Remote

Jeff Halter

@halcyon@bitbang.social

mastodon 4.0.15

Drunk on '90s computing nostalgia, hacking on After Dark, HyperCard, and Hotline.

129 Followers

44 Following

19 Posts

Joined November 27, 2022

Github:

https://github.com/jhalter

morphing.cloud:

https://morphing.cloud

Jeff Halter @halcyon@bitbang.social

· 3mo ago

If you like HyperCard, or are HyperCard-curious, I'd like to share an early build of my HyperCard player for modern macOS, "Stacks". It runs stacks natively: no emulator, sound (with MacinTalk speech synthesis!), period-accurate typography. There's an in-app browser for the Internet Archive's HyperCard collection, so you can explore thousands of stacks and run them with one click. Still early days with rough edges, but I'm having fun with it. Please report bugs! https://morphing.cloud/hypercard

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Jeff Halter @halcyon@bitbang.social

· 2mo ago

I've released Stacks v1.0a17 with many compatibility fixes, with a focus on working through problems in the fascinating "HyperCard 10th Anniversary" stack from the Internet Archive. What an amazing time capsule of Apple's history this thing is. Card 2 says that among others, the stack was presented to "Steve Jobs, Acting CEO" in late 1997. I can only imagine his enthusiasm! It's also an absolute flex: animations, music, colors, speech, drag and drop. Not 100% working yet, but progress.

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Jeff Halter @halcyon@bitbang.social

· 6mo ago

Satori by Ben Haller has aged well. Still gorgeous after 36 (!!) years.

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Jeff Halter @halcyon@bitbang.social

· 7mo ago

Replying to

Hi there @csilverman @root42 👋

In brief, the approach is:

Load the code and resources from the original module
Execute the original 68k module code using https://github.com/kstenerud/Musashi (Thank you kstenerud!)
Add handling for unhandled traps to draw to a Metal view, reimplementing the behaviors of QuickDraw one at a time (setting pixels, drawing rects, sprites, etc)

Huge thanks to the M.A.C.E project for demonstrating this approach might be viable.

GitHub - kstenerud/Musashi: Motorola 680x0 emulator written in C

Motorola 680x0 emulator written in C. Contribute to kstenerud/Musashi development by creating an account on GitHub.

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Jeff Halter @halcyon@bitbang.social

· 7mo ago

After Dark Player progress: Ripple is looking good, with the Water Color control mapped to the macOS native color picker. Feels great to get a color picker for free! 🎨

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Jeff Halter @halcyon@bitbang.social

· 3mo ago

Replying to

@gparker@discuss.systems @csilverman@mastodon.social @root42@chaos.social Ah, I'm super slow to recognize that you are Greg of Sealie Software. I sent you an email a couple weeks back re: Fringe Player, but maybe it was relegated to your spam folder. Your comment regarding the pain of the dynamic shared library was prescient, but after months of head+wall banging I've made big progress in getting most modules through 4.0 running! I'm really close to sharing this project.

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Jeff Halter @halcyon@bitbang.social

· 7mo ago

Replying to

Hey @Eric_Neue I plan to make the GitHub repo public with release builds when I’m a bit further along. I’ll be sure to post here when that happens!

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Jeff Halter @halcyon@bitbang.social

· 7mo ago

Replying to

@deviantintegral I was curious about that, but my cursory investigation into the current state of macOS screensavers is that it's a world of pain and breaking changes with every macOS release. Also raises questions about how one would distribute modules without running afoul of the copyright holder -- maybe a just a packaging tool? Too much to take on for now, but I might revisit after I get more modules working.

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Jeff Halter @halcyon@bitbang.social

· 7mo ago

Replying to

@gparker @csilverman @root42 Wow, you went down this road long before me! I’m also at the point of trying to decipher the 3.0 library behavior. Not a lot of progress yet. I agree, the 2.0 and MAD modules have had the best effort/reward ratio. Still, hoping I can somehow get over the 3.0 module blocker. So many great modules would be unlocked.

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Jeff Halter @halcyon@bitbang.social

· 7mo ago

Replying to

@zerodogg The Musashi processor emulation engine is portable, so I think the same approach could work, but it's unlikely my project would be easily adapted to Linux. If you're up for running a full classic Mac OS VM, check out Basilisk II, Mini vMac, or SheepShaver in meantime! They will all run happily on Linux.

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Jeff Halter @halcyon@bitbang.social

· 7mo ago

Replying to

@FormerlyStC That's an endgame goal, for sure! That was a favorite of mine.

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Jeff Halter @halcyon@bitbang.social

· 7mo ago

Replying to

@arroz@mastodon.social I haven't explored that in depth yet, but I'd love to make that happen if it's possible.

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Jeff Halter @halcyon@bitbang.social

· 10mo ago

I need to revisit his last game, The Fool and His Money. It landed at the awkward time between PPC to Intel transition and didn't leave me with much time to finish it before it was incompatible with my daily driver Mac.

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Jeff Halter @halcyon@bitbang.social

· 7mo ago

Replying to

@gparker @csilverman @root42 Thanks for the reference. I'll check it out. I've definitely bumped into an order of magnitude more complexity as I try to run AD 3.0+ modules, which depend on a shared resource library. Hopefully this is surmountable.

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Jeff Halter @halcyon@bitbang.social

· 7mo ago

Replying to

@jsnell Wow, hey Jason! I didn't know there was such a thing as a Screen Saver beat editor. I'd love to see a contemporaneous take on After Dark software as it was released -- will need to dig up some MacUser PDFs from archive.org!

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Jeff Halter @halcyon@bitbang.social

· 7mo ago

Replying to

@metaning Is your thought to function similar to demo mode in the original software? I currently have a full screen toggle and was considering having a floating palette there (maybe with toggle-able visibility?). Sometimes I want to fiddle with sliders, sometime enjoy the full screen scene without UI.

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Jeff Halter @halcyon@bitbang.social

· 7mo ago

Replying to

@computernut43 Can you share any details on how you’re doing that?

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Jeff Halter @halcyon@bitbang.social

· 7mo ago

Replying to

@MacBalance I think that was the case without third party software, yeah.

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