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.

vga256 vga256@dialup.cafe

starting game dev day off with a double dose of inspiration

A copy of Richard Moss’s Shareware Heroes, beside a creamy cup of espresso.

Richard Moss MossRC
@retrohistories @masukomi That's like the whole purpose of the final chapter of my book Shareware Heroes. It's complicated, but in essence shareware faded away as digital distribution and direct online sales got easier — a slow process that began in the late 1990s, accelerated in the early 2000s, and finished around the time of the iPhone's launch.

And it never really _died_; rather, the term just sort of stopped getting used. Where before we had "shareware software" and "shareware games" we instead had things sold in much the same form as "apps" (with in-app purchases and/or demo/lite versions) and "indie games".

Somewhere along the way the term became irrelevant because it became the default way to sell and distribute software and games.

Richard Moss MossRC
The interview audio cleanup, mixing/mastering, and automated transcription parts of making TerrorBytes are rather taxing on my ASUS Vivobook laptop. (I actually managed to crash the whole system a few times early on — tried to process too many files simultaneously.)
A screenshot of the Windows performance monitor showing 100% CPU utilisation on a 13th-gen Intel i9, plus 78% of 32 GB memory, 37% integrated GPU, 82% dedicated GPU, and 14.4 Mbps downstream on Wi-Fi. Remarkably, the computer remained highly responsive under this load.

Richard Moss MossRC
It’s here! @Gmatom sent me this beautiful cross-stitch rendition she made of the Secret History of Mac Gaming cover. Best gift I’ve had in years.
Photo of a framed cross stitch depicting the Secret History of Mac Gaming book cover. It's an illustration of a Macintosh Plus with the game Amazing! on the screen, with a pull down menu open, and the book title and author name underneath.

Richard Moss MossRC
Been wanting to try this one for years; it’s meant to be one of the funniest adventure games not made by LucasArts, and is based on a TV show called Space Goofs (which I’ve not seen).
Front box cover for Stupid Invaders, an adventure game published by Ubisoft for PC and Dreamcast in 2000 and Mac in 2001.

Nathan Taylor nathan@types.pl

"Decoder Ring is a keygen for games released by Ambrosia Software. This software was released on 1 October 2023 by Andrew Welch, former president and Chief Thaumaturge of Ambrosia Software.

May your flights through the stars be free of Cap'n Hector's menacing Rapiers and may no one try to kill you with a forklift."

https://macintoshgarden.org/games/decoder-ring

Robert Petersen startrek Sonikku@techhub.social

What the actual hell?

Romhacking.net is shutting down :-(

Info as to why on the site.

http://www.romhacking.net

This was the go-to site for all kinds of retro games patches, retranslations, and utilities.

Very sad :-(

SimCity2000 Traffic Helicopter sc2000bot@botsin.space

Tetractys
June 24, 2333
Total population is 0.

Tetractys (UltimateCollection/Symmetrical/Tetractys.sc2)

Richard Moss MossRC
I’m delighted to finally reveal that my next book is A Tale of Two Halves: The History of Football Video Games, a massive exploration and analysis of football games in all their many forms from 1980-2010.

Coming soon from ⁦‪Bitmap Books‬⁩. More info: https://www.bitmapbooks.com/collections/all-books/products/a-tale-of-two-halves
Cover render for A Tale of Two Halves: The History of Football Video Games. The title is styled on a fake football crest on a green jersey.

GamesIndustry.biz GIbiz@mastodon.social

Game artist Brett Jones, known for his work on GoldenEye and Perfect Dark, has died.

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/goldeneye-and-perfect-dark-artist-brett-jones-has-died

Richard Moss MossRC
@vga256 I remember I saw you mention that one and thought "ooh, I should look at that when I get my Pocket 386 set up." It seems to have a lot of depth to it.

Richard Moss MossRC
@vga256 Happy reading! Hope you enjoy it. I've been meaning to get a few blog posts together on the book's website going into complementary materials and highlighting themes that weren't much explored (like there being only a handful of women in shareware or the wide world of shareware gamedev tools).

Richard Moss MossRC
@hipsterdoofus Milanote. It's a sort of digital whiteboard-ish thing that I find really good for visual and non-linear editing and planning. I use it for the first couple of drafts of all my documentary scripts.

Richard Moss MossRC
It's a big milestone for my/CREATORVC's TerrorBytes documentary series this month as we transition into post-production, starting with a segment on the development and underrated brilliance of super-hammy FMV horror game Night Trap. Here's a quick snap of my WIP script.
Screenshot of a digital whiteboard being used for the work-in-progress scripting of a documentary segment on Night Trap, showing various colour-coded chunks of text.

Benj Edwards benjedwards@mastodon.social

I recently discovered an odd first-person maze game called “Lair of Squid” built into my HP 200LX palmtop PC, released in 1994

Then I found the author. Here’s the story of how this quirky Doom-inspired title came to be: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2024/07/how-i-found-a-forgotten-squid-based-ode-to-doom-on-a-1994-palmtop-pc/

Lair of squid illustration Lair of squid screenshot

Richard Moss MossRC
Putting the Pocket 386 mini 386SX laptop through its paces with some classic adventuring.
King’s Quest 1 VGA running on a Pocket 386 laptop. The screen shows Graham outside a dilapidated cottage in a forest.

Richard Moss MossRC
@hipsterdoofus As for easily getting a copy of the game itself, though. *shrugs* I wish things were simpler.

Richard Moss MossRC
@hipsterdoofus I have a couple of old laptops I keep for this kind of thing, but it’d probably run well in a Win2k or XP VM, which aren’t exactly easy but aren’t hard either.

Richard Moss MossRC
Links LS 2000 got criticised for a lack of documentation of its finer intricacies. Turns out the manual is 100 pages long and about double the width of a paperback book.
Front of the player’s manual for Links LS 2000.

vga256 vga256@dialup.cafe

i've been posting a lot of my shareware research lately, because i've been working on a project for the past few months with a blend of Windows 3.1 & GeoWorks Ensemble used as inspiration.

Exigy is a tile-based game creation kit that lets you make windows 3.1/95-styled games, like spiderweb software's Exile or rick saada's Castle of the Winds. hell, you could remake the Microsoft Entertainment Pack if you wanted to :)

the editor is very intentionally built to work like MS Visual Basic: you can drag and drop any GUI element into the game editor window and script in your own actions with lua. it even comes with its own built-in sprite editor, so you can create your art while you work.

games are modified in real-time with no compiling. the entire thing is built in Love2D.

think of it as ZZT for windows 3.1 if that had ever existed. 😆

A game creation kit using the GeoWorks ensemble GUI skin for window frames, and the windows 3.1 grey icons for buttons. Windows, clockwise from top-left: Editor Tools: drag and drop these GUI elements into the Game Window. There is a Tile map tool, a Label tool, an NPC tool, a Button tool, a new Window tool, a cat-NPC tool, a mouse-NPC tool, an image tool and a grid tool. Tiles: A tile window showing the available tile brushes to create a map with. Terrain Editor: a tile map made using the tile brushes, with a little mouse on it. Message box: a pop-up box that reads "Welcome to the Terrain Editor!" Sprite Editor: A cat has been loaded into the sprite editor. Colors: A palette of 16 default Windows 3.1 colours Game Window: a sample game window, Visual Basic style, showing a clickable button, a text label, and an image loaded.

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