• Apple IIc experience and the mindset of the 80's gamer vs today

    From Divarin@VERT/MUTINY to All on Thu May 23 11:18:33 2019
    So I recently have picked up an Apple IIc computer. At first I just got the monitor for not very much I think somewhere around $30 after shipping. I wasn't exactly sure what I was going to do with it but I love the look of the green phospher CRT monitors and the fact that it has a standard composite input helps. I played a few plug & play TV games on it but eventually decided what I'd really like hooked up to it is an Apple IIe or IIc computer.

    I've always felt that these computers go for way too much money but I did manage to find one for sale that claimed to be working by someone in my state so the shipping wasn't too much so I was able to pick it up for around $50.

    When I got it it only had one disk: Myster Masters Felony (which is a fun game but I ended up buying the box of the game off ebay with the C64 version disk inside because I needed the 'solutions' manual to play the game and couldn't find it online)

    I know about ADTPro and I have a serial cable on order should be here soon but I'm actually a little apprehensive about getting it and here's why:

    Since there's very little I can do with the machine right now, except playing this one game, I've spent some time in basic just playing around and learning the system. It has kind of taken me back to my childhood when my parents brought home our first computer, a TI-99/4A. We had very few cartridges for it and there was little you could do with it other than learn BASIC. I think that's probably what got me into programming in the first place.

    Although I don't need to re-learn basic (in-fact I wrote a C64 game in basic the winter before last) every machine is different so working in Apple basic was a new experience for me.

    I've also started thinking that the fewer games you have the more you value each. How much time would I spend with this Myster Masters game if I had the whole Apple IIe software universe at my disposal? For that matter how much time would I spend with *any* game with the whole universe of software available? Sadly, not much.

    Which leads me to the conclusion that I enjoyed playing with computers and playing computer games more in my childhood not only because they were a new experience to me but also because there was fewer choices available. If I sit down to play a game it doesn't take long before my brain starts saying "Boring let's play this instead" and I spend more time jumping around from game to game than actually enjoying anything.

    It takes a lot of mental discipline to get into some of these older games because they were designed for a different mindset; someone who has few games to choose from, someone who is not overly stimulated, someone who doesn't multitask all day and can't stand to focus on a single thing.

    A game like Pool of Radiance is hard to play with my 2019 mind even though I love the game not just because I'm an adult now on an adult time schedule with adult responsibilies but also because there's more game options out there than can possibly be counted and the game *will* put you into frustrating situations, boring situations, menonitous (sp?) situations, and tedious situations. Does my 2019 brain have the discipline and will to face those situations and persevere through them or will it just say "screw this I'm going to go play something else" this never actually enjoying anything?

    The Mystery Masters game also has an interesting quirk that I couldn't understand at first but looking at things in this new light I think I can:

    The Mystery Masters game also has an interesting quirk that I couldn't understand at first but looking at things in this new light I think I can: Occasionally when you question witnesses or suspects or you examine something the game asks you to look up the clues in the manual (actually it does this for everything) but occasionally the clue just says "no clue". Furthermore there may be more than one "no clue" for anything you are examining. I couldn't understand why they'd do this rather than just omitting the "no clue" ones or at least just saying "the questioning was a waste of time"

    You see, for every clue you get some time is deducted from the game clock but I think that just having the character in the game waste his time wasn't good enough, they wanted the player's time to be wasted as well. And the best way to do that is to make them look up a non-clue. It doesn't make sense to a 2019 mind which has played games designed around comfort and convienence (sp?) rather than pure game-play.

    I have noticed that this tactic has me being a lot more selective of what I want to investigate as I don't want to run out the game's clock but I also don't want to waste my time looking up "no clue"'s

    Anyway this has been quite a ramble so I digress.

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  • From poindexter FORTRAN@VERT/REALITY to Divarin on Fri May 24 00:18:52 2019
    Re: Apple IIc experience and the mindset of the 80's gamer vs today
    By: Divarin to All on Thu May 23 2019 07:18 am

    I've also started thinking that the fewer games you have the more you value each. How much time would I spend with this Myster Masters game if I had the whole Apple IIe software universe at my disposal? For that matter how much time would I spend with *any* game with the whole universe of software available? Sadly, not much.

    I spent weeks playing Zork on my Commodore 64, because it was my only game. Had I had others I'd probably have moved on to something more immediately gratifying.

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  • From Epiphany@VERT/MUTINY to poindexter FORTRAN on Fri May 24 11:09:56 2019
    Re: Apple IIc experience and the mindset of the 80's gamer vs today
    By: poindexter FORTRAN to Divarin on Thu May 23 2019 20:18:52

    it definatly takes a lot of willpower to sit down and experience some of these more involved games. well worth it but hard to do with an overabundance of choice, which wasn't a problem back then
    this may be a big reason modern games lack depth and challenge, the modern gamer lacks the abilitu or will to take on such a game
    /s

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  • From Divarin@VERT/MUTINY to Epiphany on Sat May 25 23:57:10 2019
    Re: Apple IIc experience and the mindset of the 80's gamer vs today
    By: Epiphany to poindexter FORTRAN on Fri May 24 2019 07:09:56

    So I got the serial null modem cable and along with making some disks with ADTPro I decided to try some experiments. I got a terminal program on the apple (Apple Terminal II) and was able to send text back and forth between the apple and the PC (using SyncTerm on the PC)
    That got me thinking maybe I could write a program that could run on the PC and act as a proxy to allow me to do all sorts of stuff over that connection such as connect to BBS's, hit FTP sites, text web browsing, who knows. I'll start with a telnet to com port proxy and try to do some BBSing on the apple.

    Of course if anyone know of any such program already in existance I'd like to try it out.

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  • From Digital Man@VERT to Divarin on Sun May 26 05:20:26 2019
    Re: Apple IIc experience and the mindset of the 80's gamer vs today
    By: Divarin to Epiphany on Sat May 25 2019 07:57 pm

    Re: Apple IIc experience and the mindset of the 80's gamer vs today
    By: Epiphany to poindexter FORTRAN on Fri May 24 2019 07:09:56

    So I got the serial null modem cable and along with making some disks with ADTPro I decided to try some experiments. I got a terminal program on the apple (Apple Terminal II) and was able to send text back and forth between the apple and the PC (using SyncTerm on the PC)
    That got me thinking maybe I could write a program that could run on the PC and act as a proxy to allow me to do all sorts of stuff over that connection such as connect to BBS's, hit FTP sites, text web browsing, who knows. I'll start with a telnet to com port proxy and try to do some BBSing on the apple.

    Of course if anyone know of any such program already in existance I'd like to try it out.

    sexpots can perform as a bridge between a serial "null" modem and a Telnet or RLogin connetion to any suitable server (sbbs or otherwise).

    digital man

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  • From Divarin@VERT/MUTINY to Epiphany on Sun May 26 10:40:22 2019
    Re: Apple IIc experience and the mindset of the 80's gamer vs today
    By: Divarin to Epiphany on Sat May 25 2019 19:57:10

    nevermind, it only took a little bit of googling and I discovered TCPSER, found a pre-built windows binary, and am off to the races :)

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