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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 two upcoming books — one on the creation of #AgeOfEmpires and the other about the history of football (soccer) games.

Writer/director on TerrorBytes: The Evolution of Horror Gaming, an upcoming five-part docuseries about horror games. 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.

A2_Canada A2_Canada@mastodon.social

Today is a huge day for Apple II software preservation. With the help of Antoine Vignau and @txgx42, we have managed to recover, make playable, and archive renowned game designer Dani Bunten's first game, Wheeler Dealers. Released in 1978/79 and published by Speakeasy Software, a small Canadian developer, Wheeler Dealers is a multi-player stock market simulation that only sold ~50 copies. It is the first (known) computer game to have been sold in a box. The game was considered lost until now.

Stefan stefan@gardenstate.social

Wow what a perfect piece of writing. https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/10/17/1081194/how-to-fix-the-internet-online-discourse/

There’s a sort of common wisdom that the internet is irredeemably bad, toxic, a rash of “hellsites” to be avoided. That social platforms, hungry to profit off your data, opened a Pandora’s box that cannot be closed. Indeed, there are truly awful things that happen on the internet, things that make it especially toxic for people from groups disproportionately targeted with online harassment and abuse. Profit motives led platforms to ignore abuse too often, and they also enabled the spread of misinformation, the decline of local news, the rise of hyperpartisanship, and entirely new forms of bullying and bad behavior. All of that is true, and it barely scratches the surface. But the internet has also provided a haven for marginalized groups and a place for support, advocacy, and community. It offers information at times of crisis. It can connect you with long-lost friends. It can make you laugh. It can send you a pizza. It’s duality, good and bad, and I refuse to toss out the dancing-baby GIF with the tubgirl-dot-png bathwater. The internet is worth fighting for because despite all the misery, there’s still so much good to be found there. And yet, fixing online discourse is the definition of a hard problem. But look. Don’t worry. I have an idea.

Richard Moss MossRC
A few of us at CREATORVC are looking at doing an episodic documentary series on horror games (and if it goes ahead then I'll be writer/director). It'll be called TerrorBytes.

If you're interested, please look at our synopsis and fill out our survey — both available via the link below — to help us validate the concept and refine its creative direction.

https://www.creatorvc.com/terrorbytes

"Critical Kate" Willaert katewillaert@mastodon.social

If the letters "m199h" mean anything to you, you should read this:

https://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2023/10/m199h-new-findings-both-solve-and.html

Richard Moss MossRC
@damianogerli Is that The Colonists (which I own but haven't played) or a different one? I've seen a bunch of others showing up on Steam and GOG since COVID started.

Richard Moss MossRC
Every time I play it, I'm struck by how beautifully The Settlers II balances its chill vibes and charming world with a complex-yet-intuitive economic simulation. I wrote about it at length in a retrospective for Eurogamer nearly 10 years ago. https://www.eurogamer.net/the-serene-interconnected-world-of-the-brilliant-the-settlers-2

Richard Moss MossRC
Celebrating my completion of a big book project that's been my main focus all year by trying out a fan update to one of my favourite games, The Settlers II. Looks amazing on my high DPI laptop display.
Old computer strategy-simulation game The Settlers II rendered in stunning high resolution via the Return to the Roots fan project. Also, an observation window to watch a cute duck swim around near the shore.

Richard Moss MossRC
@TheMartianLife @atomicpoet Thank you! I had a great time putting that talk together (and checking out the other sessions at Devworld while I was there).

Mars Buttfield-Addison 🛰 TheMartianLife@aus.social

@atomicpoet if you feel like reminiscing about this era, you should check out this book by @MossRC 💾

We cold-emailed Richard to speak at our Apple-focused conference about his first book “The Secret History of Mac Gaming” that was a total banger, and he was such a great storyteller. It’s no surprise this one’s great too.

Hand holding a book. Book is titled “Shareware Heroes: The Renegades who Redefined Gaming at the Dawn of the Internet” by Richard Moss. hardcover art shows four hands each holding a side of a floppy disk, upon which the title is written.

Richard Moss MossRC

This interview has some fantastic advice from John Romero on why it’s important to make lots of small games before you do a big one, and how to scope for a small game. #gamedev https://howtomarketagame.com/2023/09/25/john-romero-on-his-book-doom-guy-and-developing-games-at-a-small-scale/

Richard Moss MossRC
@flargh Still hoping for him to suddenly show up one day with an update, but the community did a pretty extensive search — really covering everything short of cold calling every Paul Pratt in America — so it's not looking good.

vga256 vga256@dialup.cafe

although @MossRC has already written extensively on the topic of , i love this little article by one of the former employees of Ambrosia Software - makers of Escape Velocity

it chronicles the ins and outs of first selling "nagware" and then "crippleware" when times got tougher for the company

https://tidbits.com/2002/03/11/the-plain-truth-about-casual-software-piracy/

inspired by the article, one of the goofy things i decided to do for the mac-like wildfire simulation game i'm working on is selling it as....... shareware!

... which of course requires a naggy splash screen, running in its own os 😆
here's a little test i did to see what it would play/look like

Richard Moss MossRC
@LexGear @Moosader Thank you both! I spent probably too much time tinkering with the design and page layouts of the site, but I love the result — it's almost exactly what I envisioned when I came up with the idea.

The foundations of the CSS, if you're interested, came from Bootstrap/386 (https://github.com/kristopolous/BOOTSTRA.386). I modified a bunch of stuff and added a few new things, but it saved me *a lot* of time getting started.

1Bit 1Bit@bitbang.social

I you wanted some tasty modern recreation fonts of the olden days of Apple, here's a chart with the old name on the left and its modern counterpart on the right (they are searchable and all free)

Richard Moss MossRC
@vga256 I made a bunch of one-level games in Torque 2D but didn't get around to doing anything bigger before the company started to struggle against Unity's great rise. I really liked using it — much more so than Unity.

vga256 vga256@dialup.cafe

diving for a dead body in police quest ii is inexplicably one of the most relaxed and calming scenes in any sierra adventure game

so much love and effort was put into making this scene reward taking your time exploring and collecting evidence

Games That Weren't gamesthatwerent@mastodon.world

Gamebase64 is an extremely important archive for the , but is now at huge risk of losing its online presence due to the tragic loss of webmaster Steven Feurer. Please check our post for more details - but can anyone help or spread the word?

https://gamesthatwerent.com/2023/09/gamebase64-needs-you/

Richard Moss MossRC
@MichaelKlamerus Also, there's Goodsol still running on exactly the same business model as 25 years ago, still updating the same solitaire game every year. https://goodsol.com

Richard Moss MossRC
@MichaelKlamerus Some others, off the top of my head:
https://legacy.3drealms.com/index.html
https://www.kaser.com/home.html
http://www.zuggsoft.com/index.php
https://www.semicolon.com/index.html (sort of — it's all modern ports of his old shareware)
http://capnmagneto.com (RIP Al Evans)
http://www.sticksoftware.com/software.html
https://www.winograd.com/games.shtml

Michael MichaelKlamerus@dosgame.club

Wrote about some shareware game developers that still have websites

EDIT: I have added a list at the end of recommendations by other folks

https://virtualmoose.org/2023/09/18/shareware-game-developer-websites/

screenshot from Hugo's House of Horrors, showing a man standing outside a haunted house screenshot from Jetpack showing a guy flying around platforms that have gold coins cover of The Adventures of Maddog Williams box showing a man with a sword riding on a dragon the title screen from Word Rescue, showing a worm and two kids facing off against blobs

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