[HN Gopher] The Art of Warez Documents the Lost ANSI Art Scene (...
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The Art of Warez Documents the Lost ANSI Art Scene (2019)
Author : DyslexicAtheist
Score : 320 points
Date : 2021-03-19 12:55 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.juxtapoz.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.juxtapoz.com)
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Why the focus on warez? There was a lot of ASCII/ANSI art making
| that had nothing to do with illegally ripping off copywritten
| software. For example, any BBS sysop would've had an opportunity
| to show off their custom ANSI art as part of the BBS itself.
| progmetaldev wrote:
| I think it has more to do with the type of audiences. I was
| lucky enough to have access to my dad's Atari 8-bit computer,
| as well as a 286, both that allowed me to connect to BBS
| systems. I was exposed to the ASCII/ANSI art early on. Most of
| my friends did not have PCs until the late 90's or early
| 2000's. Their experience with the art was through .NFO files in
| warez. I imagine how old you are, and when your first
| experience with computing, dictates your connection to the art
| scene.
| dleslie wrote:
| There was a brief period after the precipitous crash of BBS
| popularity where exposure to ANSI art was mostly through warez
| intros and crackscene tools.
|
| Anyone who was a teen in the 90s is more likely to reminisce
| about the warez scene than the BBS scene, which was popular
| when they were rather young kids.
| kickscondor wrote:
| I think it's also a lot more interesting that cracking teams
| usually had an artist.
| dleslie wrote:
| ANSI artists and MOD trackers! Such an incredible wealth of
| cultural artifacts from that scene.
| wyldfire wrote:
| True. But having seen both I think the ones who were the best
| at it tended to team up with the warez distributors.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Yeah, I remember a lot of shareware games I used to play would
| show a big ANSI art thing to promote their BBS and how to buy
| the game.
|
| I googled and found a lot of ZZT screenshots as well, not
| really the same but it could be used to create ANSI art.
| monokai_nl wrote:
| I took inspiration from ANSI art for my own domain. It also uses
| a scroll effect based on the 4 block characters:
| https://monokai.nl
| [deleted]
| alexmingoia wrote:
| That pixel scroll effect is so cool! How is it done?
| monokai_nl wrote:
| So just this once I'm going to direct you to Reddit. They've
| tried to dissect it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/com
| ments/b0wcrm/how_is_this_...
| devilduck wrote:
| Oh you are just the most humble aren't you
| codethief wrote:
| TL;DR Position an overlay element (in this case, a
| <canvas>) at the bottom of the browser viewport and draw
| some squares in the same color as your site's background
| color.
| ddingus wrote:
| I love it. Nice work.
| codazoda wrote:
| This is actually really cool. I've thought about building a BBS
| like service on the modern web but still having the old
| feeling. Your design might work for something like this. It has
| a bit of the feel, at least.
|
| I love the fading as you scroll, it gives that nostalgic
| feeling of a modem drawing the screen.
|
| Anyway, nice work, I enjoyed scrolling through it.
| sneak wrote:
| I've been thinking about an ssh-based bbs, written in a
| modern language, explicitly not accessible on the web.
|
| If something like that sounds interesting to you, hmu to
| collaborate.
| EMM_386 wrote:
| My SaltAir dual-node PCBoard BBS had custom artwork by Jed from
| ACID.
|
| Those were the days.
| christianvozar wrote:
| Do you still have that art?
| EMM_386 wrote:
| I wish.
|
| That was long before the days of easy cloud backups and sadly
| it got lost somewhere along the way.
| gxqoz wrote:
| Am I the only one who grew up pronouncing it "where-ez"?
| tomc1985 wrote:
| Nope! Me too!
| dleslie wrote:
| The BBS scene, and its art scene, is still active. Barely.
|
| Browsing /r/bbs is a great way to find information.
| EamonnMR wrote:
| I found it hard to get into without knowing all of the key
| commands to navigate BBSs.
| ggeorgovassilis wrote:
| I programmed a web-based ASCII animator a while ago:
| https://animasci.com/
| tanseydavid wrote:
| I have had a really ignorant question for a long time and will go
| ahead and ask it now: is it pronounced likes "wears" or like
| "Juarez"?
| sethammons wrote:
| holy moly, I think I've said it wrong my whole life now! I
| always said "war - ez" like "Juarez." "Wares" like "where's"
| with a Z sound makes a lot of sense. That's funny.
|
| Related, a former colleague was mostly self taught and
| pronounces "attribute" as "a tribute." The first time I noticed
| this "mispronouncing in your head" was encountering the name
| Phobe in a book in high school. I read it as "foh-b" (long oh),
| not "fee-bee". I had no clue who this "fee-bee" person was that
| the teacher was talking about! haha
| sneak wrote:
| However you like, both are permitted.
|
| My warez project is codenamed Project Franklin, for example.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| This was a point of debate and arguments on BBS message boards
| back in the day. I don't think there was ever a definitive
| pronunciation.
| whereis wrote:
| Where is
|
| or
|
| Whereas
| throwaheyy wrote:
| Like "wears", it's literally a corruption of "wares".
| EamonnMR wrote:
| Wares. I swear they say it in the BBS Documentary:
| https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7nj3G6Jpv2G6Gp6NvN1kUtQu...
| dbsmith83 wrote:
| Like wears, as in short for 'softwares'
| fsckboy wrote:
| There is an old piece of animated ansi art I'd like to see again,
| it was a file on DECUS tapes containing a long ANSI escape
| sequence. The file was JACK.OFF and yes, that's pretty self
| explanatory. it's more "stick figure" quality than anything
| elaborate, but it was funny.
|
| it needs to be played back at I think 1200 baud.
| woodrowbarlow wrote:
| curl https://theden.sh/lady
| jart wrote:
| I make ANSI art for my source code!
| https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jart/cosmopolitan/master/a...
| Also shout out to http://blocktronics.org/
| christianvozar wrote:
| Alpha King here. Thanks for the shoutout from all us in B7. Be
| sure to check out our latest pack, a tribute to FiRE.
| https://16colo.rs/pack/fire-34/
| xtracto wrote:
| Anybody remembers Phrozen Crew and this "DaVinci" ASCII/ANSI art?
| It was just amazing
|
| https://geekdrop.com/content/phrozen-crew-member-logos-by-da...
| j_walter wrote:
| I miss dial up BBS...
| Black101 wrote:
| I don't miss my 2400bps modem...
| rasengan wrote:
| ASCII art is what it was called.
|
| Edit: As aptly mentioned ANSI art is the right word. This was the
| colorful BBS days as opposed to FXP courier days they were
| covering.
| dfsegoat wrote:
| I always thought it was ASCII art, but apparently there are
| diffs:
|
| - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANSI_art
|
| - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII_art
| mr-wendel wrote:
| Not only differences in character sets, but particularly in
| the communities. Thats what makes the documentary so
| compelling!
|
| I highly recommend browsing through some ANSI art archives
| (some of which is very recent too). Two favorites of mine:
|
| - https://16colo.rs/
|
| - https://artpacks.org/
| fl0wenol wrote:
| https://ice.org for ansi packs and other old skool art
| packs.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| Another cool site: https://wab.com
| dleslie wrote:
| And https://www.pouet.net/
| apetresc wrote:
| ANSI art and ASCII art are two distinct things. This is
| definitely referring to ANSI art.
| glonq wrote:
| And don't forget ATASCII art/animation?
| api wrote:
| This thread makes me feel old in a good way. Who remembers
| TheDraw?
| dleslie wrote:
| PabloDraw is a modern alternative worth checking out.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| I DO!! An artist friend was a wizard with that thing,
| awesome watching him work. I could never produce anything
| beyond shapeless confetti.
| marshal_law wrote:
| I do. Brings back some memories - as someone whose handle
| appeared in the video a few times. :)
| pridkett wrote:
| I wasted so much time trying to make non-terrible animated
| ANSI art with TheDraw. I remember the first time I realized
| I could run it in 80x43 mode instead of 80x25 mode and my
| mind was completely blown.
|
| I also remember what a pain it was if you wanted to change
| color schemes. Especially on an animated piece. I had a BBS
| animated main screen that originally was red and yellow and
| at some point I decided bright blue and green would be more
| "3733+" and I needed to step through it character by
| character.
| core-questions wrote:
| I used to use ACiD Draw for this kind of thing. The
| blinking parts were my favourite, you could almost make
| crude animation with it.
| thegeekbin wrote:
| I miss the ascii art... it's rare to see these days.
| christianvozar wrote:
| Go check out https://16colo.rs and enjoy! Lots of art still
| being put out.
| rolph wrote:
| i know its a faux pas here but have a look here for some ~
| instant gratification nostalgic fun :
|
| https://html.duckduckgo.com/html?q=image%20to%20ascii [DDG
| search]
|
| and the other way is a bit risky but look at bittorrent
| listings and DL ascii art there, [its in the .NFOs of course]
| it still exists, just be wary when using such sources on a
| system that will execute .txt as if its .exe as there are
| sometimes code embedded in the ASCII.
|
| and there is this :
|
| https://github.com/LazoCoder/Image-To-ASCII
|
| or this :
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_raWlX7tZY [python H2 image to
| ascii]
| hammerton wrote:
| What I miss the most about warez is the music. I've ran some
| keygens for like hours just to hear those chiptunes.
| cromwellian wrote:
| C64 also had a rich scene based on PETSCII art and animation.
| Torwald wrote:
| Best scene ever. I was on Amiga, but trying to objective here,
| c64 had the best demoscene and altogether best scene.
| mlacks wrote:
| Not glorifying crime, but one of the best parts of the video game
| warez scene (for me) was the artwork that accompanied each
| release.
|
| On later systems like the Nintendo Gamebot Advance you would
| often find a little demoscene preview before the game booted up.
| Amazing what you can code in just a few kilobytes of space
| sneak wrote:
| Copying files isn't a crime, regardless of what the law says.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| The GBA warez intros were the specific inspiration for the "no-
| intro" rom collection, which originally set out to create a
| complete collection that had not been modified in any way.
| croon wrote:
| I grew up with a Spectrum and later Atari (st 1040, not the
| 2600), and the accompanying copy parties and sneakernets.
|
| (Hoping the statute of limitations have past.)
|
| It was to the point where I thought that the demo music and
| loading/menu screens before games were official, and I'm
| nostalgic for that part of it as much as the games themselves.
| deepakhj wrote:
| The only people that got raided were ones that were selling
| software for profit. I think trading warez was fun and
| competitive at the top.
| JacobSuperslav wrote:
| crime? that's a strong word
| sunjester wrote:
| Don't we see this every year
| Sil_E_Goose wrote:
| For anyone interested in learning more about the ANSI art scene
| and BBS history in general, I highly recommend Jason Scott's
| documentary series "BBS The Documentary"[0]. There is a part
| specifically dedicated to the art scene [1]. Watching this series
| in my early teen years really opened my eyes to the fact that the
| internet subcultures I was then a part of had been around for
| much longer than I was aware.
|
| [0]http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/
|
| [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2t74FlFL_M0
| myth_drannon wrote:
| There is also a new doc "Back to the BBS"-
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0OwGSX2IiQ
|
| More about the modern BBS scene
| api wrote:
| It really does go back to the 1960s phone phreak subculture as
| well as technophile aspects of the hippie subculture. Look for
| old issues of the Whole Earth Catalog.
|
| A lot of those people from the 1990s grew up and created the
| tech startup scene, which sometimes reminds me of hacker/warez
| groups in some ways.
| EamonnMR wrote:
| If you're into this sort of thing, you'll like Exploding the
| Phone[1] which details the history of phone phreaking and
| Counterculture to Cyberculture [2] which is a critical look
| at how the Whole Earth Catalog circle interacted with the
| tech scene.
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.com/Exploding-Phone-Phil-
| Lapsley/dp/08021...
|
| [2] https://www.amazon.com/Counterculture-Cyberculture-
| Stewart-N...
| runawaybottle wrote:
| Do you guys pronounce it Juarez, or Wares?
| skrebbel wrote:
| "Ciudad Warez" would be a fantastic name for a bbs or a torrent
| site.
| anthk wrote:
| And "El paso" (The Pass) the place for cracked passwords.
| wyldfire wrote:
| I have met folks who pronounce it like "Juarez" but where I
| grew up it was "wares." IMO the latter makes much more sense
| because it's likely derived from "software(s)". But so much
| discussion about warez was nonverbal, it doesn't surprise me
| that the word took on different pronunciations.
| core-questions wrote:
| We emphasized the zed out here - so like 'wares', except the
| z has that vocal fry buzz to it, usually extended out a beat
| to make it clear.
| ishjoh wrote:
| I had never considered software(s) as a potential root, and
| had always assumed it was related to the idiom or a vendor
| selling their wares, just goes to show how tricky English can
| be:
|
| https://www.merriam-
| webster.com/dictionary/peddle%20one%27s%...
| birdyrooster wrote:
| As a kid I pronounced it "where-is" and only as an adult did I
| realize the mistake lol
| GrinningFool wrote:
| I still think it as "where-ez".
| josefresco wrote:
| Wares - Just like "wears"
| marttt wrote:
| In Estonian, "vares" [v-uh-res] stands for crow (corvus). I
| first met the w-word as a kid of the early 1990s; however, to
| this day, that analogy is still the first that pops up to me. A
| warez is a vares is a vares.
| pixelbath wrote:
| That's hilarious. I had a customer in a computer store (decades
| ago) ask if I knew where to find Juarez. Given we were in
| Houston, it wasn't an unreasonable question so I asked,
| "Juarez...Mexico?"
|
| "No, like wah-rez...the illegal software downloads."
|
| "Oh...right. N-no." Setting aside that I'm not into giving out
| professional "how to break the law" advice, I was just
| completely baffled. I figured "warez" came from "softwares"
| that were being distributed. Never crossed my mind to pronounce
| it phonetically.
| thereddaikon wrote:
| You're the second person to ask that. Can I ask why you think
| Juarez would work? Not trying to be mocking, just curious if
| its a regional thing that explains it or something else. That
| Warez = wares with a Z for cool factor was self evident to me
| growing up on the east coast of the US at the time.
| runawaybottle wrote:
| Mostly because I started downloading warez when I was like
| 13, so my only excuse is that I was dumb :)
| jakearmitage wrote:
| Funny how, depending from where you are, this is a strange
| question. Juarez is pronounced hwah-rez.
| replwoacause wrote:
| Juarez
| kickscondor wrote:
| There was also Wai-rez.
|
| You really have the pick the pronunciation for the occasion
| with this one.
| msk-lywenn wrote:
| Lost? Evoke has an ANSI/ASCII competition every year.
|
| https://www.novoque.eu/competitions/graphics/
|
| https://demozoo.org/graphics/282413/
|
| https://demozoo.org/graphics/282415/
|
| I also had some fun with the EULA of our game
|
| https://store.steampowered.com//eula/610410_eula_0
| fl0wenol wrote:
| Please check iCE Advertisements (https://ice.org) for all your
| ANSI pack needs outside of compos.
| davestephens wrote:
| For anyone thinking they want to start a BBS, or just noodle with
| some software for nostalgia's sake - this is written in node.js
| and a lot of fun: https://github.com/NuSkooler/enigma-bbs
| breakfastduck wrote:
| Lets not forget the garish anime graphics and loud chiptune music
| that was the look of any reliable keygen.
| ehsankia wrote:
| Maybe it's following that tradition that every single game
| always has to start at 100% volume...
| [deleted]
| janci wrote:
| Yes! I included keygen music in our product key generator to
| great amusement of my colleagues. (No warez - internal tool to
| generate official license keys for our products)
| circa wrote:
| that made me LOL harder than I should have.
| erk__ wrote:
| There is a great site with a large collection of the music from
| keygens. http://www.keygenmusic.net/
| podiki wrote:
| Yes the art and the keygen music! Thanks for sharing, I was
| always impressed with the odd set of skills brought together:
| the technical cracking, art, music, and getting it all in a
| tiny size that was easy to use. (ahem...you know...for
| educational reasons)
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| ReclusiveLemming on Youtube took thousands of chiptunes,
| formatted them as videos and uploaded them. Unfortunately he
| disappeared a couple of years ago leaving no trace, but his
| channel is still there.
| hammerton wrote:
| Thank you!!!! I miss keygen music so much.
| ciupicri wrote:
| Do you happen to know of an archive with PC speaker music or
| sound effects?
| mr-wendel wrote:
| Oh, very cool!
|
| If you're into this stuff I recommend the artist "Master Boot
| Record". In particular, they have "Keygen Church" side-
| project thats epically awesome.
|
| Go open your text editor (vim, right?) to do some coding/etc
| and listen to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJtVDEx2HSk. No
| matter what you do, ~20 minutes later it'll have been epic.
| J5892 wrote:
| You're right. I was working on an oAuth flow, and now my
| customers are connecting directly to the Machine God.
| croon wrote:
| I'm not particularly fond of Swedish House Mafia, but given
| their popularity another fun fact is that Axwell (one third
| of it) used to go under the name Quazar / Sanxion, and I
| think most people in the very thin slice of people who have
| listened to chiptune music have probably heard this gem:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LiTxEUxSHU
|
| On recommendations I like Dubmood.
| dleslie wrote:
| This is probably the album most people would recognize
| tracks from:
|
| https://dubmood.bandcamp.com/album/crackscene-music-best-
| of-...
|
| IE, how many keygens had this track?
|
| https://dubmood.bandcamp.com/track/keygen-13-razor-1911-v
| ers...
|
| I particularly enjoy this cover:
|
| https://dubmood.bandcamp.com/track/command-
| conqueror-3-keyge...
|
| This is epically danceable, and simultaneously feels like
| a Mega Man or Sh'Mup track:
|
| https://dubmood.bandcamp.com/track/supersquatting
| breakfastduck wrote:
| What a great little fact. I have definitely heard that
| tune somewhere before. Likely a keygen of some sort!
| DiabloD3 wrote:
| An absolute classic.
|
| Other songs that should be familiar to those either into
| mod music, or into the 90s warez/keygen scene:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hkw7l8IgM4g Captain /
| Image - Space debris
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJXtR0SwZ54 Skaven /
| Future Crew - Razorback
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCl9xYSOVtM Purple Motion
| / Future Crew - Satellite One
| dleslie wrote:
| UT99's remix of Razorback is probably more recognizable
| to most folks:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3POeTKHA7w4
| themodelplumber wrote:
| Space Debris absolutely blew me away when I first heard
| it on my brand new Mediavision Pro Audio Spectrum 16. :-)
|
| Did you ever hear the updated version by the original
| artist, Markus Kaarlonen? It's on the Rochard OST and is
| awesome too.
|
| https://youtu.be/bsapsOqc7UI
| thereddaikon wrote:
| I consider the demoscene style, tracker produced music a
| distinct genre from "chiptune". To me chiptune is mostly
| about recreating the sound and feel of vintage console
| games from the 80's and early 90's. Producers put a lot
| of work into either emulating the sound chips of those
| systems or outright using them through various hardware
| mods. There also seems to be an emphasis on the style of
| music found in Japanese games of the era.
|
| The keygen/demoscene style songs are produced using MIDI
| tracker software and leverage the sound capabilities of
| PC sound cards of the era which have a distinct sound to
| consoles like the NES. They are tend to have a very
| different structure, often closer to whatever particular
| sub genre of electronic dance music happened to be
| popular that year. Ersatz final fantasy themes played
| with an emulated SNES sound different than a House track
| powered by Soundblaster.
| ranma42 wrote:
| SNES is actually interesting in this context: The limited
| sample ram gives it some closeness to chiptunes, but
| otherwise the Sony chip can actually be considered closer
| to wavetable synthesizer cards. This is very different to
| NES/Gameboy chiptunes that are more synths with maybe one
| sampled channel.
| antiterra wrote:
| The term comes from dedicated synth chips such as the
| C-64's SID chip and was used for subsequent music in that
| style. Generally this was simple waveforms, filters and
| fast arpeggiation to approximate chords. An example from
| The Last Ninja on C64: https://youtu.be/1OjPpVrc3gM
|
| Nearly all scene trackers were basically sample
| sequencers, not MIDI (excluding rare exceptions such as
| OctaMED which could send midi events as well.)
|
| Chiptune music in the tracker era often meant using a
| small synth style waveform as the sample so that the
| music sounded similar to earlier computers. Cracktros
| with small footprints often did this, example:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBv1VHy0Igk
|
| Early demoscene music was often influenced by Italo Disco
| and it's offshoots, which were relatively obscure in the
| states thanks to the homophobic Disco Sucks movement.
|
| 'Chiptune' in the early console sense gained popularity a
| bit later, around the time of the VGmix/OCRemix
| communities. (As well as the LSDJ NullSleep phase where
| people danced to Gameboy producers.)
| alisonatwork wrote:
| I don't think this is true at all. Tracker software in
| the 90s largely did not have MIDI support, it was an
| entirely different category of software.
|
| Although it is true that trackers in the PC era grew out
| of the Amiga (MOD) scene where sample playback was
| standard, there were also trackers for the 8-bit home
| computers which were used to create actual chiptunes on
| SID or the AY-3-8910 and its derivatives.
|
| In the context of demoscene, chiptune-influenced
| compositions were still extremely popular, because
| including full-length instrument samples cost far too
| much space to distribute inside an intro or cracktro.
| Songs were made up of tiny bursts of white noise and
| tightly looped single-cycle waveforms, and the bulk of
| tracker "effects" (pitch bends, arpeggios etc) came
| directly from the techniques used to coax more tonal
| variety from sound chips of the 8-bit era.
|
| Tracker music used for intros might not literally be
| "chiptunes", but they definitely took a lot more
| influence from chip music than from popular music. For
| example, this is the track that was bundled with Scream
| Tracker 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3hpnmANSMw
| (64-Mania by Edge)
| thereddaikon wrote:
| I'm talking explicitly about the PC era. The 8bit
| machines were far more limited and that music was
| chiptune in every meaningful way.
|
| But when you get to PC's you didn't have one set in stone
| hardware FM synth as a standard. Your hardware varied and
| it was absolutely controlled via MIDI even if you lacked
| the hardware to interface with external MIDI devices.
|
| Depending on the hardware you had at the time your
| soundcard gave you either FM Synthesis such as with the
| classic SoundBlasters, Adlib etc. A fixed sample library
| in the case of devices like the Sound Canvas. Or with the
| later more advanced soundcards you had wavetable
| synthesis starting with the AWE32 which opened you up to
| soundfonts.
|
| If you had a Sound Canvas or similar "sound module" as
| they were called, there were many, you absolutely did
| have external MIDI capabilities because it was a
| requirement for the device to work. You had to have a
| MIDI interface card or box. I had a 4 port Roland card in
| the mid 90's. I don't remember the model but they stopped
| making drivers after Win98 for it.
| alisonatwork wrote:
| I think you are confusing trackers with the more general
| capabilities that appeared in PC sound cards of the 90s.
|
| Although there were sound cards that supported connecting
| external MIDI instruments, and there were sound cards
| that implemented the so-called General MIDI set of
| instrument sounds on the card itself, tracker software
| did not use any of this functionality. Trackers loaded
| samples into memory and mixed the audio in software. This
| is how Scream Tracker (for example) could output directly
| to the PC speaker and did not require any particular
| sound card.
|
| Because everything was mixed in software, the complexity
| of a composition was limited by the CPU and memory of the
| computer itself. It didn't matter what sound card you
| had. On under-powered PCs, loading very large samples or
| going above 4 or 8 channels of polyphony was not a viable
| option. This meant that tracker musicians operated under
| similar restrictions to the chip musicians of the 8-bit
| era. In fact, quite a few tracker musicians got their
| start in the 8-bit era, which is why a lot of demoscene
| music sounds similar to it.
|
| (Edit to add: in case it's not clear, later trackers did
| use hardware mixing and effects if they were available,
| but I'm trying to explain more about the culture of the
| scene and how it influenced the type of music that came
| out of it.)
| neuralRiot wrote:
| I used to make music on modtracker on a celeron, i could
| load more than 8 tracks but not very long or not playing
| them simultaneously, so i resourced to downmixing some
| parts and re-loading them as one single sample, then
| combining that with hardware synths on a multitrack
| (portastudio actually).
| alisonatwork wrote:
| That's cool! I remember seeing those sorts of tricks in
| Amiga mods especially.
|
| I jumped from the 8-bit (3 channel) world straight to a
| 486sx, so getting 16 channels seemed incredible at the
| time. I soon found out that going above 8 was ill-advised
| :) The sample size was limited to 64k too, so even if you
| did bounce tracks together you might only be able to load
| a few seconds.
|
| File size in general felt like a big deal back then.
| Going over 100k for the whole mod was considered pretty
| excessive. I think Fast Tracker 2 ushered in the era of
| larger samples. I suppose it coincided with modems
| getting faster too, so people were less reluctant to
| download songs that got up into the megabyte range.
|
| The demoscene stuff always seemed especially clever to
| me, because they didn't have the benefit of dedicating
| the entire computer just to mixing and playback - they
| needed to display graphics too! I think you can often
| tell when composers came out of the demoscene by
| listening for stuff like "J37" arpeggios and the sort of
| breakdown like in 64-Mania where you play the same
| sequence in two channels with slightly different settings
| to create a phasing or chorus effect.
| [deleted]
| egypturnash wrote:
| holy shit that is an Invocation right there
|
| IA! IA! BULLUG GEGBUG IBGABIUG GIXCURE DAGABCIEA FUIC!
| gnagatomo wrote:
| MBR's website[0], album covers[1] and whole branding are
| such a throwback and amazing works of art. I personally
| recommend his retro music covers[2], genially bundled under
| the name WAREZ.
|
| [0]: http://mbrserver.com
|
| [1]: https://masterbootrecord.bandcamp.com/
|
| [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HSpWQH4iRs&list=PL7do
| xo2n1V...
| ehsankia wrote:
| I remember downloading the full pack for a few mbs since it
| was all midi.
|
| Now it's 300mb for ~5500 songs, which is still impressive. I
| actually downloaded out of curiosity and seems like there's
| now a few mp3s and XMs in there which are bigger than simple
| midi files.
| tombert wrote:
| Occasionally I go on YouTube and look up something like "best
| keygen music" if I need to study. A lot of keygen music is
| really good, relaxing-yet-catchy stuff.
| devilduck wrote:
| Yes but this is also like a full generation after the type of
| art from the OP.
| Razengan wrote:
| Some of my all-time favorite tunes have been discovered through
| the warez scene.
| jcpham2 wrote:
| I miss .nfo files
| unstatusthequo wrote:
| They still exist.
| bri3d wrote:
| I'm not really impressed with the NFOs I see these days. As
| far as I can tell the "scene" (FXP couriers, tiers of groups,
| topsites, etc.) is pretty dried up and there are just a few
| "groups" releasing torrents these days, so the diversity of
| NFO art as well as the competitive aspect seems significantly
| less fun than it used to.
|
| Or I've gotten older and more out of touch. Hard to tell
| which sometimes :)
| birdyrooster wrote:
| Release groups still are creating ascii art in their nfo files
| even today
| jcpham2 wrote:
| Yes but eventually the cost of the crime outweighs the time
| and you lose touch
| mrits wrote:
| I miss running an empire full of adults as a 12 year old...FTP
| server scripting and custom eggdrop bots were what got me into
| coding
| dopeboy wrote:
| The feeling of power in initiating FXP transfers as a
| teenager. I was so proud of my courier title.
| Datagenerator wrote:
| Glftpd?
| dopeboy wrote:
| FlashFXP
| benlivengood wrote:
| I remember being 10 or 11 and reporting to the sysop of a local
| BBS that not all the downloadable files were shareware.
|
| I think I was doing warez wrong.
| RobGR wrote:
| Reminds me of this presentation by Jason Scott, examples around
| the 24:00 min mark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCAL_YgYiP0
|
| Jason has a similar ( maybe the same ? ) Defcon talk, in which
| the goons apparently mis-schedule something and he starts in, is
| told someone else is going to present, and just power-speeds
| through the whole presentation in 3 minutes while the other
| presenter gets ready. I can't find that video though.
| bredren wrote:
| I was way into the BBS scene in Portland, Oregon in the early
| 90s.
|
| Played LORD, the risk game, a little Trade Wars etc.
|
| But also uses the messaging services and met my first person from
| "online" in real life.
|
| My mom drove me to an outlet mall in Troutdale to meet him.
|
| I also did some ASCII art for smaller boards. I haven't finished
| this documentary, but for every one of these nicely finished art
| pieces there were many, many jenky simple intros.
|
| My stuff was small animations, moving stick people around big
| simpler logos that kind of thing. I remember spending days
| animating a small Spider Man character.
|
| It was also where I spent my first money online, where I sent
| cash in the mail to a BBS based out of Lake Oswego. I think to
| get more time with them.
|
| They were one of the fewer with a trunk, so there were multiple
| users online at once, and less chance of a busy signal.
|
| It was really cool back then, there was a small weekly paper
| publication with a page in the classifieds dedicated to BBSs.
| That was how I found out about new ones.
| mmaunder wrote:
| Renegade BBS always did a great job of incorporating ascii art
| into the UX. Signing on to a Renegade BBS always had this great
| feeling as the art scrolled.
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=renegade+bbs&rlz=1C5CHFA_enU...
| dragonshed wrote:
| I used to use Figlet and TheDraw, waaay back when, to draw things
| like this (though nowhere near as good as these examples). Fun
| times.
|
| These days it looks like PabloDraw might be the way to go.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIGlet [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheDraw [3]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PabloDraw
| jzawodn wrote:
| Oh, man... The Draw brings back memories. Thanks for the
| pointer to PabloDraw.
| sudasana wrote:
| REXPaint (https://www.gridsagegames.com/rexpaint/) is really
| excellent for this sort of thing.
| acd wrote:
| Please checkout Acid productions
| http://www.acid.org/archives/archives.html
|
| and Ice https://www.ice.org/pack/
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANSI_art
|
| http://artscene.textfiles.com/ansi/bbs/
|
| This site has a good online view of ANSI art
| https://cleaner.ansilove.org/artwork.html
| sjs382 wrote:
| https://artpacks.org
| homarp wrote:
| see also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20596454
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(page generated 2021-03-19 23:00 UTC)