What I really enjoy is new engines that make old games playable, or even better than before. Dungeon Keeper, for instance. Or Quake 1, still my favorite FPS of all.
I do find it interesting that they romanticize the era, the equipment, the experience - but they're so openly hostile to the people who lived it - and actually constantly argue with those people and try and tell them they don't know WTF they're talking about. In particular, they're very easily triggered by the themes of our generation's games and gaming media which they find sexist or otherwise "probematic". They want their Amiga experience to be pure of German Amiga magazines with hot blonde pinups wearing thong high cut one piece bathing suits and stiletto heels. They don't like games where you can play the Germans in WWII. They want their own modern sensibilities retroactively written into the history of classic retro computing.
But there are a lot of things they want to have their cake and eat it too, on - not just retro gaming.
But... even among the old-timer retro-gamers, especially the Commodore ones - there is still that anti-social-nerd chip on the shoulder with disagreement. It isn't just the punk kids. There are a lot of punkass old men in the retro gaming scene too.
Also, in the Amiga scene in particular, a large population of Transwomen. I'm not sure why that is true... but there were a lot of dudes in the 80s in the Amiga community who really felt like they wanted big aquanet hair and a pair of leg warmers and leotards to cruise the mall in.
Sun Jan 10 2021 16:14:46 EST from Nurb432Even tho im not a gamer, never was, retooling older games to run on current a OS, i fully understand the appeal. Its the 'look i'm running TOS on a PI! Go me i'm cool!' crowd i just dont get. It may be faster, cheaper, but its not the same. They have never touched the real hardware. Deprecated it for what it was when it was new and cutting edge.. fought with limitations, and frustrations, ever experienced a 300 baud acoustic modem. Hell, even a rotary phone.. ( or in my case, having to call the operator to connect you..never experienced that, but im not going to put a pretend phone on my wall, with the guts of a PI to turn it into a voip device, and be proud of it )
Perhaps its the "get of my lawn" in me, i just dont see it.
( assuming they even know what TOS is, or AES.. :) )
Not real fond of the 'retro emulation' movement either ( beyond the
idea of learning/engineering of simpler tech. If you want an ST go
get one.. Pretending you have one isn't the same as holding it in
your hand, mashing the keys, the feel of the plastic... Its like
putting a pinto logo on your Porsche and just driving slower.. its
not the same. I do see reasons to "emulate" for dev and
experimental work, ( both software and FPGA ) but not the retro side
of things.
It is funny you say that since I have been toying with early minicomputer operating systems as of late.
I think looking at how things used to be done is freakign awesome. Specially when you discover that tools that are widely used today already existed in BSD 2.x
Besides, lots of old stuff I find better than modern stuff. I like some old games much more than I do AAA titles.
I agree that putting a BSD 2.x emulator in a modern SBC, and then placing the whole thing in a PDP-8 case shaped as a DEC minicomputer is a bit silly.
But hey, there is people training in serious sling sharp-shooting and zweihander combat. To each his own I guess.
Learning OS concepts, that woudl fall under "education" that i was supporting of.
Mon Jan 11 2021 06:27:39 EST from darknetuserNot real fond of the 'retro emulation' movement either ( beyond the
idea of learning/engineering of simpler tech. If you want an ST go
get one.. Pretending you have one isn't the same as holding it in
your hand, mashing the keys, the feel of the plastic... Its like
putting a pinto logo on your Porsche and just driving slower.. its
not the same. I do see reasons to "emulate" for dev and
experimental work, ( both software and FPGA ) but not the retro side
of things.
It is funny you say that since I have been toying with early minicomputer operating systems as of late.
I think looking at how things used to be done is freakign awesome. Specially when you discover that tools that are widely used today already existed in BSD 2.x
Besides, lots of old stuff I find better than modern stuff. I like some old games much more than I do AAA titles.
I agree that putting a BSD 2.x emulator in a modern SBC, and then placing the whole thing in a PDP-8 case shaped as a DEC minicomputer is a bit silly.
But hey, there is people training in serious sling sharp-shooting and zweihander combat. To each his own I guess.
I wonder if it was regional. Or at least a factor, not a driving force. At least at the time, it seemed to me that what you preferred ( Apple, Tandy, Commodore, Atari ) had a lot to do with where you lived. Due to us being manipulated by marketing. Around here it was mostly commodore, and i was the Atari odd-ball.
And ya, we grew up in a different time. If you were offended by a game or a magazine ad, you would be laughed at. Rightfully so.
Sun Jan 10 2021 20:08:17 EST from ParanoidDelusionsI do find it interesting that they romanticize the era, the equipment, the experience - but they're so openly hostile to the people who lived it - and actually constantly argue with those people and try and tell them they don't know WTF they're talking about. In particular, they're very easily triggered by the themes of our generation's games and gaming media which they find sexist or otherwise "probematic". They want their Amiga experience to be pure of German Amiga magazines with hot blonde pinups wearing thong high cut one piece bathing suits and stiletto heels. They don't like games where you can play the Germans in WWII. They want their own modern sensibilities retroactively written into the history of classic retro computing.
But there are a lot of things they want to have their cake and eat it too, on - not just retro gaming.
But... even among the old-timer retro-gamers, especially the Commodore ones - there is still that anti-social-nerd chip on the shoulder with disagreement. It isn't just the punk kids. There are a lot of punkass old men in the retro gaming scene too.
Also, in the Amiga scene in particular, a large population of Transwomen. I'm not sure why that is true... but there were a lot of dudes in the 80s in the Amiga community who really felt like they wanted big aquanet hair and a pair of leg warmers and leotards to cruise the mall in.
Sun Jan 10 2021 16:14:46 EST from Nurb432Even tho im not a gamer, never was, retooling older games to run on current a OS, i fully understand the appeal. Its the 'look i'm running TOS on a PI! Go me i'm cool!' crowd i just dont get. It may be faster, cheaper, but its not the same. They have never touched the real hardware. Deprecated it for what it was when it was new and cutting edge.. fought with limitations, and frustrations, ever experienced a 300 baud acoustic modem. Hell, even a rotary phone.. ( or in my case, having to call the operator to connect you..never experienced that, but im not going to put a pretend phone on my wall, with the guts of a PI to turn it into a voip device, and be proud of it )
Perhaps its the "get of my lawn" in me, i just dont see it.
( assuming they even know what TOS is, or AES.. :) )
I have thought for a while that the real cyberpunk counter-oligarchy insurgency of hackers will occur with cobbled together retro-machines.
They're machines you can understand, down to the registers. If there is a component on the logic board that doesn't belong, a relative layperson can recognize it. The code is small and concise enough a single person can review it - and it operates through channels that seem like backwaters to the all seeing eye of Government. It flies under the radar.
It has limitations. It itself cannot handle complex, secure encryption. But the ways it does provide security are so obscure that it might not be noticed or recognized.
Every time I see a movie where people are using modern technology to evade the surveillance state, it disrupts the suspension of disbelief for me. I go, "They've just revealed themselves to the bad actors looking for them." But if the secret agent pulled out an old Tandy "portable" and hooked it up to an acoustic modem that interfaced with a VoIP handset through an accoustic coupler... I'd buy the excuse, "The surveillance algorithm doesn't even know to look for this sound profile. It'll discard this as a malfunctioning VoIP line."
I just saw an example of this. Can't think of what it was. Maybe the Russian Pandemic series, "To the Lake." But they used technology while in crisis and I was like, "That right there is game over. They're as good as caught."
It is a problem in forensic automations tools - the data types may not be recognized and simply read as corrupt or invalid files or data. It kind of ties in to discussions we have about how people were imagining the possibilities with digital music back in the late 90s but we didn't have enough storage. Those data types have been disregarded as a threat vector. They're often forgotten and not even recognized. Even when recognized, they're not seen as robust enough to be a threat, so they're disregarded. They're not a threat, used as intended.
And - yes... the old stuff is more resilient. You can run it in an environment that is far less "clean", from the AC signal to the physical environment.
Mon Jan 11 2021 06:27:39 EST from darknetuser
It is funny you say that since I have been toying with early minicomputer operating systems as of late.
I think looking at how things used to be done is freakign awesome. Specially when you discover that tools that are widely used today already existed in BSD 2.x
Besides, lots of old stuff I find better than modern stuff. I like some old games much more than I do AAA titles.
I agree that putting a BSD 2.x emulator in a modern SBC, and then placing the whole thing in a PDP-8 case shaped as a DEC minicomputer is a bit silly.
But hey, there is people training in serious sling sharp-shooting and zweihander combat. To each his own I guess.
I guess there is one piece of retro i still would like to have ( but even if i found one of the handful that ever made it outside id never be willing to spend the cash) :
A STBook.
Yeah, they're a white elephant. But, this is where something like a MiSTer and a DIY project can be kitted into something virtually the same. It also isn't out of the question that someone might come up with a Kickstarter type project. You can build virtually an entire Amiga with new parts. Motherboard, case, keyboard... you've just got to source custom chips and be good with a soldering iron.
Tue Jan 12 2021 19:58:33 EST from Nurb432I guess there is one piece of retro i still would like to have ( but even if i found one of the handful that ever made it outside id never be willing to spend the cash) :
A STBook.
If i wanted to go 'there', having hatari auto start or something on my pinebookpro would do it as well as FPGA and is in a nice pretty laptop case already.
I still like the idea of the real thing. Even tho i know ill never have one of them :)
Tue Jan 12 2021 20:28:16 EST from ParanoidDelusionsYeah, they're a white elephant. But, this is where something like a MiSTer and a DIY project can be kitted into something virtually the same. It also isn't out of the question that someone might come up with a Kickstarter type project. You can build virtually an entire Amiga with new parts. Motherboard, case, keyboard... you've just got to source custom chips and be good with a soldering iron.
Tue Jan 12 2021 19:58:33 EST from Nurb432I guess there is one piece of retro i still would like to have ( but even if i found one of the handful that ever made it outside id never be willing to spend the cash) :
A STBook.
2021-01-11 10:01 from ParanoidDelusions
I have thought for a while that the real cyberpunk counter-oligarchy
insurgency of hackers will occur with cobbled together
retro-machines.
They're machines you can understand, down to the registers. If there
is a component on the logic board that doesn't belong, a relative
layperson can recognize it. The code is small and concise enough a
single person can review it - and it operates through channels that
seem like backwaters to the all seeing eye of Government. It flies
under the radar.
I think there is a lot of value to simple things.
A machinegun is more effective than a sword, but machineguns have mobile parts, they burn through the barrels, and need a certain knowledge to operate. If you have no clue and don't have spare parts, the machinegun will go out of service much earlier than the sword will.
I'd prefer to have a machinegun for fighting zombies, but the power of a tool you can understand and maintain yourself is not to be dismissed.
I wish there was more of a bent towards hardware in education. Nowadays, when they teach IT in school, it is software oriented, and when it is digital electronics, it is tailored to pre-assembled chips.
Might have been the John Wick Movies. I thought it might have been Commodores. But looking back, I'm not sure.
Mon Jan 11 2021 10:01:21 EST from ParanoidDelusions
I just saw an example of this. Can't think of what it was. Maybe the Russian Pandemic series, "To the Lake." But they used technology while in crisis and I was like, "That right there is game over. They're as good as caught."
Long ago I was a gamer. Just can't do it now. Doesn't hold my attention. But I find it a little harder pulling myself away from something like Gallaxian, when I put a retro gaming system together for someone. I think it is the low investment. Somewhere between 96 and 00 you needed to invest more attention into the games. I used to love it, escaping from the fact that life was your job. Those games pulled you in.
I can still manage to load up a FPS just long enough to know I still have it. But there is no lasting attraction. Even while doing it, I'm thinking about the current project I am working on.
I am actually really disappointed in the retro scene. Not so much in the effort that some have put forth in developing replacement parts and clones. But more the sheer nostalgia factor. I wonder if it is an esacape kinda thing. A return to a time when the divide between computer user and lay person meant something. Everyone has a computer in their phone. For many the bar to entry is high, when it comes to rooting your phone. Its a tad easier to put your money down on a PI or FPGA and learn some basic retro.
It seem most of the retro market is aimed at those who have "never been there" and the elite nostalgia mongers.
I'd like to see something a little more lofi available en mass. Not like the RPI. I think FPGA is the best one could hope for. There are a couple of projects out there, but they often don't have ethernet and do have a little linux running all of the background work. The MiSTer is a great device. I can't really knock it. But its not for me. I myself fall short of putting something together that would tickle my sick fancy. So too bad for me.
I'd love to see someone put the NExT186 core in a pacakges with adlib and ethernet.
More to my abilities is looking into the KolibriOS project and seeing how VM86 is supported. Might be cool to trim Kolibri down and make it a Dos Hypervisor. Kinda like DosEmu for Linux. Then I can just port over drivers for some highly available and cheap thin client(s). I would much rather do that, then try to make Dos multitask. Plus it solves the SB16 issue. And on a less powerful device, you should have better performance then with Dosbox-X (DosBox-X because it by default provide seria/parallel/ethernet, like DosEmu).
Anyway, love the place you guys have here.
It wouldn't - do it as well as FPGA - but it might do it well enough to satisfy your itch, if you wanted to go there...
And that is all that matters. ;)
I put WinUAE on the Pi400 last night and it made me decide the 18 GB stock card isn't going to do it for me, so I've got a 128GB card on the way.
Even though, I already have a lot of Amiga systems and systems running emulators - and no immediate desire to play any Amiga games. I've got a vague itch to play some classic FRP that will absorb me and keep me offline for 2 or 3 weeks. I was doing that for a while - and it was awesome. Then I ran out of titles. Or ideas, anyhow.
Wed Jan 13 2021 12:15:31 EST from Nurb432If i wanted to go 'there', having hatari auto start or something on my pinebookpro would do it as well as FPGA and is in a nice pretty laptop case already.
I still like the idea of the real thing. Even tho i know ill never have one of them :)
The sword can more efficiently open a can of tuna than a machine gun will, as well. ;)
Wed Jan 13 2021 18:02:05 EST from darknetuser
I think there is a lot of value to simple things.
It was. Every noob to every Commodore group posts the screen shot, and then gets dogpiled by the veteran users for doing it. :)
It is weird. It is like how when someone announces they're leaving a group, the BIGGEST disruption is 1000 users who aren't leaving posting, "Bye Felicia" memes at him.
"You've managed to become MORE annoying than people who announce their departure, by so enthusiastically announcing how no one cares that they're leaving..."
Wed Jan 13 2021 18:55:11 EST from cmonkeyMight have been the John Wick Movies. I thought it might have been Commodores. But looking back, I'm not sure.
I agree that earlier games were more engaging. I think there is a golden spot somewhere in the early 90s, where computer power was high enough to do complex things, but low enough that developers couldn't count on high quality graphics to make players ignore lame gameplay.
If you haven't watched If Doom was DOne Today or If Quake Was Done Today, I recommend you to. It puts things into perspective. Modern games have so much stuff goping on that is not the game, so to speak. Kinda sad.
You can count me as one of those kids who are interested in retro tech but never actually lived it. Fun thing is I don't consider myself a nostalgic or retro weirdo. I just appreciate how something like a BBS, an IRC network, or some videogame from the 80s works better for me than what seem to be the modern alternatives.
I got started toying with BSDs because modern Linux distributions were becoming bloated unstructured messes. Then I discovered I liked the way BSDs are structured and then I realized BSDs have not changed *that* much in decades. They are a blast from the 70s in a modern package. It comes to show that designs were better thought about earlier, when tools you could find in systems from the DEC-16 era tools that have survived to this day nearly as-is.
With the right ROM it would be mostly compatible, and would run faster. So good enough for me if i wanted to do emulation.
Something i had forgot about, back in the old days i did have a PCditto cart and a gemulator cart on one of my STs. But it wasn't for 'retro' it was for 'current work'. Gemulator actually ran faster than most apples of the day, and im thinking PCditto was the same as an XT. ( didnt really have a PC to compare side by side, but it felt about the same )
i had access to some macs at the office they were tossing due to being broke, so the ROMs were free..
Wed Jan 13 2021 20:18:36 EST from ParanoidDelusionsIt wouldn't - do it as well as FPGA - but it might do it well enough to satisfy your itch, if you wanted to go there...
And that is all that matters. ;)I put WinUAE on the Pi400 last night and it made me decide the 18 GB stock card isn't going to do it for me, so I've got a 128GB card on the way.
Even though, I already have a lot of Amiga systems and systems running emulators - and no immediate desire to play any Amiga games. I've got a vague itch to play some classic FRP that will absorb me and keep me offline for 2 or 3 weeks. I was doing that for a while - and it was awesome. Then I ran out of titles. Or ideas, anyhow.
Wed Jan 13 2021 12:15:31 EST from Nurb432If i wanted to go 'there', having hatari auto start or something on my pinebookpro would do it as well as FPGA and is in a nice pretty laptop case already.
I still like the idea of the real thing. Even tho i know ill never have one of them :)
You know, as a grumpy old man gamer, I'm not opposed to younger generations developing an appreciation or love for the things of my era - and actually think it is a great thing. What annoys me is when a younger generation shows up, accuses my generation of gatekeeping some thing, accuses the thing of having problematic themes or values that need to be erased, retroactively, from the community, and then claims they love the thing. Oh - and then tries to tell me I understand less about the thing than they do.
But I think that is amplified by social media. I think most people who get into a phenomenon directly associated with a previous generation tend to do it with respect and admiration - and they want to hear about what it was really like from "old-timers", they kind of wish they could have experienced it directly, in its actual moment, rather than as a retro-experience trying to recreate that moment in time.
Also, I think the younger you are, the more pressure you feel to group-identify with your peer group, even if you actually do not agree with the way they behave or what they believe. So there are a lot of younger retro gamers caught up in an attraction and admiration for the technology and experience of older gamers, who are torn between that and the "STFU Boomer" social media atmosphere of their own generation - the peers they interact with, the wellspring of their social comfort.
As a retro-gamer who saw things like the arrival of Pong, then the Atari 2600, Magnavox Odyssey 2 and INTV when I was old enough to *desire* them, who can remember when Space Invaders and Asteroids launched the "golden age" of arcade video games - I think that the 90's was where the beginning of "modern gaming" began, though.
The PSx was the turning point. The 16/32 bit era was kind of a transition phase. In particular, the Amiga had one foot in the 8 bit era gaming of the late 70s and 80s, but finally had graphics that were able to do things like creating "Laserdisc quality cartoon graphics," and display "nearly photographic real world images." Before then graphics were *very* crude... as an example, most early FRPs, it was really more like a game map, with tokens representing the characters, monsters, treasure, NPCs. Up until Ultima IV or V, this was the basic formula for almost all FRP games - and the basic idea went all the way back to the earliest CFRP games like Dragonstomper on the Atari 2600 or even Atari 2600 "Adventure". In the first case, your character icon was basically a single pixel. In the latter, you were a block holding an arrow being chased by dragons that looked like ducks. These games required a lot of the narrative to be in your imagination. But if you were a 10 year old without a circle of nerdy friends or a nerdy dad to work you through the complex rules of AD&D, this made the general experience of FRP gaming available to a big segment of a generation who would have just WISHED they could play in these kind of fantasy worlds.
But the 8 bit PC era, the Atari and Commodore lines made relatively powerful PCs with what was considered mass storage available to a LOT more people - and that opened up the ability to tell larger, more epic narratives. The graphics improved, and at the time it seemed exponentially - but looking back, it was really a minor leap forward from what earlier consoles like the INTV could perform. Graphics weren't the leap forward - the storage allowed the developers to tell richer, more complex stories, and to expand the behavior of characters, NPCs and enemies. Even leaps in processing speed weren't that important before the first and second waves of the 8 bit era. Storage is what allowed more complexity in gaming, both hard storage and random access memory. But the visuals - and large parts of the backstory, had to be in your imagination still. Those early games included props to assist in this. They relied on written documentation and traditional art to set the stage. Ultima series often had cloth maps, little icons or other swag that represented items in the game. Ankhs or stones or some little bag of goodies.
Things started to shift around Ultima 6, when processors became powerful enough to render 3D isometric views and cartoon quality depictions of characters, NPCs and monsters. I found my imagination stopped working as hard to draw the story in my mind the more concrete the visuals in-game became. I don't think I could have told you this at the time - but my interest waned.
It is the difference between reading Lord of the Rings and watching it. Cut scenes started to be a thing - and most of them were probably hundreds of times bigger than the original games. To be honest - out of the thousands of games for the Amiga line, there are probably less than a dozen that I think really hold up. Among the rest there are some truly visually stunning games that simply aren't engaging gameplay. This is largely true of the entire 16 bit era, on every platform.
By the 32 bit era, gaming had changed. It was the beginning of basically interactive, non-linear cinema. Stories were complex and engaging, graphics were powerful enough to be visually breathtaking - but instead of projecting your persona onto the in game representation of "your character", you had to project the identity of the on screen character onto your persona. Instead of imagining YOURSELF as the spy, the spy was clearly James Bond, and you had to image yourself as him.
Ultimately, that may be the distinction. The earliest video games and the most recent are actually related, but different branches, of entertainment and story telling through electronic devices.
It *is* interesting that in a lot of cases, mobile devices lend themselves better to the tile based, turn based kind of gaming of earlier generations of PC gaming - and that itself is causing a small resurgence in this type of gaming.
I do also hold the belief that there is a huge missed opportunity to create an engine that really simulates a traditional pen and paper FRP gaming experience, down to realistic depictions of custom metal figurines and game boards.
Thu Jan 14 2021 11:18:12 EST from darknetusercmonkey, there is so much to reply to that I am skipping the quote in order to save room :)
I agree that earlier games were more engaging. I think there is a golden spot somewhere in the early 90s, where computer power was high enough to do complex things, but low enough that developers couldn't count on high quality graphics to make players ignore lame gameplay.
If you haven't watched If Doom was DOne Today or If Quake Was Done Today, I recommend you to. It puts things into perspective. Modern games have so much stuff goping on that is not the game, so to speak. Kinda sad.
You can count me as one of those kids who are interested in retro tech but never actually lived it. Fun thing is I don't consider myself a nostalgic or retro weirdo. I just appreciate how something like a BBS, an IRC network, or some videogame from the 80s works better for me than what seem to be the modern alternatives.
I got started toying with BSDs because modern Linux distributions were becoming bloated unstructured messes. Then I discovered I liked the way BSDs are structured and then I realized BSDs have not changed *that* much in decades. They are a blast from the 70s in a modern package. It comes to show that designs were better thought about earlier, when tools you could find in systems from the DEC-16 era tools that have survived to this day nearly as-is.
At some point I think getting really bugged out that some script or line of code isn't doing what you think it should, provides a hard to come back from replacement for games. Unless you do that for a living. Then games can probably still be quite an escape, as the learning is repetitious and only rewarding as a paycheck or met deadline.
If I was so inclined, I think I would get more joy out of making a game, then playing one.
I didn't really have a computer back when BBSes were a thing. So I only had the observation of others getting to play demos/shareware that they pulled from eather. Now, like you, I can see the simplicity and elegance that was.
So we may, at least in part, be similar kids here. In about the 90s there was a lot of interest in how shaping technology shaped behaviour. Even in those retro tools, that some of us may yearn for now. An example is the graphical path to reaching an objective (like control panel) and the categorical location of the setting you wish to adjust. With repetition this implements a mental structure for problem solving.
So after years of using windows one may be compelled to use Linux. Then comes the CLI. At first people struggle to find a GUI for rather than just use whatever command line solution they are provided. Like the command line is taking convenience away from you. However with enough time, you end up needing to use the command line more and more. Its like a *nix trap. Eventually one day you turn around and the CLI is the convenience you prefer and wouldn't want to sacrifice. The CLI ends up being emblematic of the reason you were compelled to use Linux anyway. Windows may provide a prompt as well, but there is so much more in the way of getting the control you have with *nix.
That initial interest, in user interfaces, has had time to evolve. And it has clearly spread to games, television, shopping, banking, etc.
I like the BSD systems too. A fan of the underdog (NetBSD).
Internet, Games, and Social Media, as they are today, are completely commercial. I have no problem with that. If they need to make bloated software and overly complex hardware, so that only the right people can be behind the commercial technological curtain, fine. Its just too bad that not enough people "want" to use an alternative. So truly public use options have become unknown and akin to an inconvenience.
The retro scene provides the simple tech. But the drive isn't to make the hardware usable in a practical way. Obviously because it seems too impractical. That's where my disappointment comes in. We really could do a lot more, a lot faster, with a lot less (power). But not if you are riding on the moving target of commerce.
It sometimes seems like the only way to control the bloat, is if the platform can't handle bloated. As was somewhat mentioned in an earier post, the way tech is used "against" digital freedom just doesn't often work well with old tech. Its hard for someone to penetrate a system that has just enough power for me to do what I need to do, while I'm using it. I will notice that you are there.
I'm glad you replied.
So... an interesting thing - is that for those of us retro enough - when Windows originally rode on top of DOS, many of us disliked the limitations of Windows and spent most of our time dropped back into DOS - in particular those of us who had come from systems like CP/M which were also CLI operating systems. Amiga OS was really a prototype for a system with a GUI that required CLI for many of the most technical challenges in operating the system.
I do see what you're saying about finding, fixing or creating code that does what you want has the same sort of reward principle to gaming. When I was learning VBA for Access - I absolutely got consumed in the challenge of solving the problems with the scripts, and the reward of seeing a problem and realizing how to fix it. The breakthrough of being able to read a line of code and understand what it was telling the machine to do was also significant.
It has been quite commercial for a long time, as well. Time/Warner purchasing Atari, then Nintendo entering the market with their strict licensing. EA went from Electronic Artists meaning something to just a name.
But the Corporate Machine has become far more polished and efficient at its task across all industries since the late 70s.
The homebrew scene, with 40 years of experience, is doing incredible things with old technology, and a lot of it is designed toward showing that the hardware still can be used in practical terms. In particular the Amiga scene is still very active in doing things way beyond gaming with the platform. FPGA is a leading driver of that. I'm in the process of purchasing a Vampire V4. It is basically the intent to design a 68080 processor - a modern generation of Motorola 68xxx capable of doing things that modern PCs can do, while providing backwards support for the 68xxx family of processors. It may turn out to be a folly. But it might be an interesting alternate fork in the PC CPU road.
But I agree - it is much more difficult to hide something malicious in a machine that can only access 64k of code at a time. :)
I am enjoying the conversation, too.
Thu Jan 14 2021 20:01:41 EST from cmonkeyAt some point I think getting really bugged out that some script or line of code isn't doing what you think it should, provides a hard to come back from replacement for games. Unless you do that for a living. Then games can probably still be quite an escape, as the learning is repetitious and only rewarding as a paycheck or met deadline.
If I was so inclined, I think I would get more joy out of making a game, then playing one.
So after years of using windows one may be compelled to use Linux. Then comes the CLI. At first people struggle to find a GUI for rather than just use whatever command line solution they are provided. Like the command line is taking convenience away from you. However with enough time, you end up needing to use the command line more and more. Its like a *nix trap. Eventually one day you turn around and the CLI is the convenience you prefer and wouldn't want to sacrifice. The CLI ends up being emblematic of the reason you were compelled to use Linux anyway. Windows may provide a prompt as well, but there is so much more in the way of getting the control you have with *nix.
That initial interest, in user interfaces, has had time to evolve. And it has clearly spread to games, television, shopping, banking, etc.
I like the BSD systems too. A fan of the underdog (NetBSD).
Internet, Games, and Social Media, as they are today, are completely commercial. I have no problem with that. If they need to make bloated software and overly complex hardware, so that only the right people can be behind the commercial technological curtain, fine. Its just too bad that not enough people "want" to use an alternative. So truly public use options have become unknown and akin to an inconvenience.
The retro scene provides the simple tech. But the drive isn't to make the hardware usable in a practical way. Obviously because it seems too impractical. That's where my disappointment comes in. We really could do a lot more, a lot faster, with a lot less (power). But not if you are riding on the moving target of commerce.
It sometimes seems like the only way to control the bloat, is if the platform can't handle bloated. As was somewhat mentioned in an earier post, the way tech is used "against" digital freedom just doesn't often work well with old tech. Its hard for someone to penetrate a system that has just enough power for me to do what I need to do, while I'm using it. I will notice that you are there.
I'm glad you replied.