Two Stop Bits | shdon's comments

shdon 529 days ago | parent | on: Microsoft open-sources GW-BASIC
Is this a different version of GW-BASIC? The article mentions MS-DOS 4.01. Perhaps it is the version of GW-BASIC included with that? I thought a version of GW-BASIC had already been open-sourced a few years back?
- zxm 529 days ago
  from wikipedia 'On May 21, 2020, Microsoft released the 8088 assembler source code for GW-BASIC 1.0 on GitHub under the MIT License.[1] '
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GW-BASIC
  - shdon 529 days ago
    Yeah, that's the version this post actually links to. I don't see any links to newer versions of GW-BASIC. It's weird, as the post title refers to GW-BASIC, but everything else is about DOS 4.xx
shdon 529 days ago | parent | on: ICQ messenger shuts down after almost 28 years
Heh, I just checked my old ICQ number and the account is marked as "[deleted]" yet still has my old profile picture from more than a decade ago.
shdon 532 days ago | parent | on: Space Quest 2's master disks accidentally included...
Sierra's AGI and SCI and Lucasfilm/LucasArts' SCUMM were strokes of genius and have been a major factor in these companies' success. It allowed them to not just churn out games at a far greater pace than if every game's tech had to be built from the ground up, but also made porting to other platforms much easier. In that sense they are the predecessors of Unity and Godot and all the other game engines we have today.
shdon 533 days ago | parent | on: Psion 5x emulator
Had a Siena, 3c, 5, 5mx and a netBook. Loved every one of them. Great little machines.
Quick nitpick for the title and tags: it's the 5MX not the 5X (there was no such machine)
shdon 537 days ago | parent | on: How Sierra Was Captured, Then Killed, by a Massive...
Such a tragedy. Sierra games were responsible for my love of adventure games and if it wasn't for them, I never would have made the games I have.
- bmonkey325 537 days ago
  That the scenes were vector drawn that materialized unlike the raster images that just appeared as you saw in graphical text adventures gave it a visceral quality I can’t explain. But totally enjoy seeing.
  Also. The story telling was good. Which helped :-)
  - shdon 536 days ago
    With the very first version of the GAL (Game Adaptation Language) that would later evolve into AGI, you could actually see the images being drawn... That was with the self-booting floppy versions of King's Quest 1 and 2.
shdon 540 days ago | parent | on: F-15 Strike Eagle II: The origin story
This is really interesting stuff. I really appreciate that the author goes into a lot of detail, including all the failed attempts, and doesn't just post the final results. Will have to subscribe to get further updates.
shdon 559 days ago | parent | on: The classic DOOM game over htop, the text-based pr...
The digital world is divided in things that run DOOM, and things that soon will run DOOM.
- bmonkey325 559 days ago
  I call it Carmacks Law. Similar to Atwoods law for javascript
shdon 560 days ago | parent | on: Celebrating the zx spectrum on it's 42nd birthday
I've never had a ZX Spectrum, or even seen one in real life, but it's been a source of endless fascination for me. Lost a lot of money on RCL's Vega+ scam.
shdon 569 days ago | parent | on: 40 years of Sopwith!
Loved this game, even if I absolutely suck at it. Fraggle, who created the page, has done a port of the game to SDL (easily found through the link on the bottom) and is generally a cool person. An interview with the original creator of Sopwith is coming up.
shdon 592 days ago | parent | on: The Super Mario Maker community faces its final bo...
It makes me really sad that Nintendo is shutting down these services. Though obviously a company can't be expected to keep things running indefinitely, the fact that things can just plain disappear when a company tires of it (i.e. it's no longer profitable) is one of the major reasons I am not a big fan of many online platforms.
- bmonkey325 592 days ago
  Not wrong. While playing online with friends can be super fun, we will lose whole swaths of games when they sunset.
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