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@vga256@dialup.cafe avatar

vga256

@[email protected]

indigenous canadian, recovering academic → writer, gamedev & interactive toolsmith with a penchant for modems, the 4o3 bbs scene, 1-bit art, classic macs, and 80s/90s gaming. curator of internet, canadian & gaming historical obscura.

→ kiki: a tiny homepage construction kit https://tomotama.com/kiki
→ exigy: a VB & Hypercard-like shareware game creation kit https://exigy.org
→ tomo: a decentralized NNTP discussion group network https://tomo.city

(profile: a 6¢ canada red fox stamp)

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. View on remote instance

@vga256@dialup.cafe avatar vga256 , to random

walnut brains and big dreams

A beaver has gnawed at the base of a poplar tree hundreds of meters from his home, with no hope of dragging it home even if it fells it.
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@vga256@dialup.cafe avatar vga256 , to random

today's software preservation task

one of the great crimes of the 21st century was that Mark Jones' (Core Design) Darkmere - an isometric adventure-RPG for the amiga - was poorly visually documented by the usual places like lemonamiga/mobygames/etc.

perhaps for that reason alone, few remember just how incredible mark's pixel work is. using a tightly compressed palette of 16 colours for title screens and 32 colours in-game, he produces some of the best-lit scenes i have ever seen. all hand-dithered, no less.

it's one thing to paint beautiful pixel art stills for circulating on social media; it's entirely another to build them as modular assets to be used in a game. mark's ability to tackle both jobs is a masterwork.

thankfully, mark is his own best archivist, and kept a treasure trove of screenshots from the project. he provides an extensive commentary on the creation of each sprite/tile and the overall style of the game, as well as his memories of designing and building it.

(daggerfall fanatics may recognize some of the assets - trees and mushrooms - re-used in that game!)

read his entire writeup on Darkmere here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20171104143619fw_/http://www.mjonesgraphics.com/darkmere.html

A forest scene with a massive skull cavern, in greens and greys.
A comfy interior of a home, with a large wall fireplace and hearth; a fire burns cheerfully within it. In front of the fire sleeps a tan dog, alongside a human skull. Around the room, torches burn.
A waterfall flows quickly along a river, spilling its water onto the rocks below. The forest around it is full of gnarly, friendly trees.

A waterfall flows quickly along a river, spilling its water onto the rocks below. The forest around it is full of gnarly, friendly trees.
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@vga256@dialup.cafe avatar vga256 , to random

some time ago i discovered the 1940s General Electric Epicure 2QH2 kitchen wall clock and fell in love with the modernist face design

it took a few months, but i finally tracked one down today for $20 locally.

i was surprised to learn that the movement is continuous, so the hands sweep gently across the face instead of the harsh thok-thok-thok of cheaper movements

i’ll be taking this apart to remove the face plate and scanning it in for archival and clock repair.

A clock face with sans serif typefaces and a bright red second hand sweeping gently.

vga256 OP ,
@vga256@dialup.cafe avatar

@nitinkhanna me too. i asked a few weeks ago, and there was no consensus on the typeface. it appears to be built in-house at GE, composed of several different typefaces

@vga256@dialup.cafe avatar vga256 , to random

i'm glad to see scott murphy left his mark on EcoQuest

The user has selected the 'Pick Nose' verb-noun pair in the game EcoQuest. He has told the game to pick a statue's nose. The game responds, "That works in some Sierra games like Space Quest 3. But if would be tacky to use the same trick, wouldn't it?"
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vga256 OP ,
@vga256@dialup.cafe avatar

i could be wrong, but this might be the only lucasarts joke in a sierra game

vga256 OP ,
@vga256@dialup.cafe avatar

@dosnostalgic yes - this was mentioned by many others earlier

@vga256@dialup.cafe avatar vga256 , to random

look, i don’t have all the answers

but i do have all the modems.

this US Robotics Total Control modem bank just arrived. this is what some ISPs used in the mid-90s for incoming dialup lines. your 33.6Kbaud modem would dial into this machine, which would forward all of the incoming/outgoing data to the terminal server for SLIP/PPP

waited 3 long years for one to show up on ebay at a reasonable price.

now i can finally start offering the 16 line dialup service the world needs more than ever.

The backside of the USR Total Control appliance. it has 16 RJ11 telephone jack ports for dialup, and 16 RS-232 ports for connecting to a terminal server. There are two banks of DIP switches to control two banks of eight modems.

The backside of the USR Total Control appliance. it has 16 RJ11 telephone jack ports for dialup, and 16 RS-232 ports for connecting to a terminal server. There are two banks of DIP switches to control two banks of eight modems.
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@vga256@dialup.cafe avatar vga256 , to random

incredible modernist typeface and design on this 1950s general electric Epicure clock.

(bonus points to anyone who identifies the typeface!)

A seafoam green clock with large black hour/minute hands, and a razor-thin red second hand with a loop on one end.
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vga256 OP ,
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@petes_bread_eqn_xls very good eye! 👏 i absolutely agree, and wonder if they mixed in multiple typefaces or made custom modifications

vga256 OP ,
@vga256@dialup.cafe avatar

@csilverman oh good eye - i agree, there are many visual similarities to avant garde.

vga256 OP ,
@vga256@dialup.cafe avatar

@csilverman I very much would expect, that given GE's dominance in the 50s, that they would have an entire department devoted to typeface and print design.

i'd love to read a book on this some day, if one existed.

i did see the Eurostile font clocks - they're beautiful

@gamesthatwerent@mastodon.world avatar gamesthatwerent , to random

Also, we have added another build of Sarge's Heroes for the has been added from 01/09/2000, as well as another 7 prototype builds of Micro Machines 1 & 2 for the . Links in first reply.

image/png

vga256 ,
@vga256@dialup.cafe avatar

@gamesthatwerent i absolutely adore that they never got to implementing z-plane clipping for the army men prototype

@vga256@dialup.cafe avatar vga256 , to random

i have a really weird request for industrial musicophiles: i am beyond excited that i rediscovered a track that i've been missing from my music library for over 20 years.

the thing is, i can't figure out for the life of me where i first heard it. it was never once radio played here, nor is it something my friends were into. i can't seem to find any movies or tv series it was in.

was A Daisy Chain 4 Satan (Acid & Flowerz Mix) by My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult ever played in some well known film, tv show, or compilation cd?

or was this literally something i stumbled on it an open kazaa/gnutella/bearshare C:\ drive in 1999, or my local goth industrial club when i was an alcoholic?

thanks for the help 🙏

vga256 OP ,
@vga256@dialup.cafe avatar

@endali amazing. then that pretty much confirms that i first heard it in 2002 at a local goth club (now long gone) called New City Suburb. thank you!

@dosnostalgic@mastodon.social avatar dosnostalgic , to random

A great moment in classic interactive fiction:

A screenshot from the 1993 game "Eric the Unready". To the left is the user interface with options buttons (such as "help" and "map), a compass with directions, and two lists, one of all the available verbs and another of all the items in the game location. The right side is divided in two. On top there's a picture of the current location. It shows a pig half submerged in a brown sludge. Underneath it is the text input/output area. It displays the title "Up To Your Knees in It". Right under the under entered a command to "eat shit". The game responded with the following text: "A waiter appears out of nowhere, sets up an elegant table, and lays a place setting for one. Не lights the candelabra and says, ‘Our specials today are shit pate, shit under glass, roast shit, broccoli, and shit florentine. For а wine we have... we have..."’ He stops in mid sentence and slaps himself on the forehead. “Oh my gods, we’re all out of wine. You can’t eat shit without wine! I’m so embarrassed.” He packs up his materials and disappears."
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vga256 ,
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@dosnostalgic i see your shit sandwich and raise you a steaming mug of shit

A screenshot from Gateway II: Homeworld. It depicts an outdoor area comprised of a river of sewage. The description reads: A stream of bubbling sludge divides this chamber lengthwise. A horrible smell wafts up from it, reminding you of ammonia and sulphur. Holes in the wall periodically spew glops of green slime. They drop into the pit and slowly sink into the sewage. On the other side of the chasm, you see an open maintenance shaft. > Drink sewage You suck up a mouthful of the sewage and swirl it around with your tongue. It quickly eats through the roof of your mouth and dissolves your brain. Nice bouquet, though.
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    • @vga256@dialup.cafe avatar vga256 , to random

    today’s big box pickup. i’m always amazed that these turn up randomly in my city every few months.

    these came from a friendly local graphic designer that had them sitting in his storage unit for 30 years.

    SO excited to own Stunts finally. it was one of the first two games I ever pirated as a kid, over 2400 baud on a local bbs in 1994

    PC DOS games from the late 80s and early 90s. Millionaire (blue chip software), Test Drive III (Accolade), Stunts (Broderbund), El-Fish (Maxis), Gunship (Microprose).
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    vga256 OP ,
    @vga256@dialup.cafe avatar

    omg. El-Fish has a hilariously 90s wristwatch inside! i have owned several copies of this game over the years, and they have never included the watch

    @vga256@dialup.cafe avatar vga256 , to random

    growing up on the internet story time

    when i was 14 years old, i made my first homepage using my mom's university shell/webspace allotment (5 megs) which was supposed to be for posting homework and email storage

    there was no such thing as a profile pic in 94, but i decided that i should have a photo of me at the top of the page. i inexplicably decided that instead of scanning in a school photo, it made more sense to post a gif of some kid i found on a bbs with Night Owl cd-roms. today, i found that exact photo - it is uncredited sadly - just "boy eating watermelon"

    for my bio, instead of writing about my hobbies and interests, i proceeded to fabricate an entire identity that claimed i was the captain of the volleyball team, a straight-A student, and one of the coolest kids in my school. 0/3 of those things were even close to reality. i figured - hey, who cares? no one's ever gonna see this.

    a year later, my junior high school got its first internet connection - a 28.8k modem shared among 20 macintosh LC's in the lab. my computer ("information processing") teacher decided that our class should learn how to make a web page as a unit project.

    i told him that i had already made a homepage ages ago, and wanted to submit that as my final assignment so i could go play Bolo instead. he asked me to show him the site.

    the entire class crowded around my monitor as it loaded the page a few bytes at a time. i was feeling pretty smug until i saw the straw hat, and realized that the bio was pure bullshit. i tried to turn off the monitor but it was too late - 20 kids and my teacher got to read how this bony kid in front of them was apparently a world class athlete, One Of The Cool Kids, and future valedictorian.

    i deleted the entire site the second i got home 😅

    A black and white photograph of a young freckled boy in a straw hat posing as if he's eating a giant watermelon.
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    @vga256@dialup.cafe avatar vga256 , to random

    how did i only learn today that toejam & earl had their own website for over 20 years, still running flash until it went dark very recently. 😢

    https://web.archive.org/web/20220517102822/http://tjande.com/index.html

    A colourful watercolour flash site for the toejam & earl series of games, showing various buttons with cartoony mouseover events and sounds.

    @vga256@dialup.cafe avatar vga256 , to random

    while Apogee games have no Report Thy Feat screen, i am proud to announce that after 30+ years of trying, i just beat Crystal Caves shareware @georgebsocial 😆

    A reward endgame screen showing Milo holding an armful of tribbles with a nonplussed look on his face.
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    @vga256@dialup.cafe avatar vga256 , to random

    after 35 years, wing commander finally gets a speed patch (frame limiter) for DOS 👏👏👏

    https://www.wcnews.com/news/2025/06/11/breaking-news-wing-commander-speed-fix-released

    @vga256@dialup.cafe avatar vga256 , to random

    sometimes, sierra on-line artists could be really on their game when it came to rendering 256 colour backgrounds in deluxepaint

    this particular background from Police Quest 3 was likely hand painted on traditional media, scanned in, and then touched up in dpaint

    i usually use this scene as an example of an interesting cinematic high-angle rarely seen in games, but today i thought i'd focus on the anti-aliasing. aliasing or "jaggies" occur when a high-res image is resampled to a much lower resolution - and only get worse as the resolution decreases. you can imagine how much resolution loss there was, going from a physical painting, to a 320x200 image. jaggies galore. it probably looked like a mess when it first came out of the scanner.

    this is why the additional touch-up step in dpaint was so important. artists had the chance to iron out jaggies by blending neighbouring colours into more pleasant (smoother) patterns, so harsh lines wouldn't stand out so much

    handcrafted AA became a lost art in the mid-90s, when photoshop made layers and transparency ubiquitous. today, you can blend an object into the background using opacity sliders, or using a blending tool.

    but in 1992 when this game would have been painted, the palette was limited to 256 colours with no transparency or automatic blending available. artists had to build "ramps" or tiny incremental palettes of similar colours, and then use those to smooth out the hard lines.

    i've zoomed in on the destroyed car so you can see the anti-aliasing approach this artist used. it's still jaggy, but jaggy in a pleasant, relaxing manner. compare it to the white car in the bottom right corner, which has had no AA drawn, and is harsh and unpleasant to look at, "popping" off of the background like a bad copy + paste job.

    i love that game art of the early 90s was a mix of traditional colour-mixing knowledge, and intensely delicate pixel art. someone zoomed in to 800% to work on the back end of that car for an hour, just to provide you with a stronger sense of realism.

    it is interesting to me that while you could try to replicate this scene using transparency today (and a 16M colour palette) - you'd end up with something far less pleasant, and less cohesive for the eye. using such a compressed palette of 256 colours forced colour coherence and holism into the process. if you only have 6 shades of white to work with, it can make things easier for the eye to read.

    A screenshot from Police Quest 3: the Kindred, showing a scene of an alley. The scene has been painted at a high angle, looking down from above a street lamp, down on an old dangerous urban alley. A broken down rusting car is in the distance. The writer has zoomed in on a section of the broken down car, to show how jaggy parts of the car's body have been smoothed over using blocks of similar colours.
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    @vga256@dialup.cafe avatar vga256 , to random

    I recently found out that pixel's 2011 GDC talk on the development of Cave Story is available on the gdc vault.

    unfortunately, the vault didn't include the english translation audio track on the video. i've re-added the narrated english version as a 2nd audio track to the video and uploaded it to IA.

    mercifully, the IA's built-in video player supports multi-track audio. select the gear and click on the lines+headphones icon. japanese on track 1, english on track 2.

    https://archive.org/details/gdc-2011-the-story-of-cave-story

    @vga256@dialup.cafe avatar vga256 , to random

    a very special caturday post today

    i have this theory that truly great used bookstores all run out of space on the shelves, and end up piling books along the floors of every aisle.

    i have this second theory that a bookstore cannot be truly great until it has a store cat.

    today, i stopped in the Double Read Book Nook in Edson, alberta - on the trans-canada highway - and now have a third theory: that all great bookstore owners know how to write 6502 assembly language.

    this bookstore has been around for about 70 years, hidden away in the basement of an old building on the highway through town.

    when i last visited three years ago, the store cat - Max - was only 4 months old and a rambunctious nutsy kitty who chased me around the store for half an hour while the bookstore owner kept apologetically whispering "Max! Stop harassing our customers!" 😆

    now, Max is a Big Boy™️ and has his own kittyharness. he follows his catdad around the store, begging for treats which he catches with both front paws, and sticks them straight into his mouth before they can hit the floor.

    i got to spend an hour talking with max's dad - Bruce - the new owner of the store. it turns out that he learned 6502 assembly on an Apple ] in high school, and went on to university-level programming on IBM mainframes before switching careers.

    if you happen to find yourself driving to Jasper this summer, stop at the Book Nook. at the very least, you'll find a weird old book - and Max adores any attention he can get.

    [

    Endless rows of used books along a wall, snaking around a poorly lite basement bookstore. You see one of those old 1970s yellow office chairs in the distance.
    The outside of The Double Read Book Nook, in Edson, Alberta. It has a large old fashioned lamp post, with a sign for the store hanging outside that reads: BOOKS.

    The outside of The Double Read Book Nook, in Edson, Alberta. It has a large old fashioned lamp post, with a sign for the store hanging outside that reads: BOOKS.
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    @vga256@dialup.cafe avatar vga256 , to random

    ever since i found out that the Myst linking books were real books scanned in and photo-manipulated for the game, i lusted after building my own linking book from an old leather one. the original book is an 1875 Harper's New Monthly Magazine, and is frustratingly difficult to find at a reasonable price anymore (at least where i live).

    this morning during my weekly skinflintery trip to the thrift shop, i found these wonderful old Harper's books from 1924 - their Pictorial Library of the World War for $3 each, destined for the trash due to their condition. like the monthly magazine, they use the same spine and leather and cloth front/back boards. in other words: they're perfect for the job.

    these will be carefully repaired and restored over the next few months as I learn more about bookbinding. the hinges are in rough shape, and the leather has dried out completely. afterwards, i plan to learn how to emboss and gold gilt/leaf MYST on the front and/or spine.

    as this is a linking book - i suspect i'll be installing an 10-15 year old iPod Touch inside that can play the original game :D

    Three copies of Harper's Pictorial Library of the World War. Left to right: Volume III: Battles, Sieges and Campaigns Volume VII: Child's Book of the War Volume XI: Child's Book of the War Each book has a leather spine and burgundy red cloth front and back plates, with black leather on the corners. The spine is black leather with gold gilt lettering.
    The endsheet of the book, in a creamy yellow. It has a victorian-style emblem with latin or greek words that I cannot read, sorry.

    The endsheet of the book, in a creamy yellow. It has a victorian-style emblem with latin or greek words that I cannot read, sorry.
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    vga256 OP ,
    @vga256@dialup.cafe avatar

    @LaserdiscTurtle yes, I did.

    @vga256@dialup.cafe avatar vga256 , to random

    i can't stop laughing at the thought of someone seeing 's NCSA Mosaic/Netscape 1.x theme in 2025 and wondering if the entire world wide web was entirely grey in 1994.
    (it was)

    if this doesn't do violence to the idea of software preservation, i don't know what could

    A screenshot of the kiki construction kit running on a demo site. The homepage layout resembles the NCSA Mosaic and Netscape 1.x browsers. Nothing but a sea of grey-on-grey buttons, with a grey brick background.
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    @vga256@dialup.cafe avatar vga256 , to random

    i don't know who just paid more than double for the registered version of at http://tomo-dashi.itch.io/kiki but thank you from the bottom of my heart. you don't know how much that means to me.

    i put in 12 hour days, 6 days a week, into making the software as frustration-free as possible over the past three months. users like you make it possible to feed the real kiki - who is a voracious cacodemon despite her 1/3-kitty-size stature.

    on your behalf, i disturbed her lordship speaking of your deed, and she granted you a 3X Greater Blessing of Exceptional Luck for the next week. 😻

    A buggy-eyed black cat, with an oversized head and skinny little body, buries her chin into her tail as she sits on a windowsill perch, staring at dad's very annoying camera.
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    @vga256@dialup.cafe avatar vga256 , to random

    for the past few years, i'm sure many of you have read my many lamentations about the death of the old, small web many of us grew up with.

    there are tons of static site generators out there, but none of them did what i wanted: something that could build an entire site without futzing with javascript and library dependencies. i wanted something that we would have had in 2005, but didn't have in 2025.

    in january, i decided to do something about it instead of whining. i started gluing together a few php scripts i had been using to build blogs, rss feeds and mini homepages. i even wrote a new mini markup language.

    i thought it would take me a week. it took >3 months. 😅

    it ran for the past month as globaltalk.network's interactive site, and many of you asked if i'd ever let other people spin up an instance. i can finally say: yes!

    today, kiki is officially finished and released for public use. named after my little black house demon, it's small, fast, and sometimes well behaved. and, it's all written in php without a single external dependency. just unzip and go.

    it's released as shareware - in the oldest, finest, jankiest meaning of the word: you're free to goof around with and share the unregistered version. build your own little kiki instance, and customize the heck out of it until it feels like your own little home in the world wide web:

    http://tomodashi.com/kiki

    A screenshot of the logo for kiki, showing a tiny black cat made out of ascii letters. it reads: kiki - a tiny homepage construction kit.
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    @vga256@dialup.cafe avatar vga256 , to random

    the Battlefield franchise peaked early and quickly went into decline 21 years ago

    i've never seen a better main menu in a game since, or a better remix of white rabbit. 😋

    The main menu for Battlefield: Vietnam showing a sequence of CG animations of the vietnam war in the background. An instrumental remix of jefferson airplane's White Rabbit plays simultaneously.

    @vga256@dialup.cafe avatar vga256 , to random

    there are not very many of them, but lest we forget that not long ago, a handful of dvd distribution companies made disc folios as beautiful as any infocom game

    A copy of the Complete Dossier edition of Apocalypse Now. it is packaged in a manila folio, with a red wax-like seal. the seal reads “US Official Army”
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    @vga256@dialup.cafe avatar vga256 , to random

    it's 2025. how have we not yet reverse-engineered the After Dark module engine?

    A copy of The Simpsons Screensaver by Berkeley Systems, still in its shrinkwrap. The shrinkwrap still has the "radiation warning" sticker on it. This is the Windows 3.1 version. The Macintosh version is identical, aside from the sticker on the side.
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    vga256 OP ,
    @vga256@dialup.cafe avatar
    vga256 OP ,
    @vga256@dialup.cafe avatar

    @csilverman that one i don't know

    @vga256@dialup.cafe avatar vga256 , to random

    mozilla: here's a great way to get your browser permanently deleted from all of my production machines

    A browser prompt that reads "Update to keep using Firefox after March 14, 2025."
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    vga256 OP ,
    @vga256@dialup.cafe avatar

    @DamonWakes 🤷 easily solved for me with the trash can

    @vga256@dialup.cafe avatar vga256 , to random

    i can't believe it - went to bed last night with zero articles written on the new https://globaltalk.network kiki, and woke up this morning with 5 new articles!! you folks work fast 🙏

    incredible to see it just --- working! my vile php demonolatry apparently worked

    @vga256@dialup.cafe avatar vga256 , to random

    back before SimCity 2000 became the defining city builder, Maxis published A-Train... which was the (third) Artdink Japan "Take the A-Train" rail & city building simulation game.

    unlike railroad tycoon which is almost entire construction-based, and simcity which is entirely urban management-based, A-Train blends both genres together. you build a railroad, and in so doing, build a city around your infrastructure.

    i've always been quite taken by the UI, which I thought was much more interesting than SC.

    today i found out there was a Sharp X68000 version, which has a very subtly different colour palette which relaxes the yellows into something very pleasant to look at.

    those palettes are sixteen colours

    left: A-Train (DOS)
    right: A-Train (Sharp X68000)

    A modal dialog in A-train showing the "rolling stock" or train cars that can be placed on the tracks. This is the Sharp X68000 version, with slightly more manila coloured file folder decoration.

    @vga256@dialup.cafe avatar vga256 , to random

    haha so mobygames

    i deleted my account a few days ago. it gave me the usual "once you delete this, you cannot recover your account" warning. yadda yadda

    on a hunch, i requested a password reset just now. not only did it accept my (old) e-mail address for a reset, but it successfully reset my password, and let me login to the site

    when i logged in, all of my old data was still there, except that my username and profile name were changed to "deleted".

    i changed them back to their former values, and it accepted them.

    @vga256@dialup.cafe avatar vga256 , to random

    til almost all of the most beautiful artwork attached to the nine inch nails album covers, dvd menus and website images were the creation of visual designer david carson

    downloaded at 56k back in 99, this 5.5mb video @320x200 somehow captures the hopeful exhilaration of the millennium.

    https://www.davidcarsondesign.com/mov/nin_.mov

    @vga256@dialup.cafe avatar vga256 , to random

    i've been having fun creating a DEC VT-320 styled interface for https://tomo.city which led me to rediscovering the Dynix unix system that powered many of our public libraries' catalogue searches in the 80s and 90s.

    just found out that until at least 2013, there were still telnettable dynix catalogues out there. sadly, the IPs I tried are all vacant. some of those systems were replaced.

    has anyone tried discovering ancient telnettable library catalogues via shodan? share your results!

    photo credit @skylarstrickland https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dynix-Author-Search.jpg

    A screenshot of a Wyse monochrome amber CRT terminal, which is connected to a Dynix unix system at Goshen Public Library. It reads: Welcome to the Online Public Access Catalog! Please select one of the options below: 1. TITLE keyowrds 2. Exact TITLE 3. AUTHOR Browse 4. Subject keywords 5. Series 6. Super Search...
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    vga256 OP ,
    @vga256@dialup.cafe avatar

    @csilverman i'm amazed that it was even ubiquitous in canada too. i'm not sure if our libraries had wyse or DEC vt-320 terminals, but they looked very similar.

    amazing to hear that your library had some kind of hypercard-like interface. was it on a mac?

    vga256 OP ,
    @vga256@dialup.cafe avatar

    @csilverman that is incredible. i would love to know the background story on the development of that interface. wild

    @vga256@dialup.cafe avatar vga256 , to random

    urgh. after a week of very interesting research and digging, i've located the source code for a very popular 3d rendering/modelling program from the 90s and 2000s: Caligari trueSpace

    does anyone in the digital preservation world know someone at the Microsoft Open Source Programs (OSPO) office?
    i'd love for this to be officially sanctioned as an OSS project.

    A screenshot of trueSpace 4 running, with some rock objects modelled and textured. The interface is extremely simple with a dozen icons; the polar opposite of Blender.
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    @vga256@dialup.cafe avatar vga256 , to random

    macOS users who have large photo libraries: do you have a recommendation for a photo deduplication program that will run on Monterey/12.x? i've got a collection of 40k+ photos that needs massive deduplication, and I cannot upgrade this production machine to a newer version of macos (which has dedupe built-in to Photos)

    Edit: PowerPhotos and Duplicate Photo Finder Pro have both been tried, and crash during scanning. 😩

    vga256 OP ,
    @vga256@dialup.cafe avatar

    @gsymon did you read the post?

    @vga256@dialup.cafe avatar vga256 , to random

    former and current apple HyperCard, macromedia Flash/Director, and microsoft Visual Basic users: what features of these IDEs made them indispensable to you as a creative person?

    i've been building a shareware development kit/IDE (https://exigy.org) that tries to be as user-friendly as possible, and i'd like to borrow the best and learn the most from other great toolkits.

    vga256 OP ,
    @vga256@dialup.cafe avatar

    @csilverman me too. that’s been my goal from the beginning. building interfaces via code is just miserable!