie showcase." But there's no way I can possibly let go of it. It would break my heart... and my heart is already so weak and broken now that letting Dragon Films go would kill me. I want to apologize to everyone. I made so many showy promises about how "the new Dragon Films" was supposed to be awesome with ten thousand features per square inch and the ability to feed you candy over the Internet (as one of my friends joked recently). I never delivered on those promises. Never even came close. I got caught up in the self-inflicted hype of "making a comeback" and failed to realize that there is nothing I can do that is going to change anything anymore. I may have been one of the first 3DMM sites out there, but things are so much different now and pretending like it's still 1998 is downright ignorant. As such, I cannot promise anything anymore, other than I am going to make sure that, at the very least, you can always download the getting-close-to-1000 movies I have on the site right now. That said, I'm going to set a more realistic goal for Dragon Films and for myself. I'm so far behind the times that trying to play catch-up would be ridiculous. I doubt many people would want to take the time to upload the hundreds of new movies that have come out since I trailed off a year or two ago. So instead of trying to catapault myself forward, I am thinking I may try embracing the past. While this is still all smoke in the air at the moment, I am envisioning Dragon Films becoming a kind of 3DMM time capsule, where people can submit movies they've made going back as far as when 3DMM first came out and supply as much metadata as possible about movies so as to create a rich database of movie information. By metadata I mean not only things like who directed it, when it came out, and how big the file is, but also how long the movie is, when development began, assorted director notes/comments, development screenshots/roughs, scripts, reviews, audio clips, cast listings, drawings... basically anything and everything that could possibly be linked to a movie. In this way, Dragon Films wouldn't be your cutting-edge source of new movies (3dmm.com is the place for that now, especially with its awesome new Movies feature), but rather a source of information about movies new and old. Of course, people can send new movies in (I'm going to make this an automated feature... no more of this e-mailing nonsense), but old movies and any information about existing movies would be more than welcome, too. New movies would be released on 3dmm.com, where they should be, but then they could eventually make their way to the new Dragon Films and find a home with the other hundreds (or perhaps thousands..?) of movies in its database. I am currently trying to work out ways to turn Dragon Films into an independent study project for course credit. Assuming it works out (which I am relatively confident it will), I will more or less be forcing myself to create something special. I cannot make any promises as to when any of this will actually happen, but at least it's in the works. Something will come out of it. My goal is to make this something a utility that people will actually want to use and, more importantly, something people will actually enjoy using. I'm not going to give you candy and more features than you can shake a stick at. I'm going to try and give you something that you may want to come back to some day. Once again, I apologize for my ignorance, my lack of updates, my disappearance. I know a lot of people don't really follow Dragon Films anymore, and I know a lot of new people have joined this awesome community since I disappeared and have no idea who I am or the things I've promised and never delivered on. But I just want to let you all know that, no matter what I do, 3DMM and the community it has created will never leave its place in my heart. You guys have taken this program from a kid's toy to a powerful movie-making piece of software. Even 3DMM's developers gave up on it, yet look what it's become now. You all rock in my books. Never stop making movies.

	September 8, 2005 - Seven years of Dragon Films On June 27th, I returned from my year-long excursion in Japan. For anyone who has followed my travels at TheGerf.net, you already have an idea of what an adventure that was. For everyone else: STUDY ABROAD. Just do it. You'll learn more than you ever thought you could learn. While in Japan, I was unable to do anything with Dragon Films as it exists currently. I did spend several months developing a brand new interface and framework, but I eventually scrapped all of it because... well, I just stopped liking it. Also while I was in Japan, I fell out of love with ASP and into love with PHP, meaning I have no desire to continue working with Dragon Films's current codebase. Not only that, but I have purchased a PHP-only hosting service, meaning Dragon Films will not even work on that site unless I completely recode everything from the bottom up. I know every update makes it look like Dragon Films is starting from scratch, but this time it's serious: if I don't start from scratch, I will be unable to keep Dragon Films running anything close to "constantly." So here's the plan. I will always have the Dragon Films movies up for download as long as I have the necessary webspace. That, hopefully, will never change. The means through which those movies are delivered (as well as how new movies are added) very likely will be changing within the next few months. DF has missed out on a LOT of movies, and there's no way it could possibly keep up with everything under the current system. I have some conceptual designs of a very different and extremely simplified interface for Dragon Films, but when I'll actually be able to implement it is currently up in the air. I do know, however, that the final result, if any, will be a standards-compliant and open source software system. Right now, that's all I can say. 3DMM has become so much more than it began as in the past year. Unfortunately, I dropped off the radar during that very year. Hopefully, at some point, Dragon Films and I will be able to once again share in its wonder and be a useful part of the community. Happy Seventh, Dragon Films.

	September 8, 2004 - DF's sixth birthday, and a departing message Six years ago, Dragon Films started serving the Internet with 3DMM movies. Since then, a whole community centered on 3DMM has emerged, bringing with it more marvelous, ingenious, and amazing films than you could shake a stick at. I am glad to have been a part of this sea of talent and inspiration for so long. First off, the movies. There are 13 new films in this update, including four films I thought were fabulous: Deck the Hacks, Satanik, Teh Epic Episode 1, and Pamela. The last three movies in this list were part of the recent Film Festival, and all of them are very well-done. Be sure to check out all the new films! Tomorrow, September 9th, I will be leaving for Japan where I will spend my entire third year of college studying Japanese and taking some other courses. I will not be returning to the United States until June 27th, and will likely not be "decompressed" for another week or two after that. During this time, I will be unable to watch, rate, and post movies on Dragon Films. I am not closing the site… only putting it in "suspended animation." You will still be able to download movies normally, leave feedback, send posters, and add links, but it is very, very unlikely that I will be able to post any new movies on the site. This means there will be a very large gap in movies here on the site, and I'm sure by the time I return not only will there be a million new movies that I won't be able to post on DF but 3DMM will have evolved into a very powerful beast beyond my wildest dreams. Well, maybe not WILDEST, but, you know what I mean. *laughs* In either case, while I'm gone, be sure to check out The 3DMM Bulliten Board for the latest blockbuster films, 3DMM utilities, and more reviews than you could take in in one sitting. I just hope that, when I return, I can pick DF back up where it left off and keep going. But, as always, YOU are the ones that keep Dragon Films going with your great movies, so I will leave the decision up to you. While I'm gone, though, I will be keeping a journal and photo archive of my stay in Japan at TheGerf.net. If you're interested to see what I'm up to while I'm over there, be sure to check it out. Internet connection willing, I will be updating that site with new content as often as I can. Thanks once again for making Dragon Films what it is. Without you all, Dragon Films wouldn't be where it is today. I'm glad to have served you for six years, and, upon my return, I hope to serve you for years to come. Thanks for visiting Dragon Films. I'll see y'all on the flip side. Peace.

	June 23, 2004 - 3 new movies: JDR Revival Only three new movies in this update, but it includes quite a biggie... JDR Revival! If you haven't checked out this big-name movie yet, be sure to do so... chances are you'll have a great time! Congratulations, Dan, on a great movie. Also in this update is Remember 2003, a very nostalgic trip through some of the best movies that were released last year. That's all for now, really. Thanks for stopping by.

	June 17, 2004 - Some non-movie updates No new movies this time… I just needed to make some updates to the site. A few things had been wrong before that needed to be changed, plus I added some of Frankie's new tools to help people with Doraemon movies. Check out the Utilities page for more information on these tools… everybody who plans to use 3DMM in the future should DEFINITELY have them. Also, anyone who has sent comments or classified ads to Dragon Films recently may notice that they keep getting deleted… this was a problem on my end and I apologize. I have a slightly new system of updating Dragon Films now, and so future problems like that should be minimized. Please feel free to re-submit your ads and comments through the normal process.

	June 2, 2004 - Dragon Films breaks 900 movies First of all, I apologize for dragging my feet for two months with Dragon Films. A lot of things have been changing in my life recently (for the better, in case you're wondering), and unfortunately it is getting harder and harder (and harder) to get the time to update Dragon Films as often as I used to. However, I am pleased to announce 17 new films this update, which means Dragon Films has over 900 movies! Whew. My pick for this update is The Knights of Camelot, an absolutely brilliant masterpiece by Thomas Saville, the director who brought you Space Station Alpha and other quality films. I would also like to recommend CNCW Studios' Hunted and Jon Barton's Liquid Sunshine. These are all very well-done movies that you should take a look at. For those of you who are wondering, yes, Dragon Films is on a new server (on my own TheGerf.net domain, hosted by 1PlanHost), and no, I do not have unlimited disk space anymore. As such, many of the movies you see on Dragon Films will be unavailable for download for quite some time; more specifically, about a year and a half, for it will be that long until I return to my campus network to run Dragon Films from my personal computer (I'm going to be going to study in Japan from September 9th to June 27th). I have done my best to get as many of the most recent movies on my server, and am in the process of developing a "mirroring service" that will host movies not immediately available on the primary Dragon Films server. With these two online systems I hope to have as many of the quality films on Dragon Films available for download at the same time. If, after I get the mirroring service up and running, there is a movie you really would like to see up I will set up a way you can contact me and request that I add that to the mirroring service. So, anyway, that's all I have for this update. Until next time, keep 3DMMin'!

	April 4, 2004 - 6 new movies for Daylight Saving Time Heh, by the time I finish typing up this update, I will likely have totally lost an hour due to Daylight Saving Time. Oh well… you win some, you lose some. Anyway, I managed to clean out the movie queue (finally), and present to you six new films. I'll have to give my recommendation to 007: Unleash the Dragon, one of the most highly anticipated movies which comes to us in an unreleased form, but the other movies in this update, all by lesser-known directors, are worth the download as well. At this point, there are three weeks left of the current semester and then two weeks of final examinations. That means in early May, Dragon Films will have to run from another server aside from my own. However, as I mentioned in my last update, I have purchased a webhosting plan and will be rewriting Dragon Films's code to run off the new server forever, and not just when my computer is plugged into the campus network. Again, this will mean that I will not always be able to have every movie available for download at all times, but I will do my best to keep the most popular and newest movies up. In the meantime, I will have temporary mirror servers to host files when they are up and running. So, all in all, there should be little change in DF's functionality. Also, over the summer I would like to get screenshots of all these movies that don't have them, plus review many films using the DF rubric. We'll see what the summer brings. Ah, and there goes an hour. Well, it was good while it lasted, I guess.

	March 29, 2004 - 15 new movies and some server information Greetings all! It's kind of depressing how little time I have to keep up with Dragon Films anymore. I had originally planned to get all these plus another six movies up, plus review some older movies, but projects and other things just said "No." So, I have (only) 15 new movies in this update, my favorite being Yeti and Squidworth's Halloween Nightmare - Good Edition. However, in a very close runner up position we have two episodes of Final Fantasy 2, two movies with the most AMAZING Final Fantasy models and animation I've ever seen. Be sure to check those three movies out! As always, all movies in this update can be seen on the Listing page. Also, the director of The Attack of the Most Boring Alien Spaceships from Outer Space! sent in an updated version of his old movie. And now some news. Very soon I will very likely be purchasing some permanent online webspace, and will move Dragon Films there so that it runs off my server. This means Dragon Films will remain open all summer and all next year while I'm in Japan (though when I'm in Japan I probably won't have the time to watch new films… we'll have to see what happens). However, because Dragon Films is so incredibly large, I will not be able to host all of the movies it has to offer all year round. I will likely be updating the source code that drives Dragon Films and putting in a routine that will sort of remedy the issue of not being able to download movies directly from the new Dragon Films server. If I do not have a movie online, then it will attempt to connect you to a personal server which may or may not be operating at the moment. So, the newest movies will all be available for download (as well as absolute classics), while older ones will sort of be hit-or-miss. Obviously, the exact details of this new server plan will be cleared up when summer draws closer. Thanks to everyone who has sent in movies, and if your movie didn't make it in this update, I will try my hardest to get it up for the next one. See y'all later!

	March 1, 2004 - Micro update: 5 new films Due to massive amounts of midterms, projects, and other school-related mumbo jumbo, today's update is going to have to be a really small one. And I mean, REALLY small: 5 movies, though I only really give my hearty recommendation to 00 Dee Boned: Rotisserie Chicken. Yes, it's a "pointless action movie," but it's a PAM with skateboarding and it's done well, and thus I enjoyed it. I currently have six more movies left in queue to watch (all of which are significantly bigger… one's 20 megs!), and I should have those up after spring break (March 5-14). During that time, Dragon Films may be temporarily offline; it depends whether or not I can transfer it to another server before I leave for the week. We'll see.

	February 7, 2004 - 14 new films, Expansion Pack 0.10 While I honestly thought I could finish this update last week, apparently life got in the way (as it often does) and prevented me from getting this update done when I wanted to. But that's okay, because now it's done... with 14 new films! Highlights of this update are Danimations' JDR Revolutions and Jeff Ching's Shit Happens, two wonderful films that are definitely worth the download. Be sure to check out the Listing page for a complete list of all movies in this update. Also in this update is the Expansion Pack 0.10, a great texture-rich update to the Expansion Pack project. That's all for this update; thanks for visiting Dragon Films!

	January 10, 2004 - Back once again with 12 new films Welcome back to Dragon Films! With the new 2004 year, I thought I'd add 2004 new movies to Dragon Films. Then I woke up from my dream. Instead, we've got twelve new films here, including what I think are the two most amazing films of 2003, Ghost in the Shell and REDUX. Both of these are must-see films… be sure you check them out! And as far as updates go, that's pretty much it. Happy new year, everyone!

	December 12, 2003 - 27 new movies, winter break information Today I added 27 new movies to Dragon Films, including the very funny flick Slightly Confused. You can check out the Movie Listing page to see all the movies I've added this update. If your movie is not in this update, don't go crazy; it's finals week and I was unable to get all of the movies watched. In my next update, all movies in the queue should be up. Normally, Dragon Films shuts down for the winter break, from mid-December to mid-January. This year, I am going to try something different and keep it open on another temporary server. If things work right (which they should), I'll be able to get the rest of the movies up over break when I'll have a lot more free time to actually watch movies. I hope to also get a lot more screenshots made, and perhaps even optimize the HTML/ASP code for faster page loads and compliance with the XHTML spec. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it, though. So, that's all for this update. Thanks to everyone who has sent in movies, and a big thanks to everyone who has pointed out errors on Dragon Films. If you notice something that's not quite right on Dragon Films, please let me know as soon as possible and I will fix it right away! See you all next update!

	December 3, 2003 - The rest of Cosmos! In this special Dragon Films update, I have added episodes 3-8 of the classic series Cosmos. Now you can see this great, old movie from beginning to end (or, at least what seems to be the end for now). There are approximately 30 more movies in the queue to be posted, and I will try to get them up this weekend sometime (as this is the last week of classes). Stay tuned, and check out some old-school goodnees that is Cosmos!

	November 23, 2003 - 17 new movies, Cosmos to return! Today I added 17 new movies to Dragon Films, and am pleased to announce that the man behind the Cosmos movie series has given me the rest of his Cosmos films for Dragon Films! Expect episodes 3 through 8 of this classic series to be up for the next update. Also, an old-time producer from Imagine Entertainment has come back and will be re-releasing classics such as Sacred Sword. Be sure to look for that, too!

	November 8, 2003 - Milestones aplenty Welcome back to Dragon Films! After a short haitus, I have finally been able to get all of the "lost" movies back up on the site, along with many more brand new ones, including the much-anticipated Videogame Nightmare 2! Also in this update, Dragon Films has reached two milestones: over 800 movies, and over 50000 visitors! Thanks to everyone that sends movies to Dragon Films… you guys make DF what it is! Hey, have you downloaded VGN2 yet? No? What the… download it now!

	October 25, 2003 - 9 of the "lost" movies are back up Today I managed to re-post nine of the "lost" movies, leaving me with only about a half dozen more that still need to go up. Hopefully I'll be able to complete the re-posting this weekend, as well as introduce a few brand new films.

	October 20, 2003 - 18 new movies, more on the way Whew, it's about time I got these movies up! Today you can get 18 new movies from Dragon Films, including Canine Caper, an absolutely fabulous film from CNCW Studios. Be sure you have the Doraemon Expansion Pack and the latest 3DMM Expansion Pack from the Utilities page before trying to watch these movies, though, since many of them utilize the new additions (although you should have these installed already… right?) Also, throughout the past month I have been adding posters, utilities, classifieds, and links; be sure to check up on those if you usually do. When I moved Dragon Films to the new ASP server, I somehow lost the reviews for 14 movies. So, in the next update (which hopefully should be soon this time) I will be re-reviewing all those movies and getting them back up in their rightful places. Sorry if your movie was one of the ones lost by accident! I am also planning on adding a new feature to the Listing page. Some people may wonder exactly when movies were uploaded in relation to others, so I am considering putting up a link that will create a numbered list a user-specified number (or all, if you so choose) of the most recent movies uploaded. This way you can see exactly when one movie was uploaded in relation to another one (up to the point where I inserted all the older movies into the Dragon Films database, in which case the numbering will not be accurate). Any comments either way? I'd love to hear them. And once more, I'm still looking for people who would be interested in taking screenshots for movies on Dragon Films that do not have them yet. Please drop me a line if you're interested! That's all for now. In some future update I may take the time to convert ALL of Dragon Films into the XHTML spec, but we'll have to see what happens. As always, if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions about the site, layout, and so on, don't hesitate to e-mail me! That's it for now. See you all next time with the "lost" movies!

	September 20, 2003 - 5 new movies for 5 years Well, it's not really supposed to be for that reason, but I do have five new movies for everyone, including Perfect Dark, a very interesting movie that took over three years to complete. Even veteran 3DMMers may do a double-take when they see some of the very unique scenes this guy has cooked up… I know I did! That's all for now, really. Thanks for stopping by!

	September 8, 2003 - Happy 5th Birthday, Dragon Films! Happy fifth birthday!

	September 7, 2003 - Pre-Anniversary Update Guess what? Tomorrow, Dragon Films will be five years old! Yay! That's a pretty big accomplishment if you ask me. So why am I updating with nine new movies and a few new utilities a day before the anniversary? Eh, I dunno. Perhaps I'll give DF a nice, quiet anniversary without a bunch of commotion. In fact, I'll probably spend some time and optimize code. DF deserves it I think. Have you checked out Final Fantasy... the Ultimate Epic: The First Saga (Chapters 1-10) yet? The reviews are in, and FFEpic is a success! You can see reviews at Explode Production and 3DMM.com, and type your own on the Feedback page. Check it out! Do you play Kings of Chaos? It's a cool statistics-based online game, and I want YOU to be my officer! You can join up through this link: http://www.kingsofchaos.com/recruit.php?uniqid=p46hucx2 and help me conquer the world! If you join up under me, you will get the great benefit of my protection. It's a fun game… check it out! If you already play, please click on the link anyway to help me build up my army; if you drop me a message, I'll gladly click on yours too. Thanks for coming to Dragon Films for five years… it has been an awesome experience, and I hope it can continue for quite some time.

	August 30, 2003 - A Few New Movies Today I added about five new movies using the new database system of Dragon Films Sigma, and BOY is it easier to update! Unfortunately, the movies aren't anything groundbreaking, but eh, they're okay. Please, if you haven't been here recently, check out the Updates page to learn about all the new exciting features of Dragon Films, and get information about Final Fantasy... the Ultimate Epic: The First Saga (Chapters 1-10), which is now available for download! Also, I still have not recovered those "lost" movies. Hopefully I can get that done sometime this weekend or something. Do you play Kings of Chaos? It's a cool statistics-based online game, and I want YOU to be my officer! You can join up through this link: http://www.kingsofchaos.com/recruit.php?uniqid=p46hucx2 and help me conquer the world! If you join up under me, you will get the great benefit of my protection. It's a fun game… check it out! If you already play, please click on the link anyway to help me build up my army; if you drop me a message, I'll gladly click on yours too. And one last thing: I still need people to do screenshots. Look at the last update for more information about this. Until then, ta ta!

	August 24, 2003 - Dragon Films Sigma has arrived Once upon a time, I started a little website called Dragon Films to help replace the loss of 3DMM International, the main 3DMM site at the time. Today, five years later, I present to you Dragon Films Sigma, the sum of all my web programming experience rolled up into one website. At first, you will probably not notice any drastic changes to the site, as I have kept the visual look pretty much the same. However, begin exploring all of DF's features and you will quickly discover that it is much different than the Dragon Films of yesteryear. Everything is database-driven now, which means your movie queries are made specifically for you every time you visit the site. This way, you can find exactly the movies you want. Would you like to see the 50 most recent updates? Simply visit the Listing page. How about all Fantasy/Sci-Fi movies? Just go to the Theaters page. But what if you want to find a movie that's under 5 megabytes, is directed by somebody named Bob, and is in either the Action/Drama or Comedy theater? With the DFS Search Engine, you can now perform those types of advanced queries with ease. And best of all, the new database system makes updating the site infinitely easier for me, which means I will be able to update much more frequently. Because of this, I intend to rate movies much more thoroughly and do a better job at keeping the site as current as possible, and yes, this does imply daily (or even multiple-times-per-day) updates, depending on the number of movies I get. However, I am going to start being a little more strict with which movies make it to the Theaters and which movies are placed in the BOMB Theater, as I wish to challenge people to make better movies. This is a very exciting time, and I hope you will peruse Dragon Films and discover all its new features. You can also check out the Webmaster page for more up-to-date information about myself and what Dragon Films means to me. Also in this update, among over 20 new films, is Final Fantasy... the Ultimate Epic: The First Saga (Chapters 1-10), my magnum opus I began in 1999 and have been furiously working on ever since, and Space Station Alpha, an excellent film by Thomas Saville of SuperSonic Pictures. Be sure to check out these movies and all of the new features of Dragon Films as you visit today. As always, if there are any problems or bugs with the site, please let me know as soon as possible. I have tried to debug it as much as possible, but I am sure there are still little problems that need to be addressed. Please e-mail me with any bugs you find… don't worry, I don't bite. Also, if anyone could help me take thumbnail screenshots for movies that have a "Screenshot Coming Soon" image, I would very much appreciate it. Please simply take a screenshot of a frame that acts as a good representative of that movie, paste it into an image-editing program, and e-mail me the bitmap (use the e-mail link on the left). You need not save the file as a .gif or resize it; in fact, I would appreciate it if instead you could send me a .bmp file that has not been resized at all (you can ZIP or RAR the images if you would like). If you need more information, simply drop me an e-mail. And finally, I must note that it appears my account with Spaceports was terminated, and with it the descriptions for the movie descriptions of the last update. I keep a backup of all Dragon Films files on my computer, but for some reason I simply cannot find these HTML files anymore. I was able to recover a few of the movies' descriptions because of sequels and such, but many are still missing. In the next update I will recover all the movies so they are once again downloadable, but I will not have their descriptions or contact information. If you are the director of one of these movies (which I will list), PLEASE e-mail me so I can update the information about the movie. Also, I have cleared out the entire Links page, so if you want to submit a link please do so with the new format. Thank you for coming to Dragon Films, where dreams become reality.

	July 10, 2003 - Dragon Films is changing... Again Welcome back to Dragon Films! Due to problems with Spaceports and bandwidth, DF has been shut down pretty much for the entire summer. Now it is running on a temporary server, so the only things you'll find are text files, utilities, and graphics… no movies at the moment. While the site is down, however, I will be making yet another HUGE change to the site, one that is more revolutionary than any I have done in the past. Here's a post I made at 3dmm.com regarding this upgrade: Hey everyone, just wanted to let you all know some stuff about Dragon Films. First of all, I don't think I'll get around to updating it much this summer; I'm running a site that's well over 1 GB off a server that only lets me have 700 MB, so I've had to temporarily cut a LOT of movies and features to cram it in there. So, if you notice a lot of dead links, that's why. Furthermore, updating is going to be difficult because I have to upload from my slow-as-molasses connection again, and so on and so forth. However, I do have some good news. I have taught myself how to work with databases and dynamic websites (finally), and am putting this newfound knowledge into Dragon Films. Using my new IIS (Internet Information Services) server, I will be able to create a Dragon Films that stores most of its data in a centralized database. What does this mean? Well, it's good news for you and for me. You will be able to search for movies more efficiently, for one. Let's say the Movie Listings page just isn't enough; you want to find a movie that's by a certain director, that is under a certain filesize, has been downloaded the most, or has earned a perfect grade. With the new DF features, you'll be able to find exactly those movies you're looking for; they'll be displayed in a "personalized theater" that contains just what you want. Or, you can browse films using the old "Theaters" system if you would like; just click a button and you've got all the movies in the Fantasy/Sci-Fi theater up. Comments, links, classifieds, and so on will use the same system. All these new features will not change the graphical appearance of Dragon Films one bit. The good news for me is that this new system reduces the HTML overhead by at least 400%. Up to now, I've typed in every single byte of HTML code you see on Dragon Films in Notepad; by the time I get DF up and running again from my server in August, ASP and SQL software will generate most of the HTML code for you on-the-fly. This means it will be MUCH easier for me to add movies to the site; no longer must I change no fewer than 7 pages of pure HTML per movie I upload… now I just have to add a single entry into a database and Dragon Films will do the rest of the work for me. It's possible I may add some more drastic features, such as automatic uploading to Dragon Films right through the site, but since I rate every single movie I receive that may not happen (at least until much later, anyway). It all depends how well I can program in ASP and SQL and how useful I deem such features to be. I'd love to give you a sample of what I'm talking about, but since I'm on a dialup connection you can't connect to my server. And since ASP requires IIS to operate (and Spaceports doesn't run IIS), I can't upload it there, either. So August it'll be. In short, Dragon Films will be much more efficient, user-friendly, and much less time-consuming to update. I'm furiously programming all these automated features into the new site (even as I was typing this update), and it's rather exciting. So, I'll see you all in August. Until then, thanks for coming to Dragon Films!

Dragon Films ©1998-2006 Greg Strnad. All rights reversed.