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Richard Moss | @MossRC@social.mossrc.me

Author of *Shareware Heroes: The renegades who redefined gaming at the dawn of the Internet* and *The Secret History of Mac Gaming*, as well as an upcoming book on the creation of #AgeOfEmpires and another upcoming book that I'm not allowed to talk about yet.

Producer/co-writer on FPSDOC, a 4.5-hour documentary film celebrating the first-person shooter genre (with an emphasis on the 90s/early-2000s golden age) that's guided by the developers themselves.

Creates The Life & Times of Video Games and Ludiphilia podcasts.

He/him.

rich@mossrc.me
@MossRC on Twitter and @mossrc.bsky.social on Bluesky.

Posts mainly about #gamedev and #indiegames histories and stories, #retrogaming/#retrogames, #retrocomputing, #classicmac, #shareware, #tombraider, and #videogamehistory.

Jeremy Burge jeremyburge@mastodon.world

I don't care what anyone says, this is the peak era of graphics in games

Glider Pro screenshot Prince of Persia screenshot Sim City 2000 screenshot

Richard Moss MossRC
Congrats to all current and former contributors of @scummvm on reaching 100 supported engines (with Chamber of the Sci-Mutant Priestess, aka KULT: The Temple of Flying Saucers, as lucky number 100).

It's amazing how much they've achieved since I wrote about ScummVM's history in an Ars feature 11 years ago, when they were at a then-incredible 34 supported engines. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/01/maniac-tentacle-mindbenders-of-atlantis-how-scummvm-kept-adventure-gaming-alive/

ScummVM scummvm@corteximplant.com

A new engine lands in ScummVM.

An engine for "Chamber of the Sci-Mutant Priestess" also known as "KULT: The Temple of Flying Saucers" has landed ScummVM master.

It is a small and pretty unique game. So far, we support only DOS CGA rendering, but Hercules and EGA graphics support is in the works.

The engine is small, just 9.5k lines of code, the original was even a .COM file.

What makes this engine a bit special is it is our engine #100!

Richard Moss MossRC
@scummvm @danielalbu A fine achievement! What's the lucky 100th engine?

Damiano Gerli damianogerli@mastodon.social

For this month's issue of Retro Gamer magazine, I spoke with the team who worked on SimCopter. We went over several topics, like the infamous easter egg, the cancelled SimMars and the troubles in Maxis before Electronic Arts came in to save the day (at least, at the time...).

Brendan Sinclair BrendanSinclair@mastodon.social

Activision Blizzard's CEO has said he "rewards profit and nothing else," so it didn't go over well when Blizzard devs were rewarded for a banner quarter by having their bonuses slashed. I wrote about it a bit in the latest This Week in Business column:

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/blizzard-president-sends-a-message-this-week-in-business

1Bit 1Bit@bitbang.social

Who made the best 'About...' screens in the vintage Mac era? I present: ICOM Simulations, Inc. Theirs went above and beyond the usual boring text box while employing animation and ... music! I show them here in this video

https://youtu.be/UkA9XuP_g0w

A still capture if the 'About Shadowgate' animation sequence of a hapless person being chased by a flying dragon, high in the sky, barely jumping over a breath of fire as the scramble towards the safety of a medieval castle is attempted.

Richard Moss MossRC
@evanholt Not that I know of, although I may try to contact the two Zacks as part of my Mac gaming history follow-up book work — and I'd of course ask them about it.

Sam Brown r_tapeloaderror@mastodon.gamedev.place

How the Finnish demoscene turned Helsinki into "The mobile gaming capital of the world."

There is one crucial line in this article, "We know we have the social security network to fall back on, so you don't have to mortgage your own house to set-up a company."

In other words, a good benefits system is the basis of an innovative population. People with a safety net are likely to take more risks in their businesses.

Governments take note.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-64655633

Richard Moss MossRC
@craiggrannell @johnpassfield You could try splitting the material into multiple projects, like say one that's arcade-themed and another for the 8-bit/16-bit stuff, but there'll still need to be an angle/hook to tie each one coherently together and draw people in. Good luck, whatever you choose to do with the material; I hope the transcripts make it out into the world someday — in one form or another.

Richard Moss MossRC
@johnpassfield @craiggrannell Interview transcripts packaged in a book format can work commercially with a strong angle (eg Gamers at Work was a great set of interviews about building a successful and innovative games company) or if edited into an oral history format — in both cases requiring good marketing or an established specialist publisher to break through the noise. Otherwise you'll struggle to sell much.

But for low effort you could package them all into an ebook and get it included in a StoryBundle; that'll likely net you several hundred dollars or more, which isn't much but depending on the state of your transcripts may be worthwhile. (I'm sitting on many hundreds of thousands of mostly-unpublished words in interview transcripts with notable people, too, so I know the feeling well of wondering how to publish it in a format that earns money.)

Richard Moss MossRC
@iainmew I remember I ended up moving my FM09 save to Dropbox to avoid this very problem. Not sure about my FM12 save, which is probably somewhere on my iMac, but I suspect anything from the earlier games (FM06 and the various Champ Mans) may be long gone.

Richard Moss MossRC
@savaran Yes! They were much more difficult than I'd have liked, but the design was superb, the graphics exceptional, and the audio innovative and influential in ways it rarely gets credited for. I encouraged Mark Stephen Pierce to do an official remaster or a throwback sequel when I last spoke to him pre-pandemic, but it seems nothing ever came of it.

Richard Moss MossRC
I quote-tweeted about this game earlier on the birdsite, but it's such wholesome fun I thought I should share here — this is Capture the Flag, a once-popular mid-90s shareware DOS game inspired by an overnight boy scouts trip and Sid Meier's Civilization. It's a non-violent and rather-elaborate computer version of the traditional sport, and it has you spend most of your time exploring the map or running across fields and ducking behind rocks, trying to be unseen by the other team(s).

I covered its development and reception in my Shareware Heroes book, along with creator Richard Carr's other excellent games (and the work of many other shareware creators).
Capture the Flag game title screen. A red team lookout peers to the left while a blue team member hides in a bush, ready to jump out and rush for the red flag. A Quick Start guide for Capture the Flag. The visible text here talks about how the field is divided into two equal zones, one for each side. There are many different terrain types that affect visibility and movement, and you take turns navigating this space, exploring concealed territory. Your goal is to grab the other side's flag before they grab yours. A screenshot from an in-progress match. Francis is walking towards the midpoint line, while a red team player stands nearby in the trees Another screenshot of the game in progress. A blue team player is crouched behind a rock because he is almost out of movement points and wants to remain hidden from view.

Richard Moss MossRC
That foreboding castle could only mean one thing: Dark Castle is next up in my #macicons series. While it was impossible to make a miniature version of the game's iconic title screen (because that relied on animation and sound for its frightening thunderclap), what I always thought cool is that if you click on the icon and then click off it you kind of get the same sense of a lightning flash.

Old-school Mac (and maybe some Amiga and Apple IIgs) people will know what a special game this was in its original form, and how incredible its 1-bit dithered graphics were for the time. The rest of you, get informed (but stay away from the console ports; instead, read my Mac gaming book or find some videos and retrospective articles by people who knew the game back when it was new).
The icon for classic Mac game Dark Castle, depicting a dark and foreboding castle in a 1-bit 32 by 32 pixel illustration.

Paris B-A parisba@cloudisland.nz

ticket sales are open! Join us in for the ! Early bird discount now available! Follow @auc for updates! https://auc.edu.au/devworld/registration/

Some blank pieces of paper with empty iOS app icons and coloured pens on a table with the heading “Apps I Made”, for people to draw on at the /dev/world event!

Phil Salvador shadsy@mastodon.social

Well folks, I can finally announce my secret project...

I'm writing a book about the history of Maxis Software for Limited Run Games. Stay tuned for info about the book currently known as SIMEVERYTHING!

A cityscape from SimCity 2000.

Richard Moss MossRC
Got this obscure interactive DVD game today. Final Answer: Southampton FC. "The game you play with your remote control." This was one of many DVD trivia games released by Smoking Gun in 2005.

They made a business out of doing licensed football games for professional clubs (not even just top-tier ones, either) in England, Scotland, and sometimes across Europe. They never did regular action stuff (Codemasters had that market cornered), but they also did loads of club management sims from around 2003-5. I have a QPR one in my office.
DVD case front cover. "Interactive DVD game. Final Answer: Southampton FC. The game you play with your remote control." DVD case back cover. "Southampton fans - you think you know the score?" It then has screenshots of questions involving Matt Le Tissier and an unnamed player's famous tackle, before adding that all you need to play is your DVD remote. It also lists four features: over 1000 questions, animated match sequences, single or multiplayer, and a different experience every time you play. It retailed for 22 GBP in 2005. DVD case inside cover. Features basic instructions on how to play using the directional buttons on your DVD remote.

Richard Moss MossRC

Having just replied to a lovely new comment on the YouTube video, I’m reminded that it’s been a while since I shared this livestream I did with Escape Velocity creator Matt Burch about the EV series several years ago: https://youtu.be/oYMZQINXW_s

vga256 vga256@dialup.cafe

i spent the weekend researching mac os x Aqua interface elements, and stumbled upon this classic collection of icons from 2000.

in the early 2000s, PixelJerk aka Samuel Krueger was one of the first to publish high-quality Aqua-themed icons for the new Mac OS X operating system.

few other icon designers demonstrated such skill and creativity with their icon sets.

it took the entire day, but i (by hand) converted each of these 200 Macintosh Icon format files into PNG and ICNS formats used in modern macOS. 😓

pixeljerk.com has been offline for 20 years... huge thank-you to macmonkies.com for keeping the only copy of these icons that exists on the web!

macOS version:
https://rootmarm.com/pixeljerk_icons/PixelJerk_macOSX_ICNS.zip

png version:
https://rootmarm.com/pixeljerk_icons/PixelJerk_PNG.zip

macintosh system7/8/9 version:
https://rootmarm.com/pixeljerk_icons/pixeljerk_pack_macintosh.zip

mac garden entry:
https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/pixeljerk-os-x-aqua-icon-collection

A sub-set of the PixelJerk collection. Each icon is a high contrast fruit-coloured object, in the style of the MacOS Aqua theme. The "lickable" quality of each button is apparent in the design, texture and lighting... much like a Jolly Rancher.

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