I haven't played a ton a tone of Text adventures, particularly not of the period but that bit where it puts you over to a fake dos screen with a different color background and text and a fake dos interface is the most impressive thing I've ever seen one of them do.
For many years of my childhood, magazines, especially with coverdisks, were the only way I really felt connected with other computer users. I never heard of Big Blue Disk, but this kind of stuff was a real lifeline in a time where hardly anyone I knew had a computer.
I really like the idea of this series. I'm about the same age you are so I am also not very familiar with this era of personal computing. Going through these "magazine" disks is a really interesting way to explore it since they combine both interactive content and the types of news you'd find in more traditional magazines. I hope this ends up being popular enough to warrant looks at more of these disks.
i was alive & in computers at this era, & you did a great job on this video. funny timing that just last night i was watching LateBlt play a softdisk game.
"69...nice"...it's the small things...just discovered your channel, probably through yt-recommendations..keep up the great content, especially the camera stuff!
This was good to watch, although it's noticeably different from your other work where you have a much more personal attachment, it's more academic, I guess? It's not bad, just different. It's cool to see you bring context and knowledge to the otherwise fairly sterile stuff on the disk, like where authors ended up and the limitations of software in the era.
thank you! it's very much my intent to treat this didactically; I think there isn't enough meat on it's bones to get sensationalist about, and I think a less bombastic presentation is easier to process on a topic like this. if I do more I may modulate my tone a bit but we'll see
I grew up in the 80's with an IBM 5155. It was a stand alone beast to say the least. I did have a monitor though. Anyways, I played a game similar to the one you demoed here. There was construction going on outside. You got dressed, exited the house and then interacted with the workers. My problem was no matter how many different commands I entered, I always got hit by a flying brick when I opened the door, and then died. Although there weren't any graphics, I still can see sooo clearly what the bedroom and front yard of that house looked like. I used Lotus Release 123. When Excel took over, I was already familiar with the basics. I also had a dot matrix printer. I printed so many banners! I truly miss my childhood in the 80's.
nah, it’s actually the defining feature of the 2.0 “Gregorian” update to the Roman calendar. If you check the patch notes, they found that due to some reliability issues with the Earth’s orbit function actual length of the tropical year (ie how long between 2 of the same equinox/solstice, important for properly implementing the “seasons” mechanic) was 365.2425 days per year (or ‘baud’), not 365.25 as assumed by Sosigenes of Alexandria in his 1.0 “Julian” release of 45 BC. Thus to keep the season mechanic in in sync with the year’s true refresh rate they put in a special case that automatically skips executing the Julian patch’s leap year function 3 out of every 100 times it would normally run. Bit of a bodge, but it works and when you have working code you don’t mess with it.
This is so fascinating. I don't remember if any of the software collection disks I had as a kid had any way of communicating with the publisher, though most of the ones I remember having weren't so much collections of other peoples' software but more like, "Apogee Software Samplers" (doubt that's the real name) so each game came with its own catalog .exe with phone numbers and BBS info and stuff.
Yeah, this interests me far more than the typical shareware disk because it's a) not just a dump of an ftp or pile of disks from someone else compiled by a two-bit profiteer b) it's actually original software but it's not meant to sell a particular *development studio.* thanks for watching!!
I loved Big Blue especially all the ones that had Alfredo Adventures. Loved his adventures so much I programmed my own version in Quick Basic (full color) and a menu like theirs for my own games.
What? BBD stands for Bell Biv Devoe. Mentally hip-hop, smoothed out, on the R&B tip with a pop feel appeal to it. What's so bad about that? Granted, I wouldn't play "Do Me" in front of my mom but still...
Pedantic historical note that may be interesting to... somebody: QuickBASIC wasn't just popular because it was cheaper than a C compiler. BASIC was the de facto language for computer hobbyists. You'll notice it's included in the ROM of many computers in that era. Apple II, C64, the original IBM PC, TRS-80, BBC Micro, Sinclair's Spectrum, etc. Since BASIC was the first thing many people saw when they powered on their computer for the first time, it became the most popular language one would learn to program in. Bill Gates once said, back when he was head honcho at Microsoft, that his vision was to bring BASIC to everyone -- hence his work licensing Microsoft BASIC to every hardware manufacturer with a ROM, its inclusion in DOS, then Visual Basic, the Office suite using Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) as the house macro language, and being the most common language in Windows Scripting Host. Anyway, once ROM BASIC was no longer a given, DOS started shipping with GW-BASIC, and then QBASIC. QuickBASIC was the commercial version, with the ability to turn your .BAS code into a bona fide .EXE file. Look at your program now, all grown up and executable... Now, if you were a hardcore nerd, you would probably know ASM as well, which was often the only other alternative language you had easy to access to. Many home microcomputers had a way of entering ASM or machine code without even needing any additional software. Somewhere in between these extremes lived C. Almost as fast as assembly, but almost as understandable as BASIC. And portable, to some extent. But in the early days, "real" programmers were writing software in ASM because every byte of memory (and every cycle of the CPU) counted, and us plebs at home were tapping out BASIC code because it's just what you had. Then there were those weirdos who used PASCAL. We don't talk about them.
An answer looking for a question. You hit the nail on the head here with this observation. Well into the 90s I had people tell me that computers were a fad, to learn a "real" skill instead.
My mom was one of those. I always had outdated equipment (I didn't have a computer capable of running Windows until 1996). She didn't think it would be a good job.
This is a good way to look back the history of disk magazines. After those years, most floppy disks I own goes bad. and my floppy drives are long gone. I try very very hard to find them from Internet Archive. However, the Big Blue Disk #2, #6, #7, #9, #12, #13, #14 are still missing.
We had an Apple Macintosh on a card table. Black & white screen, about the size of a postcard. My uncle passed it on to us when he upgraded. He also gave us a big "rolodex" thing of floppies. Such weird and wild things in there.
You probably are aware of this by now but the lines starting with ">" you were confused about are quotes from messages those posters are responding to. That's how quotes were indicated when email was still text-only.
So, about 1:23, I don't know what BBD means and I did try to look it up but there are A LOT of things it can mean and I really can't tell what he's referring to. Any help?
I genuinely couldn't figure it out when I was recording it. I thought I added a note on the screen about this but maybe I forgot to unmute the layer heh
20:19 For a moment I thought it was "Microprose", Sid Meier's fist company that created Civilization and a bunch of awesome military games. I was thinking "what the heck, they made a word processor?"
I just looked it up, looks like there was some confusion back in the day, but MicroPro renamed to the much more familiar (at least in the 80s and 90s) WordStar.
the Loan Amortization article on Wikipedia existed in 2007. I believe you were in college then, so it really begs the question, if you had waited one more year how much easier would college have been?
Late to the party, but, starting at 32:18 , I find it Refreshing that unlike EA or any other publisher, they only pay you for the right to announce your original work, but You retain the Intellectual Property of the work. Basically they are paying you to advertise your software! Only if they port it to C64/128 will they pay you half the cost of the conversion, effectively a Licensing fee.
christine was the one who cooded the atari jaguar port of doom and ported it to 3do in under a month and the 3do port is notoriusly bad and notoriusly impresive that thee port was develooped by one woman in such a short period of time with nothing but useless jpegs and atari jaguar doom code
So what does BBD stand for then? because Urban dictionary's top definition is Blue Ball Disease, that I suspect we aren't all talking about. I suspect we're talking about a definition referring to the size of a black mans appendage? but then I've never come across that acronym either. And anyway so what? because there are no other jokes about black 9 inch floppy things.
I haven't played a ton a tone of Text adventures, particularly not of the period but that bit where it puts you over to a fake dos screen with a different color background and text and a fake dos interface is the most impressive thing I've ever seen one of them do.
For many years of my childhood, magazines, especially with coverdisks, were the only way I really felt connected with other computer users. I never heard of Big Blue Disk, but this kind of stuff was a real lifeline in a time where hardly anyone I knew had a computer.
I really like the idea of this series. I'm about the same age you are so I am also not very familiar with this era of personal computing. Going through these "magazine" disks is a really interesting way to explore it since they combine both interactive content and the types of news you'd find in more traditional magazines. I hope this ends up being popular enough to warrant looks at more of these disks.
i was alive & in computers at this era, & you did a great job on this video.
funny timing that just last night i was watching LateBlt play a softdisk game.
thanks!! future ones will have a lot more speculation so i hope i get my guesses right
i'm glad to answer anything if you like. :)
"69...nice"...it's the small things...just discovered your channel, probably through yt-recommendations..keep up the great content, especially the camera stuff!
This was good to watch, although it's noticeably different from your other work where you have a much more personal attachment, it's more academic, I guess? It's not bad, just different. It's cool to see you bring context and knowledge to the otherwise fairly sterile stuff on the disk, like where authors ended up and the limitations of software in the era.
thank you! it's very much my intent to treat this didactically; I think there isn't enough meat on it's bones to get sensationalist about, and I think a less bombastic presentation is easier to process on a topic like this. if I do more I may modulate my tone a bit but we'll see
YES! You finally uploaded it!!
I grew up in the 80's with an IBM 5155. It was a stand alone beast to say the least. I did have a monitor though. Anyways, I played a game similar to the one you demoed here. There was construction going on outside. You got dressed, exited the house and then interacted with the workers. My problem was no matter how many different commands I entered, I always got hit by a flying brick when I opened the door, and then died. Although there weren't any graphics, I still can see sooo clearly what the bedroom and front yard of that house looked like. I used Lotus Release 123. When Excel took over, I was already familiar with the basics. I also had a dot matrix printer. I printed so many banners! I truly miss my childhood in the 80's.
Now _this_ is the sort of *BBD* content I've been looking for!
Year 2000 being a leap year was the real y2k bug. I had to fix one of those back in the day.
nah, it’s actually the defining feature of the 2.0 “Gregorian” update to the Roman calendar. If you check the patch notes, they found that due to some reliability issues with the Earth’s orbit function actual length of the tropical year (ie how long between 2 of the same equinox/solstice, important for properly implementing the “seasons” mechanic) was 365.2425 days per year (or ‘baud’), not 365.25 as assumed by Sosigenes of Alexandria in his 1.0 “Julian” release of 45 BC. Thus to keep the season mechanic in in sync with the year’s true refresh rate they put in a special case that automatically skips executing the Julian patch’s leap year function 3 out of every 100 times it would normally run. Bit of a bodge, but it works and when you have working code you don’t mess with it.
The > in the correspondence text are probably in-line replies. You may see them in email programs depending on your settings.
This is so fascinating. I don't remember if any of the software collection disks I had as a kid had any way of communicating with the publisher, though most of the ones I remember having weren't so much collections of other peoples' software but more like, "Apogee Software Samplers" (doubt that's the real name) so each game came with its own catalog .exe with phone numbers and BBS info and stuff.
Yeah, this interests me far more than the typical shareware disk because it's a) not just a dump of an ftp or pile of disks from someone else compiled by a two-bit profiteer b) it's actually original software but it's not meant to sell a particular *development studio.* thanks for watching!!
I loved Big Blue especially all the ones that had Alfredo Adventures. Loved his adventures so much I programmed my own version in Quick Basic (full color) and a menu like theirs for my own games.
What? BBD stands for Bell Biv Devoe. Mentally hip-hop, smoothed out, on the R&B tip with a pop feel appeal to it. What's so bad about that? Granted, I wouldn't play "Do Me" in front of my mom but still...
Lmfao, you beat me to this joke
Also Poison
Pedantic historical note that may be interesting to... somebody:
QuickBASIC wasn't just popular because it was cheaper than a C compiler. BASIC was the de facto language for computer hobbyists. You'll notice it's included in the ROM of many computers in that era. Apple II, C64, the original IBM PC, TRS-80, BBC Micro, Sinclair's Spectrum, etc. Since BASIC was the first thing many people saw when they powered on their computer for the first time, it became the most popular language one would learn to program in.
Bill Gates once said, back when he was head honcho at Microsoft, that his vision was to bring BASIC to everyone -- hence his work licensing Microsoft BASIC to every hardware manufacturer with a ROM, its inclusion in DOS, then Visual Basic, the Office suite using Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) as the house macro language, and being the most common language in Windows Scripting Host.
Anyway, once ROM BASIC was no longer a given, DOS started shipping with GW-BASIC, and then QBASIC. QuickBASIC was the commercial version, with the ability to turn your .BAS code into a bona fide .EXE file. Look at your program now, all grown up and executable...
Now, if you were a hardcore nerd, you would probably know ASM as well, which was often the only other alternative language you had easy to access to. Many home microcomputers had a way of entering ASM or machine code without even needing any additional software.
Somewhere in between these extremes lived C. Almost as fast as assembly, but almost as understandable as BASIC. And portable, to some extent. But in the early days, "real" programmers were writing software in ASM because every byte of memory (and every cycle of the CPU) counted, and us plebs at home were tapping out BASIC code because it's just what you had.
Then there were those weirdos who used PASCAL. We don't talk about them.
An answer looking for a question. You hit the nail on the head here with this observation. Well into the 90s I had people tell me that computers were a fad, to learn a "real" skill instead.
My mom was one of those. I always had outdated equipment (I didn't have a computer capable of running Windows until 1996). She didn't think it would be a good job.
This is a good way to look back the history of disk magazines. After those years, most floppy disks I own goes bad. and my floppy drives are long gone. I try very very hard to find them from Internet Archive. However, the Big Blue Disk #2, #6, #7, #9, #12, #13, #14 are still missing.
I liked these. I would watch more if you posted them.
We had an Apple Macintosh on a card table. Black & white screen, about the size of a postcard. My uncle passed it on to us when he upgraded. He also gave us a big "rolodex" thing of floppies. Such weird and wild things in there.
I would be interested in seeing this in CGA artifact color.
Should I assume you know about edlin by now? The horror... it makes vim look user-friendly
yeah, never liked edlin!
You probably are aware of this by now but the lines starting with ">" you were confused about are quotes from messages those posters are responding to. That's how quotes were indicated when email was still text-only.
BBD by Softdisk huh? Writes itself...
Ohhh, the BBD I always hear about!
So, about 1:23, I don't know what BBD means and I did try to look it up but there are A LOT of things it can mean and I really can't tell what he's referring to. Any help?
I can't tell if you're joking about the joke title or not, haha. If not, "bits and pcs" = "bits and pieces"
I genuinely couldn't figure it out when I was recording it. I thought I added a note on the screen about this but maybe I forgot to unmute the layer heh
20:19 For a moment I thought it was "Microprose", Sid Meier's fist company that created Civilization and a bunch of awesome military games. I was thinking "what the heck, they made a word processor?"
I just looked it up, looks like there was some confusion back in the day, but MicroPro renamed to the much more familiar (at least in the 80s and 90s) WordStar.
By BBD, you mean, um, epidydimal hypertension? ;)
the Loan Amortization article on Wikipedia existed in 2007. I believe you were in college then, so it really begs the question, if you had waited one more year how much easier would college have been?
8:54. RELAX, it's the horse from the Berserk anime.
I guess it's better than Big Blue Catalog.
Technically edlin was the only way to edit a text file… EdLin = Edit Line = Line Editor… GW-BASIC was before Quick BASIC as well! 😉😉😁😁
1:27 What do you have against Bell Biv Devoe?
The BBD is certainly a Load Star 😬
Well I doubt the floppy's were on the same level as the Compile Disk Station disks for the MSX2.
Late to the party, but, starting at 32:18 , I find it Refreshing that unlike EA or any other publisher, they only pay you for the right to announce your original work, but You retain the Intellectual Property of the work. Basically they are paying you to advertise your software! Only if they port it to C64/128 will they pay you half the cost of the conversion, effectively a Licensing fee.
Sorry, meant 33:07
Bbd and loadstar... Man, that's a rough google search
Oh how I miss getting my monthly fill of BBD
As I recall before edit we used copy con
christine was the one who cooded the atari jaguar port of doom and ported it to 3do in under a month and the 3do port is notoriusly bad and notoriusly impresive that thee port was develooped by one woman in such a short period of time with nothing but useless jpegs and atari jaguar doom code
Amazing Disk!
At 15:10 I had a disk of games that was titled "Underware" No reason other than it being a silly title...
issue #1 is from the month i was born. neat
1:16 Ah, yes. Bell Biv DeVoe.
Your big blue disk is looking a bit soft(disk)
So what does BBD stand for then? because Urban dictionary's top definition is Blue Ball Disease, that I suspect we aren't all talking about.
I suspect we're talking about a definition referring to the size of a black mans appendage? but then I've never come across that acronym either.
And anyway so what? because there are no other jokes about black 9 inch floppy things.
Lol no please look up bbd folks😂