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2022-07-02 21:20:02
https://vintagecomputing.ch/?browseid=4232
Antares is a classic role-playing game of the Bard's Tale variety set in a science-fiction scenario. After the radio contact with space explorers stopped, a second troop goes to look for them. Unfortunately on the way they receive a emergency call, get shot and have to land on the planet Kyrion. Now the troop has to explore the planet and find out more about what happened.

The party has six members (chosen from twelve pre-defined characters) with different statistics and abilities, e.g. fighting, cooking, PSI (the science-fiction variant of magic) or translating (needed to communicate with non-hostile species). The world and dungeons are explored through a first-person perspective and when meeting enemies, the fight plays out turn-based: the player tells the characters what to do and text informs of the results. Killing enemies reward experience points which in turn improve the abilities.

Each character has to eat and sleep. While too much hunger results in death, a sleeping character is in a kind of trance: he still walks around, but can't take any actions or fight. Besides sleeping, there is also medicine available to keep the spirits up: just like other parts of equipment, it can be bought in hidden shops with gold found at slain enemies. Each character can transport up to six items and a radar shows how dangerous the current area is. Dead party members can be resurrected at the landing module.
https://vintagecomputing.ch/?browseid=8188

 

It is a sad fact that the 6502 used in the Commodore64 and other home computers of the 80s is widely believed to have a poor code density when it comes to compiled or wider than eight bit code. The C standard requires computations to be made with ints which work best if they have the same size as a pointer.
The 6502 also has a very small stack of 256 bytes which cannot be easily addressed and thus cannot be used for local variables. Therefore a second stack for variables has to be maintained, resulting in costly indexing operations. The 6502 is also pretty poor when it comes to indexed operations, it has no index with constant offset addressing mode, and requires the y register to be used for indexing.
https://vintagecomputing.ch/?browseid=5812
Amicom of Spreadpoint has been interviewed by Com and Orlando of Brainstorm at the Escpape and Spreadpoint copy party on Oktober 7th. 

When did you join Spreadpoint ? 
-A month ago. 

Your task in Spreadpoint ? 
-Coder, but in Spreadpoint everybody can do what he wants to. 

For how long have you been programming on the Amiga ? 
-For 2 years. 
What computers did you work on before? 
-Spectrum, Sinclair QL. I did some graphic programming with BASIC. 

What did you program on the Amiga? 
-A 3D-Demo (Summer of 88 for TLB), various intros and copiers for cracked games, Powerutility (sold it), a level editor for a shoot'em up, AMICOM-Kickstart (Antivirus, Copier etc.) 

What are you doing at the time ? 
-I'm working on Demo, called ATOM-demo. 
What's this about ? 
-Colored, shaded, permeating(!) 3D-Objects. 

Your future projects ? 
-3D vectorgrafics, 3D editor (ev. sell it), copier with multitasking capility, various utilities. 

What hardware do you have ? 
-An Amiga 1000  (1.5Mb, Harddisk 20 Mega SCSI), And an Amiga 2000 (A2620 Unix card, 68020 processor, 68881 math. coprocessor, 68851 Memory Management Unit, harddisk 80 MB SCSI, Modem 2400 Baud) 
Tell us something about your Master Seka. 
-It's based on the Seka V3.0 by Kefrens/Promax. It has been reassembled  and revised by my collegue Buddha. 
The main advantages are: 
Better editor commands, a finally working optimize function, auto runback, the workspace can be changed without exitting the Seka. 

Is there anything you want to advise to Amiga coders ? 
-Unfortunetly, there are more and more good programs, recently, which run only on one special Amiga. So I advise to try out the programs on different Amigas and to avoid unproper coding (absolute addresses, selfmodifing code, DBF-waiting-loops running to fast on the 68020.) 
And I hate programs, which you only can exit by a reset! 

Thank you for your answers. 

     Translated by The Acc{sed/BRS
https://vintagecomputing.ch/?browseid=268
The arcade was a place to play games, meeting point. In the german part of switzerland there were almost only males (you could also gambel). They were dark in the most of cases.
In the ‘westschweiz’ there were a lot more women in also in the arcades and younger people (for example in Lausanne). 
In the arcades there were always different types of arcades (older and the latest), than ‘table football’, flippers and so on. 
https://vintagecomputing.ch/?browseid=4554
Aus Wikipedia über Hofstettler: 
Kreml von 1986 (englische Version Kremlin, herausgegeben von Avalon Hill, Träger eines „Origins Award“ 1988) ist eine Parodie der sowjetischen Politik. Dieses Gesellschaftsspiel lässt sich nicht im klassischen Sinn in die gängigen Spielarten einordnen, da ihm sowohl ein Spielbrett wie auch Spielkarten im herkömmlichen Sinn fehlen. Die Spieler spielen die Rolle grauer Eminenzen, welche hinter Kandidaten stehen, die um Ministerposten bis hinauf zum Amt des Staats- und Parteichefs kämpfen. Nimmt ein Spieler dabei mehr als nötig Einfluss auf das Spielgeschehen, so verrät er seine „Beziehungen“ und macht sich dadurch angreifbar. Kreml stellt insofern ein Kuriosum dar, als man durch weitestgehende Passivität und Unauffälligkeit beste Gewinnchancen wahren kann. Der Spielverlauf nimmt dabei immer wieder überraschende Wendungen.
Ilyad (Description)
2022-08-03 13:32:28
https://vintagecomputing.ch/?browseid=5098
ILYAD is a side scrolling shoot 'em up with big sprites. You control a spaceship and your goal is to defeat all enemies. A sinister villain named Baron Arkhon has unbalanced the temporary space of the galaxy. We must destroy their bases and set the temporary equilibrium in 4 different ages (destinations):The Creation, Prehistory, Antiquity and the Middle Ages. At the end we will have to enter the fortress of Arkhon to destroy the generator of a infernal time machine. We can obtain 14 power-ups like Speed Down/Up and several types of improvements for the shot. The most effective are the triple trigger as Bustar, Doolyx, Jaxtorys, Leitun or Kyus. At the end of stages the are enormous final bosses with enormous sprites that require a lot of shots. Ilyad has a very effective soundtrack..
https://vintagecomputing.ch/?browseid=7127
@la1n/imp89 @Shana @dipswitch Sorry, I only just now noticed about this intense discussion going on. Shana has put it 100% correct already. The name eventually was given to the event by Furball/Fake That back in 1996 for Bünzli#1 (taking place near Bern). Was changed to 'Buenzli' (no umlaut) once international visitors started to appear. This then was kind of a 'trademark' for a while. When we changed the location from Winterthur to Olten, we also rebranded the party to Demodays, a name that was a bit generic but worked without the need to explain it all the time. It also allowed for the Demonights pun afterwards. 'Demodays', however, has not really been adopted by the demoscene too much, many people just kept it calling Buenzli (or 'Buenzu' for some). This is also somewhat reflected in inconsistent naming/series ordering on Pouet and possibly Demozoo. I'm happy, Furball &the other teenage guys called the event Bünzli: Without that decision, we wouldn't have interesting discussions like this 😉
War Heli (Atari ST)
2022-07-08 11:36:10
https://vintagecomputing.ch/?browseid=1258
War Heli is a state of the art shoot em up game with big sprites on a computer with no hardware-scrolling! 
https://vintagecomputing.ch/?browseid=4200
The topics vintage computing and vintage gaming are of course intertwined. 
First gaming is a part of the whole digitalisation. But before computer were in every household the consoles were there. The first funny digitalisation and alternative to the non existing tv-program (share the screen). And then the homecomputer in the private areas came ‘home’.  So games became again software in the area of computing. 
And so on … 
https://vintagecomputing.ch/?browseid=4494
Tiling was a design pattern often used in the beginning of the gamedesign.
Reason:
  • Tilebase is simple to use. Create the tiles and just say here is TileA, titleB.
  • Tilebase save space (######) - important in the beginning
  • Tilebased could be used for creating games (Labyrinths) with Sprites in front
  • You can create very fast new levels
  • The hardware has often tilebased background support 
  • Seamless tiles create very fast interesting backgrounds and foregrounds … 
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2022-05-21 14:24:19
https://vintagecomputing.ch/?browseid=3040
Game description
Starbirds is a shoot'em up game in the style of old AMIGA shooters like R-Type, Apidya, Wings of Death and many others. The game play is simple: the player controls a space ship (called the Starbird) and tries to keep alive, which is best ensured by shooting as many enemies as possible.
Starbirds features four horizontally scrolling levels, each packed with a huge amount of enemies and guarded by an extra-large boss enemy with big shields and power. The levels are constructed in a way that there are a lot of turn-off's which allow the player to take another path each time.
A special feature of Starbirds is the weapon system, which was inspired by action games like Wings of Deathand Lethal Xcess. There are two categories of weapons, primary and secondary weapons. Each category consists of 8 different types of weapons, four of each category are selected by the player before entering the first level. The player can decide at every time if the approaching enemies should be attacked using the primary or secondary weapon. By repeated pressing of the fire button the primary weapon is fired, by holding down the button the secondary weapon is fired.
The currently active weapon can be changed by collecting weapon symbols, which are left behind from exploding enemies quite often. Blue symbols represent primary weapons, red symbols secondary weapons. Every weapon has five different powers. If a symbol is collected, which represents one of the currently active weapons, then its power increases by one. Therefore it is advantageous to collect the same symbol several times in order to get a weapon with high power. On the other hand, changing a weapon reduces the power by one, therefore too many changes without intermediate power-up quickly lead to a poorly armed space ship with little chance of survival.
The Starbird space ship does not survive hits with enemies, their shots or with the background. Fortunately the player has six space ships available and he can restart the game three times in the last visited level. The game supports four levels of difficulty, which can be selected in the main screen, before entering the first level. Finally the game can even be played by two players simultaneously.
https://vintagecomputing.ch/?browseid=3755
GameArt like other digital media art is distinguished by a technologically induced ephemerality as well as by a decentralised and therefore difficult longterm availability. More complicating, GameArt differentiates even further and orientiates itself towards earlier lines of game culture like play in backyards, malls and high streets. There is a wide range for designing, playing, and experi- encing GameArt that expands all the way back to a mode of playful experience and action. How can this wide range and depth of themes, interactive playing time, and game mechanisms possibly be archived and made accessible?
Archiving for a society with an open end, in other words a „ludic“ society, has to be determined by an open possibility of observing artistic instruments being developed in order to expand it fur- ther or contextualize it in a new way. The suggestion is to try to build an open and playful archive that includes involved parties and works (from a „knocked down“ curbstone pixel to a player) as well as bystanders (spectators) in a comprehensive setting. While there seem to be long known instances of recipients through whom art works only have been able to unfold their meaning (in play), artists with their possible intentions and, finally, the functional systems of society like sci- ence have to be included first. These instances would only be the first traces and layers among many in an open archive. Subsequently a new „philosophy of archiving“ will be drafted that origi- nates in specific phenomenons and questions of GameArt.
These emerging levels and models describe diverse and partly disagreeing strategies of GameArt. The works span from the game as a medium of artistic discourse to the outright subver- sive criticism of a pronounced „ludic“ society. Therefore a „Mille-Plateaux“-archive is at the same time the base we are standing on and the future we are developing (as a tool).
Neon-Style
2022-09-12 08:08:03
https://vintagecomputing.ch/?browseid=5452
Grafitti of course has also technics to simulate this. 
https://vintagecomputing.ch/?browseid=5850
Brainstorm is a Swiss-based demo group, that has existed in two distinct periods; their formation as an Amiga demo group in the period between 1989 and 1993, and their reformation as a mainly pc demo group in 2006 until present day. They were originally formed a short while before may 1989 by graphician Chester and coder Majestic, and their first release was Lazer Roll. During the summer they recruited more members (like Orlando), and at the end of the summer vacation they were joined by the entire group Axxis (Bird, ...). This group had both a Swiss and German section, but the German section was found to be substandard and was forced to leave after a while. Another member, swapper Joker, left the scene soon after. They had by now started planning what would become the diskmagazine Zine. It was originally conceptuated as a cooperation between Brainstorm and another Swiss group at the time, Setrox, but the latter eventually decided against being part of the project. Due to this, Setrox coder The Accused left to join Brainstorm. Zine 1 was released in october. They were now a totally Swiss group again, except for two German members - Shadow and Yankee.
Advert in Cracker Journal 18 (january 1990), looking for members. Cracker Journal 19 (march 1990) reported, "Angel Dust joined Brainstorm and his name is now Six Pack." Sometime between Zine 3 (february 1990) and Zine 4 (april 1990) they decided to kick their German writer Yankee because he wasn't productive enough. He was a freelance writer for D.I.S.C. for a while before finally joining Addonic. Zine 5 was released at the Alcatraz Pentcost Party 1990 at the beginning of june. It was to be Orlando's last issue as editor, as The Accused had returned from his army service.
Metamorphosis (august 1991) mentioned their bbs Cheese-Line as 'new', and listed Accused, Axel, Bird, Chesney, Chester, Droid, ESA, Fly, Grubi, Luke, Macho, Majestic, Odie, Oli, Orlando, Patsy, Peace, Scattergold and Truxton as active members. Danish megaswapper The Pride joined the group in late september, and was sent a new packmenu for creating a new series of packs (see Superpack 1) - which would become the Obsession packseries, starting in october. All this was also reported in R.A.W 1 (november 1991).
R.A.W 2 (february 1992) reported that The Pride moved on from the group to join Sanity, and that a Finnish section had been opened by Phazer, Extabulator, Hoover, Mac, Top Azz and Voyager.
January 1993 saw the release of Axel's musicdisk Musicland, featuring among other songs his 8th-placed Technology from The Party 1992 the month before.
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2022-12-06 08:35:46
https://vintagecomputing.ch/?browseid=5926
» Do you remember your intentions when you set out to design FALSE?
Yes, initially my only goal was to try and make a “useful” language in as small an implementation as possible. I’ve always been obsessed with small/simple/fast (still am), and for me this was a fun diversion from the relative complexity of the E compiler.
I knew the language had to be based on Forth, as there’s no other language that has such simple parsing (it is mostly just a sequence of operations, little structure) and execution model (each operation simply takes from / adds to the stack).
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2023-04-11 13:26:13
https://vintagecomputing.ch/?browseid=8118
“Commodore has always paid lip service to software,” Charpentier said. “They do enough to get by and then rely on outside sources to fill the gap. Commodore was an extension of Jack Tramiel, and to him software wasn’t tangible—you couldn’t hold it, feel it, or touch it—so it wasn’t worth spending money for.”
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2023-05-01 12:01:44
https://vintagecomputing.ch/?browseid=8656
Derrick Steel sums up the game succinctly in his entry on MobyGames: "In what has to be considered one of the most "original" games of all time, you are a flying beer in space. And the evil corporations are coming after you, so you must use your "beer power" to fight off wave after wave of corporate beer." To be more precise, your goal is to defend the Eichhof Brewery from the imperium of invading "big beers," with bottle caps and other imaginative weapons that only beer lovers can appreciate ;)
https://vintagecomputing.ch/?browseid=9147
The CFA was founded in 1987 in Basel, Switzerland, when 3-letter names were still in fashion. CFA stood for “Computer Freaks Association”. In the first months the CFA was a group of C64 fans and gaming tournaments were held in regular intervals. They organised a gaming room at a local School-Party of the RG in Basel.

The CFA started with pure Demo-Making and Software-Swapping. The first international contact was the Norwegian group The Sinister Realm 2013 Stavanger. One of the early meeting places was the Dial-Club, a local Computer-Center in Basel.
At this time a regular Exchange-Ring of Software between the members was built up.
The first Copy-Party visited by CFA members was Crazy & ZSS Party 1988 in Pratteln/Switzerland. In 1989 Members of the group was busted by police on a German Copy-Party, but thanks to slow Swiss legislation, no CFA member had any troubles at all after returning to Switzerland.
The CFA took part in Demo-Contests of other Swiss copy parties: Crazy & RCS Party 1989, Crazy Stardom Copy-Party 1989 and Fresh Party 1990

In the early days, our strategy was: focus on Switzerland. This changed with the first member expansion outside of Basel: 
German members: Snief and The Cure.
Liechtenstein members: Sandman.

War against another Swiss group Fresh, which led to a funny anti demo Fresh on Top. The war was officially ended at the Swiss Pirates Reunion 2002. (nowadays there are many friendship boundaries between the former 2 opponents).

The CFA has in the meantime started importing and cracking games: access to the major US BBS, latest wares and cards agogo. 

1990-1991 Cooperation with Italian Cracking Service from Italy.

11/1989-07/1993 reknown Disk Mag “Immortal Flash” an e-zine that become quite popular in the scene (later released by Atlantis).

In 02/1991 the CFA died and the remaining members built up Atlantis. More info in Joker Note.
Fresh (1989 - 1990)
2023-09-15 12:08:56
https://vintagecomputing.ch/?browseid=9173
Fresh was founded April 22, 1989 on the Crazy & RCS Party 1989 by Iceman/ISI Soft, Graphics-Boy, Project B, Shake (subgroup) and Welfare Software Boys (subgroup). 2 months later Krush joined in as main cracker. The first Fresh Intro gained a lot of attaention in the Swiss scene: it was coded Mat and the music was exclusively composed by Tim of Modern Arts, one of the most progressive demo groups back then.

After the Crazy Stardom Copy-Party 1989 (August) in Le Locle the 2 Swiss demogroups Future Vision Switzerland and Trap joined Fresh. 

Mainly in 1990, a war with Computer Freaks Association was ongoing. Both groups were competing for being Switzerland's #1. Computer Freaks Association released a small anti-demo called Fresh on Top. The war was officially ended at the Swiss Pirates Reunion 2002 (nowadays there are many friendship boundaries between the former 2 opponents).

Was in co-op with Century for short while in February/March 90. The co-op was stopped due to a lack of Century cracks.

After the Fresh Party 1990 (April) Krush, Ogygene and Mirage left to built up a new Swiss group together with The Sexton/G*P called Abstract, which later then joined forces with the ashes from the Swiss demogroup Future Concepts and renamed into Crusade.

Also in April 1990 a small but neat Austrian section was built by Awesome & Beast. They have produced some one file demos and due to the good connections to Lotus, Awesome has supplied a couple of hot originals. 

In May 1990 some Fresh members have been working on a project to join forces with The Ancient Temple. Both group got to know eachother at the Fresh Party 1990. Project names were SAPPHIRE or LIFE IS A BEACH. There was no agreement on the name, so the project never was realised. 

In June/July 1990 a German section in Cologne was built around Spy, Trax & Scoundrel. After their lame release Lost in Time , they have been kicked out.

Was in co-op with Holocaust from August 1990 to October 1990. The coop started with Fresh's first release of Back to the Future II 5. The co-op later was stopped due to a lack of Fresh cracks in that period (main cracker Graphics Boy had left the group to join Crazy).

Fresh died in late 1990 when Freestyle and Dave joined Talent.
About
2022-07-19 21:30:22
https://vintagecomputing.ch/?browseid=570
vintagecomputing is an open platform for people, who are interesting in the different aspects of vintagecomputing and gaming in switzerland. You can just create an account and enter data, make propositions and enter data. 
Listing Cultures
2023-02-10 08:58:30
https://vintagecomputing.ch/?browseid=801
The listing culture is a hybrid between gutenberg galaxis and software. Software was often distributed in the mainframe time as source code ( c ). each system had a different set of hardware, processor. c and co were the platform. You could compile it for your system. 

The listing culture brought source code to the magazines and could be published. first with basic and co for homecomputers, later with checksums, than basic with assembler inlines, than only shortcodes. 
of course by typing in you could learn how to code and solve problems.
https://vintagecomputing.ch/?browseid=997
Games made with old technologies but not old working hardware. 
Impressions
2022-07-09 20:36:47
https://vintagecomputing.ch/?browseid=1134
Some insights into vintagecomputing and research.
Storable Levels
2022-04-13 16:59:32
https://vintagecomputing.ch/?browseid=1271
The progress could be stored on the game disc! (The game has 35? levels)
https://vintagecomputing.ch/?browseid=1273
Perhaps the first shoot-em-up with joystick, keyboard and mouse-control. 
homecomputer 8bit
2022-04-15 10:34:42
https://vintagecomputing.ch/?browseid=1539
8bit: most of the homecomputer came with a basic as ‘operating system’. loading programs has to be done in basic.
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2022-04-28 11:39:51
https://vintagecomputing.ch/?browseid=2266
**The Cheshire Catalyst** (Richard Cheshire) (@Cheshire2600) was the last editor of the notorious TAP Newsletter of the 1970s and 1980s. (TAP was a predecessor of 2600 Magazine.) In his “share the knowledge” spirit, he has volunteered at every HOPE conference since the first one in 1994. His PHonePHriendly.Com sets up web pages meant to be read on mobile phone web browsers, and allows him to delude himself that he’s still into phones as a phreak.
TENNISFORTWO
2022-04-29 14:48:08
https://vintagecomputing.ch/?browseid=2343
Tennis For Two was the first Videogame ever! It was developed in 1958. The gameplay features were more complex and more fun than in the later very popular Pong or Breakout. GameLab ZHdK has made a new version to bring the amazing game mechanics to attention. You hit the ball with the A-button of your controller while you use the left analogue stick to indicate the direction (or angle) of the tennis ball. And since it is tennis, you can hit the ball anywhere in your own half of the court! It is surprisingly fun to play the "TennisForTwo Fantasy 1958" version. Made in 2015 by GameLab ZHdK.
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2022-05-12 09:52:38
https://vintagecomputing.ch/?browseid=2625
SEND US YOUR MOST BEAUTIFUL 5.25” OR 3.5” DISKS. PAINT IT, SPRAY IT, DYE IT OR PUT SOME ORIGINAL STICKERS ON IT. THEN WRAP IT IN A PAPER WHICH CONTAINS YOUR ADDRESS. THE WHOLE BUNCH HAS TO BE PUT INTO AN ENVELOPE AND SENT TO THE FOLLOWING ADDRESS : PO-BOX 470 / 8037 ZUERICH / SWITZERLAND. AFTER HAVING DONE THIS, YOU LEAN BACK IN YOUR CHAIR AND WAIT FOR YOUR PRIZE… 1ST TO 3RD PRIZE: A DINNER WITH THE SCA-CREW (ALL TOGETHER, IN ZURICH) 4TH TO 10TH PRIZE: AN SCA T-SHIRT (100% COTTON, SIZE: S,M,L OR XL) 10TH TO 25TH: AN SCA-STICKER OR AN SCA SWAP-DISK.
Tennis for two - radical
2022-05-21 14:44:35
https://vintagecomputing.ch/?browseid=3072
Tennis for two is one of the most radiacal games ever. It has no ! avatar. At the moment the ball is on your field, you have the power to kick it in the direction, you want. So the game is more territorial based than avatar/npc-linked.
designpattern
2022-07-08 11:13:22
https://vintagecomputing.ch/?browseid=4492
which designpattern where used? and why?
Capitals (Bourdieu)
2023-05-06 14:00:42
https://vintagecomputing.ch/?browseid=8741
communities (as systems) have their own language, their own values (and thus also their own capitals), their own operations, their own exensions, their own decision extensions.