I just became aware of 'Mythbusters The Game: Crazy Experiments
Simulator'. For those of you who remember the show 'Mythbusters' I
probably don't have to say anything more. For those who don't know of
it, 'Mythbusters' was a show on the US cable channel Discovery. Very
popular, lasted for many years. The central premise was testing urban
myths. In as destructive and spectacular a way as possible with massive overkill. (They had a retired FBI explosives expert on call and a list
of favorite places to blow things up at.) There a lots of videos out
there if you are curious.

At any rate it is on sale currently at GOG, 15% off so its only US$11.04. https://www.gog.com/game/mythbusters_the_game_crazy_experiments_simulator

--
I've done good in this world. Now I'm tired and just want to be a cranky
dirty old man.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Fri, 7 Oct 2022 08:28:23 -0700, Dimensional Traveler
<dtravel@sonic.net> wrote:

I just became aware of 'Mythbusters The Game: Crazy Experiments
Simulator'. For those of you who remember the show 'Mythbusters' I
probably don't have to say anything more. For those who don't know of
it, 'Mythbusters' was a show on the US cable channel Discovery. Very >popular, lasted for many years. The central premise was testing urban
myths. In as destructive and spectacular a way as possible with massive >overkill. (They had a retired FBI explosives expert on call and a list
of favorite places to blow things up at.) There a lots of videos out
there if you are curious.

Well, I can't say that particular game looks interesting to me, but
yeah... there's a game for everything now (I get that feeling myself
when scrolling through Steam's library. I mean, a lawn-mowing sim,
really?!?).

And, honestly, I think it's great that the hobby has blown up so much
that it can cater to smaller, specific demographics. I know I
bad-mouth Indies (usually for the quality and lack of polish of their
games), but I really do appreciate the rise of these smaller
developers because they're willing to create games that only have
mass-market appeal.

Oddities like these also speaks of how mainstream video-gaming has
become; that it's not questioned that people will be playing games
anymore, but the topic of the games itself. There is still an idea
(fortunately becoming less common) amongst many that video-games are
childish and anyone playing them is weird or nerdy; that 'real' people
would rather be out playing football or watching a movie or doing
anything but sitting on a couch with a controller. But as games become paradoxically both more and less mainstream, it helps put that notion
to rest. Video games are now just part of ordinary life, a way to pass
time equally as valid as football or movies.

TL;DR: hurrah for Indies! ;-)

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Fri, 07 Oct 2022 12:05:21 -0400, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action,
Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

And, honestly, I think it's great that the hobby has blown up so much
that it can cater to smaller, specific demographics. I know I
bad-mouth Indies (usually for the quality and lack of polish of their
games), but I really do appreciate the rise of these smaller
developers because they're willing to create games that only have
mass-market appeal.

It's like the good-old-days, when games came in a plastic baggy at the
local computer shop. Just as hit-and-miss as well, but I welcome the
variety and small developer staff.

--
Zag

No one ever said on their deathbed, 'Gee, I wish I had
spent more time alone with my computer.' ~Dan(i) Bunten

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Fri, 07 Oct 2022 11:58:55 -0500, Zaghadka <zaghadka@hotmail.com>
wrote:

On Fri, 07 Oct 2022 12:05:21 -0400, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action,
Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

And, honestly, I think it's great that the hobby has blown up so much
that it can cater to smaller, specific demographics. I know I
bad-mouth Indies (usually for the quality and lack of polish of their >>games), but I really do appreciate the rise of these smaller
developers because they're willing to create games that only have >>mass-market appeal.

It's like the good-old-days, when games came in a plastic baggy at the
local computer shop. Just as hit-and-miss as well, but I welcome the
variety and small developer staff.

The small developers never really went away completely, although they
were for a long time overshadowed by the more successful
"professional" developers. BBSes (and later FTP sites) were always
filled with tiny freeware/shareware/trialware programs of every sort,
and you could find some really esoteric and weird stuff at the time.
But discovery was challenging and only the most popular programs -
like PKZip204g.exe or Wolf3d106.exe - got widely distributed, so a lot
of smaller stuff slipped by unnoticed.

(Add to that, back in the early days of computing, even the best games
were compatively low-quality to what we have today - which meant the
"indie" stuff of the day were truly bottom-of-the-barrel. Nowadays,
even the most half-assed programmer can now create games that are
halfway playable thanks to the powerful developer tools available to
them)


updated TL;DR: yay for places like itch.io and Steam for making it
easier to find indie games, and yay for stuff like Unity and Unreal
for helping to raise the bar ;-)

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 07/10/2022 18:57, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

On Fri, 07 Oct 2022 11:58:55 -0500, Zaghadka <zaghadka@hotmail.com>
wrote:

On Fri, 07 Oct 2022 12:05:21 -0400, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action,
Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

And, honestly, I think it's great that the hobby has blown up so much
that it can cater to smaller, specific demographics. I know I
bad-mouth Indies (usually for the quality and lack of polish of their
games), but I really do appreciate the rise of these smaller
developers because they're willing to create games that only have
mass-market appeal.

It's like the good-old-days, when games came in a plastic baggy at the
local computer shop. Just as hit-and-miss as well, but I welcome the
variety and small developer staff.

The small developers never really went away completely, although they
were for a long time overshadowed by the more successful
"professional" developers. BBSes (and later FTP sites) were always
filled with tiny freeware/shareware/trialware programs of every sort,
and you could find some really esoteric and weird stuff at the time.
But discovery was challenging and only the most popular programs -
like PKZip204g.exe or Wolf3d106.exe - got widely distributed, so a lot
of smaller stuff slipped by unnoticed.

(Add to that, back in the early days of computing, even the best games
were compatively low-quality to what we have today - which meant the
"indie" stuff of the day were truly bottom-of-the-barrel. Nowadays,
even the most half-assed programmer can now create games that are
halfway playable thanks to the powerful developer tools available to
them)

updated TL;DR: yay for places like itch.io and Steam for making it
easier to find indie games, and yay for stuff like Unity and Unreal
for helping to raise the bar ;-)

Gawd, I still remember actually typing in programs from magazines. Now
that was fun!

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Sun, 9 Oct 2022 11:23:11 +0100, JAB <noway@nochance.com> wrote:

Gawd, I still remember actually typing in programs from magazines. Now
that was fun!

I used to do this with 'Compute's Gazette' - a Commodore 64 magazine
here in the US. I have absolutely no memory whatsoever of any of the
games I typed in though. I probably enjoyed typing them in more then
playing the damn things.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Sun, 9 Oct 2022 11:23:11 +0100, JAB <noway@nochance.com> wrote:

On 07/10/2022 18:57, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

On Fri, 07 Oct 2022 11:58:55 -0500, Zaghadka <zaghadka@hotmail.com>
wrote:

On Fri, 07 Oct 2022 12:05:21 -0400, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action,
Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

Gawd, I still remember actually typing in programs from magazines. Now
that was fun!

Me too, but my opinon on the matter was quite different from yours. It
was all too error prone, and troubleshooting was a bitch. It didn't
even encourage me to learn to code - that came later - because none of
what I was typing was ever explained. And the end results - once you
finally got it working - was always a disappointment; you'd spend
hours typing and debugging and get... a half-assed Hangman clone?

Unnecessary TL;DR: I had more fun with "programming games" (like
Origin's "OMEGA") than programming games in that era.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 09/10/2022 14:34, Mike S. wrote:

On Sun, 9 Oct 2022 11:23:11 +0100, JAB <noway@nochance.com> wrote:

Gawd, I still remember actually typing in programs from magazines. Now
that was fun!

I used to do this with 'Compute's Gazette' - a Commodore 64 magazine
here in the US. I have absolutely no memory whatsoever of any of the
games I typed in though. I probably enjoyed typing them in more then
playing the damn things.

The one I remember most is Sinclair Programs* for all things Sinclair.
As to how much I remembered, I can think of three which probably says
something about the quality of them.

The first was a shopping list program, so type in what you want and it
will print it out for you on oh so lovely thermal paper. Even at my
young age I thought what's wrong with a pen&paper. Next up a twinkling
Xmas tree that played (as much as the Speckky could play) Xmas carols.

The best I saved to last as at the time it was really quite impressive.
You give the program some base co-ordinates for half an object which it
would then mirror map to a complete object and rotate it as a wire-frame
model.

Tell a lie, there was one more for the utter failure of it. This was in
another magazine and it for once actually looked like a game that maybe
worth playing, some sort of navigating a 3D maze while being chased by
bats. The slight problem that it was all machine code and was literately several pages of hexes number to enter. Myself and a friend spent a good
few hours putting it all in and to no surprises it didn't work. That was
fun!

*Obviously long since dead but the issues are available in an archive.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 09/10/2022 16:15, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

On Sun, 9 Oct 2022 11:23:11 +0100, JAB <noway@nochance.com> wrote:

On 07/10/2022 18:57, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

On Fri, 07 Oct 2022 11:58:55 -0500, Zaghadka <zaghadka@hotmail.com>
wrote:

On Fri, 07 Oct 2022 12:05:21 -0400, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action,
Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

Gawd, I still remember actually typing in programs from magazines. Now
that was fun!

Me too, but my opinon on the matter was quite different from yours. It
was all too error prone, and troubleshooting was a bitch. It didn't
even encourage me to learn to code - that came later - because none of
what I was typing was ever explained. And the end results - once you
finally got it working - was always a disappointment; you'd spend
hours typing and debugging and get... a half-assed Hangman clone?

Unnecessary TL;DR: I had more fun with "programming games" (like
Origin's "OMEGA") than programming games in that era.

They probably got me interested in programming as a whole so I learnt
Spectrum Basic, Assembler and even Forth with its reverse polish notation.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Mike S. <Mike_S@nowhere.com> writes:

On Sun, 9 Oct 2022 11:23:11 +0100, JAB <noway@nochance.com> wrote:

Gawd, I still remember actually typing in programs from magazines. Now
that was fun!

I used to do this with 'Compute's Gazette' - a Commodore 64 magazine
here in the US. I have absolutely no memory whatsoever of any of the
games I typed in though. I probably enjoyed typing them in more then
playing the damn things.

I don't much either. I vaguely remember one maze game (in basic) that
was somewhat fun and I remember photocopying the pages for it in a
public library from whatever magazine.

Later in the 8-bit era there was a C64 type-in called "Minidium" which
tried to cram a Uridium-like horizontally scrollable shmup into type-in
size. I think I typed that in and at that point there were already aids
that displayed a checksum after you entered each line. With the helper
the game worked the first time but I remember the experience was
underwhelming.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)