Pleroma

Pleroma

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.

Happy 40th birthday to the original Macintosh and to the first commercially released Mac game, Alice (aka Through the Looking Glass). The former was a revelation in how we interact with and comprehend our computers; the latter kicked off a long line of offbeat and creative interactive computing experiences and games that could only exist on a computer like the Mac.

You can read about the creation and influence of both in my book The Secret History of Mac Gaming. The publisher has the Expanded Edition on sale today to celebrate the milestone. https://www.bitmapbooks.com/collections/all-books/products/the-secret-history-of-mac-gaming-expanded-edition
A screenshot of 1984 Mac game Alice, which was officially called Through the Looking Glass for its boxed release.

Poster for my next documentary project, TerrorBytes, a five-part episodic series about horror games. Pre-sales will start next month ahead of a year of supporter-exclusive live events and other perks while we make the thing.
Poster for TerrorBytes: The Evolution of Video Game Horror, a Robin Block Production that's written/directed by Richard Moss and produced by Daniel Richardson

COVID barely gets a mention these days – here’s why that’s a dangerous situation.

"COVID complacency, by governments, the media and the public, is a threat to the overall health of the population, to health services and particularly to those most vulnerable, including older adults and those with pre-existing health conditions."

@auscovid19

Source: https://theconversation.com/covid-barely-gets-a-mention-these-days-heres-why-thats-a-dangerous-situation-220867

@Gmatom It's a lovely memory, at least, and a beautiful little story you can share when you talk about her.

Good insights here on why there's often a discrepancy between what the press says about a sequel and how fans react to it, snapped from an interview I'm transcribing with Mark Terrano about Age of Empires. (He was network programmer on AoE1 and lead designer on AoE2.)
Mark Terrano: I think the press, because of the number of games they play, they always have a bigger appetite for change than the audience does. You know, the audience is pretty satisfied with an incremental change and the press wants everything to be radically different. But they don't have to deal with the risk of that either. I mean, having a core audience and a loyal audience, you know, they really have expectations of what the brand and the game is going to deliver, that they build up. And of course everybody has a slightly different version of what makes Age of Empires amazing. So you capture as much as you can and, you know, you build in new strategies and new freshness as well as great content and try to pack a lot in the box. I mean, that was always — we just said this put a lot in the box. And that's a little bit of a different philosophy than there is now. But we really wanted to give long term value and just provide a lot of ways for people to play the game and enjoy it.

@darylbaxter @Gmatom Yeah, really just a remarkable team all around — not only the programmers, but also the rest of them too. By the way, I enjoyed the oral history in your book but I wish you'd proofread it more; it can be hard to read at times with all the typographical and syntactical errors.

@Gmatom That doesn't surprise me at all, having spoken a few times to Gavin Rummery (who wrote the level editor) and heard great things about the other main programmer Paul Douglas.

A bit of Tomb Raider trivia that's not widely known concerning Aspyr is that before signing up to publish the Mac ports of TR1 and TR2 in the late 90s, they were a tiny Mac publishing house run out of the home of one of their co-founders.

They had no right getting or even bidding on the contract from Eidos, but they went for it anyway and pretended they were a larger company. (And then they hired @Gmatom to do the porting grunt work, which she smashed out with awesome improvements.) I talked to the founders about this once; it'll be in the second volume of Secret History of Mac Gaming, if that's ever finished.

Really cool to see Aspyr sharing their approach to the Tomb Raider remasters and to tease at the effort that went into preserving the original game in a 1:1 graphics and controls overhaul.

And also interesting (though very much unsurprising) to note that they pitched it to Crystal Dynamics and were the driving force behind the project.

https://blog.playstation.com/2024/01/16/tomb-raider-i-iii-remastered-ps4-ps5-features-detailed-new-key-art-revealed/

@smallsco
@jmechner Nice! I hope you enjoy them both. I can't speak for my own book, other than that I found it fascinating to research and write, but Jordan's journals make for an insightful and inspiring read.

@tkn
@CodingItWrong That wiki page covers most of the detail, but to offer a more pithy explanation: it's all semantics, as all 3D games are ultimately rendered as a 2D image, but when people say "real" or "true" 3D they usually mean polygonal 3D, where the maps and all objects are stored and manipulated as 3D coordinates -- including the player, enemies, and camera.

Doom looks 3D thanks to its use of billboarding (for sprites) plus ray casting and binary space partitioning (for walls and floors), but you could render it as a top-down maze and it's mechanically the same game. Marathon uses shearing (sliding and scaling on the y axis) to create an optical illusion that you're looking up and down but is also using tricks to present 2D geometry and logic as though it's 3D.

I didn't check out Aerofoil when I first read about it in @MossRC's book, but now I wish I had. It's an attempt to preserve Glider PRO as unchanged as possible on modern systems. And it's free! If you like old Mac games definitely check it out, even if you also have Glider PRO running on original hardware. https://galeforcegames.itch.io/aerofoil

Video: The origin of Mario like you've never heard it before. Even if you think you know the Donkey Kong story, you don't.

Please share this wherever you can think to, and consider supporting my research on Patreon.

https://www.acriticalhit.com/hidden-influences-mario-how-popeye-game-became-donkey-kong/

Staying at a hotel tonight with liquid hand soap dispensers that you squeeze rather than push, pull, or put your hand under to operate. It's such a lovely tactile experience that I'm surprised I've never encountered it elsewhere.
cylinder-shaped liquid hand soap dispenser with sign above saying "squeeze to disperse".

@allenu Thanks! It was a surreal experience, between the beautiful landscape and creepy cows. I also have these two other shots as we were approaching them. Most of the cows just stood completely motionless, watching us.
Three cows on a hillside, one staring straight at the camera. Many cows on a hillside, two standing on the road ahead.

Stumbled across this old photo of mine and it made me laugh. I remember they stood like this for about two minutes before stepping out of the way and letting us past.
Four cows stare directly at the camera, which is pointing through the front windshield of a car. Two are standing on a dirt road, blocking the car, while the other two (and various others) stand nearby in the undulating, flower-and-grass-covered field.

@Gmatom You finished it! I've been looking forward to seeing this one done, and it does not disappoint. Looks fantastic.

Finished another project, recreating the cover of Richard Moss’ wonderful book, The Secret History of Mac Gaming. Back when he was writing it, I had a fun trip down memory lane talking with him about my years as a Mac game developer, and neat to read stories of all the other game devs. @MossRC

@ernie I'm using that very Asus machine you mentioned right now, after deciding against a MacBook Pro because of the combo of high RAM+storage costs (I need a minimum of 24GB + 1TB), non-repair/upgradability, and a keyboard I don't like.

Really enjoying it — beautiful screen, pretty-good keyboard and touchpad, does everything I throw at it with ease (even intense audio editing tasks), light weight for its size, etc. And way cheaper than an Apple laptop with comparable specs.

Here's me on the podcast When Does It Get Fun? having a long and in-depth conversation about FPS games, some of the challenges of making FPSDOC, and, rather surprisingly, the appeal of sports games — particularly my love for Pro Evolution Soccer, why people play MyCareer/Be A Pro modes, and why I don't like how present-day FIFA/EA Sports FC plays.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/47JnPiqbtCdj57HnWDNJ1n?si=3643adc98e59441f&nd=1

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