Re: The next holy grail of the A2 software world

[Michael Kent <michael@syndicomm.remove.this.com>]

Mitchell Spector <mitch2gs@hotmail.com> wrote:

>    As for playing them on the IIgs, there was BeatBox from Alvin Tan 
> and Brian Ballweber. Although in an unfinished state, it did work quite 
> well and supported a few 8 track MOD formats (e.g. MED, OctaMED, 
> Protracker, FastTracker) on a stock Apple IIgs. It was released 
> publicly 12 years back, should be out there. I still have it here.

I've tried BeatBox, but I usually like to be doing something else with
my GS while I listen to MODs.  For a standalone player I prefer
soniqTracker.  Just my personal preference.

>    Unreleased players...I have shockWave (version 0.05b1) from
> Ian Schmidt and Richard Wifall--the guys from the old GS<>IRC
> group. Like BeatBox it supported 8 track MODs and MEDs, but
> had the unique distinction of S3M "support" as well. It was *very*
> crash prone and just made a bunch of unrecognizable noise trying 
> to playback S3M's though. Obviously it was far from finished, and
> more an interesting curiosity than a functional piece of software.

I've never heard of it.  Sounds interesting.

You must have an interesting archive.  For the sake of the community,
make a backup!  :-)

>    Yep, it was shellPlay. It and BeatBox offered the best sound quality,
> accuracy and supported effects, although as the name implied it only 
> ran in a CLI shell based environment, like Orca or GNO/ME. Ninjaforce
> released an NDA called "Deskplay" which gave shellPlay a GUI
> interface, runnable from any GS/OS application and still allowed the
> same background playback. That was what I used back in the day.
> I think I used it with DOCVu CDA to get a visual show too.

I tried the DeskPlay / ShellPlay combo, and it didn't work at all for
me.  It would stop and start, the volume going up and down at inappro-
priate times -- sounded really horrible.  Sonobox worked much, much 
better.

And as for a visual show, DOCvu is nice, but I prefer GShisen.  ;-)

>    I have to agree. Personally I'm very doubtful it was anywhere near
> complete, or even in a runnable state given Bill's track record with 
> claims of how far software was complete. AppleWorks GS 2.0, for the 
> most part, doesn't exist.

Supposedly the last few years of GS+ were written in it.  At least that's
the story I heard if I haven't screwed it up.  So I would say it existed
in some useable form.

>    Speaking of lost software, there were a few titles I'm still looking for
> that have been *confirmed* to exist. Namely the unfinished copy of
> Sword of Sodan, and Mike Searl's Gameboy emulator, QuickTime
> video player and Photo CD viewer for the Second Sight. The latter
> three were actually shown at KFest one year.
> 
>    I'm also curious if the rumours were true about unreleased Taito
> games such as Renegade, Bubble Bobble and Operation Wolf.
> At this point in time, I'm rather doubtful.

Those would all be very cool to see.

>    Ninjaforce's KABOOM certainly does exist too (I have it on my
> hardisk!), and in a playable state, but no sound/music...yet. Okay, 
> it's been 12 years but I'm still hopefully they'll one day finish it. :)

Is that on their website?  Sounds like it would be worth checking out.

Mike